Paul Doherty - The Cup of Ghosts

Philip’s anger at the delay was obvious, royal messengers being sent out almost by the hour to seek out the English party. At last the news arrived. Edward of England had been delayed but he had left Dover, he had arrived at Wissant and was hastening with all speed towards Boulogne. The bells of the city rang out to greet him as Isabella and I went up on to the walls to watch his approach. A mass of brilliant banners announced his arrival. I glimpsed the golden leopards of England against a scarlet background, a swirl of riders, cloaks flying, soldiers and knights dressed in the royal livery all clustered round a horseman resplendent in scarlet and silver, his golden hair clear for all to see. Edward of England had arrived! A forest of pavilions grew up round the town, every available chamber and garret was taken, even the porches and gateways of churches and taverns as the great ones assembled with their retinues. The English had wisely camped in and around the town of Montreuil. From there Edward led a delegation into Boulogne to treat with his future father-in-law over Gascony and other vexed questions. There was no formal meeting with Isabella; protocol and etiquette demanded that Edward keep his distance from his intended bride.

Casales, Sandewic and Baquelle provided juicy morsels of gossip about the proceedings. Relations between the two kings remained as frosty as the weather. Edward had agreed to suppress the Templars, being more vexed by the demands of his own leading earls regarding Gaveston. These he had ignored, even appointing Gaveston, fully invested as the Earl of Cornwall, as regent during the royal absence. Of course, we weren’t satisfied until we’d studied the English king when he visited Philip. Isabella and I seized secret vantage points to achieve this. Edward II was over six foot tall, broad-shouldered, slim-waisted with the long legs of a born horseman and the wiry arms of a swordsman. He was handsome-faced, slightly olive-skinned, a strong contrast to his golden hair and neatly clipped fair beard and moustache. He had heavy-lidded blue eyes, the right one slightly drooping as if he distrusted the world, an impression heightened by the wry grimace of his mouth. He walked quickly, hands swinging, carrying himself arrogantly, yet when he relaxed he appeared to be courteous in the extreme. A weathercock of a man! I watched him closely; even from those few glimpses at the start of my life, I gathered Edward was changeable. He’d pat a servant on the back but, if the mood took him, lash out with fist or foot and hurl a litany of abuse. He had a carrying voice and a commanding presence. A man of nervous energy who shouted at his grooms to take care of the horses, gazing round as if expecting some French bowman or assassin to be lurking nearby.

Edward was apparently eager to finish the wedding celebrations and leave. He did little honour to Philip or the French king’s feelings, complaining bitterly about the cold, the loneliness of Boulogne and the need to return to England to deal with pressing business at Westminster. According to Sandewic, Edward advanced the argument that he’d come to France, he’d marry Isabella, do homage for Gascony, suppress the Temple, so what else did Philip want? Of course, the source of his distress was the growing crisis in London between Gaveston and the earls, led by the king’s cousin Thomas of Lancaster. This group of barons, who would come to dominate all our lives, were also hostile to a French marriage. They openly demanded their king ignore all such revelry, summon a new army and march north to deal with the Scots, who were launching raids across the northern march. On one thing all the earls agreed: Gaveston was to be exiled. According to Casales he was no more than a Gascon squire who’d been created a premier earl, and now the great earls had to gnaw their knuckles as Gaveston reigned supreme.

All these observations and news swirled around us as Isabella prepared for her wedding at the cathedral of Notre Dame in Boulogne, where the Archbishop of Narbonne, together with other leading ecclesiastics, would celebrate her betrothal and nuptial mass. On the Feast of the Conversion of St Paul, 25 January 1308, Isabella, resplendent in a silver gown of pure silk, a white gauze veil held in place on her head by a circlet of finest gold, met her royal bridegroom, garbed in robes of blue, scarlet and gold, at the door of Notre Dame to exchange vows. The princess looked and acted the part of the Grande Dame from the romances she so avidly read. I was not allowed near her, being herded into the cathedral porch with other retainers, whilst the princess was escorted up the church by leading ladies from the courts of Europe. The nuptial mass was celebrated, the powerful voices of the cathedral canons singing the melodious plainchant refrains whilst Isabella and Edward knelt on splendid prie-dieus before the high altar, half-hidden by the clouds of incense streaming out of the many censers. Once the Archbishop of Narbonne had sung the ‘Ite Missa Est’, king and royal bride walked hand in hand down past the choir and into the nave to receive the applause of the aristocratic congregation. Afterwards they proceeded out on to the steps to be acclaimed by the crowds, whilst fresh choirs carolled ‘Laus Honor et Gloria Vobis’ followed by a hymn to ‘Isabella Regina Anglorum’, even though she had yet to be crowned.

