And if it was from prudence that he had been put in the same dungeon because the means by which he had escaped from it were known, it was a singularly useless precaution. This time he had no wish to escape.
To Roger Mortimer it seemed that he had died in Nottingham. For men such as he, who are governed by pride and have achieved, if only temporarily, their highest ambitions, downfall is equivalent to death. The true Mortimer was now, and for all human eternity, part of the history of England; the dungeon of the Tower contained no more than the indifferent envelope of his flesh.
Curiously enough, that envelope had fallen at once into its old habits. As when, after an absence of twenty years one returns to the house in which one lived as a child, one’s knee of its own volition and by a sort of muscular memory presses against the door that always stuck or one’s foot steps farther in on the staircase to avoid the worn edge of a tread, so Mortimer was repeating the physical movements of his previous imprisonment. He could even walk the few steps from the window to the wall in the dark without ever knocking into anything; his first act on entering the dungeon had been to push the stool back into its old place; he recognized at once the familiar sounds of the guard being relieved and the bell tolling for the services in the Chapel of St Peter ad Vincula; and without any conscious thought. He knew the hour at which he would be brought his meals. Nor was the food much better than it had been in the time of the ignoble Constable Seagrave.
Because the barber Ogle had on the previous occasion served Mortimer as a messenger in organizing his escape, he was not allowed anyone to shave him. His beard had a month’s growth.
But apart from this everything was the same, even to the raven which Mortimer in the past had nicknamed Edward. The bird was pretending to be asleep; but every now and then it would open a round eye before darting its great beak through the bars.
Nevertheless, there was one thing lacking: the melancholy conversation of his old uncle, Lord Mortimer of Chirk, who used to lie on the plank bed. Roger Mortimer understood now why the old man had refused to escape with him. It was not through fear of the danger nor through weakness of body; one has always enough strength to set out, even if one must fall by the wayside. It was the feeling that his life was over that had held the old Lord of Chirk back and led him to prefer to await his end on the plank bed.
For Roger Mortimer, who was only forty-five, death would not come of itself. He felt vaguely troubled when he looked towards the centre of the Green, where the block usually stood. But you become accustomed to the nearness of death by a whole series of simple thoughts that add up in the end to no more than a weary melancholy. It occurred to Mortimer that the sly raven would live on after him, and would tease other prisoners; the rats, too, would go on living, those big wet rats that emerged at night from the muddy banks of the Thames to run about the stones of the fortress; and even the flea that was irritating him under his shirt would jump onto his executioner the day of his death and go on living. Every life that is wiped from the world leaves the other lives intact. There is nothing so ordinary as death.
He sometimes thought of his wife, Lady Jeanne, but without nostalgia or remorse. He had kept her sufficiently aloof from politics for there to be no reason for arresting her. She would no doubt be allowed to keep her own property. As for his sons, they would have to suffer their share of the hatred that had brought about his downfall; but since it was improbable that they would ever become men of as great attainment or ambition as himself, what did it matter whether they were Earls of March or not? The great Mortimer was himself, or rather what he had been. He had no regrets either for his wife or for his sons.
As for Queen Isabella, she would die one day, and from that moment there would be no one on earth who had really known him as he was. It was only when he thought of Isabella that he emerged from his contemptuous detachment from life. There was no doubt that he had died at Nottingham; but the memory of those four years of passion was still alive, rather as the hair still obstinately continues to grow after the heart has ceased to beat. Indeed, this was all that remained for the executioner to sever. When his head was separated from his body, the memory of the royal hands clasped about his neck would be annihilated.
As he did each morning, Mortimer had asked the date. It was November 29th. Parliament must therefore have met and he was awaiting the summons to appear before it. He well knew the cowardice of assemblies; and he realized that no one would speak up in his defence; far from it, both Lords and Commons would take hasty vengeance for the fear with which he had inspired them for so long.
In fact, sentence had already been pronounced by Parliament in the session at Nottingham. It was not to an act of justice they were submitting him, but to a necessary imitation of it, a formality, exactly like the sentences he himself had had delivered in the past.
