The Confession of Piers Gaveston (2 page)

A COMPANION FIT FOR A PRINCE
 

I lost everything the day my mother died. No one can ever know how much it hurts to wind the clock of memory back to the days before … before she died, before I became infamous and notorious, a harlot in masculine form, the most hated man in England, and the beloved bedfellow of a feckless, addle-pated king, the object of an obsession that nearly sank the ship of state and tore the land asunder.

I was born in Gascony, in the year 1284, and before they burned my mother a castle was our home. It was crafted of golden stone, with a large rose garden, fish ponds, and an orchard that yielded apples, cherries, and pears. And behind the kitchen there was an herb garden, with a sundial at its center, where I used to sit and play with my spaniel while my mother and Agnes gathered the ingredients for their remedies.

After her marriage, my mother had borne three sons in quick succession, my brothers Arnaud, Raimond, and Guillaume. My father, Arnaud de Gaveston, was overwhelmed by his good fortune. Not only had the need for an heir been more than amply met, but he had been blessed with this trio of hale and hearty sons who favored him in both appearance and demeanor, while I was entirely my mother’s child. Where they were tall, big-boned, and sturdy, my slenderness and middling height gave the deceptive appearance of delicacy, a fallacy that, in years to come, would cause many to think me an unworthy opponent in the tiltyard and battle. So I, being in a sense superfluous, was left entirely to my mother, to ease her loneliness, and be both a comfort and companion to her. And I could not have been happier! For the first seven years of my life, I was cherished and adored!

By any standards, my mother was a remarkable woman, not only beautiful but wise. In this world where women are regarded as ignorant chattels little better than cattle and are prized only for their beauty, childbearing abilities, dowries, and housewifely skills, her learning set her apart. And it was my good fortune to inherit her quick mind. She taught me languages and poetry, songs and stories of romance, fables, history, and heroes, and to dance, play upon the lute and harp, write a graceful hand, and she insisted that I acquire a firm grasp of mathematics.

And having, at that time, no daughter to pass her secrets on to, she initiated me into her ancient religion. She taught me to love and revere the goodness and light that is the Lady, the Goddess, men worshipped long before the Christ came. And she taught me never to fear death and told me all about the Isle of Apples where our souls sail away to when we die. But we were ever mindful of the Law and the Church’s persecution of our kind—they called us Witches—and for safety’s sake, we donned the masks of proper Christians. Mass we seldom missed, we dutifully confessed our sins, and a chaplain was always a part of our household. Together, with Agnes and our little coven, we performed rituals and spells, to honor the Lady and ask Her to protect us and bless all of our endeavors, and grant us health, happiness, and a bountiful harvest, or to bring the rains when a drought threatened. And with the herbs that are Her gift to us, we healed the sick and eased the pain of those in the throes of suffering, dying, or laboring to bring a new life into the world. And four times a year we came together to celebrate the change of seasons. But curses we never did speak, nor harm a man or hex his crops or beasts!

I saw my father so rarely he was almost a stranger to me. And I knew my brothers little better. They were soldiers all, their allegiance sworn to the English King Edward I, and the business of war often took them away. I was always uneasy in their company, to my child’s eyes they seemed so big and brawny, always laughing and passing a flagon of wine between them. Their coarse jests, lusty boasts, and heated brawls both bewildered and repulsed me. When they deigned to notice me at all, it was only to make me the butt of one of their jests. Indeed, they would never really notice me until I became Edward’s favorite, then they would come scurrying to court, drunken, surly, and avaricious, and I often had occasion to wish them at the bottom of the sea, they did so plague and vex me.

