Harlot Queen (46 page)

‘A saint—he!’ Isabella laughed; but her laughter had an uneasy ring. ‘If ever he got into heaven he’d corrupt the angels!’

‘They’d not interest him; they have not the where-withal!’ Mortimer said, gloomy. ‘By God your husband’s more nuisance dead than alive! No end to his
miracles
. For look you, a saint’s as potent as the philosopher’s stone to turn base metal to gold. And this the damned abbot at Gloucester knows better than most. He’ll not be in a hurry to lose his saint!’

Certainly the good abbot knew how to turn his new saint into gold. From every part of England came the lame and the halt. And why not? A blind man had seen the dead King in a blaze of light and the light had forever cured his darkness. A housewife had lost a silver piece; a voice from the tomb had told her where it might be found. A dead child had stirred in its coffin, had risen and walked. No miracle too great or too small.

Gloucester had become a place of pilgrimage; any man with a room or a bed or even a place upon the bare floor could command his price. The town grew in prosperity, the cathedral in wealth and beauty.

Edward more useful dead than alive.

‘We must make out own pilgrimage,’ Mortimer said, sour. ‘It would look ill if we did not.’

‘Before God, no!’ she crossed herself. ‘I’ve not forgot the funeral. I expected, every moment, the effigy to bleed at the sight of us. I’ll not risk a second time. My son has commanded a fine tomb. Let that suffice.’

‘By God, your son takes too much upon himself! He asked no leave.’

‘He needs none. He is the King. And, besides, who would question such piety? Mortimer, Mortimer, my son grows in stature; old men and women say he grows like his grandfather, that indomitable man! When I consider the future, I am troubled; I am troubled, dear love—and chiefly because of you. Show him some respect; it shall serve us well!’

‘Respect! the boy’s scarce dry behind the ears. You make an old woman of yourself—you and your fears!’

He saw the flush spread under the paint; and, since she still held power, said quickly, ‘But for all that there’s none can hold a candle to you!’ He flung out his arms in a yawn, ‘Come love to bed!’ And saw the raddled face brighten.

The young King felt his manhood strong within him. He was not only a King; he was to be a father. To hand on the crown strong and secure, was his plain duty. Eighteen. It was young, Lancaster thought, but not too young. The boy had a strength within him. It was true what they said—he was less his father’s son than grandson to great Edward.

The tide that had been steadily rising came in with a rush. And now it was not only the common people, it was the princes of England, church and state, it was Parliament; but for all that they must speak in whispers, work in secret. Madam Queen Isabella and Mortimer, already uneasy, would be tigers to defend their ill-got power. Kent had been hurried to his death; why should they spare any other—Lancaster or Norfolk, or indeed Edward himself? They had thrust one King down into the grave, why not another?

The first step was to crown the King’s wife, to set her image in the public eye, equal at least, in dignity to the King’s mother.

‘Sirs’, Lancaster told Parliament, ‘soon by God’s grace the King’s son shall be born. It is not fitting his mother should go uncrowned; already the matter has been too-long delayed.’

It was a crowning long due, Parliament agreed. But where was the money to be found?

‘There’s money found for all else!’ And they knew to whose extravagance Lancaster referred. ‘There must be money found for this, also!’

The last day in February, in the year of grace thirteen hundred and thirty the King’s summons went out; it commanded his well-loved princes and prelates,

to appear to do their customary duties in the coronation of our dearest Queen Philippa, which takes place, if God be willing, the Sunday next to the feast of St Peter in the cathedral of Westminster.

It was not a magnificent affair. There was little in the Treasury and less in the Wardrobe. They were so poor, the young King and Queen, they had scarce enough to meet the modest demands of their daily life. Isabella was not ill-pleased at the meagreness of the crowning; everything that took from the dignity of the young Queen must add to her own.

She had reckoned without the girl herself—Philippa, great with England’s heir, and her own incomparable dignity. So young, so moving in her pregnancy, there was a joyousness about her, a sweetness, a patience. Her known kindness, her clear honesty gave hope for the future; England had suffered too much under a bad Queen!

