Gradually his voice grew drowsy and at last he fell asleep. My arm was trapped beneath the weight of his body but I lay still, not wanting him to wake. With my free hand I pulled the cover over him.
I had no desire to sleep. I was fully awake and thinking. If Edmund’s brother had been commanded to God, who, I wondered, had given the command?
My cousin, Roger, Lord Mortimer of Wigmore, was standing with his legs apart and his back to the fire, casually issuing commands as if he were the ruler of all England. The king, meanwhile, was crouched on a stool looking miserable. His face was ashen, his eyes red-rimmed and his bottom lip was trembling. Perhaps, like Edmund, he blamed himself.
Isabella sat stony-faced in the best chair regarding both her son and my cousin with distaste. She had been weeping.
My cousin regarded us sombrely. ‘A sad business.’
‘Please, tell me what has happened,’ I said quietly.
‘Letters have come from Lord Berkeley telling us the prisoner is dead.’
‘Requiescat,’ I murmured.
‘Indeed.’
‘When did he die?’
‘Two days ago. The night before Gurney left Berkeley.’
‘Gurney?’
‘Sir Thomas Gurney. Lord Berkeley’s man. The one who brought the letters,’
‘Did he say more?’
‘What more is there to say?’
Edmund was talking quietly to Isabella and her son and couldn’t hear what I was saying.
‘Did the letter say how he died? Was he sick?’
My cousin looked at me thoughtfully.
‘The letter said nothing. It didn’t need to. He’s dead. It’s finished.’
I shook my head. ‘I never thought it would end like this.’
‘Didn’t you? I credited you with more intelligence, but perhaps I was mistaken.’ He started to turn away but then turned back. ‘Margaret, a word of warning. Be careful. Do not raise phantoms where none exist. Leave Isabella and the boy to grieve in peace.’
I was about to ask what phantoms he imagined there were to be raised but one look at his face made me close my mouth.
I went over to Isabella.
‘Your grace,’ I said quietly. ‘I grieve for you. A husband is still a husband no matter where he is or what he has done. Sir Edward was the father of your children and as such I know your heart must be full of sorrow at this time.’
She was very pale but quite composed.
‘I am truly a widow. No more pretence. It’s over.’
She reached out to touch my hand as she had that time on the ship when we thought we might die. I felt the coolness of her fingers and waited for more words but she said nothing.
Edmund was talking to his nephew. They were two young men vainly trying to bring comfort to the other.
‘I have written to my de Bohun cousin,’ said the young king bleakly.
‘And I shall write to my sisters,’ said Edmund. ‘There are only four of my father’s children left. So many have gone.’
‘It is God’s will,’ said the boy, turning his sorrow towards me.
‘Your grace?’
‘Please,’ he half-smiled. ‘I don’t need formality at a time like this, I need comfort.’
‘Dearest Edward,’ I said, returning the smile. ‘I grieve with you. If there is any service I can do?’
‘There is,’ he said simply. ‘When we return south, bring me your son. I like babies. They are always happy and I need to be reminded that somewhere happiness exists.’
I was surprised. Men have tender feelings towards their own children but it was unusual for a boy to acknowledge a love of all babies.
‘It will be an honour for Mondi.’
‘Is that what you call him?’
‘Yes, Edmund, for his father.’
‘I shall call my firstborn son Edward, for my father,’ he said firmly. ‘It will be a way of remembering him.’
‘We must make a decision how to play this,’ said my cousin abruptly. ‘We cannot delay too long in spreading the word. An announcement must be made to the parliament.’
‘Is that wise?’ said Isabella. ‘It’s not as if he was king any more. Perhaps we should keep the death hidden until we have settled matters.’
‘What matters?’ said the young king.
‘Nothing which need concern you, dearest,’ said Isabella gently.
‘The body,’ said my cousin with studied callousness. ‘We can’t just toss it into a pit.’
‘Lord Mortimer!’ I said angrily. ‘Your words are unfeeling.’
