The Traitor's Wife

by Susan Higginbotham

  “Lady Despenser? I am the new constable of the Tower, as perhaps you have heard.”

  “I have heard.”

  “And I have orders to take you and your children into safe custody. Safer than you are in now.”

  “To imprison us, you mean.”

  “Well, yes.”

  “So I had thought. Where are we to be housed?”

  “In the tower built by the first Edward,” said Gisors, referring to what would in later years be known as the Beauchamp Tower. Relieved at her calmness, he added, “They're very comfortable lodgings, considering. You may pack some necessaries for you and your children. I'll wait as you do so.”

  Eleanor nodded. Despite her apparent composure, she moved as if in a trance, picking up an object and staring at it vacantly before setting it down again. Gladys, meanwhile, scurried in and out of the room with armloads of garments, which she piled up in heaps on the floor until a manservant materialized with a chest, and then another and another. Gisors scowled. “I said some necessaries, not everything she owns.”

  “My lady has six children here with her,” said Gladys coolly. “They must have warm clothing. And where are they to sleep? My lady must have a regular bed. She cannot sleep on a pallet night after night.”

  “Why not?” said Gisors philosophically. But the woman was a king's granddaughter, after all; perhaps she could not sleep on a pallet night after night. “She can bring beds with her. But we'll leave all the elegant trappings behind, shall we?”

  Eleanor in the meantime had left the room. When she returned after a time, she was holding only a cloak that was clearly a man's. Gisors frowned. “Is that your husband's, my lady? All of his chattels will be forfeit to the crown. You can't take that with you.”

  “I can, and I will. He has had this cloak for as long as we have been married. It's not a very costly one, and I must have something of his to cherish—until he returns.”

  Was the woman fool enough to think that Hugh would return? Gisors started to say as much, then bit back his comments. It was too much like striking an unarmed opponent. He said, “Very well. Stop at that. Your quarters aren't large enough for your entire wardrobe, or his.”

  Gladys said, “My lady, I have done packing. Shall I get the children?”

  “No.” Eleanor had gone white. “I will get them.”

  In a very long time she returned, carrying a baby and trailed by five children. Christ, there were a lot of them! thought Gisors. Aside from the baby, whose sex Gisors could not determine, there were three girls and two boys, all with the same dark eyes and auburn hair and all showing their mother's eerie composure. Were they not Despenser's offspring, Gisors would have admitted them to be a handsome family. Each carried some belongings with them, including the baby, who clutched a blanket, and all watched Gisors levelly as they came to stand in front of him. “We are ready, sir,” said their mother.

  “Very well.” He glanced at the cluster of servants, many of whom were in or near tears. “Say good-bye to your mistress, if you please.”

  Eleanor had produced a purse and was pushing coins at each servant in turn. When it came Gladys's turn, however, she shook her head. “No, my lady, I'm staying with you.” She looked at the others. “You are young, and I don't blame you for leaving. Neither will my lady. But I'm up in years, and I've served my lady since she was thirteen. I won't leave her now.”

  “My good woman,” said Gisors, “the crown will be paying your lady's expenses, and it won't pay a halfpenny more if you stay with her. There will be less to go around.”

  “Aye, and I can stand to stint myself if need be.”

  Eleanor's eyes were filled with tears. She whispered, “I should be telling you to go, Gladys, but I cannot. I am so glad you are staying with me.”

  “Then that settles it.” Gladys patted Eleanor's hand and looked at Gisors. “I packed my own things with the others, my lord, so there is no need to delay further.”

  “Well, that's something to be thankful for,” snapped Gisors.

  He conducted the eight of them out of the royal apartments and into the Beauchamp Tower, where they were taken to two connecting rooms, gloomy but not as miserable as they had feared. There were fireplaces in both, and access to a garderobe, and the single window allowed them a truncated view of the Tower grounds. Eleanor roused herself enough to suggest that straws be drawn to determine which room the boys should have and which the females should have. The boys had won the room with the window, but with the smaller fire, when the chests and beds arrived. After all was arranged, Gisors, promising them that supper would be brought in an hour or so, locked them in with a great banging of keys and took his leave. Then the questions began.

