Read The Red Rose of Anjou for Free Online Page B

reproach yourself, my lady. I know all you did, you did for me and Isabelle. Well, it is an end to our life here at Nancy but only for a while. All will be well in time.’
    ‘René,’ said Isabelle, ‘stay and fight. Let us see if we can defeat this arrogant Duke.’
    ‘With what?’ asked René. ‘We cannot pit ourselves against him. I must perforce go and take the boys with me.’
    ‘René...stay. Let us find some means...’
    But he shook his head. ‘The laws of chivalry demand that I honour my commitments. I was taken in fair battle; I must therefore pay the ransom demanded or remain a prisoner.’
    They could see that it was impossible—he being René—for him to take any course but the honourable one.
    ‘When you take the boys with you,’ said Isabelle, ‘there will only be little Margaret left to me.’
    René took her face in his hands and kissed her.
    ‘She is a beautiful child. You will find great comfort in her.’
    Within a few days Isabelle, with little Margaret on one side and the Dowager Duchess on the other, waved goodbye to René as he rode off into captivity.
    ###
    It was a sorrowful household. The Dowager Duchess was wrapped in gloom. She could not forget that she had brought this about and she could not forgive herself.
    ‘Sometimes I think,’ she told her daughter, ‘it is better to be as René. He reviews his captivity with calm and without shame. If they will supply him with paints he will be happy.’
    ‘Dear Mother,’ replied Isabelle, ‘you must stop grieving. You are making yourself ill. You were right to do all you could. Who would have believed that Burgundy would be so angry that he takes his revenge in this way?’
    ‘I think Sigismund must have approached him without tact. I should have thought of that. But for me René would be here now and although you are poor and without the means to extricate him from this humiliating position, at least you were together.’
    There was nothing Isabelle could do to comfort her mother. Each day the Dowager Duchess grew more pale, wan and listless. Her appetite had deserted her and she could not sleep at night thinking about the havoc her interference had caused.
    When August came it was stiflingly hot and she was obliged to take to her bed. Within a few days Isabelle had grown really anxious. The old lady had lost that tremendous verve which had made her seem immortal and because she had lost it, Isabelle knew that she was very ill indeed.
    As the month progressed she grew steadily worse and on the morning of the twenty-seventh when her women came into her bedchamber they thought she was sleeping peacefully and did not disturb her, but before the morning was out it was realized that she was dead.
    Isabelle knelt at her bedside and thought of all this vital woman had done for her. She could not believe that she would never see her again. Devoted mother, great ruler, affectionate, clever...how fortunate she had been to have been born to such a woman!
    I must be like her, thought Isabelle. I must be strong and particularly so since I am married to a man who is scarcely that.
    Deeply she mourned her mother but there was little time for mourning. This was going to mean changes. Margaret Dowager Duchess of Lorraine would be greatly missed. She had been popular with the people and that had been of great use in the fight against Antoine de Vaudémont. Isabelle was going to have to take over much of the work her mother had continued to do until her illness overtook her. Yes, there was little time for grieving.
    She must plan. Here she was, without the support of her husband and her mother. She had to get her sons back; she had to free her husband; and she had to rule over Lorraine and prevent Antoine de Vaudémont taking it from her.
    Her mother had been a power throughout Lorraine. What would happen now she was dead?
    Isabelle was going to need all her resources to keep hold of what she had until René and her sons returned.
    Messages came from