The Traitor's Wife

by Susan Higginbotham

  Hugh her husband was there too, of course. It had snowed a few days before Christmas, and he and Eleanor and their three-year-old son had had a delightful time throwing snowballs at each other. Even Margaret had temporarily abandoned her fine manners to join in, ganging up with little Hugh and his nurse against his parents. Eleanor had been freezing cold afterward, and Hugh had taken her inside and helpfully removed her sodden clothes, which had led to an even more delightful time. She'd then forgiven him entirely for so highhandedly taking her sumpter horses.

  “York!” she asked now. “Why York, this time of year?” Hugh the elder said, “It can mean only one thing, my dear. He is bringing Gaveston back to England.”

  “York! This time of year! We just came from York. I do not intend to go back there.” Isabella looked around her at the comforts of Westminster, where she and the king were spending Christmas. “I will not go there.”

  “Then you may stay. I go to York.”

  “Edward. You cannot be contemplating having that Gaveston return.”

  “I am not contemplating it. My messenger has already given Piers his instructions. He is to make his way to York immediately.”

  “Edward, are you mad?”

  “Certainly not. Only a madman would consent to be treated the way I have been treated, being told whom I can have around my own court. Do you think for an instant my father would have tolerated this? I did a short while, but 'tis past.” He glanced at his seething young wife. “But there is no need for you to hurry, as you may join us at York at your leisure. We shall travel slowly too, for we must stop at Wallingford and bring my niece Margaret with us. Traveling with a pregnant woman will slow us down, but Piers will like to see his child, and Margaret is of hardy stock. Piers's old nurse, Agnes, and Lady Despenser shall go with her.”

  “You take my own lady now, without informing me?”

  “I am informing you now, Isabella, and is it not natural that Eleanor should attend her younger sister in childbirth? When the child is born, Eleanor shall return to her duties with you. In the meantime your household will not much feel the diminution by one, I imagine.”

  “You forget that my lady Isabella de Vescy has also been forced from me.”

  “By those Ordainers you find so irritatingly sensible at times, my lady, not by me. They seek to control you as much as me. Shall I read you the Ordinances again?”

  “You need not. I am having them transcribed for me.”

  He laughed and said, with genuine approbation, “I have always admired your inquisitive mind, Isabella.” He glanced at Isabella's figure, now entirely that of a woman, and smiled. “Shall Piers be alone in his fatherhood, my queen, or shall we give him a rival? We have not made any efforts in that regard lately, I think. I must leave in the morning.”

  She nodded and dutifully let him lead her toward her bed.

  Eleanor, having had a fairly easy time in childbirth herself, had hoped that Margaret would be similarly blessed, but hours had gone by with Margaret no closer to giving birth than she had been when a boy awoke Eleanor from a deep sleep to bid her to attend her sister.

  “Did he say he would come?” Margaret whimpered between spasms.

  Eleanor said gently, “I know only what the king told me, and the king says he will soon be here.”

  “I want him, Nelly. I miss him.”

  “I know you do, Meg.”

  “I don't care what they say about him and the king. He loves me, and I love him. I am so scared, Nelly. What if I die before he comes?”

  “You will not die,” said Eleanor. Though women did every day, of course. Yet their mother had borne four babes from Gilbert de Clare and four more from their stepfather, and their grandmother Queen Eleanor had borne even more. Neither had died from childbearing. “You are a Clare, and we are from strong stock.” She cast her mind back on what her own midwife had told her. “Breathe. Like this.”

  Margaret was in between pains. She said loftily, “I know well how to breathe, sister.”

  Three more hours had passed, and Margaret had at last gone into hard labor. Only then did she remember that she had packed a relic to clutch at as she gave birth. Eleanor, relieved to be out of the room and away from Margaret's yelps for a short while, went to find her trunks to unpack it.

  Exhausted and dizzy from bending over her sister, she scarcely noticed the men sauntering toward her. Then she started. “Uncle! Piers!”