‘I have no feelings for Sir Edward as he had none for me. He threw me into the Tower and left me to rot. I did not receive justice at his hands. He would have let Despenser hang me. He was a bad king.’
The king jumped off his stool and stood there, his eyes blazing.
‘How dare you speak of my father like that, Lord Mortimer. If you were not my mother’s friend I would …’
‘Yes, boy? What would you do?’
‘Mortimer!’
We all jumped as Isabella’s voice sliced like a blade across the room.
‘In my presence and in the presence of my son, you will mind your tongue. This is my husband you are slandering and he is not dead a week.’
With no thought for anything but the need for haste, I excused myself and hurried down to the hall where I found one of Edmund’s men. I asked the whereabouts of Sir Thomas Gurney and while waiting for him to be brought to me, wondered if he would tell me the truth. He might consider it none of my business, not the preserve of a woman.
‘Countess?’
Thomas Gurney was a man with a ferrety face, dark-haired and black-browed, broad in the shoulder with blacksmith’s arms. It was impossible to tell if he was more than a simple messenger so I needed to tread carefully. He stood blocking the light, staring at a point somewhere above my head.
‘Lord Mortimer said I might find you here.’ I put out a hand to grasp a rail, trying to look fragile with my eight-month belly.
‘My lady?’
‘You are returning to Berkeley?’
His lips twitched in annoyance. ‘Yes, my lady. We were ready to leave when I was summoned.’
This was not a good start.
‘Please understand, Sir Thomas, my husband, is in great need of consolation. He grieves and, being a dutiful wife, I wish to lessen his pain. If I could tell him his brother did not suffer, it would be a kindness.’
Gurney frowned.
‘I lost my first husband, at Bannockburn,‘ I continued in a low voice as if my words were a long-kept secret revealed for Thomas Gurney alone. ‘I didn’t know how he died and no-one could tell me of his last moments. Nobody could say if he suffered. I’m sure you understand, Sir Thomas, why I wish to bring my husband any comfort that I can.’
Gurney nodded. ‘I’m sorry you lost your lord, my lady. ‘Twas a bloody battle. Many good men fell to the Scots that day.’
I hurried on before he could embark on the horrors of Bannockburn. Since marrying Edmund they had disappeared from my dreams and I had no wish to have them resurrected.
‘I hear Berkeley is like my childhood home, Sir Thomas - a damp place where fogs creep in from the marshes, and sickness strikes quickly.’
Gurney looked puzzled. ‘There has been no sickness in the castle, my lady.’
He seemed very sure but then he would. If there had been sickness everyone would know and would have been afraid.
‘Thank you for your assurances, Sir Thomas. My husband’s fears will be eased knowing his brother was not lost to a fever. Was it perhaps a fall?’
‘I heard of no fall.’ A fleeting look of suspicion crossed his face and I knew I’d asked one question too many.
There had been no sickness, no fall. What was it t
hat had caused Edmund’s brother to die? Perhaps Sir Thomas Gurney didn’t know or perhaps he was under orders to tell no-one.
‘The prisoner was well-treated, my lady. He was fed better than my lord. His chamber was heated and he had pen and parchment. They said he wrote verses and would read them to his keeper. I do not think you can fault my lord for his care of the prisoner.’
So Edmund’s brother had a particular keeper. I wondered if I could discover his name but Sir Thomas Gurney was anxious to be gone. He took two steps backwards and was beginning his formal farewell. It would do me no good to become an object of his suspicion and perhaps there was nothing of which to be suspicious. I inclined my head and tried to look duly grateful although he had told me nothing of any value.
‘I thank you, Sir Thomas.’
He stared at me as if I was worth no more than a laundress. A stupid man. But cunning could easily be mistaken for stupidity. If Thomas Gurney had secrets he was not going to blurt them out to the first woman who asked questions, no matter that she was Lord Mortimer’s cousin.
