The King Must Die (The Isabella Books) (5 page)

Beyond the outer doors, the rumble of a crowd grew louder. John’s grotesque stories of a murderous rabble rushed back to me. Panicked, I hastened through the far door, bumping my shoulder hard. I raced up the stairs, three per stride. By the time I stumbled out through the tower door into the ashen light of a dying day, I had to fight the urge to run, because there was nowhere to run to.

Wind stung at my eyes. A glittering of snow frosted the stones. I perched myself in a crenel of the outer wall ringing Westminster Palace, my arms tucked around my ankles, my chin on my knees. A languishing golden sun flashed unexpectedly, stabbing its light between racing clouds far to the west. I blinked against the brief glare, then looked down below. Today it seemed half of London had invaded Thorney Island to crowd at the gates of Westminster Palace. From here, I could not make out what it was they were shouting. My name? Or were they crying for my father’s freedom, for justice?

No boats coursed along the Thames. Its banks were thick with ice. Instead, they were all moored at river’s edge, waiting for the weather to break.

Occasionally, Will peered at me from the shadows of the tower door. Each time, I chased him away with a scowl. We had an understanding, Will and I. I may have been his to guard, but that duty did not grant him rights to my every thought and the company of my every moment.

For the first time in a long while, I felt a pang deep in my gut—a twinge of sympathy for my father. One day he had been king of all England. The next, he was running in fright. Now, he sat alone, shut up at Kenilworth, his future in doubt. They said he was a bad king. Accused him not only of crimes, but unspeakable sins. If they ... No, I could not question the events—or the people—that had brought me to this day. It was my fate.

The sun retreated to the earth’s underside, yielding its heavenly throne to the pale glimmer of countless stars. Bitter wind drove winter’s bite deep into my bones. I shivered so hard my teeth were rattling my skull. But I would not go inside. Not until they came to get me.

A roar erupted from the crowd below, but I neither looked nor moved from my eyrie.

My stomach growled. My eyelids drifted lower. My fingers were stiff with cold, my toes so frozen I could no longer feel them. I closed my fur-lined cloak tight around me and rested my forehead on my knees.

The clack of boots startled me from my uneasy slumber. Will approached at a brisk clip along the wall-walk, defiant in the face of my most threatening glare.

I pulled my fingers into fists. “Sending me to bed now, are you?”

“Too early for that, isn’t it?” He flung his cloak back over his shoulders and drummed his gloved fingers on his hips. “But you’ll be interested to hear that Bishop Orleton has emerged from the assembly. Looking rather smug, I’d say. He asked where you were.”

I swung my legs toward him, gripping the edge of the stones as a jolt of excitement flashed through my veins. “And?”

He cupped a rough-whiskered chin in one hand thoughtfully. “Perhaps I shouldn’t say anything. I heard only bits, after all. I’m sure your mother will have you retrieved short—”

“Will!” My lip twitched with a snarl. “Tell me. I command you.”

“Do you?” he teased.

“Just tell me, please. I’ve waited
all
day. I know it’s my father they’ve been talking about. What’s to become of him?” I smacked the stones with the heels of my hands and stood. “I need to know ... before they come.”

He tossed a look over his shoulder and then nodded. “Very well. I suppose you should be prepared.” He clenched my shoulder so hard I feared tomorrow would find a bruise there with the imprint of his fingers.

“Is he still king?”

The wind tore at his hair, tossing it across his face. His grip lightened. He shook his head. “They say he gave up the crown willingly, my lord.”

“Willingly?”

With a shrug, he let go of me. “Even if his hand was forced, it’s for the best, don’t you think?”

The onus of kingship struck me like a hammer blow to my breastbone. I slumped down on the stones, the air whooshing out of my lungs so fast and completely I had to gulp air to speak. “What does this mean? What of me?”

He crouched down before me, his eyes sparkling with an undaunted confidence that I could but hope to emulate. “You, Ned? You were born to this. You’ll be king—and a fierce one at that.”

