The Battle of the Queens Read online

  ‘There is no doubt that we should have married years ago.’

  ‘What is done is done. We are together now.’

  She took his hand and they went into the thicket.

  ‘You must never let me go again, Hugh,’ she said. ‘If you did, you would never have another moment’s peace. I promise you that.’

  ‘I know it.’

  She slipped her arm through his and he kept a tight grip on her hand.

  ‘We will walk through the trees and talk, Hugh. There is much we have to say.’

  ‘There is only this, Isabella,’ he said. ‘I am betrothed to Joan.’

  ‘A child … little more than a baby. And my daughter at that. It was a sad sick joke of John’s to betroth you. It was the sort of thing he enjoyed. He wanted to distress me … for he knew that I loved you. He always knew I loved you. It was the greatest emotion of my life and I could not hide it. You must not think that I shall ever let you go, Hugh. You do not know me if you think that.’

  ‘My dearest Isabella, it is not for us to follow our inclinations.’

  ‘You are wrong. How else should people live? Love should not be denied. Why should it? If you had a wife and I a husband, still I should stay with you. I would defy the world to do so. But you have no wife. I have no husband. You are betrothed to a child who knows nothing of the world … nothing of marriage … nothing of love …’

  ‘She has learned a great deal. She has lived ten winters and is old for her years. She cannot be sent back.’

  ‘Then she shall stay here. She is my daughter. Oh Hugh, I have thought of last night. To be with you thus … it was a wonderful dream come true and so shall it be throughout our lives, for I shall never give you up. There is only one thing for us to do.’

  ‘Nay …’

  ‘Yea, my lord. You shall have your bride. It is no child for whom you have to wait; it is your eager mistress who refuses to wait any longer for you. All these weary years have I yearned for you. I have caught you now, Hugh, and you are mine.’ She stopped and drawing his face down to hers kissed him wildly. ‘You shall never escape me. Never. Never.’

  She watched him. He wanted her. He had never known such love-making. She laughed to herself. Cruel, wicked, ruthless, insatiable John had been a good tutor. Not that she had needed tutoring. Women such as she was were born with such knowledge. She could reduce him to such desire that he would be willing to promise anything. There was an innocence about him which had been completely lacking in John; she loved him for it. For if she was capable of love, she loved Hugh le Brun. There was no self-sacrifice in her kind of loving; a little tenderness now and then, a desire to give pleasure – but perhaps that was because she wanted to be thought supreme; there was a need to satisfy her own desires, a need to be loved and admired as no woman had ever been loved and admired before. In the first months of marriage with John she had believed she had brought him to a state of slavery, for he had given her all she asked in those days when he had shocked his ministers because he stayed in bed with her throughout the day. How wrong she had been! John could love no one but himself and she had quickly learned that it was an overwhelming sensuality in her which matched something similar in him which had made her imagine he was hers to command. It had waned as such feelings must – although he had never entirely escaped from it. Hugh was different. There was innocence and idealism in Hugh. Hugh would be her slave now and for ever.

  Assuredly she was not going to allow him to escape her.

  ‘It is not possible,’ he said desperately.

  ‘My dear Hugh, it is possible if we wish it to be. If you refuse me, I shall know that I was mistaken. All these years when I have thought of you have been a mockery. You did not love me after all. Perhaps it was as well I went to John.’

  ‘You know that to be untrue.’

  ‘I had hoped it, but now you spurn me …’

  ‘Spurn you!’ He had taken her in his arms. And she thought: Yes, here in the forest … where some riders might come upon us at any moment. It will show him how great is his need of me, how his need and his desire takes from him the inherent inclination to conventional conduct.

  ‘Nay, you do not spurn me,’ she whispered. ‘You need me, Hugh … just as I need you. You could never let me go …’

  He gave a cry of despair and thought of the innocent eyes of his young betrothed before he forgot everything but Isabella.

  He had asked that he should first break the news to her.

  ‘My dearest,’ Isabella had cried, ‘but why? She will hear of it in time.’

  ‘Nay,’ he had said, ‘I wish this.’

  She was a little put out but it seemed advisable at that time to give way.

  He said he would ride out into the forest with his little betrothed because he thought it would be easier that way.

  She was grave on that morning; it was almost as though she sensed some disaster. He found it difficult to tell her; he wanted to choose the right words, to explain that it was no deficiency in her.

  She herself began it by saying: ‘My lord, are you displeased with me?’

  ‘My dear little Joan, how could I be?’

  ‘If I had done something that you thought was wrong.’

  ‘You have done nothing wrong.’

  ‘Is it something to do with my mother?’

  ‘Your … mother?’ he repeated miserably.

  ‘Yes, it seems that since she came …’

  He plunged in. ‘You know that she and I were betrothed long ago?’

  ‘Yes, I knew it.’

  ‘Then your father came and took her away.’

  ‘She has told me often.’

  ‘Well, now she is here again and your father is dead … the truth is, we are to marry.’

