THEY WERE UNCONSCIOUS of the passing of time. The liqueur wine, scented with rosemary, roses and pomegranate, had sunk more than halfway down the crystal flask; the fire had burnt low in the hearth.
They had not even heard the cries of the night-watchman which arose hour by hour in the distance throughout the night. They could not stop talking, particularly the Queen who, for the first time in many years, had no need to fear that a spy was concealed behind the arras to report every word she uttered. She could not have said whether she had ever confided so freely in anyone before; she had forgotten even the memory of freedom. And she could not remember ever having talked to a man who listened with so much interest, replied so intelligently, and gave her such generous attention. They had days and days before them in which to talk, and yet they could not make up their minds to stop and part till tomorrow. Theirs was an orgy of confidences. They had so much to discuss: the state of the kingdoms, the treaty of peace, the Pope’s letters, their common enemies, and Mortimer recounted his imprisonment, escape and exile, and the Queen told him of her harassments, and of the latest outrages the Despensers had inflicted on her.
Isabella intended remaining in France till Edward came in person to render homage. This was the advice Orleton had given her at a secret interview between London and Dover.
‘You cannot return to England, Madame, before the Despensers have been driven out,’ Mortimer said. ‘You cannot and you must not.’
‘Their object in persecuting me so cruelly these last months is perfectly clear. They were trying to provoke me to some foolish act of rebellion so that they might accuse me of high treason and shut me up in some convent or remote castle as they have your wife.’
‘Poor dear Jeanne,’ said Mortimer; ‘she has suffered much on my account.’
And he went over to put a log on the fire.
She has been such a great help to me,’ Isabella went on. ‘And it was she who taught me to know what kind of man you are. On many a night I made her sleep beside me for I was so afraid they would assassinate me. And she talked to me of you, always of you. I know you better than you realize, my lord.’
For a moment it seemed as if they were both waiting for something, and they were a little embarrassed too. Mortimer was leaning towards the fire and its glow illuminated his deeply cleft chin and thick eyebrows.
‘Had it not been for this war in Aquitaine,’ continued the Queen, ‘and the letters from the Pope, and this mission to my brother, I am sure something terrible would have happened to me.’
‘I knew it was the only way, Madame. Believe me, I had no liking for a war against the kingdom. If I consented to take part in running it and appear as a traitor – for to rebel to defend one’s rights is one thing, but to go over to the enemy’s camp is another –’
He had the campaign in Aquitaine very much on his mind and wanted to exonerate himself.
‘It – it was because I knew there was no hope of saving you except by weakening King Edward. And it was I who conceived the idea of your mission to France, Madame. I worked for it unceasingly till it was finally agreed and you were here.’
There was a deep vibrant note in Mortimer’s voice. Isabella half-closed her eyes. She mechanically pushed back one of the blonde tresses that framed her face like the handles of an amphora.
‘What’s that scar on your lip? I never noticed it before,’ she said.
‘A present from your husband, Madame, a mark he left on me so that I should never forget him, when the men of his party threw me down in my armour at Shrewsbury where I was unlucky. And unlucky, Madame, less because I lost the battle, risked death and endured prison, than because I failed in my dream of coming to you that evening, carrying the heads of the Despensers, to do homage for the battle I had fought for your sake.’
This was not the whole truth; the safeguarding of his estates and prerogatives had weighed at least as heavily in the military decisions taken by the Baron of the Marches as had the service of the Queen. But, at this moment, he was sincerely persuaded he had acted only on her behalf. And Isabella believed it too; she had so much wanted to believe it. She had so longed for the day when her cause would have a champion. And now here was that champion, sitting beside her, with his long and slender hand that had held the sword, and on his face the slight but indelible mark of a wound incurred for her. In his black clothes, he seemed to her to have come straight out of some romance of chivalry.
‘Do you remember, friend Mortimer …’
She had dropped the ‘my lord’ and Mortimer felt greater joy at it than if he had been victorious at Shrewbury.
