The Traitor's Wife

by Susan Higginbotham

  “You're no Eleanor of Aquitaine, Mother.”

  “You must care nothing for me, Ned. Nothing, after I risked so much for your sake.”

  Edward grunted and moved toward the door. “What shall you do?” demanded his mother, wiping her eyes.

  “I don't know.”

  The Earl of March having read the Earl of Kent's confession to Parliament that Friday afternoon, the Earl of Kent was begging for his life. “Your grace, I meant you no harm. I only wished to free my brother; he was kind to me always. Your father, your grace, lonely and forgotten in Corfe Castle! Spare me, and I will walk through the streets in my shirt, as I said. I will do anything. I will reside abroad, give up my estates, go to prison—anything! Your grace, have mercy on me.”

  Roger Mortimer glanced down at the beseeching earl. “Your grace, if you have mercy upon this creature you will endanger yourself, endanger your crown, endanger your heir so soon to be born. He can plot abroad, plot in prison, plot without his estates. You will be setting yourself up for your own destruction.” In a lower voice, audible only to the queen mother and Edward, he said, “Your grace, do you want to be the king your father was, or your grandfather? Your grandfather would not have given way to pity. He would order this man to be hung, drawn, and quartered straightaway. With him, the good of the realm always took precedent over all else.”

  Edward drew a breath, and the great hall was so still that everyone there could hear him do so. “I cannot grant your request, my lord. You are guilty of treason, and as you are so close to the crown, your treason is more dangerous than most. You should have shared your suspicions about my father with me instead of plotting against me with men whose loyalty to the realm is uncertain at best. But I will grant you beheading rather than a traitor's death.”

  The Earl of Kent stood up, looking suddenly so much like his own imposing father that the older men in the room started. “So be the will of God. May He have mercy on your soul, Edward.”

  “We must act quickly,” said Mortimer the next day to the queen mother. “Your son has gone to Woodstock to see his wife, and you know after some pillow talk he'll relent and commute the death sentence.” He handed her a paper. “This order to the bailiffs of Winchester will take care of him, if it's signed by you.”

  Isabella glanced at the paper indifferently. “So he is to die Monday? What if the king comes back before then?”

  “Then we'll have to get another order, won't we? But I doubt he'll leave his love nest that early, particularly as the strain here has been so great for him.” There was a contemptuous look on the earl's face that few mothers would have borne with.

  Isabella merely shrugged and signed the parchment.

  Isabella and Mortimer had not forgotten the Earl of Kent's wife and small children, particularly since the unfortunate countess, whose handwriting was more certain than her husband's, had written the letter read in Parliament at Kent's dictation. They were ordered to be taken to Salisbury Castle, sans the countess's jewels, and imprisoned there indefinitely. The jewels were to be sent to the king.

  The Countess of Kent was nine months pregnant.

  On Monday, March 19, the Earl of Kent stood in the marketplace at Winchester wearing only his shirt. The king was not there, having not yet returned from Woodstock, nor was the dowager queen, who was lying in a drunken stupor behind her rich bed curtains.

  Nor, to the Earl of March's chagrin, was the executioner present. Nor the deputy executioner. Nor the butcher, nor anyone who had experience in wielding an ax. None of the knights present would move against a peer of the realm. No one wanted to kill the first Edward's golden-haired youngest son.

  The day dragged on. Finally, toward Vespers, a murdering sewer cleaner, offered a pardon for his life in exchange for taking Edmund of Woodstock's, mounted the scaffold self-consciously and diffidently ordered the earl to put his head on the block. “Here?” he said, raising the ax and looking tentatively at the earl's neck. “Or lower?”

  “There,” snapped the Earl of March. “Give him time to cross himself; don't you know anything?” He nodded approvingly as the amateur executioner swung the ax and severed the head with one blow. “Get it and hold it up now, man, don't be squeamish. Behold the head of a traitor!” he called.

  The crowd only stared, save for those who wept.

