Isabella: Braveheart of France (24 page)

“Is this your idea?” Stratford asks her.

She ignores the question: “It has been ratified by the council.”

“He will never do it,” Stratford says.

“Oh, he might,” Richmond says.

He might, because if Edward wants Gascony someone must come and bend the knee before Charles, and the Despenser will not let it be the king. Stratford’s eyes widen. Either the Queen or the King of France is cleverer than all of them. By his smile he seems to think it is Isabella.

In the end, Stratford goes back to England alone. By now he has become a seasoned seafarer, and Richmond has taken to calling him Captain Stratford in jest. He does not accompany him, feigning illness. If it is good enough for the king...

He stays in France, he has made his choice. Stratford may be the one best acquainted with the channel, but it is Richmond who already sees which way the wind blows.

Chapter 44

The young prince is stiff in her arms. It is not that he does not love her, but when a young boy has his mother and father compete for his affections, it makes him guarded with the entire world. He will be a fine man one day, but for now his chestnut bangs and soft cheeks only make him look vulnerable. He is precise and measured in all he does. His eyes watch everything.

He is the age I was when I married Edward, she realizes. Was I this callow?

Stratford catches her eye.
I cannot believe you managed this.

He is introduced to the French court. She watches what he watches. He is just a boy, but even a boy’s lowered eyes will turn towards a well-shaped ankle, a plump bosom, if they are offered for view. She has to know if Edward’s curse has carried to the son. Life would have been different if her husband had longed for a woman, any woman really.

It would not have been an entirely happy life, but she might have managed.

***

The king is dressed in a blue robe emblazoned with golden lilies, and there is a relic of Saint Louis hanging on a chain around his neck. His hair is freshly oiled, his beard trim. There is a bejewelled ring on every finger. His ministers stand either side, dressed in black, crows looking for easy pickings. Behind the king is a great tapestry with Saint Louis at Damietta, his knights on snorting warhorses charging from a blue sea, the white dove of the Holy Spirit watching from a pure sky. Its wings are edged with gold.

It is like being in the presence of God. A
French
god.

Knights in royal livery flank the king, their hands resting on their broadswords.

The court is in their silks, and the women in their velvets, burgundies and golds. Edward, her beautiful son, bends his knee, and after his homage he is pronounced the Duke of Aquitaine.

There, it is done.

Charles is buoyant. He announces that he thinks he will retain the Agenais as indemnity for losses suffered in the war. The
nuncios
appear stricken. Isabella keeps a straight face in public. When Edward learns of this he will cough up his liver. This was not what he supposed would come of this.

Later, in the gardens, Stratford trails across the wet grass after her. It has been raining, and her skirts soak up the dew and are heavy to drag across the lawns of the palace. “The king has ordered you home,” he tells her.

“Is that what he charged you to tell me?”

“He sends this safe conduct,” Stratford says, holding a scroll towards her. She ignores it. Instead she turns to Richmond. “And what is your advice?”

“Should you go, you put yourself at the mercy of the Despensers, and you know what I think of the Despensers.”

“No, I do not.”

“Did you know he kidnapped Elizabeth Comyn and kept her in a gaol until she signed over her estates to him? The man’s greed has no bounds. For myself, I think he is half mad. At least as mad as the king, who cannot see any side of an argument but his own. Should you go back to England, I should think you mad as well, for you place yourself in his purview, and this time he will brick you in and you will never see sunlight again.”

“My lord Richmond, can you keep your voice down.” Stratford looks around as if there might be spies hiding in the hearth.

“You don’t like your king either, do you?” she asks him.

His face is blank. He is a bishop and a statesman to the bone. “It is not my position to say,” he answers.

As soon as news of Charles’ equivocation on the Agenais reaches England, a new envoy is sent. This time it is Stapledon, the Bishop of Exeter. He is in France for a month, and Isabella avoids seeing him or receiving his letters, which are returned with their seal intact. She stalls this meeting as long as possible. But finally she relents. Charles is becoming restless over her expenses and she must talk finances with him.

From the moment he appears in her company he berates her. He tells her he does not like the company she has been keeping. He says she is consorting with disaffected exiles and traitors who plot against the king. Really, who does this impudent crow think he is? She would not tolerate such interference in her affairs from her own husband.

Who is this man again? A mere bishop?

She would gape at him in astonishment, but she remembers herself.

“My lord Stapledon, you were commanded by your king to help with my finances during my embassy here in Paris, which is at my husband’s command. So far you have done nothing to assist me. Let us discuss that first.”

He draws himself up to his full height, which is not very far. “I have been unable to do so. It is not for the want of effort.”

“I do not care much for your efforts--it is funds I need. I remind you I am here at the king’s service.”

“In the opinion of the king, your service to him is finished. He requires that you return at once to England.”

“I am unable to do so at the present time.”

“What prevents you, your grace?”

“What prevents me is my husband the king’s disposition. Should I return, what life does he warrant me? My estates have been sequestered and my income should scarce fill the needs of a peat cropper. I require his guarantees that should I return I shall again be treated in the manner that a royal daughter of France requires and deserves. The first of my conditions is that the Lord Despenser is told that his presence in England is contrary to our wishes.”

“Your condition for your return?”

