The Traitor's Wife

by Susan Higginbotham

  “Just a few days before,” said the king. “And just look what was found in it, dear friends. Look.”

  He pulled out a few parchments. Several were safe conducts, allowing Lancaster's followers to go unmolested into Scotland. The first had been issued the previous December, the last less than three weeks before. Two were from the dreaded James Douglas; one of them was addressed to “King Arthur.” The last informed an unidentified correspondent that Hereford, Damory, Audley, Badlesmere, and several others had come to Pontefract and were ready to make surety with the Scots if the latter would come to their aid in England and Wales.

  “Good Lord,” breathed Hugh the younger. “Lancaster has been treating with the Scots!” He turned delighted eyes in the king's direction. “Edward, did not I mention long ago that after the siege at Berwick, Lancaster's lands were never touched by the Scots, while all the surrounding ones were despoiled? Now, you see, he has only continued what he was doing long ago.”

  “You were right, Hugh.”

  “And can he really be signing himself 'King Arthur'! I'm not sure which is worse, the treason or the delusion.”

  “We have him,” said Hugh the elder. “Your grace, do you intend to make this public?”

  Edward grinned. “For once, Hugh, you've not anticipated me. I forwarded these to the Archbishops of Canterbury and York, and to all of the sheriffs of England, to be read and published. Soon all of England will recognize Lancaster for the traitor he is.”

  By March 7, the two forces were facing each other near Burton, one on each side of the Trent. Lancaster's forces burned the bridge and the nearby town, but after three days of fighting, Pembroke and Richmond discovered a ford upstream, over which most of the royal army crossed. Lancaster had unfurled his banners and wanted to meet the king in battle, but the five hundred men he had expected one of his retainers, Robert Holland, to bring did not materialize, nor did Holland, who later gave himself up to the king. Meanwhile, Hugh the younger had stopped the king from unfurling his own banners as the army crossed the Trent. “Sire, no! They should never be able to claim that you made war against them!”

  “It is war as far as I am concerned,” snapped the king. But he kept the banners rolled up.

  Lancaster and Hereford abandoned the castle of Tutbury, Hereford privately making plans to escape abroad to Hainault, where he had relations. They fled to Pontefract.

  As the king's men were feasting on the provisions left behind at Tutbury, a servant of the king's approached him and whispered something. The king winced and without explanation followed the man to Tutbury Priory, hard by the castle. There in the infirmary lay Roger Damory, a blood-soaked bandage wrapped around his belly. “Roger.”

  “Your grace.”

  “Roger, why? I trusted you, gave you land, honors, even my niece—all because I was your friend. I would have pardoned you at any time, even yesterday, if you'd left Lancaster. Why didn't you?”

  Roger shrugged. He was too weak to do much talking, and even if he had not been, what use was it to explain to this fool of a king what anyone else could have seen, that his had always been an eye for the main chance? He watched with no emotion but contempt as the king walked toward a window and began to sob for his dying former friend.

  Damory died on March 12. The day before, the king had officially pronounced him, Lancaster, Audley, Hereford, and the rest to be traitors, but Damory did not suffer the horrid traitor's death, or any execution at all. He died of his wounds in the priory and was given an honorable burial by the king.

  At Pontefract, Lancaster balked at going to his own castle at Dunstanburgh, belatedly worrying that a flight north would be seen as an attempt to seek aid from the Scots. Better sit and wait for Edward's forgiveness, he advised; after all, the king was his first cousin. Only under threat of death from one of his followers, Roger Clifford, did Lancaster relent. Meanwhile, Sir Andrew Harclay, having been given his promised orders by the king, came south from Carlisle and met Lancaster and his small army at the town of Boroughbridge. Lancaster first tried in vain to bribe him, promising him five earldoms if Harclay would join his forces. Harclay would have none of it. His experiences fighting the Scots had not been wasted on him, and Robert Bruce himself would have approved of the close-packed formations of pikemen that greeted Hereford's men as they attempted to cross the bridge. Pushed together, much like the king's forces had been at the Bannock Burn, Hereford's men could see little but the masses of arrows flying from the archers beyond the schiltron. Nor could they see the men hidden under the bridge, one of whose spear, thrust upward, skewered Hereford himself as he led the way across it. With Hereford's death, Lancaster halted the attack. He agreed to either do battle the next morning or surrender.

