Braveheart (6 page)

She went through the rest of the ceremony, repeating her vows wherever it was expected of her. Prince Edward became her husband in the same mechanical way. They did not kiss; they were not expected to. Later, Isabella would not remember the ceremony at all.

But she would never forget her first look at those eyes.

That night the attendants prepared a special wedding chamber for them in the new royal apartments she and Edward were to inhabit together. A table was placed before the bedroom fireplace and a special dinner laid out upon it, with lamb, fowl, fish, fresh fruits, vegetables, pastries—every rich food the kingdom could provide. And wine, too, and more flowers, all arrayed for them in the bedroom. A small army of servants must have worked on it, and yet they had all remained, and only for a moment. She gripped Isabella’s hands in her own, stared as if she had just spoken—though she had uttered not a word since their time together before the ceremony—and nodded, not once but many times. Then Nicolette too left her.

Isabella thought the prince would arrive at any moment. She sat down beside the fire to wait, for ever since she had seen her father-in-law, she had felt cold. But her new husband did not arrive. The ice in the wooden bucket around the wine melted, and an attendant tiptoed in to replace the water with more gray chunks from the palace ice house. Kitchen servants tiptoed in to take the food away and warm it again, but still Edward did not come.

Isabella fell asleep in the chair.

Later—she did not know how much later—she awoke to the sound of male laughter and the rattle of the latch at the door. Someone was fumbling at it as if staggered in. He was drunk. He was accompanied by another young man, the same one who had been with him at the first royal dinner she had attended.

They stopped laughing when they saw her; then Peter, her husband’s friend, burst into laughter again.

Isabella smiled, trying to understand the joke. But now her husband seemed to see no joke; he was looking at her. He then turned to Peter and stared blankly at him.

“I shall wait outside,” Peter said and laughed again. He left them, closing the door loudly.

Edward stared at her.

She stared at him. She rose from her chair.

He did not move.

She moved to him. He said nothing. There was sweat on his brow; his breath stank. He smelled as if he had vomited recently.

She knelt before him and kissed his hand, then rose. He did not move.

She walked to the bed, still fully dressed, and lay upon the fur. “I am ready,” she said.

She heard the door close and Peter laugh. Her husband had gone, and she was all alone.

Her wedding night.

10

THE NEXT MORNING, ISABELLA BREAKFASTED NOT IN THE royal apartments, but in the dining room of the guest quarters where she had previously stayed. When Nicolette found her, she was already half through with her meal. “There you are!” her friend sang brightly. “And up so … early.” Nicolette’s tone changed the instant she saw Isabella’s face. She sat down immediately and leaned close, her eyes asking the question.

Isabella spoke softly, barely above a whisper. “I was ready. I suppose he was not.”

Nicolette’s tongue tried to wet her lips, suddenly dry. She seemed to want to say something but was saved from the effort by the arrival of a trim young man dressed in the bright livery Prince Edward had designated for all his personal servants. He handed Isabella a folded, sealed message on a small silver tray and said, “From your husband.”

As soon as Isabella lifted the note, the messenger bowed sharply and took his leave. With a glance at Nicolette, the princess broke the seal, unfolded the single paper, and read the words scrawled there. “`The king directs me to attend a meeting this morning at the first chime. I am otherwise engaged, also at his direction. You will attend in my place and report to me afterward in the royal apartments.’ It is signed `Edward.’”

Just then the first chime of morning rang. Nicolette looked across at her friend. “You are late,” she said.

Longshanks stood at a map nearly as tall as he was and stabbed with his narrow finger at the land north of England, marked as endless hill country dotted with fortresses and shaded in other areas so impassable the mapmakers had left them bare. “Scotland!
Scot—land!”
he barked at his advisors. They sat at a grand table in clothes that made their shoulders look wider, their chests thicker. Some even wore polished armor to conferences like this one in order to enhance their status as military men. But none of that made them less afraid of Longshanks.

“The French will grovel to anyone with strength!” he said in a voice deep and powerful and relentless as the sea. “But how will they credit our strength when we cannot rule the whole of our own island?!” Longshanks shouted.

He punched the map again, then saw the princess enter silently and move to the window along the far wall.

“Where is my son?” Longshanks asked.

She stopped suddenly, realizing the question was meant for her. “Your pardon, m’lord, he asked me to come in his stead,” the princess said.

Longshanks’s eyes expanded in fury; it was frightening to see. “I send for him—and the little coward sends you?!”

“Shall I leave, m’lord?”

“If he wants his queen to rule, then you stay and learn how! I will deal with him.”

He spun back toward his generals. Ignored, the princess settled silently onto the cushions of the window seat.

“Nobles are the key to the Scottish door. Grant their nobles land here in England. Give our own nobles estates in the north. Make them too greedy to oppose us,” he said.

One old advisor spoke up hesitantly, “Sire, our nobles will be reluctant to relocate. New lands mean new taxes, and they are taxed already for our war in France.”

Longshanks glared at him but took the point. The wheels spun in his brain. His dark eyes fell on the princess. He stared, his eyes cold and blank. She felt chilled, and yet it was as if he was not looking at her at all, but at some lifeless echo that inspired a dusty memory. What could he be thinking of?

He turned back toward his advisors and revealed his inspiration. “Then let our nobles be real lords in Scotland. Grant them
prima noctes,
`first night.’ When any common girl inhabiting their lands is married, our lords shall have sexual rights to her on the night of her wedding. That should fetch just the kind of lords we want to Scotland.”

