The Traitor's Wife

by Susan Higginbotham

  Eleanor's screams that same night of September 21, 1327, woke not only her family, but the guards dozing outside the Beauchamp Tower. Their sleepy fumblings at the door, combined with the howling of Lizzie and John and the barking of the dog, only caused her to scream the harder. It was not until Tom, in the kindliest manner possible, resorted to slapping her briskly across the face that she calmed enough to sit in a chair and sip the wine Gladys carefully gave her. “Another nightmare about Hugh, my lady?”

  “No.” Eleanor took a shuddering breath and stared at Gladys in bewilderment. “My uncle.”

  December 1327 to March 1328

  SHORTLY BEFORE CHRISTMAS, TOM HURRIED INTO THE BEAUCHAMP TOWER, his face alight. “She is here in London, at last!”

  “Is she pretty, Tom?” Eleanor asked. “You have an eye for a pretty woman, Tom, I know.”

  Tom considered the question with the air of authority. “Hard to say, wrapped up as she was, but I thought she was nice-looking. Pleasingly plump, I would describe her as.”

  Since the news had arrived that fourteen-year-old Philippa of Hainault and her uncle John had landed in Dover, in preparation for her marriage to the fifteen-year-old king, all of London had been abuzz with excitement, a happy excitement for a change, and even Eleanor had caught a bit of the anticipatory mood. It was much more pleasant for all concerned to think of the wedding, which was to take place at York in January, than of the funeral that had taken place at St. Peter's Abbey in Gloucester on December 20. There, Edward, late the King of England, having lain in Berkeley's chapel for a month and by the high altar at the abbey for two months, had at last been interred amid great pomp.

  The details of the funeral reached the Tower at about the same time the bride-to-be, her carts groaning with the weight of the gifts presented to her by London's officials, proceeded on to York. The queen, dressed suitably and elegantly in mourning, had spared no expense in burying her husband. Edward's body had been watched and prayed over constantly, before and after being personally escorted to Gloucester by Thomas de Berkeley and his followers. Each side of the hearse bore a gilt lion, wearing a mantle bearing the arms of England, and one of the Four Evangelists. Eight angels holding censers, and for good measure two more lions, stood outside the hearse. Edward was enclosed in his coffin, but a wooden figure of him, draped in cloth of gold and bearing a gilt crown, had been carved to rest upon the hearse. New robes had been provided for the knights in attendance. Roger Mortimer himself had ordered a black tunic (very somber, very expensive) especially for the occasion.

  The young king, of course, had attended the funeral, along with his brother and sisters. John of Eltham and the girls, Eleanor thought, must have shed some honest tears for their father. So, perhaps, had Mary, Edward's sister. Eleanor's own sisters, she heard, had also gone to the funeral, though she herself, needless to say, had not been offered the opportunity. It was just as well, she knew, for she had never believed for a moment the official announcement that the former king had suddenly been taken ill. She could not have sat through the hypocritical business without shouting out to accuse the queen and Mortimer of murder, and where would she and her children be then? Better for all concerned that she mourn the king whom she had loved first as a niece, then as a woman, privately in the Chapel of St. Peter ad Vincula.

  “What are you planning to do with that thing, anyway?” Mortimer asked the queen.

  He was pointing to a small silver casket that Isabella had been given a few days after the funeral by Hugh de Glanville, a clerk who had been overseeing the burial arrangements. Inside the casket was the dead king's heart. “I shall keep it, of course. After all, I asked for it.”

  “Why, for the love of God?” He grinned. “Oh, I see. As a trophy.” Isabella shook her head. “Surely you cannot be mourning this man, can you?”

  “No!” Isabella tried to laugh. “God knows I am not. But he was the father of my four children, Roger, and it becomes me to affect some grief for their sake. They do mourn him, you know. The king for one is very upset that he did not see him before he died.”

  “That ripe-looking Hainaulter girl will get his mind off his father.” Roger crossed the room restlessly. “What did the old crone tell you?”