Isabella, handsomely gowned, ablaze with jewels, high-painted into beauty must yet take second place. She longed to weep; to weep for grief, for anger, for the injustice of this eclipsing of her glory. Once she had knelt in that very place where now her son’s wife knelt, sat upon that very throne, bent her head to that same diadem. She, too, had made her vows; vows as good as those of the clumsy young creature kneeling now. Twenty-one years. In a flash… gone.

She shut her eyes against the young Queen… Bitter, bitter beyond enduring to see another in her own place.

The words of the great ceremony fell upon deaf ears; she listened, instead to the words of her own thoughts.

… She sits in my place; she has everything. She has the crown. She has a proper man for husband—more than ever I had! She’s great with England’s heir. Yet she’s not half the woman I was… or am; or am! Where’s the wit, the ambition, the daring? Where the beauty? Honest she may be; kindly and trustworthy—these things one looks for in a servant! For all her breeding a peasant! Yet my son looks at her as though that body of hers held the beauty of all women…

It came to her with bitterness that, for all her own beauty, no man had ever looked at her like that. Her husband had insulted her womanhood. To her young knight of Hainault she had not been a woman of flesh and blood; she had been his lady, some disembodied spirit of chivalry. She had for her lover the most magnificent man in England; but it was she that had made him magnificent… and he was an unkind lover.

Her eye came back to the girl on the throne…
the peasant!
She longed to shake her, shake her, shake her; to send the crown ridiculously toppling over her nose, to show her up for the figure-of-fun she was with her fat face and her heavy breasts, and the swollen belly. Yet the girl, she must admit it, was a dutiful daughter-in-law. There had been that large dowry, now regrettably spent. The girl might well have complained; but not a word. Not a word, either, about the Queen’s dues kept in her mother-in-law’s hands. And she behaved well whenever they met—courtesy from son’s wife to his mother. But there was little warmth in it; her son’s wife did not seek her company. As she grew older—and not so much older either—the creature would grow heavier, duller, lose what looks she had. Let her look to it that her husband’s eyes did not stray—the Plantagenets were not known for their virtue, the Capets still less. Yet she would take it all as it came; shrug off his lapses—not in weakness but with her peasant’s strength. Year by year she would produce his children. Always he would come back to her. Her respect would strengthen him, her affection steady him; commonplace, she would be his mainstay, his way of life.

She sighed, in spite of her contempt envying Philippa.

A simple crowning, a simple feast; and then to Woodstock to await the birth of the child. Here Parliament followed them; and here the King talked often and secretly with his cousin of Lancaster. The time was almost ripe; discontent festered throughout the land. But, for all that, they must wait until the Queen was safe-delivered; the King would not have her disturbed though the plot worked in him like yeast. His first thought was for her. He walked with her, talked with her, plucked her summer posies with his own hand; he offered up masses that the child might be a son; he gave alms, he prayed night and day for her safe delivery.

The child was born at Woodstock in mid-June. It was the longed for boy, handsome and well-made. ‘We shall call him Edward—the fourth Edward!’ the King said. But no man may foresee the future; this child was to die in young manhood, die before his father.

‘She feeds him at her own breast!’ Isabella told Mortimer, winged brows lifted in disgust. ‘A Queen to behave like an animal!’

‘All women are animals—queens and peasants alike!’

‘It is you men make us so!’ she said quick and angry.

‘I’ve seen no unwillingness in you!’ he smiled into her face.

Madam Queen Isabella might think a Queen too fine for such work but the country adored the young mother. Humble women suckling their babes felt kinship with the Queen. Painters chose her for their Madonna; her serene face smiled down in many a church.

When he looked upon his son the King was more than ever aware of his manhood. Now when he sat with Lancaster, the Queen made a third in their secret talk; this quiet girl, Lancaster found, wielded power over her passionate impatient husband. Their plans were maturing; peers and bishops in ever-growing number came in to the King. Lancaster’s spies reported that the country waited for the word. To lull any suspicion on the part of an uneasy Isabella and Mortimer, the King proclaimed a great tournament to honour the Queen upon the birth of his son—an opportunity to gather, without undue suspicion, knights-in-arms; to assess their virtue in the field and the strength of their following. At Chepeside stands were erected, tier upon tier, with an enclosure for the Queen and her ladies.