A twenty-year-old king impatient to rule and young lords impatient for the royal favour required his death so that they might be sure of their power.
‘For young Edward, my death is the necessary complement to his coronation. And yet, they will do no better than I did; the people will be no happier under their rule. Where I have failed, who can succeed?’ he thought.
What attitude should he adopt during the mockery of a trial? Humble himself, as had the Earl of Kent? Cry peccavi, entreat, offer submission with bare feet and a rope about his neck, and admit to his past errors? You had to have a very great desire to live before you could submit yourself to such farcical disgrace. ‘I have committed no fault. I was the strongest, and I remained so till others, stronger yet for a moment, brought about my downfall. That is all.’
Should he insult them? Face that Parliament of sheep for the last time and say: ‘My lords, I took up arms against Edward II, but though you are sitting in judgement on me today, who among you did not follow me then? I escaped from the Tower of London. My lord bishops, you are sitting in judgement on me today, but who among you did not furnish assistance and money to help me to freedom? I saved Queen Isabella from being murdered by her husband’s favourites, I raised troops and armed a fleet to deliver you from the Despensers, I deposed the King you hated and had his son, who is having me judged today, crowned. My lords, earls, barons and bishops, and you, honourable members of the Commons, who among you did not support me in accomplishing these things, and did not applaud me in all I did? Even to the Queen’s love for me! You can reproach me with nothing more than having acted on your behalf, and you are merely eager to destroy me so as to be able to expiate in the death of one man events for which you are all responsible.’
Or should he remain silent, refuse to answer questions, defend himself and go to the useless trouble of justifying himself? Let the hounds bay now that they were no longer subject to the whip. ‘How right I was to keep them in a state of terror!’
His thoughts were interrupted by the sound of footsteps. ‘The moment has come,’ he thought.
The door opened and sergeants-at-arms appeared. They stood aside to make way for the Earl of Norfolk, Marshall of England, who was followed by the Lord Mayor and the Sheriffs of London, as well as by a number of delegates from the Lords and Commons. They could not all get into the dungeon and crowded together in the narrow passage.
‘My lord,’ said the Earl of Norfolk, ‘I come in the King’s name to read the sentence passed on you three days ago by Parliament assembled.’
They were surprised to see Mortimer smile at the announcement. It was a calm, contemptuous smile, but it was directed at himself rather than at them.
The sentence had been pronounced three days ago, without interrogation, defence or even the prisoner’s appearance, while a moment before he had been considering what attitude he should adopt when he was brought before his accusers. A vain anxiety! He was being given a lesson: he might have dispensed with legal formalities in the cases of the Despensers, the Earl of Arundel and the Earl of Kent.
The Crown Coroner began reading out the judgement.20
‘“In as much as it was
ordered by Parliament, sitting in London, immediately after the coronation of our Lord the King, that the King’s Council should consist of five bishops, two earls and five barons, and that nothing might be decided except in their presence, and that the said Roger Mortimer, without regard to the will of Parliament, appropriated to himself the government and administration of the kingdom, appointing and changing as he pleased the officers of the King’s household and of the whole kingdom, in order to place his own friends as he felt inclined …”’
Standing with his back to the wall, one hand resting on a window bar, Roger Mortimer gazed out at the Green and seemed scarcely interested.
‘“In as much as the father of our King was taken to Kenilworth Castle, by order of the peers of the realm, to be detained there and treated in accordance with his princely dignity, the said Roger ordered him to be refused all those things he required and to be transferred to Berkeley Castle where eventually, on the orders of the said Roger, he was treacherously and ignominiously assassinated …”’
‘Get away, you evil bird!’ Mortimer cried suddenly, much to everyone’s astonishment. The raven had pecked at the back of his hand.
