Queen Isabella could never understand how her late father-in-law, Edward I, whom she remembered vividly as a fearsome brute, could have sired such limp sons. Her estranged husband was bad enough, but even he cut a marginally more impressive figure than Edmund of Woodstock, Earl of Kent, his half-brother by his father’s second wife, who was kneeling at her feet.
“Forgive me, dear lady,” he begged, his eyes shut and hands clasped together as if in prayer. “You must understand, I meant no disloyalty to you. I was merely protecting my interests in England. I am your servant, first and foremost.”
Long years of conversing with men like Kent had trained Isabella to be patient, and yawn inwardly. He was pleasant to look at, she supposed, tall and fair and muscular like her husband, though clean-shaven while Edward always sported a moustache and a beard. In her younger days, she might have found him attractive. She had found Edward attractive, once.
“It is a question of trust, my lord,” she replied. “You might have informed me that you were sending a member of your household to London. Had it not been for my valet, who sees and hears all, I would not have known about it.”
Kent’s handsome face screwed up in consternation. He was trying to think, and finding it difficult. “I…I am in a difficult position, my lady,” he said. “If I remain in Paris with you, King Edward will seize my estates in England. He has already cut off my allowance. I merely wished to assure him that I had done nothing against his interests.”
“In other words, you sought to play for time. And you told a falsehood to the King, your liege lord. Every moment you spend with me here is prejudicial to his interests. You have conspired with me to attract more English lords to our banner, and to bring the Count of Hainault to our side. By any standards, you are neck-deep in treason and conspiracy.”
She deliberately avoided reference to Mortimer. The couple were only half-reconciled after their recent furious row, though he had made an attempt at an apology. Mortimer had come to her quarters one morning, perfectly sober and well-groomed, and quietly asked permission to see her in private. Against Isabella’s better judgment, she had received him, and once they were alone he had astonished her by going down on one knee and mumbling some words of contrition.
She had graciously accepted, and then asked him to leave when he followed up with some nonsense about assassins in the dark and making a playful snatch at her skirts. Her refusal had roused his temper again, and he stormed out, cursing under his breath. That was three days ago, and Isabella had not seen him since.
Kent was still stammering excuses. “Oh, you are forgiven,” she said, waving at him to get up. “Just be sure to keep me informed in future, if only as a courtesy. Remember, there is nothing you do that I cannot learn for myself.”
Isabella had to endure a stream of gratified noises, and the earl nuzzling her hand with rather more enthusiasm than was seemly, before she finally got rid of him.
“That was mercy, Majesty – perhaps too much so,” said John, Lord Cromwell, who had stood by her chair throughout the interview. The only other people in the private chamber were two ladies, among the few who remained in her household. The others had trickled away in recent weeks, not caring to stay in the service of a woman generally reckoned to be a traitor and an adulteress. She was aware that certain of them had been acting as spies for her husband, and was not sorry to see them go.
She turned her head to smile at Cromwell. Like Kent and John of Brittany, he was another English noble who had chosen to risk the dangers of exile with Isabella and Mortimer. Unlike them, Cromwell was a solid, tough-minded military man, the sort she needed around her if the projected invasion of England was to stand any chance of success.
“What else could I do?” she replied, sighing. “I have not so many allies that I can afford to expel a man like Kent, fool that he is. What news of the Papal Nuncios?”
Cromwell shrugged. “Still prevaricating, Majesty, like a couple of nervous old maids. Your judgment of them was astute. They are frightened to cross the Channel.”
Isabella curled her hand into a fist. “Cowardly, damp-eyed old men,” she said. “They fear my husband’s anger.”
The nuncios, the Archbishop of Vienne, and the Bishop of Orange, had been sent by the Pope to mediate between King Edward and Isabella and affect some sort of reconciliation between them. Despite their seniority and experience, Isabella thought them deeply unimpressive, a couple of oily, insincere politicians without a spine between them. Having failed to persuade Isabella to return to England or send her son back to his father, the nuncios were deeply reluctant to cross the Channel and risk facing King Edward’s wrath.
Ineffective as his emissaries were, the Pope’s increasing involvement was damaging Isabella’s cause. The nuncios had been in the room when Mortimer exploded with rage at the fateful dinner, and heard his threat to kill the Queen if she dared to try and desert him and return to England. Lurid reports were no doubt on their way back to Rome.
