The Traitor's Wife

by Susan Higginbotham

  “So the earls plan to let him speak there?” asked Eleanor.

  “Pembroke says they will, and Pembroke is an upright man, for all that he consorts with the Ordainers.” Edward yawned. “A pity he must go all the way to Wallingford, and then back to Lincoln, but I daresay he will prefer riding back and forth to sitting at Wallingford without company. He tells me that he and Pembroke are getting on well now, for all that Pembroke is entirely lacking in a sense of humor. Who knows, Gaveston may develop one in him.”

  The king and queen, meantime, began preparing to leave York for Lincoln. All was ready, and Eleanor was taking one last walk in the coolness of an evening in late June, when she saw a messenger approaching the castle in great haste. Curious, she hastened to the great hall of the castle. It was empty. Somewhat hampered by her growing bulk, she hurried to chamber after chamber, finding the same lifeless air over all of them, until she saw a knot of people standing near an outer room that led to Edward's bedchamber. Her husband was there. “Hugh? What is wrong?”

  “A messenger has brought news about Gaveston. My father is in there with the king now.”

  “News? What news? Have the Ordainers not honored their part of the agreement?”

  A cry came from the king's bedchamber. Never had Eleanor heard a sound like it. It was animal-like, otherworldly, yet it had to have come from a man, for it was followed by sobs. Eleanor could not have believed that a man could feel such anguish and survive. There was no need for Hugh to say the next words; she knew what had happened.

  “They have killed Gaveston, Eleanor. 'Tis the work of Lancaster and my uncle Warwick.”

  June 1312

  PEMBROKE'S WIFE, BEATRICE, WAS FRENCH AND FAIR, AND NONE BUT A churl would have argued when Pembroke, having stopped for the night with Gaveston at the rectory at Deddington in Oxfordshire, decided to ride the few miles to Bampton to pay her a visit. He thought of taking his captive with him, but Gaveston, still feeling the effects of his illness a month before, was not as strong as he used to be, and did not look up to the ride. Moreover, turning up at Bampton with his charge might spur his wife, a proper hostess to the bone, to pull out the stops of hospitality for the Gascon, and Pembroke had been parted long enough from his bride to wish her attentions to be given to no one but himself. Shaking his minimal misgivings from his mind, he hired a fresh horse for the journey and galloped happily away, grateful for the extra hours of light the June days were affording him.

  Gaveston himself ate a simple but delicious meal and retired early, pleased to see that he had been provided with a comfortable bed in a pleasant, airy room. He was dreaming a dream to match his cheerful surroundings when he heard his name called, again and again, followed by, “Arise, traitor! You are taken.”

  Mother of God! it was the Black Dog of Arden, with dozens of men. Pembroke's few men, taken unawares, were themselves under guard, save for a couple who had been gravely wounded and needed none. Gaveston opened the window. “Don't bark so loud, Warwick. You disturb the neighborhood.”

  “Aye, I bark. And I bite too, you fool. Dress yourself and come down.”

  “Where is Pembroke? What about his oath?”

  “I care little where he is, and I care naught about his oath. Come down, or you will be dragged down.”

  A voice from outside the door—the rector's—said, “My lord, all is lost. Pembroke's men have been captured—one killed already—and there is a guard all around the rectory.”

  “Very well,” Gaveston said, “I'll come down.”

  Pembroke, having passed a very pleasant evening with Beatrice, was on the road to Deddington when he heard the news from one of his men, who after having been disarmed by Warwick's men had been left behind at the rectory. Gaveston had been stripped of his shoes and jewels and had been made to walk, wearing nothing but his shirt and hose, through the town. Only when Warwick's men tired of the slow pace this necessitated had a horse been produced for him, although the horse was such a nag the change did little to speed the procession.

