The Traitor's Wife

by Susan Higginbotham

  “Who, my dear?”

  “Despenser and I. He married my cousin Eleanor on the same day I married my detestable husband.” She thought of the mass knighting that had taken place a few days before the weddings, and the huge banquet that had accompanied it, and her stomach once again started to churn. “I wonder how she will take his death.”

  Isabella regarded her friend thoughtfully. “I had not thought of the new widow. She should be told, shouldn't she?” She turned to a servant who was standing discreetly nearby. “Go, man, and fetch me—let me see—William Ogle. He will do nicely.”

  “I have not heard of any William Ogle,” Joan said weakly.

  “You wouldn't have; he served in Lady Mortimer's household at Wigmore Castle and served her when she was imprisoned in Hampshire. But he joined Lord Mortimer after he had her released, and he is a good man for my purpose.”

  “Which is?”

  “Delivering a message quickly, of course. Go and lie down, Joan dear. You look ill.”

  Joan curtseyed and left, heading for the garderobe with all due speed. Her place was soon taken by Ogle. “You can ride fast, man?”

  “Very.”

  “Do you have a good memory?”

  “The best.”

  “You can give a detailed account of what happened today?”

  “Certainly.”

  “I want you to speed to London and tell Hugh le Despenser's widow—she is a prisoner in the Tower—of all that transpired since he was captured. She is a foolish little thing, and may faint. If she does, wake her up. Don't go until she knows all.”

  “Yes, your grace.”

  “And, Ogle? There is no need to be delicate with her. She is not such a fine-bred creature that you need mince words.” She smiled.

  “I won't, your grace.”

  Isabella turned back to the servant. “Now please go fetch Lord Mortimer for me.”

  “Yes, your grace.”

  The queen took another pastry—Bishop Orleton's cook had truly outdone himself on this occasion—and a large sip of wine, deciding that it would be enjoyable to be a little tipsy when Mortimer arrived. He would be wild to take her, she knew, and it would be a wonderful ending to this truly special day.

  Part II

  * * *

  NOVEMBER 1326

  TO

  JUNE 30, 1337

  November 1326 to February 1327

  IN ELEANOR'S CELL AT THE BEAUCHAMP TOWER, WILLIAM OGLE FROWNED. Either the widow was exhibiting extraordinary self-control or she had not cared a whit for the life of her late husband. Either way, he sensed, the queen would be disappointed. He went on, “After they hung him, they thought he was dead, but then he woke up right nicely. Just in time to have his, er—”

  Ogle's French did not include the word for “genitals.” But Isabella had counseled against delicacy, so Ogle did not search further for euphemisms. “Balls and cock chopped off.”

  The fat old damsel standing by the widow looked at Ogle as if she would like to chop his own off, but the lady showed no emotion aside from widening her green eyes a fraction. Ogle chuckled silently. It was obvious that even Hugh's wife had detested him. He finished smoothly, “He knew what was happening to them, all right. Then they cut him open, and he moaned and carried on a bit, but I think he was dead or close to it right afterward. Then they took his guts and heart out and cut the head off. Then they quartered him. His head will be coming to London pretty soon, I imagine. The rest of him goes to York, Bristol, Carlisle, and Dover.”

  “Are you done, sir?”

  Ogle considered. He'd told her about the stripping of him, the writing on him, the reversed coat of arms, the crown of nettles, the filth heaped upon him, Simon and the standard, the four horses, the fifty-foot gallows. “I am done.”

  “Thank you for informing me of this. If you have nothing more to tell me, then I will wish you good day.”

  She closed the door against him as if she was in her own castle instead of in a cell at the Tower. Only when she heard his footsteps receding into the distance did she let Gladys take her into her arms. She was not crying, but she was shivering, and she allowed Gladys to lead her beside the fire and sit her down a while, murmuring words of comfort. Then she whispered, “Let us tell the children.”

  “My lady—”

  “I can tell them, Gladys. They must hear it from me.”