  ‘You … marry my mother. But how can that be? I am your affianced bride.’

  ‘My dear child, you are very young and a much more suitable husband than I could ever be will be found for you.’

  ‘I think you are suitable. You are kind and I thought you liked me and were happy about our betrothal.’

  ‘I was, and I love you of course … but as a daughter. You understand?’

  ‘No,’ she cried. ‘No!’

  ‘Listen to me, little Joan. You have to grow up. There is much you have to learn. Your brother is the King of England.’

  ‘Young Henry,’ she said scornfully. ‘He is only a boy.’

  ‘He is the King of England and you as his sister are worthy of a great match.’

  ‘I have a great match.’

  He took her hand and kissed it. She said eagerly: ‘You did not mean it. My mother will go back to England now you are home and it will all be as we planned.’

  He shook his head sadly: ‘Nay, my child,’ he said. ‘Your mother and I will marry. It was what was intended years ago. Fate has brought us together again but it is what was meant to be. Come, we will ride back to the castle. I wanted to tell you this myself … to explain.’

  ‘I see,’ she said, ‘that you love my mother.’

  He nodded.

  ‘Far more,’ she said sagely, ‘than you could ever love me.’

  Then she spurred her horse and rode forward. He kept a distance between them. He did not want to see her sad little face.

  So they were married and Joan saw her mother take that place which she had thought would be hers.

  She watched them but they were unaware of her; they saw nothing but each other.

  There were festivities in the castle to celebrate the marriage. There was dancing and the singing of lays. Minstrels rendered their music soulfully, romantically, and it was all about lovers.

  Isabella was as beautiful as she ever was, Hugh was handsome. The life of the castle seemed to revolve round them; and the attendants whispered together and their talk was about the romance of two lovers, long parted, come together again.

  Joan wondered what would happen to her. She supposed that when they emerged from this blissful wonder of being married they w
ould perhaps remember her. Something would have to be done about her because she had no place in the castle now. Even the attendants looked at her as though she was something which a guest had left behind and must be set aside until she could be collected.

  Even the bridegroom, kind Hugh, when they met, which she fancied he tried to avoid, seemed as though he were trying not to remember who she was.

  She wept during the night when no one could see; and by day she wandered through the castle, lost and bewildered, but waiting with the certainty that something would have to happen before long.

  Chapter III

  THE SCOTTISH BRIDEGROOM

  William Marshal had gone to his castle at Caversham near Reading with the conviction that he would never leave it. He was old – few men passed their eightieth birthdays – and he should be grateful for a long life, during which he had been able – and he would not have been the honest man he was if he had denied this – to serve his country in a manner which had preserved her from disaster.

  He could look back over the last four years since the young King had come to the throne and congratulate himself that England was well on the road to recovery from that dreadful malaise which had all but killed her and handed over her useless corpse to the French.

  There was order in the land. How the people responded to a strong hand! It had ever been so. Laws and order under pain of death and mutilation had always been the answer; and if it was administered with justice the people were grateful. That was what John had failed to see, for he had offered the punishments without consideration of whether they were deserved. Praise God, England was settled down to peace; there had been a four years’ truce with the French and he and the Justiciar, Hubert de Burgh, would see that it was renewed. England was rising to greatness and he would say Nunc dimittis.

  Isabella, his wife, was concerned about him. They had grown old together; theirs had been a good union and a fruitful one. They had five sons and five daughters and their marriages had often brought good to the family by extending its influence; and although his first concern was with his honour and the right, and he put the country’s interests before his own, he could not help but be content that his was one of the richest and most influential families in the land.

  But he had known for some time that his time would soon come; and he preferred to go before he lost his powers. Who – if he had been a man of action and sharp shrewd thinking – would want to become a poor invalid sitting in his chair waiting for the end?

  His wife Isabella looked in at him as he sat thoughtfully at his table and he called to her.

  ‘You are well, husband?’ she asked.

  ‘Come and sit with me awhile, Isabella,’ he said.

  She came, watching him anxiously.

  ‘We must not deceive ourselves,’ he said. ‘I believe that I shall soon be gone.’

  ‘You have the pain?’

  ‘It comes and goes. But there is after it a kind of lassitude and times when I find my mind wandering back over the past and my King is another Henry, blustering, wenching, soldiering in the way of a wise general, using strategy rather than bloodshed. He always used to say that to me: “A battle that can be won by words at a conference meeting is worth thrice as much as that in which the blood of good soldiers is shed.” I forget, Isabella, that it is the pallid boy who is now our King and not his grandfather who rules over us.’

  ‘There have been two kings since then, William.’

  ‘Richard … who forgot his country that he might win glory and honour with the Saracens … and John …’

  ‘My dear William, it upsets you to think of that. It is past. John is dead.’

  ‘For which me must thank God,’ said William. ‘He has left us this boy king.’

  ‘And you, William, have made England safe for him.’

