Braveheart Read Online Free Page B

their perches at the rear of the carriage; one opened the carriage door and the other placed a golden step below it. From the carriage emerged the brother of the king of France, himself a prince. He was thirty-eight years old, fair-haired and handsome; he wore the finest clothes that anyone on the ship had ever seen.
    But he was not the one they had sailed across the channel to meet. Stepping from the carriage into the sunlight was Isabella, his niece, daughter of the king of France, bride-to-be of Edward, son of Longshanks king of England.
    The captain had seen the sun, after a storm-tossed night at sea, rise above the alabaster cliffs of Dover. He had seen the Milky Way on a night so dark and calm that the stars reflected on the black surface of the water and the ship seemed suspended in the heavens. But as he lifted his eyes for his first look at the future queen, the breath left his body, and he knew he would never see anything nearly as beautiful as this blue-eyed woman who kissed her royal father upon his cheek and floated across the bridging timbers into the ship as the sun played upon her yellow hair.
     
    Her name was Isabella Maria Josephina Christiana Marguerita Rochamboulet—well, she had more given names than she had years—And those were just the Christian names. Her family names and titles, in a world where inheritance of crowns depended upon connections of blood and marriage, were a litany as long as the Latin Mass. She had been educated in languages, for which she had great talent, and music, in which she had little, but had received no instruction at all in the art of politics, and it would be years before anyone realized that her gifts in that arena were greatest of all. But she was a woman, and a beautiful one. Yet she could have been utterly unremarkable and still have found herself on this ship, bound for the same destination, because of all those names and titles.
    Longshanks had chosen her to be his daughter-in-law because her connection to the throne of France reassured the French nobles of their prospects in the kingdom he sought to create through the union of the two realms. And the king of France had allowed her to accept the proposal because he too wished to see France and England under one crowned head, though with Longshanks already old and his son reputed to be weak, the French king had a different expectation from Longshanks about whose head would wear the crown.
    As Isabella stood at the rail and watched the sails fill with breeze, she was aware that nothing she had ever accomplished or said or thought or felt had ever had any result whatsoever. She was a princess already; she was going to be a greater princess still. People would bow and curtsey and would obey her every whim, to marry a man she had never met in a country to which she had never wished to go. No one had every asked for her consent in the arrangement. She had no power at all. Isabella would only have one man, and he was already chosen. She was a virgin—a royal physician had certified that—and once she married she was forbidden to have any relationships beyond those with her husband. To violate this law was treason.
    Beside her stood Nicolette, her friend, her confidant, her lady-in-waiting. Nicolette had dark hair, beautiful dark eyes. Isabella had sometimes wished to have hair and eyes like Nicolette’s. Just to be different. But what would it matter?
    It was a clear day. The sun was bright. Isabella looked toward the horizon and her new home. They said you could see England from far off on a clear day. She looked toward her new home and gripped the ropes to the sails as the ship rolled through the waves.
    Nicolette looked at her lady’s face and saw that it looked sad. Nicolette was not surprised. She had seer, that face laugh many times, but not since they told her of the engagement. Still she would make the best of it. Nicolette knew that. Isabella seemed frail with that narrow waist and those eyes like a painted