  April 1330 to November 1330

  THANK YOU, YOUR GRACE, FOR ALLOWING ME TO SEE YOU ALONE.”

  “You need not look around you, Lady Despenser. There are no spies about.”

  Eleanor, who had indeed been looking around her warily as she entered the king's chamber at Woodstock, blushed. “Your grace, I shall not take up your time needlessly. I am here to ask that you release my husband.”

  “He is a traitor, Lady Despenser.”

  “He is not, your grace. I know he had no intention of removing you from the throne.”

  “How do you know what was in his mind? Were you involved in this scheme too?”

  “No. He told me nothing; perhaps he thought I had been in enough trouble with the crown already.” Eleanor smiled, but the king continued to stare at her levelly. “But I know my husband. He was loyal to your father, and he has been loyal to you. It was Hugh he opposed when he joined forces with the queen, not my dear uncle. And it was Mortimer he opposed when he joined with the Earl of Kent. Not your grace.”

  In coming to Woodstock to beg for William, she had counted on two things: that the king was becoming weary of his harness and that he had executed Kent with the greatest of misgivings. What if she were wrong? Of all the men she had known, Eleanor had never met one as difficult to read as this young king. What if he admired Mortimer and had had no compunctions about sending Kent to the block?

  Edward said, “I will consider it, my lady, and give you an answer in a day or two.”

  This being better than nothing, Eleanor thanked him. Then she ventured, “I understand the queen is with child. I hope she is feeling well?”

  “Very well.”

  “I held your grace when you were newborn, you know. It seems strange to think that you will be a father yourself in two months' time.”

  “It seems strange indeed.” Edward smiled. Then his tone changed abruptly. “Tell me, Lady Despenser. Did your husband ever believe the rumor that my father was not dead?”

  “I do not know. I never heard it until I heard of William's arrest.”

  “You were probably the closest person in the world to my father, after Lord Despenser and the Earl of Cornwall. Do you believe the rumor?”

  “No, much as I would like to.”

  “Why not?”

  “It is an illogical reason, your grace.”

  “Women are illogical, they say. Tell me.”

  She dropped her eyes. “The night I later heard he died, I had a nightmare. About him. I had not had one about him before, and I have never had one since. I knew that he was in dreadful trouble, and I could not help him. I longed to so badly, but I could not move a step to help him. I know, your grace, that it sounds foolish, like witchcraft even. But it is what I dreamed that night.”

  “It is what I dreamed that night too, Lady Despenser.” Edward turned away from Eleanor and looked out at the window to where Queen Philippa and her ladies were strolling, or in the queen's case waddling, in the April sunlight. “Find some mainprisors for your husband and send them to me as soon as you find them. And then he will be free.”

  “I saw my old charge, Lady Despenser, leaving as I was coming,” said William de Montacute a few minutes later. “I suppose she was here about her husband?”

  “I said I would release him if she could find mainprisors.”

  “Mortimer didn't interfere?”

  “He and my mother are out with their falcons. I said I'd keep Philippa company here instead of going with them. I'm doing a lot of that lately.”

  “Fatherhood does have its advantages,” said William. “Even prospective fatherhood.”

  “I should have said no to her, but
after she gave up her lands to the crown I felt guilty, even if she did act of her own free will.”

  “You believe that?”

  “Why, the document she signed said so.”

  “She was coerced into signing it by Mortimer, Edward. After you signed the order to release her from the Tower, she was shut up in Devizes Castle on the sly by him. She'd still be there if she hadn't nearly died and decided to give in to him.”

  “I didn't know that.” He winced.

  “Edward. Other than your lady the queen, there is no one in the kingdom more loyal to you than me. I would risk my life for you. You know that.”

  “Yes.”

  “Then you will forgive me when I tell you that there is a lot you don't know, and it is high time you knew it. You're like your father in that way, you tend to shut out unpleasant things.”

  “I do not!”

  “Like your mother's adultery?”

  “I know she miscarried of Mortimer's bastard child. You needn't rub my nose in it.”

