The Queen's Spy

by Caroline Newark

  She laughed. ‘It is more than that, my dear. You do not share what Roger and I have shared all these years without understanding each other. I know exactly what he is doing and why, and although I may not agree with his every step, I am still loyal.’ She paused. ‘And he, no matter what you may think, is still steadfast.’

  I put out my hand and gripped hers.

  ‘You will be careful?’

  ‘My husband will not permit anyone to harm me, Margaret. I am part of his life. He will not put that aside. As for this interlude.’ She shrugged. ‘That is all it is - an interlude.’

  She kissed my cheek.

  ‘She will not hold him forever,’ she whispered into my ear. ‘He will come back. And when he does, I shall be waiting.’

  I wished I was as sure of this as she was.

  On the third day at Ludlow we went hawking in the wild lands of the Marches and it wasn’t long before I found the opportunity I was hoping for. I edged closer to Lady Berkeley who was gazing disconsolately at her husband’s attempts to coax his bird onto his glove. She hadn’t seen me approach.

  ‘My lady?’ I said softly.

  She turned round and a smile filled her face.

  ‘Margaret! How perfect. I was looking for you yesterday but there were so many people and you were busy with that handsome husband of yours.’

  It had been sixteen years since I’d last seen my cousin’s daughter. I’d been on my way to my wedding and Meg Mortimer had been a tearful nine-year-old, distraught at her friend leaving Wigmore.

  ‘My mother tells me you have children?’

  ‘Yes, two - a boy and a girl.’

  ‘How lucky you are! Here am I, nearly twenty-four years old and I’ve only been permitted to live with my husband since Easter.’ She lowered her voice. ‘I told the sisters at Sholdham I was the oldest virgin wife in the country.’ She giggled. ‘They couldn’t decide whether to beat me for saying such a thing or order me to my knees to ask for God’s forgiveness.’

  I smiled. Clearly her years shut up in the priory for her father’s misdeeds had not harmed Meg Mortimer.

  ‘So you were not with your husband when the old king, Sir Edward, died at Berkeley?’

  ‘No I wasn’t. But he wasn’t there either. He was at Bradley throwing up into a basin.’

  That was odd. No-one had said that before. I wondered if it was true.

  ‘Did Sir Edward’s death distress your husband?’

  ‘He complained he had to rise from his sick bed. When they told him Sir Edward was dead he was doubled-up with pains in his belly. Of course, being the lord, it was his duty to ensure everything was done properly so he hauled himself up and rode to Berkeley. He was as sick as a dog apparently, poor man, but could hardly leave a servant to deal with a dead man who’d once been the king.’

  ‘Had it been done properly?’

  ‘Oh yes. It seems Gurney and Ogle had everything organised. All my lord did was write and inform the king and the queen, and then return to his sick bed and carried on vomiting.’

  So Lord Berkeley said he had seen nothing.

  ‘Ogle?’ I asked. ‘Is that William Ogle who taught us to fish at Wigmore?’

  ‘Yes. Do you remember the giant pike?’ She laughed. ‘Oh those were the days! What fun we had.’

  ‘Is he attached to your husband?’

  ‘Ogle? No. I think he is my father’s man but I really can’t remember.’

  I was beginning to think I would glean no useful information from Meg. She had the mind of a grasshopper.

  She grabbed my arm. ‘Look! There she goes.’

  Lord Berkeley’s hawk dropped like a stone from the sky onto some small unsuspecting creature below and as his wife ran to offer her congratulations, my hopes of discovering more from Meg Mortimer were extinguished like the life of the prey killed by her husband’s hawk.

  All I knew that I hadn’t known before was that Lord Berkeley said he had not seen the dead man. He was occupied with his sickness. Thomas Gurney and William Ogle, who were both my cousin’s men, had been in charge of whatever was done. I wondered who had told the embalming woman to cover the face.

  Later, after a pleasant afternoon’s sport, Isabella ordered me to attend her in her chamber. I was there to admire the green rugs with their red and white roses, the delicate silk bed sheets stitched with flowers and the heavy green silk hangings.

