The She-Wolf

‘But you’re soaked through!’ he said.

‘No matter!’ replied Mortimer. ‘A free air will dry me quick enough.’

He got to his feet, took off his tunic and shirt, and stood naked to the waist in the middle of the boat. He had a shapely, well-built body, powerful shoulders and a long, muscular back; imprisonment had made him thinner, but had not impaired the impression he gave of physical strength. The moon, which had just risen, bathed him in a golden light and threw the contours of his chest into relief.

‘Propitious, dangerous to fugitives,’ said the Bishop, pointing to the moon. ‘We timed it exactly right.’

The night air was laden with the scent of reeds and water, and Roger Mortimer felt it playing over his skin and through his wet hair. The smooth black Thames slid along the sides of the boat and the oars made golden sparks. The opposite bank was drawing near. The great Baron of the Marches turned to look for the last time at the Tower, standing tall and proud above its fortifications, ramparts and embankments. ‘No one ever escapes from the Tower …’ And, indeed, he was the first prisoner who ever had escaped from it. He began to consider the importance of his deed, and the defiance it hurled at the power of kings.

Behind it, the sleeping city stood out against the night. Along both banks, as far as the great bridge with its shops and guarded by its high towers, could be seen the innumerable, crowded, slowly waving masts of the ships of the London Hanse, the Teutonic Hanse, the Paris Hanse of the Marchands d’Eau, indeed of the whole of Europe, bringing cloth from Bruges, copper, pitch, wax, knives, the wines of the Saintonge and of Aquitaine, and dried fish, and loading for Flanders, Rouen, Bordeaux and Lisbon, corn, leather, tin, cheeses, and above all wool, which was the best in the world, from English sheep. The great Venetian galleys could be distinguished by their shape and their gilding.

But Roger Mortimer of Wigmore was already thinking of France. He would go first to Artois to ask asylum of his cousin, Jean de Fiennes, the son of his mother’s brother. He stretched his arms wide in the gesture of a free man.

And Bishop Orleton, who regretted that he had been born neither so handsome nor so great a lord, gazed with a sort of envy at this strong, confident body that seemed so apt for leaping into the saddle, at the tall, sculptured torso, the proud chin and the rough, curly hair, which were to carry England’s destiny into exile.

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The Harassed Queen (#ulink_324d2792-dc14-5075-afb2-4efc45f6af0e)

THE RED-VELVET FOOTSTOOL on which Queen Isabella was resting her slender feet was threadbare; the gold tassels at its four corners were tarnished; the embroidered lilies of France and leopards of England were worn. But what was the use of replacing the footstool by ordering another, if the new one were immediately to disappear beneath the pearl-embroidered shoes of Hugh Despenser, the King’s lover? The Queen looked down at the old footstool that had lain on the flagstones of every castle in the kingdom, one season in Dorset, another in Norfolk, a winter in Warwick, and this last summer in Yorkshire, for they never stayed more than three days in the same place. On August 1, less than a week ago, the Court had been at Cowick; yesterday they had stopped at Eserick; today they were camping, rather than lodging, at Kirkham Priory; the day after tomorrow they would set out for Lockton and Pickering. The few dusty tapestries, the dented dishes, and the worn dresses which constituted Queen Isabella’s travelling wardrobe, would be packed into the travelling-chests once again; the curtained bed, which was so weakened by its travels that it was now in danger of collapsing altogether, would be taken down and put up again somewhere else, that bed in which the Queen took sometimes her lady-in-waiting, Lady Jeanne Mortimer, and sometimes her eldest son, Prince Edward, to sleep with her for fear of being murdered if she slept alone. At least the Despensers would not dare stab her under the eye of the heir-apparent. And it was thus they journeyed across the kingdom, through its green countryside and by its melancholy castles.

Edward II wanted to be known personally to the least of his vassals; he thought he did them honour by staying with them, and that a few friendly words would assure their loyalty against the Scots or the Welsh party. In fact, he would have done better to show himself less. He created latent discord wherever he went; the careless way he talked of government matters, which he believed to be a sovereign attitude of detachment, offended the lords, abbots and notables who came to explain local problems to him; the intimacy he paraded with his all-powerful chamberlain whose hand he caressed in open council or at Mass, his high-pitched laughter, his sudden generosity to some little clerk or astonished young groom, all confirmed the scandalous stories that were current even in the remotest districts, where husbands no doubt deceived their wives, as everywhere else, but did so with women; and what was only whispered before his coming was said out loud after he had passed by. This handsome, fair-bearded man, who was so weak of will, had but to appear with his crown on his head, and the whole prestige of the royal majesty collapsed. And the avaricious courtiers by whom he was surrounded helped considerably to make him hated.

