Isabella: Braveheart of France (31 page)

“Will you?”

“I had thought about it, once. Often, when I was king, but there seems no point now.”

She comes to stand by the fire. This is not unpleasant. She had thought to find him shivering in a dungeon with a piss-soaked blanket round his shoulders. “Will you offer me refreshment?”

He has wine in a jug. Not very good wine, but better than most prisoners get. Mortimer has kept his word, or his friends have.

He looks her up and down. There were days not long past when she would have welcomed a look like that. “You look well,” he says. “Overthrowing kings seems to suit you.”

“You dethroned yourself.”

“Really? Because this is not how it seemed when I was riding through Gloucestershire at night with Mortimer’s wolves at my back.”

“Come now, Edward. I washed up on a beach with a few hundred soldiers and a handful of horses and disaffected Englishmen. If the people loved their king, how far do you think I would have got?”

He shrugs, as if conceding a minor point. “Despenser overreached himself.”

“No, you allowed him to do it. If you had been a true king, he could not have risen as high as he did.”

He smiles, emerges from the dream of Edward and how Edward appeared, uncurling like a lizard from a warm rock. The fire makes his face appear to glow from within.

An idea dawns. Surely not.

“You wanted him to make England suffer, didn’t you?”

“When did England ever love me?”

“Was this all about Gaveston?”

He appears exasperated with her, a child who will not learn her letters. “You have never been in love, have you?”

“Yes. With you.”

He shakes his head. “With me? You never knew me. You had a dream of something, a song in your head, and you fitted my words to it.”

“How do you know you loved Gaveston more than I loved you?”

“Because I was not meant to love him, because he was a danger to me but I did it anyway. He was my madness. He was all I could think of it when I first woke, he was what I thought of when I closed my eyes. He was-”

“Stop it.” She put down her cup of wine so that she would not dash it in his face.

“England took away the one thing I loved. More, they wanted me to be something I am not, and so they tore out my heart that night they tore out Perrot’s. I just hated them all more. Not just the magnates, there were commoners out there that night, they threw filth at him while they led him out of the castle. All of England conspired against me.”

“Keep your voice down,” she says.

He looks at her in surprise. There is no one to hear. But it is Isabella who does not want to hear it. She had wanted someone to love her like that, perhaps once she thought that Mortimer would, but it seems she is doomed to disappointment yet again. She hates Edward at this moment, hates him so her bones ache, for he has had something she never will.

“You loved him more than your throne,” she says.

“Will you harangue me for wanting, needing, something that I cannot resist?”

“God forbids it.”

“It was God that made me want it so why should He deny it to me?”

She is astonished. How can he claim this is from God?

But Edward is not finished. “They took from me the one thing that I truly loved. He gave me what I needed! You can never do that. I loved you and honoured you best I could. Did I not? If you might turn a stone to water and drink it, then perhaps you can make of me a different man, but madam, if I am what you desire to bring you happiness, then you shall die unsatisfied. It is beyond my power to give it.” There was no unkindness in how he said this. She thought he might even put out a hand to comfort her, as he might a wounded dog.

In anticipation of it, she backed away.

“Have you ever forgiven yourself - for letting him go to Scarborough alone?”

He shakes his head. “If I had kept him with me, I might have saved him. It was all my fault.”

“But why Despenser?”

“You think he was my lover, don’t you?”

“Was he not?”

“Is Perro so easily replaced? If that is what you believe then you do not understand what I felt for him. You think I just wanted a splendid pair of buttocks, is that it?”

“You wanted the Despenser just for his cruelty?”

“He was not wantonly cruel, he was cruelly efficient. There is a difference. Yes, I used him to square my accounts with England. I chose well. He was rather splendid at it, don’t you think?”

The shadows lengthen in the room. The silence becomes unbearable, though Edward himself seems comfortable enough with it. She wants to tell him her girl’s dreams, how she might have helped him become England’s greatest king if he had but allowed her. But he was right--this was her dream, not his.

“They wish for you to abdicate the throne willingly.”

“You mean
you
wish it.”

“Your son will become king when he reaches the lawful age and you will continue to live honourably.”

“Until then you will be regent and Mortimer will be the new Lancaster. Things have turned out well for him.”

“Will you do it?”

He looks in her eyes. “They won’t let me live whatever happens, Isabella. Our friend Mortimer learned his lesson when he escaped the Tower. He won’t make the same mistake I made with him.”

“I will guarantee your safety.”

“You cannot do that.” He picks up her cup of wine and drains it himself in one draught. “Look after Edward, won’t you?”

“He’s my son.”

“And mine.” He slams down the cup. “Oh, tell them I’ll do it. What do I care for damned England now?”

Chapter 56

“There has been another attempt to free the king,” Mortimer says.

This is the third such plot. After the first failed, they had him transferred from Kenilworth to Berkley Castle, under the stewardship of Mortimer’s son-in-law, thinking it more secure. But now a group of royalists led by a Dominican friar called Thomas Dunheved had managed to free him, they have gained entrance through a sewer leading from the moat to the inner baillie and murdered a Gascon porter called Bernard Pellet.