  Most beautiful of all, and what I had clearly been summoned to take particular note of, was a magnificent white bedcover embroidered with pictures of the Siege of the Castle of Love. Richly dressed ladies in gowns of every colour hung over the castle walls throwing flowers to armour-clad knights who massed in the field below. Men fought to gain entry through an undefended gatehouse while to one side a young couple embraced passionately. From a tower, high above, a fat little Cupid fired his tiny arrow, aiming at the heart of a beautiful lady who, when I looked closely, bore a striking resemblance to Isabella. She held a shining crown over the head of her beloved who knelt on the ground in front of her.

  I had to admit I had never seen anything quite so splendid or quite so disturbing.

  ‘He had it made especially for me,’ said Isabella, smiling provocatively. ‘He knew I would be amused.’

  She stretched like a cat in the sunshine. Juliana Nauntel pattered around the room retrieving Isabella’s clothes from where her mistress had cast them, while three of the other maids stitched industriously in a corner by the window. A fifth girl was selecting combs from a small silver box. Light flooded into the room casting great golden bars across the floor. It was everything I had imagined it to be. It was glorious. And my cousin had created it for Isabella.

  ‘Mortimer says we shall hold a Round Table tournament here next year,’ said Isabella languidly. ‘He wishes to have me arrayed in gold as the Lady Guinivere. The tournament will be the most magnificent ever and Mortimer and I shall be at its heart. He will be King Arthur and I shall be his queen.’

  I wondered what roles she would assign to her son and his bride - probably two lowly obedient servants. And what of his wife? What role would she have?

  Isabella’s lips curved in a secretive smile as the maid began to comb her hair. She turned her head this way and that, running her fingers down her bare neck. The gown she was wearing was a waterfall of embroidered silk designed to accentuate rather than conceal the female form. I thought it wholly indecent but of course a woman may wear what she pleases in her private chamber and there was no law which said she must cover herself up in thick cloth. I thought of Joan, Lady Mortimer in her sturdy brocade and old-fashioned veils and understood only too well the extent of my cousin’s dilemma.

  Before we left Ludlow I went to pay my respects to my aunt. She was old and rarely strayed from her own hearth but had wanted to see her granddaughters marry. She did not accompany us on the hawking expeditions and I was told she found tournaments too noisy and too tiring; she preferred to rest in her own rooms. Remembering the years when she had cared for me and the obligations of a dutiful niece, I climbed the stairs to her small solar.

  ‘My lady,’ I said, kneeling for her blessing.

  ‘Margaret.’ She stroked my face with her wrinkled old fingers.‘My son gives me a good account of you. He says you have done well.’

  ‘I try to remember the things you taught me, my lady.’

  ‘Hmm. Is that so? Your marriage was most useful to my son.’

  ‘So he told me.’

  ‘And you will continue to be of use to him, Margaret. My son was born for great things and your marriage was only one small step for him. There will be others and you must be there to help. Do you understand?’

  ‘Yes, my lady.’

  ‘You are my sister’s child. Remember that.’

  I nodded obediently. ‘I shall always remember our ties, my lady. How could it be otherwise?’<
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  ‘There is no more important lesson in life, child, than to hold fast to your kin. Friends may be faithless, husbands may prove a disappointment, but one’s kin are always there.’

  ‘I don’t know what my cousin has told you, my lady, but my husband is not a disappointment to me.’

  She smiled. ‘Oh Margaret! How much you still have to learn. Husbands are always a disappointment in the end. Yours will be no different.’

  ‘I think your son’s wife would disagree,’ I said.

  ‘Ah but Roger is a special man and Joan is a clever woman. She respects my son. She will do anything to help him as must you. You will put your other desires aside and do what my son requires of you. Do you understand?’

  Her voice was that of a querulous old woman but she spoke with fire in her belly. The Aunt Mortimer who had so often terrified me in my youth was there still, hidden somewhere inside this bent and faded old lady.

  I didn’t stay long. Aunt Mortimer summoned her private chaplain so that we could say a prayer together and then I left. She was an old woman and it was sad to see her fading when I remembered her as strong. But that is what happens to the old.