Useless and powerless, the Queen had to take part in this ill-considered progress. She was torn by two conflicting emotions; on the one hand, her truly royal nature, inherited from her Capet ancestors, was irritated and angered by the continuous process of degradation suffered by the sovereign power; but, on the other hand, the wronged, harassed and endangered wife secretly rejoiced at every new enemy the King made. She could not understand how she had once loved, or persuaded herself to love, so contemptible a creature, who treated her so odiously. Why was she made to take part in these journeys, why was she shown off, a wronged Queen, to the whole kingdom? Did the King and his favourite really think they deceived anyone or made their relations look innocent by the mere fact of her presence? Or was it that they wanted to keep her under their eye? She would have so much preferred to live in London or at Windsor, or even in one of the castles she had theoretically been given, while awaiting some change in circumstance or simply the onset of old age. And how she regretted above all that Thomas of Lancaster and Roger Mortimer, those great barons who were really men, had not succeeded in their rebellion the year before last.

Raising her beautiful blue eyes, she glanced up at the Count de Bouville, who had been sent over from the Court of France, and said in a low voice: ‘For a month past you have been able to see what my life is like, Messire Hugues. I do not even ask you to recount its miseries to my brother, nor to my uncle of Valois. Four kings have succeeded each other on the throne of France, my father King Philip, who married me off in the interests of the crown …’

‘God keep his soul, Madame, may God keep it!’ said fat Bouville with conviction, but without raising his voice. ‘There’s no one in the world I loved more, nor served with greater joy.’

‘Then my brother Louis, who was but a few months on the throne, then my brother Philippe with whom I had little in common, though he was not lacking in intelligence …’

Bouville frowned a little as he did whenever King Philippe the Long was mentioned in his presence.

‘And then my brother Charles, who is reigning now,’ went on the Queen. ‘They have all been told of my unhappy circumstances, and they have been able to do nothing, or have wished to do nothing. The Kings of France are not interested in England except in the matter of Aquitaine and the homage due to them for that fief. A Princess of France on the English throne, because she thereby becomes Duchess of Aquitaine, is a pledge of peace. And provided Guyenne is quiet, little do they care whether their daughter or sister dies of shame and neglect beyond the sea. Report it or not, it will make no difference. But the days you have spent with me have been pleasant ones, for I have been able to talk to a friend. And you have seen how few I have. Without my dear Lady Jeanne, who shows great constancy in sharing my fortunes, I would not even have one.’

As she said these words, the Queen turned to her lady-in-waiting who was sitting beside her. Jeanne Mortimer, great-niece of the famous Seneschal de Joinville, was a tall woman of thirty-seven, with regular features, an honest face and quiet hands.

‘Madame,’ replied Lady Jeanne, ‘you do more to sustain my courage than I do to maintain yours. And you’ve taken a great risk in keeping me with you when my husband is in prison.’

They all three went on talking in low voices, for the whisper and the aside had become necessary habits in that Court where you were never alone and the Queen lived amid enmity.

In a corner of the room three maidservants were embroidering a counterpane for Lady Alienor Despenser, the favourite’s wife, who was playing chess by an open window with the heir-apparent. A little farther off, the Queen’s second son, who had had his seventh birthday three weeks earlier, was making a bow from hazel switch; while the two little girls, Jane and Alienor, respectively five and two, were sitting on the floor, playing with rag dolls.

Even as she moved the pieces over the ivory chess-board, Lady Despenser never for a moment stopped watching the Queen and trying to hear what she was saying. Her forehead was smooth but curiously narrow, her eyes were bright but too close together, her mouth was sarcastic; without being altogether hideous, there was nevertheless apparent that quality of ugliness which is imprinted by a wicked nature. A descendant of the Clare family, she had had a strange career, for she had been sister-in-law to the King’s previous lover, Piers Gaveston, whom the barons under Thomas of Lancaster had executed eleven years before, and she was now the wife of the King’s current lover. She derived a morbid pleasure from assisting male amours, partly to satisfy her love of money and partly to gratify her lust of power. But she was a fool. She was prepared to lose her game of chess for the mere pleasure of saying provocatively: ‘Check to the Queen! Check to the Queen!’

Edward, the heir-apparent, was a boy of eleven; he had a rather long, thin face, and was by nature reserved rather than timid, though he nearly always kept his eyes on the ground; at the moment he was taking advantage of his opponent’s mistake to do his best to win.

The August breeze was blowing gusts of warm dust through the narrow, arched window; but, when the sun sank, it would turn cool and damp again within the thick, dark walls of ancient Kirkham Priory.

There was a sound of many voices from the Chapter House where the King was holding his itinerant Council.