  The other room, where the children had been sent upon Ogle's arrival— even he had thought they should be sent away—was unnaturally quiet when she entered it, and there was no need to ask for their attention. She said quietly, “I told you when I heard that your grandfather was dead that we must prepare for the worst, and the worst has happened. Your father is not coming back.”

  Her daughter Joan let out a little cry, and Edward—the most undemonstrative person Eleanor knew—took his sister's hand. The gesture made Eleanor's tears start to run, but she managed to continue, “He died several days ago, in Hereford. It was quick, I am told"—the lie for the younger children sprang to her lips readily, and was the only sign she had that God was still with her in any way—"and he will soon be in a much better place than here. Let us pray for him.”

  She knelt and led them in a prayer before they had a chance to ask any questions, but when it came time to rise, she was trembling so badly once again that she could not get off her knees. She looked quizzically at Gladys, who swiftly moved to her side. “Let me put you to bed, my lady.”

  “There is no need, Gladys. I am fine.”

  “True, my lady, but you need your rest. Edward, help me.”

  Together Gladys and Edward raised her and walked her into the next room. “Lie down, my lady.”

  “Oh, there is no need for that.” But Eleanor allowed herself to be helped into bed. “He was lying to me, wasn't he, Gladys? He was only trying to make me unhappy. They could not have treated him so horribly.”

  “Mother—”

  “I know he was lying.” Eleanor was trembling even more violently than before, and even her teeth were chattering. “He had to be. Wasn't he, Gladys? Wasn't he?”

  “Mother!”

  “He was lying, my lady.” Gladys turned to Edward, who was whiter than his mother. “Get her some wine.”

  Edward obeyed. “Drink this, my lady. It will calm you.”

  “But I am calm. He was only lying.” She made no resistance, however, and drained the cup slowly as Gladys removed her headdress and wrapped Hugh's cloak around her. Eleanor slept snuggled within the cloak every night, and she smiled as her hand touched its fur edging. Gladys pulled the bedcovers tightly around Eleanor and helped her drink another cup of wine. Gradually, the trembling stopped. “I am so tired, Gladys.”

  “I know you are, my lady. Go to sleep.”

  Eleanor turned on her side and closed her eyes. Only when they heard her snore did Edward whisper, “Gladys, has she gone mad?”

  “No, Edward. The news has given her a shock, a very bad one, but she will be better after she rests.”

  “Please don't let her be mad.”

  Gladys looked at the twelve-year-old boy, knowing how badly he himself needed comfort. She put her arm around his shoulders, and he allowed it to rest there a minute or two. “I promise you, Edward, she is not mad.”

  “He died a traitor's death. Didn't he?”

  Edward was too old to be fooled. “Yes.” She reached out to hold him, but the boy pulled away, looking numb. She could think of nothing to say but, “It is all over now, Edward. Try not to think about it. Come with me. Your brothers and sisters will be frightened that we have been gone so long.”

  They were terrified, in fact—four of them sitting huddled together by the fire, one-year-old John having fallen mercifully asleep sometime earlier. Edward took charge of Gilbert, while Gladys saw to the three girls. For a few hours they tried to busy themselves, succeeding to the point where the girls began quarreling and John woke and started crying. Edward was trying in vain to break up the argument, Gilbert was try
ing to get involved in it, and Gladys was trying to console the baby, when they heard a footstep, and Eleanor entered the room. She was chalk white, but her voice had authority when she said quietly, “All of you. Listen to your brother.”

  “Yes, Mama.”

  “Come here, little one.” Eleanor took John, who snuggled against her.

  “You scared us, Mama,” said Nora reproachfully.

  “I am sorry, Nora. But I am better now.”

  Gilbert's lip was trembling. “Is he really dead, Mama?”

  “Yes.” Eleanor looked at her wedding ring. “He is really dead, my children, and we must be strong.” She tried to smile. “Your father would want to see it so. He was proud of all of you always.”

  “Will they kill us, Mama?” Joan asked.

  “No. We are not important to them.”

  “What about Hugh?”

