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  But Nicolette had not lied. She was an experienced lady of the court of France, even if she was still only nineteen. And while Isabella, reared in the expectation that she would someday wear a crown, had been wrapped in the regal requirements of chastity, the customs of Nicolette’s life had been just the opposite. It would be many years before she delighted some nobleman or even a royal cousin by consenting to become his wife; until that time—and, the truth be told, even after that time—she would enliven the world of court romance like a willing participant at a royal ball, doing one of those dances in which everyone is always switching partners.

  “Isabella!” Nicolette said in a demanding tone that only she could take with her friend, and only now. “You mean you know nothing? Absolutely nothing?”

  “I tell you I can’t think of anything to do! With you, with everything you’ve ever described, there is some kind of—of—of courtship! Some kind of gradual…. But I haven’t even spoken to the prince, not really!”

  “Madame Bouchard! She’s the one who should’ve told you!”

  “She isn’t here!”

  “All right, all right, listen to me, this is what you do! Tonight, when you are in the bedroom waiting…”

  “Yes?”

  But suddenly Nicolette didn’t know what to advise either. “Yes, let me think, let me think. Well, you don’t really have to do anything. Exactly! That’s it! He will come in and he will know just what to do!”

  “What if he doesn’t?” The two young women stood blinking at each other. “I mean, I don’t know anything about such things, but did he appear to you to be someone who knew a great deal himself?”

  Another knock at the door, and a voice from outside pleading, “Please, ladies! Please!”

  “All right,” Nicolette said decisively. “You will lie down upon the bed, you will close your eyes, and you will say as softly as you can, ‘I am ready.’ Do that, and everything will be…acceptable.”

  “1I am ready?’” Isabella repeated.

  “1I am ready?’”

  Arm in arm, the princess and her lady-in-waiting moved to the door. Nicolette opened the latch and pushed the door open, revealing dozens of relieved attendants dressed for the wedding and perspiring in their scarlet smocks trimmed in white ermine. “I am ready,” the princess declared, and with a slight glance at Nicolette and a faint smile upon her lips, the future queen of England walked slowly into the corridor to join the great procession that would take her into Westminster Abbey.

  9

  HE WEDDING WAS A BLUR FOR HER. IT WAS NOT THAT SHE missed all the details; quite the contrary, she felt and saw so many things that she could scarcely take them all in. Her attendants looked so beautiful, with flowers in their hair, sewn into garlands draped around their shoulders, strewn in petals at their feet; the flames of a thousand candles danced in ranks in the abbey to the tunes of harps and lutes; and the faces of the dignitaries crowded into the pews, all of them watching her.

  But there was one face that would wipe all of this from her memory: Edward I of England, Longshanks himself. She saw the king for the first time in her life as she reached the altar of the abbey; she was just about to kneel to receive the initial blessing when she became aware of his presence. It was strange, this presence of the king; she had been with kings before and knew the strange sense that came into one’s stomach when a king was about. All attention was directed to him, and yet everyone pretended to be looking away. She sensed that same breathlessness as she came to the end of her walk down the abbey’s central aisle and looked in the direction that everyone else was pointedly not looking. There she saw Longshanks.

  He was tall, as tall as they had said. But nothing she had heard, in France and later in the court in London, had prepared her for what she was seeing now, for he was handsome. There was no doubt about that. It was in his carriage more than his features; he stood like a statute, like a living statute, with the posture of a man who has never questioned his own judgment, has never had to. He was dressed in the grandest clothes of the kingdom; he wore his crown lightly as if he had been born with it on, and in effect he had. The face itself—well, some people had told her it was cruel. Certainly the nose was too long, the chin too sharp for his face to look kind. But his long dark hair was luxurious, the skin smooth, the—

  The eyes! He turned them to her just then, and it was then that she understood what everyone had meant. There was no feeling in them, none at all. They were dead eyes, like one of those Greek statues in which the shape of the irises had been carved but the pupils had not. When he looked at her, it was clear to Isabella that he felt nothing. The young beautiful princess was used to being appraised, considered for her beauty, her value to the realm. Or if not appraised, then admired. But this man showed nothing, and Isabella was sure beyond doubt that he felt nothing. She had heard a story about him, how his wife had died while visiting him during a campaign against the Celts in Wales. Longshanks, so the story went, had been shattered by grief; he ordered her body carried back to London on the shoulders of his proudest soldiers. Wherever they stopped to rest and set the litter bearing her body down upon the earth, his builders were ordered to erect a cross. In the Norman French of Longshanks’s court, these were called chère reine crosses, for “precious queen.” English commoners, in that peculiar mongrel tongue they called the English language, corrupted the term into charging cross. It was the decree of a grieving man, a romantic, a man with a heart. The story had put Isabella off guard. This man who looked at her now, with those dead eyes, had no heart and no soul.

  She went through the rest of the ceremony, repeating her vows wherever it was expected of her. Prince Edward became her husband in the same mechanical way. They did not kiss; they were not expected to. Later, Isabella would not remember the ceremony at all.

  But she would never forget her first look at those eyes.