He made it sound so simple, as if I should never question the auspices of my birth. Like it was a cloak I could don at will to become the king of England’s calling. But for the first time in all my hopeful, eager days, I felt a flutter of doubt. The uncertainty that I could be all things to all people. The terrible knowledge that whatever I thought was right would be wrong in someone’s eyes. And if that came to pass, would they do to me what had been done to my father?

Yesterday, I had thought I would seize the crown with gleeful abandon, secure in my destiny, an answer to God’s whispered breath. Could I, in clear conscience, sit upon the throne while my father yet lived?

“Edward?” a comforting voice called out.

My mother stood in the tower doorway, her pale hair reflecting the silver glow of starlight, a thin gold circlet sitting just above her smooth brow like an angel’s halo. She lifted a hand, her flared sleeve falling away from her wrist to reveal delicate bones, fingers outstretched, begging me nearer.

I went and took her hand in mine. With a gentle squeeze, the warmth of her touch eased my fears. Tears were pooling in her eyes. She tried bravely to blink them away, her teeth pinching her lower lip, but in a rush they spilled onto her cheeks. Her arms went around me, so fast and tight I fought for breath, my arms clamped to my sides. A long minute later, she snuffled and loosened her embrace. “They’re calling for you. They’re waiting to make the proclamation.”

“I’m ready,” I said.

4

Isabella:

Westminster — February, 1327

O
n the morning of Christmas Eve, when Bishop Orleton delivered the Great Seal into my hands at Wallingford, he also gave me something else from my husband: a letter. In it, Edward spoke of hope, of receiving his children’s love, and of one day returning to the throne with me at his side. But as the days and weeks passed, his penned musings turned from pleading to accusatory, forlorn and rife with resentment, laying all blame for his misfortunes at my feet. To him, I was the deceiver, the betrayer, the unfaithful one.

Oh, Edward, blame is a shield with which we deflect duty. We learn it as children when responsibility seems too great a burden to carry upon our slight shoulders. Condemn our circumstances, let loose the victim’s cry and compassionate souls shall reach out to offer soothing words. Alas, pity is but a balm dabbed upon the gaping wound of our guilt.

Never. I would never go back to him. There could be no harmony between us. Not even polite accord, like so many mismatched husbands and wives who lived out their years, enduring one another in silent disdain.

My contempt dwelt much deeper than mere dislike. Wed to King Edward II of England at not yet thirteen, I had thought my life would be a grand affair of ceremony and bliss. Instead, I shared him not with a mistress, nor even with the demands of war and statehood, but with a man: Piers Gaveston. Like any naïve young wife sworn to her wifely duties, I turned my face from it. In time, it was Edward’s barons, not me, who brought an end to Gaveston.

In the years after Gaveston’s death, Edward and I were often at Langley. In the meadows surrounding Langley, sheep meandered amid buttercups and vetch. In late spring, when the sun had chased away the rains and dried up the ubiquitous English mud, peasants tended to the fields, furrowing and sowing, so that by summer the land was striped in verdant and gilded bands. There, our family grew. We, for awhile, were content.

Hugh Despenser destroyed all that.

By then, I was wiser. I knew there was more between Edward and Despenser than mere friendship, more than the gratitude of a liege to his lord. More, even, than lust. It was not so much that Edward turned away from me and to another to sate his desires. It was that Despenser sought to sever me from my husband’s life altogether, from both comfort and power, from all that I cherished. He took my money, my lands, and ... my children. Edward did nothing to stop him.

Even with Despenser dead, Edward had still refused to give up the crown, as if someone might save him. As if I might fold with guilt simply at the volley of his unkind words and repent of my actions. Did he think the people of England so gullible—or me so weak of will? No, I was not the doe-eyed Isabella, full of airy hopes, who had stolen glances at him in Boulogne’s cathedral that January day so long ago. Hugh Despenser had chased that girl forever into hiding and left in her place a woman of ruthless determination.

To do what is right and worthwhile, it is never easy. To be a woman of action is to risk judgment. But the alternative is to abandon free will—and thus to die slowly inside.

