Rebellion (36 page)

By the time the great guns were fired from
Calais, at about ten in the morning, Isabel's labour was already well established. For a
while they continued to advance, hoping that the gunfire would cease. But in the end
they were forced to retreat. They put down their anchor just out of reach of cannon fire
and waited, but no boat came out to them.

‘We had better sail on,' his captain said.
‘They will kill us if they can.'

‘They have to let us in,' his wife said. She
had been attending her daughter in the cabin and already looked haggard. ‘Isabel cannot
give birth here. She needs a proper bed, and clean water. And I am no midwife.'

After some dispute it was agreed to send out
the little boat with a messenger to Lord Wenlock, entreating him to let them land,
because his daughter's time had come.

The messenger departed with some reluctance,
unarmed, bearing emblems of peace.

When no shots were fired the earl began to
think it had all been some terrible mistake. Some fool had mistaken their ships for an
enemy fleet and opened fire. Once Wenlock had realized the mistake they would be
welcomed ashore.

He remained on the upper deck, where his
daughter's cries were drowned out by the calling of the gulls.

More than two hours later the little boat
returned. It dodged
and bobbed in the water and had some difficulty
approaching. Warwick helped to haul the messenger on board.

‘My lord,' he said, ‘they will not let us
in.'

Lord Duras, the marshal from Gascony, had
taken control of the port. Late last night an embassy had arrived from King Edward
forbidding them to allow the earl to land. As soon as he arrived they were to report to
the king.

Edward's soldiers now patrolled the
port.

‘Lord Wenlock sends wine for the Lady
Isabel,' the messenger said. ‘He hopes she will be well delivered.'

Then he took a scrap of paper from his
cloak. On it were words so inscrutable they might almost have been in code. But it was
Wenlock's handwriting.

If the earl were to sail round the coast,
land in Normandy and seek help from King Louis, he – Wenlock – and the Calais garrison
would support him. But he could do nothing for him while they were here.

The Earl of Warwick stared at the paper. Now
he would need a different plan.

But there was Isabel.

And the captain had said a storm was coming.
They would not be able to sail in any direction soon. But for the same reason Edward's
ships would find it difficult to follow them.

They would be relatively safe here for the
night. Unless Duras sent out his own ships.

‘Bring up the wine from the boat,' he
said.

When the wine was hoisted up he went below
deck to his wife.

There was a new note to Isabel's crying; a
pitiful, bleating tone.

His wife came out to him, wiping her hands
on a cloth. ‘Well?' she said.

‘We – have a change of plan,' said the earl.
His wife looked at him. He found it difficult to continue. ‘Lord Wenlock says he will
support us – if we sail to Normandy.'

His wife stared at him. ‘How long will that
take?'

‘I – we – cannot sail
tonight,' he said as she glared at him. ‘If the wind changes – then maybe a day or
two.'

His daughter gave a sharp cry.

‘She needs help
now
,' his wife
said. ‘A midwife – a surgeon even – or a priest.'

‘She is giving birth,' he said. ‘It is not
so unusual.'

His wife gave him a look of absolute
hostility. He had been nowhere near when either of his daughters had been born. ‘Listen
to me,' she said. ‘I may not know much about labour but I know this is not going well.
If we don't get help she may not survive.'

She did not add
and I will never forgive
you
, or any recriminations about their enforced flight so late in their
daughter's pregnancy, because there was no need.

He was saved from replying by his daughter,
who called out suddenly for him.

The earl pushed past his wife. It was not
usual for a man to be present in the birthing chamber, but nothing was usual in this
situation.

The sour smell of vomit and piss assailed
him – there was no air in the cabin. His daughter lay on a narrow bunk that was fixed to
the wall. Her knees were raised beneath a stained sheet.

He did not want to look at the stains. He
knelt at her side and took her hand as she moaned and writhed. ‘Isabel.'

‘Papa – it will not come.'

‘It will come, dearest – it is coming.'

She cried, a long, harrowing cry.

‘Isabel, listen to me – the child will come
– it is coming – it will be over soon and you will have a fine son.'

‘Papa,' she sobbed.

‘I know, I know – it's not good, my darling
– it's horrible – but it will end.'

‘It will end me.'

‘No,' said the earl and his wife together,
and the earl went on,
‘You will come through this, I promise, and you
will have a son. And you will look back and tell him how he was born at sea.'

Isabel gave another drawn-out howl, and the
earl held on to her hand without realizing how hard he was gripping it. His wife passed
him the cloth she was holding and he wiped his daughter's face.

‘I promise you,' he said as the cry
finished, ‘you will not remember any of this.'

His wife gave him a sour look. ‘You had
better bring the wine,' she said. But Isabel did not want him to go.

‘I have to go,' he said. ‘It's not good luck
for the baby.'

Isabel turned her face away and wept. His
wife left the room then reappeared with the wine, and propped her daughter up with one
arm to give her some, in the hope that it would act as an opiate. He remained long
enough to see her spew it out again in a stream of vomit that was greenish with bile,
then he backed away.

‘Find some clean sheets,' his wife said.

In the narrow passage he was stopped by his
son-in-law, Clarence. Clarence's face was reddened by drink, his eyes bloodshot.
Evidently he had found his own supply of wine.

‘How is she?' he said.

‘How do you think she is?'

‘I think,' said Clarence, holding on to the
wall as the ship lurched, ‘that she is having my son.'

