The King Must Die (The Isabella Books) (28 page)

He turned his head away. “No, our sins are ours—forever.” Then he strode abruptly from me, picked up a loose-fitting nightshift of mine and handed it gruffly to me. “But sins can be forgiven, Isabella. A reputation, once sullied, is always stained. And power, once lost, is almost never salvageable.”

Mortimer retrieved his shirt from the bed and the rest of his clothing from the floor. I kept my eyes from him as he dressed himself, the cold air from a dwindling hearth fire raising goose bumps on my flesh. I shivered, but I could not move. I only wanted him to go—away from me, forever—and let me deal with this alone, somehow.

Before leaving, he said one more thing:

“If you have the child, Isabella, I will not claim it. Someone, conveniently, will have seen another man, or perhaps several, entering and leaving your private chambers at all hours. They will call you a whore, cram you in the dungeon and let you deliver the child alone, in the darkness and filth, then rip it crying from your arms.” There was a hint of smugness in his voice—a tone I had heard him use often with others, but never once before with me.

He went toward the door.

“And I will say you raped me,” I threatened.

He shut the door firmly behind him. I would never have said that he had raped me—never. Not even if he levied ridiculous claims of my own lechery to foul my name and exclude himself from accusations of having fathered a child on me. I only meant to make him pause, to reconsider his ultimatum. He could not dictate what I would do with the life inside me. Such decisions did not belong to either of us, but to God.

And yet, as I stood there shivering, my knees wobbling, the sloshing bile in my stomach threatening to spew fire over my tongue, I wanted to melt into a puddle on the floor and never rise up again ... wanted this cruel irony of a nightmare to vanish like a thinning mist in the pale light of dawn.

I did not know what to do. Did not know what was right. I only knew that so many things that I had done ... were wrong.

By letting the child live, I would be inviting a series of calamities on Mortimer, on myself, on my son, on France and England and a hundred thousand untold souls.

Yet of all the terrible things I had done in my life, reasoning them away, I always told myself that the good in the end was worth the wrong in the moment. But this time I resisted turning down that path once more, for I did not know when it would ever end, this ugly, damning life of lies and secrets.

What I have known with you, Mortimer—a joy so intense and private it has riddled my heart with scars that will never heal—it cannot go on forever.

This stirring within me ... if I must choose between it and you, Mortimer—this is my new beginning.

My soul drained dry, I slipped my nightshift over my head in a haze, slinked back to bed, gathering the sheets and blanket along the way, and crawled beneath their crumpled mess. I lay awake for a long, long while, wishing that I could feel something ... anything. But it was as if I had nothing left within me—neither love, nor hatred, neither joy, nor dismay, certainty nor doubt.

Nothing but an emptiness so big that it could douse the light of day and darken all the heavens forever.

Nothing.

***

Patrice pinched my upper arm, rousing me abruptly from a hard sleep. I cracked open my eyes to blindingly bright morning light, then swiftly shut them again to close out the world.

“What time is it? Have I slept the day away?” I drawled. I did not want to rise from the warm security and solitude of my bed and set my feet upon the cold floor to pretend my way through another impossibly bleak day. “Oh, let me be, Patrice. Go away.”

“Isabeau,” she whispered urgently, “I must tell you something. Please, it cannot wait.” She shook me so hard that it rattled the bones in my neck.

Scowling in objection, I sat up and scooted beyond her clawing reach. My own sudden movements elicited a wave of nausea, reminding me of the previous night’s happenings. I sank back into my pile of pillows, wishing that they would swallow me up and spare me whatever crisis Patrice was about to deliver. With all the troubles this past year between Lancaster’s insurrection, Kent’s death and now ...

Dare I ask what more could go wrong?

“Do I want to know, Patrice? Tell me good news, or tell me naught at all.”

A pout tugged at her lower lip. She looked down at the floor, concern evident in the lines of her face. “Lord Roger’s life is in danger.”

It felt as though a knife had been punched between my ribs, letting all the air in my lungs rush out. “How so? By whom?” Brutally awake now, I scrambled to the edge of the bed to sit beside Patrice. I tried to steady myself, but my head was suddenly throbbing in whiteness, my heart accelerating to an impossible pace. I held my breath. “Lancaster?” But even as I asked it, it did not make sense. Lancaster had been subdued, the fight whipped from him. There had not been so much as a grumbling of discontent from his diminished domain of late.