  Aymer de Valence, Earl of Pembroke, had worked with Warwick long enough to know that approaching him would be futile. Instead, he galloped off to Tewkesbury, where the Earl of Gloucester was staying. Gloucester was a moderate man, and second only to Lancaster in riches; if any man could save Pembroke's honor and Gaveston, it was Gilbert de Clare. But young Gilbert was not in an accommodating mood. He felt affronted, having not been consulted about Pembroke's arrangement, and through his association with the Ordainers he had grown over the years rather to dislike Piers Gaveston. It did not help matters that Gaveston was a father, while Gilbert's wife had suffered several miscarriages.

  He heard Pembroke out, but barely. Then he lifted his red head and said coolly, “We all agreed to capture him, did we not? The wrong done to you is not to be imputed to Warwick alone.”

  “He was captured, Gloucester, and in my custody. And now that he has been taken out of my custody my goods and lands will be forfeit.”

  “Then you must negotiate more carefully in the future.”

  “The future! There is no future for me, nor for Gaveston I fear. Can nothing move you to pity? For God's sake, man, Gaveston is married to your sister!”

  “It is that marriage that prevents me from going to Warwick now, and only that marriage. The man is bad for England, and it and my sister will be better off without him.”

  Pembroke stared at Gloucester, who looked back at him with all of the arrogance of his twenty-one, largely untroubled years. “Then I curse you, you arrogant brat.”

  Almost weeping, Pembroke rode away from Tewkesbury in a daze. Reaching Oxfordshire again, he decided to appeal to the clerks and burgesses of the town and university of Oxford. At the very least, he would be able to clear his name, he hoped, for he was beginning to realize that his foolishness in leaving Gaveston at Deddington might be regarded as treachery.

  He was met with inaction at best, derision at worst. Did he expect the scholars at Oxford to raise an army? What made him think anyone would stir to help the sorcerer Piers Gaveston? And what would be the displeasure of the king to that of the mighty Lancaster?

  Utterly dispirited, Pembroke returned to see his wife once more, this time as the one person in the world he knew would give him comfort and understanding. Then he would rejoin the king in the north and offer him his undivided allegiance. It was all he could do now.

  Meanwhile, the Earls of Lancaster, Arundel, and Hereford journeyed to Warwick Castle, where the Earl of Cornwall was being held in chains. Warwick, having taken the bold step of seizing Gaveston, was beginning to have some doubts, but Lancaster silenced them. “With Gaveston alive, there will be no peace in England!”

  “And there will be peace with him dead?” said Hereford glumly.

  “Yes, there will. Why, the queen is with child, did you know that? That cannot but help matters. An heir may be what it takes to force the king to act as one.”

  “If the king acts as one, we shall all die a traitor's death for this.”

  “He will be in no position to act as one,” said Lancaster, illogically but with great force. He nodded toward a clerk, sitting glumly in a corner. “In any case, he is not a match for all of us acting in concert. We shall draw up letters patent in which each of us swears to save and defend the others from any loss they might incur from this.”

  “Should he have a trial before he dies?” asked Arundel. He himself had no compunction about executing Gaveston, who had humiliated him several years before by trouncing him at a tournament, and he was tired of listening to Lancaster and Hereford debate over what was plainly a foregone conclusion.

  “It would be best,” assented Lancaster. “We'll find suitable justices.”

  The justices examined the evidence presented to them—an easy task as Gaveston himself had no chance to speak or call anyone to speak in his behalf—and sentenced the Gascon to death. Here Gilbert de Clare, though unwittingly, came to Gaveston's aid, for the earls deemed it unseemly that the brother-i
n-law of the Earl of Gloucester should die a traitor's death. Instead, he was granted the nobleman's death of beheading.

  “They finally took him out of the dungeon, on June 19 it was,” said the Countess of Pembroke's laundress. She cleared her throat; it was not usual for her to speak in front of so many people, and certainly not in front of a group of people like this—the king, the queen, her lord Pembroke, the king's nieces, the Earl of Surrey, Lord Despenser and his son. Gaveston's young widow was in full mourning; most of the others were in black or at least in their drabbest robes. “Poor man, he was filthy and looked in need of a good meal—he'd been in there nine days—but still he bore himself proudly, like the fine knight that I had heard he was. The Earls of Lancaster, Arundel, and Hereford came to Kenilworth to watch it be done.”