  “Nelly. How fares Meg?”

  “Well as can be expected, but Piers, she is in the worst stage, and it would help her so much if she could see you. You must go to her.”

  “Go to her? In childbed? But Nelly, no man goes there.”

  “This is special.” She tugged at Piers. “Get you there now!”

  “Nelly! What a fierce little creature you are. Quit yanking at me, and I will follow you to wherever you wish. But what if I collapse?”

  “If you can stand battle,” said Eleanor, “you can surely stand this.”

  Gaveston followed her back to the birthing chamber, where the midwife—a local woman who had said no more than a dozen words in so many hours— stared at him in horror. “Sir! No man comes in here.”

  “It is all right,” said Eleanor, pushing him forward. “I asked him to come. Meg, look who is here.”

  Margaret was in such intense pain that her face was contorted, but her eyes lit up when she saw her husband. “I am so glad to see you,” she panted when she could speak. “Now get out!”

  “Women,” said Gaveston as Eleanor escorted him briskly out of the room. “Where shall you drag me now, Nelly? To a nunnery?”

  “I knew she would be happy to see you,” Eleanor said softly. “Wait nearby. It won't be long now.”

  A half hour later, Margaret was delivered safely of a daughter, and Eleanor dispatched her sister's youngest, gawkiest page to give the message to Piers and to the king, knowing that the lad would get a handsome reward for his short walk. The midwife cleaned the baby, while Agnes and Eleanor made Margaret pretty to see Piers, who was regaling the unenthusiastic king with his very brief glimpse of a childbed.

  “How shall you name her?” asked Eleanor.

  “After our mother.”

  “Not after Piers's?”

  “Claramunde? Too French.” She smiled apologetically at Agnes. “Piers himself suggested Joan if the baby was a girl. Anyway"—she lowered her voice—"I suppose you have heard the rumors about his mother.”

  “Rumors?”

  “Really, Nelly! How do you stay so naive? Have you never heard the talk that Piers's mother was burned as a witch?”

  “No! I have never heard such a horrible thing. Surely—”

  “There's no truth to it,” said Agnes coolly. “I was with the poor lady when she died. She had a fever, and it carried her away in a few hours, her dying in her bed just as any other lady might. There wasn't much out of the ordinary about her but her beauty, though Lord knows she stood out enough for that. Piers takes after her in that respect. But it suits the barons to say that she was a witch, and that she passed her powers on to my lord.”

  “They are vile men,” said Eleanor. “My uncle was right to bring Piers back in defiance of them. They and their Ordinances deserve no respect.” She patted Margaret on the hand. “But let me bring in Piers and show him what a beautiful daughter you have given him.”

  During the hurried, cold trip to York, Eleanor had not presumed to ask the king his intentions regarding Gaveston; she and Margaret knew only that he was to return to see his child born. Perhaps, Eleanor had thought, Gaveston planned to take Margaret with him after she went through with her churching, which would take place about forty days after the birth of her child.

  Now, however, Edward's plans became clear. The household, and more important, the chancery clerks, were all making their way to York, men and cartloads of documents moving from south to north. No sooner were the clerks ensconced in their new headquarters at St. Mary's Abbey did Edward sit them down and begin issu
ing orders, each calculated to infuriate the Ordainers, who had not joined the move to York. In writs issued to all of the sheriffs of the land, he declared Gaveston's exile to be contrary to law and reason. He granted Gaveston all of the lands that had been forfeited with his exile. He declared that he would not abide by the Ordinances, though later he softened his approach by stating he would not abide by those harmful to him. The Ordainers stayed away from the court, planning strategy.

  Meanwhile, the small court enjoyed itself. Margaret was churched in the grand style Edward had promised; Edward's minstrels provided the entertainment. Eleanor herself did not enjoy the churching much, however; she had been tired for days, no matter how well she had slept the night before, and wanted nothing more than to fling herself on her bed and sleep. Only when she lay in bed that night did it occur to her that the last time she had been so bone-weary was when— She started up and frantically began to prod her sleeping husband, who had joined the court for the churching ceremony. Hugh, like all of the other men, had been somewhat fuddled by the churching and the vinous entertainments that had followed. It took Eleanor several shakes to awake him. “Hugh!”

