Hugh and Bess

by Susan Higginbotham

  Her mother clucked approvingly. “When the time comes, I will send a midwife to you. I know that there are some in these parts, but she is the best I know.”

  “I am not with child,” Bess said firmly, perhaps too firmly.

  Fortunately, her mother took her tone for disappointment. “Well, there's plenty of time. You and Hugh couldn’t have been at it for long.”

  “No. Not at all.”

  Upon hearing of her parents’ expected visit, Bess had longed to throw herself into their arms and confide her troubles to them, but as she thought about it, she had changed her mind. Mama had told her before her wedding day that men strayed, after all, though surely it was reasonable to expect them to keep away from one's closest friend. What if her parents told her that she was being foolish? Or worse yet, what if, faced with Hugh's straying in reality instead of in the abstract, they became infuriated with her husband? Her father had never had a quick temper, but this might be sufficient to rouse it. Angry as Bess was with Hugh, it would still be horrid for all concerned if her father decided to take vengeance upon his son-in-law. Besides that, she had been proud of how well she had adapted to her role as Lady of Glamorgan. It would be humiliating to let her parents see just how badly she had bungled things.

  The earl chuckled. “Your mother's eager for grandchildren, can’t you tell, Bessie? Pity this business in Brittany has taken Hugh away from his duty at home.”

  “Let me show you that tapestry I wrote to you about,” Bess said. “Then we will be having dinner.”

  She had used sickness as an excuse yesterday to take her dinner and her supper in her chamber, knowing that everyone in Cardiff Castle was gossiping about her failure to see Hugh off to war and about Emma's hasty departure. Now she thanked heaven that her parents were here, to sit beside her at the high table and to give the wondering household something else to focus their eyes upon. And it gave her some comfort when her mother admired the household livery, which had been of Bess's selection, and when her father praised the musicians, whom Bess had engaged. Here, at least, was something that she had done right.

  Her relief, however, was short-lived. As she and her mother sat sewing afterward, her father having decided to ride off his dinner, the Countess of Salisbury said, “I notice, child, that Mary is your only damsel. I thought you had another lady, a widow, keeping you company. Was I mistaken?”

  “No. Lady Welles is off visiting her family.” Too late, Bess wondered if she had told her mother that Emma had no family. She hurriedly scrambled out of the pit that she had dug for herself. “That is, her very distant relations. Someone—ah—fell ill and wished to see her.”

  “Well, if she does not return soon, perhaps one of your sisters can visit for a while. It must be lonely for you without Hugh.”

  Bess stared as intently at her sewing as if her life depended on the neatness of her stitches. “Yes,” she mumbled. “Mama—” Her voice choked.

  “What, child?” Then her mother said, “Poor dear, you do miss him, don’t you?”

  Bess nodded feebly.

  “I am glad in a way, because I know you were not pleased with him as your chosen husband. It's good to see you’ve got past it. Still, child, you must learn to bear these separations. Men were born to fight and women to wait, and we must be of good cheer while we do so.”

  “I will try. But—”

  “Why, what is the matter now?”

  “I—My monthly course is upon me, and I ache dreadfully. Can you show me that remedy you use for it? I have forgotten what it was.”

  Her parents left the next day after dinner. “Hugh ought to be proud of you,” said her father. “I certainly am. It seems that you have things well in hand here.”

  If only he knew, Bess thought.

  “Don’t get the girl too puffed up,” her mother said fondly. “Hugh has been gone only several days, after all. How things are running on the estates a month from now will be the test.”

  “My clever Bess can handle it.” The earl hugged Bess and slipped some coins into her hand. “Just in case you want to buy yourself something frivolous.”

  “Thank you, Papa.”

  “I’ve a feeling I’ll be in Brittany soon myself. Shall I give your husband any message if I run across him?”

  “No.” She added hastily, “I suppose I will have heard from him before you get there.”

  “True.”

  Bess hugged her mother good-bye. Katharine said, “Now, child, keep yourself busy, more than usual, and it will seem no time at all before Hugh is back safe and sound. That is how I manage during your father's absences.”

  “Oh?” said the earl. “You told me that you cried yourself to sleep every night when I was the French king's prisoner.”

  “Hush, William. The child needs encouragement.”

  “And I need to keep my mouth closed. I’ll pass on that bit of marital advice to Hugh if I see him, Bessie. It works without fail for us menfolk.”

  Bess watched wistfully as her happily married parents and their retainers rode away, shouting farewells. When they were out of sight, she climbed the stairs to Hugh's chamber. She had not been in it since that dreadful night, and she half expected it to be in the state it was when she had left it, frozen in time as a testament to her humiliation. But of course it was nothing of the kind. The linens had been changed and the bed made, decorously awaiting its lord's arrival home.

  As she stared out of Hugh's window, seeing the view that he saw, she realized that what she had said to her mother the day before was true; she did miss her husband: his friendly presence next to her at meals, his rides with her around their estates, his good-night visits to her chamber. She had come to enjoy the latter; at Mold, she’d caught herself more than once listening hopefully for Hugh's light knock on her chamber door, and back at Cardiff, she had felt almost cheated by the hasty visits Hugh had been paying her in the hectic days before his departure. For the first time, she wondered if she might have come to enjoy his spending the entire night, with all that it entailed.

