The Traitor's Wife

by Susan Higginbotham

“As boarders. He did not make nuns of them, Joan. He did not force them to take vows that can never be broken, without fear of damnation.”

  Joan shrugged. “It is what the queen deems best.” Not unkindly, she added, “You must be realistic, Eleanor. They are better off as nuns now. With Hugh's goods and lands forfeit and his name in ruins, they could hardly hope to marry men of any substance.”

  “Not men of any substance, perhaps. But they might have married decent men of modest means who would be good to them. They might have had children of their own to love.”

  Joan snorted. “Yes, they might have married such paragons as you speak of. Or they might have married a profligate like I did, or a pervert like the queen did, or a villain like you did. At least there shall be no surprises for them as there were for us.” She sighed. “Don't fear, Eleanor. I shall take good care of them on their journey, and I am sure the nuns will too.” Joan looked at the three bundled-up little girls and smiled at them. They gazed back at her unsmilingly, three sets of Hugh's brown eyes meeting hers. “I brought them plenty of provisions for the trip.”

  Eleanor bent and kissed the three of them. “Good-bye, my pets. You know that I cannot leave here now, but someday I will, God willing, and then I shall write and visit you. I love you dearly. Not a day will go by without my thinking of you.”

  They were filing out in front of Joan of Bar. As the stout countess followed them slowly, still breathing heavily from her climb up the Tower stairs, Eleanor seized her by the shoulder and hissed, “Joan, wait! Please don't let them see Hugh—on the bridge—if you have any kindness in your heart.”

  Joan sighed. “Do you think I am some sort of monster, Eleanor? I will guard their eyes. In any case, though, they would not know it was their father. He is already unrecognizable. You would not know him yourself.”

  Boisterous Gilbert was unusually well behaved that day, settling himself to his lessons without the usual protest he thought behooved him. Even John played quietly with the wooden pigs and cows the king had carved for him. As for Edward, he showed none of his usual moodiness. When he saw Eleanor sitting staring into space, he put his arm around her and whispered, “I didn't mean what I said to Joan, Mother. God will protect them,” in such a manly fashion that Eleanor, who had thought she could feel nothing now, felt a surge of pride.

  Two days before, she had snapped at Margaret when she misplaced her doll for the dozenth time and wanted Eleanor to find it immediately. (How could she lose something in such small quarters? Eleanor had wondered.) Only yesterday morning before Wake came, she had told Nora not to chatter so incessantly. Four days ago, she had told Joan that just because they were prisoners was no reason why things should not be put away neatly. Now she would never search for Margaret's doll again, would never hear Nora's volley of questions again, would never pick up after Joan again.

  Did the girls know she loved them? She had tried so hard to be good to them since Hugh died, knowing that they were grieving like herself and were more bewildered at their sudden change of fortune than she. But she had not always succeeded. She had been so weary, so on edge since the news came of Hugh. Would they remember the mother who had tucked them into bed each night with a gentle word and a kiss, even on the nights that she had wanted to do nothing but lie on her bed with Hugh's cloak, draw the curtains around her, and cry in peace? Or would they remember the shrew who had pounced on their every imperfection?

  A guard had appeared in their rooms without her noticing and was standing by her. “My lady. Would you like to go to the chapel for a while?”

  She nodded numbly and let him conduct her to the Chapel of St. Peter ad Vincula, just a few feet away from the Beauchamp Tower. Several times in December, she had been allowed to go there to pray for Hugh's soul, and she had come out feeling a dim sort of comfort that was better than none at all. But today when she was left there kneeling all by herself, nothing came—no prayers, not even tears. What was the point of praying or crying? If there was a God, he was clearly on the side of Mortimer and Isabella.

  She got to her feet and knocked at the door, where her guard waited tactfully on the other side. “You were not here very long, my lady.”

  “No. My thoughts are not of the sort one wants to be alone with, and there is probably no one to hear my prayers anyway.”

  The guard, a young man named Tom, looked shocked by this blasphemy. Eleanor added dully, “But thank you for taking me there. It was a change from our cell at any rate.”

  He led her back to the Beauchamp Tower, and had conducted her through her doorway when he hesitated. “My lady, I would like to bring you something. May I?”

  “What? Daughters to replace the ones I have lost?” She recoiled at Tom's hurt look. “I suppose, Tom. What is it?”

  “You will see.”

  Not really caring what he brought back, Eleanor nodded. When Tom returned, Gladys had taken the boys outside, and Eleanor, in an attempt to numb her mind through activity, was mending one of her sons' shirts—trying to ignore Nora's smock that had been put in the same basket of items needing repair. Tom was carrying a small sack, which clinked when he set it down. “What?”

  Tom opened the sack and pulled out a large gold cup. Eleanor gasped as she saw the Despenser coat of arms on it. “My husband's goods?”

