The She-Wolf

by Maurice Druon

  When he presented himself before Bristol in the morning, banners flying and helms laced, the city had already decided to surrender and you could have taken it with a stick. The notables hurriedly sent envoys who were concerned only to know where the knights wished to be lodged, protested their attachment to the Queen and offered to surrender their lord, Hugh Despenser the Elder, on the spot, for he alone was to blame for the fact that they had not shown their good intentions earlier.

  As soon as the gates of the city were opened, the knights took up their quarters in the fine houses of Bristol. Despenser the Elder was arrested in his castle and placed under the guard of four knights, while the Queen, the heir to the throne, and the principal barons took possession of his apartments. The Queen found there her three other children, whom Edward, when in flight, had left in Despenser’s care. She was astonished to see how they had grown in twenty months and could not stop gazing at them and kissing them. She suddenly looked at Mortimer, as if this excess of joy might offend him, and murmured: ‘I wish, my love, that God had granted they were born of you.’

  At the instigation of the Earl of Lancaster, a Council was immediately assembled round the Queen, which included the Bishops of Hereford, Norwich, Lincoln, Ely and Winchester, the Archbishop of Dublin, the Earls of Norfolk and Kent, Roger Mortimer of Wigmore, Sir Thomas Wake, Sir William La Zouche d’Ashby, Robert de Montalt, Robert de Merle, Robert de Watteville and the Sire Henry de Beaumont.38

  The Council derived its legal justification from the fact that King Edward was beyond the frontiers; whether he was in Wales or Ireland made no difference. It decided to proclaim young Prince Edward guardian and keeper of the realm in the sovereign’s absence. The principal administrative posts were immediately redistributed and Adam Orleton, who was the intellectual leader of the rebellion, took most of them, in particular that of Lord Treasurer.

  And, indeed, it was high time to make provision for the reorganization of the central authority. It was remarkable that during the whole month, when the King was in flight, his ministers dispersed, and England at the mercy of the Queen’s and the barons’ great expedition, the excise had continued functioning normally, the tax-collectors had gone on collecting taxes, the watch, in spite of everything, had maintained order in the towns and, taken all in all, ordinary life had pursued its normal course from a sort of habit of the social body.

  And now the guardian of the realm, the provisional holder of sovereignty, was fifteen years old less one month. The decrees he would promulgate would be sealed with his private seal, since the seals of the realm had been carried away by the King and Chancellor Baldock. The young Prince’s first act of government was to preside at the trial of Hugh Despenser the Elder that very day. The prosecution was in the hands of Sir Thomas Wake, a rugged old knight, who was Marshal of the Army.39 He accused Hugh Despenser, Earl of Winchester, of being responsible for the execution of Thomas of Lancaster, for the death in the Tower of London of Roger Mortimer the Elder (for the old Lord of Chirk had not lived to see his nephew’s triumphal return but had died in his dungeon a few weeks earlier), for the imprisonment, banishment, or death of many other lords, for the sequestration of the Queen’s and the Earl of Kent’s property, for the bad management of the affairs of the kingdom, for the defeats by the Scots and in the war in Aquitaine, all of which had been due to his disastrous advice and counsel. The same charges were later to be brought against all King Edward’s councillors.

  Wrinkled and bowed, his voice feeble, Hugh the Elder, who for so many years had feigned a tremulous self-effacement before the King’s desires, now showed the energy of which he was capable. He had nothing more to lose and defended himself inch by inch.

  Lost wars? They had been lost by the cowardice of the barons.40 Executions and imprisonments? They had been punishments, decreed for traitors and rebels against the royal authority, lack of respect for which brought kingdoms to disaster. Sequestrations of fiefs and revenues had been decided on only to prevent enemies of the Crown raising men and money. And if he were to be accused of some plundering and spoliation, were the twenty-three manors, either his own property or that of his son, which Mortimer, Lancaster, Maltravers and Berkeley, all here present, had pillaged and burnt in 1321, before their defeat either at Shrewsbury or Boroughbridge, to count for nothing? He had merely reimbursed himself for the damage he had suffered and which he valued at forty thousand pounds, apart from the violence and cruelty of every kind committed against his people.

