Isabella: Braveheart of France (10 page)

“What have they done?”

“Your Grace, he is beheaded.”

Edward sinks into his seat as if he has been struck by a mace. “You saw this?”

“We were imprisoned, we heard of it when we were freed.”

“Where is he?”

“The monks took him to Oxford.”

“To Oxford? They killed him in Oxford?”

“No, in Warwick.”

“In the castle?”

“On a hill.”

“Hill? What hill?”

“Lancaster came for him late one night and took him from the dungeon and brought him in irons to Blacklow Hill. It is a mile from the castle, on Lancaster’s land.”

“On Lancaster’s land? But where was Warwick?”

“He stayed behind, at the castle.”

“He had the venom for this act, but not the stomach.” Edward mutters this to himself, into his beard. His eyes look mad.

The messenger is breathing hard. He wants to finish this and get out but must wait for the king’s leave to speak again. It is a long time before he receives it.

“And then?”

“He was handed to Lancaster’s guards and taken up the hill in full view of the crowds-.”

“The crowds? He made this a public occasion?”

“There was a large gathering. It was festive. Some blew horns.”

Isabella closes her eyes. Do not say
that
to him! Think fit to leave out such painful embellishments, you fool. Because he asks you for such details does not mean he needs to hear them. Do you not have sense enough to lie to him, man?

“Lancaster observed all this?”

“And my lords Hereford and Arundel.”

“And what of Perro...what of my lord Gaveston?”

The man looks to his companion.
It is your turn now
, his eyes are saying.

The other takes up the rest of the story. “He begged Lancaster for mercy, your grace.”

“You saw this?”

“We heard of it later.”

“Tell me what you heard. All of it.”

Isabella shakes her head: no, don’t. But he is not looking at her.

“He begged Lancaster for mercy on his knees. He wept.”

“And the crowd saw this?”

“They seemed all the more happy for it.”

Isabella wants the story to end. Edward, Gaveston is dead, let this be over with. Edward sighs and regards the ceiling, sighing deep in his chest. “How was it done?”

“One of the guards pierced him through the chest with his sword. The other cut off his head and showed it to Lancaster.”

Edward taps a forefinger on the arm of the throne. Isabella waits for the outburst, but there is none.

“Who told you this?”

“One of the shoe menders.”

“Shoe menders? What would a shoe mender have to do with this?”

“He was charged by the monks with sewing the head back on.”

The silence stretches for an eternity. Old Hugh thinks it is politic at this point to tap the men on the shoulder and point to the door. Never has she seen two men more happy to leave a room.

Edward is absolutely still. He hardly seems even to breathe. His eyes are fixed at some point high in the ceiling.

Finally he shakes his head and says, in a quiet voice: "By God’s soul, he acted like a fool. If he had taken my advice he would never have fallen into the hands of the earls. This is what I always told him not to do. I knew this would happen! What was he doing with the Earl of Warwick? He never liked him." He gets to his feet. “Make sure those men are fed and paid for their service to us.”

He leaves the hall. No one moves. Isabella hurries after him but he has already gone to his bedchamber and the door is locked. She hears him though on the other side of the door, it sounds as if someone is slaughtering a pig.

She sends the servants away. She wants none of them hearing this.

A man who knew the shoe mender.

She hears his dogs on the other side of the door yelping and scratching to get out. They are clearly terrified. She edges the door ajar to release them and they flee scampering down the passage. She glimpses Edward, drooling like a lunatic. He overturns an oak table it took four men to move the day before. He tears down a recess curtain and breaks a holy picture over his knee.

She shuts the door and sits in a chair outside, listening to him rage. She sends orders to old Hugh that no one is to be allowed entry to his chambers.

She finds him the next morning among the wreckage. It looks as if his apartments have been ransacked by marauders. Edward lies in the middle of it, clutching a goblet, wine spilled on the carpets and all over his clothes.

She goes out again, lets him sleep.

For days he wanders the halls and gardens, mindless in grief. Once she sees him from her window, sink to his knees in the rain, then keel onto his side there in the mud. Grief owns him totally.

She feels the child kicking in her belly. It will be all right, she tells him. Gaveston is gone. Everything will be all right now. We will just get through these dark days and then all will be well.

Chapter 18

“Isabella, by the grace of God, Queen of England, Lady of Ireland and Duchess of Aquitaine, to our well-beloved the Mayor and aldermen and the commonalty of London, greeting. Forasmuch as we believe that you would willingly hear good tidings of us, we do make known to you that our Lord, of His grace, has delivered us of a son, on the 13th day of November, with safety to ourselves, and to the child. May our Lord preserve you. Given at Windsor, on the day above-named.”

***

She looks so small under the bedcovers, and pale. She manages a smile. They tell him the birthing was difficult, she so small in the hips and this her first, a lusty boy, and carried long.

“Isabella...”

“Your grace.”

“You have given us a son.”

“I hope it pleases you.”

He leans over the bed. She has not seen him smile like this since the year before, when Gaveston returned from Brabant. There was a time she thought never to see him smile again. If this was what it took, then it was worth it.

“They say you lost much blood.”

“You have your battlefields, I have mine.”

“And you were valiant on it.”

“Once it has begun a woman has no choice but to bear it. What shall we call him?”