  We left Ludlow, travelling slowly and in great splendour and by the time we arrived at Worcester, the king and Lady Philippa were waiting for us. Everywhere I went there were whispers of how over-mighty my cousin was becoming. He had taken to wearing the kind of robes more suited to a king than a baron and that evening at supper wore a silk tunic covered with yellow velvet and emblazoned with the Mortimer arms. Beside him the young king looked insubstantial, a mere boy playing at being a king.

  ‘You are looking pleased, my lord,’ I said to him when he greeted me later. ‘Are matters going well?’

  He looked surprised at my question as if he had almost forgotten my existence. ‘Yes. Since you ask, they are going very well. I’ve just acquired the roof lead from Despenser’s castle at Hanley for my new chapel at Ludlow.’

  ‘I told my son it would be a charitable gift,’ explained Isabella. ‘The chapel is to be dedicated to St Peter ad Vincula in recognition of dear Mortimer’s escape from my husband’s clutches. It is, after everything that has happened, the least a grateful king can do for one who has done so much for him. But what a pity Lady Mortimer will have the use of it.’

  I wondered how many visits to Ludlow “dear Mortimer” would make to check on the progress of his chapel and whether he would tell Isabella where he was going. Knowing about his continuing relationship with his wife and the sharing of intimacies, I thought he would be wiser to keep Isabella in ignorance.

  We spent an increasingly uncomfortable week at Worcester amidst endless rows between Henry of Lancaster and Isabella, and between Isabella and her son. The king surprised us by raising his voice to his mother, something he had never done before.

  ‘This your doing,’ he yelled across the chamber. ‘Yours and that …’

  He was momentarily lost for a word that was acceptable in public to describe my cousin. I was certain that in private, with his close friends, he used suitably vulgar terms, but he had been raised to respect his mother and could not bring himself to use words like that to her.

  ‘As always, I have your best interests at heart,’ said Isabella placidly.

  ‘It was not in my best interests to give away parts of my realm,’ he shouted. ‘I shall not recognise this treaty.’

  ‘It is too late,’ said Isabella. ‘It is done and cannot be undone.’

  ‘And I don’t agree to the selling of my sister. I say she stays here.’

  ‘Joanna is a royal daughter. She will do as she is told. We are to travel to Scotland where she will be married. It has been agreed.’

  ‘I shan’t go.’

  Isabella raised her eyebrows.

  ‘Indeed?’

  ‘I refuse to watch my sister handed over to those warmongers.’

  ‘Very well,’ said Isabella equably. ‘Stay here. Lord Mortimer and I will take the child.’

  That stopped the king. Clearly he couldn’t prevent his mother from going, and having once said he wouldn’t go, changing his mind would be seen as a display of weakness. Poor Edward! Isabella would always win their arguments because she was skilled at twisting words. How humiliating it must be to be treated as a child when he was the king.

  I thought Isabella would relent but two days later, with no further discussion, as far as I was aware, she and my cousin departed for Berwick. Their party was bound for the Lady Joanna’s wedding to the little son of John’s murderer, the so-called Scottish king.

  I watched the vast procession pass under the gatehouse of Worcester Castle and out into the morning sunshine, flags waving, trumpets gleaming and everyone dressed in their best clothes. Isabella, I noticed, had dropped any public pretence of grieving for her late husband and was wearing an amazingly splendid outfit of dazzling blue and gold with a travelling cloak of fur-lined green velvet. Included in the party were Isabella’s younger children as well as Bishop Orleton and the earl of Surrey together with their retinues. Accompanying them were the chancellor and hundreds of lesser knights and clerics, all eager for the opportunity to prove themselves friendly towards my cousin and the king’s mother. It seemed everyone knew who really held the reins of power and it wasn’t the king.

  Edward stayed behind in the care of Lord Henry who was his guardian. But Isabella and my cousin were careful; they took the Great Seal with them and without it the young king was powerless and so was Lord Henry. How Edmund and I laughed when we heard what they’d done.