  “I wish I could tell you he is safe, but I cannot. We can only pray for him.”

  They sat in silence for a while. Then Eleanor said, “Soon it will be time for us to go to bed. Let us talk of the happy times we had with your father, and that is what we will think of when we go to sleep tonight. I will start.”

  Hugh's head arrived in London several days after Ogle did, making the journey in a jaunty little cart painted especially for it with edifying scriptural verses and the Despenser arms. (The queen's troops had become quite good at drawing the Despenser arms, the queen observed to Mortimer; by the time the brat in Caerphilly was taken, they would be masters.) Most of the staff at the Tower, including the cook assigned to the Despensers, went to London Bridge to see it placed there, and they spent several hours afterward celebrating. It was some two hours past the family's supper time when a guard finally handed them some bread, ale, and milk; no one, it appeared, was quite sober enough to do the cooking yet. Gisors, himself somewhat worse for wear for drink, came up later to apologize. “Well, it's up there,” he whispered to Gladys as he turned to go. “Not a pretty sight.”

  Since Eleanor's captivity, her sense of hearing had sharpened. “Him,” said Eleanor softly. “Not it.”

  Isabella and all four of her children spent Christmas at Wallingford, joined by Mortimer, whose wife had settled conveniently at Wigmore. Mortimer had seen to it that her household was reestablished properly and had given her more money than usual so that she could replenish her wardrobe and furnish her castle comfortably. These matrimonial duties completed at no cost to Mortimer himself—the royal treasury held a whopping sixty-two thousand pounds, and Isabella saw no reason why she and Mortimer should not help themselves to part of it—he could lie with his royal mistress with a clear conscience and a fat purse.

  The treasury aside, Arundel had left money and plate in Chichester Cathedral, and Despenser had left plate in the Tower, that the queen had ordered to be delivered to her. Already she had had a fine time sorting through Arundel's silver cups, delivered to her shortly after the earl's death, and the Bishop of Winchester, who had superintended the moving of Despenser's plate into the queen's wardrobe in London, reported that most of his cups were gold. And more treasure, looted or seized from the estates of the Despensers and Arundel by the queen's supporters or found secreted in monasteries, was appearing every day.

  But despite the presence of her lover and the prospect of booty, Christmas at Wallingford was not quite as pleasant as the queen could have wished. All three younger children, once the glow of their reunion with Isabella had worn off, had an irritating habit of asking about their father. Where was he? Was he sad to be away? Why could they not see him? The girls had an even more irritating habit of asking about Lady Hastings. Why had she gone away so suddenly? Was she ill? And John had a truly maddening habit of asking about Lady Despenser. Was she being treated well in the Tower? Was she lonely? Would she be getting out soon? To these questions Isabella parried answers as best she could. The king needed time to himself after his exhausting sojourn in Wales, where he had been dragged shamefully by Hugh le Despenser. Lady Hastings, though sweet and pleasant on the surface, as the daughter of a Very Bad Man was unsuitable to be around the girls, as they would understand someday. And Lady Despenser was a traitor's wife and therefore had to be kept fast, for her own safety and that of the realm.

  To her further annoyance, Isabella's marriage had been a subject of episcopal concern. On the day after Despenser's death, the queen (suffering from a slight hangover along with the rest of Hereford) had cast off her mourning robes and appeared in the finest cloth to be found in Paris, but she had not suggested returning to her husband. This, the bishops gathered in Wallingford posited, could be taken the wrong way.

  It was Orleton who solved her problem. If the queen returned to her husband, he explained to all and sundry, she would be in the direst physical danger. Why, the king was known to carry a knife in his hose to kill Isabella with, and if this were not available, he had threatened, he would use his bare teeth! The danger had only been increased by the death of Despenser. Edward had loved him immoderately and inordinately, and would naturally want to avenge his death.

  Well pleased as she was over this quick thinking on the part of the bishop, Isabella knew that something would have to be done about the king, even if she had a temporary reprieve from having to live with him, and it was a matter that she and Mortimer put their minds to as the New Year approached. But it was not the only matter of business that was taken care of in Wallingford that Christmastide.

