At last we were free, rising and falling on the surging waves of the powerful tide. The boats were awash with a bloody swirl. Corpses floated on the water. The Scots, realising pursuit was futile, now turned to face the danger behind them. Already a few were breaking, retreating back along the shoreline. The wherries and boats drove on, braving the swell, almost crashing into the side of The Wyvern. We clambered up rope ladders, men shouting and pulling us over the side. We were shown little sympathy, lying on the deck where we were thrown. Water skins were passed around and I, clothes sodden, spent the rest of the morning tending to the wounded and dying. The master of The Wyvern was not concerned with us, more determined to break free of the coast, alarmed by beacon lights flashing from the clifftops, wary of the Flemish privateers prowling those waters. By midday I and the ship’s leeches had done what we could for the wounded, Demontaigu and Dunheved assisting. Middleton and Rosselin came up but I shooed them away. Demontaigu remained cold and resolute. I thanked him for what he’d done. Dunheved certainly impressed me. He was calm, patient and watchful. Nevertheless, I could feel the fury curdling within him. We all entertained suspicions about what had happened, but now was not the time for discussion.
Once we had finished, Dunheved supervised the swift burial of the dead, committing their bodies to the deep and their souls to God. In the late afternoon the ship’s crew assembled with their passengers to witness Dunheved, under an awning stretched out from the cabin, celebrate a dramatic mass for those killed. An eerie experience. The Wyvern, its sail full-bellied by a brisk north wind, surged through the waters under a strengthening sun. In a powerful, ringing voice Dunheved proclaimed the oraisons for the departed as well as leading us in a hymn of thanksgiving for our deliverance. I felt unsteady, as if I was in a dream. The rolling ship, its pungent smells, the creak and groan of timber and cordage. Above us a sheer blue sky, the sun washing the deck. Such a contrast to the fog-bound, craggy heights of Tynemouth.
In the early evening, the queen, unscathed and calm, left her cabin and met us under the same awning beneath which Dunheved had celebrated mass. She was ivory-faced, her hair tied tightly around her head, over which she pulled the deep cowl of her cloak. She publicly thanked the master of The Wyvern, her squires, Demontaigu and others of her household. She distributed precious stones as tokens of her appreciation, then sat in the captain’s small, throne-like chair as Dunheved listed the dead.
‘We lost eight in all. A lady-in-waiting, one of the squires and six of the queen’s household.’ The Dominican added that at least twice that number from the castle garrison had perished in our escape.
Isabella just sat, her face like that of a carved statue, hard eyes unblinking as she stared out across the sea. At Dunheved’s question, she answered that she was well, but then returned to her reverie, those blue eyes, sapphire hard. Afterwards she shared a jug of hippocras and a platter of sweetmeats with us. Rosselin and Middleton, who’d been busy attending to matters below deck, joined us. They looked shamefaced. I’d glimpsed them during the day going up and down the deck as well as at Dunheved’s mass. In truth, they confessed, they’d been as surprised and shocked by the furious battle on the beach as had The Wyvern’s master, a shaven-headed, cheery-faced seaman from the port of Hull. He declared how Rosselin and Middleton had wanted to go back to help them, but he had warned them that was futile. Nevertheless, the master had the sense to realise that something treacherous had happened: Isabella, Queen of England, had almost been captured by a Scottish raiding party.
Dunheved and I remained with the queen till late in the evening. She insisted on reciting the Vespers of that day. Afterwards we tried to engage her in conversation, but she simply shook her head, raising a finger to her lips.
‘Not now,’ she murmured, ‘not now, Mathilde, Brother Stephen. We must simply sit, wait and watch.’
We had no choice. The Wyvern had been turned into an infirmary as well as a ship prepared for battle. Its master was determined on one thing alone: to bring the queen out of hostile waters to a safe port. After a good night’s sailing, he met Isabella and declared that by sunset we would slip into the port of Whitby on the Yorkshire coast.
‘It’s a mere fishing village, but high on the cliffs stands a famous convent.’ He smiled. ‘I am sure the lady abbess will be welcoming and give you good housing.’
True to his word, late that afternoon The Wyvern slipped safely into the cove of Whitby. The queen insisted on immediate disembarkation. Boats took her and her household to the beach, a messenger being sent to alert the abbess of St Hilda’s. After a short while, a group of nuns in their dark blue habits, escorted by retainers from the abbey, whose majestic buildings we’d glimpsed from the sea, came down to conduct the queen up to lodgings being hastily prepared for her. A busy, exhausting time. I’d been so immersed in the dangers we’d escaped, I didn’t have time to reflect on anything. Only now did I realise how tired, frayed, dirty and dishevelled I must have looked.
For the next three days we rested and relaxed in spacious and very comfortable quarters provided for us at the abbey. A strange time, an island of peace between the horrors of leaving Tynemouth and the storm gathering around the throne of England. Days passed. Messengers left on the fastest mounts from the abbey stables. Squires and retainers were dispatched to the master of The Wyvern, which dipped its sails three times in honour of the Trinity and sailed out of Whitby. It returned a few days later, its master hurrying up to take secret council with the queen.
I was certainly pleased to be away from Tynemouth. St Hilda’s Abbey proved to be a fine resting place where Isabella could relax in beautiful surroundings, be it rich, oak-panelled chambers or luxuriant gardens and shady cloisters, especially as the weather had changed, one sun-filled day following the other. I became busy in the infirmary, assisting with the wounded, or helping in the dispensary filling pots and jars with various remedies. Demontaigu begged leave to be excused on his own secret business, as did the Aquilae Petri, who hired horses and thundered out to discover the whereabouts of their master. People came and went. Rumour was rife. Stories gathered as plentiful as fleas in a dog’s fur, but Isabella never showed her hand. She truly was schooled in the harsh, bloody conflicts of court. As a child she had been abused by her three brothers, and she’d acquired the patience of a waiting cat. She had a mind that teemed, yet openly she smiled and acted so graciously. She still seemed a little distant from me, as if absorbed in some secret problem she could not share. I tended to her. She allowed me to examine her and I was relieved to find that she and the child she carried had come through safe and unscathed. Isabella was that rare flower, elegantly beautiful and lissom but in fact hard and tough as the finest armour in the land. She was, both body and soul, in good spirit. True, her belly was much swollen and she suffered quietly the usual pains, aches and discomfort of being enceinte, but such petty problems did not concern her. She sat in her chamber dictating letters, closeted herself with Dunheved, walked out to meet the abbess and the good sisters or acted the bountiful seigneur in the grand refectory of the abbey. All this was a device, a shield carried before her, not only to protect her but behind which she could plot her own devious path. The queen was spinning her own web, watching and waiting.