Isabella: Braveheart of France (4 page)

The audience goes badly from there. There is shouting and threats. Lancaster and Warwick depart, threatening reprisals against their own king. She has never heard anything like this; no one would ever dare raise their voice to her father. Who is King and who is servant in this country?

Chapter 7

An Easter Friday, cold and bright. Edward storms in, trailing clerks and advisers, even a dwarf. Mortimer is there, and old Hugh le Despenser, Lincoln as well.

He has still not given her the dower she was promised, and as she cannot afford to keep her own household, she now lives in his. She is witness now to all of his moods and travails.

Edward paces relentlessly. He is holding a petition, bunched in his fist. “ “A higher duty is owed to the Crown over the person of the king?” What do they mean by this?
I
am the Crown.”

“They refer to the institution of kingship,” Mortimer says, refusing to join in the general air of exasperation.

“The
institution
? There is no institution. I am their king, they should do as I say.”

“What has happened, my lord?” she asks him.

For the first time he notices her there. He waves a hand airily at her. “Explain it to her, Mortimer.”

“The barons have demanded my lord Gaveston’s banishment. They say he has misappropriated funds and has turned the king against his own advisers.”

“What funds has he misappropriated?” Edward shouts. “Everything he has I have given him openly. If a king may not give gifts to those who serve him best, what are jewels and land for? They are mine to give, are they not? And yes I listen to him before I listen to any of that crowd. He has my best interests at heart, they don’t.”

“Have all the barons signed this petition?”

“Of those not here tonight only Lancaster still stands with us.”

Isabella is surprised at this. That gargoyle is no friend of Gaveston, if his remarks about barrels and whores are to be believed.

“What does it mean?”

“It means the king should prepare for war,” Lincoln says. He is vast, the Lord Lincoln, the fattest man she has ever seen.

“It means these upstarts will defy their anointed king!” Edward shouts.”

Mortimer is still; old Hugh says I am sure it will not come to that. Edward sees his dwarf and kicks him by way of venting his frustration. The jester hurries to the door and flees.

“Would it not be wise to listen to your barons?” she asks him.

The king stares at her in shock. “What are you doing here?”

“Your grace, I was here when you walked in.”

He looks confused. He puts out a hand as if to block her from his vision.

Mortimer stares at her in surprise, she can see him thinking: look at this slip of a girl, she has an opinion! He turns back to the king. “Perhaps if you just give them what they wish for now,” Mortimer says. “Let this blow over.”

“He’s right,” Old Hugh says. “It would not harm our cause to appear conciliatory.”

“They would not argue with my father, they will not argue with me.”

Mortimer and Lincoln exchange a look; yes, but you are no Longshanks, they are thinking.

“What is it that so offends them? If I love Gaveston, so should they.”

This is too much for Lincoln. “Your grace, who a man loves is a private matter. I have nothing against wives or whores, but I should not like to see them at council meetings.”

“Are you calling Perro a whore?”

A man clears his throat. Gaveston is sitting in a window seat, playing himself at chess. The sun comes out, and for a moment he glitters with gold. There are jewels on all his fingers. He gives them a slow smile. “I am still here, you know.”

Lincoln waddles towards the king, lowers his voice. “This is what they mean. This conversation should best be kept private. Whenever we have things to discuss, he is always here.”

“I can still hear you,” Gaveston says, and checks his own black king with his white knight.

“Can this rebellion stand?” Edward asks old Hugh.

“What makes up a king’s power, your grace? The loyalty of his barons, for they each bring their armies to every cause he fights. But if they are on the other side, then what armies does the king have?”

“Do you know how to bring down a wall?” Mortimer says.

“Fifty men and a battering ram,” Edward says.

“There are subtler ways. Work a chisel into the mortar and work at it until you release one brick. When one brick is out the wall is weakened. Soon you have a large hole. Then you do not even have to bring the wall down, you just walk through it.”

“Your meaning?”

“For now we should stop running full-tilt at the wall. Instead you should sidle up to it, examine each brick and find the weakest. Then work at it, until you have it loose.”

He nods. “Perhaps Lord Mortimer is right. I shall pander to their petty grievances for the time being. But there shall be a reckoning.” He stares at the petition in his fist. “Institution indeed! There is no higher institution than the King himself! He holds the parchment to the candle, waits until it is well aflame, then stamps on it with his boot. Afterwards he grins as if he has solved the problems of the barons for good.

After they have all gone, Rosseletti appears from the shadows. Isabella’s father has sent him to help her oversee her affairs and assist her with her correspondence.

In other words, he is Phillip’s spy.

“You heard all that?” she asks him.

He nods, slowly.

“What shall I do?”

“England needs a strong king. Your father does not wish to see you married to a prince who cannot control his own kingdom.”

“I just want to go home.” She would like to throw herself on the floor and weep, if it would make any difference.

“Things will get better when this Gaveston is out of the country. Your position will improve.”

“Do you think he will really send him away?”

“He has no choice, your majesty.”

That night she stares at the Easter moon, haloed by high wispy clouds. She hugs her fur mantle close around her shoulders.

When she had imagined Camelot, she had not imagined this.

