Isabeau, A Novel of Queen Isabella and Sir Roger Mortimer (8 page)

“I take it you know who I am?” I grinned facetiously. “Sir Roger Mortimer, England’s greatest traitor, did they tell you? Some might argue that. Myself for one. But I wager you’re an important man in these ranks to have been granted the honor of looking after me. What is your name, good sir?”

 He crossed his arms. The lines of his face were firmly set to show he afforded me no sympathy. “Gerard d’Alspaye, Sub-lieutenant of the Tower. I came to see if you needed a physician?”

“I am to live after all, then?” But even as I asked it, I feared the only purpose in keeping me alive was to put me on trial. A trial with the sentence already written. When he gave no reply, I plied him further. “How many years have you been in the king’s service?”

“All of it. And ten years under his father before that.”

“Well then, you deserve the honor. Although it may not be for long. If Edward has his way I’ll be headless ere springtime.” I went to the chair and eased my aching body onto it. If I stood any longer, my legs would give way. “So, where have you put my uncle and son?”

Impervious to my attempts to learn more, he repeated himself. “Do you need a physician?”

“Do I look broken?” I answered peevishly. I looked toward the window, quite sure I would be spending many days, months perhaps, alone like this as I awaited my fate. “Send your physician to my uncle. He is old and ill.”

D’Alspaye nodded and turned to go.

“Lieutenant,” I called, still not looking at him, “is there anything you
can
tell me?”

 “Only that it is a pity to see you here
 ...
my lord.”

Then I heard his knock on the door, the sliding of the outer bar, and his footsteps fading away. I sighed and regarded my meager meal. The mouse froze momentarily, a morsel of bread clenched between its tiny claws. Its whiskers twitched in frantic indecision. We studied each other closely. At length, it scampered away.

I rose, kicked the cup against the door and lay down in my cold, hard bed.

*****

Never again did I see the guards that had escorted us from Shrewsbury to London. Those that kept watch over me daily were less violent men, but more impressionable. They had heard of my exploits in Ireland. I told them how I tamed the Irish and brought law to the land. I told them of Bannockburn, a tale that needed no embellishment. Shortly after that, Gerard d’Alspaye came and asked me to tell it again. He poured us both cups of ale and sat down on my decrepit chair, listening with the rapt attention of a young boy who sits at his father’s knee and dreams of being a knight. When I was done telling my story, he gave me news of the outside world: Lancaster had been brought to battle by Andrew Harclay, the Earl of Carlisle, at Boroughbridge. He was captured the next day and taken to Pontefract. His end came as quickly as Edward
–
and the recently returned Hugh Despenser
–
could get there.

Had I known that they would lop off Thomas of Lancaster’s red-faced head in a fit of revenge for trying to make peace with the Scots ... I would have swum to Ireland before laying down my arms. Great lords by the dozens were sent to their deaths, including the meek Bartholomew de Badlesmere, who was taken to Canterbury and hanged. Every day, I expected them to come and escort me to the scaffolding. Yet days stretched miserably into weeks with no word of what was to become of me.

While I languished, Edward marched into Scotland. I wondered how he would fare there, failure that he always was at war.

I might have gone mad, shut up in the Tower with the rodents, muttering to myself. A likely outcome. No doubt many a man had, as he picked at putrid scabs and retched his guts dry from hunger. Had I more faith in God’s plan than my own, I would have turned monkish and welcomed my death. But I was not so certain that heaven awaited me. Souls bound for heaven ought to be pure and repentant and full of forgiveness.

I was not.

For every night that I lay my head down on my pillow crawling with lice, I dreamed of revenge. It was the only joy I had.

7

Isabella:

Tynemouth Priory – October, 1322

EDWARD SAID HE WOULD come. He told me to wait for him and when he did not come I thought surely he would send someone to bring me to his side. Yet the days crawled by like years and there I waited, praying to the dusty bones of a trifling saint, far from the places I had come to know as home, far from my beloved children.

Once, he had abandoned me in York. He would again, I feared
–
this time in a remote, holy place, as if God and His saints would guard me.

I raised my face to the new light. Three silver-yellow fingers reached through the tall, lancet windows on the eastern wall of Tynemouth Priory. They crept silently across the length of the nave, stretching moment by moment, illuminating the dusky tiles of the floor and the spindly columns that aspired heavenward, until at last they brushed my face. I blinked at the intrusion and shifted on the velvet cushions beneath my knees until the prickling sensation in my feet lessened and the steady pulse of blood returned.

