The Traitor's Wife

by Susan Higginbotham

  “Hugh, there is no need for one of your speeches. I will do it.”

  “Eleanor?”

  “I will do it because of what I mentioned just now. I cannot forget that the queen begged the king to send you and your father away, knowing what happened to Gaveston. I cannot forgive it. I should, and I have tried, but I cannot. And I remember that she blamed you and the king for Tynemouth, with no justification. So if there are to be sides taken, with you and the king on the one and the queen on the other, I will side with you and the king, and I will do what you and he feel needs to be done. To a point, of course.”

  “A point, my dear?”

  “I will not act dishonorably to the queen. To that point.”

  “Well, of course not. The king and I would not ask you to do anything dishonorable. But there's more, my love. You are to be in charge of John of Eltham's household. Bella is to take charge of the girls. Young Edward, of course, will continue in his present arrangements.”

  Eleanor stared. “All this responsibility to me and Bella? Hugh, it is an honor, I suppose, but—The queen will despise all of us for it!”

  “I don't see why she should. They are of an age to be in their own households anyway, being royal children. In any case, the queen will not be prevented from seeing them.”

  “Does Bella know of this?”

  “I will write her straightaway. She will likely enjoy the company, poor thing, with Ralph de Monthermer's health failing.”

  Eleanor nodded sadly. Age was at last catching up with her debonair stepfather, whose gout sometimes kept him in bed for weeks at a time. Yes, the company of two lively little girls would indeed be welcome to Bella. “Does the queen know of this?”

  “Her lands are to be confiscated,” said Hugh dryly. “As I haven't heard shouts or heavy objects being thrown anywhere, probably not. The king and I will undertake that agreeable task shortly.”

  The queen, however, took the news with dignity, which should have been a warning to them all. “I am sorry you feel these measures are necessary, Edward, but I will abide by them.”

  “It is only until this business is over,” said Edward, much relieved at her reasonableness. “And it is no slur upon you. I am merely anxious to protect against what your brother may try. Most of your lands are on the coast, and always vulnerable to attack.”

  “And without your knowledge, he may be using certain members of your household to gain information,” put in Hugh. “Therefore, it is the wiser measure that my wife be your housekeeper.”

  “I can think of none better,” said the queen. She gave Eleanor a smile so radiant that it must have hurt. “It will be like the old days, when Lady Despenser was one of my ladies in waiting.”

  “Indeed, your grace.”

  John of Eltham, who was now eight, seemed no less pleased with the new arrangements. He had always been fond of Lady Despenser, whom he considered a soft touch as far as sweetmeats were concerned.

  Bella came to Porchester Castle in person to collect Joan and Eleanor, the king's young daughters, who were to go to Marlborough Castle in Wiltshire. She knelt to the king, whom she had seen but a few times, shyly. “Your grace.”

  “You need not be so formal, Lady Hastings. I shall be at Marlborough and the vicinity quite often to see my daughters, and you will soon be very used to my being around. Well, girls! Here is Lady Hastings. She is to superintend your household.”

  Eleanor and Joan, aged six and three, looked at Bella dubiously. “Papa says we are to move to Wiltshire with you,” said Eleanor.

  “Yes, my dear, you are. You are getting to be big, old enough to have a household of your own, because you are the eldest royal daughter, the greatest lady in the land save your mother. And your papa thought you and Joan would be happier together than apart, so she shall go with you.”

  “I will miss my papa and mama.”

  “Of course you will, sweet, but they will visit you very often, I warrant. And you will like my husband, Lord Monthermer. Did you know he can pull a penny from his ear?”

  “From his ear?” put in Joan.

  “Lady Hastings is right,” said Eleanor. “Lord Monthermer is my stepfather, Eleanor and Joan. He pulled many a penny from his ear for my brother and sisters and me.” Her eyes stung, as they did whenever she thought of her sisters, but she added, “I used to wonder that his head did not clank, so many were in there.”

  “Well, does it? Clank?”

  “No,” said Bella. “He walks very carefully so it will not.”

