The Traitor's Wife

by Susan Higginbotham

  “A few dozen.”

  “How are the supplies?”

  “Rather sparse, sir. With my lady staying at Hanley—”

  “We can besiege it,” William said. “I've my men here, and I can pay more. What of my lands? Are they in custody?”

  The constable shook his head. “I don't know, sir, but the men mentioned only the lady's lands.”

  “We must send the women and children to safety somewhere,” William said, looking at his son and the Despenser brood. “Wiltshire might be best; I've manors there. If they've been seized, I've friends who will take the children in.”

  “And Hugh's sisters will help too,” said Eleanor. “But Caerphilly is just one castle, William! What of my other lands? We must make the king see reason. Perhaps if I went to London personally and prayed for his forgiveness, he would relent. You should come too, William.”

  But the men, indignant about this royal interference in the Welsh March, were set on besieging the castle. Roger Mortimer was hated in Wales, especially since the second Edward's untimely death, and from the men's excited conversation Eleanor gathered that the local Welsh would happily seize this pretext to take up arms against him. At the same time, it was agreed that she should go to the king. She would travel with the children to Wiltshire, and then go on to London, where the king was said to be heading.

  Alan flatly refused to go with the children, preferring to join his father at the siege. To Eleanor's surprise, Edward, who had scarcely said two words, neither of them civil, since their marriage, elected to stay with his stepfather also. “It'll be good experience,” he said sullenly. “And I'm too old to go with the others.”

  “Very well,” said Eleanor, kissing him good-bye to the extent he would allow it. She turned to embrace her husband. “I love you,” she said, wishing she could stay in his arms forever.

  Eleanor was accompanied to London by her former guard Tom, who just recently had joined her household, and his friend Hugh Dalby, who had come with him from the Tower.

  William was aware that Eleanor had borrowed money from Benedict de Fulsham, though not of where the security had come from, and before Eleanor had left Wales, she and William had agreed that Eleanor should ask Benedict for another loan. She had been repaying him regularly for the sum she had borrowed of him nearly a year before, and she was certain that he would lend her more. And more would certainly be needed for William to pay the men besieging Caerphilly Castle, and for Eleanor to pay part of the fine the king would no doubt demand as a prelude for restoring her lands. Though as a married woman (Eleanor smiled at the thought), she could not borrow the money in her own right, she had no doubt that Benedict would advance the money to her on William's promise that he would sign the proper documents later. His word was one trusted by everyone.

  With this as her purpose, Eleanor went to see Benedict while she considered whether to go straight to the king or to enlist someone, perhaps one of the priors with whom she had been friendly, to intercede with her in case the king was in a stubborn mood. Benedict, who still held Eleanor's golden collateral, was as agreeable as she had hoped. They were finalizing the repayment terms when Benedict, facing the door of his counting house, suddenly went white and stopped mid-sentence. “Sir?” Eleanor asked.

  “In the king's name!”

  Eleanor whirled and saw Tom and Hugh being wrestled to the wall by a group of armed men. “In God's name, leave them be! What have they done?”

  The leader of the men smiled. “Nothing, my lady. It is you who are under arrest.”

  He was advancing toward her with shackles in his hands. “Arrest! For what? This is an outrage! I will not go with you; you will not take me!” Eleanor threw herself on the man, who was twice her size, and began to kick and claw him.

  The leader hesitated; then, losing patience with Eleanor's ineffective but dogged assault, slammed her across the face, so hard that she crumpled to the floor. He shackled her hands and yanked her up, pulling off her veil in order to wipe her bloody nose. “Look at this, mates! Hair as red as a vixen's, and a temper to match. Calmer, my lady?” Eleanor honked a reply of some sort, which the man decided to take as an affirmative answer. “Good. Then let's get on our way to the Tower.”

  The distance from Benedict de Fulsham's counting house to the Tower was not a long one, but it seemed endless to Eleanor, walking shackled between two guards as the men at the front of the procession cried irritably, “Make way for the king's prisoner! Make way for the king's prisoner!” every few feet. The king's prisoner being a richly dressed lady, with unbound hair falling to her waist, the cries succeeded only in attracting more interest from the bystanders, and that slowed their progress even more.