Princess Isabella, tucked against the far window, upon a goose down sitting cushion by the damask curtains, felt a draft must have blown in, so could did her back become. Vivid emotions flooded through her in a confusing swirl. Young women…on their wedding nights…She had just experienced the emotions and uncertainties of her own wedding night, and she felt for any girl in the same situation. Isabella was young, perhaps naïve, but she sensed that princesses and pauper girls must all be alike in their hearts. This was against all she had been taught, but her experience, her recent experience, told her it must be true! If anything, she, in the last days, had come to envy common girls who, she fancied, were free to marry for love. But now, here loomed the enforcement of an old tradition whose only purpose, as far as she could see, was to destroy love and families. If the true purpose of marriage, as the Church taught, was procreation, then the right of a lord to copulate with a common girl in his dominion on the first night of her marriage would mean that her husband could never know if his firstborn child was of his seed or the nobleman’s. What a savage, perverse law!

And on top of that, why had the king been looking at her when he thought of it?

Then Isabella’s heart went cold. Longshanks was looking at her again. He was smiling lewdly at her. She lowered her eyes, stood, and left the room.

11

THE PRINCE AND HIS MUSCULAR YOUNG FRIEND PETER were stripped to the waist and fencing in the royal apartments. They paid no attention to the knock or to the princess as she entered. She watched them—they were dancing more than fencing. Edward lost his sword; it clattered to the polished floor. He looked up at his wife as if angry at her for having seen his clumsiness.

“What is it?!”
Edward snapped. He had a bark like his father, as if imitating Longshank’s face and tone. But the son’s sound seemed to say, How long must I suffer? Whereas the message in the king’s tone seemed to be, How long before I make you suffer?

“You directed me to report to you when the king’s conference was ended,” the princess said.

“So I did! And what was so important about it?”

“Scotland. He intends—“

But Edward and his friend were fencing again, the clanging of their blunted swords so loud that she couldn’t hear herself.

She tried again. “He intends to grant—“

But Edward lost his weapon once more, and now he whirled on her. “Shut up, would you! How can I concentrate?!”

“His majesty was quite keen that you should understand—“

“All so very boring! He wants me to learn to fight too, so
let me do it!”

For an instant, anger flared into her eyes. She glanced at Edward and at the young man with him just before she turned to walk out. But Edward had noticed her glance.

“Stop there,” he demanded.

She stopped but did not turn around.

“Do you disapprove of Peter?” Edward asked.

He lifted his hand and drew his friend Peter to his side. Still the princess did not turn around.

“No, m’lord,” she quietly said.

“Turn around. I said,
turn around!”

She braced herself and turned. But she could not brace herself enough for what she saw: Edward nuzzled Peter, the prince’s bare chest to his muscular friend’s bare back, both men glistening with sweat and sexual excitement.

The princess’s eyes quivered, but she did not look away.

“Now, my flower, do you understand?” Edward asked.

“Yes. I had thought that…I was loathsome to you. Perhaps I am. If I may be excused, m’lord.”

“You may,” he said.

She started to leave as quietly as she came, but her husband yelled after her, “Don’t worry, m’lady, it is my royal responsibility to breed. And I assure you, when the time comes, I shall… manage.”

She closed the door softly on her husband and his lover.

12

FAR NORTH OF LONDON, UP WHERE THE FIRTH OR FORTH and the river Clyde cut the great British island nearly in half, seven horsemen galloped along a wet road, the hooves of their horses slapping sharply, smacking mud high onto the horses’ flanks and across the legs of the riders. They rode with military precision as a bodyguard; in the center of their formation was a young man, barely in his twenties. His hair was dark brown, his moustache and chin whiskers smartly groomed in the fashion of Norman nobility. His shoulders were broad, his chest thick from hard practice with the heavy broadsword he wore at his waist. The tunic over his chain mail displayed a scarlet cross, and one of the riders beside him carried a banner that snapped in the wind, flashing the same noble colors.

They wound into Edinburgh, Scotland’s royal seat, city of its last king. The road grew more crowded, but the peasants and free merchants scrambled aside to let the riders pass. At the steep hill up to the castle their horses labored, but the young man spured his horse into the lead and through the gates without pause. A clatter of hooves upon the cobblestones, a snapping of the guards’ pikes in salute, and Robert, 17
^th
earl of Bruce, had arrived.

Gathered around a massive table in the central room of the castle were two dozen noblemen, supporters of the Bruce’s claim to the vacant Scottish throne. As young Robert strode in, still spattered with the mud of his ride, the others stood and bowed their heads in respect. Robert waved his solemn acknowledgment and took his seat at the center of the table; the others settled in respectfully. Young Robert glanced to his friend Mornay, another young noble similarly attired in fighting armor, and gave him another nod in personal greeting, as he did to Craig, a balding, gray-haired nobleman.

Old Craig was not only leader of the council, he had long been a friend and ally of the Bruce’s father. He spoke up immediately. “Young Robert, we are honored! And your father is well?”

“He strained his leg so that it pains him to ride, but he sends his compliments.” Robert glanced around the table to include all of them, for noble pride was never to be slighted. Then Robert, as was his habit, plunged right into business. “He hears Longshanks has granted
prima noctes.
”

“Clearly meant to draw more of his supporters here.” Craig said.

Mornay, lean, dark, and fit, though not so handsome as young Bruce, had been impatiently awaiting his friend’s arrival and now gave vent to the sentiments that had been pushing to get out. “The Balliols have endorsed the right, licked Longshanks’s boots so he will support their claim to the throne!”