Hugh and Bess

by Susan Higginbotham

  “Best not think of it, or you’ll be getting yourself in the same shape you were last night. And you’ve other things to think of now. Your own head, mainly.”

  Hugh unconsciously ran his hand along his neck. “I wonder if they’d kill me,” he said almost detachedly.

  “Why not? They killed Simon de Reading, what for no one knows except that he was loyal to your father to the end. I suppose you’ve not heard about the Earl of Arundel?” Hugh shook his head. “They beheaded him the day after your father was captured. Him and two of his followers. All he did that anyone can think of was to marry his son to your sister and get some of Mortimer's lands.”

  “Christ.” Hugh crossed himself. He slid out of bed and looked about for his clothes.

  “Shall I call a man for you? I can undress a gentleman a lot better than I can dress him.”

  “I’ve been managing on my own.” He took the newly brushed clothes that Alice handed to him and began pulling them on. From behind his shirt he asked, “I don’t know what to do. Stay here? Flee abroad?”

  “The garrison was talking over your situation last night before I came to you. Most seemed to think that you should stay right here. Even if you were to dress in borrowed clothes and hide your face, the queen's men were bribing the people around here very generously when your father and the king were hereabouts. They’d have an eye out for you, and you favor your father a great deal. You could travel by night and hide by day, I suppose, but every man around would be combing his stables for you once word got out that you were at large. Here at least you can hold them off for a time.”

  Hugh winced. “My head aches too much to follow that, but I think I agree.” He bent to retrieve the wine cup from where it had fallen the night before. Turning it in his hands as if he were reading his fortune in it, he said, “I know John de Felton will be loyal, but what will that count if the garrison deserts like my grandfather's did? Do you think they’ll stay?”

  “Only one way to find out.”

  “Even if they desert me, I’ll stay as long as I can.” Hugh looked at the doorway where his father had stood just a few weeks before, a lifetime ago. “I’ll be damned if I let the queen complete her collection of Hugh le Despensers.” He winced again as a jab of pain shot through his head. “Though I’m not sure I’d mind at the moment.”

  The garrison did not desert him. When the queen's forces arrived just hours later to seize the castle and Hugh, they found the gates shut up against them. Several times over the next few months the queen and Mortimer tried to entice the garrison with a pardon, expressly excepting Hugh's life, but they continued to resist the royal forces, even when the second Edward resigned his throne to his young son and all hope of resistance seemed futile. Hugh often wondered what had kept the garrison so loyal. Had it been regard for Felton or merely an abhorrence of seeing a man as young as he die on the scaffold? Or had it been respect for Hugh himself? Whatever their reasons, it was the men of the garrison who allowed him to hold out until mid-March, when the nominal king offered yet another pardon. This time, Hugh was promised that his own life would be spared. Knowing that no better offer would be forthcoming and that even these men's loyalty had its limits, he surrendered Caerphilly Castle and watched in its great hall, under guard, as Felton and the rest of those who had stayed true to him filed outside to freedom. Even a tearful Alice was with them, having left Hugh a pile of clean, crisp linen shirts to remember her by.

  Then they were all gone, and just Hugh and his captors were left at Caerphilly. The commander of the besieging forces, William la Zouche, had treated Hugh kindly and considerately when taking him into custody, but not all of his men were so well disposed toward him, Hugh found when Zouche left the room. “Take a look around you, Despenser,” said one of the guards as they prepared to lead Hugh to the far-off chamber in which he would be kept as the crown's prisoner. He was a young man, not much older than Hugh, and he had the look that Hugh would come to know well over the next few years: the appearance of someone who had realized that he was free to treat Hugh just as he pleased. The guard waved to encompass the splendor of the great hall. “You might never see this again, you know.”

  Hugh looked up at the corbel of his father and felt the ache in his chest that had never quite left it since the news had come. “If only he’d known,” he said. “He could have spared himself the investment.”

  The guard glared. “Think you’re amusing, Despenser? Shut your trap.”

