It was a few days later when Lady Abernethy came to see me.
‘A girl,’ she said, a note of disgust in her voice. ‘And after all that shrieking and panic.’
I smiled at her. ‘My husband is pleased. He wanted a daughter.’
‘Your husband would be pleased with anything you did, Lady Margaret.’
‘Have you seen him?’ I asked anxiously.
‘Yes, he ran three successful courses today. The women in the stand were swooning.’
I smiled with pleasure thinking I too would have swooned at the sight of Edmund jousting. There were great rewards for a woman in having a handsome husband and being envied by other women was one of them.
‘And the king?’
‘He did well. He has determination and will be a great fighter when he’s older.’
‘And the others?’
Lady Margery lowered her voice so that my maid couldn’t hear. ‘Lord Mortimer is keeping his distance.’
‘Why? Has something happened?’
‘Rumours. Not just one or two, you understand, they are everywhere.’
A shiver ran down my spine as I thought of Lady Mortimer far away in her lonely castle.
‘What rumours?’
‘People are saying the old king did not die a natural death. They believe he was murdered.’
I wasn’t surprised. Any sudden death produced a brew of scurrilous tales and the more important the man the more lurid the telling.
‘What is being said?’
Lady Margery Abernethy would talk to anyone. She gossiped with the serving boys and with the men who brought carcasses into the kitchens. When there was a story to discover she could be found whispering to one of the laundresses or asking questions of the men who cleaned out the privy pits. Long ago I had learned to ask Lady Margery if I wanted to know what people were saying.
‘The women favour poison. They look at their husbands and imagine how pleasant it would be to feed him a cake to burn out his throat and have him writhing in agony on the floor. And they remember talk of the so-called “loving gifts” sent to Kenilworth by the queen. They believe she poisoned him.’
‘And the men?’
‘Strangling. What else? Or smothering with a pillow. Men have very little imagination and think it wouldn’t leave a mark.’
A mark! I had forgotten to ask if there were marks. But of course, if there were, Sir Thomas Gurney would not have told me.
‘Is there no-one who thinks he died a natural death?’
‘Only silly girls. They say it was a great sorrow which killed him. They imagine him love-sick for his wife and dying of grief.’
‘It could be worse,’ I said gloomily. ‘At least no-one imagines my cousin wielding a dagger and slicing him into bits.’
Lady Margery lowered her voice and leaned closer. ‘Not yet, but wait a while and they’ll think of that too. I did hear of one man who told a truly disgusting tale but no-one believed him.’
‘Tell me,’ I said.
‘It will churn your stomach.’
‘I’ll risk it.’
Lady Margery put her mouth to my ear and whispered.
‘They heated a poker until it was red-hot, then held the prisoner down and. pushed it up his … his fundament.’
‘Mother of God!’
‘I told you it was disgusting.’
I considered the end of Sir Hugh Despenser, fifty feet up in full view of the crowd having his manhood sliced off - a particular punishment selected for a vile and unnatural crime. Was this another punishment chosen for a particular crime? And if it was, who had done the choosing?
For the next few weeks, like all newly birthed women, I was confined to my room. When not admiring my daughter or entertaining the occasional visitor, I lay on my bed and wondered. Who? Why? And how?
Who wanted the old king dead and was prepared to put their wishes into deeds? It wasn’t a natural death, of that I was certain. He was a strong man in the prime of life and there’d been no talk of sickness or wasting.
Why then and not earlier, at Kenilworth or in the wilds of Wales where it could easily have been passed off as an accident?
And how was it done so that nobody knew? I cursed myself for the questions I had failed to ask Sir Thomas Gurney.
I wondered how I would have done it. Had I wanted to kill a king, what would I have done? I lay looking at the vaulted ceiling, tracing the curves with my eyes and imagining myself as a woman with murder in my mind. Then I remembered Isabella’s vial in the leather pouch. Was that it? Was that how it was done?
Edmund escorted me to Gloucester, as tender a husband as any woman could wish for. He advised me on what would be expected of me as my husband’s wife and of the arrangements that had been made but nonetheless I was totally unprepared for the glorious spectacle.
This was a royal funeral like no other. The austere burial of the count of Valois in the church of the Minorites in Paris two years before, paled into obscurity in comparison to this overt display of royal pageantry. Preceded by a procession of black-robed clergy and with six black horses each plumed and trapped with the royal coat of arms, the bier was drawn slowly through the streets of Gloucester. The body of Edmund’s brother lay silent in its coffin within a canopied catafalque. There were carved images of the four evangelists with eight gilded angels as incense bearers, and royal leopards in their passant glory. As Edmund had wished, everything shone brightly with gold.
The magnificently decorated coffin was supported by four sturdy gilded lions, and on top, clothed in royal robes of cloth-of-gold and ermine and wearing a shining copper crown, was a carved and painted effigy of the dead man. With golden hair and flowing beard it was so lifelike I almost believed it was the dead king himself.
