Виктория Холт - The Vow on the Heron

‘So, my lord,’ he said, ‘I come to tell you of a way into the castle which is known to very few people. There is a passage which is under the moat and comes up in the keep. It was made by a Saxon prince during the Danish invasions. You could enter through this hole and thus take possession of the castle.’

Montacute’s spirits rose. He could see a satisfactory end of the enterprise in sight.

He planned with the King and Sir William to enter the castle that night.

* * *

In their bedchamber Isabella and Mortimer were preparing for bed. Isabella had placed the keys of the castle under her pillow and they were safe for the night, she believed.

We must be thankful for every night, she often said to herself. I have a terrible fear that some evil fate overhangs me.

It was for Mortimer she feared rather than herself. She could not believe that Edward would ever allow anyone to harm her.

Mortimer said he had thought of something he must say to the Bishop of Lincoln and his two trusted friends, Sir Oliver Ingham and Sir Simon Bereford, who were in the castle on this night. He would join Isabella later.

He never did.

As he talked with his friends, Montacute with an armed guard had come up through the secret passage and into the castle.

Mortimer heard the scuffle outside the door followed by shouts and groans. He opened the door and saw the armed men and several of his bodyguard lying dead on the floor.

‘What means this?’ he shouted.

He was immediately seized.

‘It means, my lord,’ said Montacute, ‘that you are the King’s prisoner.’

Isabella hearing the shouts came running out in her night clothes.

When she saw Mortimer held by the guards she gave a great cry of distress.

‘Where is the King? The King is here. I know the King is here.’

No one answered her and she ran forward and would have thrown herself at Mortimer’s feet, but two of the men gently restrained her.

‘Where are you going? What are you doing? Release Mortimer.’

‘My lady, the Earl of March is the King’s prisoner.’

‘Take me to the King. Take me to the King,’ she sobbed. ‘Oh sweet son, have pity on my gentle Mortimer.’

She slipped gently to the floor. She was moaning as they hustled Mortimer away.

* * *

The King has issued a proclamation. He had taken the administration of the country into his own hands. He summoned a Parliament which should meet at Westminster on the twenty-sixth day of November and its first task would be to try the prisoner, Roger de Mortimer, Earl of March.

The whole country was talking of Mortimer. The people had long hated him. They had deplored his relationship with the Queen. There was scarcely a man in England who did not rejoice to see the end of Mortimer’s rule. The King was now a man. He was his grandfather all over again. Thank God, they said, England at last has a King.

The story of Mortimer’s capture was told and the secret passage into Nottingham Castle was named Mortimer’s Hole and called so for ever after. This must be the end of Mortimer. He must go the way of other favourites who had taken so much of the wealth of the country and used it for their own benefit. England would have no more of him. England needed a strong King, a King who would restore law and order to the country so that it might trade and know justice and so grow rich.

There came the day when Mortimer faced the King and his peers.

The charges against him were that he had usurped royal power, that he had murdered King Edward the Second and Edmund Earl of Kent. He had taken possession of state revenues the latest of these being the payment from the Scots. For all these crimes he was judged to be a traitor and enemy of the King and the kingdom and was condemned to the traitor’s death, hanged, drawn and quartered.

It was important, all agreed, that there should be no delay in carrying out the sentence. The Queen Mother had sent repeated appeals to her son but he would not see her until after the sentence was carried out.

Mortimer must die. The country demanded it.

So three days after his sentence Roger de Mortimer was taken to Tyburn and there, watched by thousands who had gathered to see the end of the most hated man in England, the terrible sentence was carried out.

Mortimer’s reign of triumph was over.

* * *

Edward was distressed. He could not make up his mind what should be done about his mother. The old fascination she had always exerted over him was still there. She was guilty he believed of the murder of his father for she doubtless had connived with Mortimer to bring it about. He was hearing terrible rumours about the manner of that murder and surely any who could agree to such an act deserved the direst form of punishment.