It was long since Londoners had seen offered so fine a sight; the country was so poor, so sick at heart. Long, too, since they had set eyes on their young Queen; not, indeed, since she had gone into the country for the birth of her child. All this time there had been no court and no Parliament, now both were to return; trade would prosper once more in London. Now London was to see its Queen again—the Queen that had given the country its prince. After the hardships endured at the hands of the bad Queen and her lover, she brought hope of better times. It was said of her that, poor as she was—because of those accursed two—no poor man ever went empty from her presence. No wonder the King treasured her as the apple of his eye. It was said also—whispered very low—that he’d not put up much longer with the state of affairs. With such a King and such a Queen the bad times must surely come to an end.

The tourney was set to begin, every seat taken; yet more and more folk thrust their way through the tiers fighting, pushing, being in turn pushed and fought; the seats creaked beneath a weight they had never been built to hold.

With a flourish of trumpets the King and Queen entered. The summoning notes, the sight of the young couple they had not seen for so long, stirred the crowd to madness. They stood upon their seats screaming and stamping; the stamping was the last straw. With a crash the scaffolding gave way. Amid a litter of broken wood folk lay upon the ground groaning, shrieking, struggling to rise. Some would never rise again; for over their bodies, frantic to escape, crowds surged in all directions. Amid flying timber, men and women fought with fists and feet, with sticks and pieces of jagged wood.

The King, arm about the Queen, saw it coming, the heavy beam. Even as he pulled her away, the jagged end crashed; down she went like a stone. He lifted her in his arms; he saw the white coif take the red stain. Himself, maddened, he fought his way treading upon those that blocked his path.

She lay senseless in his arms. She was dead, he knew it. Such happiness as his could not last long. Now, with her, his life had come to an end.

Her lids fluttered, she stirred in his arms.

She was not dead. God be thanked she was not dead! A terrible joy took him, thereafter a terrible rage.

She was not dead. But she might have been…
she might have been
. Men shrank from his face as he passed carrying his burden—the fixed jaw, the unseeing eye, the face of stone. In his anger terrible; those that had never seen his grandfather saw him now.

They had brought a litter; he walked, his hand upon it. He could trust none but himself to watch over her, lest still she slip from life. He and he alone could keep her safe.

She was lying in the Queen’s lodgings in the Tower. He could not enough look at her, could not enough thank God. But, for all that, he had lost none of his anger; he was sick and shaken with anger. He would have the lives of those responsible for this—foremen and labourers that had not sufficiently tested their work.

‘They shall hang, every mother’s son!’ he cried out looking upon her he had so nearly lost.

Every mother’s son
… She had so lately borne a son; the words played havoc in her heart. She raised her gentle head. ‘There’s no harm done!’ she said.

‘You might be lying dead,’ he said and shook at the thought.

‘But I am alive. It was an accident; a thing no man could foresee.’

‘It
should
have been foreseen. Carelessness, bad work—it’s no excuse. It might have killed you!’

‘God shows His mercy. But, if yourself show none, how shall we deserve it of God?’

He turned his face from her. He loved her; and how nearly he had lost her! Those responsible must answer; he would not remit their just punishment.

A little unsteady she rose from the bed. A bruise marked the white skin of her forehead. Freed of the coif, her hair flowed free, her pretty brown hair. She looked little more than a child.

And she might have died, trampled beneath those brutish feet! He could not listen to her prayer.

She went down upon her knees; like any suppliant she knelt. She said no word. She took his hand and kissed it.

‘I can refuse you nothing!’ he said from a grim mouth.

Henry of Lancaster heard the tale; the King himself told it, shame-faced that he had not meted out deserved punishment. The Queen’s mercy, Lancaster thought, should add to her image. He told the tale everywhere. Londoners heard it and blessed the Queen; and blessed the King that had not turned his ear from mercy. The tale spread throughout the land; minstrels sang the ballad of the good Queen.