  ‘Home!’ said my husband, kissing me fondly on the cheek. ‘I’ve had enough. We’ll return to Arundel where the air is fresher.’

  I enjoyed my summer at Arundel with the children. The sun shone over the walls and gardens of our new castle and I’d not felt so happy for a long time. Edmund went away twice on matters of business but I remained behind. Most days I rode out accompanied by William de la Mote. I preferred having a strong man beside me because despite Isabella’s new laws there were unsavoury elements still at large in the countryside.

  The people we came across on our rides were convinced I was a Fitzalan lady. They muttered a greeting, pulled off their bonnets and sank to the ground as if I were the queen herself which was very gratifying. I enjoyed their deference.

  ‘They’ve known nothing else, my lady,’ explained William. ‘Some of them don’t even know who the king is. The man who rules their lives is their overlord, the man in the castle, and he’s always been a Fitzalan.’

  ‘Why are they so ignorant?’

  ‘The priest fills their heads with warnings of hellfire and the lord’s man tells them what they can and cannot do. They don’t think, not like you or I do. They’re like oxen: dumb and plodding.’

  ‘But useful,’ I said, thinking that these people were like my tenants at Mansfield all those years ago. They too might have been ignorant but they weren’t at all like oxen.

  ‘Yes,’ he agreed. ‘That is God’s purpose for them. They are here to work.’

  I thought that in William’s eyes my sole purpose was probably to bear children for my husband. He wouldn’t see me valued in the way that my cousin valued his wife or rather how he had valued her in the days before he’d became enmeshed with Isabella.

  Towards the end of July, Edmund returned. I heard the sound of horses in the courtyard and men’s voices on the stairs and before I knew what was happening, there he was, pink-cheeked, wind-blown and smiling.

  ‘I thought you were going to York,’ I said after I’d kissed him.

  ‘I was but I changed my mind. I went to see my brother.’

  I waited for the explanation as to why, when there seemed no urgent reason, he had decided to visit Lord Norfolk. He sat himself down, called for a boy to take off his boots and ordered some wine.

  ‘We decided not to go to York. There’
s no point. The council is ignored whatever it says. The only voices are those of your cousin and Isabella. Cousin Henry can do nothing.’

  He cuffed the lad who was pulling at his left riding boot. ‘Mind what you’re doing, you fool.’

  He picked up his cup and tipped his head back, taking the wine in huge gulps as if he hadn’t drunk for a week.

  ‘You saw what happened over the Scottish treaty,’ he continued. ‘And as for Edward? He’s powerless. He couldn’t stop Isabella marrying his sister to Bruce’s son so there’s no hope of anything being different.’

  ‘But he is your nephew,’ I protested. ‘If you and Lord Norfolk were to …’

  ‘It’s too late, Margaret. Cousin Henry is determined to have the boy under his control. He’s already gathering an army. This time he means to get what he wants but I think he underestimates Isabella and your cousin. They won’t give up the king.’

  ‘What will you and your brother do?’

  ‘Try and make Cousin Henry see sense. We don’t want another season of killing. It’s barely two years since we got rid of Despenser and already everything’s falling apart.’

  Edmund called for his cup to be refilled.

  ‘And we’ve decided to send a man to Corfe,’ he said, almost as an afterthought.

  ‘You told your brother?’

  I was astounded. This was to be kept secret. No-one was to know of our suspicions.

  ‘I thought he should know.’ Edmund was defensive. ‘Ned was his brother too. It was right to tell him.’

  ‘And what if your brother is loose-tongued and tells others?’

  ‘He won’t. Stop worrying. It’s all organised. We found a man who will worm his way in with the men at Corfe and find out what’s happening. We’ve got to stop this rumour before it spreads any further, and the quickest way to do that is to prove it false.’

  ‘And what if it’s not?’

  He laughed. ‘Oh come Margaret; there’s not a single speck of truth in what John Pecche said and you know it. He was a frightened old man who thought his enemies were out to poison him. No wonder he saw monsters lurking beneath the flagstones in his hall.’