  William Marshal nodded slowly. ‘We are at peace as we have not been for many years, but we must keep it so.’

  ‘Hubert de Burgh is of your opinion and with two such as you to guide our affairs …’

  ‘Ah, my dear wife, how long think you that I shall be here. That is what sets me wondering.’

  ‘We are going to see that you remain with us for a long time.’

  ‘Who is this all powerful “We” which sets itself against the wishes of the Almighty? Nay, wife, when my time has come, come it will. And I want to be sure that England stays firm and that we continue in those steps towards peace and prosperity which we have taken these last four years. I am going to send a message to our son, William. I want him to come here with all speed as I have much to say to him.’

  Isabella Marshal was alarmed. With that almost uncanny foresight of his William seemed to sense that his end was not far off. But she knew him well enough not to try to persuade him against such action. William had always known where he was going.

  When she had left him he went to a court cupboard and unlocking it, took from it a Templar’s robe. Divesting himself of his surcoat, gown and soft white shirt, he put on the coarse garment.

  He smiled wryly. It is what we all come to at the end of our days, he thought. When the end is near we turn to repentance.

  He knelt down and prayed for forgiveness of his sins, and that when he passed on there might be strong men to keep the country peaceful and guide young Henry along the road to great kingship.

  Then he rose and wrote a letter to his wife in which he asked that when he died he should be buried in the Temple Church in London, for if his duty had not led him elsewhere he would have chosen to be a knight of that religious but military order.

  When William Marshal the younger arrived at Caversham he was shocked to see the deterioration in his father’s condition. He had never known the old man other than healthy and it had never occurred to him that he could ever be otherwise. His father had always been the greatest influence in his life – although in recent years they had not always been in agreement with each other – and he was shocked to realise the reason why he had been sent for. As the eldest son he had been brought up to realise his responsibilities.

  His father embraced him and young William looked searchingly into his face.

  ‘Yes, my son,’ said the elder Marshal, ‘my time has come. I know it as surely as I stand here. My spirit is as good as it ever was but my flesh betrays me. Do not look sad; I’d as lief go a little sooner before my senses desert me. I am an old, old man, but I am mortal and mortals cannot live for ever. I have had a good life … a long life … and I feel it is crowned in success because I now see that the King is firm on the throne and with good government he will remain safely there. The country is free of the French and Hubert de Burgh is a strong man. I have asked him to come here, for I wish to see him before I go.’

  Young William shook his head: ‘You speak as though you are taking a journey to Ireland … or to France …’

  ‘It is not unlike that, William.’

  ‘So you have sent for me to say good-bye.’

  ‘Take care of your mother. Like mine, her youth is long since past. It has been a good marriage and I am happy in my family. Though …’ he smiled wryly, ‘there have been times when you and I were on different sides.’

  ‘Father, there was a time when many Englishmen believed that there could be no good for England while John was on the throne.’

  ‘Aye, and who could deny them? My son, all differences are over now. Serve the King. Honour your country.’

  ‘I will do so, Father, when I can with honour.’

  The younger William was referring to that period when Louis had landed in England and he had been one of those who had done him homage. It was understandable. He had been among those barons who had been present at Runnymede and he was well aware that disaster must come to England if John continued to rule. His father knew too, but he could not bring himself to abandon his loyalty to the crown. It was young William Marshal who had seized Worcester for Louis. But a year later he had turned from the French Prince for he could not bear to see French nobles stru
tting through England and when John died it seemed natural that he should change his allegiance, so he had joined his father and became a sturdy supporter of young Henry.

  He had been married at a tender age to a child named Alice who was the daughter of Baldwin de Béthune; but the marriage had never been consummated as they had been but children and Alice had died before they were grown up.

  There was no doubt that young William Marshal was considered a man of great influence, not only through his father but because of his own abilities. Young as he was he had already caused some consternation by going over to Louis’s side. Then he had fought beside his father and had taken possession of several castles which had been in French hands; but perhaps because of his one-time support of Louis he was watched rather closely by some of the older knights and in particular Hubert de Burgh.

  He had recently been promised the hand of the Princess Eleanor – the youngest daughter of King John and at this time about three years old – because he was proposing to marry a daughter of Robert de Bruce, a prominent family of Southern Scotland who had some claim to the throne. The idea of a man’s marrying into the North, which was a perpetual threat to England, was alarming – particularly when he had shown that he could shift his loyalty to the French. And it was for this reason that the greater alliance with baby Eleanor had been offered him.

  Young William could be proud, for it was clear that he was regarded as a man who must be placated.

  When his father died he would inherit great possessions; but the thought of a world without his father filled him with foreboding.

  The old man saw this and grasped his son’s hands. ‘You will follow me, my son. You will be the second Earl of Pembroke when I am gone. I want you always to keep our name as honourable as it is at this day.’

  William promised but assured his father that he had some years left to him yet.

  His father shrugged this aside and said that he wished his son to send for Hubert de Burgh as there was much he had to say to him.