I folded my hands to pray, the beads of my rosary bunched between my palms; but prayers did not pass my lips or fill my mind. Instead, a thousand screaming visions battled in my head. Terrible and haunting. Visions of Scottish hobelars with their swords high above their heads; of arrows hissing and twanging, leaving bodies sprawled in bloody puddles; of people stumbling from burning homes, their crying children clutched in their arms; of women being brutally raped. Visions of war. Nightmares of the daylight hours.

I had seen the aftermath with my own eyes. Heard the tales. I wished not to live it.

Inside the priory church there was no rote chanting of monks, no shifting of the congregation on weary knees, nothing but the pregnant stillness of dawn. The ominous silence
–
the nothingness of it
–
only blew breath into my grotesque visions.

Kneeling next to me, my damsel Patrice drew her hand from the folds of her skirt and touched me on the forearm. Her touch gave me solace, as only the closeness of a friend could.

Sensing a shadow, I looked again toward the windows. Outside, a cloud must have scuttled across the sun, for its darkness fell upon me and I shivered deep in my bones. Patrice fumbled with the clasp on her mantle to give it to me, but I shook my head, foregoing the gesture.

“Shall I fetch your mantle, then? With the fur lining?” Patrice kept her voice low, mindful of the sanctity of our surroundings. “Tell me what you need, anything at all, and I’ll bring it.”

I curled my fingers around Patrice’s and squeezed.
An army
–
can you bring me that?
I wanted to say.

In search of further guidance, I glanced toward the tomb where the bones of St. Oswin were enshrined. “What I need ... what
we
need, Patrice, is a swift miracle.”

Edward despised war, but the events of the previous year – a rebellion led by the Mortimers and soon afterwards the Earl of Lancaster’s furtive dealings with the Scots – had driven him to invade Scotland in order to quell his uneasy barons.
He had made it unchallenged this summer as far as Edinburgh, ravaging the abbey at Holyrood before turning back. On his way southward, vexed by the elusive Robert the Bruce, he had set fire to Melrose Abbey as a token of his passing. When his soldiers soaked the ground with the blood of monks he did nothing to intervene.

I had been awaiting his return at Tynemouth Priory near Newcastle ever since then, as I had been told to do. But Edward had not come yet. He was riding on instead to Rievaulx, where he was to meet up with Hugh Despenser, leaving the Earl of Richmond to cover his back.

As if her words were a secret better left unspoken, Patrice leaned closer and whispered, “The Scots won’t come this far into England ... will they?”

Patrice knew how to draw men’s eyes to her with a modest glance or feed their arrogance by feigning interest in all they said or did, but she did not understand men’s entanglements in war or politics, or their reluctance to do without either. I smiled nervously and drew my childhood friend closer. “Robert the Bruce would be a fool to cross the River Tyne while an entire English army stands before him.”

But I had spoken the words only to allay her fears. Many times, the Scots had raided this far into England. That constant annoyance had been the crux of the Earl Thomas of Lancaster’s argument with Edward. So rather than give his cousin Lancaster what he needed
–
men and money, because in truth Edward had none to spare, or a treaty of peace with the Scots
–
Edward had simply taken off his head out of spite, thus ending the disagreement.

Skeptical, Patrice tilted her head at me. “But after what the king did at Holyrood and Melrose?”

Indeed I doubted the Bruce would let it go unpunished. Edward was ignorant to even think he might.

“If they come this way,” I said, “
if
they do, Tynemouth’s walls will keep them out.”

“But for how long?”

Not long enough, I feared.

“The king will send someone to us,” I said, trying to convince myself. I could only pray that the ‘someone’ would not be Hugh Despenser.

Far behind us, the main door of the nave groaned. A sharp autumn draft blew across the distance, chilling me to the bone. Patrice glanced over her shoulder and immediately tucked her chin to her chest.

“Arnaud,” she breathed, the blush rising from her breast to her neck and then flaming her cheeks.

I dropped my arm from her shoulder. “Perhaps he wishes to see you ... alone.”

“Not
here
,” she objected too quickly.

I winked at her. “As you choose, but I would advise you to find somewhere besides the storeroom. You reeked of onions last evening. This,” I said, looking around, “would seem a more suiting place to tempt your lover into a proposal. You’re twenty-seven, Patrice. An old maid. Put this one off and you’ll have no one calling but haggard old widowers with curled toenails who want you to rub their yellow feet at night and fetch them the chamber pot in the morning. You’re daft if you don’t ensnare de Mone. Shall I speak to him of my concern for your ‘honor’?” Sincere, I narrowed my eyes at her.

Arnaud’s steps rang closer, slowing as he neared. Patrice hushed me with a glare and a clenched jaw.

The toe of Arnaud’s boot scraped the stone tiles as he halted and clicked his heels into place. When that brought no reply, he cleared his throat roughly.