‘… do you remember the lay of the Knight of Graëlent?’
He knitted his thick brows. Graëlent? It was a name he had heard; but he could not remember the story.
‘It’s in a book by Marie of France, which was stolen from me, like everything else,’ Isabella went on. ‘Graëlent was so strong and so splendidly loyal a knight, and his renown so great, that the Queen at that time fell in love with him without knowing him; and having sent for him, the first words she said to him when he appeared before her were: “Friend Graëlent, I have never loved my husband, but I love you as much as it is possible to love, and I am yours.”’
She was astonished at her own audacity, and that her memory should furnish her with words so exactly appropriate to her own feelings. For some seconds the sound of her own voice seemed to be echoing in her ears. She waited, anxious, troubled, embarrassed and ardent, for this new Graëlent’s reply.
‘Can I now tell her I love her?’ Roger Mortimer wondered, as if there were anything else to say. But there are lists in which the bravest of warriors prove themselves singularly clumsy.
‘Have you ever loved King Edward?’ he asked.
And they both felt equally disappointed, as if they had missed an irretrievable opportunity. Was it really necessary to mention Edward at this moment? The Queen sat up a little in her chair.
‘I thought I loved him,’ she said. ‘I forced myself to it like a girl going to her wedding with all the proper emotions; but I soon realized what sort of a man I had been married to. And now I hate him, and with so strong a hatred that it can die only with me, or with him. Do you know that for long years I thought my body could inspire nothing but repulsion, and that Edward’s disgust for me was due to some physical fault of mine? And do you know I even still sometimes think so? Do you know, friend Mortimer, since I am admitting everything to you – besides, your wife knows it all – that in fifteen years Edward has entered my bed no more than twenty times, and then only on days appointed both by his astrologer and my physician? On the last occasion we had relations, when my youngest daughter was conceived, he insisted that Hugh the Younger should accompany him to my bed, and he fondled and caressed him before he was able to accomplish his conjugal act, telling me that I should love Hugh like himself, since they were so united that they were but one. It was then I threatened to write to the Pope.’
Mortimer turned scarlet with anger. Honour and love were both equally offended. Edward was utterly unworthy to be king. When would they be able to cry to all his vassals: ‘See who is your suzerain and before whom you have knelt and paid homage! Take back your sworn allegiance!’ And when there were so many unfaithful wives in the world, why should that man have a wife of such extraordinary virtue that she had respected his honour in spite of everything? Would he not have deserved it if she had dishonoured him with everyone who came along? But had she been completely faithful? Had no secret love lightened that desperate loneliness?
‘And have you never sought the arms of another?’ he asked in a voice of sombre jealousy, in that tone of voice which, so touching and moving at the awakening of love, becomes so wearying at the end of a love affair.
‘Never,’ she said.
‘Not even with your cousin, the Count of Artois, who seemed this morning to be showing you with considerable frankness that he was attracted to you?’
She shrugged her shoulders.
‘You know my cousin Robert; all’s one that comes to his net. Queen or whore, it’s all the same to him. One day long ago, at Westminster, I told him of my loneliness and, as we stood in a window embrasure, he offered to console me. That was all. Besides, didn’t you hear him say: “Are you still as chaste as ever, my fair Cousin?” No, dear Mortimer, my heart is desolate and free, and very weary of being so.’
‘Oh, Madame, it is so long now that I have not dared tell you that you were the only woman in my thoughts!’ cried Mortimer.
‘Is that true, sweet friend? Is it so long?’
