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RIVALS FOR THE CROWN
Sequel to On A
Highland Shore
London might officially
be in mourning, but one would never have known that by the behavior of its citizens.
Each day looked like a feast day. Hawkers roamed the streets with trays of
hot chestnuts and dumplings carried in iron pits, ladled out into wooden bowls
that were emptied, then reused by the next customer.
Innkeepers wore wide smiles as their rooms were filled, and butchers worked
long hours, preparing the food for all those who would need a funeral feast.
The streets grew ever more crowded with
new arrivals. Nobles on horseback jostled with farmers bringing the contents
of their root cellars to sell. Fruit from Spain
and Italy
sold for a premium. Stuffed figs and persimmons were piled on trays next to
bright oranges, sold from open stalls set up in the squares. Every church was
filled, whether because of the warmth from the pans of coals allowed for these
few days to burn in braziers above the worshippers, or whether Londoners felt
a sudden upsurge in piety at the news of Eleanor’s death, he could not say.
Every building seemed to have people hanging
from windows and doorways. The houses, dark wood or half-timbered plaster,
stretched out toward each other over the narrow streets below. Walkers had
to take care to step over refuse – and worse – as they pushed their way through
the crowds. Whores invited them inside brothels and Rory and Kieran bantered
with them, but did not linger.
The ceremony itself would take place at
Westminster Abbey and all of London seemed to be heading
there. Edward the Confessor was buried there, as he’d planned before being
driven into exile by the Danes. William the Conqueror was crowned there on
Christmas Day in 1066, and every monarch since had held important ceremonies
there.
“The queen’s ladies.” He heard the murmur as the women were
ushered past, the most important of the noble women first, wives and daughters
of dukes and earls, begowned and bejeweled in amazing fashion. Behind them was
another group, less lavishly costumed.
“What was her name?” Rory asked Kieran.
“Rachel’s friend, the one we said we’d try to find? What was her name?”
Kieran thought for a moment. “Isabel de
Burke. She must be one of them. But which? They
all look older than I thought.”
Rory nodded. Isabel de Burke. He could
not guess what her connection to the queen might have been, but certainly none
of these women looked like a possible friend of Rachel’s. And then he saw them,
two younger women, one blonde, pretty, her cupid’s mouth drawn and blue eyes
anxious. And the other, taller, with a regal manner.
Her lovely face was framed by a wimple of
creamy white and topped by a headdress of the same material, brown hair curling
softly around her temples. She had a very fine body, lithe, the curves of her
breasts and waist revealed by the line of her gray gown, the same gray as her
eyes. Her sleeves were a deep yellow, almost golden color, a bright spot in
this sea of somber hues. She turned her head, showing him her profile and the
line of her jaw, smooth and feminine, then nodded at something said to her and
hurried forward, propelled by the guards behind them.
He nudged Kieran and gestured to them.
“I’m thinking the blonde one,” Kieran said.
“Wager?” Rory asked, not from any conviction that the brown-haired
lass was Isabel, but more to see what Kieran would
do.
“Wager.”
#
The entire world, it seemed,
would attend Queen Eleanor’s funeral. Leaders from every known country had
been invited. For weeks London
had been filling with those eager to see history made, and now that the day
was here, the streets were almost impassable. Isabel watched the crowds from
her spot in one of the many royal carriages.
She’d not expected to be
here. She’d thought she would be dismissed upon their return to London, but instead, both she and her mother
were instructed to continue as they had been before. Even more surprising,
Isabel was instructed to be in court every day. Every day she woke with the
expectation of being called to the Wardrobe Tower.
And each evening, when she had not, she sighed with relief. It would not last,
she knew.
She had avoided Alis.
Difficult, since they slept in the same bed. And the next day she shared a
royal coach with her on the way to Eleanor’s funeral. She was dressed in silk
and ermine, her hands folded on her lap. She told herself she was enjoying
Alis’s open enmity, but the truth was she missed their former
camaraderie, false as it had turned out to be. She felt very alone. Rachel,
she thought. Where are you?
It was time to live
in the world as it was, not as she would have it be. Henry was here somewhere in this throng, she knew, for
all the king’s knights were in attendance. But she would not look for him.
The coach stopped and
the door was flung open. Hands reached in for the women, and suddenly it was
time to join the people crowding into the abbey. It was frightening to be jostled
and shoved, and she did not complain when Alis, her eyes wide with fear, grabbed her arm.
“You may despise me,”
Alis whispered, “but stay close. I would have both
of us survive this day.”
Isabel nodded,
and together they pushed through the openings in the crowd the guards made,
arriving at last inside the cathedral. They sat silently for what seemed like
hours. A choir began to sing and Isabel heard the trumpets outside blare to
the world that the king had arrived.
Edward made his way
up the North Aisle, slowly. How strange this day must be for the king, Isabel
thought, for Edward and Eleanor had been married in this building, and had been
the first king and queen to be jointly crowned here. This was where Edward
had raised monument to his father and where his son was buried.
