Hi, so here is another chapter, I hope that you enjoy this one, this is a complete reworking of Isabella's character. She is so much more than a love interest and here I have made her John's mistress but yet a powerful chess player in the game. If you want a historical woman to compare her too think Alice Pieres, mistress to Edward III who had children with the King, was known openly as the King's whore and yet managed to play a massive power play in a time where woman were worth less than the price of a few chickens.
Disclaimer-Nothing here is mine.
Isabella has four children, Thomas with her first husband, John, Margaret and Catherine with Prince John who did historically have illegitimate children and so there might have been a John, Margaret and Catherine out there.
Please Read and Review.
And some TRIGGER WARNINGS for Isabella's husband, while the average age for a woman for marriage at this time was twleve and rape between a husband and wife was legal I do not consider a thirteen year old and a twenty two year old being married as anything other than what it is, which is rape. So Trigger Warnings.
The Growing Good Of The World
Chapter 12-Hold Me, Thrill Me, Kiss Me, Kill Me.
Isabella of Gisbourne reflects on her life, her past, her marriage and her relationships including that of her relationship with Prince John as she waits for Robin Hood to arrive. Complete AU stand alone chapter with Isabella only.
There are several moments in a life where you realise that you are forever changed by it.
These moments are what defines you. What helps you. What keeps you going. It is the end of one version of yourself and the beginning of a new version, a new fearful version that changes you. Trauma changes you.
Isabella of Gisbourne knew a lot about trauma.
She had woken up in the castle that morning to a hot fire and hot water and silence. It was a stilted service to what she was used to, the sycophantic service of the servants at Westminster, at the Savoy, at all the other palaces and castles along the way. She was one of many she would freely admit that but she had chosen her own master this time and as she reminded herself each and every morning when she said her prayers and then broke her fast, that had to mean something.
The Sherriff of Nottingham was doing his best to accommodate her but she knew that her silence was driving him to distraction. There was the sense that John had not yet put his plan out in the open (not that she knew the entire plan herself—she suspected that only John knew that and that was what was worrying) but he had put her in one of the best rooms of the castle and had made sure that the water was warm, the fire lit and the food was hot and her trunks unpacked and Isabella had lived with a lot worse.
She had been twelve when her mother had died.
Mother was one word for it. Whore was another. Whereas Guy had buried his head in the sand Isabella had known exactly what her mother had been doing with Robin Locksley's father. She had seen the smiles and the gentle touches and the looks and she had been naïve enough to think that it had been a good thing that her mother had, had someone there. She had not understood their father, back from the war, cast out with leprosy and then killed in suspicious circumstances alongside their mother. Time had changed that, when she had been trapped in her own marriage, told to get on with it she had thought back to her own father and had concluded that Guy had been nothing like him.
She had been twelve when she had been orphaned, by thirteen she had been married and by nineteen she had been beaten, raped and pregnant and not necessarily in that order. Her husband had been cold, her husband had been cruel and he had forced himself on her drunk as a child on more than one occasion. But it had been 1177 so what choice did she have but to grit her teeth and bare it.
And after a way she did. She became numb to the pain, numb to the feelings, the beatings, the disgust, the cruelty. She had turned off her feelings and spread her legs and had pretended to enjoy it and had instead let her thoughts drift and dream to a time when her much older husband would die (because surely he would have to die before her? Surely? Please God) and she would be alone in this cold house. Cold and empty as she was.
And then she had become pregnant.
It had been the boy that her husband had wanted. He had wanted to call him Richard as all the men at court were doing but Isabella had seen enough of the flat marshes of where she lived to know that she was not going to call her son after a man who had abandoned his people for a crusade. She who could see the hungry mouths of the men and the woman who had been her tenants until they had been unable to pay and had been turfed out to bed. She who was as powerless under Richard's rule as they were. She who saw them beg for food, sell their children, sell their souls, anything, anything for a crust of bread and something that might resemble a roof over their heads.
And Richard who was writing back to the court asking for more taxes to be raised, demanding more money, stressing that this was God's work and why should he care about his people back home when he was trying to take Jerusalem back?
It was the one thing that her husband and her had, had in common at the end. Their mutual dislike for their King and their hope for better times. She had thought it was because he had felt sorry for the tenants who toiled under him. She had never thought that it was because he had frittered away all of their money into whores and gambling and drinking.
Looking back she shouldn't have been surprised. But she was.
She had been nineteen then with bruises on her back and a baby on her hip called Thomas (she refused to call him anything else) and her husband had gotten drunk and fallen out of bed and cracked his head on the stone floor and died. A mundane ending to a mundane life and an even worse marriage and so she had in one stroke been free. Free of her husband, free of the beatings, of the rape (because even though the law did not recognise it as rape there was no way a twenty two year old could sleep with a thirteen year old willingly in her book) and free of the constant cold mocking presence that was her husband. She had a baby, an heir and was named regent of her own little castle and Isabella thought that that was not a bad way to end up.
That was before she got a look at the state of the accounts.
And so there she was. Widowed, haunted, sick, tired, sad and poor.
And Isabella had promised her son that she was not going to end up in the debtors prison so she did what she had seen Guy do time and time again.
She went and begged.
God knows her brother who had been off learning his tricks of the trade in France had not been able to help nor had she come to expect it. Guy had gotten a leg up in the world because she had spread hers and she was under no doubt that she would have to do it again.