  “Or his father's. More are being brought here every day, now that your husband has—um—passed away.”

  The absurdity of the euphemism in Hugh's particular case almost made Eleanor laugh.

  “They're in a storehouse here on the Tower grounds, still to be sorted and valued. Some were taken from the Despenser manors that the queen's men looted after she landed, and some of these came from your husband's wardrobe here. The queen has already ordered your late husband's wardrobe keeper to give her the best ones for her own use.”

  Eleanor started. “What does she want with my husband's jewels? If they are forfeit to the crown, aren't they to go to the treasury?”

  “She wants them because they were your husband's, my lady. She wants to gloat over them.”

  “The same way she must be gloating over our little girls. As trophies.”

  “Yes, my lady.” He bent down over the sack. “It's not just cups. There's florins here, salt cellars, other jewels—all sorts of beautiful things.” He picked up a florin and turned it over and over. “I know nothing can make up for you what happened this morning. I know that what I'm saying doesn't make much sense. But I thought that if you took some of these things for yourself it might give you a little satisfaction at least. At least you would be keeping something from the queen she wanted.”

  “You are right. It doesn't make much sense.” Eleanor picked up another cup, one with no heraldic designs on it. “But it does give me satisfaction. I shall take some.” Picking up a florin, she handed it to Tom.

  “No, my lady. I would hang.”

  “You could hang just for doing what you are doing now! Put them back, please.”

  Tom stopped her as she began to place the cups back into the sack. “I'll take my chances; I know the right time to go and can avoid being seen. Those little girls—it makes me angry. But if you truly wish it, my lady, I will return the treasures from where I got them.”

  Eleanor smiled grimly. “No. I'll take my chances too.”

  William la Zouche had spent Christmas with his young son at Ashby-de-la-Zouche. When he arrived in London for Parliament in early January, he cast guilty looks at his right hand, which still bore Hugh le Despenser's ring, and at London Bridge, which now bore Hugh le Despenser's head, but could not bring himself, as one of Hugh le Despenser's captors, to meet Lady Despenser in the Tower of London just yet. Her grief, he argued to himself, would still be too raw. And Zouche believed from Hugh's face when he had pulled off the ring that there would be quite genuine grief. Still, Zouche, not a man given to fancies in general, could not help but fancy that the head on the bridge looked reproachful.

  It turned out to be a Parliament not like any other,
and there would come a day Zouche wished he had taken no part in it. Whether the king had refused to come, as Bishop Orleton announced, or whether it had never been intended that he come, Zouche never knew, but he was certainly not there. This was a good thing, the bishop announced solemnly, because Edward had threatened to kill the queen with a dagger if he ever saw her. In the general indignation this remark excited, it did not occur to Zouche, or to many others, that the queen had shown herself remarkably able to fend for herself.

  “What have we come to when our king will not come to Parliament?” the bishop asked the members mournfully. “Do we want to continue under his rule? Or do we want to be ruled by the king's noble son?” He raised a hand as those assembled began to argue among themselves. “Consider this matter deeply,” he said solemnly, “and return with your decision the next morning.”

  It was Roger Mortimer, who Zouche knew had lent his military expertise to the queen's noble cause, who led off the proceedings the next morning. The great men of the land, he declared, of whom he was merely a humble representative, were united in agreeing that the king should be deposed. The Londoners, he added, had all asked too that the members of Parliament swear an oath of fealty to their cause, which now included deposing the king as well as supporting the queen, her son, and the enemies of the Despensers. As Parliament collectively remembered what had happened to the Despensers and to those unfortunates in disfavor with the Londoners, Thomas Wake, son-in-law to Henry of Lancaster, sprang up. “As far as I am concerned,” he shouted, “Edward should no longer reign!”

  Bishop Orleton took over. “The Lord tells us, 'A foolish king destroys his people.' Shall we let England be destroyed, good men? Or shall we save her, and ourselves, from certain destruction? For twenty years, since the death of the great first Edward, we have been teetering on its brink! Need I recall the signs the good Lord our God has sent us? Gaveston, the witch's son? The Bannock Burn? The famine? The wicked Hugh le Despenser? Will we heed them, once and for all, and save our beloved kingdom before it is too late?”

  “Save England!” shouted the members. “Away with the king!”

  “My head is sick,” the Bishop of Winchester said dolefully when the tumult died down. “The head of England is weak, and therefore sick, and the governance of all of England has suffered as a result. The king's evil counselors have preyed on this weakness, and bled England until it has oftentimes seemed there is no cure. But succor has come to her, in the form of a noble boy and his brave, devoted mother. Shall we crown that shining sun of a boy with the shining crown of England, or shall we let the shining crown of England continue to sit on this weak and festering head? You decide!”