  The old crone in question was the woman who had removed the king's heart and embalmed his body. Isabella had asked Glanville to bring her along with the king's heart. “She told me that there were no marks on his body until, of course, she opened his chest and broke his ribs to get at his heart.”

  “I told you the men had been gentle about it,” said Mortimer, who would certainly have had the woman killed had she been more forthcoming with the queen. But she was a woman who understood the value of silence, and Mortimer had quietly rewarded hers very handsomely. “A little poison in his last meal, they said, did the trick.”

  “I don't wish to hear about it, Roger.”

  “Very well.” He jabbed a finger toward the silver casket. “Best keep that well away from your jewels, my dear, or your poor ladies are likely to get an unpleasant surprise when you ask them to fetch you a brooch.”

  On January 30, 1328, Edward took Philippa of Hainault as his bride at York Minster. Parliament convened on February 7. Before it was very disagreeable business, at least from the English point of view: the recognition of Scottish independence. With an empty treasury, a fifteen-year-old king, and a populace that had grown less enamored of the queen since the embarrassment on the River Wear and the mysterious death of the notoriously healthy second Edward, Isabella and Mortimer had decided that they could ill afford more fighting. An English embassy, led by the Bishops of Lincoln and Norwich, chief justice Geoffrey le Scrope, Henry Percy, and William la Zouche, was delegated to meet with the Scots in Edinburgh.

  William was honored to be given such a delicate task, in such exalted company. But it was another decision made by the king at York toward the end of February, one that was a matter of total indifference to most of the lords there, that filled his thoughts as he headed across the border.

  Edward and his council had ordered that Eleanor le Despenser be released from the Tower.

  “Free? I am free?”

  “On sight of this order,” said Thomas Wake's deputy constable, waggling it in front of her. “There is a slight hitch, however. You have also been ordered to go to the king. He will be sending an escort.”

  “Go to him? For what?”

  The deputy shrugged. “I suppose he wishes to obtain a pledge of your future good behavior.”

  “As I had not behaved badly before being put here, that should not be difficult,” said Eleanor dryly. She remembered the jewels in her trunks and flushed. “But where am I to live? I see nothing here about that. My lands are in the crown's hands.”

  “I imagine that will be discussed with you also. One of the merchants here might be able to let a house to you in the meantime.”

  Lease a house from one of the queen's supporters? Eleanor frowned. Then she brightened. “My stepfather left my sister-in-law Lady Hastings a life interest in his house in St. Dunstan's in the East. Unless she has leased it out, she would surely let me stay there.”

  “You could leave the children there with me while you travel to York,” suggested Gladys. “Better than dragging them there and back in the cold.”

  “Yes, and I doubt the king wants to see five Despensers when one will do!” Almost expecting the deputy to stop her, she went for her cloak. “I will go inquire about Lady Hastings' house. She will surely have someone staying there and watching the place. Now, where is St. Dunstan's? It is—” She suddenly turned pale.

  Edward said, “I will go with you, Mother. A woman shouldn't be in the streets alone.”

  “It is not necessary, Edward. I am sure that one of the guards would be allowed to—”

  “Please, Mother.”

  He had remembered, just as Eleanor had, that St. Dunstan's in the East was very close to London Bridge.

  Her business at St. Dunstan's was soon and s
atisfactorily concluded. Lady Hastings, the cheerful-looking servant said, would be only too glad to let Eleanor use her house. Did she want it by evening? Upon being assured that Eleanor could wait a day, he promised to have all in readiness for her the next morning.

  They walked on to London Bridge. Eleanor took a breath, then lifted her eyes to the spike on which Hugh's head was impaled, still wearing traces of its crown of nettles. The head was now unrecognizable as any particular man's, but a cloth tied below it bore the Despenser coat of arms. Tears began to run down her face. She was being jostled by persons coming from all directions, and a few people were openly staring at her, but she did not care. She crossed herself and said aloud, “Someday I shall give you a proper burial, my love, and you shall lie under a beautiful monument, for you loved beauty. And there shall be chants said for you, and you will lie in peace. None shall gawk, and our children and I will come and pray for your soul. Someday, my dear. Someday.”

