It was at Savernake that Isabel was residing while the barons assembled at Stamford, and marched, by Brackley, and Northampton, and Bedford, to London. Only vague and indistinct intelligence as to their movements reached her in her retreat; and, buoyed up by the king’s confident assurance that he would crush any attempts at insurrection, she delighted her soul with visions of reigning as a queen in reality, and occupied her time with repairing the palace of Savernake, and appears to have meditated housekeeping on a very extensive scale, since she added kitchens with fires for roasting oxen whole. It was not pleasant to be disturbed in the midst of such projects by news that her husband’s crown was at stake; and, when Isabel had been conveyed home after her fright and her escape, and sufficiently restored to be informed that a knight and squire sent by the king were awaiting an audience to deliver a message, she felt instinctively that something was wrong; she wrung her hands, and exclaimed to her ladies--
“My heart misgives me; I fear me they bring tidings of woe.”
But, at the same time, her impatience to know all made her anxious to receive them without delay; and, having arrayed herself so as to appear to the best advantage--for her vanity as woman was quite as strong as her ambition as queen--she ordered them to be conducted to her presence.
It was in a spacious chamber, royally adorned after the fashion of the age, and magnificent, according to the ideas of that generation, that Isabel of Angoulême, seated on an elevated chair resembling a throne, with two of her ladies behind her, received the knight and the squire. Her taste was displayed in her dress, which was such as to set off her natural charms. She wore a green robe, lined with sarcenet, and girdled round the waist with a belt sparkling with precious stones, and a collar of gold round her neck, which was graceful as the swan’s, and her hair, not concealed, as that of ladies then usually was, with kerchief or veil, but inclosed in a caul of golden network, and ornamented with an elegant chaplet. Her bearing was majestic in the extreme, and as she sat formally waiting their coming, she looked every inch a queen. But no sooner did Collingham approach, and bend his knee, than she stared as if she had seen a ghost, and fluttered perceptibly.