The earl looked at him with dislike. ‘She's
not well,' he said.

‘But she will be well,' Clarence said. ‘And
my baby – he will be well too. And – we will be well together.'

The earl did not know if he hated or pitied
him in that moment. ‘Go and fetch the sheets from your bed,' he said, ‘and mine.'

They were not clean, exactly, but they were
cleaner than the ones she had.

‘But I'm in the middle of a game of cards,'
said Clarence. ‘To pass the time,' he added as he saw the expression on his
father-in-law's face.

‘You should be praying,' the earl said
shortly. ‘Get the sheets.'

Clarence turned and
stumbled away from him. Warwick returned to the top deck where he could see the walls of
Calais, the buildings of the town, the fortress. The light was already fading and the
wind blew a stream of clouds across the sky. The air was sharp with unfallen rain; the
predicted storm had not yet begun.

It was cold on the top deck, but he did not
want to go below again.

The clouds had formed themselves into a
solid mass now, extinguishing the light. Except that over Calais there was a band of
brilliant light, dazzling without warmth. Below it, the lights of Calais were appearing
like faint stars. Calais, centre of his hopes and dreams; his second home. He would have
launched an invasion of England from there. But now he was an exile from both lands.

He could not look at the sun and he could
not look at Calais. He closed his eyes.

Show me how to put it
right
,
he said silently,

The Earl of Warwick believed in God, of
course, he had never had any reason not to. Apart from the obvious frustration of having
no son, God had looked after him well.

And he had done his part; acted out the role
he had been given. He had dispensed munificence, fought frequently and well, made good
choices in the sense of knowing when to desert an unfortunate king for a more favoured
one.

Until that king had turned against him. Then
he had acted accordingly.

How could anyone act except in accordance
with his situation?

He did not believe he had done wrong. He did
not know, any more, that there was such a clear distinction between right and wrong,
action and reward or punishment. Look at all the people killed in battle – all the
people he had killed, in fact – for no other reason than that they were there.

They were there, most of them, because their
lords had commanded them to be there. That was how they lived. And that, therefore, was
how they died. Not justice so much as cause and
effect. If he thought
further he could see the whole human race caught up in a maelstrom of cause and effect.
Was that why he was finding it so hard to pray?

He opened his eyes.

The band of celestial light had almost
disappeared. The rain and wind were steadily increasing. It made no sense to stay here,
yet the earl remained, hoping for a sign of the kind that other men were always claiming
to see.

When there was no sign he thought that maybe
he should beg for his daughter's life. But why should he have to? Did God not know he
would want his daughter and grandchild to survive? He pressed his head against the hard
mast. He was intimately acquainted with death; he knew that it had no respect for youth
or innocence.

I am asking you
, he prayed,
to
let her live.

Nothing. The lowering sky bent over the sea
like God's deaf ear. Then the storm was upon them.

The captain shouted at him to come down. It
was all he could do to descend the steps and go below deck once more.

Where Isabel cried and strained and begged
her mother to end it for her, now. And his wife's face, lit by intermittent flashes of
light, was greenish-pale. She would not look at or speak to him. Her back was stiff with
reproof.

Clarence sat in the doorway of his cabin
with his head in his hands. When he looked up his eyes were terrible, full of death.

The storm raged on until early morning, when
the wind dropped, the sea stilled and the sky turned to a pristine blue. And Isabel's
little son was born and did not draw breath.

She would not look at the baby or touch him.
‘Take it away!' she cried. Her mother ripped the last sheet and wound him in it and
placed him in a drawer. Then she lit a candle beside it and crossed herself and
prayed.

‘Take it away!' Isabel cried again. So her
mother went to the door and called for Clarence. And when he came she gave him the
drawer with the little corpse inside. Clarence looked at her in
horror
as though he might be sick; she had to tell him quite sharply to take it to one of the
ship's men to cover it. Then she went back into the cabin to clear up what mess she
could.

After a while the Earl of Warwick came and
sat on his daughter's bed and smoothed a strand of her hair from her face. ‘Isabel,' he
said.

His daughter's breathing was rough. She
looked at him as though she did not recognize him.

There was no priest to baptize the child,
and no one seemed to want to give him a name. But he could not simply be dropped into
the ocean to feed the fishes and the gulls. There was the question of his afterlife.

There was no choice but to send him to
Calais in the hope that Lord Wenlock would arrange a Christian burial for him. Though
none of them might attend.

The same messenger as before was dispatched
with the little casket and a message for Lord Wenlock. When the task was done, it said,
they would depart. He stood with Clarence and his younger daughter, Anne, watching the
small boat leave with its tiny cargo. Clarence looked exhausted, and ill. The Earl of
Warwick also felt exhausted, and older than his forty-one years. He had not seen his
grandson, nor held him, but the sight of the tiny makeshift coffin made him want to
weep.

Yet it was not so unusual for a baby to die.
He and his wife had suffered stillbirths and survived. Clarence and Isabel were young,
eighteen and twenty, and could have more children, though this was perhaps not the time
to mention it.

God had granted his wish for his daughter to
live at least.

In the same instant he realized that he had
not asked for his grandchild to live. He felt a wash of horror, a deep internal
cold.

But it was nonsense, of course, a primitive
superstition. What kind of God would take him so literally at his word? Better to
believe in no God, or one that was deaf and blind, rather than a malevolent one.