  He finished his defence with these words addressed to the Queen: ‘Oh, Madame, God owes us justice, and if we cannot have it in this age, He will owe it to us in the next world!’

  Young Prince Edward raised his long lashes and listened attentively. Hugh Despenser the Elder was condemned to be dragged through the streets, beheaded and his body hanged, to which he replied contemptuously: ‘I see, my lords, that beheading and hanging are two different things for you, but for me they amount to but a single death!’

  His behaviour, which much surprised those who had known him in other circumstances, went far to explain the great influence he had exercised. The obsequious courtier was no coward, nor the detestable minister a fool.

  Prince Edward confirmed the sentence; but he was reflecting deeply and beginning silently to form views as to how a man destined to great responsibilities should behave. To listen before speaking, to inform yourself before judging, to understand before deciding, and to remember always that there were to be found in every man the springs both of the highest as well as the lowest actions: these, for a sovereign, were the first steps towards wisdom.

  It was unusual to have to condemn a fellow-man to death before the age of fifteen. On his first day of power Edward of Aquitaine was receiving good training.

  Old Despenser was tied by the feet to a horse’s traces and dragged through the streets of Bristol. His tendons torn and his bones fractured, he was taken to the square in front of the castle and made to kneel before the block. His white hair was pulled forward to free his neck, and the executioner, wearing a red hood, raised the great sword and cut his head off. His body, spurting blood from the great arteries, was suspended by the armpits from a gibbet. The wrinkled, bloodstained head was placed beside it on a pike.

  And all the knights who had sworn by Monseigneur Saint George to defend ladies, maids, orphans and the oppressed, rejoiced with much laughter and gay talk at the spectacle of an old man’s death.

  3

  Hereford

  BY ALL SAINTS’ DAY the new Court was installed at Hereford.

  If, as Adam Orleton, the Bishop of that town, said, everyone in history has his shining hour, that hour was now his. After many vicissitudes, helping one of the greatest lords in the kingdom to escape, being brought to trial before Parliament and being saved by a coalition of his peers, and after preaching and encouraging rebellion, he was now returning in triumph to his bishopric, to which he had been provided in 1317, against the will of King Edward, and where he had conducted himself always as a great prelate.

  And with what joy this little man, who was lacking in bodily grace, but possessed both physical and moral courage, dressed up in sacerdotal vestments, placed a mitre on his head and took his crozier in his hand, to process through the streets of this city for which he had done so much.

  As soon as the royal party had taken possession of the castle, which lay in the centre of the town on a bend of the Wye, Orleton could not rest till he had shown the Queen the buildings he had undertaken, and to begin with the great square tower, two stories high and pierced with huge arches, each angle surmounted with three bell-turrets, a low one on each side and a tall one dominating them, twelve spires in all mounting to the sky, which he had built over the centre of the cathedral, over the heart of the Cross. The November light gleamed on the rosy brick, its fresh colour preserved by the humidity, while round the building lay a huge, dark, well-tended lawn.

  ‘Is it not the most beautiful tower in your kingdom, Madame?’ asked
Adam Orleton with the ingenuous pride of a builder, gazing up at the great hewn building, so pure in line, so restrained in decoration, which filled him with constant wonder. ‘If it were only to have built this, I should be glad to have lived.’

  Orleton’s nobility derived, as they said, from Oxford rather than from armorial bearings. He was conscious of it, and wanted to justify the high position to which ambition allied to intelligence, and erudition even more than intrigue, had brought him. He knew himself to be superior to everyone about him.

  He had reorganized the Cathedral library, in which stout volumes, arranged with their edges facing to the front, were bound to the shelves by chains with long forged links, so that they might not be stolen. There were nearly a thousand splendidly decorated and illuminated manuscripts, embodying five centuries of thought, faith and imagination, from the earliest translation of the Gospels into Saxon, the first pages still decorated with runic characters, to the most modern Latin dictionaries, as well as such volumes as The Heavenly Hierarchy, the works of Saint Jerome and Saint John Chrysostom, and those of the twelve minor prophets.

  The Queen had also to admire the work in progress on the chapter-house, which was still under construction, and the famous map of the world painted by Richard de Bello, which had clearly been divinely inspired for it was already beginning to perform miracles.41

  And so, for nearly a month, Hereford was the temporary capital of England. Mortimer was no less delighted than Orleton, since he recovered Wigmore Castle, which was only a few miles away, and was back so to speak in his own domains.

