Read Isabeau, A Novel of Queen Isabella and Sir Roger Mortimer Online
Authors: N. Gemini Sasson
I bowed to him and went from his presence. Maltravers hoisted the reeking bundle back onto his shoulder and followed.
To have a king’s gratitude was a good thing. But kings were fickle creatures. Especially this one. I did not want to offend him, although that was a hard thing not to do.
To offend a king is to court death.
*****
Wigmore – July, 1314
In Gloucester, I gave Gilbert de Clare’s body over to his sister. She fell to her knees and wept while she clung to my shins. I hardly knew the earl well enough to share in her grief, or Lady Eleanor enough to comfort her.
On the road north of Hereford, I paid Sir John Maltravers with the money that Lady Eleanor had given me for my labors and dismissed him. He wanted to go home, he said. So I let him, but I told him also when the time came for me to go to Ireland, I would need him.
It was well past nightfall when I arrived at Wigmore. Not wanting to be assailed by an exuberant flock of children, for I was too spent to endure their attentions, I hushed the porter and crept up the stairs. I turned the latch to our chamber door and nudged it open.
Joan stood by the open window, vigilant. Moonlight outlined the pleasing roundness of her hips through the edges of a white nightshift. My weariness was swept away in a rush of longing for her.
She glanced over her shoulder at me, nothing more than passing irritation in her voice. “So, did you come home merely to dispel rumors of your death
–
or is there some other reason?”
“I’ve come home to be with my wife.” I barred the door behind me.
“For longer this time, I hope.”
“How else,” I said, “is a man to advance himself at court when it is his sword that is his strength? It has won me the king’s gratitude several times over.”
“And the king’s gratitude is more important to you than your wife’s company?”
I let the matter go. Too often our reunions had been callous ones, tainted with misunderstanding. This first night, at least, I wanted to be pleasurable for us both.
As she turned sideways to fetch me a cup of wine, I noticed the slight fullness of her belly in the haze of the moon’s silvery glow. How long since I had lain with her? Four months? No, five. And only eight since our last child was born.
I walked past her, took the cup she held out for me, and eased onto the bed. While I gulped down the wine, Joan knelt at my feet and tugged off my boots. I must have stunk like a cow shut up in the byre too long. Despite my rankness, she kneaded at the arches of my feet, my calves, my thighs.
“Your uncle is here from Chirk,” she said. “He heard of the king’s defeat at Bannockburn and hoped ... knew you would be home soon. Although, we heard nothing until the Earl of Pembroke passed through. Shall I fetch your uncle now?”
“In the morning.”
“How was your journey home?” Her question was a courtesy, the same one she posed every time upon my return.
I leaned back, caught her by the wrists and pulled her hard against my chest. Her breath caught. “Let us not talk of it. I would rather have you.” I rolled her over beside me and ran my calloused palm over the curving mound of her middle. “Is it safe?”
“Has that ever stopped you before?” She looked up at the ceiling.
It was not an answer, but it was not denial, either. Beyond our bed, sometimes even in it, we were strangers to one another. Even after so many years.
I tried to lighten her mood, teasing, “Have we room here at Wigmore for an eighth? Do I need to build another wing?”
“It will be our ninth, Roger.” She wriggled free of my hold and slipped from the bed.
I propped myself up on an elbow to gaze at her. “Will it? Well then, tomorrow I shall have to reacquaint myself with them all. They forget their father so quickly.”
“It is not the children who forget.”
In invitation, I pushed the corner of the bedcovers away. “After this one, let us work on the tenth, and the eleventh, and the ...”
As she lifted her nightshift from one shoulder and then the other to let her breasts spill out, I forgot what I was saying. I went to her, peeled her shift downward so it rested on her hips, and kissed her neck. Instinctively, I pressed against her body, the growing heat in my loins seeking to be quenched within her. She turned her head aside and a thin sigh escaped her throat.
Had I cared to listen, I might have heard it for what it was
–
a sigh of indifference.
*****
The next morning I awoke late. Joan’s side of the bed was long since cold, the indent of her body smoothed over by fastidious hands. She was probably with the children somewhere already or going over records with the steward. I had not told her I could be sent back to Ireland at any time, should the Scots cause trouble there. When the time came for me to go, I would insist that she come with me, even though I expected her to protest profusely over the conditions there. At least she would not be able to complain of my absence.
Wearing only my breeches, I rose, stretched my arms and went to the washbasin Joan had left out for me. I dipped the washcloth in and began to scrub. Every time I wrung the cloth the water turned browner and cloudier, until I could not see the bottom of the blessed bowl. Indolent servants. Or had Joan shooed them all away to let me sleep?
“Gladys? Clementina?” I grabbed a dry shirt and buried my face in it. There was a faint knock on the door and a long creak as it swung open. “Fetch me more water.”
“Fetch your own.”
I turned to see my uncle, Lord Roger Mortimer of Chirk, in the doorway, propped up by a carved walking staff. He hobbled across the room and tapped me on the knee with his stick.