  “Is Father ever coming back, Mama?”

  “Is my doll here?”

  “Will we be here long?”

  To all of these questions, Eleanor could answer only, “I don't know.”

  On November 24, a few miles outside Hereford, Hugh lay where they had shoved him the evening before, conscious but with closed eyes. His cell was freezing and the clothing he wore still sodden from yesterday's rain. Had he been asked whether he was cold he would have said yes, but his self-imposed starvation and the fever that was beginning to creep in on him prevented him from caring much.

  Footsteps and voices near him alerted him that he was not alone. “Hugh!”

  “Dear heart!”

  “Rise to meet the glorious morning!”

  “Oh, Hugh!”

  The day before he had been roused by having a bucket of human waste dumped upon him, and in some still half-curious part of his mind he wondered whether Mortimer's men would excel themselves today. They settled, however, for prodding him in the ribs with a stick. He ignored it as long as he could. Then with the utmost difficulty he pushed himself up upon his elbow and looked at them. “Awake, Hugh? Good. Today is the day you meet your maker.”

  Hugh formed the simple words with difficulty. “You people said she wanted to kill me in London.”

  “True, love. But the queen frets that you might not make it there alive. So to Hereford—and to hell—you go today.”

  So at least his sweet Eleanor would not have to see him die in London, his worst fear. Following the ramblings of his mind, he asked, “My wife. Have you word of her?”

  “Your wife the king?”

  “My wife. Eleanor.”

  “Wasn't it she who was lying with the Tower constable the other day?”

  “Nah, she doesn't look that high. The guards.”

  “Two?”

  “Both at once. She's a lonely woman, your wife.”

  “So what else is new?”

  Hugh dragged himself to his knees and moved a few feet away. He bowed his head. “Lord, damn me if you will but protect her and our children. Spare them.”

  He collapsed to the ground and someone kicked his hand. He looked up into the eyes of a young guard, who said gruffly, “Your wife is in the Tower as a prisoner, I heard. That is all I know.”

  Then the same guard yanked him up so roughly he nearly swooned. “Now move your feet! The queen hasn't all day for the likes of you.”

  “Wait.” Hugh's head was spinning, and he was leaning against the guard, but he managed to force out another question. “My eldest son?”

  “Your whelp still holds Caerphilly Castle. Now go on!”

  Hugh's mouth twisted into a ghost of a smile as he obeyed the guard.

  Leybourne and Stanegrave and their men had made Hugh's journey to Hereford as miserable as Isabella and Mortimer could have wished. Lest any dozing village miss the fine sight of Hugh le Despenser chained to a mangy horse, a drummer and a trumpeter had been put at the head of the procession to announce his arrival well in advance. This was the cue for villagers to throw anything they could find at Hugh, and at Simon de Reading as well. Hardly anyone knew who the latter was, of course, but as he too was in chains, everyone realized that he had to be associated with Hugh, and his presence made the proceedings
twice as fun and provided some consolation for those whose aim was too unsure to hit Hugh himself.

  But the true festivities started when the troops, trailed by an ever-increasing crowd of citizens eager to see Hugh hang, reached the outskirts of Hereford, where they were met by a contingent of the queen's men coming from the city, led by Jean de Hainault and Thomas Wake. There, to the delight of the crowd, Hugh and Simon were dragged off their horses and stripped naked, then redressed in tunics bearing their coats of arms reversed. With the help of a clerk, whose Latin was needed for the purpose, the words from the Magnificat “He has put down the mighty from their seat and hath exalted the humble” were etched into Hugh's bare shoulders. His chest bore psalm verses beginning, “Why dost thou glory in malice, thou that art mighty in iniquity?” Thus decorated, and wearing a crown of nettles, he was put back on his horse. Then, to the blare of trumpets and drums, accompanied by the howling of the spectators, he was led into the city with Simon de Reading forced to march in front of him bearing his standard reversed. As there were only so many horse droppings that could be found to throw at the captives, the enterprising were selling eggs for that purpose.

