The She Wolf of France Read Free Page A

with the threat of war, rallied round the King from fear, had been patiently awaiting the hour of revenge, and now contemplated the death agonies of the young King they had never loved with a certain satisfaction.
    Philippe V, the Long, a lonely man who was too much in advance of his time, died misunderstood by his subjects.
    He left only daughters; the Law of Succession he had promulgated for his own advantage now excluded them from the throne. The crown went to his younger brother, Charles de la Marche, who was as dull of mind as he was handsome of face. The powerful Count of Valois, Count Robert of Artois and all the Capet cousins and the reactionary barons were once again triumphant. At last you could talk of a crusade again, become involved in the intrigues of the Empire, traffic in the price of gold, and watch, not without mockery, the difficulties of the Kingdom of England.
    For in England an unstable, dishonest and incompetent king, a prey to an amorous passion for his favourite, was fighting his barons and bishops. He, too, was soaking the soil of his kingdom with his subjects' blood,
    And there a princess of France was living a life of humiliation and ignominy both as wife and Queen. She was afraid for her life, was conspiring for her own safety, and dreaming of vengeance.
    It was as if Isabella, th e daughter of the Iron King and the sister of Charles IV of France, had carried the curse of the Templars across the Channel.
    PART ONE
    FROM THE THAMES TO THE
GARONNE
    i. `No one ever escapes from the Tower of London'

    A MONSTROUS RAVEN, huge, gleaming and black, nearly as big as a goose, was hopping about in front of the dungeon window. Sometimes it halted, lowered a wing and hypocritically closed its little round eye as if in sleep. Then, suddenly darting out its beak, it pecked at the man's eyes shining behind the bars. His grey, flint-coloured eyes seemed to have a special attraction for the bird. But the prisoner was too quick for it and had already drawn his face back out of danger. The raven continued its constitutional, taking short, heavy hops.
    Then the man reached his hand out of the window. It was a long, shapely, sinewy hand. He moved it forward slowly, then let it lie still, like a twig on the dusty ground, hoping to seize the raven by the neck.
    But the bird, in spite of its size, could move quickly too; it hopped aside, emitting a hoarse croak.
    `Take care, Edward, take care,' said the man behind the bars, `I'll strangle you one day.'
    For the prisoner had given the treacherous bird the name of his enemy, the King of England.
    This game had been going on for eighteen months, eighteen months during which the raven had pecked at the prisoner's eyes, eighteen months during which the prisoner had tried to strangle the bird, eighteen months during which Roger Mortimer,, eighth Baron of Wigmore, Lord of the Welsh Marshes, and the King's ex-Lieutenant of Ireland, had been imprisoned, together with his uncle, Roger Mortimer of Chirk, one-time Justiciar of Wales, in a dungeon in the Tower of London. For prisoners of their rank and they belonged to the most ancient aristocracy in the kingdom, it was the normal custom to provide a decent lodging. But King Edward II, when he had taken the two Mortimers prisoner at the Battle of Shrewsbury, where he had defeated his rebellious barons, had assigned them to this low and narrow prison, whose only daylight tame from the ground-level, in the new buildings he had had constructed to the right of the Clock Tower. Compelled, under press ure from the Court; the bishops and, even the common people, to commute the death sentence he had first decreed against the Mortimers to life imprisonment, the King had good hopes that this unhealthy prison cell, this dungeon in which their heads touched the ceiling, would in the long run perform the executioner's office for him.
    And, indeed, though Roger Mortimer of Wigmore, who was now thirty-six years of age, had been able to endure the