‘I think, Madame, that it dates from the very first time I saw you. But I believe I realized it only one day at Windsor when tears came to your eyes for some shame King Edward had put on you. But you were distant; not so much because of your crown, but because you were protected by that aloofness of demeanour you have always maintained. And then Lady Jeanne was with you, always talking to you, but an obstacle to my approaching you. Shall I tell you that when I was in prison there was no morning or evening I did not think of you, and that the first question I asked when I escaped from the Tower …’
‘I know, friend Roger, I know; Bishop Orleton told me. And it made me happy to think I had given money from my privy purse to help you towards freedom; not because of the gold, which was nothing, but because of the risk which was great. Your escape increased my troubles …’
He bowed very low, knelt almost, to show his gratitude.
‘Do you know, Madame,’ he said, his voice graver yet, ‘that when I set foot in France, I made a vow to wear nothing but black till I could return to England, and to touch no woman till I had freed you and seen you again?’
He was slightly altering the original terms of his vow and confusing, in the service of his love, the Queen and the kingdom. But in Isabella’s eyes he was but the more like Graëlent, Perceval and Lancelot.
‘And have you kept your vow?’ she asked.
‘Can you doubt it?’
She thanked him with a smile, with tears swimming in her great blue eyes, and with an outstretched hand, a fragile hand that sought refuge like a bird in the tall baron’s. Their fingers opened, crossed, interlaced.
‘Clasp them,’ Isabella murmured. ‘Clasp them hard, my friend. For me, too, it has been a long time.’
She fell silent a moment and then went on: ‘Do you think we would be right? I have plighted my troth to my husband, wicked though he is. And you, for your part, have a wife who is without reproach. We have contracted alliances before God. And I have been so hard on the sins of others.’
Was she seeking protection against herself, or did she wish him to take the sin on himself?
He got to his feet.
‘Neither you nor I, my Queen, were married of our own free choice. We have uttered vows, but not towards people we chose for ourselves. We obeyed decisions made by our families, not the wishes of our own hearts. To people like us, made for each other as we are …’
He fell silent. A love that fears to declare itself can lead to strange actions indeed; and desire can take the most circuitous ways to assert its rights. Mortimer was standing in front of Isabella, though their hands were still clasped in each other’s.
‘Shall we make a vow of blood-brotherhood, my Queen?’ he went on. ‘Shall we mingle our blood so that I may always be your support and you always my lady?’
His voice was quivering under the influence of this strange and sudden inspiration; and the trembling had communicated itself to the Queen’s shoulders. For there were sorcery, passion and faith, all divine and diabolical things, and all that was chivalrous and carnal in what he was proposing. It was the blood-bond of brothers-in-arms and of legendary lovers, the bond the Templars had brought back from the Orient in the crusades, the bond of love that united the unhappy wife to the lover of her choice, and sometimes even in the presence of the husband on condition their love remained chaste, or at least was held to be so. It was the oath of the body, more powerful than that of words; and it could not be broken, disavowed or annulled. Those who pronounced it became more united than identical twins; what each possessed belonged to the other; they had to protect each other at all times and might not survive each other. ‘They must be blood-brothers …’ people whispered of certain couples with a shiver of fear and envy.27
‘I can ask everything of you?’ said Isabella in a low voice.
He replied by lowering his lids over his flint-coloured eyes.
‘I put myself in your hands,’ he said. ‘You can ask of me anything you wish. You can give me as much of yourself as you want. My love will be what you desire it to be. I could lie naked beside you naked, and never touch you if you forbade it.’
The reality of their love did not lie in this, but it was a sort of rite of honour they owed themselves in conformity with accepted tradition. A lover bound himself to show his strength of spirit and the force of his respect. He submitted himself to ordeal by courtesy, but its duration was subject to his mistress’s decision; it depended on her whether it should last for ever or cease forthwith. The knight, who was to be armed, remained standing in prayer all night, his arms lying beside him, and swore to defend the widow and the orphan, but, as soon as his spurs had been buckled on and he had gone to the wars, he pillaged and raped, and used his sword to make widows and orphans by the hundred amid houses in flames.
‘Do you agree, my Queen?’ he said.
It was her turn to answer by lowering her lids. They had neither of them ever been blood-brothers, nor ever seen anyone so made. They had to invent their own ceremony.