  Zouche had hoped to miss these proceedings. He had retrieved the records, and the little treasure that could be found, from Swansea, and had delivered his load to the queen two days before. But having made good time to Hereford, he could not leave once the execution had been scheduled. Thus, he was standing in the market square, near the queen, Mortimer, and the Duke of Aquitaine, when Hugh and Simon, so covered in filth that they resembled scarecrows more than men, were brought there for trial.

  Isabella, still clad in widow's weeds, wore a look of resignation as William Trussell stepped forth to read the charges against Hugh. Only Mortimer, making no attempt to hide his own satisfaction, saw the sparkle in her eyes.

  At what passed for his trial, Hugh's mind wandered from the past to the present, sometimes lucidly, sometimes not. There were many charges against him, some true enough, some with a bit of truth to them, some so patently absurd that it was a wonder Trussell could keep a straight face. Piracy. Returning to England after his banishment. Procuring the death of the saintly Lancaster after imprisoning him on false charges. Executing other men who had fought against the king at Boroughbridge on false charges. Forcing the king to fight the Scots. Abandoning the queen at Tynemouth. (That again, Hugh thought.) Making war on the Christian Church. Disinheriting the king by inducing him to grant the earldom of Winchester to his father and the earldom of Carlisle to Harclay. Bribing persons in France to murder the queen and her son… He drifted off into a world where his death was not imminent, and when he was shaken back to the here and now once more, Trussell was still going on, perhaps beginning to bore those assembled a little. Trussell himself must have sensed this, for he sped through the last few charges (leading the king out of his realm to his dishonor and taking with him the treasure of the kingdom and the Great Seal) before he slowed his voice dramatically for what all were anticipating: his sentence. Though no one could have possibly been surprised by it, least of all Hugh himself, there were nonetheless appreciative gasps as Trussell, all but smacking his lips, informed Hugh what was to be done with him.

  “Hugh, you have been judged a traitor since you have threatened all the good people of the realm, great and small, rich and poor, and by common assent you are also a thief. As a thief you will hang, and as a traitor you will be drawn and quartered, and your quarters will be sent throughout the realm. And because you prevailed upon our lord the king, and by common assent you returned to the court without warrant, you will be beheaded. And because you were always disloyal and procured discord between our lord the king and our very honorable lady the queen, and between other people of the realm, you will be disemboweled, and then your entrails will be burnt. Go to meet your fate, traitor, tyrant, renegade. Go to receive your own justice, traitor, evil man, criminal!”

  At Hereford Castle, to which Hugh was dragged by four horses, a gallows fifty feet high had been erected. “Just for you!” said one of the men who untied him from his hurdle and hauled him toward the gallows. “Ain't we the special one, now?”

  Simon de Reading, having been drawn behind the usual two horses, was hung on a smaller gallows. Hugh, propped up between his guards because one of his ankles would not allow him to bear any weight on it, shakily crossed himself and whispered a prayer for Simon's soul.

  When he was twelve he had had to have a tooth drawn. His father, always anxious for him, had told him as he lay miserably in the barber's chair, “Get a pleasant picture in your mind, son, and fix it there. It'll take your mind off it as it happens.” He'd obeyed, fixing first on his new horse, then, more satisfyingly, on a buxom village maiden he'd long admired, and it had worked, at least to the extent that it'd taken his mind off his tooth until the barber actually yanked it. Eleanor, after the birth of their first son, had told him that her midwife had given her similar advice when her labor pains became intense. “She said, 'Think of something you enjoy doing, and imagine yourself doing it,' so I thought of making love to you. Isn't that terrible? But it helped.”

