Isabeau, A Novel of Queen Isabella and Sir Roger Mortimer (7 page)

“You believe Pembroke, then?” I asked.

“Not in these circumstances, no.”

“Then why are you going?”

He rounded on me, his face crimson with fury. “Because I know Simon speaks the truth!” As if he had to restrain from striking me, he clenched his fists before him. He gathered several deep breaths to calm himself before he went on. Finally, he stepped close and raised a crooked finger to poke me in the breastbone. His breath reeked of staleness. “We must denounce Lancaster. Turn our backs on him, as he did us.”

So, he believed a spy and not me. Well enough, I thought. We would go to Shrewsbury, each for our own reasons.

While I paced, my uncle bustled about madly. He called for a pot of scalding water, although what he got was melted snow, and washed his face clean. With a frayed twig, he scrubbed at his teeth until his gums bled. All the while, he carped at his young page for being slack and getting in his way. When he had finished grooming, his body squire helped to dress him in full mail. Next, the squire fastened on his poleyns, greaves and arm plates and then belted on his sword. When my uncle’s ale was poured, the squire went out to see to the saddling of his horse. Only then did my uncle pause in his frenzy to rest. I had not seen him so vigorous in months. But as he held his cup, I could see his hands trembling with weakness and the fear stark in his sunken eyes.

As much as he sometimes aggravated me, his recalcitrance had always been a part of his very sinew. To see it gone from him
 ...
I found it hard to look upon him thus. I needed to leave. There were matters that required attention and not enough hours to do them all. “You wish to go later – in the afternoon?”

“I wish – ” A cough tore through his words. He let the cup fall from his grasp with a clatter and braced his hands on his knees until the fit had passed. Before he straightened, he spat at his feet and drew a shaking hand across his mouth. His words were raspy, his tone wistful. “I wish to get it bloody over with. After this, I’m going to go back to Chirk – that is if the king keeps his word. That is where I’ll stay, until I die.” He laughed dryly. “If I make it so far.”

I nodded, understanding that he had at last abandoned his stubborn pride and yielded to reason. Hastily, I backed out through the flap. A pair of light hands grabbed my shoulders and spun me around. Edmund. I passed him the letter.

He did not take even a moment to think it over. “I’m coming with you.”

“You’re to stay here,” I told him flatly.

Word had spread rapidly. The camp buzzed with preparations: the honing of blades, the packing of supplies, the strapping of armor and the fitting of bowstrings on their staves.

“Why?” He threw a sweeping glance around him at our diminishing army of rebels. We both knew that they were as much preparing for a fight, as they were preparing to run. “Lord Badlesmere is my father-in-law. I’ve as many marks against me as you, if not more. I’d rather go to the king and pray for mercy than have him come after me. If he’s in a forgiving mood, as Pembroke says, it’s best we all take advantage of it, don’t you think?”

“Go to Picardy. Find your brother Geoffrey there.”

“Run and leave Elizabeth to languish in the Tower? What would that say of me?”

The gnawing feeling in my gut told me not to let him come, but there was a raw truth to his argument. I pushed past him to find Maltravers.

*****

Snow was falling in huge, wet chunks when we went to meet Pembroke at the south end of the bridge. On the floodplain of the Severn, the king’s soldiers flanked us on both sides. I knew as we rode between them toward the earl there was no turning back. My bones jarred with every stride of my mount and the stiffness of my muscles plagued me. Even so, my blood coursed with alertness, as if I were marching to battle to fight for my life. In a way, I was. Only it would be words, not weapons, I would fight with.

I held a flat palm up to Pembroke as we halted our horses. “You said you had proof against Lancaster.”

“I do,” he said.

“What proof?”

“A letter intercepted near Pontefract. Written to the Bruce. Lancaster signed it as ‘King Arthur’.”

My uncle spat and planted a fist on his hip. “I could call myself ‘Merlin’ if I wanted to. What sort of proof is that?”

“Proof enough,” Pembroke said.