But on the whole, mine was a very happy childhood. Until the night everything fell apart and shattered, and I learned, at the tender age of seven, what fragile, precious things love, happiness, contentment, and security are; no matter how much you treasure them, they can all be taken from you—stolen, destroyed, or irretrievably lost—within an instant. And when all your hopes and happiness hang upon one single person and you lose them … it is like having your heart ripped out of your chest while it still pulses, beats, and bleeds. The pain is indescribable, and you long for death, but it doesn’t come, and you have no choice but to suture the wound closed as best you can and go on with a life that has lost all or most of its meaning. And though you would do anything to get them back, there is nothing you can do, the hopelessness and despair, the desperation and sense of failure, are like a quartet of the keenest, sharpest daggers embedded deep within your heart. And you learn to fear love even as you crave it; to put up walls around your heart even as you long for someone to come along and tear them down, because you know what it is to lose everything that matters, and if it happened once, it can happen again; there is no pain worse, and the fear never goes away.

I was sleeping in my mother’s bed the night the French soldiers came for her. I remember the sharp splintering of wood as they bashed the doors in, startling us from a sound sleep, and my spaniel’s outraged barking. With rough hands, they dragged her from the bed in her night-shift with her abundant black hair flowing wild about her face and down her back, like a cloak, all the way to her knees.

The village priest was there, a tall, black-clad figure, hovering ominously behind the soldiers. I can still see his cold, dead eyes of the palest icy blue, and grim, thin-lipped mouth. His white hair, still thick despite his years, was cut round, as though someone had placed a bowl upside down upon his head. He was the last to leave. He lingered in the doorway, glaring at me, as I sat cowering in the bed, frozen by fear, hugging the rose satin coverlet tight against my chest.

My spaniel growled and lunged at his ankle. Calmly, with no shadow of emotion flickering across his pale face, he dealt my pet a savage kick before he turned his back and left the room, his black robes billowing out behind him. Only then could I move. I sprang out of bed and sped down the stairs, just in time to see my mother being dragged outside.

Agnes ran to her and tried to drape a cloak about her shoulders, for it was a cold night and she was clad only in her shift and bare feet, but the soldiers shoved her aside. “Take care, old woman, lest we come back for you!” they cautioned.

At the very moment my mother’s feet crossed the threshold, there was a deafening crash of thunder and the sky opened up, lightning flashed fit to blind, and the rain came down in torrents. The soldiers jumped and trembled and their hands flew up to form the sign of the cross.

“Witch!” the priest snarled. “Such tricks will avail you naught!” His hand shot out to slap her. “Take her! Those whose faith in the Lord is strong need never fear her power!”

They shackled her with heavy chains, and, as they led her away, the howling wind carried her voice back into the castle, sending me her love and imploring Agnes to take care of her children.

I would have followed her, but Agnes held me back. She carried me back upstairs, stroking my hair and murmuring soothing words as I lay my head upon her shoulder and wept. She tried to calm and distract me by having me help her tend my poor spaniel, who had suffered a broken leg, but I could tell her fear was as great as mine. There was a quaver in her voice and her hands shook.

I never saw my mother again before the burning, and for years afterwards I lived in terror that the French soldiers, or others like them, would make good their threat to take Agnes. Many a year would pass before I could sleep through the night without suffering nightmares that made me wake up screaming.

When I left the village of Guienne that terrible day I was without a penny or a home. Were it not for Agnes and our devoted manservant Dragon, I would have been an orphan as well. My father was beyond reach, having offered himself as a hostage to the French King on Edward I’s behalf—an action he would undertake thrice before prison conditions fatally undermined his health—and my brothers were also with the army. And what lands and manors we had not lost through my father’s ardent espousal of the English King’s cause, were confiscated upon my mother’s death, for the Law states that the property of a condemned witch is forfeit, and my mother was a wealthy woman in her own right, having inherited much from her late father.

We sheltered in the forest near the castle that had been our home. Agnes, who is never without her leather satchel that brims with herbs, specially prepared salves, bandages, and almost everything else a healer requires, maneuvered my shoulder back into its socket and applied a poultice of comfrey root and honey to my hands while Dragon held my baby sister.