  He thought of his wedding night. He was nineteen years old and pulling the sheets off his skittish little bride, chosen for him by the great King Edward himself, and he had been the happiest creature in the world. She was lovely and sweet and all his, and it had not yet occurred to him to want anything more.

  He'd been guilty of no greater sin back then than poaching the occasional deer, and if he had died at that time, there would have been no cheering. Perhaps someone might have even wept for him. If he'd just taken life as it came to him, his old father would be nodding off in a comfortable chair by a roaring fire now and his wife would be welcoming some pretty heiress as their son Hugh's new bride. His son Edward would be mooning over some wench and the rest of his children would be playing some absurd game. The king would be on his throne, taking the purely disinterested advice that Hugh could have offered him but never did.

  He'd truly loved them all, and he'd brought them all to ruin. It was by far his worst sin. Why had not Trussell included that in his thunderings?

  He prayed for forgiveness, perhaps audibly enough to be overheard by those surrounding him, for there was scornful laughter. Then a man in black appeared beside him. Of the faces that surrounded him, his was the only one that showed no hatred on it. It showed nothing, in fact; the man was simply following his trade. Hugh hoped he was reasonably good at it; Arundel's executioner, as the queen's men had delighted in informing him, had been a rank amateur who had taken twenty strokes to sever the earl's head. He slid his rings off his fingers and handed them to his executioner. “Go to it,” he said tonelessly.

  To separate them from the increasingly boisterous crowd, a little stand had been erected near the gallows for the queen and her son and the higher nobility. Still wearing a look of patient, slightly pained endurance, Isabella watched as Despenser, wearing nothing but his crown of nettles, was lifted aloft. Zouche, standing a few feet off with the queen's other leaders, glanced at young Edward's face but could read nothing in it.

  After dangling in the air a short time, Hugh was lowered to a platform below the gallows, next to which a good-sized fire had been lit. For a moment, he lay still, much to the crowd's dismay; then, after a few slaps from the executioner, he started to cough and gasp and opened his eyes. The executioner, satisfied that his charge was as awake as he was going to get, nodded to a boy who like a surgeon's apprentice was standing nearby with several knives and an ax. The boy handed over the smallest of the knives, and the executioner bent to his work.

  Despenser let out a strangled cry, and the executioner held up Hugh's genitals. Amid the cheers and jests, Isabella's smile was too slight to be detected as they quivered in the air. After dropping them in the fire (“Listen to 'em sizzle!” a spectator shouted happily. “Like bacon!”), the executioner took a larger knife and opened Hugh's abdomen. Hugh moaned and turned his head back and forth,
then grew quiet. He was motionless when his heart was plucked out and thrown into the fire.

  The boy handed over the ax. “Behold the head of a traitor!” The crowd shrieked with sheer joy, and men clapped each other on the backs and shoulders as if they had personally caught the king's chamberlain and brought him to justice. As the head, which was to be sent to London, was carefully put aside, Zouche found that he could not watch Hugh's blood-covered body being cut into four pieces. Instead, he stared at the ring on his right hand as he twirled it round and round.

  Isabella and Joan of Bar sat in the queen's chambers, Joan's face a distinctly greenish color. Hugh le Despenser had been cut up an hour ago, and somewhere his quarters and head were being parboiled before being sent their five separate ways, but the crowd was still celebrating. “Will that racket never cease?” muttered Isabella. She itched for Mortimer's presence instead of that of Joan, but since they had arrived in England they had forced themselves to be drearily chaste, for appearances' sake. But with Bishop Orleton out of the palace—he had been sent to seize the Great Seal from the king at Kenilworth— surely they could indulge themselves a bit…

  “They're bound to run out of ale soon,” said Joan listlessly. She watched as Isabella nibbled on a pastry. Joan herself was uncertain whether she would ever have much of an appetite again, although she had contrived to arrange her veil in such a manner that she had not seen a thing. But the pomander she had held to her nose had not done much to disguise the horrid smell, and there had been nothing she could do to keep the man's dying moans from reaching her ears. “You know, we were married on the same day.”