There were no lotions to preserve her smooth skin; no oils for her hair; no scents for her body.

If she were truly seeking repentance, she should have no need of such things.

Strange it was that she, proud Isabella, should have come to this.

There was no safety outside for her. If she emerged they would accuse her of attempting to murder the King. Her Spanish enemy would have no mercy on her.

She scarcely spoke to any, and so deep was her melancholy that the nuns believed she would die of it.

They brought her news of the world outside the convent. She heard that her husband and her eldest son had been arrested on charges of being involved in an attempt to poison the King.

‘Oh no, no,’ she cried aloud. ‘They knew nothing of it.’

Hugh defended her as she knew he would. ‘They lied,’ he cried. There had been no poison attempt in which his wife or any member of his family had been involved. The villains had mentioned his wife’s name because of recent happenings and they thought their wicked story would be believed. He challenged Alphonse to single combat that he might defend his wife’s honour.

Dear simple Hugh!

Alphonse would not fight. He declared that Hugh de Lusignan was so treason-spotted that he would not demean himself by meeting him. Young Hugh then offered to fight but his offer was refused because, it was said, with such parents, he was unworthy.

Thus they were all brought low, and since it was believed by Louis and Blanche that Isabella alone was guilty, Hugh was freed and went back to Lusignan to mourn his sad fate.

Isabella would see no one. Nothing would make her emerge from her chosen solitude.

She would take the veil and live out her life seeking forgiveness for her sins.


* * *

With the passing of the days her will to live escaped her. She sought nothing now but death.

She told the nuns that when she believed her sins were forgiven she would take to her pallet and rise no more.

There was nothing for her in the outside world. All she sought now was death.

So earnestly did she seek it that within two years of her flight from Lusignan it came to her.

They buried her, as she had wished, not in the church but in the common graveyard, for she had said, ‘Proud was I in life but humble in death.’

Thus passed the turbulent Isabella of Angoulême, and on her death Louis saw no reason why Hugh and he should be enemies. He had known – and Blanche had known – that only Hugh’s excessive love for his wife had made him a traitor of him. Such good friends did they become that Hugh accompanied Louis when he realised one of his main ambitions: to join a crusade to the Holy Land. It was on this crusade that Hugh was mortally wounded.


* * *

Six years later after Isabella’s death Henry, King of England, on a visit to Fontevrault, was shocked to discover that his mother lay in a common grave.

He ordered that her body be taken from it and buried beside his grandfather and grandmother, Henry II and Eleanor of Aquitaine. Then he caused a tomb to be built over it and a statue of her in a flowing gown caught in by a girdle and a wimple veil framing her face.

‘I remember her beauty in my childhood,’ he said, ‘and when I met her later she was as fair as ever. I never saw a woman as beautiful as my mother, Isabella of Angoulême.’

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