Patrice shook her head. “The king.”

I grabbed her by the arm. “What are you saying? What proof do you have?”

She looked at me crossly. “I would not lie about this. Lord Roger has had Arnaud follow Montagu closely. Less than an hour ago behind the Black Boar Inn, Arnaud overhead Montagu speaking to someone. He could not hear everything, but he heard enough. There was mention of arrest, a swift trial ... and Lord Roger’s name over and over and ...” She kept shaking her head, as though she, too, wished it not to be true.

I slipped from the bed to kneel before her, clamping both my hands upon her knees. “Tell me, Patrice—who was Montagu speaking to?”

“I-I-I do not know.” Tears filled her eyes. “Arnaud did not know the voice. Could not see who it was.”

“Did Montagu say when?”

“No, no ... voices, other people, were coming near. Arnaud did not want to be seen. He came to me at once, so I could tell you.”

I didn’t know where Mortimer was now. Likely far away. But I had to find him. I began to stand, but my lightheadedness slowed me. I waited a moment before speaking again, seeking out the bedpost to hold myself upright. As soon as my head cleared, I swallowed back the sour taste that gushed up. “Patrice ... how do you know the king has anything to do with this?”

She bit at her lip. The tears began to spill over the rims of her eyes. “Because Montagu said ... that it was the king’s wish ... to stop him.”

I almost asked: ‘Stop him from what?’, but I already knew. Young Edward had had enough of being mothered, guided, supervised ... being told what to do.

If he believes his father is alive ... What if he already knows ... something? Something that even I do not?

A sharp pain flared in the lower depths of my belly. I gripped the bedpost, but my knees began to give. Then, I fell to the floor, my cheek scraping raw down the gnarled length of the carved bedpost. Patrice plunged beside me, throwing her arms around me, trying to lift me up.

“I will find him,” she said.

As she began to pull away I grappled at her arm. “Please, no ... Don’t go. Send someone else for him. I need you here, with me.” The pain burned hot somewhere deep inside me. “Please, don’t go-o-o ...” My words turned to a howl. Patrice slipped her arm around me. I tried hard simply to breathe, but I struggled. I captured air in gasps, guttural, uncontrollable moans escaping my throat in between, until I began to breathe more regularly. Eventually, the pain ebbed. My head began to clear. Still, something was not right.

Patrice left to seek help.

“Lord Jesus Christ ... help me,” I pleaded softly into folded hands. “If this be Your will—be swift. Do not make this child suffer for what I have done.”

For I will suffer until my end. But it is not yet time to mourn this unborn child. Not yet.

Part III:

Sweet father, here unto thy murdered ghost

I offer up the wicked traitor’s head,

And let these tears, distilling from mine eyes,

Be witness of my grief and innocency.

Edward III

from Christopher Marlowe’s
Edward II

22

Isabella:

Nottingham — October, 1330

I
n the hours it took to find Mortimer, my pains had ebbed and faded. I could not stay on my back like a helpless invalid. Patrice berated me for pacing from door to window and back again a hundred times, but I simply could not keep still, even as weakened as I was. He had turned from me when I needed him most; still, I could not let ill befall my gentle Mortimer. We were like two trees whose roots and branches had intertwined with the years, growing stronger as a pair. If one tree died and fell, the other would surely follow.

Love is measured not in moments, but in eternity. Not in fleeting gestures, but in sacrifices large.

***

The iron keys of Nottingham Castle dangled from Mortimer’s fingers. He closed the bedchamber door and held them out to me.

“Keep them with you at all times. Lock every door yourself at dusk. Then put them beneath your pillow, so that no hand may touch them but yours.”

I twined the cord at my waist around my fingers. “How long have you had Montagu followed?”

His brow was sternly fixed. “Months. You see now why?”

Lifting a candle from its sconce, I lit several more—three on the center table, two on the mantel, two more in their sconces on the far wall. The more light to read his countenance by, the better. I turned away, searching out shadows. “You have kept this from me, as well?”

“‘As well’ as what?”

The clank of the keys made me turn back to him. He had lowered his hand.

“‘As well’ as what?” he repeated flatly. The terse delivery of his words indicated that time was essential and that giving me the keys was not a trifling matter.

“I don’t know, Roger. Since we are full of confessions today, perhaps you could begin yours?”