  “I'm not. But Ned, you knew that they were lovers months, years, after everyone else did. Of course, you were very young when it started. And part of it, of course, is that you're the king. People don't speak freely in front of you. But part of it is that you'd rather not know.”

  Edward flicked his hand resentfully. “So what else would I rather not know?”

  “The Earl of Kent.”

  “William, he was a traitor. I know that they were highhanded in executing him while I was away. There's not a day I don't feel guilt and sorrow over that. But at least his death shall serve as a lesson for those who try treason in the future.”

  “A lesson! He was entrapped by Mortimer, Edward. The friar who told him your father was alive was Mortimer's man. So were the men who took Kent to Corfe Castle and showed him someone who at a distance resembled your father. The letter the earl wrote was to a Mortimer creature. His followers—the Archbishop of York and Berenger and Zouche and the rest— were there honestly, but there would have been no conspiracy if it had not been for Mortimer.”

  Edward stared at William. “Who told you this?”

  “People brag, and their servants listen. One of them thought you should know. So he came to me.”

  “I ordered my uncle executed at Mortimer and Mother's urging for treason they tricked him into committing. I've arrested, or tried to arrest, three dozen others who got dragged into this affair.”

  “Yes.”

  “Why? Why did Mortimer do it?”

  Montacute shrugged. “He wanted to intimidate his enemies. Putting Henry of Lancaster to death would be too risky, even after his rebellion, because of his allies. One Saint Lancaster is enough, after all. But your uncle was less influential. He was a gullible man, God rest his soul, and he's always felt guilty about joining your mother against your father. Poor Kent was the perfect bait.”

  “What else, Montacute? What else don't I know?”

  William hesitated, wondering if he was not about to go too far. Telling the king what he knew about Lady Despenser and the Earl of Kent was one thing; telling what else he knew was another. Yet without the telling, how else to force the king's hand?

  “Your father, Edward. He didn't die of a fever. He was murdered at Mortimer's orders by his men Gurney, Ogle, and Maltravers after there were attempts to free him from Berkeley Castle. Some of the men who helped have been talking, or raving's more like it.”

  Edward sank down in the window seat. Barely moving his lips, he asked, “How? Poisoned? Smothered? Choked?”

  “It is only a rumor, what I have heard. But it is horrid to tell.”

  “Tell me.”

  “They wanted to leave no mark, and they didn't trust anyone to make up a poison for them. So they took a cooking spit, heated it, and used it to burn out his insides. Through his fundament.”

  Edward stumbled toward the fireplace and began vomiting. William held his head until he could retch no more, then helped him to the window seat and put his hand on his shoulder as he wept silently. Finally, he whispered, “I took his crown, William. I might as well say I took his life.”

  “Mortimer and your mother took his crown, your grace. You acted for the best by accepting it for yourself, because he had so many shortcomings as a ruler. You did not know they would serve him so.”

  “No.” Edward let William wipe his face with a towel from the nearby washbasin. “But did I ever bother myself with his welfare? Did I ever demand to be taken to Kenilworth to see him, or Berkeley? Did I ever write him a letter? The truth was, he'd become an embarrassment to me, with his favorites and his failures, and I was glad to have him out of the way. Out of sight, out of mind.”

  “You were so young.”

  “Not so young that I couldn't have at least tried to see him. Why, my brother and sisters asked about him, wanted to visit him! Not me.”

  “No matter what you did, Edward, they would have killed him anyway.”

  “Perhaps. But he died believing that I cared naught about what happened to him.” Edward looked out toward the garden at Philippa. “If I thought a son of mine would treat me as I did him, I'd wish him dead in the womb right now.”

  “Do not even think such a horrid thing, Edward.”

  “A bad son, and a worse king. I've stood by as my father was murdered, stood by as my uncle was murdered—nay, I passed the death sentence on him myself! The people must hold me in contempt, Mortimer's puppet!”