  And, throughout this time, the search for the King went on.

  A certain Rhys ap Owell, a Welsh knight, arrived one day with information that Edward II was hiding in an abbey on the coast of the county of Glamorgan, to which the ship he had taken in the hope of escaping to Ireland had been driven by contrary winds.

  Jean de Hainaut immediately fell on his knees and offered to go and beard Madame Isabella’s unfaithful husband in his Welsh lair. They had some difficulty in making him understand that it was impossible to confide the capture of the King to a foreigner, and that a member of the royal family was more suitable for the accomplishment of this painful duty. It was Henry Crouchback who had to take horse, which he did without much pleasure, to go and search the west coast, accompanied by Earl de la Zouche and Rhys ap Owell.

  At about the same time the Earl of Charlton arrived from Shropshire where he had taken prisoner the Earl of Arundel, whom he now brought in chains. For Roger Mortimer this was a splendid revenge, for Edmund Fitzalan, Earl of Arundel, had received from the King a great part of his sequestered estates and also had conferred on him the title of Justiciar of Wales which had belonged to old Mortimer of Chirk.

  Roger Mortimer contented himself with letting his enemy stand before him for a whole quarter of an hour without saying a word to him, merely looking him up and down, and savouring calmly the contemplation of a live enemy who would soon be a dead one.

  The trial of Arundel as an enemy of the realm and on the same charges as had been preferred against Despenser the Elder was conducted without delay and his beheading gave the townspeople of Hereford and the troops stationed there an opportunity for merry-making.

  It was noticed that the Queen and Roger Mortimer held each other’s hands during the execution.

  Young Prince Edward’s fifteenth birthday had taken place three days earlier.

  At last, on November 20, there was great news. King Edward had been taken by the Earl of Lancaster in the Cistercian Abbey of Neath, in the lower valley of the Tawe.

  The King, his favourite and his Chancellor had been living hidden there for several weeks, wearing monks’ habits. Edward had been spending his time, while waiting for a turn of fortune, working in the abbey’s forge, a pastime which diverted his mind from too much thinking.

  And it was here, standing naked to the waist with his habit hanging down from his belt, his chest and beard lit up by the fire of the forge and his hands all among the sparks, while the Chancellor worked the bellows and Hugh the Younger, looking far from happy, handed him the tools, that Henry Crouchback found him. He stood in the doorway, his helmet almost touching his shoulder, and said: ‘Sire, my Cousin, the time has now come when you must pay for your sins.’

  The King dropped his hammer; the piece of metal he was forging glowed red on the anvil; and the sovereign of England, his tall white body trembling from head to foot, said: ‘Cousin, Cousin, what will they do to me?’

  ‘What the great ones of your realm may decide,’ replied Crouchback.

  And now Edward was waiting with his favourite and his Chancellor in the little fortified manor of Monmouth, some leagues from Hereford, where Lancaster had taken him and imprisoned him.

  Adam Orleton, accompanied by his Archdeacon, Thomas Chandos, and the Great Chamberlain, William Blount, went immediately to Monmouth to demand the seal of the realm which Baldock still had in his possession.

  When Orleton had explained his request, Edward seized the leather bag containing the seal from Baldock’s belt, wrapped the laces round his wrist as if he wished to make a weapon of it, and cried: ‘You traitor, you wicked bishop, if you want my seal, you shall take it from me by force and make it plain that a priest has raised his hand against his King!’

  Destiny had undoubtedly designed Adam Orleton for the highest tasks. To remove the insignia of his power from a king’s hands is no usual matter. Outfacing the angry athlete, Orleton with his sloping shoulders and weak hands, with no other weapon than a light ivory-handled cane, replied: ‘The handing over must be done of your own free will, and before witnesses. Sire Edward, are you going to compel your son, who is already keeper of the realm, to order his own sovereign’s seal earlier than he expected to have to do? I can, however, forcibly seize the Lord Chancellor and Lord Despenser whom I have orders to bring to the Queen.’