He came at me so suddenly I backed into a linen chest and nearly toppled over it. But he only lifted my hand from my side, uncurled my fingers and pressed the weighty ring of keys into my reluctant grip. “Some rumors are worth listening to. They are the first hint of the truth. Rebels who had been hiding out on the continent, led by Thomas Wake, were gathering in Wales. They have been dealt with, but Lancaster denied any knowledge of their plans. Still, I do not trust his word.”

The ‘rebels’ he referred to were those who had fled England after Edmund of Kent’s execution. While I couldn’t deny that we had made enemies, suspicion was overruling his sensibilities.

“Lancaster is old and blind,” I said, “and no threat to either of us.”

“Old and blind, yes. But not a threat? Good God, you would let your worst enemies eat at your table and dribble poison in your drink as you laughed at their jokes. I warn you, Isabella. Watch those closest to you. Watch them. Trust no one. They do not seek to whittle away at your power, but to squeeze it from you like a butcher wrings a chicken’s neck. They think only of themselves, not of England’s preservation.”

He circled a chair by the window, but rather than sit, he braced himself against it from behind, his fingers locked on its back. “You think this is all in my head, I know. But I have spies. Excellent spies. In many places. Months ago the first rumors reached me. Or maybe it was a year? It all runs together so much. I dismissed them then, thinking myself invincible, thinking I had too many friends and allies. Too many who owed me for their good fortune. But not so. Bloody not so. The only ones truly loyal to me are those in my direct employment ... and even them I keep a close eye on. Someone has betrayed me and I will find them out. I will.

“I sleep with a knife beneath my pillow, did you know? God help the one who wakes me from a nightmare and feels the cold slip of a blade between his ribs. Twice since coming to Nottingham, I have pricked my knife to Arnaud’s throat. I would have drained the blood from him before opening my eyes had he not whispered his name to me. A curse to live so. To never sleep. I cannot help but look into someone’s eyes and see malice in their hearts, even as they kiss my cheek and proclaim their loyalty. Arnaud alone do I trust. You, as well, Isabella. Two people in the entire world. Only two. Thus, I fear for you both. And that dread hangs as heavy on me as my own shadowy death.” He pressed his lower ribs to the back of the chair, leaning heavily on it, his eyes darting to the door and then to the window, although there was nothing but pitch blackness to gaze upon outside. “Time to confront Edward, force this all out in the open. This whispering and plotting and conspiring to rebel—it must end.”

More and more of late, Mortimer spoke as a king speaks, as if his every word and deed were law and unquestionable. That someone dared defy him or sought to shake his hold on power fed the fires of vindictiveness in him. Once, he had followed Edward of Caernarvon’s orders faithfully and when he questioned his liege lord he had been punished for it. Now he sought to do that very thing to others, to be the suppressor and not the suppressed, the master and not the servant.

“How will you put an end to it? And what, precisely?” I asked bluntly, for knowing what Mortimer had kept from me in the past I had no designs on prolonging the secrecy between us. “It’s the king—my son—you speak of now.”

“It’s your son who is planning to do away with me,” Mortimer retorted with a snarl, pushing himself away from the chair to take a more offensive stance. “Should I lie down in the corner, belly up, and wait for him to trip across me and kick me until I crawl away whimpering like a small cur?
I
raised him up.
I
put him on the throne.”

I wanted so much to spew out every grievance I bore with Mortimer—grievances that were mounting by the moment. Young Edward would have come to the throne with or without Mortimer eventually. Mortimer alone did not put him there. “You have forgotten that my brother Charles gave you succor when you were an outcast. You have forgotten Count William of Hainault. Without him, we would never have had the men and means to land on England’s shores. Kent and Norfolk, who opened their arms to us. Lancaster, even, who did likewise. And what of Bishop Orleton, who saw that your life was spared to begin with?”
And me. What would you have ever been or done without me?
“Confront the king if you will, but take a moment to hear him out, Roger. Give him a way out of this, before it’s too late.”

The wry curve of his lips revealed that he was not swayed in the least. “Why?
He
doesn’t seek compromise. No, I know too much already, Isabella. He wants to sever a diseased limb in its entirety: me. You, even.” A full smirk twisted Mortimer’s mouth. He tilted his head, almost as if he heard a voice whispering to him from somewhere. “Yes, I will ‘hear him out’, as you say. But you may not like what you hear.”

