She wasn’t sure what it was that stopped her. Perhaps a mortal fear of so irrevocable an act, or maybe it was the thought that by dying she would indeed make her husband’s life — her ex-husband’s life — a little easier.
If he had wanted, he could have pardoned her. He didn’t need to keep her down there in the dungeon. It was three years ago that the marriage was annulled, they told her. So he could have removed her at any time, and stopped the appalling degradation she was forced to endure.
But that was a part of her punishment, surely. The rapes and indignities. And then the birth of her child.
Lord Roger Mortimer heard the two men approaching long before they actually appeared along his alleyway, and he had plenty of time to turn back and march up the alley.
There was a distinctive sound to men-at-arms. It was the clattering of their metalwork, the rattle of spurs, or simply the ribald laughter and foul language. They were like troopers in any host from that point of view. Usually he was more than happy in the company of men from any lord’s retinue, but not here and now. The King had clearly ordered him to leave the environs of Paris while the English queen was here, and he had deliberately ignored King Charles’s command.
It was stupid, perhaps, but he had responsibilities. At least Queen Isabella had shown him pity before. When he had been stuck in the Tower of London two years ago, without any hope of regaining his freedom, she had visited him, and generously offered to try to help him.
Ach, she was a lady, and a kindly gentlewoman at that. It shouldn’t have surprised him, but it did none the less. Poor Queen Isabella had enough problems of her own. Everyone in the blasted country knew that. The King had turned from her to lie with a man, from all accounts, and there she was, her authority eroded, without the company of her own husband.
Still, even with her own tribulations, she had made the effort to help him. She’d heard of poor Joan’s predicament: all her clothes and possessions confiscated, and a meagre pittance given for food and drink. The Queen had written to the treasurer to persuade him to be generous; and knowing her own position in the hierarchy of the palace was already diminished, she also enlisted the aid of Eleanor de Clare, Despenser’s wife. Roger only hoped and prayed that his darling Joan would have been accorded slightly better treatment as a result.
Perhaps it was a forlorn hope. When the King’s father, Edward I, had captured the sister and mistress of one of his bitterest enemies, Robert Bruce, Edward in his wisdom had seen fit to have them both caged and put on show. Mary Bruce, the sister, was held in her cage at Roxburgh Castle, while Isabel, Countess of Buchan, was held in a similar cage at Berwick. The sole token of privacy these poor women were accorded was the use of a hidden privy. Apart from that, both must suffer the indignity of constant display for more than three years.
He had mentioned that to the Queen, and she had confessed to being appalled by her father-in-law’s treatment of the two. It was one thing to take vengeance on a knight or some other man who had been disloyal, but this extension of revenge on to the womenfolk and children, both of whom were clearly innocent, was distasteful in the extreme. Still worse was to come, though.
After Boroughbridge and the King’s successful quashing of the attempted insurrection of Lancaster, he had launched an attack on Scotland again to quell the rebels there. But the Scots soon outflanked him, and the King and Despenser were forced to beat a very hasty retreat — leaving in their wake Isabella, trapped at Tynemouth. In her speedy escape by boat, two of her ladies-in-waiting were killed.
That, Roger reckoned, was the turning point for Isabella. Up until then she had tolerated Despenser’s ruthless tyranny. She despised his tactics, his terrorisation of any noblewoman who stood in the path of his single-minded avarice, but she was prepared to be coolly polite for the sake of her marriage. But not after Tynemouth. That her husband could desert her to the mercies of the Scots after the treatment his own father had meted out to the Bruce women showed he no longer had any feelings for her.
It was after that, really, that she had begun to work for Roger Mortimer’s release from prison. After all, as she said to him, once Mortimer was in the ascendant Despenser must be deposed and destroyed, and that could only be good for her marriage, for the kingdom, and for all who lived in it.
He only hoped that Joan was all right. Apparently she had been transferred to a fresh prison, but he had heard that her treatment had improved. Perhaps Despenser was a little troubled by the thought that Mortimer could return to take his revenge for the treatment of his family.
One son at least was free. Thanks to God, when Roger had escaped from the Tower Geoffrey, his third son, had been in France to take over the lands he had inherited from Joan’s mother and swear his allegiance to the French king. Both Geoffrey and his money would be needed if Roger’s plans were to come to fruition.
But he would have to be cautious. He had no wish to suffer the fate of men like Robert le Ewer. When it was learned that Ewer had helped plot to assassinate Despenser, he was taken and condemned to die in the slowest, most horrible manner. He was chained to the ground and iron weights were set upon his breast, slowly crushing him until he died several days later.
Roger Mortimer would not see his family suffer any more. He had already paid his debt of honour; he would see his family released.
The sound of the men’s footsteps was quite loud, but Roger was confident he could escape them. He increased his pace, took a quick right turn into a short passageway, bore right again into a wider thoroughfare, and then went left and down towards the town’s gate. He would double back in a short while.
He didn’t want to be caught by the French or the English.
Chapter Twenty-One
Arnaud had an annoying habit of humming when he was thinking. It wasn’t something le Vieux had noticed overmuch when they had been together in the Château Gaillard, but now that the others were gone, perhaps it was natural that Arnaud himself should be more irritating. The more time a man spent with a single companion, the more likely it was he’d become intolerant.
The best way to escape was to leave him behind. Le Vieux went through to see Robert de Chatillon.
Since the burial of Enguerrand de Foix at the church on the day they arrived here, a service that was honoured by the presence of Jeanne d’Evreux, Robert had been busy with the many little affairs that must be tied up. Two clerks had travelled with the Comte, and they had been going through all his papers in detail. It was slow, frustrating work for a man like Robert, but he must only endure it a little longer, and then he would be able to return to Foix. The Comte’s heart was in a sealed box, and this he would take back with him so that the Comte’s widow would have something to bury. A woman needed something like that. This way, she’d have a small spot near home at her own church where she could go and pray for him.
Le Vieux entered the room just as Robert was finishing another box of papers. He was peering down at the scroll in his hand, a frown of incomprehension on his face. Looking up and seeing le Vieux in the doorway, he raised his eyebrows. ‘Yes?’
‘Do you have any instructions for us?’
Robert shrugged. ‘I have passed on your report. All the men there at the château are dead and the woman has been taken to the abbey of Maubisson as arranged. I think that all is completed satisfactorily.’