“I waited up half the night, do you know? Going to tell me about it? The whole thing?” He leaned into the gnarled staff, rotated his weight on it and gimped over to a chair, where he plopped down in anticipation of a story. He pounded the staff on the floor to punctuate each sentence. “I want details. Who fought well. Who died. Who lived. Who’s being held for ransom. All that.”
“Tales of battle are better told over a cask of wine and late at night.”
He grumbled in disappointment. “What took you so long to find your way home? Pembroke came this way over a week ago. Said he lost you after the battle and had not heard from you. For shame, you should have seen your poor wife. She assumed you were dead. We all did.”
“How unfaithful of you all.” I gave up on getting clean water and put on the shirt I had dried my face on. Next, I went in search of a fresh pair of hose. As she always did, Joan had lain everything out for me on top of the chest at the end of our bed. “The king has another sycophant, Uncle.”
His white feathered eyebrows leapt upward. “Who?”
“Hugh Despenser the Younger. His brother-in-law, Gilbert de Clare, was killed at Bannockburn. I think he covets his earldom.”
“Gloucester dead? That will set things on end.” He hunched forward, scenting scandal. “Is Despenser anything like Piers de Gaveston?”
The king had pandered to the impertinent Gaveston, a man of humble Gascon origins, by granting him the earldom of Cornwall. Rumors about the king and Gaveston had abounded, until the Gascon’s murder ended speculation. “No, this is no roistering boyhood friend of the king’s, to be spoiled with sparkling jewels and fancy clothes. No, he is ... different.”
“Hah, I don’t doubt, given his stock. Watch him carefully, but from a distance.”
I hitched my shoulders in a half-shrug. “What do you mean? Do you know something of this Hugh the Younger?”
“Him? Barely anything. But I know his family. I know the oath his father once made to your father.”
“Tell. What oath?” I fastened the cord on my hose.
“That he would kill him.”
“Come now. I have never heard such a story. Did father slight the elder Despenser somehow? Steal his cows? Hunt on his lands? Sleep with his mistress?”
“You take it too lightly. I warn you not to. This Hugh the Younger
–
your
grandfather killed
his
grandfather at the Battle of Evesham.”
“Evesham?” I scoffed. “Evesham was fifty years ago, Uncle. My grandfather fought for Longshanks then. Saved his life
–
it was you who told me so. Surely King Edward will know of that?”
“Hmph, a Plantagenet’s memory is not that long. But Despensers ... they do not forget.” He slammed his stick down hard once, emphatic. “
Watch him
.”
I belted my tunic and sat down on the chest. “I am more concerned for the king than for myself.”
He replied with a visceral grunt.
“Despenser and I are on the same side
–
unlike our grandfathers.”
“For now. But be careful. If you offend the king’s favorite, you offend the king. Edward has hardly forgotten what they did to Gaveston.” He drew a kerchief from his sleeve and wiped his nose. “Now, tell me about Bannockburn.”
3
Isabella:
Tower of London – August, 1321
ONCE, LONG AGO, I dreamt of a happy marriage. But how quickly that dream had been quashed. First, Gaveston had owned Edward’s attentions. Now it was Hugh Despenser upon whom he lavished titles and treasures. Whenever I spoke up, I was chided by Edward, spurned even – as if he resented my presence altogether. Yet time after time, when things were at their worst and there was nowhere else to turn, it was me Edward called upon. Me, who salvaged the shattered bits of his life and pieced them together like shards of pottery into a mosaic. My one reward for enduring such perpetual misery had been my children, four of them. Four joyful blessings that gave some purpose to this misery of a marriage.
Beyond the Salt Tower, dawn’s first blush showed against a brightening sky. Armed sentries peered sleepily down at us from their posts along the walls of the outer ward. To the west, a pair of guards clutching poleaxes glanced through the open gate behind them. The groan of a winch rumbled in the morning silence. Iron scraped stone in a drawn-out screech as the portcullis of the Middle Tower went up.
Puffy-eyed and yawning, my nursemaid Ida cradled a tiny bundle in the crescent of her plump arms. I peeled back the edge of the blanket to gaze upon my little Joanna’s pink face. She wriggled a hand free to grasp my thumb, a bubble of spittle forming around her tiny mouth. When I smiled down at her, she cooed, bursting the bubble, and laughed. If only I could know such happiness, too.
“My lady?” Aymer de Valence, the Earl of Pembroke, cleared his throat in a signal of impatience and swept a hand toward the waiting carriage, which was surrounded by a mounted guard of three dozen fully armed men. Impatient hooves tapped on the cobbles. Bits jangled. Pembroke had returned from Paris only a week ago, having just wed my cousin Marie, a daughter of the Count of Saint Pol. Although he was nearly two decades my senior, I regarded Pembroke as a dear friend, but I sorely regretted that he was being tossed into the lion’s den of disorder that was Edward’s court so soon upon his return. By evening, we would arrive in Westminster. Worse than leaving my youngest child behind, who was barely now a month old, I dreaded the purpose of this journey.
Reluctantly, I tugged my thumb free of my daughter’s grasp. Her forehead puckered like a grape that has shriveled under the sun’s rays. Red fists flailing, she stretched her lips taut across toothless gums. An ear-splitting wail emanated from bottomless lungs.