On the final day of the parliament it was announced to a stunned gathering of men in the chapter house of Lincoln Cathedral that on the eve of the feast of St Matthew the Apostle and Evangelist, Sir Edward, sometime king of England, had died a natural death at Berkeley Castle.
Edmund said there were gasps and turned heads and cries of amazement. I wondered how many were genuinely sad at the death of this man they had known, and how many were secretly rejoicing. The timing of the proclamation meant the news would be carried home by every man present and its implications picked over in every hall and every hovel in the land. Each man’s wife would want exact details of what was said and by whom; and later, his servants would embroider the tale in the way that servants always do.
‘What will happen now?’ I asked Edmund as we prepared in a half-hearted way to leave for Nottingham.
‘They are arguing about the funeral arrangements. My nephew wishes his father to be laid to rest in the abbey at Westminster where his grandfather and grandmother are buried, but Isabella won’t have it. She wants some lesser place, somewhere out of the way where my brother can be conveniently forgotten.’
‘And my cousin?’
‘Mortimer fears unrest, he doesn’t want a funeral close to London. He suggested the abbey at Gloucester where his kinsman is abbot.’
‘Gloucester is a great distance from London,’ I said thoughtfully. ‘Suitable for pilgrimage but not for plotting.’
‘I expect it will be as Mortimer wishes,’ said Edmund morosely. ‘He usually gets his own way.’
‘And is your brother’s body still at Berkeley?’
‘Yes, in the chapel. I am assured a man is watching over him.’
They would have embalmed the body quickly and hopefully Edmund need not dwell on his brother’s face. Our viewing of the count of Valois’s body two years ago had not been pleasant for either of us.
‘Where would you like him buried?’
He shrugged. ‘I have no opinion. I will grieve for him as much at Gloucester as I would at Westminster.’
‘And your brother?’ I said tentatively, trying to rouse Edmund from his apathy. ‘What would he have chosen for himself?’
Edmund smiled. ‘As long as it was suitably glittering and glorious, Ned wouldn’t have minded. If he had known he was going to die he might well have chosen to be laid to rest in the chapel at Langley, beside his great friend Piers Gaveston. But no-one would permit that. It would not be fitting for a man who had once been king.’
‘So there is your duty, my dearest. Make certain that, whatever happens and wherever it is done, this funeral will be the most splendid glittering affair ever. Talk to Edward, commission a wonderful hearse, call in the king’s painter. This need not be a shabby hole-in-the-corner business. This funeral can be as glorious and as wonderful as your brother would have wanted.’
We travelled the familiar road from Lincoln to Southwell, through Sherwood, past Mansfield and on to Nottingham. On every side the fields were bare of crops and signs of autumn were already brushing the trees. In the villages, water dripped from roof thatch, and puddles formed in dips and hollows. Our summer was over and we had begun the long slow march to the turn of the year.
It was six years since I had last ridden these same roads, filled with sorrow at the death of a friend, wondering whether or not I should accept Lord Everingham’s proposal of marriage. A lifetime ago John had ridden this way dressed in his finery, overjoyed at the prospect of going to war. I hadn’t been there to watch him pass beneath the Sherwood oaks or turn the corner where the stream meandered across the path. I hadn’t seen him take one last look back at the rooftops of Mansfield or heard the greeting he shouted to the elderly blacksmith at Southwell. I hadn’t even seen his dead body when they brought him home. They said it was not a sight for a lady. All I had was a lead-lined coffin and a tattered blood-stained cloak. Those were the last and only reminders of my first husband. Of Aymer, my firstborn son, I needed no reminders. He was stitched into my heart.
Edmund was riding up ahead talking to his brother, Norfolk. There was no denying my second husband was a handsome man. My eyes followed the line of his calves admiring their taut shapeliness. None of the other men I knew had legs like Edmund’s. My cousin’s might have been more muscular and Norfolk’s longer, but when Edmund rose in the saddle, women’s eyes widened in appreciation. He had the straightest back of his family and sat his horse easily. Even his late brother, Sir Edward, could not match his looks: the flowing golden hair, the straight nose flaring slightly at the end, the high cheekbones, the full firm lips and those summer-blue eyes.