Worse, she was aware that both Edward and the Pope were sending a stream of letters to her brother, urging him to discard of Mortimer and Isabella and refuse them any military or financial support. She found it difficult to gauge her brother’s response, for he could be as statue-like and inscrutable as their father, the late King Philip, but suspected that he might buckle under the pressure.
Lord Cromwell cleared his throat. “My lady, I would speak of your son.”
She looked up at him in alarm. “What of him?” she demanded. The young prince was her jewel, the second star in her sky after Mortimer, and she was determined to keep him close.
“His Majesty read the most recent letter from your husband, and, I regret to say, sent a reply.”
Isabella gasped. “Without informing me?” she cried. “How could he be so faithless?”
“You were prudent to place spies among his household, lady. One of them managed to gain access to His Majesty’s private chamber, copy the content of the letter onto the back of a food bill and deliver the copy to me. I have it here.”
He produced a grubby strip of parchment and handed it to his queen, who eagerly took it and pored over the contents. For a heart-stopping moment, when Cromwell told her about Prince Edward’s secret reply, she thought that the prince meant to abandon her and return to England. Relief flooded through her as she read the spy’s hasty scrawl.
Like Kent, the prince was playing for time. His letter was one long refutation, protesting that he was a faithful son and kept in mind all the things the King had charged him with before he took ship at Dover. Nor, so the prince claimed, had he transgressed those commands in any way that it was in his power to avoid. Isabella thought this a nice touch by her son, playing on his youth and vulnerability to cover a multitude of sins.
“However, my dearest father and liege lord, there is much that I cannot avoid, such as the advice and company of the traitor Mortimer; the rumours about the adultery between that man and my mother; that they are using me as a bargaining counter; that they make me put my signature to documents concerning your province of Gascony without references to Your Majesty…”
This section made for quite painful reading, but not as painful as it could have been, and Isabella had to admit the truth in her son’s claims. She and Mortimer were using him, and would continue to use him until they were restored and he sat in his father’s stead on the throne of England. Even then, they would not cease to use him. Such were the harsh necessities of politics.
“Well,” she said, slowly tearing the bill up into strips, “my boy is already quite the politician, it seems. He will not leave me, but nor is he willing to sever all ties with his father, doubtless in case my enterprise fails. I would have hoped that he, of all the people in the world, would have more confidence in me.”
She handed the shreds of parchment to Cromwell, who tossed them onto the rose-red fire that hissed and crackled beneath an elaborate hooded hearth.
“Confidence is draining in your cause, Majesty,” he said bluntly. “England has been on an invasion footing since the beginning of February. Now it is nearing the end of March and they are still waiting for you. You have no ships and no men, and your royal brother continues to prevaricate in supplying you with either.”
“What is your advice, then?”
Isabella grimaced as Cromwell knelt by her chair. She had had her fill of men kneeling before her recently, but at least this was one was not begging her pardon. “Leave Paris, and go to Count William in Hainault, whose consort is your cousin,” he urged. “Entreat him for money and troops. Promise him anything.”
“I do not trust the Count,” she said. “He was supposed to supply us when my son was betrothed to his daughter back in January, and not a single ducat or man-at-arms have we had of him.”
“As long as you sit in Paris and do nothing, he will do nothing. Do you expect the Count to raise his banner against England without due cause? You must be at his elbow, Majesty, with his wife nagging in his ear. Take the Prince with you, your entire household. He could not refuse you then.”
Isabella considered for a moment, tapping the side of her cheek. “It is tantamount to begging,” she said.
“Majesty, you have little choice. You must find allies soon, or loyalty and confidence in your cause will continue to wither away. Your husband and the Despensers will win.”
Twin spots of crimson appeared on Isabella’s pale, plump cheeks, and her jaw tightened.
“We will consider it,” she said. “Now, go and find my lord Mortimer and bring him to me. Do not take a refusal for an answer. Take some men with you, if necessary.”
Cromwell rose and bowed his way out, leaving Isabella to entertain certain vengeful fantasies in which the Younger Despenser played a leading role. Her husband had once allowed the man to try and seduce her, to climb into the matrimonial bed and press his clammy, stinking flesh against hers.
The memory still had the power to make her feel sick, and for a long time she sat in silence, staring into the fire.