  Hugh, lounging in a window seat, said, “And there are more wonders in Wiltshire besides Lord Monthermer. My sister Lady Hastings will show you the Giant's Dance, I warrant. Have you heard of that? It's a wondrous strange place, these stones set side by side by no one knows who for no purpose that anyone can make out.”

  “Yes, we will go there.”

  Young Eleanor, however, was still thinking of Lord Monthermer. “I want to tell Mama about the pennies,” she announced.

  “Me, too!” Joan hurried off behind her older sister.

  Hugh laughed. “Well, Bella, you broke the ice with them fast enough! Speaking of Lord Monthermer, I hope he is better.”

  “No, Hugh, he is not. He grows worse every day.”

  “Ah, Bella, I am sorry.”

  “I know he is not a young man, but still it is hard to accept.” Bella brushed her eyes. “But he can still pull a penny from his ear, I am certain. He did it on our wedding night.”

  “On your wedding night, Bella?”

  “He told me he wanted to show me he had yet another trick up his sleeve,” said Bella with a smile and a blush.

  The girls hurried in. “Lady Despenser, Mama wants you. She is getting ready to write some letters.”

  Eleanor suppressed a sigh. The queen's correspondence thus far had proven not to be treasonous, but very tedious. There did not appear to be a cleric in England who did not want some favor from the queen, and each had to be answered. She turned to a page. “Fetch me the queen's seal, please.”

  In January 1325 the court, stationed at Langley, received news of a death, though it was not, as it had been anticipated, that of Ralph de Monthermer. It was Joan, Margaret and Gaveston's thirteen-year-old daughter. A messenger had scarcely arrived from Edward's sister Mary at Amesbury, bearing news of the young girl's illness, when a second arrived bearing news of her death.

  Professed as a nun as a child by her reluctant parents at the urging of the first Edward's strong-minded mother, who had wanted family to keep her company when she herself retired to Amesbury, Mary had managed to find an outlet for her thwarted maternal instincts nonetheless when her nieces and great-nieces had been sent to stay at the convent. First had come the Clare sisters, and later there had been Joan de Gaveston and Eleanor de Bohun, daughter of the king's sister Elizabeth. “I mourn her like a daughter,” wrote Mary of Joan, and the king did not doubt her sincerity. Probably, the king thought, perhaps unfairly, the girl had received more love from her great-aunt Mary than she would have received had she stayed with Margaret.

  The king himself had occasionally seen his great-niece. He had granted her and her cousin Eleanor a generous allowance and had arranged a marriage contract between Joan and John de Multon, a royal ward whose mother was a daughter of the Earl of Ulster and whose father had been the lord of Egremont. Edward had looked forward to having Piers's girl married in great style, as would have pleased her father, in a year or so. He had liked the idea, too, of watching England fill with Piers's grandchildren and their grandchildren, even if they would bear the name of Multon instead of Gaveston. But now this would never be, and his last link to Piers was gone forever.

  He told this to Eleanor, for he felt a certain awkwardness about discussing Piers with Hugh, and if there had ever been a time where he could have confided his sorrows and joys to the queen, it had long since passed. Eleanor was silent for a long time, remembering her last long conversation with Piers Gaveston.

  “Uncle, there is
a secret I must tell you. I have kept it for a long, long time. It was Piers's. He had another child, a bastard, a girl named Amie. She is at Shaftesbury Abbey. I know she is still there, because I have written from time to time and sent money for little treats for her. Easter robes and such like.”

  “He asked you to do this?”

  “No. He said nothing of the sort; it would have been admitting his fear. But he told me about Amie in confidence, not long before his death, and I knew later he did so in order that she might be looked after by someone just in case the worst happened. I thought of telling you at Margaret's wedding to Audley, but we were muddled in our heads a bit.”

  “But what do you know of this girl, Eleanor? Who is the mother?”

  “I do not know, Uncle. Gaveston never said. He told me only that she was fathered while the two of you were—”

  She blushed and turned away. The king said gently, “How old is she, Nelly?”

  “Fourteen.”

