The Uncrowned Queen

‘No,’ Isabella had replied.

She did not explain. I knew she would be wherever her lover Mortimer was. And I heaved a sigh of relief. Sometimes neglect could be a blessing.

CHAPTER TWO (#ulink_cbe9038a-20b8-5315-b9ef-5909ac5b1093)

Edward was able to spend one night with me at Woodstock before his escort was instructed to sweep him up and deposit him back under Mortimer’s beady eye at Westminster. It was no time for passion. Edward was restless and preoccupied with something he was not telling me, and I was too furious with Isabella to put aside my grievances and actually ask him what it was. But my mood improved when Edward rubbed my ankles, then held me in his arms and told me how much he loved me. With my head comfortably resting in the little hollow below his shoulder, I continued to be astonished, for I of all the four Hainault daughters, was the least blessed with physical beauty. The family features were strong in all of us, but they had not done their best by me. I had square, practical hands, a broad forehead, wide cheeks and lank hair of pale mouse. The sallow skin that glowed after a sunny day on Margaret and Jeanne and baby Isabelle looked merely dull on me. Nor was I very tall, even for my age. Jeanne and Isabelle, younger than I, would soon outgrow me. I was, my mother the Countess of Hainault frequently observed, a plain and wholesome daughter. Jeanne, in moments of sisterly bile, labelled me a poor dab of a girl. Isabella had wanted the Hainault dowry and did not care which sister became the bride, but Edward had wanted me.

I held on to that one miraculous thought when fears rained down on me thick and fast. For now, sheltered in his arms, I was content.

‘I’m afraid you’ll not see Pontefract or Knaresborough,’ he murmured, his chin resting on my head, as I sighed deeply.

‘No, I don’t suppose I shall.’ I laughed a little. ‘I didn’t expect to be scrabbling for money as Queen of England. But still …’ I paused for a moment, merely to tease. ‘… on the whole, I’m pleased I wed you.’

‘Only pleased?’

I raised my head so that our eyes met, barely a handspan apart, and as we smiled at each other I recalled my first sight of him, striding into the audience chamber at Valenciennes in the wake of Isabella. How astonishingly handsome he had been, this Plantagenet prince, striding confidently forward with a proud tilt of his head and a spine as straight as a pikestaff. His skin was fair, his eyes blue and his luxuriant hair as gold as a corn sheaf. He was to me as breathtaking as the image of the warrior angel St Michael in the window of our private chapel. And he still was.

‘I thought Isabella would choose Jeanne for you,’ I confessed, pushing back the fall of hair that invariably got in his eyes. I was feeling in a mood for confession and intimacy.

‘She did,’ Edward admitted dryly, ‘since Margaret was already wed. But how could I refuse a girl who was kind and resourceful – a girl who was bold enough to accuse me of being stupid when I informed her that to my mind it was impossible to trust anyone, particularly servants.’

I laughed at the memory. ‘You were impossibly opinionated. I was surprised that Walter did not hit you.’ Walter Manny, my page – now a squire and come with me to England – was unquestionably loyal to me and to those of my choosing.

‘So was I. I deserved it, I expect. My pride knew no bounds.’

Allowing my head to sink back against his chest, I sighed again, remembering. It had been a dire story that Edward had eventually told after much persuasion.

‘How can I be expected to trust anyone?’ he had demanded furiously when I had accused him of rank insensitivity to me and to Walter. ‘I am spied on. Every minute, every day. Everything I say or do is reported back to the Queen or Mortimer. If I write a letter, it is intercepted and read. I am not allowed my own friends. My servants are not my appointment. I am burdened with a bodyguard in my mother’s pay. I swear everything I eat and drink is reported to my mother. It’s worse than being in a prison cell.’

It had chilled my blood. From a position of privilege, a childhood where I had been given love and freedom and no more restriction than was thought good for a daughter of Valois and Hainault, I could not imagine such shackles. As for every word I spoke being reported to the Count or Countess: even my governess showed more tolerance than that, and accepted my childish misdemeanours. It must, for Edward, have been an intensely lonely existence.

‘You taught me to trust, and to have faith in my own destiny,’ Edward mused now, interrupting my reverie, his own thoughts obviously far away. ‘I never met anyone with so many opinions. Or so much advice to give.’

I chuckled. ‘And did you take it?’

‘Oh yes. I needed to, to survive.’

Sobering, I let my mind drift back again. I had told him, whether he wanted to know or not, while we were seated in my father’s kitchens - a warm, busy place, and a perfect refuge for Edward to escape the eagle-eyed attentions of his skulking bodyguard.

‘It seems to me that in your present position you can do nothing but wait,’ I had said when I had persuaded him to tell me of Isabella’s ambitions, and of her lover Mortimer’s hold on power. What else could I tell a prince who had not yet reached his sixteenth year? ‘One day your chance will come to seize power. On that day you will cast off your mother’s influence, and that of this dreadful man Mortimer, and take your place at your father’s side. Once you do that, you will find your friends will flock to your banner.’

The Prince had slammed his hands down against the table at which we sat, flattening the crumbs of bread. ‘I have no friends.’

It had been the bleakest statement of all that he had made that day. ‘Then you must make friends.’

‘How can I, when I am kept isolated from men to whom I would look for support? Sometimes I feel like a beetle squeezed in Mortimer’s fist …’

‘I will be your friend.’

‘You can’t fight for me.’