Dragon, I should now explain, is so named because of an ailment of the skin that lends the appearance of scales, and a wild, ferocious countenance that conceals a heart both tender and true. He roamed the roads as a vagabond, an outcast who likened his life to that of a leper, until the day he met my mother. Her kindness, coupled with her skill with herbs, eased his suffering, thus winning her his lifelong loyalty. He would have lain down his life to save her. The French soldiers beat him brutally when he tried, and he lay senseless and bloody in the muck where they had thrown him while she burned. For the rest of his life Dragon would bear the scars of that day, just like me. The beating left him with a dragging limp and a deep, furrowed gash in his left cheek that savagely twisted the side of his mouth and garbled his speech. Never again a clear word would he speak, and greater still would be the horror of those who looked upon his face.

Of Amy, the babe my mother was nursing when the hammer of Justice came crashing down on our contented little world, I can hardly bear to write.

Unlike most great ladies, my mother would not have a wet-nurse, she would feed each child born of her body on true mother’s milk instead of that which flowed from the breasts of a hired stranger. After the burning no one would take pity, no one would suckle the witch’s babe. Under cover of darkness, Dragon stole milk from cows and goats, but Amy would accept neither. She screamed in hunger and protest until she could scream no more, then she whimpered.

Dragon dug a tiny grave at the foot of an ancient apple tree, and by the light of the moon that is the sacred symbol of the Lady, I laid her tenderly in the earth as if it were a cradle. “Go to the Isle of Apples, little sister,” I softly whispered. “Eat of the magic fruit and become eternal.” Agnes sprinkled apple blossoms over her tiny corpse and Dragon filled in the grave.

It is far too painful to fully delve into the years that followed. No doubt it will surprise many that the King’s pampered and petted minion has experienced all the ugliness and brutality of poverty firsthand. I, who sit at Edward’s side and preside over lavish banquets, have lived on nature’s fruit and watery gruel. And I, the flaunting, preening peacock in gaudy multihued satins, silks, and velvets, have gone barefoot dressed in patched and threadbare homespun hand-me-downs.

After the Church’s “purifying flames” consumed my mother, I roamed about Gascony being passed fast and frequently betwixt my kin. All of them had mouths enough of their own to feed without the added burden of a growing lad with a broken heart and burned hands, a limping, sad-eyed spaniel, an aging nursemaid rightly reputed to be a witch, and a grotesquely disfigured manservant whose looks never failed to produce a shudder and hastily averted eyes.

It was all very painful and bewildering, this sudden plunge into poverty and grudgingly given charity. None of my kin felt any affection for me, and they never let me forget the debt of gratitude I owed them for succoring “The Witch’s Brat.” And years later, when I became the King’s Favorite, they were quick to call in that debt, and I was quick to pay; I wanted them and the unpleasant memories to go away.

Someday, I vowed, I would be the center of someone’s world again. I would rise like a phoenix from the ashes of poverty, and love and riches would again be mine! I have since learned that the life of every person is like a book of lessons, and here I will give you one from mine: Be careful what you wish for lest you get it; Time may reveal it to be more than you bargained for. There is always a price to be paid. No wish is ever granted free and gratis; somehow, someway, someday we always pay, and it is often our misfortune to discover that the price is far too great, but by then it is too late.

All those years until I was of an age to join my father and brothers in the army, I struggled not to slip into common, lowborn ways. Heedless of the ridicule it earned me, I fought to retain the courtly manners my mother taught me. As I toiled for my bread and board, and left one relative who did not want me to go to another and then another, I recited poetry and stories, I sang, did sums, and set myself exercises in Latin, French, English, and Italian grammar. Sometimes I even augmented our meager funds by working as a scribe and writing letters for those who could not. In the marketplaces of the villages we visited Agnes sold love potions, charms, and remedies, while I plied my pen for pennies, and Dragon took whatever work he could find. Sometimes we stole if our circumstances were dire. We did what was required and sacrificed our morals to survive.

When I reached the proper age, I went to Flanders to join my father and brothers in the English King’s army.