  “Only the three?” asked Hugh the elder. “Where was Warwick?”

  “He was not there, sir, I'll swear it. They say he stayed in his castle at Warwick the whole day.”

  “Then he is not only a scoundrel but a coward,” said the king's niece Eleanor. It was odd, the laundress thought, that it was she, not the queen, who had reached over and clasped the king's hand while the tale was being told, but the ways of the royal were inscrutable and the girl after all was the king's near relation.

  “Aye, my lady, they say he wanted no part of the business once he started it. So they brought him to Kenilworth, as I said, to the Earl of Lancaster's land, I think. Then they took him to a place called Blacklow Hill—many a day I rolled down it as a girl, and no longer will anyone want to play there—”

  “Was he shriven?” asked the king. “Do you know?”

  “There was no priest there, but he prayed before he died, and many of the bystanders did too—although others laughed.”

  The king was weeping, and so were his nieces. Strange, the laundress thought, the queen—the closest thing to an angel in looks she had ever seen—was dry-eyed. But if the rumors about the king and Gaveston had been true…

  The second Edward wiped his eyes. “Go on.”

  “There's little left to tell, your grace. They bade him to kneel down, and he did, as graceful as though he was here in court. He had just time to commend his spirit to God. Then one man—a Welshman he was—ran him through the heart, then another Welshman cut off his head. Oh, but he did ask before, joking-like, that they leave him his head so as not to spoil his beauty so much.”

  The younger Despenser's mouth twitched upward.

  “The Earl of Lancaster did not go up the hill for some reason, so they had to bring the head down to him, to show him that the deed had been done. Some friars came and got the body later, as you now know, your grace, and took him to Oxford.” She paused awkwardly, then remembered that she had been asked to tell everything she knew. “I heard—but do not know for sure—that his head was sewn back on.”

  “God bless the friars,” said Edward. “They shall be well rewarded. And so shall you.” He nodded at his steward, standing nearby, who approached the laundress with a purse.

  “It was the countess's doing, your grace. She sent me to visit my family near Warwick Castle, knowing that I would keep my ears and eyes open and report on what had happened.”

  “And it was you, Pembroke, who asked the countess to provide those eyes and ears. Thank you.”

  “It was the least I could do, your grace.”

  September 1312 to April 1314

  IN SEPTEMBER 1312, ELEANOR GAVE BIRTH TO A DAUGHTER, NAMED AFTER either Hugh's mother or the queen, depending on which parent one asked. Either way, Eleanor adored little Isabel, who within a few weeks showed every sign that her hair would be as flaming as that of Eleanor's father, who had not been called Gilbert the Red for naught.

  She was grateful to be away from court; it had become too sad there. Edward went through the motions of daily life, hearing petitions, issuing orders, meeting with his council, but something of him had died at Blacklow Hill. Not infrequently, he would stop whatever he was doing and leave the room, and every person around him knew that he was going to his chamber to weep for Gaveston anew.

  For a time that summer, the country in fact had seemed on the verge of civil war. Days after Gaveston's death, his killers—including Warwick, who had ventured out of his castle at last—gathered at Worcester, while the king and his council traveled to Westminster, having summoned Parliament to meet there in August. Both were debating what to do next; both were preparing for war. When Lancaster, Warwick, and Hereford arrived in London, days after Parliament had begun, they were accompanied by hundreds of men.

  Gloucester had become a mediator between the factions. His encounter with Pembroke had left him shaken, for all that he hid it at the time, and he had felt more than a little guilt upon seeing the grief of his uncle, who had always treated him well and kindly. Worse was the anger of his sisters. Margaret, meeting him for the first time since her husband's death, had simply slammed him across the face and run out of the room. Eleanor he had not seen, as she had gone from York to Loughborough to await her child's birth, but she had sent him a letter so uncharacteristically contemptuous that Gilbert shuddered when he remembered it, even though he'd read it only once before putting the fire to it. She didn't accuse him of bringing about Gaveston's death, and neither did Margaret; they suspected, as did Gilbert himself, that there was nothing he could have done to prevent it. But at least he could have tried, for the name of Clare was not one without power in the realm, and he had done nothing.