***

Mortimer’s eyes unnerve her; they follow her across the room without expression. He reminds her of her father, self-possessed and utterly unreadable. She is frightened of him.

She comes across him next in the hall outside Edward’s audience chamber. He is dressed in black velvet and lounging. He is here as Edward’s trusted man, the one who has secured Ireland with an iron hand.

“Your grace,” he says and bows.

“My Lord Mortimer. Have you seen the king?”

“He is with my Lord Gaveston. They are walking in the garden.”

She looks beyond his shoulder and sees them below, hand in hand, between the fish ponds, twittering like birds. She envies Edward that; there is no one she can talk to like that.

“Do you like him?”

“Who? The king?” A suspicion of a smile.

“My Lord Gaveston.”

“He was my ward for some years, when he first came to England.”

“This is why you support him against the barons?”

“No, I do it because I support the king. That is my duty.”

“The other barons do not see it that way.”

“They merely smell a weak king. It has nothing to do with what they believe.”

“You think Edward is weak?”

“I think he is yet to prove his strength.”

She smiles. I wish you had been my prince, she thinks, and it is as if he can read her mind, for he smiles at her. “Everyone thinks you’re just a child, but they’re wrong.”

“And you are impertinent.”

“I meant only that I think the king has found a great asset and does not know it yet.”

She hears a shrill laugh from the garden and closes her eyes, trying to shut out the image of the two of them down there canoodling.

“Don’t underestimate Gaveston either. He’s a good soldier.”

“I don’t underestimate him. I despise him!” To her horror she realises she has just stamped her foot.

Mortimer pretends he hasn’t seen it.

“Why has Lancaster sided with the king?”

“Because when Gaveston goes, he is the highest nobleman in the land and the king’s next adviser. This is his chance to get what he has always wanted. He will not stand with the other barons and lose his place in the king’s affections.” When she looks back at him she is shocked to see him appraising her in a way to which she is quite unaccustomed. He quickly looks away again.

“You are going back to Ireland?”

“Soon.”

“I wish you God speed.” She picks up her skirts and leaves the room, her cheeks burning.

Chapter 8

Edward keeps another menagerie at Langley, some other curious and disgusting animals from the Holy Land now shut up in pens and cages so that he and his friends can stare at them whenever they wish. There is a lion with a mane of hair, as well as the most curious horse she has ever seen; it would be impossible to ride, she supposes, for it has a huge hump on its back. She thinks it is deformed, but Gaveston tells her that all its fellows are like this, and this is in fact a prime specimen.

How much does it cost to feed all these curiosities? No wonder the treasury is empty.

The king is with the common sort again, watching some fellows muck out the yards. He wears just a tunic and breeches, no sign of a king here, but a fine figure of a man nonetheless. A boy says something to him and he laughs and grabs him in a headlock. They roll in the grass, laughing.

Really, is this seemly?

When he looks up and sees her there he stops laughing and climbs reluctantly to his feet. He looks like a chastened little boy.
And here I am, just thirteen. He makes me feel old
.

“Don’t look like at me that,” he says to her.

“Like what? I don’t know what you mean.”

“It’s like having my mother trail me about. Every time you appear, the sun goes in.”

“Because I remember I am royal?”

“I find kingship a burden. It does no harm to laugh sometimes.”

“It does much harm to do nothing else.”

“You have that look about you. Can this wait?”

“Not really. You clearly have nothing better to do, your grace.”

He looks sulky, leans on the fence. She watches muscles ripple under his cambric shirt.

“My father raised two hundred thousand livres for this marriage. I have received no gifts from you, no estates. I do not even have the funds to run my own household.”

“Listen to you. You’re just a girl.”

“I am my father’s daughter. He raised me to be a queen.”

“You are not old enough to be a queen.”

“Yet I have been crowned in one of your churches. Have I not?”

He shakes his head. “It is already decided. You shall have Montreuil and Ponthieu. You don’t have to be strident about it.”

“And what of your friend, Gaveston?”

His manner transforms. He stands straight and glares at her. “He is my friend, and none of your concern.”

“You cannot ignore this, Edward. It is clear your barons will not back down. You must listen to them and come to some concord with them or they will make an arrangement of their own.”

He stares at her, then shakes his head and laughs. “Listen to you. How old are you? And you see fit to lecture me about politics?”

“I know how these things work.”

“How can you know?”

“From watching my father. Do not let them challenge you, husband. Head them off now until you have a stronger hand.”

He frowns and leans on the rail again, peering at her as if he is seeing her for the first time. “Because you want Perro gone?”

“My duty is to you and your throne. I will not have you undermined.”

The lion roars in its cage, and the echoes of its rage hang on the morning mist. The camel breaks into a trot in alarm, pursued by the farm boys, who are trying to feed it.

“You must sit down with them and hear their complaints.”

“It is their duty to sit down and listen to mine.”

“Yes, it is. But right now, you cannot force them to it.”

He slaps the fence post with the flat of his hand. He shakes his head, confounded by her. Then he walks away. One of the boys makes a joke and he ignores him.

Isabella tiptoes back through the mud. Another gown ruined.

***