The Death of a King

paused for effect before adding, “Finally, madam, what prompted you to hire an old woman to prepare your husband’s body for burial when there were skilled court physicians at your beck and call? Who was this woman and where did she go?”
    I knew my questions were insolent, but secure in my knowledge of the king’s protection, I was also aware that the queen could have played a cat-and-mouse game until the second coming. My bluntness served its purpose. The old vixen was visibly shaken. Her face blanched, her carmine-painted lips opened and shut like a landed fish and she could only regain her composure by lowering her head to examine a be-ringed finger.
    “Your questions, Master Clerk, are both abrupt and impertinent,” she snapped. “But I shall ignore your rudeness for you will find that there is little profit in it. I can only answer your two final questions, as I am ignorant of the facts behind the rest. Mortimer supervised the king’s imprisonment and it was his men who beat off Dunheved’s attack and tracked down the rest of the band.” The queen then raised her head and smiled deprecatingly as if to imply these matters were now closed, before continuing.
    “As to my husband’s burial in Gloucester. Well,” she shrugged as if the matter was of little concern, “the cathedral was close by, while Westminster was too far away.” The queen paused again as if to rearrange her dress, though I noticed her palms were damp with sweat. “The old woman,” she continued rather hurriedly, “was hired because I realized that Mortimer had murdered the king. A court physician would have only proclaimed it to the world, and the realm was far too disturbed to accept such a scandal. Who the old woman was and where she went, I cannot tell you because I do not know myself. Anyway, all this happened so long ago. You do understand, Master Beche?”
    I understood, but I did not accept her plea of injured innocence. She had been Mortimer’s whore and must have loved him. Why else would she have tolerated him for another three years after her husband’s murder? In fact, common gossip has it that the night Mortimer was arrested, he was busy tumbling her, and when he was dragged away she was so distraught with grief that she screamed herself into hysterics. Moreover, the queen had been too glib. She maintained that Mortimer’s men had taken care of Dunheved, but I had seen the writ confining him to Pontefract and it had been signed and sealed by Isabella herself.
    Nevertheless, at the time, I gave every impression that I was satisfied with her explanations. I was beginning to think of suitable phrases to cover a swift withdrawal, when the queen mother suddenly handed me a golden casket from the table beside her and asked me to examine the contents. I opened it and beneath a glass covering lay a human heart, slightly shrivelled, but still well-preserved.
    “That,” Isabella quietly remarked, “is the heart of my husband and that is the main reason why I hired the old woman. If a court physician had removed it, Mortimer would have heard about it and been furious. You see, Master Clerk, once Edward was dead, my resentment against him also died. I remembered the golden years of our marriage and wanted his heart to be near me always.”
    I confess that I was not shocked by the queen’s revelation, as I knew that the embalming of a corpse is common amongst the nobility. However, I was surprised that such an act had not been recorded. As I examined the heart of Edward II, I thought of Theo-bald de Tois. Do you remember him, Richard? He was a skilled physician who lived in Magpie Row at Oxford. We were the only ones who could tolerate him and he thanked us by regaling us with his medical knowledge. He constantly insisted that embalming was a mystery from the East to be practised only by the skilled. So what could an old woman from the Forest of Dean know about such an art? I studied the casket, gathered my wits and then put this to the queen in as disinterested a way as possible. She seemed a little taken aback but said that if I wanted the precise details, then I should have them. The old woman did not embalm the body, she had simply cut through the flesh, broken the ribs and removed the heart, tidying up the cuts and incisions with herbs and plaster. The queen claimed she remembered all this for she insisted that the corpse should show no sign of ill-use, so frightened was she of the possible consequences. She seemed