  So in some small attempt to expiate his sins, he set about the tedious business of negotiating between the king and the group of men of whom Lancaster had become the leader. He was not without help, for the Earl of Richmond shared in his efforts, as did papal envoys and Isabella's uncle Louis d'Evreux.

  The accusations went back and forth. The goods Gaveston had left behind at Newcastle—jewels, horses, and robes—were rich, and they were in the hands of Lancaster, whom the king accused of being little more than a common thief. Lancaster protested that he had seized the goods for the crown and had even inventoried them with that noble purpose in mind, but he made no move to return them.

  Edward said that the earls had killed a peer of the realm and would depose the king himself if they could. The earls protested that Gaveston was an outlaw under the Ordinances and that he had been punished accordingly. They wanted to brand Gaveston as a traitor; Edward would accept many of the demands made upon him, would even pardon the earls, but never would he declare the person he had loved best in the world to be a traitor.

  London, never far from ferment, was also tense; when Pembroke, Hugh le Despenser the elder, and several others met with city officials to discuss the Londoners' own grievances, they ended up running for their lives.

  In the midst of all of this anxiety, Isabella lay comfortably ensconced at Windsor in November 1312, awaiting the birth of her first child. Eleanor, churched only a month before, joined her there, for who would want to miss such an occasion? On November 13, Isabella gave birth to a boy, who was soon created Earl of Chester.

  The pleasure Eleanor took in seeing the queen's happiness was trebled by seeing that of the king. The look of brooding misery at last left Edward's face; he spent hours in the nursery with young Edward and heaped presents upon Isabella. For the first time in months, he was heard to make a joke. The birth of the third Edward did much to ease the nation's tension, for a short time anyway. If few loved the king, the birth of a healthy heir at least made him less disliked, and the absence of Gaveston removed a vital source of dissatisfaction. Even the Londoners turned their thoughts to a happier direction, preparing a grand ceremony to welcome the heir. A treaty was made in December 1312, and Gaveston's valuables were finally turned over to the crown several months later, but Lancaster and Warwick refused to confirm it.

  To the barons' dismay, Edward had drawn closer to his French father-in-law, and in the spring of 1313, as the glow of the birth of an heir was beginning to wear off, he accepted the French king's invitation to
visit him in Paris, where Isabella's brothers were to be knighted. The trip was hardly a jaunt for Edward—there was diplomatic work to be done as well as feasting—but the barons grumbled nonetheless.

  Back in England, the peace efforts resumed, complete with Gloucester, Richmond, and papal envoys, and in October 1313, they at last bore fruit. More worn down with time than anything else, the king and the earls entered into a treaty.

  “The king cannot but be pleased with it,” said Hugh the elder. “Nothing branding poor Gaveston the king's enemy; no one removed from court—not even me as Lancaster has wished—and Henry de Beaumont and Lady Vescy are no longer outlawed by the Ordinances. Lancaster and the others must kneel before the king and accept his forgiveness, and that cannot be something they are stomaching well.”

  There was no satisfaction in Hugh's voice, though. After a brief improvement, his son Philip's health had rapidly declined, and just weeks before, he had succumbed to consumption. Hugh had reached his deathbed just in time to be recognized by his son; shortly after Philip's burial at the house of the Augustinian friars in London, he and his elder son and daughter-in-law had returned to Westminster, where Parliament was in session, though it was clear from Hugh's bearing that his heart was not in his duties as a peer. He continued tiredly, “There will be a banquet, of course, to mark their reconciliation. There always is.”

  The banquet, hosted by the king, took place several weeks later. The entire court was present. From their table a distance from the dais where the king and the earls sat, Eleanor and her husband watched as the king embraced and kissed earl after earl. Warwick and Lancaster more or less submitted to their embraces, and the king's was hardly heartfelt either, but all were more gallant when it came time to approach the queen. With each embrace, Hugh's lip curled more and more perceptibly.