The King Must Die (The Isabella Books) (19 page)

I did—brutally so. Edward’s faith in Mortimer had been tenuous from the beginning. Still in his minority, Edward was guided by the regency council, over which Mortimer and I held considerable influence ... but it would not be so forever. Our hold on him would one day be undone, just as the jesses on Philippa’s little merlin had been untied to set it free.

If I trusted my son, if I believed in him, why did I so dread that day?

14

Isabella:

Berwick — July, 1328

T
he journey to Berwick was the longest I had ever endured. I was giving away my youngest child, sweet little Lady Joanna, handing her into rough Scottish hands to live and grow up in that frightfully cold, wind-torn, wild and uncivilized land. The now very public objections of the young king only exacerbated the guilt that already plagued me.

Furthermore, relations between Mortimer and me had decayed into bouts of hurtful spite. Even after leaving Ludlow, we slept apart. We spoke only of political matters, and then tersely so. While I treated him with open scorn, he returned quiet contempt. We were silently at war, although what either of us was fighting to gain, I do not know. Perhaps he wished for my forgiveness. Perhaps he resented my envy and no longer loved me for that pettiness. We were both proud. Each of us blamed the other. Why is it that when we are hurting most we seek to hurt others?

Desperately, I wanted to tell Mortimer what Philippa had confided in me, but I could not, in my heart, forgive what I believed to be true—that he had lain with Joan, that he loved her still, always had ... and that he had only used me to gain his revenge on Edward of Caernarvon and achieve his power hold on England.

Such were my preoccupations while I held Joanna’s hand as she was wedded to the four-year old David of Scotland. Joanna held herself proud and tall, bejeweled and draped in shimmering cloth like a doll painted into adult clothing, well-rehearsed in the role for which she had been diligently groomed. David, however, fidgeted, whined and tugged at his leggings like a fitful infant. Next to him stood Sir James Douglas, his black radiant hair curling behind his ears and coming to rest on his slender shoulders. His ghostly pale eyes looked straight into my soul with every furtive glance.

Oh, how the very mention of his name, the ‘Black Douglas’, had once stricken my heart with terror! Twice, I had nearly fallen prisoner to him. More recently he had almost taken the young king at Stanhope Park. Douglas alone had virtually been the undoing of the English. Yet in spite of his fearsome reputation, James Douglas was nothing but dignified in his demeanor, his words barely above a whisper whenever he spoke. He even displayed the care of an older, concerned brother when he whisked little David aside to change the prince’s soiled clothing near the ceremony’s end. The prince was too young to be embarrassed by the event; others, however, would remember.

As we feasted that evening, I wore the bravest face I could, but I don’t think I smiled the whole night long. When Edward and Philippa were married, it had been a joyful day—because I truly believed they loved and had chosen one another. But this day was different. It was purely political—and completely my doing. Done for England’s preservation and benefit, whether Young Edward understood and approved or not.

And Joanna—she thought it only another holiday ... that she and I would be together again soon and her older sister Eleanor would come to visit her in the summers.

The next morning, I wept as James Douglas and Thomas Randolph pried her from my arms on the road outside Berwick. Joanna flapped her tiny arm at me in a wave as they sat her on her gray pony. Long before she was out of sight, she was already talking to everyone around her in that commanding, precocious tone of hers. I stood there, the scouring grit of road dust wafting over me, choking my throat, until she was gone from sight ... and still I stood there, waiting for the wedding party to turn around and for Joanna to come back.

“Isabella.”

A finger tapped at my shoulder and I turned
—
reluctantly, for I thought I had seen Joanna’s party crest another hill in the distance
—
and saw
Mortimer
, his mouth drawn downward in sympathy.

“It is not easy, I know,” he said, his arms enfolding me, “to let a child go. But it is easier for them than us.”

I sank into his comforting embrace. How I wanted to drown myself in him, if only to forget the heartache of that day.

***

York — September, 1328

Over and over on the monotonous ride south from Berwick, Mortimer told me it was a small sacrifice to make in the name of peace and that thousands of lives would be spared because of Joanna. It was, of course, the logical thing to say. Why, then, did it feel as though I had swallowed my heart? Perhaps because I had given my daughter into the care of that cold-hearted James Douglas. I had seen him kill a man at Tynemouth while I barely escaped with my own life.

A queen, however ... a queen cannot cling to such dread. A queen must do what is right for all. If only Young Edward could see the wisdom in the union, the benefits of it. He could not afford to wage the same perpetual war with Scotland that his father and grandfather had engaged in. It had to end. And the sacrifice I was willing to make was my daughter.

The days were yet warm, but the nights growing more chill, as we rode to Tynemouth, then to Durham and finally on to Pontefract. It was there that
Mortimer
learned that his son, Roger, had died in Ireland in a skirmish over shifting loyalties among clans.
Mortimer
grew quiet, but kept his composure, sorrow showing in the sunken corners of his mouth, the dark moons beneath his eyes growing heavier day by day.

Before leaving Pontefract,
Mortimer
made arrangements to have his Irish estates transferred from his namesake Roger to his third oldest son John on his eighteenth birthday ... but young John, so modest and full of promise, would never be able to partake of that wealth, for when we turned back north in order to attend an important council meeting in York and were within sight of the city, a rider from Shrewsbury raced up from behind our train.

The messenger dropped from his snorting mount in a billow of dust, barely dipping his knee before he plunged into his tidings.
Our procession staggered to a halt in a long line behind us.