“And where is this proof?” I asked. “Do you have it with you now?”

“I do not.” Pembroke’s left eyebrow crept upward. He tilted his head back. “The king does.”

My uncle had nothing to say to that. True or not – and in likelihood, it was – if Edward believed it, he would be bent on getting his revenge on Lancaster for betraying him with the Scots. With the king’s anger focused on Thomas of Lancaster, we were the lesser of two evils.

Pembroke swore on his honor the king would grant us pardons, although they would not come without cost: heavy fines, the loss of lands, and the stripping of high titles. It was a sore point with my uncle that almost sent him back to our camp, but I convinced him that in time Edward could be reminded of Mortimer loyalty and our influence among Marcher lords. I do not think he believed me. He simply had no more will to argue.

I rode beside the Earl of Pembroke, with Edmund and Uncle Roger behind us, over the bridge and into Shrewsbury. Twenty of the king’s soldiers escorted us through the slushy streets of the town, up the icy hill and to the castle gates. There, only after we gave up our weapons, were we led beneath the portcullis onto the castle grounds. King Edward stood waiting in the outer bailey for us. Next to him were many of those who had lately abandoned us: Arundel and Surrey among them, as well as the king’s brother, Thomas, Earl of Norfolk.

My uncle, Edmund and I tumbled down from our mounts and sank to our knees without taking a step. In a casual manner, Pembroke also dismounted and went forward to bow before the king.

“Well done, Lord Pembroke,” Edward trilled. A gleeful smile lit his face. “Well done.” An ermine-lined cloak swung from his shoulders and dragged the snowy ground as he circled us in triumph.

His head still bowed, Pembroke announced, “Lord Roger of Chirk, Sir Roger of Wigmore and his son, Edmund Mortimer come to offer their – ”

“I know why you went to fetch them,” Edward snapped. “They wouldn’t be here otherwise.”

Pembroke raised his chin, a slight look of bafflement clouding his brow. “Perhaps you wish to hear it from them, my lord king?”

“They can say whatever they want. They can sacrifice themselves to the Virgin Mary, for all I care. It doesn’t change what they have done. It is treasonous. And treason is unpardonable.”

Deep in the pit of my stomach, a knot drew tighter by the moment. I felt my uncle’s hot gaze turn on me.

“You promised you would procure our pardons,” I said aside to Pembroke.

“He tried,” Edward said, his lips curving into a sardonic smile as he stepped before me tauntingly, “valiantly. But I am not of a humor to grant any of late. Besides,
you
said you would go home, lay down your arms, and send your men away. That is not at all what you did. Instead, you continued to plot rebellion against me with the Earl of Lancaster.”

I chose not to argue with him over what constituted ‘rebellion’. Instead, I remembered my uncle’s words and played our acquiescence against Lancaster’s intractability. “Sire, Lancaster is not here. We are. And we disavow him and humbly submit to you. My uncle and I admit our wrong. We will do as you bid. Surely that begs some leniency?” It took every bit of my will to speak such terrible untruths, but if outright supplication was not enough for King Edward, nothing was.

With a gloved hand he brushed the snow from the red Plantagenet lions adorning the front of his surcoat. “A trifle, perhaps. Only a trifle. Pembroke was not altogether wrong in what he told you, although he took tremendous liberties with it. I was merely musing aloud when I spoke it. I will let you live – today. But you’re to be put away until it is decided what to do with you. I cannot run the risk of your cohorts clumping around you and whispering of insurrection again. Treason is a poison to kings, and a king is the beating heart of a kingdom. So I will keep you where it is safest. For me. For England.” He paused and cut Pembroke a cunning glance. “In the Tower.”

Pembroke’s countenance hardened. His arms stiffened and his fingers, slowly, curled into fists of stone. He understood the implication as well as I did. The Tower of London was where traitors awaited their deaths. I knew by his look that he had not known of this. The king had conceded to him merely to lure us into giving up. He had betrayed Pembroke as well as us.