‘Shall it be the finger, the forehead or the heart?’ Mortimer asked.
They could prick their fingers, let their blood drip to mingle in a glass and each drink in turn. They could make incisions on their foreheads at the hair-line and, standing brow to brow, exchange their thoughts.
‘The heart,’ Isabella replied.
It was the answer he had hoped for.
Somewhere in the neighbourhood a cock crowed and its cry tore apart the silence of the night. Isabella thought that the day about to break would be the first of spring.
Roger Mortimer undid his tunic and let it fall to the ground; he tore off his shirt. He stood there with his muscular chest bared to Isabella’s gaze.
The Queen unlaced her bodice; with a supple movement of the shoulders she drew her slender white arms from the sleeves and uncovered her breasts with their rosy nipples; four maternities had not impaired them; her gesture was proudly decisive, almost defiant.
Mortimer drew his dagger from his belt. Isabella withdrew the long pearl-headed pin that held her tresses in place, and the handles of the amphora fell softly down. Without taking his eyes from the Queen’s, Mortimer gashed his skin with a firm hand; the blood ran in a little red rivulet over the sparse chestnut hair of his chest. Isabella did the same to herself with the pin, near the left breast, and a bead of blood came out like the juice of a fruit. The fear of pain, rather than the pain itself, for an instant twisted the corners of her mouth. Then they moved towards each other across the three feet that separated them. She placed her breast against the man’s tall torso, rising on her toes so that the two wounds might meet. They each felt the contact of the other’s body for the first time, and the warm blood that now belonged to them both.
‘Dearest,’ she said, ‘I give you my heart and take yours by which I live.’
‘Dearest,’ he replied, ‘I take it and promise to keep it in place of my own.’
They did not move apart, prolonging indefinitely this strange kiss between lips that had been voluntarily opened in their breasts. Their hearts beat with the same quick and violent rhythm, seeming to reverberate from one to the other. The three years of chastity on his side and the fifteen on hers of waiting for love made the room reel about them.
‘Hold me tight, dearest,’ she murmured.
Her mouth rose towards the white scar that marked Mortimer’s lip, and her little carnivore’s teeth opened to bite.
The English rebel, the escaped prisoner from the Tower of London, the great Baron of the Welsh Marches, the former Justiciar of Ireland, Roger Mortimer, Baron of Wigmore, who had been Queen Isabella’s lover for two hours past, had just left in triumphant happiness, his head full of dreams, by the private staircase.
The Queen was not sleepy. Perhaps she would feel tired later; for the moment she was dazzled and astounded, as if a comet were aglow within her. She gazed with tremulous gratitude at the huge and ravaged bed. She was savouring her astonishment at a happiness she had never known before. She had never realized that one might have to crush one’s mouth against a shoulder to stifle a cry. She had opened the painted shutters and was standing by the window. Dawn was breaking in misty enchantment over Paris. Had she really arrived only yesterday evening? Had she ever lived before this night? Was it really this same city she had known in her childhood? The world had suddenly come to birth.
The Seine was flowing grey at the foot of the Palace, and over there, on the farther bank, stood the old Tower of Nesle. Isabella suddenly remembered her sister-in-law Marguerite of Burgundy. And a great horror seized on her. ‘What have I done?’ she thought. ‘What have I done? Had I but known!’
All women in love, in every part of the world and since the beginning of time, were her sisters, were women elect. The dead Marguerite, who had cried to her after the sentence at Maubuisson: ‘I have known a pleasure that is worth all the crowns of the world, and I regret nothing!’ How often had Isabella thought of that cry without understanding it! But this morning, in this new springtime, having known a man’s strength and the joy of taking and being taken, she understood at last. ‘I would certainly never denounce her today!’ she thought. And suddenly she felt shame and remorse for the act of royal justice she had instigated long ago, as though it were the one sin she had ever committed.