Isabella: Braveheart of France (3 page)

Valois props himself in a window seat and stares at the river, in a sulk.

She hears it described how the king allowed Gaveston to prepare both the coronation and the feast. They all count both a disaster. “Did you see the tapestry he prepared for the occasion?” Charles says to Valois. “It had Gaveston’s arms beside the king’s. It should have been my sister’s arms placed there. He has insulted our entire family!”

The door bursts open and Lancaster stamps in. “He couldn’t organize a fuck in a barrel full of whores.” Valois nods towards Isabella, and Lancaster’s face turns pink. “Your grace,” he says and bows. “I did not see you.” But he is only off his stride for a moment. “Did you see what he wore?”

Isabella stares at the floor. She has never heard language as ripe as this. This has been altogether an interesting day. “I need to get out of this damned country.” Evreux mutters.

“Why is everyone so angry?” Isabella asks him.

“No one is allowed to wear purple but the king!” Lancaster shouts at her before remembering himself and lowering his voice. “Look at me! Is gold not good enough for him as well? And he dares hold the Confessor’s crown! Is he high born? Is he noble? The privilege should have been mine or Warwick’s!”

“We sympathize with your plight,” Charles says. “But let us desist. We are upsetting my sister.”

“He has insulted her as well.”

“I agree.”

“Are you not vexed?”

“Vexed? I am ready to do murder. But one wonders if that would be a wise course. This is not our realm.”

Lancaster stamps across the room and pounds a fist against the wainscoting. It causes it to dent and splinter. “Did you see them sitting there, staring at each other?”

“Will you all please explain to me what is happening?” Isabella says.

They all look at her. The child can speak. But how can she understand? There is a long and difficult silence. They all wait for one of the others to do the talking.

Finally Charles sits down beside her and picks up her hand. “We are shamed that he pays his favourite more attention than you.”

“Who is this Gaveston, where he is from?”

“He is a Gascon, a squire in the former king’s household. They grew up together. They became close friends.”

“Close!” Lancaster snorted.

“I heard his mother was burned as a witch,” Valois said, still looking out of the window.

“There is no truth in that rumour,” Evreux says. “The plain facts about him are bad enough without making up falsehoods.”

“Why does he favour him above anyone else?” Isabella asks them.

More looks. Charles waits for Valois to help him, but he joins Evreux by the window. Lancaster shrugs and turns away. “Do not fret, Isabella. This shall not stand. He shall give you the respect that is your due.”

“I shall go to my knees tonight and ask the Virgin for guidance in this,” Isabella says.

“Then you shall not be the only one on your knees when the candles are out,” Lancaster says and walks out, leaving behind an embarrassed silence.

Chapter 6

My dread and very dear Majesty,

I commend myself to you as humbly as I can. You have heard from my dear brother of affairs here in England. I am hard pressed at present to meet my expenses; my husband tells me that his Treasury cannot even afford to pay his own.

I do not know how I shall run my household unless the King endows me with those estates he has promised me.

Now that my good uncles have returned to France I am in lack of good counsel. Edward has provided me with my own retinue of ladies, and one of them, Lady Mortimer, the wife of one of Edward’s barons, is unfailingly kind to me.

I shall do my best to be faithful to you and to France in all things, though I find this present circumstance difficult to bear.

May the Holy Spirit keep you always

Given this day at London

Isabella

She wakes to a sound as chilling as any she has ever heard. She puts on a fur-lined mantle and goes outside. Lady Mortimer is already in the hall, hurrying to attend her.

“What manner of beast is that?” Isabella asks her.

“It is one of the king’s lions, your grace. He has a private menagerie in the Barbican. His father brought these creatures back from the Holy Land, or so they tell me.”

Isabella dresses in furs and sturdy leather boots and goes outside to walk in the garden, pursued by Eleanor and other of her ladies. It is just after dawn, there is mist on the river and frost on the grey roofs of the king’s apartments. A crocus pushes its way through the brown earth.

The portcullis is raised. The stench of the river is stunning, and she reels back. Torches flare in the fog. A barge pulls up at the steps, and soldiers run to meet it, their voices echoing around the Watergate.

She returns to her chambers in St Thomas Tower and sees Mortimer going out as she is going in. He seemed embarrassed to find her awake and on the stairs so early. “My Lord Mortimer.”

He bows. “Your grace.”

“I did not expect to find you here. You have been visiting the Lady Mortimer?”

He nods his head. He seems uncomfortable in her presence.

“Did you hear my lord’s lions? They woke me.”

“Was that what it was? I thought it was Lancaster.”

She had not imagined him to have a sense of humour, and she giggles. But this is unseemly and she quickly composes herself. “The smell is overpowering close to the wall.”

“Definitely Lancaster then.”

He had seemed so fierce in the church and at the banquet but now he seems almost charming, if not diffident. He is certainly embarrassed at being caught sneaking from his wife’s bedchamber. She likes having him at her advantage. “What are they doing at the Watergate?”

He looks over her shoulder and sees the barge and the torches. “They’re unloading weapons.”

“Weapons?”

“Bows, halberds, shields. The king is preparing for war.”

“Against whom?”

He shrugs as if it is common knowledge. “Against his earls.”

She tries not to appear shocked. Having nothing more to say, she bids him good morning. “Your grace,” he murmurs and hurries away.

Civil war? Does my father know about this?

And if it’s true, what will happen to me?