Every choice I had ever made had brought me to this day: my son’s coronation. My husband had made his own choices and was now paying the price for them.

Winter light pried through the narrow paned windows of the small antechamber to fall in a broken line across square, gray flagstones. Patrice draped a long cloak over my shoulders and fastened it with a pair of bronze clasps, shaped in the form of eagles. She lifted the long, trailing hem of my gown and arranged it behind me, fussing with each fold, stretching out the wrinkles.

“Look there,” she said, “a snagged thread.” With a quick tug, she snapped it between her fingers.

“Juliana would have been more careful,” I chided, smoothing the silk cloth against my abdomen. I stretched my arms out wide, tiny flecks in the gold threads glittering with each turn and movement. Even though I had dozens of gowns in my wardrobe, this one had been made especially for today.

Patrice’s shoulders heaved in a shrug, lifting her full bosom to accentuate the cleavage revealed by her low neckline. “Juliana is not here, is she? She is in Corbeil. I hear she is pregnant ...
again
.”

Her words were tinged with bitterness. In truth, Patrice loved Juliana, who had been one of my damsels in the years between my marriage to Edward and my return to France, but she was jealous of Juliana’s good fortune—of her doting husband and growing brood of healthy children. As much as Patrice might pretend she had no liking for babes, she was the same age as me and had all but wasted her chances of ever having her own by falling in love with the handsome and dutiful Arnaud de Mone. Several years younger than Patrice, he had married another woman at a very young age. They had a daughter soon after, but sadly the girl died in her crib. Arnaud’s own mother had accused his wife of smothering the child. Mad with grief, his wife tried to hang herself. Her senses had never returned to her and Arnaud was forced to send her to a nunnery. He had never sought to have the marriage annulled, never mind that he had lain with Patrice countless times.

However, it was not my place to judge Arnaud or Patrice, or anyone, for I loved a man who was not my husband. A man who had a wife of more than twenty years. I could no more give him up than I could will the blood to stop flowing through my veins.

“My lady?”

I turned at the sound of the voice. Mortimer stood at the threshold of the doorway, resplendent in his scarlet and green. Encumbered by the almost ridiculous abundance of my skirts, I stood in place. One step without Patrice to manage the train and I would have tripped in a most ungainly fashion and been unable to right myself.

He moved forward, appraising me in a way so familiar I felt as if I were wearing nothing at all. My pulse quickened. A flush of heat fanned upward from my breast to my neck. I dabbed at beads of perspiration on my forehead, wondering if they had even been there a minute before.

“Captivating.” He made a broad circle around me, careful to avoid stepping on the great swaths of cloth that surrounded me like a sea of liquid amber. “A lifetime’s worth of beauty for any man to behold.”

When he came around before me, he swept an arm across his torso and bowed low, his thick crown of raven-black hair glistening with a fine sheen of oil. Then he rose, offering his elbow. “The Archbishop of Canterbury awaits, my queen. The sun is strong, the people are in high spirits and your son has paced a waist-deep rut in the planks of his floor. Shall we?”

I took his arm as Patrice snatched up the embroidered hem of my train and swung around behind me. My damsels scurried out of the way, but old Ida seemed unable to move, her puckered mouth alternately smiling and quivering as she mopped away tears. Ida had been Young Edward’s nursemaid since his infancy and so he was like a son to her. Finally, she hobbled to me, her bad knees making her movements jerky and unsteady.

“What is it, Ida?” I took her hands in mine, her skin dry like parchment, and squeezed lightly.

“I am so full of joy, my lady. But frightened for him, too.”

“Why?”

The crease between her brows deepened. “Because of the eagle. The one that soared above Windsor the day he was born.”

“Oh, that.” I laughed, trying to make light of it. How many times had she spoken of the omen, declaring his birth a sign of some great war that would befall England during his lifetime? A terrible burden for any babe to bear, even one destined to be king. “Let us simply rejoice in this day, shall we, Ida?”