‘“In as much as it was forbidden by an Ordinance of the King, sealed with the Great Seal, to enter the Chamber of Parliament, then sitting at Salisbury, in arms under pain of forfeiture, the said Roger and his armed band nevertheless entered it, thus violating the Royal Ordinance …”’
This list of crimes was interminable. Mortimer was charged with having organized a military expedition against the Earl of Lancaster; with having placed spies about the young King who had been constrained to ‘conduct himself rather as a prisoner than as a king’; with having acquired for his own use, as if they were gifts, numerous estates belonging to the Crown; with having ransomed, despoiled or banished numerous barons who had rebelled against his tyranny, and conspired to make the Earl of Kent believe that the King’s father was still alive, ‘which decided the said earl to verify the facts by the most loyal and honest means’; with having usurped the royal powers by bringing the Earl of Kent before Parliament and having him put to death; with having misappropriated sums intended for the financing of the war in Gascony, as well as thirty thousand silver marks paid by the Scots in accordance with the Treaty of Peace; with having taken over the Royal Treasury to his own profit and to that of certain members of the Council, with the result that the King was no longer in a position to uphold his rank; and, finally, with having created discord between the King’s father and his Queen Consort, ‘being therefore responsible for the fact that the Queen never returned to her lord to share his bed, to the great dishonour of the King and the whole realm’, and also with having dishonoured the Queen ‘by appearing overtly as her notorious and admitted paramour’.
Mortimer, staring at the ceiling and stroking his beard, was smiling again. His whole story was being read over and it was in this strange form that it would go into the archives of the kingdom for ever.
‘“And for the above reasons the King referred the matter to the earls, barons and others that they might pronounce just sentence against the said Roger Mortimer; which the members of Parliament, having consulted together, agreed to do, declaring that all the charges enumerated were valid, notorious, and known to all the people, in particular the article touching the death of the King in Berkeley Castle. They have therefore decided that the said Roger, a traitor and an enemy to the King and the realm, shall be dragged upon a hurdle to the place of execution and there hanged …”’
Mortimer started. So it was not to be the block after all! He was to be a victim of the unexpected till the end.
‘“And also that this sentence shall be without appeal, as the said Mortimer himself decided in the past in the cases of the two Despensers and the late Lord Edmund, Earl of Kent, the King’s uncle.”’
The clerk ceased reading and rolled up the pages. The Earl of Norfolk, Kent’s brother, looked Mortimer straight in the eyes. He had been very much in the background these last few months, but now he had reappeared as the embodiment of legal vengeance. Because of the way he looked at him, Mortimer felt an urge to speak – not for long, but merely to say to the Earl Marshal, and through him to the King, the councillors, the Lords and Commons, the clergy and the people, to all those whom he had held in subjection: ‘When a man appears in the realm of England who can do all those things you have just read out, you will submit yourselves to him once again. But I do not think he will appear just yet. It is now time to make an end. Are you taking me to the place of execution at once?’
He seemed still to be giving orders, even the order for his own execution.
‘Yes, my lord,’ said the Earl of Norfolk. ‘We are taking you to the Common Gallows immediately.’
The Common Gallows was where robbers, forgers, panders and other were hanged: it was the gibbet for common criminals.
‘Very well, let us go!’ said Mortimer.
‘You must first be stripped for the hurdle.’
‘Very well, strip me then.’
They stripped him of his clothes, leaving him only a cloth about his loins. And, amid his warmly clothed escort, he went out naked into the drizzling November rain. His strong body made a pale patch among the dark cloaks and armour of his guards.
The hurdle was on the Green. It consisted of rough crosspieces fastened to two runners, and was attached to a horse’s traces.
Mortimer glanced at it with a contemptuous smile. What trouble they were taking to humiliate him! He lay down on the hurdle of his own accord and they bound his wrists and ankles to it. They set the horse in motion and the hurdle moved smoothly across the grass of the Green, and then more roughly over the gravel and stones of the road.
The Earl Marshal of England, the Lord Mayor, the sheriffs, the Parliamentary delegates and the Constable of the Tower followed it. An escort of soldiers, pike on shoulder, kept the way open and guarded the procession.
