To Edward it seemed an exquisite rose-tinted star.
From a salver held out to him by another prelate, the Archbishop took the flat gold ring, encrusted with rubies, which he had previously blessed, and handed it to the King. The ring felt damp to the touch, as did everything else in the mist. The Archbishop gently drew their hands together.
‘In the Name of the Father,’ said Edward, placing the ring just over the tip of Philippa’s thumb, ‘in the Name of the Son, in the Name of the Holy Ghost,’ he said, as he moved it to her fore and middle fingers. And then, as he slipped it home on the fourth finger, he said: ‘Amen!’
Philippa was his wife.
Queen Isabella, like every mother at her son’s wedding, had tears in her eyes. Though she was making a great effort to pray God to grant her son happiness, she could not help thinking of herself; and she suffered. It had become increasingly clear during these last few days that she would no longer take first place in her son’s heart and house. Not, of course, that she had much to fear from this little bundle of embroidered velvet who, at this very instant, was become her daughter-in-law; her authority over the Court could not be challenged, nor indeed her supremacy in beauty. Straight and slender, her fine golden tresses, framing her face, which was still so clear-complexioned, Isabella at thirty-six looked scarcely thirty. She had spent much time that morning before the looking-glass, while donning her crown for the ceremony, and had left it reassured. Yet today she was no longer the Queen but the Queen Mother. How quickly it had happened. How odd that twenty stormy years should be resolved like this.
She thought of her own wedding, exactly twenty years ago, on a late January day like this. It had taken place at Boulogne in France and there had been a mist then too. She also had believed, as she made her heartfelt vows, that her marriage would be happy. But she had not known to what kind of man she was being married in the interests of the State. How could she have known that her reward for love and devotion would be humiliation, hatred and contempt, that she would be supplanted in her husband’s bed, not indeed by mistresses, but by scandalous and avaricious men, that her marriage portion would be ravished from her, her lands confiscated, that to save her life she would have to go into exile, raise an army to reconquer her position, and in the end order the murder of Edward II, who that day had slipped the wedding ring on to her finger? How lucky young Philippa was to be not only married but loved.
First love is the only pure and happy one. If it goes wrong, nothing can replace it. Later loves can never attain to the same limpid perfection; though they may be as solid as marble, they are streaked with veins of another colour, the dried blood of the past.
Queen Isabella turned to look at her lover Roger Mortimer, Baron of Wigmore, who owed it as much to her as to himself that he was now master of England and governed in the name of the young King. Stern-featured, his eyebrows forming a single line, he stood with his arms crossed over his sumptuous robe; he met her eyes, but his held no kindness.
‘He knows what I’m thinking,’ she thought, ‘But why does he always make one feel that it’s a crime to stop thinking of him even for an instant?’
She knew his jealous nature so well; and she smiled at him conciliatingly. What more could he want than he already had? She lived with him as if they were man and wife, even though she was Queen and he married; and she had compelled the kingdom to accept the fact of their love. She had seen to it that he had complete power; he appointed his creatures to every post; he had acquired all the fiefs of Edward II’s old favourites; and the Council of Regency obeyed his decrees and merely ratified his wishes. He had even persuaded Isabella to issue the order for her husband’s death. It was due to him that she was called the She-wolf of France! How could he expect her not to think of it on this wedding day, particularly since the executioner was present? The long, sinister face of John Maltravers, lately promoted Seneschal of England, seemed to be hanging over Mortimer’s shoulder as if to remind her of the crime.
Isabella was not the only person who resented John Maltravers’ presence. He had been the late King’s warder, and his sudden elevation to the post of Seneschal made it only too obvious for what services he was being rewarded. To those, and there were many, who were now almost certain that Edward II had been murdered, his presence was embarrassing, for they felt that the father’s murderer would have done better to keep away from the son’s wedding.
The Earl of Kent, the dead man’s brother, turned to his cousin Henry Wryneck and whispered: ‘It seems as if to kill a king entitles one to rank with his family now.’
Edmund of Kent was shivering. He thought the ceremony too long and the York rite too complicated. Why could the marriage not have been celebrated in the chapel of the Tower of London, or in some other royal castle, instead of making a public show of it? He felt uneasy under the eyes of the crowd; and the sight of Maltravers made it worse.
Wryneck, his head tilted towards his right shoulder – the infirmity which gave him his nickname – muttered: ‘The easiest way to become a member of our house is by sinning. Our friend is proof of it. Be quiet, he’s looking at us.’
By ‘our friend’ he meant Mortimer, and it showed how much the feeling had changed since he had disembarked, eighteen months before, in command of the Queen’s army and been welcomed as a liberator.
‘After all, the hand that obeys is no worse than the head that commands,’ thought Wryneck. ‘And no doubt Mortimer – and Isabella too – are guiltier than Maltravers. But we must all share some of the guilt; we all put our hands to the sword when we turned Edward II off the throne. It could end in no other way.’
In the meantime, the Archbishop was presenting the young King with three gold pieces bearing on one side the arms of England and Hainaut, and on the reverse a semy of roses, the emblematic flowers of married happiness. These gold pieces were the marriage deniers, symbols of the dowry in revenues, lands and castles, which the bridegroom was giving his bride. An accurate inventory of these gifts had been made, and this somewhat reassured Messire Jean of Hainaut, the bride’s uncle, to whom fifteen thousand livres were still owing for the pay of his knights during the campaign in Scotland.
‘Kneel at your husband’s feet to receive the deniers, Madam,’ the Archbishop said.
The people of York had been waiting for this moment, wondering whether the local rite would be observed to the end, and whether it was as valid for a queen as it was for a subject.
But no one had foreseen that Madam Philippa would not only kneel but also, in the excess of her love and gratitude, embrace her husband’s legs and kiss the knees of the boy who was making her his Queen. This chubby Flemish girl could find means of showing the impulses of her heart.
The crowd cheered enthusiastically.
‘I’m sure they’ll be very happy,’ said Wryneck to Jean of Hainaut.
‘The people will love her,’ Isabella said to Mortimer, who had moved closer to her.
The Queen Mother felt the cheers like a wound because they were not for her. ‘Philippa is the Queen now,’ she thought. ‘My day is over. Yet, perhaps, I shall now get France …’
For a courier, with the lilies on his coat, had galloped into York the week before with the news that her last brother of France, King Charles IV, lay dying.