Behind him were men
from every part of Edward’s life, magnates from all over England and Scotland. Barons
and knights and wealthy merchants who were among Edward’s favorites.
His six children, from the child prince Edward, the newly
married Joan on the arm of her husband Gilbert de Clare, to the eldest, Eleanor,
who had traveled far to come to her mother’s funeral.
Isabel remembered little
of the ceremony itself, for the sights and sounds were mixed with her sorrow.
And her worry for what the future would hold. At the conclusion of the hours long service, the king and his entourage filed out first,
then the nobles who had sat near him. And then Isabel and the rest of Queen
Eleanor’s ladies, walking down the North Aisle only to wait at the end of the
Nave while the crowd outside dispersed.
It was there, as she
stood next to Alis and pretended to ignore her,
that Isabel met the gaze of a man standing near the door. He was blond,
Irish, perhaps, or Norse, for he was quite tall.
His eyes were very blue,
his hair pale and drawn back from his striking face. His nose was straight,
his cheekbones were sharp, his jawline well-defined,
his mouth wide and lips pressed together as he examined those leaving. He looked
like a warrior, but was dressed as a noble, his wide shoulders covered by a
beautifully woven cloak with a circular golden brooch set with jewels. He glanced
at the others, then looked into Isabel’s eyes. And
smiled. And suddenly the noise of the people around her disappeared,
the slow shuffling as they moved forward now unnoticed.
She smiled in return,
and his smile widened. Handsome man. Golden-haired
man who lit the dark space he stood it. And then he was gone, his face blocked
by a tall man who moved between them. She was hurried forward by the guards,
through the crowd, and into the coach. She peered through the open door until
it was slammed, looking him, but it was impossible to find one tall blond man.
The funeral meal was
overlong and all those who had not had a chance to talk to Edward before or
at the funeral itself clamored for a moment now. He ignored most of them, sitting
with his closest companions at the dais, speaking little and eating less. But
none could leave until he did, and so they sat and waited.
“Are you in need of
anything, demoiselles? Isabel?”
She recognized Langton’s
voice at once, but pretended she not to hear.
“Isabel?” His tone
was insistent. “Is there anything you need?”
She forced a smile.
“Thank you, my lord. But I am in need of nothing.”
“Be sure to visit me
soon. I insist.” Langton patted the hand of the
woman whose arm rested on his, then continued to his seat with the other officers
of Edward’s household.
Isabel shivered, trying
to mask her revulsion. The man terrified her.
“Langton, Isabel?” Lady Dickleburough
asked. “Have you not been warned? He is a snake and you would not be the
first to be devoured by him.”
“I am careful, madam,”
Isabel replied.
“Wise.” She emptied her wine. “Alis
has been telling interesting things about you lately. Have you two argued?”
“No, not at all.”
“Ah. Then it must be
that she is jealous of your youth and beauty.”
Isabel took another
sip of wine. “How do you know this?”
Lady Dickleburough smiled slowly. “I hear everything, Isabel.
Everything.”
She was miserable.
Her days were long and she either suffered Alis’s
presence or agonized in her absence, wondering if Alis
and Henry were together. She visited her mother, who complained bitterly of
nothing to do. When she told her mother to be glad they had roofs over their
head, her mother had asked what she would know of earning a roof over her head.
She had let more time
pass before her next visit. And the one after that, for they argued again,
her mother accusing her of being cosseted while she lived in one tiny room.
Isabel thought of the bed she shared with Alis. And the apartment she shared with the rest of the queen’s
ladies. And said nothing.
Two days after the queen’s
funeral, when a guard came to fetch her where she and Alis sat in their apartment, doing embroidery.
“There are men here
to see you, Demoiselle de Burke,” he said.
Isabel looked up. She
was expecting no one. “Who are they?”
The guard’s disdain
for the visitors, or for her, was obvious. He examined his nails and waited
for her reply. “Foreigners, but aren’t they all these days? I could not understand
their names.”
She exchanged a glance
with Alis, their uneasy truce since the funeral still
untested.
“Don’t bring them here,”
Alis said. “Go to them instead.”
Isabel nodded, for a
moment tempted to ask Alis to accompany her, then
thinking better of it. “They asked for me by name?”
“Which is why I am here, demoiselle.”
She stood, her irritation
flaring. “Take me to them,” she said, tossing her needlework onto the cushion
she’d abandoned, and wondering how quickly the word would get to Lady Dickleburough.
The guard did not answer,
but led her down the stairs and through the corridors to one of the anterooms
used by the queen’s household for meeting with tradespeople. He paused outside the door, looking down at
her, then thrust the door open and waved her inside.
There were two men waiting
there, both tall, both outlandishly dressed, their cloaks well-tailored but
of a fashion she knew was not from London. They wore high boots and long saffron
shirts and tunics of finely woven wool, with a pattern that featured lines crossing
themselves. Gaels, she thought, knowing them now for what they were. One was
dark, his black hair well-brushed and just below his shoulders, his blue eyes
curious. A handsome man. He bowed, smiling.
And the other was the
blond man from Westminster Abbey.
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