Mathilde 02 - The Poison Maiden Read Online Free PDF Page B

the queen dowager had solemnly assured us, came from the Holy Land. I remember that mazer well: gilded with silver and displaying the Five Wounds of Christ against the IHS insignia. I sat staring at it whilst the flames roared, the charcoal braziers crackled and the torches, candles and lantern horns sent the shadows dancing, a fitting prologue to the horrid murders about to slip like a horde of ghosts into our lives.
    At the time my mistress and I were utterly bored, though Isabella schooled her lovely features like a novice. She crouched, head slightly down, the folds of her gauze veil hiding her lustrous hair, her fur cloak, still clasped about her, slightly opened in the front to reveal a woollen dress of dark blue, its lace fringes resting on the fur-lined buskins protecting her feet. Next to her, Margaret, the queen dowager, was garbed like a nun in dark robes, her face and head framed by a pure white wimple. Around her gloved fingers were a pair of ave beads with gorget of silver and a gold cross. A serene face, cold as clay; those heavy-lidded eyes, square chin and bloodless lips recalled the stony features of Margaret’s redoubtable brother. I always considered her face to be chiselled out of marble, and even then I wondered if her soul reflected her features. Margaret, the devout, the holy one! Even her drinking cup depicted scenes from the passion of Thomas à Becket. Around the rim, as Margaret had tediously told me on at least three occasions, were the pious words: Of God’s Blessed hand be He that taketh this cup and drinketh to me . On the wall behind her was painted: God who died upon the Rood. He bought us with His Blessed Blood upon that hardy tree .
    Oh yes, Margaret, the saint, the bore, the empty head. Ah well, I should have been more prudent and reflected on the adage: Cacullus non facit monachum : ‘the cowl doesn’t make the monk’. Or in her case, the wimple the nun! On a stool at the far side of Margaret sat the queen dowager’s constant companion and kindred spirit, Margaret de Clare, sister of Gilbert, Earl of Gloucester, and wife to Peter Gaveston. An ill-matched pair surely, or, perhaps, one fashioned in heaven, for de Clare did not interfere in Gaveston’s affairs. She was whey-faced, redeemed only by expressive eyes and an ever-petulant mouth. De Clare adored the queen dowager, and imitated her in every way, particularly her piety and her public passion for relics and pilgrimages. I deemed both of them pious simpletons, but then I was green in matters of the heart, whilst experience is the harshest teacher. Isabella secretly dubbed them ‘the great Margaret and the lesser’ or ‘the Holy Margaret and the even holier’. She could mimic both to perfection: their sanctimonious expressions, dull looks and monotonous gabbling about the sanctity of a shard of shin bone.
    On that particular day, despite her innocent looks and questioning blue eyes, Isabella had been teasing them both about the so-called glories of Glastonbury Abbey, where the bodies of King Arthur and Queen Guinevere had allegedly been found during the late king’s reign, together with the magical sword Excalibur and the mystical Grail Cup of Christ. The two saintly Margarets (and I write as I saw at that moment of time) warbled like songbirds about visiting Glastonbury later in the spring and wondered if her grace would like to join them. My mistress, as she later informed me, bit back her screamed reply. Due to the Lords, she could scarcely leave Westminster whilst her household exchequer was empty; she simply lacked the silver to travel. Of course, as always, she behaved herself, winked at me and innocently asked if the revenues of the good abbey had greatly increased due to their miraculous discoveries. The queen dowager was on the verge of a new homily about the mystical rose bush at the abbey, a sprig she claimed sprouted from the staff of Joseph of Arimathea, when Guido the Psalter intervened. He and Agnes d’Albret