  “Conceived in about 1310 then. Yes. Piers was acting a little oddly at times back then.”

  “He did not tell you because he thought it would grieve and anger you if you knew that he had been—unfaithful, I suppose—to you.”

  “Nothing he did ever angered me. I wish he had told me.”

  “Are you angry that I waited so long?”

  “No. I am glad you told me now. Thank you, Nelly.”

  He embraced her. Because of the great difference in their heights, it was an awkward embrace, which was just as well. He pulled back and said, too briskly, “I think I shall send her to stay with Ralph and Bella, don't you think that would be a good idea? Bella would probably enjoy having a companion, and I daresay Shaftesbury Abbey will have educated her so that she will be most suitable to be around my little girls.”

  “I think that will be an excellent idea.” Eleanor hesitated. “Sir, you will let my sister Margaret see Joan buried?”

  “I don't see why not.”

  “And might you consider releasing her? She has been in Sempringham for nearly three years.”

  Edward shook his head. “No, Nelly. I cannot release her. There is too much mischief afoot, between the French and our enemies that they harbor, and she is a clever woman, with a grudge against me. God knows what use might be made of her.” He looked at his niece's disappointed face. “But if you wish to visit her yourself I would have no objections.”

  “It would be of no use. She would not want to see me.”

  “I am sorry, Nelly.”

  She nodded and walked out of the king's chamber slowly. Only when she was halfway toward her own chamber did her tears begin to fall—for Margaret, for little Joan, or for herself, she did not know. Perhaps for all three.

  In the queen's chamber at Westminster, where the court moved in February 1325, all was in its usual order—letters and petitions to be read in one pile, letters and petitions to be answered in another, letters and petitions to be shunted elsewhere in another. Hugh had shown Eleanor his own tidily efficient system, minus the coins that accompanied most petitions directed toward Hugh and went from thence into Hugh's purse. Despite this lack, Eleanor found the system a most satisfactory one.

  Isabella arranged herself gracefully in front of a loom while Eleanor settled herself at her housekeeper's table. “Well, Lady Despenser? As my allowance is only a pittance, most of these petitions should present no problem to you. You simply tell them no.”

  “Most do not ask for money.”

  “No, they ask for my good word with the king, which is quite useless these days, isn't it? Better they ask for yours.”

  Some, in fact, did, but Eleanor preferred not to let the queen know this. This did not prove as much of a problem as she had anticipated, however, for in Eleanor's early days as housekeeper, every attempt to involve Isabella in the work she was doing had been met with, “Dear, don't trouble yourself to consult me. You and the king and your husband are wise and just, I know, and you will treat each petition as it deserves, I am sure.” Eleanor had even been left to select the fabric for the queen's New Year's livery on her own.

  The first few petitions were from poor monasteries and nunneries. Eleanor would put them in a stack to be turned over to the queen's almoner. Next, several petitioners asked that their daughters, as good Englishwomen without a trace of French blood, be received into the queen's service. (Isabella's French attendants had been sent packing as part of the measures taken by Edward; evidently this was becoming common knowledge.) Eleanor would reply that the queen was amply attended but that the writers would be kept in mind should one of the queen's damsels marry or leave her service through some other means. One correspondent asked for nothing, but ranted that it was a pity that such a good lady as the queen had to be under the governance of the despicable Despenser family. Eleanor fed this parchment to the fire.

  The next letter was rather more impressive than its predecessors. “Why, your grace, this is from Bishop Stratford. It is a fair copy of a letter he has written to the king. In it, he proposes that as the situation with France has reached a stalemate, the king consider sending you to France to negotiate with the French king your brother. He—”

  “Let me read it for myself, Lady Despenser.” Isabella snatched the letter out of Eleanor's unresisting hand, but there was nothing in it that Eleanor had not mentioned in her brief summary. She tossed it back in her housekeeper's general direction and studied her tapestry. “I shall await the decision of the king.”

  “So, Hugh? Shall we send her to France?”