“Your wife, Joan,” the messenger breathlessly said to Mortimer, pushing the brim of his cap up from a grime-covered forehead, “who was attending the tournament at Shrewsbury five days ago, wishes to inform you of the untimely and accidental death of your son, John. He was knocked unconscious from his horse in the first pass of the jousting championship. They say he failed to raise his shield in time. His opponent’s lance struck him in the forehead. Tremors gripped his body and grew worse and worse. He could not be revived. Lady Joan says that he died doing what pleased him most.”

Mortimer plummeted from his saddle as abruptly as if he had been toppled by a lance himself. For a moment, he stood there, hunched over, one hand pressed against his horse’s ribs to keep himself upright and one holding his head, before he sank to the ground, folding his head into his knees. Then he turned his cheek to the dirt and wept softly.

As if cued by his grief, the skies to the west blackened and the wind gained force. It was my turn, then, to be strong for Mortimer, even when I did not yet believe I could be. I knelt on the ground beside him.

“I should have told him,” Mortimer said hoarsely, “never to lower his shield.” He slammed a fist into the ground. “I should have told Roger, too.”

“Mortimer, my dear, gentle Mortimer ...” I stroked his back and shoulders, knowing that it was but a feeble solace to him at such an insufferable time. “I am so sorry. So terribly sorry. If there is any comfort, it was that you were able to be with John not long ago—Roger, as well.”

“Do not mock me with words,” he growled, clawing at the hard-packed dirt. The wind rippled across the back of his shirt and tossed dust into his face. “There is no fortune in the death of someone you love—
ever
.”

He spoke no more that day. Except for my personal attendants, I ordered the remainder of our retinue to find quarters within York. Parliament was set to take place in Salisbury in a few months, but rumors about Lancaster had bade me to summon a council meeting in York beforehand to settle matters. The timing, given the morbid news of Mortimer’s sons, could not have been worse.

***

Mortimer and I took up residence within the King’s Tower with its eagle’s view above the sweeping, rock-strewn moors. For two days he said very little, drifting through the daytime hours in a cloud of despondency. Meanwhile, the wind had shifted and a great, black storm thundered in from the north. Lightning flashed across the sky and cracked from dawn until noon, coming again in the evening and continuing on through the night so that it was impossible to sleep without being awoken with a jolt. A tithe barn to the west of the city caught fire and it was only the constant deluge from above that saved it from burning to the ground. Meanwhile, the wagon ruts in the roads filled up with deep mud, making them impassible. Soon, the streets of York flowed like rushing rivers.

There was nothing I could have said to Mortimer to ease his pain. He could not put his sorrow into words. He did not seem to want to. My loss of Joanna to the Scots no longer seemed a tragedy. She, if not happy, was at least alive and well. That, ironically, eased my misgivings.

Undoubtedly, the rains had delayed the arrival of Lancaster and the others. It was a small blessing the weather turned bad when it did, for Mortimer was in no state of mind for diplomacy. By our fourth evening in York, however, he gradually began to engage with the world around him. Still, he did not speak of his sons or the mortal ache in his heart.

He came to me after I had taken to bed for the night, dismissing Patrice almost insouciantly, as if his presence in my bedchamber had never ceased to be a regular occurrence. Patrice was dubious that she should abandon me, with him standing so insistently by and not altogether in his right mind, but I assured her it was all right. Ever eager to be with Arnaud, she gave no argument.

Mortimer and I had not been together intimately since before the weddings at Hereford, more than two months before. But as he stripped himself of every last thread of clothing and stood fully naked beside my bed while the silver light of a half-moon poured over him—as though his doing so was a right that had always been his—I could tell it was but a physical act to displace the anguish inside him.

He yanked aside the covers I was clutching to my breast, shoved my gown up to my midriff, and surveyed my body from foot to neck, lingering halfway ... but he would not meet my eyes. With all the mindless ceremony with which Edward of Caernarvon had once carried out the act, Mortimer climbed onto the bed and thrust his hips at me, missing his mark the first several times. His movements were jerky, his breathing shallow and rapid. He did not kiss me or touch me tenderly or whisper of eternal love into my ear after he ended with a gasp and a shudder. He merely rolled from me onto his back, his hands clasped across his stomach and a single tear rolling silently down his cheek.

“I would rather have died first,” he said, his voice so low and fragile I could barely hear it, “than to lose my sons before me.”

I laid my arm across his chest and held him until the glow of moonlight yielded to the shining light of a new day.

***

Lancaster never arrived in York, nor did Edmund of Kent or Thomas of Norfolk. Lancaster’s failure to appear was no surprise. It was, in fact, something of a relief, for even though Mortimer was coming out of his melancholy, he was commonly short on both tolerance and optimism. Had Lancaster shown up in a foul mood too soon after the deaths of Mortimer’s sons, it might have come to blows between them. But the fact that the king’s uncles had stayed away, as well ... that whispered of collusion.

More unsettling news came when we heard there had been a public outcry in London that threatened to erupt into havoc. The Abbot of Westminster was preparing to return the Stone of Scone to the Scots, as had been agreed to in the Treaty of Northampton. Instead of realizing the peace with Scotland would deliver prosperity to England, the people were regarding it as an act of treason. I was hard pressed to understand how they could view it so, but old prejudices are not easily shaken. In the end, the Stone stayed put and whether or not any Scottish kings would ever again be crowned while sitting on it remained to be seen.