For a few anxious days the king of England is loose in the Marches until he is finally recaptured.

Now there are reports of armed men gathering in the Forest of Dean. Mortimer worries that there are still those in the kingdom that love him and would have him back on the throne.

“If that were true, why could he not raise an army last year when we landed at Norfolk?”

“Times change, memories are short. We cannot take the risk, Isabella.”

The colour rises to her cheeks. One day this Mortimer will overreach himself. They speak in whispers for an hour, his head inclined towards her, debating Edward’s life.

“And what will I tell my children?”

“You need not tell them anything other than he is dead.”

“The young prince will know.”

“Suspicion is not the same as proof. In time he will understand that these things are necessary. He can hardly be King of England and be innocent forever.”

The candle is burning down, the wax sizzles and flickers. Mortimer’s face dances in the flame.

“How might it be done?” she says.

“Quietly, in the night. Do I have your approval for this?”

“No! No, you do not.”

He is furious. His jaw muscles work. “Then what would you have me do?”

She turns away. She considers their position in silence and then says, in a voice almost too soft to hear: “If you do it, I want no part of it.”

“It is for the prince’s sake.”

This hypocrisy makes her want to clout him.

“I will do what must be done then,” he says and strides from the room.

That night he comes to her bedchamber and finds it locked to him. She hears him in the corridor testing the latch and she thinks he might rap on the door but it seems he understands her message well enough, and so finds some other warm place to rest his powerful head.

Chapter 57

The silver casket is brought in and placed on the table. Not a word is spoken. She runs her fingertips across the surface. It was a gift from her mother-in-law on the day of her wedding, a lifetime ago. Inside the cask is everything she had ever wanted and had been determined one day to have.

It is chill in the room and she comes to stand by the fire. A log breaks in the hearth in a shower of sparks and startles her.

She thinks of him that first time she saw him, at Boulogne. So tall, so straight, her perfect knight; but no knight was ever perfect. She stares at the casket. She thought she would feel more than this.

The door opens. It is the young prince. How he has grown these last weeks. He stands straighter, and his eyes glitter.

“You have heard the news?” she asks him.

He studies her face looking for the truth. But the truth is not as plain; there are only versions of it. “Tell me you had no part in this,” he says.

“I had no part in it,” she answers, without hesitation.

***

The casket is still there on the table after the prince has gone. She takes it over to the window. It is a beautiful autumn day, the trees turning to gold. The sun lights her face.

She closes her eyes, brings the casket to her lips and kisses it.

Mortimer had given his gaolers precise instructions: the body was to be eviscerated, embalmed and wrapped in linen cere cloth within hours of death, so that the bruises on the neck could not be seen. The job was done by a local wise woman who has since disappeared.

The heart was placed in a golden casket with the arms of Plantagenet and Caret in quatrefoils engraved on the lid, the same casket she is holding now.

“You see,” she murmurs. “I told you that one day I would have your heart, Edward. And I always get what I want.”

Epilogue

Melzzo d'Acqui

Milan, Italy

A group of riders appear above the monastery, walk their horses down the hill through the cypress trees. Two friars, working in a vineyard, watch them come. The men are knights and liveried, and the rider at their head must be an important man to have such an escort.

They do not recognize the devices on their pennants. They are not from here. The monks lay down their baskets and make their way through the vineyard to greet their visitors.

The tall monk shouts ‘Can we help you?’ in Italian.

One of the riders tells them, in heavily accented Italian, that they have come all the way from England. They are there at the express command of Bishop Orleton.

“You are indeed a long way from home,” the friar says. “What could be so important to bring you here?”

“I am looking for an Englishman.”

“An Englishman? Here?”

“You do not have any Englishmen in your chapter?”

He shakes his head. “What would an Englishman be doing in Melzzo d'Acqui?”

“Hiding.”

“Hiding?” the other friar says.

“He would have come here perhaps five years ago.”

They both shake their heads. They have been gathering grapes in baskets. It is hard work and the sweat glistens on their skins. “If an Englishman came here, we would know about it. We have been here most of our lives.”

The second friar moves closer to the first. Their fingers touch. “Who are you looking for?” the first friar asks.

“The King of England.”

The two churchmen laugh and shake their heads. “In Italy? You have lost your way, sir.”

“The King was overthrown and murdered by his gaolers.”

“Then he is unlikely to be here.”

“That is not the whole story. There is a letter circulating in the English court--it is said to be from the king’s confessor. It claims that he escaped his gaolers and that another body was substituted in order to cover it up. It further claims the body that was buried in Gloucester cathedral was not the king but a porter who was murdered by the men who helped him escape.”

“Why did this king not gather an army and take back his throne?”

“He was not popular. Some say he didn’t want it anyway.”

“So why are you looking for him here?”

“In the letter it says he was bound for Italy, that he wanted a simple life.”

“So why not leave him in peace?”

“His son is the new king, and he wishes to leave no stone unturned.”

“He fears for his throne?”