  The king, it turned out, was in residence at the Tower, accompanied by Mortimer and what remained of his council—for Lancaster and Thomas Wake and their followers, though they had not been imprisoned, had been required to execute large monetary recognizances and were not welcome at court. As Eleanor was brought before her sixteen-year-old sovereign, he looked at her dourly. “Lady Despenser,” he said, “we are disappointed in you.”

  “What is the meaning of this, your grace? Why have my men and I been shackled like common criminals and brought before you? Did not my husband offer to pay whatever fine was demanded of him?”

  The king was about to reply, but Mortimer broke in. “Which husband, Lady Despenser? It appears you have two, you know.”

  “Two?”

  “Does the name John de Grey mean anything to you, my lady? It ought to. He says you made him a promise of marriage, followed by sexual intercourse, and that as a result you are his legal wife.”

  Eleanor stepped back from the king. “No! It cannot be. I am married to Lord Zouche. I never promised to marry Sir John. Never!”

  “Perhaps your memory will become more clear after you have had leisure to reflect,” said Mortimer. “And leisure you will have, Lady Despenser, or Grey, or Zouche, for you are the king's prisoner.”

  “For what reason? For these sham charges of Sir John's? For marrying my lord Zouche?”

  Mortimer again forestalled the king's answer. “The crown doesn't care who you spread your legs for, my lady. You are under arrest for stealing the king's jewels from the Tower.”

  March 1329 to December 1329

  ON A RAINY DAY, WILLIAM LA ZOUCHE SAT IN THE GREAT HALL OF HIS manor in Essex, close to London, watching his stepchildren playing in a corner. Were it not for their presence, he might have believed that his marriage to Eleanor had been but a dream, this last month but a nightmare.

  The nightmare had begun in February when one of his good friends from the king's court had arrived at Caerphilly Castle, where William's siege was, thanks to an army of enthusiastic Welshmen, well under way. There he had heard that his wife was a prisoner in the Tower, on charges of theft. She along with two of her men had been haled out of the royal presence to cells somewhere, and none of them had been seen or heard from since. In his shock William had barely registered the other piece of news, that John de Grey was claiming Eleanor as his wife.

  A warrant for William's own arrest had issued, it turned out, and William, when the king's men came for him a day later, had not resisted, but let himself be escorted to London. There he had begged the king's pardon, offered to give up money and lands, offered himself in place of Eleanor, offered to keep her in custody himself. He'd begged to see her, begged to be allowed to bring her provisions, begged to send a letter to her. All to no avail. He'd only met with stares: the king's blank one, the queen's amused one, Mortimer's cold one. Then he had been allowed to leave. He had been stripped of his positions as constable of the Tower and justice of the forest, but his lands were his to hold still.

  There had been nothing to do after that but to go to Wiltshire and gather up Alan and his motherless stepchildren. He'd told the little ones that their mother had had to visit her lands in Ireland and would be staying there indefinitely. What else could he say to them? That their mother, whom he
had sworn to cherish and protect, was back in the Tower, utterly alone, and he had not done a thing to save her? He knew that was what Edward believed; he had said as much that miserable day outside Caerphilly Castle when news had arrived of Eleanor's arrest. Accusation after accusation, curse after curse he had hurled until Alan, angry at the insult to his father, had punched him and the boys had gotten into a fistfight so violent that three knights had had to yank them apart. Oddly, the black eyes Edward had given and received had gone a long way toward relieving his anger; he'd been civil, if sullen, ever since, and he and Alan had become friends of sorts. But his stepson's words rang in William's ears nightly. She was fine until you came, you whoreson. They would have left her in peace but for you. If she dies in prison, you'll be responsible.