Then I kissed her on each cheek and took Mortimer’s arm again, confident in the outcome of the day, but now sharply reminded that the future was never certain.

The archbishop led the short procession from the palace to Westminster Abbey. The crowd pressed close, waving and crying, “Glory! Glory to the king!” A robe of red samite, trimmed with gold cording, cascaded from Young Edward’s narrow shoulders as he strode, step by proud step, beneath a belled canopy, the poles held aloft by a quartet of earls. Beneath his shoes flowed a river of brilliant blue silk, seducing him onward as it rippled up the cathedral steps, through the tall, arched doors and down the center of the nave.

I observed the ceremony through a veil of tears, my son posed regally on his gilt throne, a jewel-studded scepter clasped in the circle of his fingers. Archbishop Reynolds stood before him at the high altar, the crown of Edward the Confessor held high as he invoked God’s blessing in Latin verse upon the reign of Edward III, King of England.

As the crown alighted on Young Edward’s fair brow, a halcyon settled upon my soul. The memory of nineteen years fraught with strife and struggle flashed through my memory and was quickly replaced by the sight of this luminous moment. It was as though England had endured a long and savage storm and today was the bold breaking of dawn above the treetops: a new beginning, as pure and full or promise as the scent of rain on freshly sprung grass.

***

All that had ever been taken from me was returned, augmented even: Sheen, Langley, Leeds and other royal residences, so that I might live in a manner befitting my station as Queen Dowager. I was also granted an annuity sufficient to reward me for England’s deliverance. Two days after the crowning, a regency council of twelve was formed, headed by the Earl of Lancaster, which would remain in place until Young Edward passed his eighteenth birthday. My son would be tested in these first few years. His influences must be carefully chosen.

One month had passed since the coronation day. Since then, the arguments had been many. There were matters to be remedied, policies to be decided on, and appointments to be made. Sir John had returned to Hainault and in doing so deprived me of one of my most trusted supporters.

The regency council had just adjourned after another daylong meeting. One by one, its members slid their chairs back and departed, drifting away in clumps. Archbishop Reynolds and Bishops Melton and Stratford were discussing who to suggest for various bishoprics, while the Earl of Kent exchanged small talk with Lord Henry Percy. Lancaster and Lord Wake lingered by the table, until Lancaster’s son-in-law, John de Ros, proposed they all share a drink. Lancaster clapped Ros on the back and they swaggered off, their voices raised boisterously as if they were already drunk.

Finally, there was only Bishop Orleton, Mortimer and myself remaining in the chamber. Mortimer was not a member of the council, but he had been called to sit in that day to give a report of the raid the Scots had launched on Norham on the day of Edward’s coronation. Throughout the meeting, he had fidgeted in his chair impatiently, giving only the briefest account of the activities of the Bruce’s furtive and ruthless commander, James Douglas.

The flames of the hearth cast an amber glow over Mortimer’s features, darkening the shadows in the creases around his eyes. Leaning an elbow upon the mantel, he kicked an ember back into the fire and glanced at the door before letting his sight rest on the bishop.

“Have they found him?” Mortimer said.

Orleton closed the door and came to stand halfway between Mortimer and me. “Dunheved? No.”

I turned a questioning face on Mortimer, then Orleton. “Dunheved? Who is Dunheved?”

“Stephen Dunheved.” Orleton flipped the edges of his red-tasseled stole to his sides and sat back down in his chair. “A Dominican friar who once carried a message to the pope himself at the behest of Lord Despenser. You can imagine that his mission to Avignon was not in your favor, my lady. Rumors are that it was a request for an annulment. This Dunheved eventually became Sir Edward’s confessor.”

A flutter of worry stirred deep inside my belly. “I don’t understand. Why would you be looking for Edward’s confessor?”

Mortimer pushed away from the mantel. “There was a plot —”

“
Alleged
plot, Roger,” Orleton corrected. “We have discussed countless times that there would be rumors in the wake of this past year’s upheaval and that we could not accept each and every one as fact and condemn innocent persons.”