The Uncrowned Queen. Anne O'Brien

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      I raised my head so that our eyes met, barely a handspan apart, and as we smiled at each other I recalled my first sight of him, striding into the audience chamber at Valenciennes in the wake of Isabella. How astonishingly handsome he had been, this Plantagenet prince, striding confidently forward with a proud tilt of his head and a spine as straight as a pikestaff. His skin was fair, his eyes blue and his luxuriant hair as gold as a corn sheaf. He was to me as breathtaking as the image of the warrior angel St Michael in the window of our private chapel. And he still was.

      ‘I thought Isabella would choose Jeanne for you,’ I confessed, pushing back the fall of hair that invariably got in his eyes. I was feeling in a mood for confession and intimacy.

      ‘She did,’ Edward admitted dryly, ‘since Margaret was already wed. But how could I refuse a girl who was kind and resourceful – a girl who was bold enough to accuse me of being stupid when I informed her that to my mind it was impossible to trust anyone, particularly servants.’

      I laughed at the memory. ‘You were impossibly opinionated. I was surprised that Walter did not hit you.’ Walter Manny, my page – now a squire and come with me to England – was unquestionably loyal to me and to those of my choosing.

      ‘So was I. I deserved it, I expect. My pride knew no bounds.’

      Allowing my head to sink back against his chest, I sighed again, remembering. It had been a dire story that Edward had eventually told after much persuasion.

      ‘How can I be expected to trust anyone?’ he had demanded furiously when I had accused him of rank insensitivity to me and to Walter. ‘I am spied on. Every minute, every day. Everything I say or do is reported back to the Queen or Mortimer. If I write a letter, it is intercepted and read. I am not allowed my own friends. My servants are not my appointment. I am burdened with a bodyguard in my mother’s pay. I swear everything I eat and drink is reported to my mother. It’s worse than being in a prison cell.’

      It had chilled my blood. From a position of privilege, a childhood where I had been given love and freedom and no more restriction than was thought good for a daughter of Valois and Hainault, I could not imagine such shackles. As for every word I spoke being reported to the Count or Countess: even my governess showed more tolerance than that, and accepted my childish misdemeanours. It must, for Edward, have been an intensely lonely existence.

      ‘You taught me to trust, and to have faith in my own destiny,’ Edward mused now, interrupting my reverie, his own thoughts obviously far away. ‘I never met anyone with so many opinions. Or so much advice to give.’

      I chuckled. ‘And did you take it?’

      ‘Oh yes. I needed to, to survive.’

      Sobering, I let my mind drift back again. I had told him, whether he wanted to know or not, while we were seated in my father’s kitchens - a warm, busy place, and a perfect refuge for Edward to escape the eagle-eyed attentions of his skulking bodyguard.

      ‘It seems to me that in your present position you can do nothing but wait,’ I had said when I had persuaded him to tell me of Isabella’s ambitions, and of her lover Mortimer’s hold on power. What else could I tell a prince who had not yet reached his sixteenth year? ‘One day your chance will come to seize power. On that day you will cast off your mother’s influence, and that of this dreadful man Mortimer, and take your place at your father’s side. Once you do that, you will find your friends will flock to your banner.’

      The Prince had slammed his hands down against the table at which we sat, flattening the crumbs of bread. ‘I have no friends.’

      It had been the bleakest statement of all that he had made that day. ‘Then you must make friends.’

      ‘How can I, when I am kept isolated from men to whom I would look for support? Sometimes I feel like a beetle squeezed in Mortimer’s fist …’

      ‘I will be your friend.’

      ‘You can’t fight for me.’

      I had stood, out of all patience. Walter, a silent shadow, stood as well. ‘But I can give you advice, for what it’s worth. Be temperate, be patient. Listen and take counsel. Build a power base when you can. Is that not what all rulers do? One day you will be King whether the Queen wishes it or not. Be ready for that day.’ I had given him frown for frown. ‘But if you are to win friends, you have to charm your supporters rather than grumble and snarl and beat them about the head with your complaints!’

      He had reared back as if I had struck him. ‘Do I grumble and snarl?’

      ‘Yes. You are doing it now.’

      What a turbulent wooing it had turned out to be. My lips curved at the memory of that brief episode - all of eight days.

      ‘Why are you smiling?’ Edward asked.

      ‘Just remembering,’ I replied, my mind leaping sharply back to reality in Woodstock, and I sat up again as a thought struck me. ‘Why was Mortimer scowling at you when we parted company?’ We had left him at Winchester. Mortimer had been more heavy-browed than usual, barking out orders that Edward must not linger after depositing me at Woodstock, as if I were a parcel of cloth for the market.

      Edward shrugged, but his lips tightened. ‘I’m in his black books.’

      ‘What have you done?’ I asked, my mouth suddenly dry with apprehension.

      ‘Only refused to obey orders and attend my sister’s wedding,’ Edward replied. ‘It’s not news, Philippa. But Mortimer hasn’t forgiven me. He says I dishonoured his good name before the whole kingdom. His good name, by God! And as if I did not know the meaning of dishonour and shame …’

      Edward might pat my hand to reassure me, but he did not succeed. No, it wasn’t news. The whole episode had had caused a major furore. Edward had refused to attend the political marriage of his sister Joan to the son of the Scottish King Robert Bruce after the kingdom of Scotland had been wilfully handed back to the Scots. But I hadn’t heard Edward’s explanation from his own lips before. All I knew was that Edward had refused pointblank to go across the border.

      ‘Mortimer said it had been agreed, and that I would attend,’ Edward bit out the words. ‘I said that I had not agreed to it. The agreement signed at Northampton with the Scots was none of my doing. I didn’t make the treaty so felt in no mind to live by it.’ I was impressed by his fighting words, and my initial fright was overlaid by pride in him. ‘I wasn’t prepared to dance at their wedding,’ he continued. ‘I would have more likely spitted the groom on my sword and widowed my poor sister than given them my good wishes.’ He shuffled restlessly, rucking up the bed linen into an uncomfortable heap. ‘My absence was the only way I could express my abhorrence of the whole proceedings.’

      It had come, as I knew, at the end of an unsatisfactory campaign, with England’s defeat at Stanhope Park, even if Mortimer had been able to prevent a subsequent Scottish invasion of England. Edward’s own desire to push on with an attack had been thoroughly thwarted. Mortimer had ordered a withdrawal, and the Northampton agreement had, in Edward’s mind, been nothing more than an ignominious backing down.

      ‘Mortimer sees my sister as the future Queen of Scotland.’ Edward still felt the loss as a personal failure, even though he had come close to being captured and killed. ‘All I see is the English dead and dying on the battlefield at Stanhope Park. I refused to condone СКАЧАТЬ