  So began the next four years of his life.

  iii

  * * *

  June 1341: Hanley Castle

  HUGH SAT UP IN BED AND, AS USUAL, LOOKED AROUND him before arising. Though it had been nearly ten years since he had been the crown's prisoner, he still felt the need every morning to check his surroundings to assure himself that he was a free man. The need was even more compelling on occasions like this one, when he’d awakened from one of his bad dreams. They all ended the same way, with the sight of what he’d been spared in life: his father hanging naked in the air before he was cut down, castrated, disemboweled, beheaded, and quartered. Then the queen's men came for Hugh himself with their noose.

  He took a couple of deep breaths, reminding himself that all this was in the past and that he had nothing to fear. His own life was a good one. He was healthy, rich, and still relatively young, with no great sins on his head. He had led men in battle with success and was on reasonably good terms with the king, though they would never be intimates; in any case, his father had been so close to his king that this would probably have to suffice for whole generations of Despensers. He had no enemies, personal ones at least; if—or, to be more accurate, when—he died, it might be violently at the thrust of a French or a Scottish sword, but it would be an honorable death in battle, the death of a knight.

  And what was he doing thinking of death anyway, when he was quite content, except for one thing?

  He lay back again, taking more comfort in his surroundings. There was his familiar carved bed with the coverlet of material his mother had chosen for him. There was the pleasant feel of fine linen sheets against his bare skin; in prison, he’d always slept fully clothed, feeling too vulnerable and often too cold to do without his garments. If he parted the heavy bed curtains that matched the coverlet, he would see he was in his familiar chamber at Hanley Castle, overlooking the River Severn. Stretched out by the fireplace would be his favorite dog; Hugh could hear him having his nightly scratch. Although the dog's presence in his chamber at night violated every principle of civilized living his chamberlain held dear, Hugh let the animal stay. The four years he’d spent as a captive without friends had made him appreciate the ones he had now, human or canine.

  The most reassuring sight, however, was that immediately to his right: Emma, sleeping beside him. No; not sleeping now. She was awake and put her arms protectively around him. He was still shaking, he realized; he must have screamed himself awake as he did on occasion.

  “It's early, Hugh,” she said gently. “Go back to sleep now. All is well.”

  But it wasn’t, of course. That very day, Emma was going to leave him.

  He’d first met Emma when they were each twelve or so, several years after his mother had come into her third of the Clare inheritance, a third, he had become more and more acutely conscious, that would someday be his own. His father was full of schemes to make his share an even larger one, but Hugh was cheerfully unaware of the full extent of these ambitions, much less worried about to what they would lead.

  On a fine day in the early spring of 1321, soon after the Clare property of Hanley Castle had reverted to his mother, Hugh, now serving in the king's household, paid a visit to the family's new estate. He’d been riding off a heavy dinner when he came to a rutty area, too treacherous to go through at a fast pace. As he reined in his horse, he saw a flash of blue at a distance. Drawing closer, he saw that it was the cloak of a girl of his own age. Walking on a tree that had fallen across a stream, she was balanced as pre
cariously as the acrobats he’d seen at court. Unlike the acrobats, she was encumbered by her gown and cloak, the skirts of which she had to hold with both hands to keep from tripping her up. Still, she was making it across the stream, though so slowly that Hugh, realizing that he had been holding his breath, had to let it out. As he did, his horse took a step forward and snapped a twig underneath its feet. With a yelp, the girl swung sideways, made a vain attempt to right herself, and fell into the stream with a prodigious splash.

  Hugh scrambled down from his horse and reached the bank as the girl rose from the shallow water, dripping from her head to her toes. Somewhat disappointed that he would not have the chance to heroically save her life, he gave her his hand, but she ignored it and stepped onto the bank with as much dignity as she could muster under the circumstances. Her eyes, Hugh saw, were blazing, and they were also mismatched, one blue and one brown. “Did you make that noise?” He could only nod. “Oaf!”

