Hugh and Bess

by Susan Higginbotham

  “Do you think Hugh's mother wore them upon her marriage to Hugh's father?” Bess shuddered.

  “Quite possibly; the settings look old enough. Now, don’t you get it into your head not to wear them because of that! It is not every girl who gets to wear jewels like these on her wedding day—or ever. They’re too fine to let sit in their casket because of your superstition.”

  Holding the brooch herself, Bess had to agree.

  The Montacute family was already in Tewkesbury, where Hugh had a manor close to the abbey founded by his mother's ancestors. Though the manor house was a good-sized one, it could hold only the bride and groom and their immediate families and servants, even with most of the servants bedding down in the great hall. With the wedding to take place in two days, the house was quickly filling up, as were the local inns. Anyone with a respectable home who could drag in an extra bed or pallet to accommodate a paying guest was doing so, and a small forest of pavilions was sprouting nearby as well. The taverns were full, and their keepers, in the highest of spirits, were heard to say that they wished the lord of the manor got married every year.

  With each new relative from Hugh's family who arrived at Tewkesbury manor over the next day and a half, Bess's head swam like the fish embroidered on her new bed coverlet. Hugh's four sisters were the first to appear. The eldest was Isabel, the Countess of Arundel. Bess already knew not to expect her to be accompanied by the Earl of Arundel. The couple had married as children and had disliked each other from the start. Mortimer and Isabella had executed their fathers a week apart, and though this circumstance might have brought some couples closer together, it had not improved their marital relations. They had lived together just long enough to have a fourteen-year-old son, Edmund, who came with his mother to his uncle's wedding.

  “No need to be formal,” said Isabel briskly as Bess acknowledged her sister-in-law's higher rank with a curtsey. “I am a countess for now, but I shan’t be as soon as Richard finds a higher class of woman than the doxies he usually runs with and gets the annulment he is always threatening me with. Oh, it's true, Edmund, don’t blush. But here! See what I have brought you as a wedding gift! Oh, there's the usual gold cup that you’ll receive later, but I thought you might prefer this.”

  A page who had been standing in the background stepped forward and solemnly placed a ten-week-old puppy into Bess's arms. “The best of my finest bitch's new litter,” Isabel said. “Hugh said that yours had died a few months ago, and I thought you might like this one.”

  Bess had indeed told Hugh during her horseback ride with him and Sybil that she was fond of dogs and that her old one had died recently, but it was something that she hardly thought he would have remembered. She cuddled the pup as it licked her nose. “’Tis so kind of you, Countess.”

  “Isabel.”

  Isabel was giving Bess a detailed account of her dog breeding, and Edmund had struck up an animated conversation with Bess's younger sister Sybil, when a girl of about fourteen rode up, followed by a waiting woman, a few men, and a very scruffy-looking, mud-splattered boy of about eleven. “My youngest sister, who's married into the Berkeley family,” said Isabel. “She is an Elizabeth like you, but she is Lizzie to us, and as I suppose you shall be Bess to us, that will save a great deal of trouble. Lizzie! This is Hugh's betrothed, Lady Bess.”

  Elizabeth de Berkeley smiled at Bess as the boy, evidently a Berkeley page, awkwardly assisted her from her horse. Though quite womanly looking, with a full bosom and a nicely rounded rump, Lizzie still wore her curly brown hair flowing, as befitted only maidens and new brides. Was Lizzie still deemed too young to bed with her husband, wherever he might be? “Will your lord be coming?” Bess asked, realizing when it was too late to retract her question that this might be another situation like that of the Arundels.

  Lizzie pointed to the boy. “My husband is right here,” she said resignedly. “Maurice will never go around a body of water if it is shallow enough to ride through.”

  “Cools off the horses. And if I had gone the long way I wouldn’t be here yet.”

  “I took the long way and arrived here at the same time as you,” said Lizzie.

  “Because I waited for you, slowpoke.”

  “And you have gotten yourself all dirty for Lady Bess! For shame, Maurice.”

