The Battle of the Queens by Jean Plaidy

have to be done about her because she had no place in the castle now. Even the attendants looked at her as though she was something which a guest had left behind and must be set aside until she could be collected.
    Even the bridegroom, kind Hugh, when they met, which she fancied he tried to avoid, seemed as though he were trying not to remember who she was.
    She wept during the night when no one could see; and by day she wandered through the castle, lost and bewildered, but waiting with the certainty that something would have to happen before long.

Chapter III
    THE SCOTTISH BRIDEGROOM
    W illiam Marshal had gone to his castle at Caversham near Reading with the conviction that he would never leave it. He was old – few men passed their eightieth birthdays – and he should be grateful for a long life, during which he had been able – and he would not have been the honest man he was if he had denied this – to serve his country in a manner which had preserved her from disaster.
    He could look back over the last four years since the young King had come to the throne and congratulate himself that England was well on the road to recovery from that dreadful malaise which had all but killed her and handed over her useless corpse to the French.
    There was order in the land. How the people responded to a strong hand! It had ever been so. Laws and order under pain of death and mutilation had always been the answer; and if it was administered with justice the people were grateful. That was what John had failed to see, for he had offered the punishments without consideration of whether they were deserved. Praise God, England was settled down to peace; there had been a four years’ truce with the French and he and the Justiciar, Hubert de Burgh, would see that it was renewed. England was rising to greatness and he would say Nunc dimittis .
    Isabella, his wife, was concerned about him. They had grown old together; theirs had been a good union and a fruitful one. They had five sons and five daughters and their marriages had often brought good to the family by extending its influence; and although his first concern was with his honour and the right, and he put the country’s interests before his own, he could not help but be content that his was one of the richest and most influential families in the land.
    But he had known for some time that his time would soon come; and he preferred to go before he lost his powers. Who – if he had been a man of action and sharp shrewd thinking – would want to become a poor invalid sitting in his chair waiting for the end?
    His wife Isabella looked in at him as he sat thoughtfully at his table and he called to her.
    ‘You are well, husband?’ she asked.
    ‘Come and sit with me awhile, Isabella,’ he said.
    She came, watching him anxiously.
    ‘We must not deceive ourselves,’ he said. ‘I believe that I shall soon be gone.’
    ‘You have the pain?’
    ‘It comes and goes. But there is after it a kind of lassitude and times when I find my mind wandering back over the past and my King is another Henry, blustering, wenching, soldiering in the way of a wise general, using strategy rather than bloodshed. He always used to say that to me: “A battle that can be won by words at a conference meeting is worth thrice as much as that in which the blood of good soldiers is shed.” I forget, Isabella, that it is the pallid boy who is now our King and not his grandfather who rules over us.’
    ‘There have been two kings since then, William.’
    ‘Richard … who forgot his country that he might win glory and honour with the Saracens … and John …’
    ‘My dear William, it upsets you to think of that. It is past. John is dead.’
    ‘For which me must thank God,’ said William. ‘He has left us this boy king.’
    ‘And you, William, have made England safe for him.’
    William Marshal nodded slowly. ‘We are at peace as we have not been for many years, but we must keep it so.’
    ‘Hubert de