The Battle of the Queens (39 page)

Christmas was spent at York. Joan, Queen of Scotland, was delighted as she always was to be with her family. It gave her great pleasure to be back in England; she confided to Isabella and old Margaret Biset that Scotland could never be home to her.

‘It always seems cold,’ she told them, ‘even in summer. The draughts are bad for my cough.’

There are enough of them here in York,’ grumbled Margaret, ‘and I am constantly scolding my lady here because she will not wrap enough against these icy winds.’

‘Oh, Margaret, you coddle me,’ said Isabella.

‘And look at her for it,’ cried Margaret proudly. ‘Is she not the picture of health?’

Joan agreed and Margaret thought: It is more than I can say for you, my lady of Scotland.

Margaret shivered. She did not believe in these royal marriages. She would have liked her little ones to have married noble lords of the court so that she could flit about between them and look after their babies when they came. She lived in terror that ere long they would find a husband for her remaining charge. She stoutly told herself that if they tried to marry her pet to some old man – king of a remote country – she would tell the King she would not have it. Merely bravado of course. How could she prevent it?

Joan asked if Isabella had seen their sister Eleanor recently.

‘Yes,’ said Isabella. ‘She came to court with the Earl of Pembroke.’

‘Is she happy?’

‘Poor mite,’ said Margaret Biset. ‘Little more than a baby … and to be a wife.’

‘It happens to us all, Meg,’ said Joan.

‘But my little Eleanor … she had no notion of it at all … and there she was married to that man. Now you, my lady, went off to foreign parts first and lived in that strange place.’

‘Yes,’ said Joan wistfully.

‘It gave you a little foretaste, you might say.’

‘Yes, Meg, you’re right.’

‘And your mother took your place.’ Margaret’s lips were tightly pressed together. And good riddance, she was thinking. ‘And a big family she’s providing I hear.’

‘Yes, our mother had a great many children,’ said Isabella. ‘I wonder how it feels to have two families.’

Margaret made a clucking sound which might have indicated contempt or indifference. She loved those she called her children the more because they had had such unnatural parents.

She was going to make a posset or two for Joan and see what she could do about that cough before the child went back to that unnatural place above the Border.

They were like children together – Isabella and Joan. Margaret was glad Joan had been able to come here for the festivities. It was company for Isabella and it gave Margaret a chance to look after Joan. It was a pity Eleanor couldn’t be with them, but there had been some trouble between Eleanor’s husband and the King and although the quarrel had been patched up, there was this difference which fermented underneath.

I hope we’re not going to have
that
sort of trouble, thought Margaret. Why couldn’t people live in peace and why did there have to be all this juggling with the young people to make this and that alliance?

Her girls had a right to be happy – as happy as she had always made them in her nurseries.

Now they were indeed like two children together discussing their gowns for the Christmas celebrations – Isabella forgetting the ever-present menace of a foreign marriage and Joan refusing to remember that soon she would have to go back to the bleakness of Scotland. Margaret listened happily to their chatter.

Joan would wear a wimple of gold tissue and Isabella one of embroidered silk. Perhaps they would let their hair hang loose or perhaps wear it caught up in a coil of gold thread. Joan as Queen would be more sumptuously clad than Isabella. She would wear a circlet of gold jewels about her head. She showed it to Isabella, who tried it on, and as she did so said: ‘I wonder if I shall be a queen too?’

Margaret watching was saddened, for she thought it very likely that before long her last remaining charge might be snatched from her.

There were the customary Christmas celebrations with dancing, singing and games which included
roy-qui-ne-ment,
in which a king who did not lie was chosen to ask questions and comment on the answers – whether they be true or false. This was a great favourite, for everyone sat in trepidation lest they should be called upon to answer truthfully a question when it might be an embarrassment to do so. What the penalty was if a lie was spoken, no one was quite sure; it was never referred to; but most of those who played the game believed it would be swift and terrible. The enjoyment of this game seemed to be the shivering terror in which the players sat throughout and the relief when it was over.

Then there were the usual jugglers and sword dancers, morris dancers with their bells, sticks and hobby horses; vaulting, tumbling and even wrestling.

Beside the King sat his brother Richard of Cornwall and Hubert de Burgh. There had been a certain coolness between the King and Hubert, and Hubert and Richard after the meeting with the earls, but that had seemed to have passed away and they talked amicably.

The King looked on at the performers with pleasure, obviously enjoying the manner in which everyone deferred to him.

The pleasures of kingship were a delight at times such as this when there was nothing to think of but entertainment and everyone looked to him to begin the dance, to give dismissal to the dancers, to choose the king or queen who does not lie.

He thought how much more powerful he would have been if his father had not plunged the country into civil war and all that rich land in France belonged to him. But it should not prove an insuperable task to get it back. A young king on the throne, guided by his mother it was said; and there had been trouble with the barons there as there had in England. Spies over there reported that Hugh de Lusignan, Guy de Thouars and the Count of Champagne had joined forces against the young King and his mother. Naturally Hugh would. Why, Hugh was his stepfather and his mother would be unnatural indeed if she sided with the French against her own son.

Why this delay then? He had thought the French possessions would be in his hands by now.

He turned to Hubert and said: ‘Next year I intend to take an army into France.’

Hubert looked dismayed. ‘My lord,’ he said, ‘that would be a big undertaking.’

‘A big undertaking. What do you mean? Have not my ancestors taken armies into France ever since it came into our hands?’

‘It would need preparation …’

‘Well, we will prepare.’

Richard was listening intently. Having been in France he considered himself far more knowledgeable than the King or Hubert de Burgh.