So she took Thomas and went to court with her name and a distant connection to some minor noble and she had been prepared to beg. She knew she was pretty, she knew she came across as destitute and she knew enough about men to know that for someone that would be enough to get their cock hard enough for her to work some magic. If it kept fire in her fireplace and her son in shoes she didn't care that much what she had to do.
Things changed when you became a mother she thought as she had rocked Thomas back and forth in the presence chamber waiting for her turn for an audience.
And then just like that she had heard footsteps. Everyone had bowed because it was the Prince John the man acting as regent in his brother's absence. The man who she needed to court desperately. She had tried to curtsey but with a baby it was hard and she had been aware of blue eyes on her.
She had not known it had been him at the time, not known what he had seen in her but he had seen something in her and that was the end of that. He had seen her that night, gotten her, her fortune back by midnight and she'd never had to take more than a cup of wine off him.
It didn't stop there.
He wanted someone to talk to, she realised. For all his faults (and God knows with John there were many) she knew that he was lonely. He was the fifth son of a famously in love couple (until they were not and then they famously hated each other) and he had been passed over and supplanted by a father who had famously hated all of his children at the end. There had been William dead before he was a man, Henry who had ruled with his father with disastrous results, Geoffrey who had been killed in an accident, Richard who was an idiot (in her opinion) who barely spoke the language and looked at them with utter contempt and then him. The last born, the last loved. He had then been betrothed to a woman who had slept with his father, been imprisoned and nearly killed by said father and then had watched as his mother had tried to supplant him to the point where he'd had to have her imprisoned.
Isabella who had listened to all of this on those long nights that she been asked for a cup of wine realised that he simply wanted someone to whine too. He had friends, people who thought Richard was doing a terrible job of Kingship just like she did and she watched as he put the plans in motion. She watched as he gave her things, clothes, jewels. She wanted the power and the respect. They were not sleeping with each other—that would be far to easy but she wanted security and he wanted to be loved and it was easy that way.
When she did sleep with him, when she became his lover in body and soul, she did it with an open mind and an open heart and an open body.
John was not the best lover that one could have but he was a damn sight better than the one she'd had before and to be honest it was always part calculation with her part desire. She didn't know if she would ever want a man on desire alone.
She didn't know if she would ever want that.
But she want the diamonds around her neck, she wanted the warmth of his touch between her legs and she found she did want the baby he put in her belly after all.
When John was born she found she was officially the court mistress. He might have a wife…several for all she cared and he might tire of her one day but she had his son and then later Margaret, his daughter and with every child she sent home she knew that she was building a legacy for her, for John, for the cause and when he sent her to secure another noble for his cause, when she plied the fat old man with wine and the security that John could provide she felt like she was doing her bit for her country. The country that needed King John and not King Richard.
She had not been involved in the Sherriff of Nottingham however. That had been Winchester who had sworn he could do that and John despite her better judgements had agreed to see what could be done. She'd thought it was ridiculous and it had taken months of damage control to stop her lover from being arrested for treason. She'd gone back to the country then, given birth to Catherine their fourth child and had gone back to court pleasantly surprised to see that she was allowed through the doors to see that he had at last considered the Sherriff a liability and this Robin Hood a serious contender.
It was there she learnt about Guy's death.
It did not do much to upset her. She had considered Guy dead to her from her thirteenth birthday. The fact that it was a woman who had killed him was just something that made her smile when she went back to her chambers and smiling overrode the pang of sadness that she did feel (despite her better judgements) at his death.
She was not always the bitch the maids in waiting thought she was.
Buckingham who was slowly beginning to read the writing on the wall was pushing for a pardon, pushing to make the Sherriff the man that would swing for the failed rebellion but John wouldn't pardon someone if they wouldn't put down their weapons and plead forgiveness. So here she was. Hoping against hope Robin Hood wasn't as proud as they all thought he was and he would see that Richard was soon to meet his make and that John was going to have to become King. There was nothing else to stand in his way (Arthur was a sickly boy he was not going to make old bones even without any intervention). They needed to make this transition as smooth as possible.
And Isabella wanted a seat at the table. She had a taste for power and she had four children. She was young, she wanted more. She wasn't stupid, she did not want her son on the throne, she did not want a battle after all this was over but what she did want was them married well, secure and safe within their own fortunes, royal bastards were such a complicated kettle of fish. Sometimes they complied and sometimes they rebelled and Isabella was going to make sure that John, Margaret, Catherine and anymore children she might have complied. She wanted another child, she wanted the fullness of a heavy belly and she wanted John to look at her with those blue eyes. Clouded they might over the throne, a whore she might be for him. But they were two people making their way in the world. Love might not be the sweeping, all encompassing, all knowing thing that she wanted when she was twelve and she had seen her mother dance around Locksley Snr like a lovesick young girl but she knew she had done what her mother could not have done and that was to pull herself up by skill alone and make something of herself.
She was helping to shape England.
And this time Isabella knew that she had chosen her own master. In a world where woman were bought and sold like horses one way or the other it might not have made a difference but to her…to her it made all the difference in the world.
And so there you go, I hope you enjoy this chapter and I will do my best to bring you the next one sooner rather than later.
Next Chapter-Isabella presents John's terms to the camp and Robin realises just how divided his men and woman have become when it's clear that peace is on the table.