Every street in Gloucester was packed with people. Most were openly weeping; some fainted and some even tried to throw themselves against the dead king’s bier. It was an extravagant display of grief for a man whom none of them knew. But he had been their king for nearly twenty years and that was a lifetime for many people, they would have known no-one else.
The family walked in slow procession behind the hearse. Isabella, covered from head to toe in a full-length veil of black silk, wept steadily. Tears began to fall the moment we stepped outside her chamber and she continued to demonstrate her widow’s grief until she was no longer on display. I was not deceived and doubted any of it was truly genuine.
Her son walked at her side, his head bowed, tear stains clearly visible on his pale cheeks. Behind them came Edmund and his brother, Norfolk, both in black, both dry-eyed, and both with their eyes fixed firmly on the ground.
The younger royal children snuffled and wept. Isabella’s eyes occasionally darted in their direction, annoyance flitting across her veiled face. She hadn’t wanted the little ones to attend but Edward had insisted. He said his brother and sisters must come to bid farewell to their father.
The Mortimer lord of Wigmore walked amongst the great men looking more splendid than usual and certainly more splendid than anyone else. Whereas the king had chosen a simple black tunic to honour his father, my cousin had ordered a glorious extravagance of black velvet and brocade in which he struck an impressive figure.
The masses and the committal in the abbey church of St Peter were as lengthy and as sombre as expected. The incense was overpowering and I began to feel faint. Abbot Thoky, a simple man, had been overruled by Isabella and my cousin in every aspect of the funeral and the burial. Having decided it should be a display of royalty, Isabella had spared no expense.
As I gazed at the hundreds of fat wax candles ablaze in the north aisle I thought back to John’s burial at Mansfield when I had managed only a scant half-dozen to burn around his coffin. It hadn’t mattered because no amount of light could disperse the shadows which filled my heart and my first husband had needed no
candles where he had gone.
Once the funeral was over we moved to Worcester to spend a dismal Christmas. I would have liked to go home to Arundel to see the children but accepted that soon we must make our way to York for the wedding of the king and the count of Hainault’s daughter. I wondered if young Edward’s bride was still the same plump little girl we’d seen at Valenciennes or if she’d grown tall and slender and lost her freckles.
By now the party from Hainault would have arrived in London and be starting their slow progress north through the mud and snow of our English winter. The king told me that Lady Philippa was coming with her father and her uncle, Sir John, and would be escorted by his de Bohun cousin, the earl of Hereford. Although he was good at concealing his innermost thoughts, I detected an excitement in this young man, which was unsurprising. He had waited a year and a half for his bride and must be impatient to see her again.
Isabella said he wrote frequently - too frequently in her opinion. As his mother she would have preferred a more measured approach, a more distant, reserved attitude, something less enthusiastic. Isabella had chosen well when she’d selected young Philippa but what she had not anticipated was how much her son would be entranced by his bride. Love in any form had not entered Isabella’s calculations.
‘The girl is young,’ she mused. ‘I think she should lodge in my household. Do you not agree, Margaret?’
I selected my words carefully. ‘Will they not wish to live together, your grace. The king is of an age and the countess’s daughter must be nearly fourteen. I remember her as a ripe girl, very forward in ways which matter. What does her mother say?’
‘Mothers!’ said Isabella, waving away the countess’s opinions as if they counted for nothing. ‘She is anxious for a grandchild. She would push them into bed no matter what. No, I think it will suit to have the girl with me for a while. It will save the expense of a separate household for her.’
Isabella was ever attentive to reducing expenditure on others as such economies left more for her and more for my cousin.
‘Will she have a coronation when we return to Westminster?’
‘Certainly not,’ snapped Isabella. ‘The girl must prove her worth first.’
That, I thought, would be difficult if Philippa was kept chained in the queen’s apartments. If she and the king were not permitted to be together how would she conceive a son. Isabella was a powerful woman and would know how to intimidate a fourteen year-old girl but I wondered if she would manage to control the young king who was showing signs of wanting to do things his own way.
Later we were interrupted by the arrival of a visitor. It was one of the royal clerks and with him was a hunched up figure shrouded in a dark cloak.
‘Master de Glanville,’ said Isabella graciously. ‘What is your business?’
The man was nervous but most people were nervous in Isabella’s presence. He looked at me, frowning, doubtless wondering who I was.
‘You may speak in front of the countess.’
‘Your grace, my apologies but I was told to speak to you alone.’
‘The countess is my sister in all things.’
Isabella smiled pleasantly and the man took this as his direction to proceed.
‘His grace, the king, has spoken with this woman and he wishes that you too should have information from her.’
The clerk pulled back the woman’s hood. She was old with sharp little eyes and a clean white cap, woollen clothing, black boots, but it was impossible to say what sort of woman she was.
‘Why should I wish to see a person such as this?’
The man lowered his voice. ‘She is Lord Berkeley’s woman, your grace. She was at the castle. She attended to the body of your late husband, Sir Edward, may his soul rest in peace.’