  “I don't know,” said Hugh, moodily studying the companion letter to the one sitting on Eleanor's desk. “On the one hand, I'm not entirely certain that she would have our best interests at heart. On the other hand, she is Queen of England; all her prestige and power lies in that title. It's to her advantage to work for our own good. And she did do well enough when she went to France some years back.”

  “The year Jacques de Molay was burned to death. His curse has nearly come true, hasn't it? The king and two of his sons dead, and the third yet with no heir.” Edward shook his head. “Interesting to see how that will work itself out.”

  “If we don't send her,” said Hugh, “they are only going to pester us more about your going yourself.”

  “And that would not do,” said the king. Hugh himself was persona non grata in France, and what might happen to Hugh, left alone in England, if the king went to France? He was too unpopular. Edward could see this, but seeing and caring were two different things entirely. He touched Hugh's hand. “Leave you here, dear one? Never.” He frowned. “Hugh, you don't think Mortimer would harm the queen if she were to go to France, do you? I'll not have her dishonored, for all we've grown apart.”

  “I doubt it. He is living off the lands his son holds in France. It's not to his advantage to alienate Charles by harming his sister in any way.”

  “True,” said Edward. “Well, shall we put this before the council?”

  The council was agreeable, the king's envoys to France were agreeable, the Pope was agreeable, the queen was agreeable, Charles was agreeable. Only one man in England had misgivings over Isabella's departure: the prior of Christchurch, Canterbury, Henry Eastry. Isabella dined with him on her way to Dover in March 1325. “Do you hunt, Prior Eastry?”

  “On occasion.”

  “I have been in a quandary about what to do with my dogs and huntsmen, Prior Eastry. My greyhounds are high-strung and do not travel well. And I doubt I shall have time to hunt when I am in France. Might I leave them here with you for a time?”

  “Your grace—”

  “It shall be but a short time, I am sure. And"—Isabella smiled broadly—"I am certain that Edward and Hugh le Despenser will take care of any unforeseen expense. Indeed, I would leave you money to provide for them in advance, but as you know I am in very reduced circumstances.”

  “That is a pity,” said Prior Eastry. He frowned as Isabella lifted a hand to wipe a tear from her eye. “Of course, your grace, I w
ill take the dogs.”

  “And the huntsmen. They are of no use to me without the dogs.”

  “Of course,” said Prior Eastry gloomily. The next morning, after his royal guest had gone on her way, he dictated a letter to his friend Archbishop Reynolds, though it was hard to be heard over all of the yapping of the greyhounds. “It would be better in my opinion—do they never fall silent?—if the queen— wretched beasts!—were given back her lands and French servants before she departed England. Otherwise—surely they can't be hungry again—I fear that some misfortune may arise out of her natural resentment. Well, feed them!”

  April 1325 to September 1325

  MARGARET D'AUDLEY SAID THOUGHTFULLY, “I MIGHT GET SPOILED BY THIS traveling your sweet husband and uncle have allowed me, Eleanor. One trip for my daughter's death and another for my stepfather's. I wonder who shall be the lucky person who next gives me an occasion to leave Sempringham?”

  “Margaret, I told you. I have tried to persuade the king to let you out, and I will keep doing everything in my power to get you out.”

  “Your power is rather laughable, isn't it, dear? And then the king had such a nice surprise for me when I came here. Gaveston's bastard brat, Amie!”

  “She seems very pleasant,” said Elizabeth quietly. Unlike Margaret, she had directed no venom toward Eleanor upon finding her at Marlborough Castle, where Bella had summoned them to attend their dying stepfather. Eleanor almost wished that Elizabeth would take a turn at insulting her. Her polite reserve was more unnerving than Margaret's open hostility.

  Gaveston, however, had temporarily eclipsed Eleanor in Margaret's enmity. “To think that all that time he was pretending devotion to me, he was canoodling with some whore!”

  “Ah, Margaret, it was not like that. You were very dear to Gaveston. He told me so, and that he felt guilty about his relations with Amie's mother. And all men are unfaithful at times, I think. It is their nature.” Loyalty made Eleanor add, “Although I don't think Hugh has ever been.”