‘Madame,’ said the Count de Bouville, ‘I would willingly dedicate all the remainder of my days to your service, could they be useful to you. It would be a pleasure to me, I assure you. What is there for me to do here below, since I am a widower and my sons are out in the world, except to use the last of my strength to serve the descendants of the King who was my benefactor? And it is with you, Madame, that I feel myself nearest to him. You have all his strength of character, the way of talking he had, when he felt so disposed, and all his beauty which was so impervious to time. When he died, at the age of forty-six, he looked barely more than thirty. It will be the same with you. No one would ever guess you have had four children.’

The Queen’s face brightened into a smile. Surrounded, as she was, by so much hatred, she was grateful to be offered this devotion; and, her feelings as a woman continually humiliated, it was sweet to hear her beauty praised, even if the compliment was from a fat old man with white hair and spaniel’s eyes.

‘I am already thirty-one,’ she said, ‘of which fifteen years have been spent as you see. It may not mark my face; but my spirit bears the wrinkles. Indeed, Bouville, I would willingly keep you with me, were it possible.’

‘Alas, Madame, I foresee the end of my mission, and it has not had much success. King Edward has already twice indicated his surprise, since he has already delivered the Lombard up to the High Court of the King of France, that I should still be here.’

For the official pretext for Bouville’s embassy was a demand for the extradition of a certain Thomas Henry, a member of the important Scali company of Florence; the banker had leased certain lands from the Crown of France, had pocketed the considerable revenues, failed to pay what he owed to the French Treasury, and had ultimately taken refuge in England. The affair was serious enough, of course, but it could easily have been dealt with by letter, or by sending a magistrate, and most certainly had not required the presence of an ex-Great Chamberlain, who sat in the Privy Council. In fact, Bouville had been charged with another and more difficult diplomatic negotiation.

Monseigneur Charles of Valois, the uncle both of the King of France and Queen Isabella, had taken it into his head the previous year to marry off his fifth daughter, Marie, to Prince Edward, the heir-apparent to the throne of England. Monseigneur of Valois – who was unaware of it in Europe? – had seven daughters whose marriages had been a continual source of anxiety to this turbulent, ambitious and prodigal prince, who inevitably used his children for the promotion of his vast intrigues. The seven daughters were by three different marriages for Monseigneur Charles, during the course of his restless life, had suffered the misfortune of twice becoming a widower.

You needed a clear mind not to lose your way amid this complicated family tree, to know, for instance, when Madame Jeanne of Valois was mentioned, whether the Countess of Hainaut was meant or the Countess of Beaumont, the wife of Robert of Artois. Just to help matters, the two girls had the same name. As for Catherine, heiress to the phantom throne of Constantinople, who was by the second marriage, she had wedded in the person of Philip of Tarantum, Prince of Achaia, an elder brother of her father’s first wife. It was, indeed, something of a puzzle!

And now Monseigneur Charles was proposing that the elder daughter of his third marriage should wed his great-nephew of England.

At the beginning of the year, Monseigneur of Valois had sent a mission consisting of Count Henry de Sully, Raoul Sevain de Jouy and Robert Bertrand, known as the ‘Knight of the Green Lion’. To curry favour with Edward II, these ambassadors had accompanied him on an expedition against the Scots; but, at the Battle of Blackmore, the English had fled and allowed the French ambassadors to fall into the hands of the enemy. Their freedom had had to be negotiated and their ransoms paid. When, at last after a number of unpleasant adventures, they had been released, Edward had replied, evasively and dilatorily, that his son’s marriage could not be decided on so quickly, that the matter was of such great importance that he could make no contract without the advice of his Parliament, and that Parliament would be summoned to discuss the matter in June. He wished to link this affair with the homage he was due to pay the King of France for the Duchy of Aquitaine. And then, when Parliament had at last been convoked, the question had not even been discussed.

In his impatience, Monseigneur of Valois had taken the first opportunity of sending over the Count de Bouville, whose devotion to the Capet family was undoubted and who, though lacking in genius, had considerable experience of similar missions. In the past, Bouville had negotiated in Naples, on the instructions of Valois himself, the second marriage of Louis X with Clémence of Hungary; he had been Curator of the Queen’s stomach after the Hutin’s death, but that was not a period he cared to recall. He had also carried out a number of negotiations in Avignon with the Holy See; and in matters concerning family relationships his memory was faultless, he knew all the infinitely complex inter-weavings that formed the web of the royal houses’ alliances. Honest Bouville was much vexed at having to go back this time with empty hands.

‘Monseigneur of Valois will be very angry indeed,’ he said, ‘since he has already asked the Holy Father for a licence for this marriage.’