  That night the attendants prepared a special wedding chamber for them in the new royal apartments she and Edward were to inhabit together. A table was placed before the bedroom fireplace and a special dinner laid out upon it, with lamb, fowl, fish, fresh fruits, vegetables, pastries—every rich food the kingdom could provide. And wine, too, and more flowers, all arrayed for them in the bedroom. A small army of servants must have worked on it, and yet they had all remained, and only for a moment. She gripped Isabella’s hands in her own, stared as if she had just spoken—though she had uttered not a word since their time together before the ceremony—and nodded, not once but many times. Then Nicolette too left her.

  Isabella thought the prince would arrive at any moment. She sat down beside the fire to wait, for ever since she had seen her father-in-law, she had felt cold. But her new husband did not arrive. The ice in the wooden bucket around the wine melted, and an attendant tiptoed in to replace the water with more gray chunks from the palace ice house. Kitchen servants tiptoed in to take the food away and warm it again, but still Edward did not come.

  Isabella fell asleep in the chair.

  Later—she did not know how much later—she awoke to the sound of male laughter and the rattle of the latch at the door. Someone was fumbling at it as if staggered in. He was drunk. He was accompanied by another young man, the same one who had been with him at the first royal dinner she had attended.

  They stopped laughing when they saw her; then Peter, her husband’s friend, burst into laughter again.

  Isabella smiled, trying to understand the joke. But now her husband seemed to see no joke; he was looking at her. He then turned to Peter and stared blankly at him.

  “I shall wait outside,” Peter said and laughed again. He left them, closing the door loudly.

  Edward stared at her.

  She stared at him. She rose from her chair.

  He did not move.

  She moved to him. He said nothing. There was sweat on his brow; his breath stank. He smelled as if he had vomited recently.

  She knelt before him and kissed his hand, then rose. He did not move.
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  She walked to the bed, still fully dressed, and lay upon the fur. “I am ready,” she said.

  She heard the door close and Peter laugh. Her husband had gone, and she was all alone.

  Her wedding night.

  10

  THE NEXT MORNING, ISABELLA BREAKFASTED NOT IN THE royal apartments, but in the dining room of the guest quarters where she had previously stayed. When Nicolette found her, she was already half through with her meal. “There you are!” her friend sang brightly. “And up so… early.” Nicolette’s tone changed the instant she saw Isabella’s face. She sat down immediately and leaned close, her eyes asking the question.

  Isabella spoke softly, barely above a whisper. “I was ready. I suppose he was not.”

  Nicolette’s tongue tried to wet her lips, suddenly dry. She seemed to want to say something but was saved from the effort by the arrival of a trim young man dressed in the bright livery Prince Edward had designated for all his personal servants. He handed Isabella a folded, sealed message on a small silver tray and said, “From your husband.”

  As soon as Isabella lifted the note, the messenger bowed sharply and took his leave. With a glance at Nicolette, the princess broke the seal, unfolded the single paper, and read the words scrawled there. “‘The king directs me to attend a meeting this morning at the first chime. I am otherwise engaged, also at his direction. You will attend in my place and report to me afterward in the royal apartments.’ It is signed ‘Edward.’”

  Just then the first chime of morning rang. Nicolette looked across at her friend. “You are late,” she said.

  Longshanks stood at a map nearly as tall as he was and stabbed with his narrow finger at the land north of England, marked as endless hill country dotted with fortresses and shaded in other areas so impassable the mapmakers had left them bare. “Scotland! Scot—land!” he barked at his advisors. They sat at a grand table in clothes that made their shoulders look wider, their chests thicker. Some even wore polished armor to conferences like this one in order to enhance their status as military men. But none of that made them less afraid of Longshanks.

  “The French will grovel to anyone with strength!” he said in a voice deep and powerful and relentless as the sea. “But how will they credit our strength when we cannot rule the whole of our own island?!” Longshanks shouted.

  He punched the map again, then saw the princess enter silently and move to the window along the far wall.

  “Where is my son?” Longshanks asked.

  She stopped suddenly, realizing the question was meant for her. “Your pardon, m’lord, he asked me to come in his stead,” the princess said.

  Longshanks’s eyes expanded in fury; it was frightening to see. “I send for him—and the little coward sends you?!”

  “Shall I leave, m’lord?”

  “If he wants his queen to rule, then you stay and learn how! I will deal with him.”

  He spun back toward his generals. Ignored, the princess settled silently onto the cushions of the window seat.

  “Nobles are the key to the Scottish door. Grant their nobles land here in England. Give our own nobles estates in the north. Make them too greedy to oppose us,” he said.

  One old advisor spoke up hesitantly, “Sire, our nobles will be reluctant to relocate. New lands mean new taxes, and they are taxed already for our war in France.”

  Longshanks glared at him but took the point. The wheels spun in his brain. His dark eyes fell on the princess. He stared, his eyes cold and blank. She felt chilled, and yet it was as if he was not looking at her at all, but at some lifeless echo that inspired a dusty memory. What could he be thinking of?

  He turned back toward his advisors and revealed his inspiration. “Then let our nobles be real lords in Scotland. Grant them prima noctes, ‘first night.’ When any common girl inhabiting their lands is married, our lords shall have sexual rights to her on the night of her wedding. That should fetch just the kind of lords we want to Scotland.”

  Princess Isabella, tucked against the far window, upon a goose down sitting cushion by the damask curtains, felt a draft must have blown in, so could did her back become. Vivid emotions flooded through her in a confusing swirl. Young women…on their wedding nights…She had just experienced the emotions and uncertainties of her own wedding night, and she felt for any girl in the same situation. Isabella was young, perhaps naïve, but she sensed that princesses and pauper girls must all be alike in their hearts. This was against all she had been taught, but her experience, her recent experience, told her it must be true! If anything, she, in the last days, had come to envy common girls who, she fancied, were free to marry for love. But now, here loomed the enforcement of an old tradition whose only purpose, as far as she could see, was to destroy love and families. If the true purpose of marriage, as the Church taught, was procreation, then the right of a lord to copulate with a common girl in his dominion on the first night of her marriage would mean that her husband could never know if his firstborn child was of his seed or the nobleman’s. What a savage, perverse law!

  And on top of that, why had the king been looking at her when he thought of it?

  Then Isabella’s heart went cold. Longshanks was looking at her again. He was smiling lewdly at her. She lowered her eyes, stood, and left the room.

  11

  THE PRINCE AND HIS MUSCULAR YOUNG FRIEND PETER were stripped to the waist and fencing in the royal apartments. They paid no attention to the knock or to the princess as she entered. She watched them—they were dancing more than fencing. Edward lost his sword; it clattered to the polished floor. He looked up at his wife as if angry at her for having seen his clumsiness.

  “What is it?!” Edward snapped. He had a bark like his father, as if imitating Longshank’s face and tone. But the son’s sound seemed to say, How long must I suffer? Whereas the message in the king’s tone seemed to be, How long before I make you suffer?

  “You directed me to report to you when the king’s conference was ended,” the princess said.

  “So I did! And what was so important about it?”

  “Scotland. He intends—”

  But Edward and his friend were fencing again, the clanging of their blunted swords so loud that she couldn’t hear herself.

  She tried again. “He intends to grant—”

  But Edward lost his weapon once more, and now he whirled on her. “Shut up, would you! How can I concentrate?!”

  “His majesty was quite keen that you should understand—”

  “All so very boring! He wants me to learn to fight too, so let me do it!”

  For an instant, anger flared into her eyes. She glanced at Edward and at the young man with him just before she turned to walk out. But Edward had noticed her glance.

  “Stop there,” he demanded.

  She stopped but did not turn around.

  “Do you disapprove of Peter?” Edward asked.

  He lifted his hand and drew his friend Peter to his side. Still the princess did not turn around.

  “No, m’lord,” she quietly said.

  “Turn around. I said, turn around!”

  She braced herself and turned. But she could not brace herself enough for what she saw: Edward nuzzled Peter, the prince’s bare chest to his muscular friend’s bare back, both men glistening with sweat and sexual excitement.

  The princess’s eyes quivered, but she did not look away.

  “Now, my flower, do you understand?” Edward asked.

  “Yes. I had thought that…I was loathsome to you. Perhaps I am. If I may be excused, m’lord.”

  “You may,” he said.

  She started to leave as quietly as she came, but her husband yelled after her, “Don’t worry, m’lady, it is my royal responsibility to breed. And I assure you, when the time comes, I shall… manage.”

  She closed the door softly on her husband and his lover.

  12

  FAR NORTH OF LONDON, UP WHERE THE FIRTH OR FORTH and the river Clyde cut the great British island
nearly in half, seven horsemen galloped along a wet road, the hooves of their horses slapping sharply, smacking mud high onto the horses’ flanks and across the legs of the riders. They rode with military precision as a bodyguard; in the center of their formation was a young man, barely in his twenties. His hair was dark brown, his moustache and chin whiskers smartly groomed in the fashion of Norman nobility. His shoulders were broad, his chest thick from hard practice with the heavy broadsword he wore at his waist. The tunic over his chain mail displayed a scarlet cross, and one of the riders beside him carried a banner that snapped in the wind, flashing the same noble colors.

  They wound into Edinburgh, Scotland’s royal seat, city of its last king. The road grew more crowded, but the peasants and free merchants scrambled aside to let the riders pass. At the steep hill up to the castle their horses labored, but the young man spured his horse into the lead and through the gates without pause. A clatter of hooves upon the cobblestones, a snapping of the guards’ pikes in salute, and Robert, 17th earl of Bruce, had arrived.

  Gathered around a massive table in the central room of the castle were two dozen noblemen, supporters of the Bruce’s claim to the vacant Scottish throne. As young Robert strode in, still spattered with the mud of his ride, the others stood and bowed their heads in respect. Robert waved his solemn acknowledgment and took his seat at the center of the table; the others settled in respectfully. Young Robert glanced to his friend Mornay, another young noble similarly attired in fighting armor, and gave him another nod in personal greeting, as he did to Craig, a balding, gray-haired nobleman.

  Old Craig was not only leader of the council, he had long been a friend and ally of the Bruce’s father. He spoke up immediately. “Young Robert, we are honored! And your father is well?”