“I want an agreement from him confirming my position in the realm and the income he has set aside for me as his queen. The Despensers are to leave England, and it is to be set in the statutes of England - by the king’s law - that they are forbidden to return. They have placed themselves between my husband and me, and by God’s law I cannot abide it any longer. Nothing less than his agreement to these terms is acceptable to me. I would be obliged if you would convey this message to him immediately.”

“I do not know that he will care for your conditions. It has come to my attention that you have met with individuals who the king regards as traitors to the Crown and enemies of England.”

They regard each other.

“Perhaps you did not hear what I said,” she says, finally.

“Very well. I shall convey your exact words to him in person.”

“I should rather you send a messenger to convey my wishes. You should remain here to assist me with my finances. Do I make myself clear?”

His eyes are pinpoints. “Perfectly.”

***

No sooner has she ordered him not to leave the country than he is back in England.

“He will tell the king all he has seen and heard here,” Richmond tells her when he hears the news.

“Well it is too late to go back now. The die is cast.”

“It always was, I think. You just didn’t want to think it. None of us did.”

“You know, if you took a gravedigger or a tailor - a simple man - and put him on the throne of England, I believe the result would be the same. Edward is not a bad man. He is just not royal. My father was royal and ruthless by design. Edward is ruthless through exasperation.”

Richmond sighs and looks over the roofs of Paris. If things go badly this will be his only view for the rest of his life. The window of her apartments frames the church of Sainte-Chapelle on the Île de la Cité, which Saint Louis had built to hold the Crown of Thorns. We know about such crowns, Edward and I.

A steward brings wine and Richmond sips at it daintily, toying with a garnet ring. “The king has ordered me home.”

“Again?”

“I think only so that he might be aggrieved at my refusal.”

“I shall not forget your loyalty to me.”

“I never thought I should be disloyal to my king. But Lord Despenser makes it impossible for me to be otherwise. The man is a lout. I should rather be ruled by the Irish. Why does Edward allow this?”

“I don’t know.”

“Gaveston - well I didn’t condone it, but I understood it. The man had a certain roguish charm. I enjoyed those jokes he made about Warwick. But Despenser has no humour. He’s a lawyer with a mean streak. “

“You’d go mad trying to work it out. I did.”

“Well I trust I shall never fall into his clutches, or the king’s, not now. Or it’s the traitor’s death for me.” The wine glistened in his beard, like blood. “The king has sent the Pope five thousand florins.”

“A bribe?”

“A gift.”

“Has the Pope accepted it?”

“With alacrity. But he won’t be bought. He took it like it was a ham, or a new carpet. The king wants you excommunicate. Instead, the Pope sent a letter to Despenser telling him to be more pleasant and make his peace with you.”

“I think we are well past the point of reconciliation.”

“Do not let the
nuncios
hear you say that. Did you know that he wants you stripped of your title and exiled?”

“Despenser suggested that?”

“He believes he has found some precedence in law, a ruling on some old Saxon queen. It is so long ago it might be a folk tale. He would enshrine an ugly rumour as the eleventh commandment if it suited his purposes.”

“I cannot ask you to throw in your lot with me, Lord Richmond. It is too dangerous. But whatever happens, you have been a good friend to me in France and I shall never forget it.”

“I threw in my lot a long time ago. The Lord Despenser made the choice an easy one.”

“You know, before I came here, I spent my days sitting in a garden. Watching two robins chase a crow from their nest was the most excitement I ever had in one day. Now I have the future king of England in my care, he is heir to the throne and the most eligible prince for all the royal families of Europe. Why should I give this up for two birds in a hedge?”

“Yet, your grace, if you continue to defy Edward’s orders you risk the reproof of the entire Church as well as the common man. This is not how a wife commonly behaves.”

“And this is not how a wife is commonly treated, not when she is a princess of France and a Queen of England. I will run the risk, my Lord Richmond, because to do otherwise is to put my neck under the Lord Despenser’s boot. And I shall never do that again.”

***

Young Edward has a hunted look about him. Everyone here treats him with such deference that he cannot help but suspect some subterfuge. He sits at her table as stiffly as if he is the head stable boy invited to say grace at the king’s coronation feast.

He wants to know when they will go back to England; he wants to know why he had to pay homage to the king of France. Was it true that that man was his uncle? Then why does his father dislike him so?

And why do the people here say such horrid things about his uncle Hugh?

The servants hover around him, he is a lad and he needs feeding up. There are roast meats and goose, duck, capons, eels. He stabs at the food, examines it, eats hardly any anything. He takes a sip of the watered wine and his lips gleam scarlet in the candlelight.

“I should like to go home,” he tells her.

“What is it you miss?”

“My father.”

She tells herself he is too young to understand. Besides, no damage can come to him. In the end he will be king, no matter what others decide.

But whose king will he be? Hers? Or Edward’s?

***

When her Uncle Valois dies, the noble and powerful converge on Paris to pay their respects. Jeanne, the daughter of the Count of Hainaut is there. Also in her retinue is a man she last saw as a shadow in the moonlight, newly emerged from a chimney on the Lanthorn Tower. She can feel his eyes boring into her in the cold vault of the church. She will not chance a glance over her shoulder for fear that it will encourage him.

Just once then, a glimpse.

Such naked lust on his face. She is disgusted with him, and smiles.