  On January 4, 1327, the queen arrived at Westminster, and on that same day, the Tower's latest constable, Thomas Wake, knocked on Eleanor's door. “My lady, let me have a word with you in private.”

  Since his arrival, Wake had been reasonably polite to Eleanor, but on this day, his face was ominously kind. Eleanor knew immediately what he had to tell her: her eldest son was captured, or dead. She thought back to the day she had given birth to him, the happy little boy he had been, the joy she would have had in welcoming his bride. “My son is dead,” she said quietly.

  “No. No one is dead.” Wake looked at the parchments he held in his hand and coughed.

  “My daughter Isabel? I heard that she and the Countess of Arundel and her boys have been staying with the Earl of Surrey since the Earl of Arundel was executed. Has she been harmed?”

  “I know nothing of her. This concerns your three daughters here. They are to go to convents, my lady.” He coughed again. “They are to take the veil.”

  She stared. “You must be mistaken, sir. They are far too young. Margaret is not even four years old!” She went on patiently, “Joan is only ten, Nora seven…”

  “Here are the orders themselves, my lady.”

  She read the orders, identical for each girl, hearing the queen's pleased triumph in every word. “To be admitted and veiled without delay, to remain forever under the order and regular habit of that house, and to cause her to be professed in the same as speedily as possible…”

  Forever. She sagged against the wall and dropped the parchments to the floor. From a distance she heard Wake saying awkwardly, “You won't be here forever, my lady. Then you can visit them.”

  “Yes. I can visit them.”

  She picked up the parchments and studied them again. Margaret was to go to Watton, Nora to Sempringham, Joan to Shaftesbury. They were issued in the king's name and bore his Great Seal, as did all the orders these days that emanated from the queen and Mortimer. But the king never would have signed such an order. Never in his life had he been unkind to her. She looked at the date: January 1, only a few days after Christmas. So this was how Isabella celebrated the birth of the Lord, that friend of children, by caging hers for life.

  She looked at the dagger at Wake's side. With one swift movement she could take it; with another, perhaps, she could put it in her heart. But he would try to stop her, surely, and she was half his size. She would undoubtedly botch it anyway and die slowly, painfully while her children watched. No, dying was too much trouble. And she had the boys to think of—at least until Isabe
lla took them too. “When are they to leave?” She hardly recognized her own voice, so dull was it.

  Wake had seen the glance at the dagger, and he put his hand on it. “Tomorrow, my lady.”

  “Then I must prepare them for their new life now. Excuse me, sir.”

  Joan was the worst. Margaret and Nora had only vague ideas of what was happening to them; they were being sent to live with nuns, just as they had been sent to live with nurses not long ago. But Joan understood. She said quietly, “But Mama, Papa said I was to get married. He said after the Earl of Kildaire's poor son died that he would find someone else nice for me to marry.”

  “Things are so much different now, child.”

  “But why is the king doing this?”

  “It is not really the king, it is the queen. The king would never have made you part from me like this. He loved our family. But this is not about the queen, or your papa, Joan, you must remember. You have been blessed and honored to be chosen as a bride of Christ. It is God's will, Joan.”

  “I don't want to be a bride of Christ. I want to be a real bride. And I hate God! First he took Grandfather, and then Papa, and made us prisoners—I hate God!”

  “Joan! You must not say that.”

  Joan threw herself on the bed the three girls shared, weeping. Edward, who had taken on almost a paternal air since Hugh's death, came over and patted her on the shoulder.

  “Don't worry, sweetheart,” he said, in a voice that before it cracked up an octave was so like his father's that Eleanor started. “I hate Him too.”

  It was midmorning when the door to her cell finally opened and a familiar face appeared—her cousin Joan of Bar, Countess of Surrey.

  As Gladys readied the girls, Eleanor whispered, “How could she, Joan? How could you?”

  Joan of Bar said crisply, “Your husband sent Mortimer's daughters to convents, after all.”