Isabella: Braveheart of France (20 page)

She lets out her breath.

She might now safely raise the alarm, but instead she stumbles back down the stone stairs to her apartments and takes herself to her bed. Her two ladies are already fast asleep in the trundles.

She gets under the sheets and lies there listening to the lapping of the water around the pilings at the Watergate and the lonely cry of a water bird. She recalls impudent looks, smouldering eyes. Lord Mortimer will be far away by the time she wakes. She wonders what Edward and the Despenser will say when they find out he has escaped from the Tower. Perhaps that will make them a little less cocksure.

It should.

***

Young Edward has grown into a fine boy, and he has his father’s looks. His eyes are so serious, he watches her with such intensity it is frightening. He has strong opinions and tells her loudly which servants he trusts and those he does not. He is already very sure of himself.

“Did you really help that man Mortimer escape from the Tower?” he asks her.

The escape is all that anyone will talk about. Mortimer is the first prisoner to escape from here in a hundred years. She is told he had the connivance of the constable, d'Alspaye, who smuggled him an iron to take out a stone in the wall of his cell. He then climbed a chimney with a rope and escaped through the Hall Tower. He and d’Alspaye then scaled down the outer Baillie to the wharf with rope ladders. There were boats waiting. It is supposed he has fled back to the Marches or to Ireland, where he has friends.

“Helped Lord Mortimer? Of course not. Where did you hear someone say such a thing about me?”

“Father says Lord Despenser told him about you, that you had planned it with Mortimer's friends.”

“That is a vile thing to say. I would never plot against your father.”

“Well, that’s what he said. A lot of people are saying it.”

“A lot of people?”

“People talk in front of me like I’m not there. It annoys me.”

“What else do they say about me?”

“The King or Uncle Hugh?”

“Uncle Hugh. Is that what you call him?”

“Father says he is my uncle. Almost.”

She has a rejoinder for that but she bites her tongue. If the young prince is telling her all the scandal about the king, then he would just as surely carry everything she says back to him.

“What else does...Uncle Hugh...say about me?”

“He says that you had an uncle too, called Lancaster, and that you sent him secret messages to help him in his war against Father. Is that true?”

She shakes her head and forces a smile. It makes her jaw ache to appear pleasant in the face of such outrageous calumnies.
Not only has he exiled me, but he wants me tried for treason! It is clear now what the Despenser wants.

He wants to become queen in my place.

Chapter 38

She is invited to Hanley as the guest of the Despenser. She has not seen the king for many months, and when he walks in she is shocked at how careworn he looks. It is clear he does not want to see her. He will not meet her eyes.

“Oh what have they done to you, Edward?” she murmurs.

She remembers when she first saw him at Boulogne. She was unscarred then, and he still had Gaveston. They were both innocent in their own way. They both had hopes that love could come to something.

“Hugh said you wished to see me,” he mumbles and sits by the fire, still without looking at her.

“I wished to ask you about the children.”

“They are all healthy and well cared for. What else do you wish to know? I should like to keep our interview short. I have much to do.”

She blinks at him. She suspects he has been coached. “I do not understand what I have done to offend you.”

He taps a finger on the arm of the chair. He does not answer.

“Can you not see what he is doing?”

“Can you not see what
you
are doing?”

She slumps to her knees. He ignores her. Once it would have melted him, no matter how hard his heart. Has it come to this? “What has he said to you about me?”

“He does not need to tell me, the facts speak for themselves.”

“What facts are these, your grace?”

“My enemy finds succour with your brother. How do you explain this?”

“Ah, you mean Lord Mortimer?”

“Yes. I mean Lord Mortimer. You know he has appeared in France? He has offered his sword to your brother, the king, to go against our fellow Englishmen in Gascony.”

“Does that surprise you?”

He is suddenly on his feet. “Should he betray his country so?”

“I think you have rather forced his hand, don’t you?”

“Did I force his hand when he took his armies and marched against me? Did I force his hand when he surrounded us in London, his army around the walls?”

“I rather think the Lord Despenser is his enemy, not you.”

“You argue like a lawyer.”

“You say that as if it is a bad thing.”

A rare smile from him despite himself. “Oh, get up,” he says. He lends out a hand and helps her stand. He guides her to the seat by the fire.

“You know your brother blames me for what happened in the Agenais.”

“The insurrection, you mean?”

“Well if he would not build a
bastide
on my lands then the locals should not feel the need to attack it. No harm was done.”

“A sergeant was killed.”

“Only a French one.” He is immediately sorry for that remark. His cheeks flush. She lets it go.

“This could lead to war between us. The very thing our marriage was meant to prevent!”

“Not the only reason, surely?”

He ignores this remark. “Did you know Mortimer had signed on with him?”

“Why should I know this?”

“You are in constant communication with your brother through that little spy of yours, Rosseletti. He would have told you all this. Was it you who asked your brother in France to protect the gallant Lord Mortimer when he ran away?”

“Of course not!”

“You have to deny it. To do otherwise would be to admit treason, wouldn’t it?” He stares into the fire. “I should have executed Mortimer when I had the opportunity, but you persuaded me to mercy. Perhaps even then you were plotting against me.”