  But in the end, he did neither. Overnight, scores of his men deserted him, abandoning their armor and dressing themselves in whatever rags they could find in order to be taken for common beggars as they made their way out of Boroughbridge. Harclay, seeing this, decided there was no point in waiting. He captured Lancaster, and virtually everyone of importance with him, the next morning, March 17.

  “So this is where Lancaster planned to keep me?”

  Edward and Hugh the younger were standing in one of Pontefract Castle's towers. This one was visibly newer than the rest. Hugh nodded. “So they say. He intended to shut you up for life in it.”

  “Well, I can't do the same for him, but we'll let him spend the night here, shan't we?” He shook his head. “What I would like to do,” he said softly, “is to shut him up in one of his dungeons for nine days, as was my brother Piers. But no, let's get it over with.”

  Lancaster was tried the next morning before a tribunal that included the Earls of Kent, Warenne, Richmond, Pembroke, and Arundel, the two Despensers, and the king. The charges included negotiating with the Scots, further proof of which had been found on Hereford's body in the form of an agreement under which Robert Bruce and two other Scottish leaders would come with all of their forces to Lancaster, where they would make war against all those whom the earl and his allies wished to come to harm. As with Gaveston, the earl was not permitted to reply to the charges against him. He was ordered to be hanged, drawn, and beheaded, but in consideration of his royal blood—and as with Gaveston—his sentence was commuted to beheading alone. It was to be carried out that same day, March 22, 1322.

  A late-season snow was falling as Lancaster, mounted on a unprepossessing-looking mule, was led from the castle to the place of execution a short distance away. Enough had fallen already for some of Lancaster's own tenants to pelt him with snowballs; he had not been a popular landlord. As Lancaster, not without dignity, knelt before the executioner, the king watched as one last snowball hit his cousin, his mind not on the present winter's day but on a perfect midsummer's day nearly ten years before.

  “Perrot,” he whispered, “the Fiddler has played his last tune.”

  October 1322 to March 1325

  WITH THE KING'S ENEMIES DEFEATED, THE KING ONCE AGAIN TURNED HIS attention to the Scots. The result was yet another disaster. The English had moved into Scotland to find that all around them had been stripped of crops and livestock. Starving and sick, the English army had retreated to England, only to find that Bruce had moved into Yorkshire and was planning to capture the king himself. Edward, who had sent most of his troops away, heard the news while he and Hugh were dining at Rievaulx Abbey. Leaving their valuables behind, he and Hugh had fled to York with the Scots at their heels.

  Eleanor had remained at York, while the queen had stayed at Tynemouth. The day after the king and Hugh arrived, exhausted by their flight from Bruce and disheartened at the ruin into which the Scottish campaign had fallen, yet oddly exhilarated by their shared ordeal, the queen joined them. Though the king had not forgotten her safety, sending troops to protect her, they themselves had encountered the Scots, leaving Isabella to escape Tynemouth by boat with the help of her household squires. Even with their heroism, the Scots and their arrows had caught up with th
e boat just as it sailed, fatally wounding one of her ladies and causing another to go into premature labor.

  Eleanor had wept for the fate of the queen's unfortunate women, while the king had thanked the Lord (aloud) for the queen's preservation and Hugh had thanked the Lord (silently) that Eleanor had not been with her. The queen, however, was neither tearful nor thankful. She stared straight at the king's chamberlain. “This was your doing, Sir Hugh.”

  “My doing?”

  “That I was put in this danger.”

  “Your grace, perhaps you are unaware that the king himself was in danger? He came within a hair's breadth of being captured, along with myself for that matter. Many of our own men were killed; many captured, among them the Earl of Richmond and Henry Sully, who was to protect you. All of us were in grave danger.”

  “Except your lady wife. How prudent to keep her out of harm's way.”

  “Your grace, that is nonsense! You know I would have gone with you if asked, and that the king and Hugh would have agreed to it. But you did not ask.”