I jabbed Patrice teasingly with an elbow. “Will you see what it is my squire wants? I’m deep in prayer and wish not to be disturbed.” My lips pressed together, I stifled a laugh at her embarrassment and pretended to resume my prayers. Between barely parted lashes, my chin tilted toward my shoulder for a better view, I watched them, intrigued.

Slowly, Patrice rose, turned, and met the clear blue eyes of Arnaud de Mone. So much was shared in the fleeting look between them that the poignancy of it struck a pang of jealousy in me. Even before Arnaud, men had always desired her, pursued her and she had played with them like a sailor plays at dice to pass the time. But unlike the others, she had not grown bored with him. Rather, she had been the one doing the pursuing. When he first arrived at court on the tail of his knighted uncle, every female at court had learned his name, the place of his birth and his family lineage by his first day’s end. But it was only Patrice he saw. His eyes followed her everywhere, even though for a whole month he could not summon the courage to speak to her. Proving more of a challenge than she was accustomed to, she threw herself wholeheartedly into the pursuit. Two more months passed before he kissed her and two after that before he could no longer deny himself of her.

Before his lips even parted to speak, Patrice must have recalled clearly the sweet tenor of his voice and the words he had spoken recently, for her fingers drifted up to her ear and paused there. For a moment it was obvious that she forgot me, forgot where she was and that only a day and a half had passed since she had been in Arnaud’s arms.

“M’lady,” he uttered, his gaze locked on Patrice’s form, both of them visibly flushed. Then with a hard shake of his head, he bowed and thrust a letter into Patrice’s hands. “For Queen Isabella. From my lord king.”

The letter rustled in Patrice’s outstretched hand. She stared at it as though he had given her a poisoned dagger.

I willed myself to stand, but my knees were locked, legs numb, the blood draining from my head in a shockingly cold rush.

“Read it,” I uttered.

Patrice shrank into her shoulders. The tight, black ringlets at the back of her head disappeared into her mantle. She could read, although not well, and the king’s scrawling, she had once remarked, looked more like the fingernail scratches of an angry child on frosty glass than the letters of a learned man. After so many years of severity leveled at him by the Lords Ordainers, King Edward was too suspicious to entrust letters addressed to me to the scribing of a secretary. But more than the awkwardness of having to decipher the king’s writing, I knew Patrice was as reluctant to reveal the news that might be there as I was to hear it. She retreated, shaking her head.

Sensing her discomfort, Arnaud stepped closer to her. “May I?”

The letter relinquished gladly into his hands, Arnaud broke the seal. He squinted, twisted his mouth up tight and read, fumbling along at intervals where the words were crowded illegibly together:

“Our Dear Consort,

At present, we are unable to send aid to you, our beloved consort. My dearest and most ... most trusted cousin, the Earl of Richmond, after a long and courageous battle, was taken at Byland Moor by the wicked and traitorous Robert the Bruce. We are deeply
 ...
deeply concerned for our kinsman. As soon as circumstances permit, we will demand his release and if need be offer
 ...
monies for his ransom. We fear, however, the price will be impossible, if only to taunt us.

We have taken flight from Rievaulx Abbey by way of Bridlington and at last found refuge at York, where we await you. You are commanded to take ship posthaste. My councilors advise that the
 ...
Scottish traitors may be aware of your location and will ride on Tynemouth
–
we pray not before this letter reaches you.

May the Holy Spirit bless and keep you.

Edwardus Rex

16
^th
day of October, 1322”

I forced myself to my feet, plucked the letter from Arnaud’s unsuspecting hands and reread it. When I raised my eyes again, my voice began shakily, but with each word it grew in volume and spite. “Take ship? I have no ships. He provided me with none, saying I would not likely need them! How am I to take ship to him if he is in York
forty miles from shore
?!”

“My lady, I believe he means,” Arnaud began gently, trying to insert calm into the crisis, “for you to make land to the east at
–
”

“I
know
what he means!” I stomped my foot. White pain shot up from my heel through my calf, but it was lost in the red fury that consumed me. I had requested ...
begged
for a sufficient escort to see me safely back to London and for weeks I had been given nothing but excuses. “What this means is the Scots are somewhere between here and York
–
that we are cut off from any relief force and left to fend for ourselves. What this means is the Bruce has once more outwitted our king. The Scots will plunder their merry way home until there is not a cow left between York and Carlisle and
–
”

The Scots. We were doomed indeed if we expected them to turn away or spare their arrows because we claimed sanctuary here. I scooped up the hem of my gown and took four quick steps toward the door, then whirled about. “Arnaud, where were they last reported?”