Isabella: Braveheart of France by Colin Falconer

red-faced and looks as if he is swallowing back his own bile. He begs the king’s forgiveness for Gaveston’s death and Edward pardons him.
    They give each other the kiss of peace, and after it is done they all stand and glare at each other, Edward’s smile frozen on his face. “Your pardons,” he tells them, “have been granted through the prayers of my dearest companion, Isabella, Queen of England”.
    Afterwards she is attended by two of the king’s physicians and two more sent by her father, Peter and Master Odinet. Her arm is swollen and hot and is weeping fluids. They apply herbal plasters and a lotion of rosewater and olive oil. Edward storms in and sheds his good humour like scalding armour after a long battle.
    “Did you see his face? I should soon have taken out his eyes than kiss that man!”
    “It is done now, Edward. You need his truce for the moment.”
    He kicks over a stool. Then he sees the physicians around her and comes himself to take a look at her injury. “Isabella, you are suffering. Make her well,” he tells them, “there is reward for all of you in it.”
    “We are doing all we can,” Master Theobald says.
    Her physicians fuss around her. They tell her she should rest. But while Edward needs her, she will not rest. She is his queen and he is in trouble.
    She sees the fever in Edward’s eyes. These days the king is not himself, whoever Himself is.
    “I will have my revenge,” he tells her when they are finally alone. “He may be your uncle but he is my enemy now. Both he and Warwick, they will pay for this, by God’s holy soul, I will not rest until they pay!”
    Isabella smiles. For a time she had been afraid he would be too consumed with his grief to remember to be a king. Lancaster was an uncle, but not much of one, and no one would weep for the Earl of Warwick when the day came. She prefers him vengeful to besotted.
    He sends her back to France to present his case again over the disputed Gascon lands at the Paris Parliament. “How can your father ever resist his own daughter when even Lancaster gives in to you?” he tells her.
    He does not know her father.
    But he trusts her and so she will go.
    She makes a pilgrimage to Boulogne, to Amiens, and to Chartres accompanied by Gloucester, Henry de Beaumont, and another magnate called Baddlesmere. It is a passable show of strength.
    The night before she arrives in Paris they burn Jacques de Molay, the last Grand Master of the Templars, over a slow fire on the Île de la Seine. As he dies, he invites her father and Pope Clement to meet him at God’s judgment before the year is out.
    When she arrives, everyone in Paris is talking about it.
    “The ravings of a madman,” Phillip says and dismisses the episode out of hand.
    They walk together through the royal cloisters. There is frost on the grass and mist curls around the gargoyles perched on top of the pillars. Isabella shudders, imagining one of them to be the writhing spirit of Jacques de Molay.
    She presents Edward’s petitions and asks for his favourable opinion of them, but Phillip is more concerned about the wounds on her arm. He summons physicians.
    The next day a messenger arrives at the court from Rome. The Pope is dead. The Templar’s curse has been swift, though her father seems unperturbed. “Clement was an old man,” is all he says. She stares at Phillip and imagines him dead. What would the world be like without him? She cannot imagine it. He has been the touchstone to duty and achievement for so long.
    What will I do when I have only my own conscience as guide?
     
     
     

Chapter 21
     
    Berwick
     
    Edward is no longer the man who sat shrunken and abandoned on his throne when they brought him news of Gaveston’s death.
    He has now amassed a great army; just one victory against the Bruce and he will have the barons in his thrall and nothing Lancaster can do about it. She sees Pembroke in attendance. These days he cannot do enough to appease the king, though she