‘Lady Margaret! You shouldn’t gaze at Lord Edmund like that. It is not what wives do. You look as if you wanted to eat him.’
It was Margery, Lady Abernethy. She had ridden up beside me and I’d been so busy thinking of Edmund I hadn’t noticed.
She glanced at my belly. ‘In your condition it is more than indecent, it is positively dangerous.’
‘Lady Margery, he is my husband.’
‘Precisely, and as such he has licence. You should be safely confined by now and out of the clutches of lustful men.’
She leant across and tapped me with her riding whip.
‘I thought Lord Mortimer would be riding with the queen.’ She peered ahead to where Isabella and her son led our royal procession.
‘He prefers to keep out of sight.’
‘Not for much longer. With the impediment removed there’s no further need for evasion.’
‘Impediment?’ I said wanting to make sure I had understood her correctly.
‘The husband. The prisoner. Our late and dearly lamented king. I suppose your cousin will wait a suitable length of time and then claim his reward. God alone knows, he’s been waiting long enough.’
So Lady Abernethy, like me, was of the opinion that Isabella had not yet given herself to my cousin. Their apartments were mostly adjoining and they often sat together in private, but in public they were very circumspect.
‘I’ve heard that in Avignon they call her the adulterous royal whore,’ she confided. ‘The Holy Father is talking of excommunication,’
‘I don’t know where you heard that, Lady Margery, but if it’s true, the queen must tread carefully. Her plans will suffer if there is gossip.’
‘Perhaps Lord Mortimer has plans of his own.’
‘What do you mean?’
Our procession came to a halt so Lady Margery was able to lean across and whisper, ‘If I were Lady Mortimer I would employ a taster for my food and be very careful whom I allowed into my castle.’
The Welsh March was a long way from anywhere, thrown out on the fringes of England, a wild place where lords made their own laws and women depended on the strength of their men. Lady Mortimer would be at Ludlow but my cousin rarely spoke of he
r and I had learned not to ask. She must still be alive but I didn’t know if she was free to ride out or if my cousin had imprisoned her behind those grey forbidding walls.
In my ignorance I had thought my cousin a good Christian, a God-fearing man, but I was beginning to have grave doubts. Two people stood between him and the prize he craved, and now one of them was dead. I thought of my cousin’s wife, alone in her castle, waiting for a husband who never came, and wondered if his recent trips to Wales were to arrange matters for his benefit.
As we passed under Cow Lane Bar and entered the familiar streets of Nottingham, I felt the first stab of pain. The royal procession, turned into Low Pavement and wound slowly up the hill to the castle leaving behind cheering crowds and the ever-present stench of the Shambles. By the time we’d crossed the bridge and passed under the gatehouse into the outer courtyard, I was in no doubt. Our child was not going to wait for a more convenient time or place.
She was born that evening on the feast day of St Michael and we named her Joan, for my mother. By the time she was baptised the following day, I had betrothed her several times over: once to a fine English nobleman, perhaps the Pembroke heir, or aiming higher, the elder son of the count of Hainault, still unmarried at the age of twenty. The possibilities for a brilliant marriage were endless when your father was the uncle of the king of England.
She was a beautiful baby with rosy-pink skin and plump cheeks like my mother, and on top of her head was a fuzz of fine golden hair. She had tiny curled hands with translucent pearls for nails and when she opened her eyes they were a dark colour like over-ripe damsons. But I was worried she couldn’t see.
‘Is she malformed?’ I said anxiously.
My brother said Lancaster was almost blind, his vision hidden by a creeping fog. There was nothing the physicians could do, not even with their silver needles. I feared this was God’s punishment for what we had done. What if this child of mine was paying for our sins?
‘Many of the babes I pull into the world are like this,’ said the midwife complacently. ‘It passes. In a few weeks her eyes’ll be as pretty as a wayside flower, my lady. You wait and see.’
The Queen's Spy Page 19