Yet ... she was his mother.

What could he do? He could not let her live in state. He could not allow her to be near Philippa and the boy. She must not believe that she could act in such a diabolical way and nothing be made of it. That would be unfair to his father.

He thought often of his father. He reproached himself for not being more watchful. He should have known when they put him away that some terrible fate was being planned for him. He could honestly plead his youth. A boy such as he had been had not dreamed such wickedness was possible.

He would not go to her just yet. He could not face her. She had murdered his father—she and Mortimer between them—and if rumour was true in the most horrible manner.

He could not condemn her to death as he had Mortimer. But he could not let her go free. He could not allow her to come to his Court. How could he? Every time he looked at her he would think of the terrible things she had allowed to be done to his father.

He talked the matter over with Montacute.

‘My mother! ‘ he murmured. ‘My own mother! ‘

‘It is a difficult situation in which you find yourself,’ agreed Montacute. ‘You will have to act promptly and wisely, my lord.’

‘I know it. I shall strip her of all the wealth she has amassed—she and Mortimer together. Her ill-gotten gains must be restored to their rightful owners. But she is my mother, Montacute. I cannot forget that.’

‘Nor should you. Let her have an adequate income of say three thousand pounds a year. That will keep her in the state worthy of a queen and yet without extravagance. Send her to one of your castles and let her stay there until you have decided what you should do in the best interests of all.’

‘You have the answer, Montacute. I shall do that. And I think Castle Rising would provide the answer.’

‘You mean that place in Norfolk not far from the town of Lynn?’

‘That is the one. It is some distance from Westminster and from Windsor. It seems an ideal spot.’

‘Yes, my lord, I think you have chosen wisely.’

* * *

Through the gloomy rooms of Castle Rising Isabella roamed as though she were seeking her lover. Sometimes she called to him.

‘He is not dead,’ she told her attendants. ‘He cannot be dead. No one could kill Mortimer. Mortimer is invincible.’

They tried to soothe her. It was dreams which haunted her. Someone must sleep in her chamber and be there to soothe her when the nightmares came.

Once she fancied he was hanging on a rope at the foot of her bed. She had heard that long long ago King John had had his wife’s lover mutilated and hung on her bed canopy so that when she awoke in the morning the first thing she should see was his obscenely assaulted body.

Then she would dream that they were doing to Mortimer what had been done to Edward.

At these times they said: ‘The madness is upon her.’

It would pass and she would remember then where she was and why she was there. And how her son Edward the King had sent her there, making her his prisoner.

‘He wants me out of the way,’ she said. ‘I have become an encumbrance to him ... a reminder.’

Then she would be sunk in melancholy and she told them that her longing for Mortimer was more than she could endure.

She wept a great deal.

‘It should have been so different,’ she said. ‘If I could but see my son ...’

But Edward did not come near her. He was trying to find the murderers of his father. They had all escaped overseas but that did not mean they would not be found and brought back to justice. Then the questioning would start. She shuddered.

‘Let be, let be,’ she said. ‘It is past and done with.’

That, she remembered, was what Mortimer had always said. And now he—the brave, the strong, the virile—the one being she had truly loved in the whole of her life—was past and done wi th.

The months went by. She did not see her son, nor his Queen and her child.

‘One day,’ she said, ‘he will come. He will never desert his mother completely.’

There were days when she was well but her attendants never knew when the frenzy would come upon her or the madness return.

Sometimes they heard ghostly footsteps in the night.

‘It is Queen Isabella wandering through the castle,’ they said. ‘Her madness is coming upon her again.’

EDWARD was in a quandary. He had discovered the names of the men he suspected of murdering his father. William Ogle, he believed, had actually done the deed. When Edward considered that he felt sick with horror and his temper which he had inherited from his ancestors was ready to break out into fury, which it certainly would if he ever laid hands on Ogle. Nothing would be too bad for that man to suffer. ‘And by God, he shall suffer,’ vowed Edward.