It was the embalming woman. At last we would have information about how Edmund’s brother had died. There were certain things which could not be hidden from the person who attended a body after death: wounds, bruises, broken bones. Men who were strangled retained the horror in their faces and most poisons left indelible marks. These you could not disguise. An Italian in Paris had told me the secrets of his art and also of the dangers of too much knowledge.
Isabella composed her face.
‘You prepared my husband’s body for burial?’
The woman lowered her head and made to crouch on the floor.
‘Get her up, Master de Glanville,’ said Isabella impatiently. ‘I cannot talk to her down there.’
The clerk pulled the woman to her feet and gave her a push so that she stood closer to Isabella, I could smell her, an unpleasant sour odour overlaid with the stench of fear.
‘You are Lord Berkeley’s woman?’
The woman was trembling. She looked as if she wanted to run.
‘Aye, m,lady,’ she whispered.
‘Yes, your grace,’ prompted Master de Glanville.
‘Yes, y’grace.’
‘You were at Berkeley three months ago?’
‘Yes, m’lady.’
‘And Lord Berkeley called you to attend to a man who had died?’
‘They said ‘twere him wanted me.’
‘Who said?’
‘Didn’t say his name.’
‘One of Lord Berkeley’s men?’
‘Yes, m’lady.’
‘And he brought you to the castle?’
‘Yes, m’lady.’
And told you to attend to an important man who had just died?’
She nodded. ‘Yes, m’lady.’
‘Did you know who this man was?’
The woman’s eyes were full of fear and she turned in panic to the clerk.
‘There were rumours, your grace,’ explained Master de Glanville. ‘People talk. You can’t stop them.’
‘You knew the body was that of the man Lord Berkeley had in his keeping.’
‘Yes, I did.’
‘You knew his name?’
‘No.’ She sounded utterly terrified.
‘But you knew who he was? You knew he was the father of the king?’
‘It were the king,’ the woman muttered. ‘People said.’
Isabella frowned. ‘Not the king. My son is king.’
The woman looked at Master de Glanville.
He spoke very slowly and clearly. ‘The young man we saw before - that was his grace, the king. This is the Lady Isabella, mother of the king. I explained this to you.’
He looked embarrassed at the woman’s mistake. ‘My apologies, your grace. It is hard for these simple people. Their minds are slow. I am sure in time they will know that his grace, your son, is king, but there are still many who are ignorant of the matter.’
Isabella turned her gaze back to the woman and spoke slowly. ‘You knew you were attending a royal person, a man who had once been a king.’
‘Yes, m’lady.’
‘He was a tall man, powerfully built?’
‘He had big feet,’ muttered the woman.
‘Naturally,’ said Isabella. ‘A well-built man can hardly teeter around on dainty toes.’
‘They’m too big,’ said the woman.
Isabella ignored her. As far as she was concerned the woman was stupid.
‘Were there marks on the body?’
The woman hesitated.
‘They’m always be marks. No man’s unmarked.’
‘But there were no wounds; no sign that he had been hurt.’
‘He were dead. You can’t hurt the dead.’
Isabella looked at me and raised her eyebrows.
‘Ask about his face,’ I whispered.
‘The face?‘ said Isabella. ‘Was it peaceful? Had he gone quietly to God?’
‘He had a good face,’ said the woman.
‘Nothing unusual?’
‘All faces are di
fferent.’
‘Naturally, but there were no signs of violence?’
The woman’s eyes were alive with terror.
‘No.’
‘Ask her who was there,’ I whispered.
‘Were you alone when doing your work?’
‘That sergeant were there.’
‘What sergeant?’ Isabella was alert. This was something she hadn’t been told.
‘Didn’t say.’
‘Was he one of Lord Berkeley’s men?’
‘No. He come the day old Will lost his ducks. Wi’ a couple of others.’
‘And he stayed with you while you worked?’
‘Yes, m’lady.’
Having satisfied herself that murder had not been done, Isabella went on to describe the many kingly virtues of this man whom she and my cousin had shut away. Eventually she turned to Master de Glanville and thanked him for his trouble in bringing the woman.
‘I have what your grace requested,’ the clerk said, bringing out of his bag a beautifully wrought silver vessel with a cover.
‘My husband’s heart?’ Isabella was visibly moved by this reminder of the man who had once been dear to her. I could see a tear in her eye.
While the little ceremony of handing over the silver vessel into the queen’s keeping occupied Isabella and Master de Glanville, I spoke in a low voice to the woman.
‘Were his clothes clean?’
‘Yes m’lady, but his boots were too small.’
‘Too small?’
‘They didn’t fit. I told the other lady. They were too big. Soft leather. Fancy silk tassels. Never seen the like before. The lord don’t have boots with tassels.’
Too big? Too small? She clearly didn’t know what she was talking about but she was only a simple woman with a useful skill; you didn’t need to be clever for that.
‘There were only one,’ she whispered.
I frowned. One? One what? One boot? One foot?
She looked at me slyly. ‘There should’ve been two. All men have two.’
The Queen's Spy Page 20