  And now she might never know, for Emma had taken him away from her.

  vi

  * * *

  July 1342 to March 1343

  IN HIS PRISON DAYS, ONE OF HUGH'S PASTIMES HAD BEEN to choose a wife for himself. He’d not based his choice on his situation as the imprisoned son of an attainted traitor, of course, for that narrowed his range of options, to put it mildly. Instead, he’d assumed that his father and grandfather were alive and thriving (he had the right to set the parameters of his own pastime, after all) and that his father's criteria would dutifully have to be followed. The girl had to be from a noble family, preferably an earl's daughter or better; no humble knight's daughters need apply. An heiress would be preferable but was not mandatory. As royal connections were more than welcome, English birth was not imperative; foreign royalty or nobility would make an interesting possibility. To these paternal criteria Hugh added his own special requirements: nearness to Hugh's own age, ample breasts, a sweet smile, and an eagerness to engage in all sorts of bed tricks in all positions and at all times. In Bristol Castle, by far the worst of his prisons until Mortimer's fall had eased his lot, he’d sit on the floor of his cell in the semi-darkness, ill-fed, ill-clothed, and chilly, his pale, thin face intent with concentration as he tried to pick a suitable bride. It was not a task he took lightly; this was a lady he would have to spend his life with. He could spend hours debating with himself on the subject, sometimes becoming so engrossed in his imaginary dilemma that he would fail to respond to a question or to a command and would have to be nudged back to reality by his guards. Such reminders might take the form of a gentle tap on the shoulder or a kick, depending on the guard. If it were the latter, it would lead to a second means by which Hugh had passed the time at Bristol: fighting with his guards. And as he was invariably outnumbered, a third occupation flowed naturally from the second: nursing his wounds.

  Well, at least the fighting had helped him on the battlefield.
But the marriage game hadn’t prepared him at all for Bess. If only he had chosen her as carefully as he had his imaginary bride.

  Did the girl know how pretty she had become? At the time of their first meeting, Hugh had thought her a pleasant looking lass who would without doubt grow into a reasonably attractive woman, but something had happened to her recently, something Hugh had not predicted. In a matter of a few months, she’d shot up tall and filled out, and her facial proportions had changed somehow so that her huge, expressive brown eyes dominated her serious face, turning it into one that Hugh found to be haunting and irresistible. Her long, thick hair, a rich brown in color, which had been her chief attraction when Hugh had first seen her, had not altered, but now that she had adopted the married woman's custom of hiding it in public, it had become a mysterious thing to be seen only at night when Hugh visited her. Too often for his comfort lately, he’d imagined it spread out over her pillow as she lay on her bed without a stitch on, awaiting his pleasure.

  God almighty.

  Now that Hugh recalled it, his father had almost married him to an Elizabeth Comyn, a woman eight years his senior and one of the heirs of the late Earl of Pembroke. Hugh doubted that the lady had been enthralled with the idea of marrying a cub like himself—he’d been only seventeen at the time—though her opinion would have counted for naught, of course. Hugh himself had not heard of the plan until it had been abandoned; whether his own objections would have counted either, he did not know. Something had put his father off the idea, most likely the fact that the unfortunate Elizabeth had given up her lands to him without him having to go to the trouble of getting her for a daughter-in-law. (Probably his father would have found a disinherited heiress rather poor company as his son's bride; in his own way he had liked harmonious family relations.) Having survived this plucking by Hugh's father, Elizabeth had married a Richard Talbot and had been restored to her lands at the time of the queen's invasion. Hugh had often wondered if his father had had other brides for him in mind, but aside from their stilted last conversation at Caerphilly Castle, the subject had not been seriously raised.

  In any event, Hugh's father could not have picked for Hugh worse than Hugh had picked for himself. A pretty, spoiled wench whose beautiful body aroused him unbearably and who loathed the sight of him.

  Elizabeth Comyn would have been better.

  “Hugh! I’ve called your name twice. What's on your mind, that you’ve lost your hearing?”

  The man riding up beside him was none other than Richard Talbot. Hugh could hardly tell him that he had been wondering what would have happened if he had married Richard's wife. “Sorry.”

  “You’re missing that young wife of yours,” said Talbot. “Indisposed, was she?”

  “Yes.”

  “Who knows, Despenser? You might have an heir waiting for you when you return.”

  “No, she said it was a bad cold,” said Hugh hastily. No point in telling Richard that his wife would not let him near her without raising a ruckus, but also no point in starting an impossible rumor. Richard was a gossip.

  Richard would not be stopped. “That's how I started out, I hear, as a cold.”

  Hugh and Richard had started their rather unlikely friendship when Richard had served as one of Hugh's mainprisors after he’d been provisionally released from prison and was awaiting a final pardon from the king. The mutual liking that had grown between them had been strong enough to overcome the grudge that Richard might have justly held against the Despenser family for the harsh treatment of Elizabeth Comyn. The lady herself was still a little frosty with Hugh, though he’d gotten a chuckle out of her the last time he’d visited at Goodrich Castle.

