Chapter 9 through 11 Summary and Analysis

In 1365, Isabelle is the 33-year-old, single, willful and over-indulged second child of King Edward and Queen Philippa. She has been promised in marriage five times but never married. Her younger sister Joanna is to take her place in one of these marriages but Joanna dies of the plague before the event. At nineteen, she is betrothed to the son of a landowner with property in both England and France—an apparent effort to sway the landowner's loyalties to England. Just as she is boarding the boat for the voyage to her wedding, she changes her mind. Her reasoning is unclear though it could be the thought of Joanna's death on her own wedding voyage, that she does not want to marry beneath her station or that she simply wants a new wardrobe. The jilted landowner's fate is uncertain...