‘I’ve done all I can, Bouville,’ the Queen said, ‘and you can judge from that what weight I carry here. But I do not regret it as much as you do; I do not want another princess of my family to suffer what I have suffered here.’

‘Madame,’ Bouville replied, lowering his voice still further, ‘do you doubt your son? He seems to take after you rather than after his father, thank God. I remember you at his age, in the garden of the Palace of the Cité, or at Fontainebleau …’

He was interrupted. The door opened to give entrance to the King of England. He hurried in; his head was thrown back and he was stroking his blond beard with a nervous gesture which, in him, was a sign of irritation. He was followed by his usual councillors, the two Despensers, father and son, Chancellor Baldock, the Earl of Arundel and the Bishop of Exeter. The King’s two half-brothers, the Earls of Kent and Norfolk, who had French blood since their mother was the sister of Philip the Fair, formed part of his entourage, but rather against their will so it seemed; and this was also true of Henry of Leicester. The last was a square-looking man, with bright, rather protruding eyes, who was nicknamed Crouchback owing to a malformation of the neck and shoulders which compelled him to hold his neck completely askew, and gave the armourers who had to forge his cuirasses a good deal of difficulty. A number of ecclesiastics and local dignitaries also pressed into the doorway.

‘Have you heard the news, Madame?’ cried King Edward, addressing the Queen. ‘It will doubtless please you. Your Mortimer has escaped from the Tower.’

Lady Despenser, at the chess-board, gave a start and uttered an exclamation of indignation as if the Baron of Wigmore’s escape were a personal insult.

Queen Isabella gave no sign, either by altering her attitude or expression; only her eyelids blinked a little more rapidly over her beautiful blue eyes, and her hand, beneath the folds of her dress, furtively sought that of Lady Jeanne Mortimer, as if encouraging her to be strong and calm. Fat Bouville had got to his feet and moved a little apart, feeling himself unwanted in this matter which purely concerned the English Crown.

‘He is not my Mortimer, Sire,’ replied the Queen. ‘Lord Mortimer is your subject, I should have thought, rather than mine; and I am not accountable for the actions of your barons. You kept him in prison; he has escaped; it’s the common form.’

‘And that shows you approve him! Don’t restrain your joy, Madame. In the days when Mortimer deigned to appear at my Court, you had no eyes except for him; you were continually extolling his merits, and you have always put down the crimes he has committed against me to his greatness of soul.’

‘But was it not you, yourself, Sire my Husband, who taught me to love him at the time he was conquering, on your behalf and at the peril of his life, the Kingdom of Ireland, which indeed you had great difficulty in holding without him? Was that a crime?’

Put out of countenance by this attack, Edward looked spitefully at his wife and found some difficulty in replying.

‘Well, your friend’s on the run now, running hard towards your country no doubt!’

As he talked, the King was walking up and down the room, working off his useless agitation. The jewels hanging from his clothes quivered at every step he took. The rest of the company followed him with their eyes, turning their heads from side to side, as if they were watching a game of tennis. There was no doubt that King Edward was a fine-looking man, muscular, lithe and alert. He kept himself fit with games and exercises and had so far resisted any tendency to stoutness though his fortieth birthday was close at hand; he had an athlete’s constitution. But if you looked closer, you were struck by the fact that his forehead was utterly unlined, as if the anxieties of power had failed to mark him, by the pouches beginning to form beneath his eyes, by the uncertain line of the curve of the nostril, and by the long chin beneath the thin, curled beard. It was not an energetic or authoritative chin, nor even a really sensual one, but merely too big and too elongated a chin. There was twenty times more determination in the Queen’s little chin than there was in this ovoid jaw whose weakness the silky beard could not conceal. And the hand he passed from time to time across his face was flaccid; it fluttered aimlessly and then tugged at a pearl sewn to the embroidery of his tunic. His voice, which he hoped and believed was imperious, merely suggested lack of control. His back, which was wide enough, curved unpleasantly from the neck to the waist, as if the spine lacked substance. Edward had never forgiven his wife for having one day advised him to avoid showing his back if he wished to gain the respect of his barons. His knee was shapely and his leg well-turned; indeed, these were the best points of this man who was so little suited to his responsibilities, and to whom a crown had fallen by some curious inadvertence on the part of Fate.

‘Haven’t I enough worries and difficulties already?’ he went on. ‘The Scots are always threatening and invading my frontiers and, when I give battle, my armies run away. And how can I defeat them when my bishops treat with them without my permission, when there are so many traitors among my vassals, and when my barons of the Marches raise troops against me on the principle that they hold their lands by their swords, when some twenty-five years ago – have they forgotten? – it was determined and ordered otherwise by King Edward, my father. But they learned at Shrewsbury and Boroughbridge what it costs to rebel against me, didn’t they, Leicester?’