Read Online The Death of a King by Paul C. Doherty - Free Book Online

great lords and ladies and the conversation drifted on to more mundane matters. I sat and let the talk flow on, realizing that the queen I was going to visit had certainly not resigned herself to a gentle retirement. She would have to be approached with great care. I had studied the queen’s reputation. Her shrewdness was legendary. In 1313 on a visit to France she met her three sisters-in-law and gave each of them presents of satin gloves. A year later, on a return visit to France, she noticed those same gloves being worn by three young knights of her father’s court. Isabella reported the matter to her father, and so initiated a court scandal which rocked France and delighted the rest of Europe. Evidently, Philip’s three daughters-in-law had set up a love-nest with these young knights in the Tour de Nesle in Paris, where they met for secret parties and orgies. Their stupid mistake in passing on Isabella’s gifts led to their discovery and humiliation. The princesses were immured for life, but their lovers were broken on the wheel at Montfancon. Isabella was dangerous.
    The next morning I rose early, dressed carefully and rode out of King’s Lynn towards Castle Rising. I reached it about midday, but by-passed the small village and began to make my way up the winding path to the main castle gate. I was about half-way there when a troop of horses emerged from the trees on either side of the track to block my path. I have never seen more fitting candidates for the gallows. They were dressed in a motley collection of gaudy rags but they looked seasoned fighters and were armed to the teeth with swords, daggers, shields and crossbows. Their leader was a huge, beetle-browed man, dressed in half-armour, his head capped in a steel conical helmet, while lying across his saddle pommel was a huge double-edged axe. He cantered towards me and asked my business in a thick Scots burr which declared, without any introduction, that this was Michael the Scot. I tried to hide my anxiety by curtly informing him that I was on the king’s business and wanted an audience with the queen mother. He asked to see my commission. I waved it at him but refused to hand it over. He seemed amused by the gesture for his great, black ugly face broke into a sneer which ended abruptly as he plucked the reins from my hand. “If you wish to see the queen, little man,” he roared, “then see her you shall.”
    Whereupon the rest of the band surrounded us and we set off at a breakneck gallop up the winding track and thundered across a drawbridge into the main castle forecourt. I was dragged from my horse, while deft hands plucked both my sword and the king’s commission from my grasp, and I was hustled across the yard and up countless steps into the castle solar. A huge, gaunt room, it dwarfed the small figure dressed in black who sat near a window embroidering a piece of tapestry. I was pushed forward and then roughly forced to my knees as the figure rose and advanced towards me.
    “ Eh , Michel ,” a soft voice asked, “ qu ’ ce que ce petit homme ?”
    “A clerk, Your Grace,” the huge ruffian replied, ignoring the Norman French. “He carries a royal commission and claims to be on the king’s business.”
    “Have you the commission?”
    “Yes, Your Grace.”
    “Then we must receive him accordingly. Michael, a chair for our guest.”
    I rose and sat. I tried to hide my trembling breathlessness, my eyes riveted on the queen. Men have called her many names, “La Belle,” “French whore,” “Jezebel,” “She-Wolf,” yet all I saw was an ageing but still beautiful woman. She sat opposite me, with Michael the Scot standing beside her, his helmet in the crook of his arm and his small pig-eyes glaring at me. I dismissed him with a swift glance of contempt intended to hide my fear of him and then I turned back to Isabella. She was dressed in widow-weeds but they were costly velvet, not sackcloth. Concession had been made to fashion and the