Free Isabeau, A Novel of Queen Isabella and Sir Roger Mortimer by N. Gemini Sasson Page B

must not waste himself with rash – ”
    The wagon driver threw a look at me over his shoulder and growled a warning. I went quiet, the oppressive silence tightening like a rope around my throat. Soon, the monotonous rumble of the wheels lulled the driver into a stupor, but by then Edmund had closed his eyes. Whether he truly slept or was merely shutting me out, I did not know.
    On my right, my uncle lay curled on his side away from me, his face averted so that he, too, would not meet my eyes. He blamed me. Still. He would rather have rushed to his own slaughter at Shrewsbury than bend his knee to the king and be dragged away like a common thief to meet an ignominious end on the Tower Green.
    “It was not Pembroke who failed us,” I muttered at the back of Uncle Roger’s head, risking a beating from our guards. “He tried to influence the – ”
    “You’re a fool!” he spat.
    I looked down at my lap. “If Lancaster had – ”
    “Fool!” he repeated. He drew his head deep into his shoulders like a badger retreating into its burrow. His entire body was coiled so tight with anger one touch more might have unraveled him altogether.
    The driver and closest mounted guard laughed. Probably, they figured my uncle’s shunning of me was punishment enough.
    In my uncle’s eyes, I deserved no forgiveness.
    I gazed at Edmund’s face, ashen as a funeral effigy. So young. And I, although not old, already had much to look back on. But, what more did I have to live for? Children I rarely saw? A wife who did not love me? Not those things, no. I had been a rich and powerful man, thousands at my command, heady with my victories in battle. Efficient in office as the King’s Lieutenant of Ireland. A man on the verge of an earldom. If not for the all-encompassing greed of Hugh Despenser. Had I died in battle at Shrewsbury fighting for all I had gained, then it was Despenser who would have won, without even being there. With the resistance to Edward’s tyranny dissolved, it was only a matter of time before he beckoned Despenser back to England. I could not stop that from happening now. Not bound and bleeding in the back of a wagon. Not locked up in the Tower as the king’s prisoner. Not swinging dead from a traitor’s rope.
    But if I lived – and lived long enough – one day, I could have my revenge.

    *****

    I could tell we had arrived at the city’s edge simply by the power of its nauseating stench. Our wagon rumbled into London at the darkest hour of night. The timing of our arrival was well planned. The streets were hushed and vacant. Only the occasional yowling of a cat in season or the alert yap of a dog sliced through the dead air.
    When we entered the city at Ludgate, a surly guard dismounted, clambered into the wagon bed and one by one covered each of us with a moth-eaten, mildewed blanket. Out of habit, for I had always hated London and avoided it at all costs, I muttered about the odor and swiftly felt the toe of his boot to my gut.
    “Quiet, bastard traitor!”
    I was not spoken to again until we reached the inner bailey of the Tower of London. There, they snatched the blanket away and pitched me sideways from the wagon. My elbow and chest slammed against the cobbles. Air was sucked from my lungs. Before I could draw breath, Edmund landed across my legs, tumbled over, and banged his head on the stones. He gritted his teeth to keep from crying out, but a long hiss of pain escaped his mouth. I choked and sputtered as I fought to breathe. Then I saw another shadow wobbling above me. There was an irascible grunt, followed by a spit and a curse.
    They hurled my uncle from the wagon. My torso broke his fall; only he did not land with the lithe reactions of my son, but the dead weight of an old man stiff in the joints. I tried to inhale, but his weight crushed me. My lungs would not expand. Down low my ribs burned with pain, as though someone had plunged a flaming poker into me.
    “Get  ... off,” I gasped.
    They