With a flick of the king’s fingers, a swarm of guards rushed forward and began to strip us of our armor and mail. My uncle flailed his arms and cursed Edward, but the king walked away without a backward glance. His retinue of new bloods trailed after him up the steps to the great hall. There they would raise their wine goblets, exhilarated by their conquest of the rebels, and sing honeyed phrases to the glory of King Edward while they drank themselves beneath the tables.

We never saw the inside of Shrewsbury Castle, never stepped within its warmth or were offered a meal to silence our rumbling bellies. Our hands were tied with rope that smelled of damp hay and manure. Like livestock loaded up for market, we were shoved onto the bed of a wagon and taken away.

A single falsehood had robbed us of our freedom. Meanwhile, Edward was free to do as he pleased. Not a lord was left in England who would dare defy him.

6

Roger Mortimer:

Tower of London – February, 1322

THE ROPE THAT BOUND my hands together burned raw into my flesh. My wrists had been chafed bloody on the first day, the cords drawn so tight that my fingers went numb. I dared not turn or stretch my hands even slightly to try to relieve the discomfort. If I developed an infection, they would gladly let me rot to death.

The slumbering countryside rolled by in a blur; the dull gray of a winter sky blending with the mud-brown of earth. A dense mantle of smoke lay still and suffocating above the rooftops of the towns. Deep, bone-biting cold enveloped the land, sinking its teeth into exposed flesh. Every tree limb and grass stem was covered in a pearly frost. Small rivers had frozen into ribbons of ice. Had I been a free man, instead of a prisoner mired in gloom, I might have seen some beauty in it.

I wedged my fingers between my knees to warm them. The wagon that my uncle, Edmund and I were being transported in rattled incessantly. I drifted between half-sleep and hazy wakefulness. In my more lucid hours, I searched the faces of passing strangers. I hoped beyond hope that some old ally would come to our rescue. But no one afforded us more than a glance of mockery. Most dared not look at all with the king’s livery surrounding us.

I hungered. Hurt. Slept hardly at all. Lost count of the number of days we were on the road, even though it must have been no more than a week. Always, day slipped into night without distinction.

Suddenly, the right front wheel plummeted into a hole. My head banged against the back plank of the driver’s seat and my teeth came down sharply on my tongue. Before I could recover from the jolt, the wagon bounced upward. My chin snapped forward onto my chest. A blow of pain hammered through the back of my head and down my neck. I thought the axel might break and we would be tumbled into the roadway to be crushed by the hooves of the guards’ horses, but the wagon wobbled unstoppably on.

I looked around only to discover it was night again. Somehow, I had slept. To my left, still as a dog lazing by the hearth, my son Edmund lay flat on his back. Blankly, he gazed up at the stars through a rare break in the clouds. Since leaving Shrewsbury he had not spoken at all. Rather than flee to Picardy, where his younger brother Geoffrey served in the household of Joan’s relatives, the de Fiennes, Edmund had chosen to stay and fight beside me. But it had not been much of a fight for him thus far. At Bridgnorth I would not even allow him to take part in the assault across the bridge. I had wanted to keep him safe. At Shrewsbury, I had delivered him straight into Edward’s hands. Now this. A bleak end to a life barely begun.

 Except for Edmund and Geoffrey, the rest of my children were at Wigmore with Joan. King Edward would have sent a small army there by now. I might never know what had become of them, or the child Joan was expecting. I would not be there to give it a name.

“There are things,” I whispered to Edmund, “that I never had a chance to tell you, to teach you.”

He turned his face toward me, his lips drawn tight with dread, only long enough so I could glimpse the quenched hope behind his eyes.

“Fight only when forced to,” I went on, “and when you do, let others take the advance. Never lower your shield until the one you are fighting has spent himself. A knight must not waste himself with rash – ”

The wagon driver threw a look at me over his shoulder and growled a warning. I went quiet, the oppressive silence tightening like a rope around my throat. Soon, the monotonous rumble of the wheels lulled the driver into a stupor, but by then Edmund had closed his eyes. Whether he truly slept or was merely shutting me out, I did not know.