  Beside her stood a silent Edward. Eleanor turned to look at her son. “Edward? Are you all right?”

  He nodded, and Eleanor knew that was all the response she would ever get from him. She took his arm, glad that the press of the crowds around them gave her an excuse to touch him. “Will you take me back now?”

  “Yes, Mother.”

  Together they walked back to the Tower, trailed, unbeknownst to either, by a protective Tom.

  The sun was barely up the next morning when Bella's men began moving Eleanor's belongings to her new abode. Tom had been no less active. London swarmed with his relations, and he had found a widowed cousin with a young baby who could act as a wet nurse for Lizzie, a great-aunt who could work as a laundress, and a person of uncertain consanguinity to serve as cook. Her new retainers all proving satisfactory, Eleanor had only to stand back and watch as her goods were loaded into a cart to be sent to St. Dunstan's. As her expenses during her imprisonment had been paid by the crown, and Gladys had managed to hide some money in their trunks when they were taken prisoner, she could give generous presents to the guards who had been kind to her.

  She turned to Tom, her partner in felony and the kindest of them all. “Tom, I do not know what the king has in mind for me, but if I have the means, I hope you will join my household when your term here expires. You have been so good to me.”

  “I'd like that, my lady.”

  He took her hand, and when he released it she found a shining florin in it. “Tom!” she said halfheartedly.

  He shrugged and helped her into the cart that was to take her and the children to Bella's house. Holding a swaddled-up Lizzie, who was staring at the vast space in front of her with bewilderment, she looked around her too at the place that had been a home to her as well as her prison. The Beauchamp Tower, where Lizzie had been born. The Lanthorn Tower, where she and Hugh had spent their last night together. The great hall where she had sat so often by the side of her uncle the king at the high table. Probably she would never see any of these buildings from the inside again, for whatever her new life was to consist of, it would certainly not include the new king's court.

  “Lord Zouche! Lord Zooouche! Oh, there you are!”

  Gilbert grabbed up the dog and all but sprang into the cart. Whatever concerns Eleanor might have about beginning life anew, they were not shared by her six-year-old son. Settling down beside him, she smiled and ruffled his hair.

  Gilbert had been in London only for a short while—one could not really count the Tower grounds as London, he had decided, since all one saw there were boring guards and clerks and the stray merchant—but already he loved it. This very morning, he'd been roused from sleep by a pieman shouting his wares outside, and several peddlers had been to the door. His mind was busy working on a way to evade stuffy Edward and go outside for a walk by himself.

  There were, of course, rules he had to follow. He could not wear fine clothing out of doors, not that his clothing was much to boast of these days. If he met a stranger, he had to call himself Gilbert of Gloucester, if anything beyond “Gilbert” was required at all. People would not like him if he gave his father's name, Mama and Edward had told him. Gilbert knew this was true. While baby Elizabeth had been being born, and they had all been taken to stay in the constable's hall of the Tower, he had seen some mean men looking at Edward and saying how much he looked like his whoreson father. Gilbert knew that this was an ugly word. It was just as well that he himself looked nothing like his whoreson father, whatever it meant, and so much like Mama. Edward had heard the men too and had become very angry, but he had said nothing. They had to be good, Edward had told him, or the queen might decide to take them away from Mama, just as she had their sisters.

  His family had already created some sensation in the neighborhood, however, for an hour or so after the pieman's departure, there had been a new commotion outside his window. A man had appeared, a knight from the looks of him, bearing the royal standard, and it was his own mother he had come for, to take her to the king! Sir William de Montacute had stayed only long enough to take some refreshment, but he had allowed Gilbert to give his horse some oats and had told him that Lord Zouche was a fine-looking dog. He reminded Gilbert a little bit of his brother Hugh. Every night, Gilbert prayed to God that Hugh would come back. He had been so tall and so kind and so brave, and Gilbert knew the latter for certain, for he had held Caerphilly Castle—Papa's castle—against the wicked queen.