‘The time is ripe,’ he said. ‘Louis is young … completely tied to his mother’s apron-strings. She is not popular with the French. She is a foreigner and the French do not fancy being ruled by a foreigner. And rule she does. Louis does everything she tells him to.’

‘There, you see,’ said Henry.

‘There could be dissension in the country,’ said Hubert, ‘but you will see that if the English came against them, they would join ranks and stand against us.’

‘Hubert is determined to kill the enterprise before it begins,’ said Richard.

‘Nay, my lord,’ protested Hubert, ‘I am as eager as you to bring back what is ours by right. I merely say that the time is not yet.’

Henry looked sullenly at his Justiciar and many noted it.

‘The time will be when I say,’ said Henry.

Hubert was silent. He did not want an argument at the table.

Later he contrived to be alone with the King and raised the matter of taking the war into France during the year which was about to begin.

‘I would beg of you to consider, my lord, the low state of the treasury, which is the main reason why an expedition to France would not be wise.’

‘I will raise the money,’ declared Henry.

‘More taxes! That would not please the people.’

‘I shall not wait on people’s pleasure.’

‘It would be wise to.’

‘Listen to me, Hubert. When I say I shall go to war I mean I shall do so.’

Hubert bowed his head.

No good purpose could be served by a quarrel. He would have to try to find other means of preventing the King from attempting to go to war until he was well equipped to do so.

This proved to be impossible. Henry had made up his mind.

He was going to take an expedition into France at Michaelmas and no matter how Hubert tried to dissuade him he would not listen.

Hubert was in despair. He asked himself again and again how they could equip an army without money; how could they even procure the ships to transport that army overseas. Henry was childish, completely unable to grasp practical details. When Hubert tried to explain and Henry showed signs of losing his temper, Hubert was uneasily reminded of the King’s father.

There was nothing he could do but stop pointing out the inadvisability of continuing with the preparations, yet they went on apace.

Henry would have to learn by his own bitter experience, Hubert realised, and it was going to be a costly matter.

In due course they were ready to sail for France and Henry at the head of a large army rode down to Portsmouth, Hubert beside him, and that hardened warrior, the Earl of Chester, was at the other side of the King.

Henry glowed with pride. This was how a king should be, at the head of his troops going into battle. He felt noble and brave. He wanted to impress his brother who had already been engaged in battle and who thought he had inherited some special quality from his uncle Coeur de Lion as well as his name.

But when they reached Portsmouth it was realised that there were not enough ships to take the soldiers across the sea, and Henry fell into a violent rage.

‘Why so? Why so?’ he kept shouting. ‘Where are the ships? Why is it that there are but half of what we need?’

‘My lord,’ began Hubert, ‘I warned you that we would need a great many ships. The cost of supplying them was so great that your treasury could not meet it.’

Henry turned white with rage. ‘So it is you who have done this. You would teach me a lesson, is that it? You would let me bring my troops here to find that there is not enough transport for them. You traitor … you old, sly traitor. I believe you are in the pay of the Queen of France. Is that it?’

There was a shocked silence among the beholders. Hubert was suddenly afraid. The Earl of Chester was thinking that the end of the Justiciar’s rule must be in sight.

‘You jest, my lord,’ began Hubert. ‘You never had a more loyal subject than I. And you will remember I persuaded you to wait until you were properly equipped …’

This was adding fuel to the fires of rage.

With a gesture worthy of his father, Henry drew his sword and would have run it through his Justiciar if the Earl of Chester had not seized Hubert and dragged him away.

‘My lord,’ said Chester, placing himself between Hubert and Henry, ‘you do not mean to kill the Justiciar.’

Henry glowered at them all and Chester thought: Is he going to be such another as his father?

Chester wanted to see Hubert’s decline but not in this manner. If he were not careful this Henry would soon be emulating that other of his name who had done penance at Canterbury for the murder of Thomas à Becket. They did not want Hubert to be made into a martyr.

‘He has deliberately done this,’ spluttered Henry.

‘Nay, my lord,’ said Chester. ‘He but warned you that the enterprise will be costly and so shall it be. We need more ships, but the way to get them is not by thrusting your sword through the heart of your Justiciar.’

Henry regarded Chester steadily. He was not sure what to do. His anger had cooled. He knew he had acted foolishly for Hubert had truly warned him that it would be too expensive to provide all the ships they needed; and he was really angry with him because he had been proved to be right.

Chester went on: ‘Should we not use what ships there are and then when we have transported all they can carry they can return for the rest?’

‘It would seem there is nothing else to be done,’ said Henry sullenly.

He did not look for Hubert. He had slipped away; he would tactfully keep out of the King’s sight for a while, and when they met the incident would appear to be forgotten.

But it would never be. There had been too many to witness it; and in the thoughts of many was the notion that this was the beginning of the end for Hubert de Burgh.

It was as Hubert had thought it would be. They met again in France and there the King behaved as though that scene had never occurred.

Hubert thought: The thought of war has gone to his head like too strong wine. He is a boy in truth. But I should act more warily in future.

Henry knew in his heart that he had behaved foolishly and in an ungrateful manner. If the Earl of Chester had not stopped him in time he would have killed Hubert. It was a most unwise thing to do – and he regretted it; but this made a rift between him and Hubert; he could not feel the same towards his Justiciar again, for he could not forgive him for having made him act so foolishly.

The many enemies of Hubert had exalted in that display of royal anger and ingratitude. This was the beginning of the end for Hubert de Burgh, they thought. Metaphorically they began to sharpen their knives.