  Maurice smiled and bowed to Bess, then pointed to his wife. “She acts proper now,” he said in the tone of one making a great confidence, “but she can play at football nearly as good as a lad, I’ll tell you.”

  Lizzie rolled her eyes. “Do clean up, please, Maurice. Lady Bess will think us savages.”

  “They’ll be fine breeders when they reach the age,” Isabel prophesized as Hugh's servants arrived to take the new arrivals to their chambers.

  No sooner had the Countess of Arundel and Elizabeth de Berkeley been accommodated than Joan and Nora le Despenser arrived. They and a third sister, now dead, had been forced by Queen Isabella to take the veil only weeks after their father's death. Isabel escaped the queen's net because of her marriage and Lizzie escaped because she was still in her mother's womb at the time. Bess's heart ached for those young nuns who had never had a vocation and who had been denied the chance of grand weddings of their own, but Joan and Nora did not seem inclined to self-pity. They ran into their brother's arms as soon as they were assisted off their horses. “I thought you would never marry!” said Joan as Hugh embraced her.

  “One would think it was you who had taken vows!” added Nora.

  Presently Hugh's youngest Despenser brothers, Gilbert and John, and his Zouche half-brother, William, arrived. Bess had barely learned their names and gotten a sense of their dispositions—Gilbert was boisterous, John reserved, and William studious, she decided—when a commotion was heard at the entrance of the great hall in which dinner was being served. Hugh, his soldier's instincts taking over, half rose from his seat, then relaxed as two small boys barged into the hall and ran toward the high table, heedless of anyone or anything blocking their path. “Uncle Hugh!” they yelled.

  “Boys? But if you are here, your father must—” Hugh stopped as a man, smaller and with more delicate features than Hugh but clearly his younger brother, entered the hall more sedately but nearly as eagerly as his sons. “You came!”

  “I wasn’t sure I should, but Anne insisted. She said that little Hugh would be fine and that I shouldn’t miss your wedding.”

  “True, it was rather ill-bred of my namesake to start cutting all of those teeth right before I married. I’m glad you came, Edward.” Hugh embraced his brother and then turned toward Bess. “My lady, this is Edward, and these two ruffians”—he waved a hand toward the boys, who had been caught by the hands by a stout nurse who had puffed in after Edward—“are his sons. His eldest two sons, for his third was born just the year before. His lady is incapable of breeding anything but boys, it seems. The younger is named Thomas and the older is another Edward, I’m afraid, but as they’ll ignore you when you call anyway, it shouldn’t be a source of confusion.”

  “Come now, they aren’t that ill-behaved,” Edward protested. He turned to Bess with an apologetic look. “Truly, my lady, they are not, but they had to ride in a litter for a very long ways, and when it was opened—”

  “They found their way to freedom,” Isabel put in. She gave her younger brother a kiss on the cheek. “You spoil them, Edward, always have.”

  “Perhaps,” Edward conceded. He blushed.

  His shyness appealed to Bess, who said, “I am sure they are good boys. There is nothing more wearisome than riding in a litter on a fine day like this.”

  Edward beamed at her, and Bess knew she had made a friend for life.

  As the Despensers bantered amongst themselves and made themselves agreeable to their eldest brother's chosen wife, the dinner passed pleasantly for Bess. But after dinner there was more trying-on to do, the tailor having been busy with Bess's wedding dress during the meal, and a crisis presented itself when the ruby brooch Hugh had give
n Bess could not be found. When Bess's puppy was seen wearing a look of indigestion, this gave rise to the direst of suspicions, which were alleviated only when the brooch was found under a pillow. The puppy, however, was far from having its name cleared, for further investigation turned up Bess's bridal slippers, which bore unmistakable chew marks. In the pandemonium of scolding and barking that followed, Bess's wedding nerves shattered. She threw herself on her bed, sobbing, and lay like that until Katharine cleared the room.

  “There is time to fix the slippers, my dear. And if not, no one will notice them.”