  “This is nonsense, indeed,” said Edward coldly. “Isabella, you are tired and overwrought. You have been through a terrible ordeal, of course. That is making you talk foolishly and to place blame where none lies. I will accept your apologies on behalf of Lord and Lady Despenser while you go to rest—What is it?”

  “Your son Adam, my lord.”

  Adam had finally gotten his way and had been allowed to accompany his father on his expedition to Scotland. The king had armored him expensively and carefully for his first taste of battle, but no armor could protect the boy against the fever that had stricken so many of the king's men. For some weeks he had been lying ill at the nearby priory, but in the last few days, he had seemed to be recovering. “How fares he?”

  “He is very ill, your grace. He is being shriven. You must hurry.”

  “You sent for me, Adam?”

  Adam lay on a cot in the priory infirmary, one hand in his father's. “Yes, Lady Despenser. Is Hugh back from hunting?”

  Hugh had wanted to go to Scotland too, but his parents deeming him too young to join the fighting, the king had ordered him, as a consolation, to hunt deer for his tables, expenses to be paid by the crown. Accompanied by the king's huntsmen and the best pack of hounds to be found in England, he had been traveling from county to county, having a fine time of it. His expenses to date had included several mysterious sums paid to such worthies as “Clarabelle” that had baffled Eleanor until her husband had said wryly, “Wenching, love, wenching. The boy has turned fourteen, after all. I daresay the king's huntsmen saw it as their duty to educate him.”

  And now Hugh would come back from this happy junket to find his best friend dead. “He is not back yet, dear. I have sent for him, though. He will come to see you as soon as he gets the message, I know.”

  “I want to give him my sword. Will you make sure he gets it?”

  Eleanor's eyes filled with tears. “Yes, Adam. I will make sure of it, and I know he will treasure it always.”

  “Tell him I hope he is better in the saddle now. He will understand.” The boy managed a grin.

  “Imp.” Eleanor smiled as best she could and kissed Adam on the forehead. “I will certainly not give him such a scandalous little message. What do you take me for?”

  “I like having you here, Lady Despenser. Will you stay?”

  “Of course, Adam.”

  “I used to wish you were my mother. Isn't that strange?”

  Eleanor was about to manage a lighthearted reply when the king spoke. “Your mother, Lucy, was very much like Lady Despenser, Adam. I knew her for but a short time but I still miss her. If things had been different—”

  He fell silent and Eleanor took the opportunity to get Adam to take some sips of wine and to lay a fresh, cool cloth on his forehead. Adam continued his rally, asking his father a few questions about the Scottish campaign, which Edward answered with brisk enthusiasm, and asking Eleanor if she remembered the time he had placed a mouse in her workbasket at Langley just to hear Eleanor's own squeak of horror. Then he too grew quiet and dozed off, Edward holding his hand and Eleanor stroking the bright hair that was so much like Edward's. By dusk, his breath had grown shallow and ragged, and before sunset the king's eldest son was dead.

  Adam's death having pushed the queen's travails aside, nothing more was said about Tynemouth. But several days after the boy's body was sent to be buried at Langley, not far from Gaveston's tomb, Isabella announced her intention to go on pilgrimage to various sites around England, in thanksgiving, she said coolly, for her many blessings. She planned to be away from Christmas to Michaelmas. At York, where the court had remained for Christmas, the king bade her a cordial good-bye. “Good riddance,” said the king to Hugh the younger later. “Let her nurse her imaginary grudge on the road.”

  The queen was not the only person on ill terms with the king. Shortly before Damory's death, his wife, Eleanor's sister Elizabeth, had been taken prisoner by the king and sent to Barking Abbey, where she had remained for six months. The king had then invited Lady Elizabeth de Burgh, as she preferred to be styled, to York for Christmas, where she had been called to a private conference with the king and Hugh and stalked out of the castle in a rage. Her council members had been put under arrest; evidently they had threatened the king in some manner. Then Elizabeth, halfway home to Clare Castle, had been persuaded to return to York, where, as Hugh explained it, she had settled Damory's considerable debts to the king by exchanging Gower, now back in Hugh's hands, for Elizabeth's more lucrative property of Usk. Eleanor had not been pleased with this transaction, but as Elizabeth as a traitor's wife might have been imprisoned and left with no land at all, Eleanor had kept her feelings to herself and sent Elizabeth a barrel of sturgeon and some cloth for her children's robes. The gifts had been returned straightaway.

