Paul Doherty: The Poison Maiden

‘A scholar,’ Magister Theobald mocked. ‘Mathilde, you should have entered religion!’

‘I never left it.’

‘Taken vows.’

‘I have, as solemn as any sworn by you.’

‘Mathilde, Mathilde.’ Magister Theobald rose to his feet and walked across to stand over me. ‘Why do you not speak to the king?’

‘Is that why you are here, Magister, to learn what I know? To urge me to confess?’

‘To confess?’

‘Come, Magister.’ I gestured with my fingers. He leaned down, and I whispered in his ear one petty hint about Isabella’s great secrets. He drew away, pale, eyes all startled.

‘I don’t believe-’

‘Oh do, my child,’ I teased, ‘believe me. If you told the king what I have just told you, you would not live to see the first Sunday of Advent next.’ I shrugged. ‘An unfortunate accident, a contagion or something you ate, squeezing itself down your throat and depositing in your belly a feast of toads that, as you die, will rumble like a fire blocked in a chimney.’

Magister Theobald backed away and sat down.

‘I’m trying to protect you, Magister. Go back and report that I am as obdurate as ever.’

The king’s advocate wiped the sheen of sweat from his face. ‘The old queen,’ he muttered, ‘she babbled so much when she died.’

‘Leave that!’

‘One thing.’ Magister Theobald drummed his fingers on the arm of his chair. ‘The Poison Maiden — who was she?’

‘Ah,’ I smiled, getting to my feet, ‘tell his Grace the Poison Maiden is not far from me, or indeed from him.’

Magister Theobald stared back, perplexed.

‘My child,’ I bowed, ‘I have said enough.’

I left and returned to the sanctuary, where I knelt beside her tomb, cooling my hot face against the marble. I stared down the nave and thought of the Poison Maiden. It was time to return to my confession.

Winter’s spite was spent. Candlemas had come and gone in a glow of light through dark sanctuaries, chancels and chantry chapels. Edward of England had scarcely been crowned a month, yet already the Great Lords, as they called themselves — Aymer de Valence, Earl of Pembroke; Henry de Lacy, Earl of Lincoln; Bohun of Hereford; Beauchamp of Warwick; and de Clare of Gloucester — were mustering for war. The roads and lanes into London surged with fighting men of every description. Archers dressed in quilted jerkins over homespun shirts, around their waists leather belts with scabbards for sword and dagger, their green serge leggings and crude oxhide boots caked in mud. Their helmets and neck cloths glistened in the sheen of the spring rain, and against their shoulders were longbow staves, the precious twine concealed in a leather sleeve to protect it against the wet. Behind these marched masses of foot in their leather jerkins, heads and faces concealed by conical helmets with broad nose guards. Crossbowmen followed armoured in kettle hats and hauberks; men-at-arms marched in leather jacks and quilted gambesons, coats of scaled armour, the iron skullcaps on their heads laced beneath the chin. They all carried round shields or targes, in their belts shafted axes, clubs and daggers. All these troops streamed towards Westminster, the retinues of the lords who hoped to unfold their war banners in a blaze of arms: dragons, castles, chevrons, martlets, griffins, bears and lions of every colour. The troops mustered in the fields and wastelands around Westminster, impatient for their masters, conventicled in nearby St Peter’s Abbey, to issue their defiance of the Crown.

Across the narrow road, protected by fortified gates and crenellated walls, lurked their intended victim: Edward of England, with his golden hair and olive skin, two yards in height, a prince of striking appearance. His finely etched face was made all the more remarkable by a straight nose, full lips and a generous mouth, and his slightly drooping right eye, a legacy from his father, gave him an enigmatic, mysterious look, as if he was constantly weighing what he saw and heard. As well he might. The Great Lords were demanding the arrest and trial of Edward’s favourite, the man he called his bosom friend, his dear brother, a new Jonathan to his David, the Gascon, Peter Gaveston. The Lords thought different. In their eyes Gaveston was the alleged offspring of a witch, a commoner unjustly exalted by the king to the earldom of Cornwall, a premier lordship of the kingdom, a public display that the favourite was the king’s heart and soul. Gaveston had also been given in marriage Margaret de Clare, the king’s own niece. He was allowed to display extravagant arms dominated by a gold-scarlet eagle. In the eyes of the Great Ones, Gaveston, despite his dark hair and splendid physique, adorned by costly robes of silk, velvet and damascene, was a cockatrice. He was compared to that fabulous two-legged dragon with a cock’s head and face whose stare and breath were fatal to all it glared at. In a word, Gaveston was a blight on the kingdom. He was that mysterious, fabulous beast, with the head of a man and the body of a lion protected by porcupine quills and a scaly tail, which roamed the land dealing out death and devastation. He was a marined, a merman, neither one thing nor the other. The Lords wanted him dead. Resentful at his hold over the king, his elevation to power, his marriage, his wealth, his wit, not to mention his skill at arms, they were truly jealous of Gaveston. They wanted him gone and had come fully armed to the Parliament at Westminster to achieve that.

To strengthen their case, the Lords had summoned old Robert Winchelsea, Archbishop of Canterbury, back from exile to sanctify their proceedings. The leading earls met the archbishop in the hallowed precincts of the abbey. They muttered behind their hands how this was God’s work, that Gaveston was not only the offspring of a witch but a badling, a sodomite who had captivated the king’s heart and trapped his body in sinful, unnatural lusts. Satan, they argued, lurked in the shadow of the Crown. Winchelsea, with his scrawny hair, bony face and eyes all animate ready to fight, was only too eager to play the role of the ‘Prophet of Wrath in Israel’. He had swept into London, which he dismissed as ‘a city without grace, having men without faith and women without honour’, a veiled warning to the capital not to support their king.

Edward and Gaveston laughed when they heard that, but sobered swiftly enough. Winchelsea, exiled by the old king for his meddling ways, proclaimed himself ready for martyrdom, eager to follow in the steps of Becket, to be the vox populi, if not the vox dei — the mouthpiece of righteousness come to judgement. In the end, however, denunciation was one thing, war was another. No one dared draw the sword. If Edward unfolded his standard displaying the royal arms, to go to war against him was high treason to be adjudged immediately. So the Lords hesitated. What was to be done next? Edward and Gaveston retreated deep into the Palace of Westminster. A host of retainers and servants, whitesmiths, blacksmiths, coopers, jewellers, masons, tilers and craftsmen followed. These were joined by petty clerks of the household, those of the pantry, buttery and kitchen, not to mention the royal clerks of the wardrobe, exchequer and chancery as well as those from the courts of king’s bench and common pleas. A packed throng of liveried royal servants protected by the Kernia, Gaveston’s wild Irish mercenaries, together with royal troops, knight bannerets and a host of Welsh archers. All these took up close guard along the walls of the palace, at King’s Bridge and Queen’s Steps, as well as the Great Gate and the postern doors to the royal quarters. The abbey scaffold in nearby Gallows Lane became busy, swiftly adorned with the corpses of malefactors, footpads and foists who’d dared to creep close to the royal household eager for rich pickings. The king had vented his rage and frustration on such lawbreakers, whose corpses froze, drying hard in the cold spring air.