  “Mmm.”

  “I believe I am with child again!”

  “Mmmm!”

  The queen herself, complete with household, arrived a few days after Margaret's churching, by which time the court was fully sober and Eleanor was feeling thoroughly queasy. Edward seemed genuinely pleased at his bride's arrival, and Isabella, who liked Margaret well enough, admired little Joan and often took the infant on the royal lap.

  As the Ordainers plotted in the south, Isabella's ladies and damsels plotted in the north. “Who shall take the king this year?” asked Ida de Clinton, one of the ladies.

  “I shall only watch,” said Eleanor, who had discovered the whereabouts of every garderobe in York Castle. She smiled at the oldest of the queen's damsels, Alice de Leygrave. “You should lead the effort, Alice.”

  “Very well,” said Alice, who had been the king's nurse. She looked over the women sternly. “We meet at dawn.”

  At dawn, the women, trailed by a giggling Isabella and a yawning Eleanor, met in the deserted great hall at York Castle and made their way to the king's chamber, unopposed by the guards they met along the way. Finally, they entered the chamber and tiptoed to the bed, surrounded by heavy curtains. There the king slept soundly, decorously clad in drawers, for he knew well of the plans against him. Alice threw back the curtains. “Your grace! We have caught you abed on Easter Monday, and you must pay the price.”

  Edward stirred. “I must protest, good ladies.”

  “No excuses, your grace. Come, ladies. Bring him to be ransomed.”

  It took all of the women, most who were on the diminutive side, to haul the king out of his bed and down to the great hall. Eleanor was feeling hale enough to help by grabbing hold of her uncle's ankle, and Isabella cheered them on as they proceeded from whence they had came. There stood the king's steward, who watched as the women lowered the king to the floor triumphantly. “Aye, your grace,” he said, shaking his head solemnly. “The ladies have taken you once again.”

  “Good man, set me free.”

  The steward opened a purse and gave each of the damsels several sparkling coins. By now all the members of the miniature court had gathered in the great hall, dressed in whatever robes they had found near at hand, and they cheered as Alice bade the king to rise.

  But there were no light hearts in the south of England, where the Earls of Warwick, Lancaster, Pembroke, Hereford, and Arundel, outraged over Gaveston's return and the flouting of the Ordinances, were meeting and planning. They had even assigned themselves and their followers duty over different parts of the kingdom: to Eleanor's dismay, the Earl of Gloucester was in charge of the south. The Archbishop of Canterbury, Robert Winchelsey, had excommunicated Gaveston. “No need to bother with indulgences now,” was Gaveston's comment.

  Isabella, at the king's request, wrote to Gloucester, Hereford, Warenne, Lancaster, and Pembroke, begging them charmingly to desist from taking any action that would divide the realm, but received only polite, tolerant, meaningless, and rather patronizing responses, the equivalent of a pat on the head. The weaker sex, the womanizing Warenne explained, simply did not have to or wish to be involved in national affairs. An emissary met with a similar reception, save for the remark about the weaker sex.

  “This is not a safe place for your grace to be,” said Hugh le Despenser the elder one evening in late March, shortly after the king had been ransomed from the queen's ladies. “Rumor—from what my son has heard—has it that the Ordainers will be heading north. They are setting up tournaments, but they are nothing but shams to disguise the moving of troops.”

  “So where to?” asked the king. He did not wonder if Hugh's information was correct; it always was.

  “Scarborough, I would suggest.”

  “I shall order it fortified immediately.”

  Several days later, the king and his household prepared to head north, Margaret and the baby and their attendants remaining in the comfort and safety of the abbey. The queen's household lagged behind the king's a few days; Isabella was not feeling well.