  “You were a fool to try to walk across it.”

  “I do it all of the time! How was I to know some idiot boy would make a racket?”

  “If a little noise like that scares you so easily, you should have stayed on the bank where a girl belongs.”

  Having reached a verbal impasse for the time being, they glared at each other until Hugh remembered the chivalrous training he was receiving: a knight did not let a lady, even a peculiar-looking one who looked as if she might claw him with her nails, shiver in the cold while he enjoyed a warm cloak. Hugh took his off and handed it to her. “Here. It’ll warm you a little.”

  “That's useless. My wet clothes will only get it wet too.” She put it on, however, and Hugh saw her expression change when she realized from the fur inside how costly it was. Her face turned scarlet. “You—You must be—”

  “Your new lord's son,” said Hugh, thoroughly enjoying her discomfiture. “His eldest son,” he added, doubling his pleasure as he saw her turn even redder. “There's Hugh le Despenser the elder, my grandfather; Hugh le Despenser the younger, my father; and me, Hugh le Despenser the Oaf.” He considered adding that she was in his family's deer park, where she had no business, but decided to reserve this point for later.

  “I—” She curtseyed. “I beg your pardon. I am shortsighted.” She began to slide the cloak off. “I must go. Thank you for the cloak.”

  She was openly shivering, and wherever she lived, it would take her a while to get there. Probably letting the smart mouthed wench catch her death of cold would be unchivalrous too; a knight's life was not always an easy one. “That's silly; you’ll freeze. Keep it on. Get on my horse and let me take you to the castle. Someone can find some dry clothes for you to borrow and bring you home.” Whose clothes he could not imagine; though the girl was tall for her age, she was so skinny that his mother's robes would hang on her, and his oldest sister's robes would barely reach past her knees. He decided to leave that dilemma up to the womenfolk.

  The girl was too cold to argue, it seemed. By the time Hugh got her on his horse, she was shivering so hard that she could hardly stay on without his assistance. Hugh pulled her closer to him on the saddle and gathered the cloak more tightly around her, nobly conquering his distaste for the females of the human species and their surefire way of spoiling perfectly good rides with their falling-into-water antics. A boy, he knew, would have stayed on the stupid tree. He heaved a martyred sigh and clucked at his horse.

  At Hanley Castle, the servants took one look at the girl, now almost blue with cold, and hustled her upstairs to his mother's chamber, where she was wrapped in blankets and put in front of a fire. (Someone also took the trouble to ask her name, which Hugh certainly hadn’t.) Though Emma, as she turned out to be, soon looked warm and comfortable, the occasional minatory sneezes she let out alarmed Hugh's mother, who to Hugh's utter disgust ordered that instead of being sent home straightaway, she be put to bed in his sisters’ chamber and kept at the castle overnight, a message having been sent to her parents accordingly. Hugh comforted himself with the notion that Emma's sharp tongue would irk her companions and that she would be in high disgrace when morning came.

  Instead, when the children broke their fast the next morning with watered-down ale and bread, Hugh discovered that overnight, his sisters had become devoted to Emma, who was several years older than Isabel, the eldest of the Despenser girls. Joan was too young to do much more than gaze worshipfully at Emma, and Nora was only a baby, but Isabel was a different matter. Already she and Emma had entered into a few of the private jokes that girls were so fond of, for they said things that were absolutely not humorous at all and laughed at them as heartily as if the king's jester had been putting on a command performance. Isabel had contrived to give Emma one of her girdles and would have given her one of her best jewels if Emma had not had the wisdom to suggest that Isabel's mother should be consulted. Worse, though Isabel and Emma whispered when they said it, Hugh distinctly heard the word “oaf” when they looked in his direction. All of his sisters, even baby Nora, were in tears when Emma, resplendent in her dried and brushed clothes and her new girdle, left (not on a dung-wagon as Hugh had hoped, but on Isabel's own palfrey and escorted by a page). Only through promising to return in a few days to visit did Emma stem the flood of emotion.