  Now that they had been allowed to leave the Tower, perhaps Hugh would be allowed to leave his prison too? He had thought of asking his mother, but it would probably make her sad, and Edward got very angry whenever Gilbert made Mama sad. Not that he ever meant to do so. The queen had done enough of that already, killing Papa and Grandfather and sending his sisters away and shutting Hugh up. Gilbert would have hated the queen, but Mama said it was wrong to hate. But he didn't have to like her. Mama and Edward had said that not liking her was all right.

  Edward was calling him, in the man-of-the-house way he had assumed since Papa died. Edward could be irritating, but he could be kind, too, almost like his brother Hugh. After Papa had died—Gilbert thought it must have been in some dreadful but exciting battle—Edward had caught Gilbert crying in the bed they shared, and he hadn't scolded him at all, the way he had when Gilbert had cried when his pony had thrown him just a few months before.

  His pony. Might he ever get his pony back? He'd been such a good rider for his age. Papa had told him so. So had Hugh.

  Edward himself had arrived in Gilbert's room, with a very dreary-looking book in his hand. Gilbert sighed, then brightened. There would be plenty of time, after all, to explore London now that they were free.

  Eleanor had been uneasy when she was told that the king would be sending an escort for her, wondering what sort of man the king—or Mortimer and Isabella—would choose for the task. William de Montacute was an immense relief. He was the son and namesake of the man who had been a good friend to the late king after the Bannock Burn, and that in itself augured well.

  Montacute was not particularly talkative, both by nature and by his instinct that Eleanor wished to be left alone with her thoughts as they headed north, over countryside that Eleanor had traveled so many times in state as Hugh le Despenser's wife and the king's niece. From time to time, however, he broke their companionable silence. Did Eleanor know that the French king—the last of Isabella's brothers—had died suddenly on the first of February?

  “I did not know that, sir. Who shall take the throne? I know with the French law the way it is, our queen is out of the question.” She muttered in her horse's receptive ear, “And a good thing that is.”

  “His wife is with child, so there may be an heir yet, but he had named Philip of Valois, his cousin, as his successor in the event he had no son.”

  “Do you think Ed—our king will try to claim the French throne?”

  “It's a possibility,” said Montacute. “Certainly as a grandson to Charles the Fair he would seem to have more right to it than Philip of Valois.
”

  “Philip of Valois,” said Eleanor. “Isn't his sister Queen Philippa's mother?” “Yes. But the lady Philippa is technically not queen yet, you know. She has not been crowned.”

  “Not crowned! What are they waiting for?”

  Montacute shrugged uncomfortably. “She is but fourteen.”

  “Why, Isabella was crowned when she was twelve, alongside my uncle and with just as much ceremony! Indeed, I was part of the procession!” Isabella, Eleanor thought to herself, was evidently not eager to be supplanted by this young girl.

  By the third or fourth day of their journey she felt so comfortable with William de Montacute that she could ask him about her uncle's funeral. “I so much wanted to have been there, to tell him good-bye,” she said softly after Montacute had praised the music at the service. “But at least now I hope I can visit his grave.”

  “You will not be alone, Lady Despenser. Many are coming there now, as pilgrims you might say. They started coming in droves after the funeral, even in the dead of winter. The abbot, they say, is thinking of making improvements to the place with all the money they are bringing in.”

  “The queen and Mortimer do not try to stop the people from coming there?”

  “What good would it do them? It would only raise more sus—”

  He called to one of his men and began to issue orders about finding a suitable abbey to stay the night. For the rest of their trip, they talked of nothing but trivialities, and when Montacute had occasion to mention the young king, he did so with the utmost respect and warmth. But his slip had told Eleanor that while Montacute might be the king's man, he was certainly not Roger Mortimer's and Queen Isabella's.