  “I don’t want to marry, Mama. I don’t want to manage his awful estates or to worry about bedding him. Or anybody. Please don’t make me be Hugh's wife. There are so many girls he could marry—can’t he find someone else?”

  Katharine held her as she cried a little more. “Child, it is only your nerves that are torn to shreds. You have been meeting so many people, and sitting through that long dinner, it is no wonder. You need some air. Why don’t you go ride a bit?”

  The prospect of a ride was tempting, especially as going to the stables would give her a chance to look at the snow-white palfrey that Bess had seen a groom lead into a stall rather furtively the day before. When Bess admired it, the grooms had been maddeningly vague about to whom it belonged, which had led Bess to suspect that it was yet another wedding gift from Hugh. But a horse would have to be made ready and saddled, and in the interim her sisters or her prospective sisters-in-law might well take the notion to join her. She wiped her eyes. “I’ll walk to the town instead.”

  Accompanied by the requisite page, Bess soon arrived in the thriving town that had grown up around Hugh's manor. But peace was as elusive there as it had been in the manor house. The street was full of people who had come to see her married, traveling to and from their lodgings and the manor house. As Bess's page was wearing Montacute livery, there was no escaping identification as the bride-elect. Stranger after stranger stopped to pay his respects, until Bess thought she would scream. Only one place appeared to be tranquil: the Abbey of St. Mary the Virgin, or Tewkesbury Abbey as all called it, where she was to be married the next morning. “Let us go in there,” she hissed.

  A monk, elderly and slow moving, greeted her as she stepped through the heavy wooden door leading inside the abbey. “My lady?”

  Evidently the old monk was shortsighted, for he was one of the few people in Tewkesbury who did not recognize the livery of Bess's father. “I am Elizabeth de Montacute.”

  “Ah, yes. Our lord's bride,” the monk said in such a reverent tone that Bess was momentarily taken aback before she realized that he was referring not to the deity but to Hugh.

  From his outstretched hand, Bess guessed that he was intending to show her around the abbey. More company, the last thing she wanted. Pretending not to have heard him, she broke away and hurried into the choir, muttering a prayer of repentance for her rudeness. Left in peace, for her page had stayed behind with her would-be host, she slowed her pace and looked up, then gasped at the beauty and intricacy of the vaulting above her head. Ribs, painted with gilt, joined each other to form floral patterns, colored in brilliant blues and reds. Light shone into the choir from seven stained-glass windows. The window on the far east represented the Last Judgment, the damned being hustled off to hell by an avenging angel as a kneeling, nude lady, who Bess later learned represented Hugh's mother, looked on. The four adjacent windows had been given over to biblical kings and prophets. As Bess turned to the last two windows, her gaze was met by those of a host of stained-glass knights, their coats of arms identifying most as ancestors of Hugh's mother, Eleanor de Clare. Hugh's own notorious father, resplendent in a surcoat marked with the Despenser arms, stared down coolly, daring anyone to question his fitness to stand beside so many great men.

  “Do you like it, my lady?”

  Bess whipped round and saw Hugh standing beside her. “What are you doing here?” she asked, realizing too late the impertinence of her question, for if there was one person in Tewkesbury not a monk who had the right to be in the abbey, it was surely Hugh.

  Hugh seemed unoffended, however. “I came here to pray for the souls of my parents. The monks do so regularly, of course, but I’m inclined to think that my father could still use some more help.”

  “Oh.”

  “Well? What do you think?”

  “It is beautiful,” Bess admitted. “Did you commission this work?”

  “No. I am seeing through what my father began and what my mother continued after his death. Should you like to see their tombs, my lady?”