  “I have borne these removals with remarkable patience,” she said to Eleanor in mid-April. “But I am nearing the end of it. All for an upstart Gascon who could not even sire a male heir!”

  “The king's brother, in all but birth, your grace.”

  “Brother!”

  “I think it beautiful that their loyalty is so strong that the king is willing to risk all for Gaveston.”

  “You take a rosy view of life, my lady.”

  “Better than the opposite, surely.” Isabella said nothing, and Eleanor went on dreamily, “I sometimes wish Hugh had such a bond; someone he loved better than himself, and vice versa. Then if he ever had to go to battle, I would know that he was being looked after. But of course he and his father are devoted to each other; most men's fathers are dead.” She frowned. Though she had been chattering to keep up Isabella's spirits, it was true she did worry that Hugh had no close friends, at least that she knew of. She supposed it was partly to do with his cool self-possession, which some could mistake for arrogance.

  “You wish Hugh had a sordid relationship with another man, to expose you to gossip and calumny and neglect?”

  “Of course not, I am thinking of a brotherhood in arms. If men must fight, and I suppose they must because they always have, it seems good that they should form such bonds. And in any case, there is more at stake than Gaveston, is there not? The Ordainers seek to impose their will upon the king in all matters, great and small. He is right to resist.”

  In reply Isabella merely shook her head and gazed bleakly out the window. “You are feeling no better, your grace?”

  “No. I feel as if I want to vomit, and I am deadly tired.”

  Eleanor stared at the queen. “Tell me, your grace. Is your monthly course late?”

  Isabella stared at Eleanor. “Several weeks, in fact.”

  “Do you miss months?”

  “Not since I was fourteen. Lady Despenser! Could it be?”

  “I can think of nothing else, your grace.” She started as Isabella's embrace nearly knocked her off her feet. “Your grace!”

  Isabella gave Edward the good news as soon as she stepped into the hall at Newcastle. Edward's delight was tempered by his concern over Gaveston, who, quite unusually for him, had fallen ill, seriously so. “I have had the best physician here attending him, Isabella, but to no avail. My God, what shall I do if I lose him?”

  Had Isabella answered the question as she longed to, her life and the king's might have turned out quite differently. Instead, she said serenely, “I am sure he will recover, Edward. People who are never sick are always frightening when they become ill, because of the contrast.”

  “There may be truth in that,” said Edward with a sigh.

  Eleanor said, “Uncle, are others here ill? Because if they are
, surely you will not want the queen and your future child here.”

  “Only Gaveston has been affected, but by God, you have a point! Who knows who else might become ill? You must not stay here, Isabella, and you neither, Eleanor.” He glanced at Eleanor's belly, which by now was showing itself. “I wish you to move on.”

  “To where?”

  “Tynemouth Priory is a good place for you, quite comfortable.”

  Move on Isabella did, but without much good grace. As they were sharing a litter, both having been forbidden by their husbands to sit a horse, Eleanor could not fall behind her, as she sometimes allowed her palfrey to do on the days when the queen was out of temper. “Barely a word about our child! Barely a word!”

  “But, your grace, we are where we are because of your child.”

  “He is totally preoccupied with that Gascon. You know, I sometimes believe the rumors that he is a witch's son.”

  “His nurse says they are nonsense.”

  “Well, she would, wouldn't she?”

  Once at Tynemouth and out of her jouncing chariot, which Eleanor blamed for the queen's ill temper entirely, Isabella busied herself with charitable works and became quite good-natured. She put her almoner to work in the surrounding neighborhood, wrote to London to see how a little orphan boy whom she had provided for fared, and gave the priory church a splendid cloth of gold.

  Nearly two weeks had passed quietly for the queen and her household when late one evening as the queen and her ladies were on the verge of retiring, a commotion was heard outside the priory, where the only noises were usually the chanting of the monks and the lapping of the waves at a distance. “My God! 'Tis the king and Gaveston!”