***

They do not stay long in one place; the royal households are large, and even the most well-appointed castle turns foul soon enough, especially in the winter. There are parliaments to attend, Scots to be harried, Welshmen to be hanged.

Every time they move it is like a small army decamping.

Edward’s favourite retreat is at Langley. He mentions casually that this is where he met Piers Gaveston - or Perro as he calls him. Is this why it is so special to him?

Her treasurer, William de Boudon, begs audience. “Your grace,” he mumbles in the studied tones of a man who shudders to raise the subject of such a vulgar thing as finance in the presence of royalty, though that is what he was hired to do. “I count one hundred and eighty persons in your household, and all must be fed and clothed and adequately compensated. Your wardrobe must be maintained. Yet I do not have an adequate purse for the purpose.”

“We have no money.”

“Precisely.”

She has one of the inadequately compensated ladies-in-waiting call for her steward. She tells him to fetch a horse, the queen wishes to go riding. Ask the Lady Mortimer if she will accompany me.

She goes in search of the king, who has responded to the threat of revolt among his barons by offering to help one of his gamekeepers repair his roof. When she finds him, he looks so happy she feels a pang of misgiving at disturbing his labour.

He looks like an overgrown boy. She watches him for a while; he has with him several of the lads of the estate, all of them on the roof, clambering over the thatch. He is a neat hand with a shearing hook. He is down to his peasant hose; his body all wiry and hard muscled. It sends a shiver through her. She hears him laughing, sharing some bawdy joke with the men. Gaveston is asleep in the straw below, looking decorous.

The lieutenant of her guard holds the reins and she slides from her horse. She lifts her skirts clear of the dew. Edward sees her and waves.

He slides halfway down the ladder, jumps the rest of the way, landing easily on the balls of his feet. “Isabella.”

“Dread lord.”

A servant hands him a cup of wine. Not quite a commoner yet, then. The dregs leave a glistening residue in his beard. “Is everything well?”

“Passing.”

“I trust you have all you require.”

“My lord, what are you doing?”

He spreads his hands, puzzled by the question.

“A king does not work alongside commoners. Next you will tell me you have been digging trenches.”

“Should they need digging, why not?”

“This is not what a king does.”

“Not the king of France perhaps. But it is what I do. I can disport myself as I wish.”

“I meant no offence, your grace. I am just ... startled.”

“Will here is my groundskeeper and has been since I was a boy. His roof is in need of some new thatch, and the kingdom may spare me for a morning.” He hectors her much as her father does. She feels so stupid here in England; everything must be explained to her. “Is there something I might do for you?” he asks her.

She gathers her courage, this needs saying and she has no one to do it for her. “Your grace, I hope you do not think me impertinent, but I am in dire need of money. I have nothing with which to maintain my household.”

Edward laughs. “Madam, it shall be forthcoming.” He turns for his ladder. He is missing the straw already.

“Forthcoming will not do, Edward. I need money
at this moment
.”

He stares at her. He looks shocked. “I am not accustomed to being addressed in such a manner by a girl.”

“I am the daughter of the king of France. I have
never
been a girl.”

Gaveston is awake now. He leans on one elbow watching this exchange with interest, as do the lads on the roof. Edward says, through gritted teeth: “Well, I should like to assist you in this matter, but the Treasury is unfortunately sorely depleted - at this moment.”

“So you have told me. But as part of my dower I was promised the Duchy of Cornwall. The rents from the patronage would assist greatly.”

“I have given Cornwall to my Lord Gaveston.”

She lowers her eyes as she had been taught. She waits, does not move, listening to the beating of her own heart. “I shall see what might be done,” he says and returns to the problems of a good thatch.

Isabella lets out her breath. She has never confronted a grown man before. She would not have dreamed of taking issue with her father--or either of her uncles--on any matter; today she has surprised even herself.

She returns to her riding party and the Lady Mortimer assists her back onto her horse. She thinks she hears her whisper: “Well done, Isabella!” but then she might have imagined it.

***

But Edward’s good humour is quickly vanished when her uncle Lancaster and the Earl of Warwick visit him. They have come to complain about Gaveston, that the king is too familiar with him, that he should not have been granted the Duchy of Cornwall. Isabella listens out of sight from the gallery, as she sometimes did when her father held audience in the Palais in Paris.

“And where should Cornwall have gone?” Edward asks them. “To you, I suppose?”

“To the queen.”

Choked off laughter comes from a chair by the hearth, where Gaveston warms his stockinged feet and reads a book. “That twelve-year-old schoolgirl? What will she do with Cornwall?”

“I see your bitch is curled nice and easy by the fire.” Lancaster says. “I didn’t see her there.”

Heads turn to the hearth. Edward’s wolfhound lies at Gaveston’s feet, asleep on the Turkish carpets.

Warwick is more direct; handsome as the devil, dark, bearded and frightening, he has the whitest hands she has ever seen on a man. They say he can converse in Latin and keeps a dagger hidden in his tunic. “What is Gaveston doing here? This is our point. Do we never get to speak to the king alone?”

“He is my most trusted adviser.”

“Then what advice you must be getting,” Lancaster says. “He could not even organize the banquet for your coronation.”

“The fault lies with the cooks and stewards,” Edward says, and starts to rise from his throne. “I believe they were paid to make him look foolish.”

“Why?” Warwick asks. “When they could have
that
for free?”