  England's two newest earls, the Earl of Winchester and the Earl of Carlisle, girded as such during the York Parliament held the previous May, had also traveled to York. The Earl of Winchester—none other than Hugh the elder—had enjoyed the Christmas festivities well enough, but Andrew Harclay, created Earl of Carlisle owing to his victory at Boroughbridge, had left court in a fury, deciding that not enough was being done about the Scots, who had finally taken themselves out of England, having left a path of devastation behind. Concluding that the Scottish situation was intolerable, Harclay took it upon himself to negotiate with Bruce. They reached an agreement that was sound and sensible—and completely beyond Harclay's authority to enter into. Humiliated by Harclay's ad hoc efforts, and furious at the agreement's terms, which amounted to a recognition of Scottish independence, Edward had the Earl of Carlisle executed as a traitor in March 1323. Yet he himself had little choice but to seek a truce with the Scots now. Days after the unfortunate earl's execution, a temporary truce took effect. By the end of April, four English hostages—including Eleanor's son Hugh—had gone to stay at Tweedmouth while two Scots envoys journeyed to England for further negotiations with Hugh the younger, Pembroke, Robert Baldock, and the Bishop of Exeter. A month later, they had entered into a thirteen-year truce.

  The Earl of Lancaster, meanwhile, had achieved a following in death that had eluded him in life. Edward had had him buried at Pontefract, where within six weeks, stories were being told of miracles being performed at his tomb there. His hat, it was discovered, could cure headaches, while his belt was protection against the dangers of childbirth. (“Well, yes, if the woman puts it around her privy parts so she can't get with child in the first place,” Hugh said to Eleanor. “Maybe that was why Lancaster never begat children off of his countess.”) Disgusted and worried, the king shut off the chapel to the public.

  But it was not the queen's anger, or Elizabeth's lands, or Harclay's well-meant treason, or Lancaster's miracles on which Eleanor brooded as Hugh, fresh from a meeting with the king and humming over his latest plans for the Exchequer, parted the curtains and settled in bed beside her: It was her sister M
argaret. Hugh d'Audley, her husband, had been spared his life because of Margaret's pleas to the king, but he remained a prisoner. Margaret herself had been sent to Sempringham Priory, albeit with a maid and two yeomen. In her incarceration, sadly, she was like dozens of other wives or widows of the men who had fought against the king. The nunneries and royal castles were bulging with them: Lady Badlesmere (now freed from the Tower, though her husband had been executed after Boroughbridge) at the Minorites without Aldgate and Lady Mortimer of Wigmore at Hampshire were just a couple. Some of their children had been sent to nunneries to live, some to royal castles; some stayed with their mothers; some had even been made royal wards and lived comfortably in the households of the king's children. But all were, in one form or fashion, prisoners.

  “Hugh.”

  “What is it, sweetheart?”

  “Can't you set Margaret free? She has been confined well over a year.” It was August 1, 1323.

  “I can't set people free, Eleanor. That is the king's prerogative.”

  These days the king's prerogative was also Hugh's. Eleanor shook her head impatiently. “You know full well you have the influence to do so, if you wished.”

  “Eleanor.” Hugh's voice was even; Eleanor could not remember him ever raising it to her. “Have you forgotten that Audley devastated our lands—your lands? Killed and imprisoned our men? Where was Margaret in all this? Begging him to stop?”

  “I know naught about what she said or did not say, Hugh, but neither then do you. For God's sake, Hugh! I am not asking that you make her rich again. Give her enough to live on comfortably and pleasantly, instead of being shut up in that nunnery—”

  “Shut up? She has the run of the place, servants, plenty of company, her child by Audley.” Margaret's daughter by Gaveston, Joan, remained at Amesbury with her aunt Mary, where she had spent almost all of her life. “Interesting company, too. There's Princess Gwenllian.”