Later in the afternoon, as darkness drew in, the feasting and banqueting took place in the royal mansion hastily refurbished for the occasion. I did not attend. Court protocol and etiquette demanded that during her first marriage days, Isabella could only be waited upon by women of the royal blood who had witnessed the nuptials and the consequent royal bedding. I kept to my lodgings in the nearby old bishop’s palace, accepting, like my companions, the remains of the feasts: scraps of venison, pork, beef, fish, half-eaten manchet loaves, bruised fruit and jugs of wine of every variety.

Isabella did not ignore me. She sent a small purse filled with English silver and a piece of parchment on which a forget-me-not flower was carefully inscribed. More importantly, Sandewic came into his own. He was now Custos , knight-keeper of the princess’s household. She was the centre of the English court so her retinue was embraced by the English king’s peace. During the wedding days Sandewic used the opportunity to bring in an escort of Welsh archers, little wiry, dark-faced men who spoke a tongue I could not understand. They were clothed in Sandewic’s livery, a white lion rampant on a green background, they carried longbows of yew with wicked-looking stabbing knives dangling from rings on their belts and quivers of yard-long shafts strapped to their backs. These archers guarded and patrolled the bishop’s palace, cheerful men who loved to drink and sing the haunting songs of their country. They were most vigilant and careful, demanding that the servants who brought my food first taste it before they allowed them through. Oh yes, those days marked a sharp shift in the seasons! I too was now in the power of England.

Casales and Rossaleti also recognised their tasks were changing. Rossaleti prepared himself to carry Isabella’s secret and privy seals though she quietly vowed that only she and I would seal what she and I should only know. A distance grew up between Casales and Rossaleti; they were no longer envoys but members of different households. Baquelle came into his own, being specially charged with organising the English departure from Boulogne to the nearby port of Wissant. Of course Sandewic gave me the news about the banquets and feasts hosted by the various courtiers with their flowery speeches and empty promises. He also took me out through the dreary mizzle of a Norman winter to view the sights.

Boulogne was a town transformed; banners, streamers, brightly coloured ribbons flapped everywhere alongside the fleur-de-lis of France and the leopards of England. Bishops, nobles, haughty ladies, high-ranking clerics, swaggering mice-eyed retainers tricked out in their glorious attire of ermine, brocade, satin silks, linen from the looms of Flanders and goldwork from Cologne. Sleek horses of every type, sumpters, destriers, palfreys and cobs, clattered across the frost-glazed cobbles. In the fields outside town the war-pennants fluttered and glowed in the bursts of weak sunshine. The might of Europe, garbed in the armour of Liege and Limoges, Damascus, Milan, London and Toledo, had come to do mock battle in the lists, those great tournaments and tourneys organised in Isabella’s honour. The frozen meadows outside the town walls were transformed by a host of standards all displaying their exotic insignia: wolves, wyverns, leopards, dragons, fire-breathing salamanders, suns and moons, wheat sheaves, fabulous birds, charging boars, rampant lions, crouching dogs, all parted per pale or per fesse, per cross or bend sinister. All these emblems were painted in the colours of heraldry, azure, gules, sable, vert, purple and argent. In the centre of this city of silken pavilions stood the lists, where knights in plate armour, helmets carved in terrifying shapes and surmounted by brilliantly coloured plumes, charged, lances splintering, shields buckling. As one joust finished another began to the blast of trumpet and horn, the air riven with the clash of steel, the thunder of hooves and the heralds shouting, ‘ Lessez les aler, lessez les aler, les bons chevaliers! ’ Pages and squires clustered round the heroes who’d survived the battling of the last few days, all intent on winning the golden crown. I quoted the lines of a troubadour: