Paul Doherty: The Darkening Glass

Demontaigu sits at the end of the banqueting table gowned in dark-blue murrey and Cordovan riding boots; long fingers grasp a quill pen, and around his neck hangs a reddish Templar cross. He sits next to Uncle Reginald and the dark-featured Ap Ythel, captain of Edward’s bodyguard. They dine apart from the rest on wholesome foods, sweet viands and manchet bread. The rest of my guests are hidden behind fantastic details, a mosaic of different symbols, foolish forms and countless chimeras. Belshazzar’s palace is no hall of light and life, but a stretch of the dark lands, the vestibule of Hades, the gloomy enclosures that house the tombs of hell. I have summoned up the smoke spirits, the wraiths, the pallid, bloodless ghosts to drift in my painting along that cold, lifeless passageway. The food for these demons is foul scorpions and fiery toads, whilst the wine pouring from the jugs looks like stagnant water from a sewer. Servants hover like black-feathered demons. These wait in attendance on the Great Lords. First, Philip of France, killer of his own wife, Jeanne of Navarre, with his silver-white hair and soulless blue eyes, and a face that looks almost pious if it wasn’t for the smirk twisting his lips. On either side, his three sons: Louis, reddish as a weasel; Philippe, long and gangly, fingers scratching his face, mouth half open, as it was in life when he believed his dead, dread father constantly walked by his side; next to Philippe, Charles, blond and fat, one hand as ever going out to grasp the wine flagon, the other beneath the table stroking a pig playing the bagpipes. Behind the King of France are his three familiars, those human boars and bloodhounds, Philip’s mole-men. The demons who worked constantly in the dark to bring down the Templar order in shattering ruin and send my uncle and other innocents to the yawning scaffold over the great pit at Montfaucon. Oh yes, Philip’s lawyers, who believed they could plunder hell and return unscathed. They stand there in their scalloped jerkins lined with rat’s fur. I gave them hoods with monkey ears, whilst a whetstone and a jordan, a dripping urinal, hang clasped around their necks as their every breath was crooked. Foremost amongst these is red-haired Enguerrand de Marigny, Lord Renard, Philip’s first minister and leading councillor; then his other two minions of murder: Guillaume de Nogaret, with his face fat like a bag of dung, and Guillaume de Plaisans, blond-haired and mastiff-featured. On another table sit the Lords of England. Edward of Caernarvon, king yet a fool, with his lustrous blond hair, moustache and beard. Beside Edward, dark-haired Peter Gaveston, his woman-like features, gentle eyes and laughing mouth hiding a heart full of murderous deceit. On a bar above their heads stands a magpie, its black and white feathers all ruffled, sharp yellow beak ready to jab.

I finished this part of my own harrowing of hell on the eve of the Annunciation, when dying winter meets a strengthening spring. The scenes took me back to my chronicle, to that time of blood so long ago, that egg-ripe Easter of 1312, when a hideous massacre on the ghost-haunted wastelands outside York ushered in a season of murderous betrayal.

By the spring of 1312, my mistress Queen Isabella was on the verge of full ripeness. Sixteen summers old, she had matured rich and fertile, a fairy-tale Queen from the romances she so ardently read. A beautiful woman, tall, willowy and slender, her face as perfect as an angel, with lustrous blonde hair, rose-kissed lips and eyes that could dazzle with life. Strange eyes, light blue and sloe-shaped, a legacy from her Navarrese mother. Isabella presided over a court in chaos. The great earls were in fierce rebellion against Gaveston, the king’s favourite, who had been created Earl of Cornwall and placed at the right hand of the power. Gaveston’s banner, a gorgeous red eagle, its wings spread, constantly fluttered over the English court and sparked the flames of civil war. The great earls assembled in this church or that, hands extended, to swear the most sacred of oaths that Gaveston’s banner and coat of arms must be reversed, torn and ground into the dust. Thomas, Earl of Lancaster, cousin of the king, and the other Great Lords whistled up their levies and, with banners displayed, marched on London, only to find that the king and his hen-groper — as the great earls mockingly called Gaveston — had fled north to the fastness of York. King, queen, favourite and their households sheltered at the Franciscan friary opposite St Mary’s on Hetergate, which lay between Castlegate and the river Ouse. The Franciscan house was a splendid sprawling complex of buildings around a stately church with a lofty bell tower. I still recall its nave and sanctuary, places of hallowed light, with their altars to the Resurrection and the Trinity, all shrouded in the glow from a thousand tapers. How can I forget, when that house of God soon became the haunt of murder? Most of the royal servitors lay quartered in other establishments, stretching from Bootham Bar to Fishergate; my mistress and I, however, occupied the Arcella chambers above the main cloister garden of the friary.

Isabella had changed, and so had I. A few years older than the queen, I was now recognised as a lady of the inner household, the queen’s own chamber; in fact, its only member. Others gossiped that I was Isabella’s shadow, with my long pale face and mousy hair. True, I was, I am, no beauty, though Demontaigu always claimed my eyes were clear and merry, my face an ivory pale, with lips meant for kissing. Flatterer! An honourable man; was it just a lovely lie? I was the queen’s physician, adviser and clerk. I attended meetings of the king’s chamber council. Sometimes Gaveston and even the king would ask my voice on certain matters. My relationship with the queen had certainly deepened: in public her lady and handmaid, in private the closest of kin. My duties were not only in the kitchen and spicery but generally in the household, whether it be the scullery, the hanaper or the great wardrobe. I was Isabella’s trusted domicella , in charge of the jewel chests and the great coffers containing her robes. I paid messengers like John de Moigne, presented the high altar of the Franciscan chapel with cloths of gold, supervised the purchase of five hundred Galloway pears, a great delicacy much loved by the queen, together with Gruyere cheese, which her father sent from Paris along with a spate of advice on how she should behave, especially towards Gaveston, the king’s favourite. Gaveston, pretty-faced, with a dagger-like wit! What was Isabella’s relationship with the king’s minion? Many have asked me. To be true, it’s still a mystery, even now, tens of years later. I can only suspect the truth, not demonstrate it. In public or in private, be it courtyard or secret chamber, they acted like sweet cousins, with soft words and pretty compliments towards each other. I detected no tension between king and queen, or between Gaveston and Isabella, at least not until that fateful Easter.

In the February of 1312, the favourite’s wife, that little mouse, the sanctimonious and ever pious Margaret de Clare, gave birth to a girl child. Six weeks later, Isabella announced to a delighted court that she too was expecting a child. I had known this since the Feast of the Epiphany. I advised the queen that she was to be a mother: her courses had stopped for at least three months, whilst the swelling of her stomach and thighs and the tenderness of her breasts confirmed this. Isabella suffered slight sickness in the early hours. I begged her not to take any potion except a little camomile sprinkled in pure water, boiled then left to cool. In truth, she had come into her own. She proclaimed that the child would be a boy, a future king. Edward was beside himself with pleasure, for the heralded proclamation confirmed his own virility and put paid to the filthy rumours that he was nothing better than a capon nestling with his lover Gaveston. Of course, the curious ask if there was any truth in such scandalous rumours. I can only answer on what I perceived. In my eyes, Gaveston was the king’s brother, sister, mother and father. Edward was a lonely man, and he pined for Gaveston as a man would for the staples of life.