On my right, my uncle lay curled on his side away from me, his face averted so that he, too, would not meet my eyes. He blamed me. Still. He would rather have rushed to his own slaughter at Shrewsbury than bend his knee to the king and be dragged away like a common thief to meet an ignominious end on the Tower Green.

“It was not Pembroke who failed us,” I muttered at the back of Uncle Roger’s head, risking a beating from our guards. “He tried to influence the – ”

“You’re a fool!” he spat.

I looked down at my lap. “If Lancaster had – ”

“Fool!” he repeated. He drew his head deep into his shoulders like a badger retreating into its burrow. His entire body was coiled so tight with anger one touch more might have unraveled him altogether.

The driver and closest mounted guard laughed. Probably, they figured my uncle’s shunning of me was punishment enough.

In my uncle’s eyes, I deserved no forgiveness.

I gazed at Edmund’s face, ashen as a funeral effigy. So young. And I, although not old, already had much to look back on. But, what more did I have to live for? Children I rarely saw? A wife who did not love me? Not those things, no. I had been a rich and powerful man, thousands at my command, heady with my victories in battle. Efficient in office as the King’s Lieutenant of Ireland. A man on the verge of an earldom.
If not for the all-encompassing greed of Hugh Despenser.
Had I died in battle at Shrewsbury fighting for all I had gained, then it was Despenser who would have won, without even being there. With the resistance to Edward’s tyranny dissolved, it was only a matter of time before he beckoned Despenser back to England. I could not stop that from happening now. Not bound and bleeding in the back of a wagon. Not locked up in the Tower as the king’s prisoner. Not swinging dead from a traitor’s rope.

But if I lived – and lived long enough – one day, I could have my revenge.

*****

I could tell we had arrived at the city’s edge simply by the power of its nauseating stench. Our wagon rumbled into London at the darkest hour of night. The timing of our arrival was well planned. The streets were hushed and vacant. Only the occasional yowling of a cat in season or the alert yap of a dog sliced through the dead air.

When we entered the city at Ludgate, a surly guard dismounted, clambered into the wagon bed and one by one covered each of us with a moth-eaten, mildewed blanket. Out of habit, for I had always hated London and avoided it at all costs, I muttered about the odor and swiftly felt the toe of his boot to my gut.

“Quiet, bastard traitor!”

I was not spoken to again until we reached the inner bailey of the Tower of London. There, they snatched the blanket away and pitched me sideways from the wagon. My elbow and chest slammed against the cobbles. Air was sucked from my lungs. Before I could draw breath, Edmund landed across my legs, tumbled over, and banged his head on the stones. He gritted his teeth to keep from crying out, but a long hiss of pain escaped his mouth. I choked and sputtered as I fought to breathe. Then I saw another shadow wobbling above me. There was an irascible grunt, followed by a spit and a curse.

They hurled my uncle from the wagon. My torso broke his fall; only he did not land with the lithe reactions of my son, but the dead weight of an old man stiff in the joints. I tried to inhale, but his weight crushed me. My lungs would not expand. Down low my ribs burned with pain, as though someone had plunged a flaming poker into me.

“Get
 ...
off,” I gasped.

They hoisted him to his feet and began to drag him away.

I tucked my right elbow beneath me to roll over, but the pain burst through me again. With my hands still bound, I could not push myself up with either of them. The scrape of fading footsteps urged me to try again. I lifted my other shoulder and turned my head enough to see, in the silver etchings of a winter night, my uncle being escorted toward one of the tower doors. A virulent sneer tore from his lips.

“May you rot in hell!” he shouted at me. His crackling voice echoed off the high walls like the shattering of glass. They shoved him headlong through the doorway. He cursed again. The door slammed shut. Then
 ...
the sound of a beating. His profane oaths were muffled by fist blows, until at last they faded to heavy sobs and drawn-out whimpers.