  “They don't, Edward. Truly.” William looked out the window too. How much more time would they have alone? Probably not much. He quickened his voice. “But they might, someday, if you don't act soon. You spoke about the need to before—”

  “I spoke about it before, and then Philippa got with child, and I've been worthless ever since,” Edward grimaced. “But how to act? Half the people in my household are spies, I think. It's not that I could raise an army against Mortimer without anyone noticing. And he's got his horde of his with him wherever he goes.”

  “I haven't a plan either,” admitted William. “But now you know fully what Mortimer is capable of, we should start laying the ground for one. Whom do you trust, your grace? I can talk to them.”

  “My cousin, Edward de Bohun. Robert Ufford. William de Clinton. John Neville.” Edward shook his head. “Isn't that pitiful? In all my household, only four besides you that I can name with no hesitation whatsoever.”

  “That's enough for a start. In the meantime, you must dissemble. If Mortimer wants to give himself more land and titles, let him. Be obliging and passive.”

  “That won't be hard,” Edward said bitterly. “But what of the Earl of Kent's followers? The Archbishop of York, for one, is scheduled for trial soon. He is to come here shortly.”

  “I would think that Mortimer would have had others executed by now if he's going to. He's out to harass and intimidate the others, and he can do that just as well by keeping some in prison and getting the others' trials dragged out. Killing them all would create more enemies, just as your father created enemies after Boroughbridge. But we must keep a careful eye on what goes on. Now let's go out to Philippa, so Mortimer suspects nothing when he arrives.”

  Edward nodded and slowly made his way out to the garden, where Philippa and her ladies, along with Montacute's own wife, had ceased their walk and had settled down to work on a tapestry for the royal nursery. Even from a distance, Philippa glowed; pregnancy seemed to be her optimal state. His mother had warned Edward with a hint of malice in her voice that pregnant women were volatile and moody, but Philippa had been more even-tempered than ever. “Why, what on earth is wrong, Edward? You look positively gray.”

  “I have had a tedious morning,” he lied. “Papers.”

  “Are you sure nothing is wrong, Ned?”

  Philippa's phlegmatic personality hid her sharp powers of observation, Edward knew, although Mortimer and the queen had never understood this. “We will talk later,” he promised. “I want to go for a walk alone for just a short time.”<
br />
  He did not have far to go, only into a wooded area close to the manor house. There, soon after Edward's younger sister Eleanor had been born at Woodstock, his father had taken him for a ride on the grounds and carved him a whistle, taken from a branch of the tree Edward stood before. He knew it because of the names that had been carved into it: Edward Rex. And below it, carved in a much more awkward writing, Ned. He could almost feel his own small hand, being guided by a larger one, writing the word. “There,” his father had told him, admiring their handiwork. “Now it's our special tree.”

  His father had loved him. And he had utterly abandoned his father. Not because of any grand principle, but simply because it had been the easiest thing to do at the time. No matter what kind of king he grew into, no matter what kind of man he grew into, he would never be able to erase that item from his conscience. And there was nothing he could do to make amends, nothing that would alter his father's last terrifying moments in Berkeley Castle. The Earl of Kent had thought he had been given the chance to redeem himself, but he had been wrong, cruelly wrong. And Edward had had him killed for believing, irrationally but irresistibly, that he could do so.

  The king leaned his head against the tree and wept.

  In June, Philippa gave birth to a fine boy, naturally named Edward after his father (or his late grandfather, Eleanor hoped). Eleanor, though by no means on the list of notables immediately notified of the birth, had found out about it fairly quickly, for she and William and the children had gone to spend some time at her manor of Caversham, not far from Woodstock.

  Isabella and Mortimer were not fool enough to skimp on ceremonies for the new heir, and by the end of July word had drifted down to Caversham of the young queen's magnificent churching. “Her robe was purple velvet embroidered with golden squirrels, trimmed with miniver and ermine, William. Doesn't that sound beautiful?”

  “Actually, my dear, it sounds a little warm for July.”