The Uncrowned Queen

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 what was done then, and I won’t now.’

‘It’s months ago now,’ I observed. ‘Can Mortimer not put it aside?’

‘Apparently not. He’s still smarting. He said my absence was an embarrassment – that I had damaged the alliance. What alliance? In my eyes, there is no alliance, and there is no peace. Scotland is mine.’ Thrusting himself from the bed as if driven by a need to take action, Edward strode to the coffer beside the fireplace, peered suspiciously into the flagon he found there, and poured two cups of wine, returning to hand one to me. ‘I can’t overthrow Mortimer yet,’ he said quietly as if the walls might have ears. ‘All I can do is make life difficult for him …’

‘… but not so difficult that he might clap you up in a dungeon in the Tower.’ I had no faith in Mortimer’s compassion.

‘Yes. Just like he clapped up my …’

The air around me prickled. Edward stiffened and his mouth closed in a firm line, as if he had come up against a rock that blocked his path but was too solid and vast for him to shatter. I, too, closed my mouth. And I did not question him, knowing it was too painful a matter to broach. Did not all families have their secrets? Ours were simply more complex and more dangerous than most. Without a word I took his hand to draw him back down with me, and waited until he relaxed a little and managed a wry grimace that might just have been a smile.

‘No. Mortimer won’t lock me up,’ he said as if he had thought about the possibility often. ‘He needs me. King Edward, the sacred figurehead, who will obey every dictate. Except that I won’t.’ He took a gulp of wine and rubbed one hand over his face, his voice rough with desperation. ‘Ah, Philippa. Mortimer plays the king in front of me, posturing and preening as if he were the true King and I some prancing upstart, dressed and groomed to mimic royalty. And before God, it’s no mummer’s play! I have to tolerate it because as yet I can find no way to break free. I’m running out of patience.’

‘But not out of time,’ I urged, winding my fingers into his furred cuff. The fright was back with a vengeance. Sometimes my dreams were red with bloody murder, and I woke with ragged breathing and a galloping heart.

‘He has every trick up his sleeve.’ Edward might laugh, but it was laced with anger. ‘Did you know? Mortimer is now claiming descent from the mighty King Arthur – the line which ancient prophecy says will one day rule all England and Wales. Isabella will love that.’ The laugh was transformed into a snarl. ‘And what’s more, as his first step on the damned ladder, he’s claimed the premier earldom in the kingdom for himself. Did you know? Mortimer is now the Earl of March, by his own gift.’

Mortimer’s ambitions were no surprise, but this outrageous claim shook me.

‘God rot him!’ I exclaimed. Which at least made Edward smile.

‘Amen to that.’

I waited until Edward had drained his cup, then took it from him, placed it on the floor beside my full one, and held his hands enclosed in mine. He cocked his head as if he might read my mind, and when he failed – for cannot every clever woman hide her thoughts from the man she loves? he said: ‘Tell me, then. I can almost hear your mind scurrying with advice.’

‘Let him be Earl of March,’ I replied urgently. ‘I say he’ll not enjoy it much longer. You have friends now, I think, who will not turn their back on you when Mortimer orders them into line.’

‘I have indeed.’ Edward’s eyes suddenly gleamed with a presentiment of the future. ‘I have friends who look to me as the young wolf who will one day challenge the old pack leader. So you have been listening to gossip?’ I think I amused him, as I often did.

‘Walter collects useful facts like a magpie collects bright objects,’ I explained.

‘I only hope Mortimer’s not as well informed as you seem to be – or my friends might feel the edge of an axe against their neck before they are much older.’

‘Walter and I are very discreet,’ I pronounced. ‘I drink to your friendships.’

I rescued my untasted cup and we made the toast.

‘To friends,’ I said. ‘To the future, and your ultimate victory.’

‘Well said, Madam Counsellor.’ And I saw him deliberately step away from the weighty matters of state, for my sake, as he dragged me back into his embrace, his chin once more on my hair. ‘Now you must sleep. This child needs to rest, too, if one day he is to take on my sword and my kingdom. Let him be at peace – and don’t lecture him on what he must and mustn’t do if he is to be the perfect prince.’

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