They passed out of the Tower to be greeted by a cruelly hostile crowd, which increased throughout their progress.
When one has looked at men all one’s life from a horse’s back or a baron’s chair, it is strange to see them suddenly from ground-level, their wagging chins, their mouths twisted in shouting, their nostrils agape. Neither men nor women were beautiful seen thus; their faces were grotesque and wicked, frightful gargoyles which one should have trampled down when one was on one’s feet! Had it not been for the drizzle falling straight into his eyes, Mortimer could have had an even better look at these faces so full of hate, as he was bumped and jolted along on the hurdle.
Something damp and slimy hit him on the cheek and ran down into his beard; he realized someone had spat at him. Suddenly he felt a sharp, piercing pain run through his body; a cowardly hand had thrown a stone and hit him between the legs. Had it not been for the pikemen, the crowd, which was intoxicated by its own furious howlings, would have torn him to pieces there and then.
He, who six years earlier had been received with acclamations down all the roads of England, was now being dragged between walls of insults and curses. Crowds have two voices, one for hatred and the other for joy; it is one of the great mysteries that many throats shouting in concert can produce such very different sounds.
Suddenly there was silence. Had they reached the gallows already? It was only Westminster and the hurdle was passing under the windows at which the members of Parliament were gathered. They looked silently down on the man, who had held them subject to his will for so many months, being dragged like a felled tree over the cobbles. The established institutions of England had won at last.
Mortimer, his eyes full of rain, was searching for one face. He was hoping that, by a supreme act of cruelty, Queen Isabella had been compelled to watch his torment. He could not see her.
Then the procession turned towards Tyburn.21 When it reached the Common Gallows, the condemned man was unbound and hastily confessed. For the last time, Mortimer dominated the crowd from the scaffold. He suffer
ed little, for the hangman pulled so hard on the rope that it broke his neck.
That day Queen Isabella was at Windsor, where she was making a slow recovery from having lost both her lover and his child she was expecting.
King Edward informed his mother that he would spend Christmas with her.
4.
A Bad Day
FROM THE WINDOWS OF Bonnefille House Beatrice d’Hirson was watching the rain fall in the Rue Mauconseil. She had been waiting for some hours past for Robert of Artois, who had promised to come that afternoon. But Robert never kept his promises, either in small things or in great, and Beatrice was beginning to think that she was very silly to believe in him.
To a woman waiting for a man, he has every fault. Had not Robert promised, and for nearly a year now, that she would be a lady-in-waiting in his household? At bottom he was much like his aunt; all the Artois were alike. An ungrateful lot! You worked yourself to death in their service, running after suppliers of poisons and casters of spells, committed murder to serve their interests, ran the risk of the gallows or the stake – and all for what? It was certainly not Monseigneur Robert who would have been arrested had Beatrice been caught putting arsenic into Madame Mahaut’s medicines, or salts of mercury into the Dowager Queen Jeanne’s wine. ‘I don’t know the woman!’ he would have said. ‘Does she dare maintain she was acting on my orders? It’s a lie. She was a member of my aunt’s household, not of mine. She’s obviously saying it to save herself. Send her to the wheel.’ And who would hesitate between the word of a peer of France, the King’s brother-in-law, and that of an obscure bishop’s niece, whose family was no longer even in favour?
‘And what have I done it all for?’ Beatrice thought. ‘Simply in order to wait all alone in my house, to which Monseigneur Robert deigns to pay a visit once a week! He said he would come after vespers; and benediction has already rung. No doubt he’s carousing somewhere with a couple of barons he’s invited to dinner, and talking of his great exploits, the affairs of the kingdom and his lawsuit, while pinching the maidservants’ bottoms. Even La Divion eats at his table now, I hear! And here am I, staring out at the rain. He’ll come in late at night, heavy, belching and red in the face; he’ll talk nonsense for a moment, collapse on the bed, sleep an hour and leave again. If he comes at all, that is!’