  Eleanor, Hugh's mother, was no better than her daughters. Several times over the next few hours she commented on how well mannered Emma was (Fooled you, Hugh thought), and Hugh heard her telling Gladys, her damsel, how nice it would be to have a companion for the girls who was young enough to be a friend to them yet old enough to provide some guidance to them. After that, events took their inevitable course, and two mornings later, their mother announced that Emma's parents had consented to allow their daughter to come to live with the Despenser girls. Of course they had consented, Hugh thought. It was an honor to be singled out thusly by the Lady of Glamorgan, and Emma's parents, members of the local gentry who were tenants of the Despensers, could expect that her undoubtedly modest dowry would be added to by the lady when it came time for Emma to marry. With those peculiar eyes and that tongue of hers, she would need all of the help she could get on the marriage market.

  So that very same afternoon, she arrived, bringing with her a coffer containing her small wardrobe. Hugh had expected, perhaps hoped, that she would have another go at insulting him, but having made her one blunder, she spoke to him with all of the deference due to him as the Despenser heir. Soon he became as accustomed to her as he was to his sisters, and as little interested in her doings as he was in theirs. In any case, he hardly saw her, for as part of his knightly training, he was usually living at court and joining it on its travels.

  It was in his seventeenth year, during the Christmas of 1325, that he first saw Emma as something other than his sisters’ companion. He’d not been around her in months, and those months had wrought a dramatic change in her, so dramatic that Hugh, thinking of the time he had held her close to him on his horse as they rode back to Hanley Castle, cursed himself for having made so little out of the opportunity. Emma was still tall, but she’d become slender rather than skinny, her sharp features had become interesting rather than simply stark, and she’d developed a bust. An exemplary bust, Hugh decided, contemplating it as closely as he dared, and could, under the modest robes Emma wore. So intently and unsubtly did he admire it that one of his cousins had waved a hand in front of his face, and the following morning, his father himself decided that a father-son ride was in order. Toward the end of the ride he’d said, not at all in relation to the illuminating conversation about the wool trade that they had been having, “That girl Emma has become a fine wench, but you’d best stay away, son. She can’t be your wife, and your mother and sisters are too fond of her for her to become your plaything. Leave her be and let your mother find a suitable match for her.”

  Did his father really think he was capable of seducing her? This was flattering, at least, for as far as he could tell the attraction between them was purely one-sided. Yet he might have
been tempted to disobey his father and try anyway had not Emma's mother fallen fatally ill a few months later. Emma went home to nurse her and remained there after her death to keep her widowed father company, at his request. Probably, Hugh realized later, her father had been not so much lonely as cautious; it was becoming less and less desirable to be allied with the Despenser family. Just a few months before, Emma's father, who had done some estate business for Hugh's father, had found an excuse to be relieved of his duties.

  Then came the Christmas of 1326, with Hugh's father executed a month before, his grandfather two months before, and Hugh himself under siege at Caerphilly Castle by the queen's troops. Emma's extraordinary bosom no longer mattered much. Nothing did, really, that Christmastide.

  It was on a July day in 1331, the day after Hugh had been released from his captivity at Bristol Castle, the last of the various places that he’d been imprisoned, that he next encountered Emma. His mother had hastily arranged a feast to celebrate his sudden homecoming. Hugh, rather the worse for wine, had been watching from his seat of honor as the trestle tables were cleared for the dancing to begin when he saw Emma standing across the room, dressed in widow's garb. He had not known she had ever married; it was disconcerting to realize how much had happened in the four years of his imprisonment. He’d thought about her occasionally in prison, as he thought about everyone he cared for and never got to see, but as the months turned into years he’d forgotten his baser longings for her; he had even ceased to recall her features distinctly. But now that he had seen her, Hugh suddenly felt an intense ache in his groin. He rose from his seat and made his unsteady way over to her. “Emma,” he said, taking her hand. “I’ve missed you.”