  “Who's ill?” Oliver Ingham, seneschal of Aquitaine, rode up with a frown. He was an even more incongruous companion for Hugh than Talbot, for Ingham, though he’d gotten on well with the Despensers and the second Edward in their day, had jumped ship at the precisely right moment and had ended up as a member of Roger Mortimer's inner circle. So close had he been, in fact, that he’d been arrested at the same time Mortimer had. Yet within a few weeks he’d been freed, and in due course he had been reappointed to his old post in Aquitaine and had been there ever since, save for the occasional trip to England like the one he was taking now to bring back troops.

  “Despenser's wife,” said Richard with a wink.

  Ingham missed the wink. He was a crotchety man, a trait that Hugh would have attributed to age and failing health had not he known that Ingham had been no less cranky in his prime twenty years before. Perhaps, thought Hugh, he had assimilated to new regimes so readily because he treated everyone pretty much in the same manner: as a child who needed a good talking to. “Don’t tell me you are planning on heading back to her, Despenser. We need to be making time.”

  “She's fine. It's just a summer cold,” said Hugh wearily.

  Ingham nodded and began telling Hugh what he had already told him—he was a man who tended to repeat himself—but Hugh did not protest, as Ingham's droning allowed him to think his own thoughts. Since the Count of Montfort had been imprisoned, the Countess of Montfort had taken over the command of his force. “It's said that when Blois's troops arrived in Hennebont, she rode through the streets, urging her men to victory. And a victory they had— for the time being anyway. Killed the French whoresons by the score. But they came back and tried to besiege the place. They gave up and left soon enough, though. Cowards.”

  “And the countess? Where is she now?”

  “Brest, with none but Walter Mauny's men to help her. Our king promised thousands, and where the hell are they?” He shook his head with disgust. “She can’t hold out forever.”

  Why not? Hugh thought. Bess certainly could.

  “The worst part about being besieged,” said Edward le Despenser a month or so later, “is not being able to send a letter to Anne. Or to receive one.”

  Hugh, without thinking very hard about the issue, could have come up with even worse things about being besieged, such as starving to death or being taken captive, but he forbore to point them out to his brother at the present time. Instead, he confined himself to a sympathetic nod.

  Ingham and Hugh had been bound for Gascony, but upon landing at Saint-Mathieu and seeing how vulnerable the countess's position in Brest was, it had been decided that Hugh and his eighty or so men would stay to aid her. He had arrived just in time, for by August Brest was surrounded, shadowed by fourteen Genoese galleys in its harbor and ringed by French troops on the land. More English troops were on the way, Hugh had kept assuring the countess, but there was no sign of their approaching. In the meantime, those in Brest had little to do but wait for their relief. Hugh had been through this long before at Caerphilly Castle, but Edward had not, and the strain was beginning to tell on both him and Gilbert, who was also serving in Hugh's retinue. Pleased as Hugh was to have them with him, he was relieved in a way that John, his youngest full brother, was in the queen's household and that William, his half brother, was safely at Glastonbury Abbey, where he was to become one of the monks. Two brothers to worry about were enough.

  Hugh pointed out the window toward the row of Genoese galleys. Bobbing in the water, they made a pretty picture; sunk beneath the waves, they would have made an even prettier one. “Pity our father isn’t here. He pirated one of them, do you remember? He’d have kept them from ever reaching the port.”

  “One pirate in the family is enough,” said Edward. He had begun to pace around the room. “What if she's with child?”

  “Then you’ll have a pleasant surprise waiting for you when you return to England.”

  “Aren’t you worried about Bess? What if she's with child?”

  Because the two older brothers were alone together, Hugh said, “There's only been one virgin birth known to man, Edward.”

  This confidence at least made Edward stop pacing. “What? You haven’t—”

  “She's put herself off limits.” Hugh decided it was his turn to pace.

&nbs
p; “Surely she's old enough?” Edward saw the look on Hugh's face. “I’m sorry, Hugh. I don’t mean to pry.”

  “It's one way to pass the time.” He shrugged. “I came to her bed the night before we left Cardiff. She sent me packing. Obviously, the girl is oblivious to my charms.”

  “Had you been getting along?”

  “So I thought. The girl's never been madly in love with me; I knew that from the start. But I thought she was thawing. And then—”

  “You must have taken her by surprise,” said Edward. “Women have strange moods, Hugh. Even Anne does. We’ve quarreled during them.”

  “You and Anne have quarreled?”

  Edward's face took on a look of deep concentration. “Two or three times,” he admitted after thinking for a while.

  Hugh snorted. “I wonder Anne hasn’t sought an annulment.” He shook his head. “I keep telling myself that, Edward, that it was just a mood of Bess's. I was a little tipsy, too; that puts her off, I know. Maybe I shouldn’t have surprised her; maybe I should have told her before what my intentions were so that she could commiserate with her ladies first.” He grimaced. “Of course, I didn’t help matters by lying with Emma later that night. My only lapse since we married, but Bess caught me.”