“Is this the Lord Despenser speaking or my lord and husband?”

“How is it Mortimer has found succour with your brother?”

“My brother does not consult me on matters of policy. I am neither his prime minister nor his queen, and I have not his ear in the council chamber or the bed chamber so I cannot answer that question for you.”

“Have I not treated you with all decency and gentleness as becoming your rank in this world and your place in my household? You have wanted for nothing, and I have never insulted you publicly or caused you or your servants physical harm. Have I? Yet you insist it is not enough. What is it you want from me?”

“I want you to want me.”

“What you ask is impossible!”

“You are a man. Am I not pleasing to you?”

“You are indeed a very beautiful woman.”

“Then what?”

“You would not understand!”

There is colour in his cheeks and his fists open and close at his sides as he struggles to pacify her. She wants to shake him, like she would a child.

“I have been loyal to you and helped you in all that I am able.”

“Indeed you have, and I have acknowledged that in all things.”

“I want to be your queen!”

“You are my queen!”

She hears a servant scurry down the stairs. Just as well, for if she found any scullery boy sneaking behind drapes to listen she would thrash him to Michaelmas.

Edward goes to the window and stares at a dove on a branch outside. By the look on his face he should like to hurl a stone at it for its pretty cooing. “They sent an assassin from France to murder Hugh, do you know that?”

Yes, she knows. “You credit me with much more information that a lady living in exile might reasonably acquire.”

He sighs, his hands behind his back. “Look.”

She joins him at the window. There is a monk at the gate collecting alms. He is a jolly fellow with a stave, and he is laughing at some frippery with the guard at the gatehouse. “He looks happy, that man.”

“He looks cold. He has sandals. In this weather! His feet must be blue.”

“But he has time to pass the day with a soldier and a laundry maid. What must his life be like?”

She puts put a hand on his arm. For once he does not try to shrug it away.

“I sometimes think it would be better as a foundling than a prince,” he says. “Let me have a day in the field working, some mead at night and a few prayers. I think it should not be such a bad life.”

“You should miss the company of women,” she says, and he looks thunderous, but just for a moment and then he laughs.

She strokes his beard. He rests his cheek against her hand and closes his eyes. “Sometimes I think you know me better than anyone.”

“Come to my chamber tonight. I have missed you. Husbands and wives should share a marriage bed. You don’t have to do anything, just keep me warm.”

There are tears in his eyes--for his situation, for hers. He nods. When she leaves the chamber he is still at the window, watching the friar go about his day.

***

The candle gutters in a draught and their shadows dance on the wall like demons. The wind is howling around the tower, the Dispenser’s animus prowling the night, free from its anchoring body, peering in at the windows and howling in jealousy.

Edward takes a breathy gulp and his hand slides along her thigh. “Don’t ever leave me, Isabella.”

“But my king, it is you who sends me away.”

“You know I don’t mean it.”

“I think that you do.”

He caresses her breasts, places his hand enthusiastically between her thighs and kisses her with as much passion as he can. She pities him in his efforts. For all his writhing, he remains incapable of anything with her besides tenderness.

“You should be my touchstone.”

“But I’m not.” She cannot see his face in the darkness.

“Just hold me,” he says and she does. They keep each other warm. It is enough. She wakes with him still in her arms, his hair warm and musty.

She wishes the light would not creep up the sky, that she could not hear the servants clattering pans in the kitchen. Let this moment stay.

Later that morning the Lord Despenser marches into her chambers unannounced. It may be his castle but there are still common forms to be observed. Her ladies in waiting look up, alarmed. “A word in private,” he says.

She considers refusing it, but that would appear churlish. She nods and her ladies flee the room.

The Despenser smiles. “You passed a restful night?”

“I slept very little,” she tells him and his eyes blaze. Does he love Edward, she wonders, or is it that he thinks that lust is the only way he can control him? If he thinks that then he should study himself more carefully in a reflective surface.

“You told the king he was ill-advised.”

“I said to be careful who he listens to. There are those who would counsel him to their own advantage.”

“You refer to me?”

“I refer to no one in particular.”

He walks around the room, examines a little of his wife Eleanor’s embroidery, some of her French ladies’ handiwork as well. It appears that his hold on Edward is not absolute after all.

She remembers this morning, the damp sheets, holding Edward in her arms as his breathing slowed.
Does he think of me when he loves me, or of someone else?
She doesn’t care. She would take him as he was, she will even share him with a ghost, but not with flesh and blood.

The Despenser is looking worn of late. His youth is creeping away from him.

He steps towards her, still smiling. She is unnerved by how close he stands. Suddenly he spins her around, clamps one hand across her mouth and pins her arms with the other.

“Do not try to interfere with my plans, you fucking French whore,” he whispers.

She struggles, but he is surprisingly strong. She cannot breathe. He pinches her nostrils with his thumb and index finger, and she thinks she is going to pass out.

“I may do what I wish with you and the king would never believe you for a moment.”

His hand squeezes between her legs, and even through her dress it is painful. She tries to push his hand away but she cannot. There are black spots in front of her eyes; her knees will not hold her. Even as she goes down, he is calling out for help.