  Bess did not, but she nodded and allowed Hugh to take her arm and lead her to a chest-like tomb, its many niches occupied by figures of Christ, the Apostles, and a host of saints. In a recess within the tomb lay the effigy of Hugh's father, dressed in the same manner as his stained-glass counterpart and looking on the whole to be quite pleased with his beautiful surroundings. Bess was half curious to know whether any of his quartered remains had been salvaged, but it was hardly a question she could ask his son. Then Hugh to her surprise said dryly, “In case you are wondering—most people do, I’m sure—he is all here, within reason of course. The men who had the task of reassembling him, so to speak, were rewarded very well by my mother.”

  “I should think so,” said Bess lamely.

  Hugh crossed himself, and Bess tactfully moved a distance off while her husband knelt and prayed for a short time. He caught up with her as she was heading toward the Lady Chapel. “My mother and stepfather are in here, Lady Bess. There's my mother's tomb.”

  A lady's effigy gazed up at an intricately carved canopy. Hugh's mother lay with hands clasped in prayer, as had her first husband. Though the effigy wore the headdress that no respectable lady would be seen without, even in death, the sculptor had left some stone hair, painted in a red as vivid as the colors of the lady's robes, visible. “My mother asked that her tomb resemble that of her uncle, the second King Edward. She was very fond of him, poor man.”

  “It is very fine. But why didn’t she ask to be buried with your father? Did he ill-treat her?”

  “No. He loved her and he was a good husband, save for—” Hugh shrugged. “They loved each other very much. But she loved my stepfather too, and in the end she did not want to choose to lie near one over the other. She fretted about it a good deal toward the end of her life, poor thing.” Hugh half smiled. “To ease her mind, I finally told her that I would place her at an equal distance between their tombs, and so you see I did.”

  “Do you miss him?” Bess asked daringly.

  “Every day.” He tapped Bess on the nose. “You’re wrinkling it in disapproval, I see, but I too loved him. He was the only father I had, after all, though I did get on well with Lord Zouche.”

  “Are you like him?”

  “No. He was much more clever.” He smiled at Bess. “Sweetheart, I know it can’t be easy, marrying into a family with a reputation such as mine has, but there is nothing to fear, from me or from my father's ghost, I assure you. Will you let me show you that I can be a good man and a good husband to you?”

  Taken aback by his frankness, she nodded. Hugh bent and kissed her lightly on the lips, so quickly that she was in doubt a moment later as to whether the kiss had taken place. “I have not asked you why you are here, Bess.”

  “I needed to be away for a while. The wedding preparations—”

  Hugh laughed. “Poor Bess. My robes have been ready for weeks now, and all I have to do tomorrow is put them on and get on my best horse. It's different for a bride, isn’t it? If you came here for peace, then I shall leave. You have a man with you, I assume, to take you home?”

  Home. The word jarred, though in less than a day, the manor of Tewkesbury would indeed be her home. “Yes.”

  “Good day to you, then.” He kissed her hand this time and turned away. Soon Bess could hear him conversing with someone, probably the monk who had greeted her. Left alone at last, she was at a los
s for what to do. As she was in the chapel, it seemed most natural that she pray, but except for her first husband, whom she’d barely known, she had no dead to pray for, or at least none whom she had known more than fleetingly. Nor could she in good conscience pray that something prevent her wedding the next day, not in the chapel built by Hugh's own family. She would have liked to have prayed that she have a noticeable bosom on her wedding day, like Joan of Kent's, but not only did this seem somewhat frivolous, it would take more of a miracle at this late date than the Lord was perhaps willing or even able to provide. Flummoxed, she finally prayed that her wedding day would be a sunny one and that her slippers could be mended.

  Both these small prayers, it turned out, were answered, though this heavenly benevolence made Bess's wedding morning no less a nervous one for her. As she was assisted onto her new white palfrey, which wore a spanking-new saddle that was bejeweled almost as finely as Bess herself, she was certain that she would fall off, exposing her legs and God only knew what else to Hugh's household, all of whom were standing around watching her as if they had never seen a girl getting married before. She would be the laughingstock of Tewkesbury for years to come. She stayed on, however, and also managed to avoid sitting on her thick, dark hair, which she normally wore in a single braid but which on her wedding day fell unbound to her hips.