  He wrote to her regularly, hoping that some of his letters got through; they were certainly accompanied by large enough bribes. He sent money and gifts of food to her daughters' convents each month, sent provisions to Hugh at Bristol Castle—though he had no way of knowing whether these made it past his guards. He wrote to the king, to the queen, to Mortimer. None of them responded.

  Gladys had traveled to the Tower herself, begging to be allowed to keep her lady company, but had been refused. She had then rejoined William in Essex, where together they had pieced out what must have happened with the jewels. Gladys had remembered the trunks full of cups and Tom's comings and goings, the florins jingling in Eleanor's purse. “My lady's honest, Lord Zouche. She must have had a reason.”

  “I know it, Gladys.”

  Without Gladys to grieve with, he must have surely have gone mad, for Edward and even Isabel were distant to him, and he had to pretend that all was well in front of his younger stepchildren. With Gladys, he'd had no reason to hide his emotions when she'd handed him an item that had been tossed in with the children's belongings during their hasty trip to Wiltshire: a brush full of bright red hairs.

  A servant came to his side. “Sir, you have a guest. The Earl of Kent.”

  Bleak as William's mood was, it became even bleaker at the thought of a visit from the Earl of Kent. Though the earl himself was amiable enough, his retinue was notorious for its boisterousness and for its high living. A visit from him would leave his larders bare, and there was not a chance in the world the earl would pay for any of it. So not only was he without a wife, he was about to be beggared, he thought, with the black humor that had become his only defense against utter despair.

  Still, the earl was the king's uncle, and Eleanor's too, and if he could be persuaded to say a word for Eleanor… “Show him and his mob in,” he said gloomily, and tried to look welcoming as he arose to meet his guests.

  Only two men, however, walked into the great hall: the Earl of Kent and a knight. So oddly matched were they that William forgot his troubles for the moment and stared, wondering what on earth had brought them here together. The Earl of Kent was tall, handsome, and blond, like his father and his late brother the king, and was only twenty-eight years of age; the knight was barrel-shaped, short, dark, ordinary-looking, and close to sixty. But it was not merely the men's looks that made them such an odd couple. The Earl of Kent had been one of the judges at the Earl of Winchester's trial. The knight, if not the ghost of the Earl of Winchester, was the next best thing: Sir Ingelram Berenger, his close friend.

  William beckoned the children to come pay their respects to the visitors. Alan received the guests politely, but Edward managed only a surly greeting for the Earl of Kent. His manner changed abruptly, however, when Berenger was introduced. “Sir Ingelram? In the service of my grandfather?”

  “Yes, Edward, God assoil his soul.”

  “Will you help free my mother, for his sake?”

  Berenger was about to reply when Gilbert, John, Lizzie, and Edmund ambled over, leading with them William's canine namesake, whom the children had dressed in some of Alan's cast-off robes. “Lord Zouche? What do you think?”

  “I think he needs a better tailor, Gilbert, but now you must greet the Earl of Kent and Sir Ingelram Berenger.”

  Gilbert bowed, and the three younger children managed a reasonable semblance thereof before Isabel and Gladys, who had just heard of the visitors' arrival, paid their own respects to the men and then led the youngsters away. The Earl of Kent smiled. “Are any of those four scamps yours, Lord Zouche?”

  “I think of them as mine now, but they are Eleanor's, except for the youngest boy, who is Eleanor's grandchild.”

  “I've several children. You should see my little one, Joan. Prettiest lass you'll ever see, even though she's but a baby still. Lord Zouche, might we speak with you privately?”

  William nodded and was about to lead the men to his chamber when Edward grabbed his arm. “I am coming, too.”

  “Edward…”

  “I am! If it is about my mother—”

  William sighed. “I would ask that he be allowed to join us, if you please. If there are any confidences to be had, he will keep them safe, I know.”

  The earl nodded. “Very well. He is my great-nephew, after all.”

  Edward did not look particularly pleased at this acknowledgment of their relationship. He stayed close to Berenger as they walked toward Zouche's chamber.

  Once servants had brought wine and food, the earl said, “I don't want to inspire false hopes in you or your family, Lord Zouche. My business doesn't involve your wife, but it could benefit her.”

