“Dearest brother, you ought to feel for us, and so should all men of our estate, for much we are, and much we have been, grieved at the shameful despites and great injury which we have so long endured. Nay, verily, brother-in-law, we cannot bear it any longer. May the Holy Spirit keep charge of you.”
In his darker moments, when the duties and cares of his royal office were oppressing him, King Charles liked to withdraw somewhere private and dig out the recent letters sent to him by his brother monarch in England. Indignant, beseeching, and increasingly pathetic in tone, begging him to disassociate himself from his sister and her lover, they afforded him great amusement.
“Perhaps the rumours are true,” he said aloud in the peaceful silence of the roomy, well-lit solar he had retreated to. “Perhaps he really is a changeling and the old King’s true son is living as a cowherd somewhere.”
This thought was more amusing still, and an impish smile spread across his amply padded face.
Charles reckoned that he had a great deal to be pleased with, particularly himself. He was playing a complex game, far more complex than the King of England and the Pope realised, and seemed to be getting away with it.
He reclined on the silken cushions of his window seat that gave such a splendid view of the Paris streets, far below, glorying in the sunshine of a baking July and smiled inwardly again. “Oh, but I played it beautifully,” he murmured.
He replayed the memory of a row with his sister, three days previously. Isabella had come storming into his presence, white-faced and with curses spilling from her ruby red lips. She was so like her fiery Spanish mother, Joan of Navarre, that for a moment Charles had imagined the old witch had come back to haunt him.
“What is this I hear?” she screamed, careless of the servants and courtiers in attendance. “Rumours and court gossip, all saying that you are going to abandon me. Is it true?”
The king retained his composure. “Dear sister, we are glad to have you in our presence once again and we are sorry that we have withdrawn from you of late. But we have read the recent letters from Rome, and decided that you must drop your plans to invade England.”
Isabella’s eyes widened in disbelief, and her fists clenched. “Please consider, this is a royal command, not friendly advice from one sibling to another,” he said before she could respond. “You will obey, or we must regretfully command you to depart from our realm.”
She stamped her foot like a war-horse. “Traitor! You are a traitor to France, and a traitor to the house of Valois!”
“Guard your tongue, sweet sister,” Charles said in a warning tone, but she ignored it.
“Traitor, I call you! I have watched you these past months, brother, sitting inert and smiling on your ever-expanding backside, stuffing your face with sweetmeats. Do you think our royal father would be proud to know that his throne was occupied by a fat, complacent, treacherous catamite? Would he proud of your bungling, your greed, your unending vicious conduct? No, by the face of Christ, he would not.”
When she finally broke down in tears Charles gripped the arms of his throne and rose to his feet in stately, royal fashion. “No man calls me traitor,” he said quietly, dropping the royal ‘we’, “and no woman either. Not even you, sweet sister. Since you are determined to cause a fuss, I will go further and issue a proclamation. Any of my subjects who speaks out on your behalf or offers you support, will be banished, and their lands and goods will be made forfeit. I decide the destiny of France, Isabella, not you, and I will not allow her to risk the wrath of the Vatican and be dragged into a war with England just to soothe your injured pride.”
He descended the steps of the dais, and lifted his hand to touch her on the arm. “I realise that our father did a great wrong when he married you to Edward of England,” he said, “for the Plantaganet is as unfit a husband as he is a king. I took pity on you, and gave you asylum in my court. But French gold and French blood will not be spent on gaining you revenge.”
It was a fine piece of theatre, ending in suitably dramatic fashion as Isabella recoiled from her brother’s touch and swept out of the room, tearful and incoherent with rage. Charles watched her go with the touch of a smile on his plump face, and shook his head at the guards on the door when they moved to block her path.
The events that followed did so thick and fast. Fearing the King’s anger, most of Isabella’s remaining supporters abandoned their mistress and fled Paris. Her English supporters remained, Kent, Cromwell, and Richmond, and a few others, but of all the Frenchmen who had once been proud to follow in her train, only her cousin, Robert of Artois, had stayed with her.
Robert, however, was the King’s creature as well as Isabella’s. A stocky, flat-faced man with eyes like two squashed flies in a block of suet, he never displayed any emotion beyond bland curiosity. Possessed of discretion and intelligence as well as blood ties to the royal family, Charles considered him the perfect spy.
The King summoned him to the royal bedchamber, late one night. “Go and see my sister,” Charles ordered, without taking his eyes off the game of chess that he was playing against himself, “wake her, if necessary, and tell her that she must leave Paris by midday tomorrow.”
Robert bowed and padded out of the room. The next day, Isabella departed from Paris in a tearing hurry, taking her lover, her son, the Earl of Kent and a following of English knights. She took Robert with her as well, who sent frequent messages back to her brother, informing the king of the fugitive’s progress.
From Paris she rushed straight to her province of Ponthieu to raise money and men, while Mortimer galloped away to Hainault. It seemed that the adulterous pair had finally reconciled, and agreed that the Low Countries would be used as the springboard for their invasion.
Charles was mightily pleased with himself. In one stroke had sidestepped the threat of scandal and excommunication. He had failed to return Isabella’s son to his father, true, and word was filtering back from England that King Edward was preparing for war, but Charles was not overly concerned. All of Christendom knew that Edward was chicken-hearted and luckless in war. His miserable and repeated failures to conquer Scotland were proof of that.
No, Charles was far too proud of his achievement to worry about Edward making belligerent noises. For his banishment of Isabella had been quite pre-meditated and done with her collusion, a ploy designed to fool the English King and the Pope that he was doing their bidding.
All the while, during the thundering public rows and denouncements, the siblings stayed in secret communication. The faithful and subtle Robert of Artois had acted as their go-between.
Now the King had finally, despite his constant financial difficulties, managed to scrape together enough money to hand over as a considerable loan to his sister. The loan, along with whatever monies she managed to extract from her county of Ponthieu, would go towards raising a force of mercenaries, while Mortimer tried to secure the lease of a fleet from the Count of Hainault. Charles hoped that the Englishman would manage to stay reasonably sober and keep his notorious temper in check during the negotiations.
Slowly, slowly, the web was tightening around King Edward and his loathsome favourites. Charles cherished a burning ambition to fulfil his father’s dream of the English-held territory of Gascony back in French hands, and a descendent of the House of Capet on the throne of England. If Isabella and Mortimer’s invasion was successful, King Edward would be deposed, and his son, Charles’s nephew, would replace him as Edward III. France would become the dominant power in Western Christendom, and he would be remembered as the monarch who brought it about.
Charles leaned back against the cushions, and exhaled. These were heady dreams, intoxicating visions of glory, but on the verge of becoming reality.
“My God,” he exclaimed, “but I do love being King.”