On his knees, Edmund shook his head. Slowly, he turned his face toward me. A trickle of blood traced its way from the indent of his temple to the ridge of his cheekbone. “He did not mean it,” he said barely above a whisper.

At that, one of the guards seized him by the back of his shirt, yanked him to his feet and slammed a fist into his belly. “Keep your mouth shut, you hear?”

Edmund crumpled against the wagon, his eyes squeezed tight in pain. Before he could recover, they hooked their hands beneath each of his arms and were taking him away, too. Had I any breath to spare, I would have called after him. With stoic courage, Edmund lifted his head, picked up his feet, and kept silent so they would not give him the same pummeling they had given his great uncle. He was escorted to the same door, but when it was opened there was neither sight nor sound of my uncle. Edmund dodged to the side to avoid being slammed into the doorway as they jostled him through.

Vaguely, I was aware of the clop of hooves, the wagon rattling away over the stones, a barking of orders, the groaning of a gate, and the slow murmur of deep voices from behind me.

“ – the Lanthorn Tower. There is a room for him there. Mind you, no one is to speak to him.”

Measured footsteps approached me from behind. I felt a pair of hands lift me carefully up until I was sitting. I winced involuntarily.

A man in full mail and wearing the king’s red and gold stepped around me and sank to his haunches. His balding head, bare of coif or helmet, was fringed with close shorn chestnut locks and streaked with the first white hairs of middle age. “A bit bruised, aren’t you?” He began to probe about my head with lightly jabbing fingers and worked his way down my neck and shoulders. When he came to my last two ribs on the right, I clenched my jaw, but there was a little groan deep inside my throat he must have heard, for he drew his hands away and stood. “Take him away. And see to his injuries. ‘Tis the king who says whether he lives or dies, and when, not us.”

Silently, I thanked him for that grace, however morbid.

*****

A shaft of white daylight broke through the single window of my room. I stretched my arms outward, only to feel the pain clamp around my ribcage. It had worsened through the night, but I had been so grateful for a mattress and a blanket, despites the lumps and fleas, that I went dead with sleep minutes after lying down. Besides a real bed, I had been given a room with a chair, although its cushion was flat and its red cloth frayed, and a cracked chamber pot. Slowly, I pushed my blanket away and eased my feet onto the floor. I curled my fingers into loose fists and unrolled them one by one. The scabs on my wrists were puckering. I turned my arms over. No fresh blood. No sign of infection. I draped the blanket over my cramped shoulders and hobbled across the room in six small pain-riddled strides. Winter wind leaked around the leaded panes of the recessed window. My view was of the waterfront and the Thames itself. I guessed from my height above the river that I was housed on the uppermost floor.

I heard a scraping sound and looked over my shoulder. But it was only a mouse, scurrying from under the bed into a tiny hole between the stones at floor level. I leaned back against the cold, rough wall and gazed out at the world beyond. A world to which I no longer belonged. Below, fishing boats slipped downriver on their way out to open sea. Merchants’ barges slogged past them against the current. One maneuvered into a wharf to unload sacks of grain. The sun beamed bright over London, alive with activity, but I felt only the icy fingers of winter slip beneath my tunic to steal the warmth from my flesh and the pain sharp in every rattled bone and bruised muscle.

At intervals, I heard dampened voices through the thickness of the door. Mostly, there was only silence and the faint clack of boot heels from the sentries along the walls connecting the towers. Finally, the latch turned. Hinges squeaked. The door opened. A guard shuffled in, flashed me a look of contempt, and flung a hunk of bread and a cup of drink on the floor next to the door. Had I remarked on how he had spilt half the drink in his carelessness, I would have gotten a rude welcome from him. He backed out. Two others behind him parted, but instead of one of them reaching to close the door, another stepped between them and entered. It was the man who had given the orders to send me here last night. He gestured for the guards to close the door.