Isabella: Braveheart of France by Colin Falconer Page B

his son up to the castle on his shoulders, gore leaking down the front of him.
    Edward does not even look at her. His eyes are glazed, still fixed on the battlefield.
    Later she dresses his wounds as he sits immobile in a wooden tub, not speaking. Afterwards she and her ladies wash his armour, they must scrape off the mud and dried blood with stiff brushes. They say the king fought well, but whether he fought well or ran like a girl, it will not matter now.
    He had believed nothing could stand in the way of heavy cavalry; they had all believed it. They were all wrong.
     
    ***
     
    “And you!” Lancaster dares point a finger at his king. Some gasp inside the Parliament at his presumption. “If you had honoured the Ordinances, we should never have suffered this humiliation. An army of twenty thousand defeated by a dozen peat boggers with sharpened sticks!”
    Edward is forced to listen to this abuse. Isabella stares over her uncle’s head, she will not look at her husband for fear that should he look back they will see it as further sign of weakness.
    And she will not look at Lancaster, for she has come to despise him.
    He relishes this moment. He has the king on his knees.
    “We must press on with this war,” Edward says. “If we desist now, the Bruce will have his crown and we shall never have Scotland.”
    “Is eleven thousand dead not enough for you?” Lancaster hurls at him.
    “We cannot let them win.”
    “We didn’t. You did.”
    Edward subsides into his throne, shrunken in, as if they have removed all his bones and left just breathless flesh and half a heart.
    “I never wanted to be your enemy, Edward,” Lancaster says. His long sleeves rustle against his velvets, as he parades before the parliament, like a peacock before a mate. “But you planned to lead your victorious army against me, is this not so? You thought to vanquish the Scots only so that you might vanquish your own cousin.” He shakes his head, appears disappointed rather than angry. “But you are not your father, you are not Longshanks. You are weak and stupid and easily led.
    Edward flinches, as if struck with an open hand, and struggles to recover his composure. His hands ball white-knuckled into fists.
    “You made me kneel to you at Westminster. For what? To be forgiven for a righteous act. I should kill Gaveston again if I could, send him to a traitor’s death just to hear the bitch scream.”
    Now Warwick is on his feet, the great resenter, the great complainer: “You have led us to disastrous wars and bankrupted the Treasury. We demand a purge of the royal Exchequer and a limit to the royal purse of ten pounds per day.”
    “Ten pounds!” Edward is on his feet. “I would not keep my dogs on that.”
    “Then get smaller dogs,” Lancaster says.
    He cannot refuse. He no longer has power over England, though he is the king. It is Lancaster who is regent now, in all but name.
    It is just after the Feast of Saint Saturninus when a messenger arrives at court from France. Her father is dead. She knew he had been ill, but this is unexpected. There is not time to attend the funeral, for a crossing of the Narrow Sea at this time of the year is not advised. Besides, Edward tells her that he needs her with him, to help deal with the revolt of his barons.
    She hears Jacques de Molay laughing, perched like a gargoyle on the roof of the palace. When he died, he cursed Phillip’s line for seven generations. She wonders what her own punishment will be.
    It is hard to imagine him truly gone. Yet in many ways he is not gone at all, he is still there with her every day, wagging a long finger in her face: You will love this man. Do you understand? You will love him, serve him and obey him in all things. This is your duty to me and to France. Am I clear?
     
    ***
     
    Edward works tirelessly to have the anathema that Winchelsea laid on Gaveston’s head reversed. His man Reynolds makes sure it is done, but it is not easy and costs money. He has