The Death of a King

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 long black dress was fringed with Bruges lace around the neck and cuffs, and a silver filigree chain belt clasped her slender waist. Her hair was covered with a black coif but this only enhanced the white, bejewelled fingers which constantly rearranged it with fluttering touches. The face so many men have talked about is heart-shaped, scarcely wrinkled, although slightly marred by pursed lips and violet eyes which never smile.
    I must have been gawking like a rustic, for the queen suddenly leaned forward. “Master Beche,” she said, “what did you expect? A witch, a crone, a hag?”
    She had read my thoughts, but I had the wit to reply, “No Madam, I expected to find a beautiful woman and I am not disappointed. May I thank you for receiving me so courteously.”
    She caught the drift of my words and smiled. “I am afraid that Michael is over-protective. I found him years ago after,” she paused, “after my retirement from state affairs. I took him into my household and he has repaid me with almost fanatical devotion. Anyway,” she exclaimed, “enough. How is the court?”
    I tried to supply her with all the latest gossip I knew, but I re alized it was only to give her time to appraise me. As I spoke, she scrutinized me carefully, and then abruptly interrupted to ask why I had come.
    I told her that I was writing a history of her late husband’s reign and needed information about his deposition and death. I expected some emotional outburst but instead she was frank and moved swiftly to the point, as if repeating some lesson she had learnt by rote.
    “Master Beche,” she exclaimed, “I deposed my husband because I hated him, but I took no part in his murder. Mortimer ordered that. I only learnt about it later and I know no more than you or anybody else. I have told the king this many, many times and I cannot understand why he does not follow the words of the Gospel and leave the dead to bury the dead.”
    “Madam,” I tactfully replied, “my real purpose in coming here was not to reopen old wounds, but to seek the answer to several puzzling questions. First, why did the money supplied to your husband suddenly end on 21 July, two months before his death? Secondly, what did happen during Thomas Dunheved’s attack on Berkeley Castle in August, 1327? Thirdly, why were all of Dun-heved’s men thrown into jail where they suddenly died before trial? And why was Edward of Caernarvon buried at Gloucester and not in Westminster, among his ancestors?”
    I