“I was thinking...Piers.”

She looks at her baby, better arranges the blanket around his face. The room has turned cold.

“Your suggestion?” he asks her, finally.

“I thought Phillip, after my father.”

He stands up, crosses his arms. “What about Edward?”

“Well, he is your son.”

“So he shall be Edward, then.”

He smiles and kisses her. She closes her eyes. If he would only tell her he loves her--as she had once heard him say to Gaveston--the moment would be perfect.

***

The threat of civil war has ended with Gaveston’s death. The manner of his kidnap and execution brings Pembroke, outraged and humiliated, back to the king’s side, Surrey and old Hugh’s son with him. It horrifies even those who despise Gaveston, and many call it murder. Warwick sulks in his castle and Lancaster returns to Kenilworth, snarling with contempt at any who dare question his motives.

Edward is mean while decamps to Oxford, where he pays for cere cloths to wrap the body and then has it embalmed with balsam and spices. He commissions an elaborate coffin for Gaveston’s body for he will yet be awhile above the ground. He died excommunicate, so he cannot be buried in hallowed ground.

“You know they left the body there in the open?” he shouts at her, as if she is to blame. “Some shoe-menders took him on a ladder to Warwick Castle, and our good Earl turned them away!”

“Will there be war now?”

“If I could not defeat them before, how should I do it now? But the wheel will turn, Lancaster will part with his head and so will Warwick, I shall swear it on my father’s tomb. They will pay for every drop of blood, by God’s soul they will!”

The king makes overgenerous financial arrangements for monks in Oxford to keep him at their friary and to pray for his unhallowed soul. He hires two men to watch over the coffin night and day. Margaret and Gaveston’s former servants are all awarded pensions.

Lady Vescy returns, no longer outlawed, and then Winchelsea dies. More good news, then, Edward says, clapping his hands in delight when the messenger brings him the missive. Edward makes his friend Walter Reynolds Archbishop of Canterbury in his place with the pious hope that his predecessor will moan everlasting in hell on the end of a hot pitchfork.

Hereford and Arundel come snivelling back, and old Hugh encourages the king to make peace with Lancaster and Warwick, for the good of the realm.

“I cannot do it,” he tells her. “I cannot forgive them.”

“Just make a show of it,” she says. “You have the other barons on your side now. If you were to take an army and defeat the Scots, your kingship would be unquestioned. You could then turn the army on them. Hold your hand till then.”

“But I have vowed to see them dead!”

“Vengeance cannot be rushed. Have patience, take their submission and when you are stronger then you can make them pay you in full measure for what they have done.”

The birth of her son thaws the frosty relationship between her husband and her father. Gaveston’s death does no harm to it either. Now Phillip sends the king a letter, inviting him to Paris, so that he can see his new grandson and talk about Gascony.

Edward is delighted. He senses the possibility of concessions. As soon as his wife is recovered, they will take ship to France.

Chapter 19

Paris. March, 1314

“He is so handsome!” Marguerite squeals, peering between the curtains.

Pentecost Sunday and Isabella’s brothers are to be knighted by their father, Phillip. But it is Edward who attracts the attention; tall, strong and handsome, it seems at last Isabella is envied, as she never is in England. And he does carry it well; working on a roof or a field may not be regal, but it has made him a physical specimen to be admired.

She thinks Marguerite should instead have eyes for her husband Louis, for it is his day; but she and Charles’ wife Blanche have always been this way: flighty girls, though pleasant company. The silk purses she has made for them warrant barely a glance. Once they treated her as a little pest, now they behave as if she is all but invisible.

Neither do they try to hide the looks they give the two young men on the other side of the church. Isabella makes a point to find out who they are; they are brothers by the name of d’Aulnay, both knights and outrageously handsome. They pretend not to notice that the two sisters are watching them.

They do not pretend very well.

Her sisters-in-law’s gossip is about the Templars; all arrested and put to the torture, at the Pope’s behest. Marguerite and Blanche are not concerned about the politics of it, their talk is of how the Order encouraged their members to have sexual dalliance with a cat and worship a disembodied head.

Really, she could have more intelligent conversations with her horse.

Neither Marguerite nor Blanche has many kind words for her brothers, their husbands. “All Louis ever wants to do is play tennis,” Marguerite says.

Her father has not aged at all. His nickname is Phillip the Handsome, and he still is, frighteningly so. He actually smiles when he sees her, a rare compliment indeed.

“You have grown beautiful,” he says and nods with approval. This she did not expect.

They are in the White Chamber, so named for its pure white walls. The windows of thick stained glass bear the armorial insignia of the royal house of France, a wheel of candles burns overhead. Théophania enters, holding the new prince for the king’s inspection. He pronounces himself well pleased and then calls for wine to celebrate. She has waited five years to make him so proud.

Afterwards, her father takes her aside, and they talk in whispers beside the raging fire. He is much consumed by the state of her marriage to Edward. “Things go well between you now?”

“They could not be better.”

“There are no more...favourites?”

“He is as attentive a husband as a wife may hope for.”

“I hear from Rosseletti that Lancaster and this Warwick still disobey him.”

“Gaveston was just their excuse. They wish to undermine his rule and have the power for themselves. But killing Gaveston was very bad for their cause.”