***

Young Edward loped into the meeting chamber with Montagu following at a respectful distance of five strides, pausing whenever the king paused, picking up pace likewise. The king threw himself into one of the two empty chairs opposite ours, slouching with one eye open and one closed. As Montagu planted himself along the wall between the king and the open door, Edward nodded once to affirm that his guard post—a pocket of shadow tucked in the corner—was well chosen.

Mortimer indicated to the guards flanking the door to close it and remain outside. There were only the four of us, eyeing each other warily. I found it a wonder, if Mortimer had been correct at all about his suspicions regarding Edward, that the king had elected to come without a formidable host of guards. Edward bore no weapons and Montagu had only the sword at his belt. Hardly the defenses of those about to be confronted by their supposed archenemy.

Young Edward let out a yawn and glanced toward one of the wide windows along the far wall. Dawn was not even a hint of gray in the distance yet. Two sputtering oil lamps threw their amber light in long, wavering streaks around the room.

“What is so dire you had to rouse me at this impossible hour?” Edward stifled a yawn before continuing. “I had not half a night’s sleep and Philippa was quite aggravated to have someone banging on her door so rudely, let alone having me yanked from my bed indecent.”

“Sir William, please,” Mortimer said, his spine rigid against the back of his own chair, “sit.”

Montagu followed Mortimer’s command and slid onto the chair beside the king. I could not recall the last time I saw him take orders from anyone but the king.

Mortimer directed his comment at Edward. “There is a plot afoot to dispose of me, my lord.”

“Plot?” Edward scratched at his chest and then rearranged the front of his tunic.

“Yes, a plot instigated by you.”

The king rocked forward and grabbed his knees, both eyes now open wide. He cast a perplexed glance at Montagu, who hitched his shoulders in a light shrug. “Perhaps my head is a little foggy yet, but I do not understand.”

“There is no need to deny it. My sources are reliable.”

“I do deny it, vehemently. Dispose of you how?”

“Arrest. Trial.” He did not say the rest.
Execution.
That was the presumed fate of a traitor.

“You mean in the same swift fashion that befell my poor Uncle Edmund?” Edward’s upper lip twitched. The light emanating from the lamps danced erratically across his lean face, making his features much harsher and more deeply cut than their true youthful smoothness. “This is almost too preposterous to believe. I might laugh if I were not so shocked to hear it. Since you have done nothing to betray me—as far as I am aware—on what grounds would I ever pursue such action?”

“Sir William.” Mortimer abruptly turned his attention on Montagu, who looked more perturbed at the ridiculousness of this scene than wary of its outcome. “You were overheard recently speaking of this very thing. To whom were you speaking?”

He returned a blank look and shook his head slowly. “What ‘thing’, my lord?”

“You know precisely what I’m speaking of.”

“No, I do not.”

“Who were you speaking to?”

“When?”

“Yesterday, early evening.”

“And where was this ...”—Montagu’s ragged eyebrows folded together in grave concentration—“this conversation you say I had?”

“Behind the Boar’s Head Inn. You know the place.”

He leaned back and looked pensively up at the beams of the ceiling, his fingers tapping against his thigh. “I do, but only vaguely, however. The Boar’s Head is best known for its prostitutes, I hear. But I was with the king and several others then, here in the castle, playing dice, I confess. A vice of mine. I shrive myself of the sin once or twice a year in confession. Shall I fetch witnesses for you? Or would you prefer to personally question the whores at the tavern, as to whether or not they saw me—or if they even know of me personally?”

A long pause ensued. The cool golden-green of Montagu’s eyes resisted the smoldering heat of anger behind Mortimer’s.

“Mother?” Young Edward interrupted. “Please, enough. This is baseless conjecture. Mockery without meaning, and a dangerous precedent to adopt. Explain this sham—or are you merely humoring him? If so, I should like to go back to the comfort of my own bed. Philippa will be awake until I return—and it will be me who will suffer her mood tomorrow for lack of sleep.”

My son, who had come here already irascible from his rude awakening, was by now struggling to keep his virulence in rein. There was only Arnaud’s word to go by. Whatever else Mortimer might have known, he had not yet revealed. I looked at Mortimer. His face was set in stone.

 “Sir Roger, he is right,” I said. “If you are to make accusations, you must have evidence. So if you seek some truth, some further ... information, then lead us to it. Or let this go.”

Mortimer’s jaw tensed. Slowly, he turned his head to fix me with a stare so vile I could not endure it and looked away.