  Zouche felt his spirits lag again. “So what does it involve, your lordship?”

  “My brother Edward.”

  “The late king,” William said confusedly.

  “Yes. Lord Zouche, my brother is still alive.”

  William knocked his wine to the floor. Recovering himself, he said, “Mother of God, man, you went to his funeral!”

  “I never saw his corpse. Did you?”

  “No—”

  “No one from the court did,” said the earl. “So who is to say who died in Berkeley Castle?”

  “Thomas de Berkeley, for one. The king was laid out for viewing under his supervision, so I've heard.”

  “But no one viewed him that closely, did they? And how many of those people had seen my brother before that time, except briefly? Any blond man of about the same age and build might have been taken for my brother at a distance.”

  “So where do you think he is?”

  “Corfe Castle,” Kent answered promptly. “A friar told me that he is there.” Kent had clearly had enough of these tedious details. He leaned forward, tapping an excited finger against his wine cup. “I am going to set him free, and restore him to the throne. But to do so I must have help, and that is why I am here tonight.”

  William stole a look at his stepson, sitting next to Berenger, but Edward's dark eyes, like his father's had been, were unreadable. He said hesitantly, “Restore him to the throne, my lord, assuming he is really alive to be restored? With all of his shortcomings—”

  “He is my brother,” said Kent simply. “I betrayed him in France, when I joined the queen. I betrayed him at Westminster, when I shouted in favor of his son. I'll not betray him again, now that I know he is alive.” The earl drained his cup. “It is best that I be on my way, Lord Zouche. You being out of favor with the crown, it won't do for me to be seen much around you. But talk to Sir Ingelram here. I will await to hear from him what you choose to do.”

  He left the room, and soon William from his window saw him galloping away toward London. Only then did he ask, “Sir Ingelram. Do you believe the late king is still alive?”

  “No. I believe he is dead. Murdered.”

  “But you have allowed the earl to believe that you think him alive?”

  “No. He knows I have my doubts. He knows we all have our doubts— there's several of us he's spoken to, you see. He humors our doubts, waits for the day he can show us his brother alive and well.” Berenger poured himself some more wine. “But if this can be used to stir the people against Mortimer and the queen…”

 
; “Who else is he speaking to?”

  Berenger smiled. “A wider range of people than you might think. Men like myself who were associated with the Despensers, of course, who never have borne the Earl of March any goodwill. But there's others too, like yourself, who once followed him and now have reason to want him gone. Men who are ready for a change, all of us.”

  “Lancaster?”

  The old knight shook his head. “There were some moves by the Earl of Kent in that direction, but the Earl of Lancaster preferred to take a different path against Mortimer. Now he's got Mortimer's spies on him and couldn't help us if he wanted to.”

  “The Earl of Kent abandoned the Earl of Lancaster. What makes you think he won't do the same now?”

  “Intuition, I guess. He does feel great guilt for leaving his brother to that she-wolf of a queen. And there's always been something rather lackadaisical about the Earl of Kent. Not now. He's taken this to heart.” He shrugged. “If I'm wrong, and he betrays us or bungles this business, you don't need me to tell you that we're dead men. I'm willing to take the risk, myself. My world as I knew it ended when they killed the Earl of Winchester.” Berenger crossed himself and then touched Edward on the shoulder. “He was like a brother to me.”

  “What does the Earl of Kent want from us?”

  “Money, at the moment. I'm going to raise some on my lands in Cambridge.”

  William sipped his wine and pondered. Never in his life, he decided, had he heard such a harebrained scheme. The fact that the Earl of Kent, whose accomplishments thus far in life had not exactly been impressive, was at its head and that his accomplice was a man who was highly lucky to have escaped execution along with the Despensers hardly inspired confidence either. Every bit of common sense Zouche possessed warned him off.

  But what had common sense done to get Eleanor back? “Tell the earl I'll give all that I can. Starting with monies from my own lands in Cambridge.”