  At these words, Edward ceased being concerned about the seal and thought only of his beloved favourite. He removed the leather bag from his wrist and threw it to the Chamberlain William Blount, as if it had suddenly ceased to be an object of value. Opening wide his arms to Hugh, he cried: ‘Oh, no, you won’t take him from me!’

  Hugh the Younger, emaciated, trembling, threw himself on the King’s breast. His teeth chattered, he seemed about to swoon and he groaned: ‘You see, it’s your wife who has ordered this. It is she, that French she-wolf, who is the cause of it all. Oh, Edward, Edward, why did you marry her?’

  Henry Crouchback, Orleton, Archdeacon Chandos and William Blount looked at the two men embracing and, though their passion was incomprehensible to them, they could not help recognizing that there was some appalling quality of grandeur about it.

  In the end it was Crouchback who went up to them, took Despenser by the arm, and said: ‘Come on, you must separate.’ And he dragged him away.

  ‘Goodbye, Hugh, goodbye!’ cried Edward. ‘My life’s darling, my sweetest soul, I shall never see you again! They have taken everything from me!’

  The tears were pouring down his blond beard.

  Hugh Despenser was handed over to the knights of the escort who began by dressing him in a peasant’s cloak of coarse cloth, on which they painted derisively the arms and emblems of the counties the King had given him. Then they bound his hands behind his back and hoisted him on to the smallest and wretchedest horse they could find, a rough, dwarf, scraggy, country screw. Hugh’s legs were too long; he was forced either to draw them up or let his feet drag in the mud. In this way he was led through the towns and villages of Monmouthshire and Herefordshire, halting in the market-squares so that the people might mock him to their hearts’ content. The trumpets sounded before the prisoner and a herald cried: ‘Look, good people, look at the Earl of Gloucester, the Lord Chamberlain, look at the wicked man who has done such harm to the realm!’

  The Chancellor, Robert de Baldock, was taken more discreetly, for the sake of the dignity of the Church, to the bishop’s palace in Lo
ndon where he was imprisoned; as an archdeacon he could not be condemned to death.

  All the hatred was therefore concentrated on Hugh Despenser, whom people still called the Younger though he was now nearly thirty-six years of age and his father was dead. He was quickly brought to trial in Hereford and his sentence, of which no one was in doubt, pronounced. But since he was held chiefly responsible for all the errors and misfortunes from which England had suffered, his execution was to have certain particular refinements.

  On November 24 the stands were erected on an open space in front of the castle and the scaffold built high enough so that a numerous attendance should lose no detail of the execution. Queen Isabella sat in the first row of the largest stand, between Roger Mortimer and Prince Edward. It was drizzling.

  The trumpets and busines sounded. Hugh the Younger was led out by the executioner’s assistants and stripped of his clothes. When his long, wide-hipped, pigeon-breasted body appeared, white and completely naked, between the red-clothed executioners and above the pikes of the archers who surrounded the scaffold, a great coarse laugh rose from the crowd.

  Queen Isabella leaned towards Mortimer and murmured: ‘I wish Edward were here to see it.’

  Her eyes bright, her little carnivore’s teeth parted, her nails gripping the palm of her lover’s hand, she was taking care to lose no detail of her vengeance.

  Prince Edward was thinking: ‘Is that really the man my father loved so much?’ He had already attended two executions and knew he could hold out to the end without being sick.

  The busines rang out again. Hugh was laid down on a horizontal Saint Andrew’s cross and tied down by his arms and legs. The executioner was slowly sharpening a pointed knife, like a butcher’s, on a hone, and testing the edge with his thumb. The crowd held its breath. Then an assistant came forward with a pair of pincers with which he seized the prisoner’s penis. A wave of hysteria ran through the crowd; its stamping feet made the stands shake. And in spite of the noise everyone heard the cry Hugh uttered. A single, piercing cry that was suddenly broken off, as the blood spurted from him. The same operation was repeated on his testicles, but he was already unconscious, and the sad offal was thrown into a brazier of burning embers fanned by an assistant. An appalling stench of burning flesh rose from it. A herald, standing in front of the busine-blowers, announced that these things had been done ‘because Despenser had been a sodomite, and had favoured the King in sodomy, and thereby had exiled the Queen from her bed’.