I had stood, out of all patience. Walter, a silent shadow, stood as well. ‘But I can give you advice, for what it’s worth. Be temperate, be patient. Listen and take counsel. Build a power base when you can. Is that not what all rulers do? One day you will be King whether the Queen wishes it or not. Be ready for that day.’ I had given him frown for frown. ‘But if you are to win friends, you have to charm your supporters rather than grumble and snarl and beat them about the head with your complaints!’

He had reared back as if I had struck him. ‘Do I grumble and snarl?’

‘Yes. You are doing it now.’

What a turbulent wooing it had turned out to be. My lips curved at the memory of that brief episode - all of eight days.

‘Why are you smiling?’ Edward asked.

‘Just remembering,’ I replied, my mind leaping sharply back to reality in Woodstock, and I sat up again as a thought struck me. ‘Why was Mortimer scowling at you when we parted company?’ We had left him at Winchester. Mortimer had been more heavy-browed than usual, barking out orders that Edward must not linger after depositing me at Woodstock, as if I were a parcel of cloth for the market.

Edward shrugged, but his lips tightened. ‘I’m in his black books.’

‘What have you done?’ I asked, my mouth suddenly dry with apprehension.

‘Only refused to obey orders and attend my sister’s wedding,’ Edward replied. ‘It’s not news, Philippa. But Mortimer hasn’t forgiven me. He says I dishonoured his good name before the whole kingdom. His good name, by God! And as if I did not know the meaning of dishonour and shame …’

Edward might pat my hand to reassure me, but he did not succeed. No, it wasn’t news. The whole episode had had caused a major furore. Edward had refused to attend the political marriage of his sister Joan to the son of the Scottish King Robert Bruce after the kingdom of Scotland had been wilfully handed back to the Scots. But I hadn’t heard Edward’s explanation from his own lips before. All I knew was that Edward had refused pointblank to go across the border.

‘Mortimer said it had been agreed, and that I would attend,’ Edward bit out the words. ‘I said that I had not agreed to it. The agreement signed at Northampton with the Scots was none of my doing. I didn’t make the treaty so felt in no mind to live by it.’ I was impressed by his fighting words, and my initial fright was overlaid by pride in him. ‘I wasn’t prepared to dance at their wedding,’ he continued. ‘I would have more likely spitted the groom on my sword and widowed my poor sister than given them my good wishes.’ He shuffled restlessly, rucking up the bed linen into an uncomfortable heap. ‘My absence was the only way I could express my abhorrence of the whole proceedings.’

It had come, as I knew, at the end of an unsatisfactory campaign, with England’s defeat at Stanhope Park, even if Mortimer had been able to prevent a subsequent Scottish invasion of England. Edward’s own desire to push on with an attack had been thoroughly thwarted. Mortimer had ordered a withdrawal, and the Northampton agreement had, in Edward’s mind, been nothing more than an ignominious backing down.

‘Mortimer sees my sister as the future Queen of Scotland.’ Edward still felt the loss as a personal failure, even though he had come close to being captured and killed. ‘All I see is the English dead and dying on the battlefield at Stanhope Park. I refused to condone what was done then, and I won’t now.’

‘It’s months ago now,’ I observed. ‘Can Mortimer not put it aside?’

‘Apparently not. He’s still smarting. He said my absence was an embarrassment – that I had damaged the alliance. What alliance? In my eyes, there is no alliance, and there is no peace. Scotland is mine.’ Thrusting himself from the bed as if driven by a need to take action, Edward strode to the coffer beside the fireplace, peered suspiciously into the flagon he found there, and poured two cups of wine, returning to hand one to me. ‘I can’t overthrow Mortimer yet,’ he said quietly as if the walls might have ears. ‘All I can do is make life difficult for him …’

‘… but not so difficult that he might clap you up in a dungeon in the Tower.’ I had no faith in Mortimer’s compassion.

‘Yes. Just like he clapped up my …’

The air around me prickled. Edward stiffened and his mouth closed in a firm line, as if he had come up against a rock that blocked his path but was too solid and vast for him to shatter. I, too, closed my mouth. And I did not question him, knowing it was too painful a matter to broach. Did not all families have their secrets? Ours were simply more complex and more dangerous than most. Without a word I took his hand to draw him back down with me, and waited until he relaxed a little and managed a wry grimace that might just have been a smile.

‘No. Mortimer won’t lock me up,’ he said as if he had thought about the possibility often. ‘He needs me. King Edward, the sacred figurehead, who will obey every dictate. Except that I won’t.’ He took a gulp of wine and rubbed one hand over his face, his voice rough with desperation. ‘Ah, Philippa. Mortimer plays the king in front of me, posturing and preening as if he were the true King and I some prancing upstart, dressed and groomed to mimic royalty. And before God, it’s no mummer’s play! I have to tolerate it because as yet I can find no way to break free. I’m running out of patience.’

‘But not out of time,’ I urged, winding my fingers into his furred cuff. The fright was back with a vengeance. Sometimes my dreams were red with bloody murder, and I woke with ragged breathing and a galloping heart.

‘He has every trick up his sleeve.’ Edward might laugh, but it was laced with anger. ‘Did you know? Mortimer is now claiming descent from the mighty King Arthur – the line which ancient prophecy says will one day rule all England and Wales. Isabella will love that.’ The laugh was transformed into a snarl. ‘And what’s more, as his first step on the damned ladder, he’s claimed the premier earldom in the kingdom for himself. Did you know? Mortimer is now the Earl of March, by his own gift.’

Mortimer’s ambitions were no surprise, but this outrageous claim shook me.

‘God rot him!’ I exclaimed. Which at least made Edward smile.

‘Amen to that.’