  “What will it be, sirs?” shouted Wake, arms extended and hands waving as if he were trying to put himself into flight. “What do the people say? Shall the son reign?”

  “Yes!” cried Parliament as one.

  Archbishop Reynolds, who owed his post to the second Edward, took his turn. “The voice of the people is the voice of God,” he said. “After years of oppression, you have spoken your will that the foolish king be deposed and that his son rule in his place, and your will is God's will.”

  Wake, all but flying now, yelled, “Is this the will of the people? Do the people will that the second Edward be deposed and his son made king in his place?”

  “Fiat! Fiat! Amen!”

  A door swung open and fourteen-year-old Edward, magnificently dressed, came slowly in, followed by the queen, who for Parliament had resumed her black robes, albeit in velvet. Reynolds shouted, “Behold your king!”

  The queen was both weeping and smiling, evidently torn between grief that her husband had sunk so low and joy that her son was soaring to the country's rescue. Zouche's own eyes, and those of many others, were streaming tears; it was all Zouche could do to croak out the words to “Glory, Laud, and Honor.” Only a few dissenters stood silent, not even humming, and for several days afterward, they would be nursing the bruises they subsequently received at the hands of the watchful Londoners.

  With Bishop Orleton to London had come Robert Baldock, formerly the Chancellor of England. As a member of the clergy, after his capture he had been spared the humiliation meted out to Despenser and Simon de Reading, but instead had been allowed to ride inconspicuously from Llantrisant to Hereford with the troops' servants. Once in Hereford, he had been turned over to the bishop to be tried by his fellow men of the Church.

  In London, his luck ran out. Bishop Orleton took him to his manor to stay while awaiting trial, but the Londoners, learning of his presence there, prized him out on the pretext that the bishop had no right to keep him out of their own prison. Hence, he was dragged off to Newgate, where by May he would be dead of maltreatment. Though Orleton would later claim to have done nothing to harm him, he had also done nothing to save him.

  Edward had no complaints to make of his own jailer, Henry of Lancaster. The king had a set of rooms to himself, comfortable furnishings, warm clothes, blazing fires, good food and wine, and a staff to take care of his needs. He could go for long walks within the castle grounds and was allowed to attend the entertainments by Henry's minstrels. But since he had heard the news of Hugh's execution—and like Eleanor, he had been given all the details—his days had become things to be endured.

  They were long days, for he had no visitors to break them up, and expected none. Eleanor, he knew, was a prisoner in the Tower; she could help him no more than he could help her. Still, the memory of her red hair cascading to her bare hips was a pleasant one; memories of her, and his memories of Gaveston and Despenser and Lucy, were all that made life bearable now. Who else was there? Certainly not his children; that his whore of a wife would never allow. Mary, his only sister left in England? The days when she could leave her convent on a whim had ended, he knew, the day he had been captured at Llantrisant. His brothers? Not those faithless knaves. If they ever turned up, he'd refuse to see them.

  He was wrong, however, to have expected no visitors, for on January 20, an entire crowd of them came. A delegation, he was told, from Parliament.

  A make-believe, play Parliament it would be without him, he thought, but as under the circumstances he could hardly refuse to receive the delegation, he let himself be led into the great hall. He was dressed from head to toe in black. Henry had frowned a bit when Edward insisted on having mourning clothes for Hugh le Despenser, but as Henry himself had donned black for Thomas of Lancaster, a man he had never liked much for all of his dutiful avenging of him, he hadn't belabored the point.

  Edward recognized many of the men in the great hall. Orleton, who only eight weeks ago had taken the Great Seal from him. The Bishop of Winchester. The Earl of Surrey. Lancaster, of course. Barons, abbots, priors, justices, monks, knights—who was the knight staring so arrogantly at him?

  Sir William Trussell. The man who had pronounced sentence on Hugh and his father. His cruel face was one of the last things they had seen in this world—

  Edward's feet slid from under him, and the world went black. “Hugh?” he whispered gratefully as someone took him by the arm. “Hugh, is it you?”

  “Cousin, you were faint. This room is too hot, and you ate but little this morning. Do you need to rest a while first?”

  On one side of him was Henry of Lancaster, on the other the Bishop of Winchester. Edward sighed. “No. Have them say whatever they have come to say.”

  After Edward had been helped into the great hall's chair of state, Orleton was only too glad to proceed. The king, he pronounced dolorously, had been controlled and governed by others who had given him evil counsel. He had given himself up to unseemly works and occupations, neglecting the realm in the process. He had lost the realm of Scotland, and territories in Gascony and Ireland that the first Edward had left in peace. He had destroyed the Holy Church. (Edward, looking at Orleton's rich vestments, thought for his part that the Church, or at least Orleton's share of it, looked quite healthy.) He had also put many great and noble men of the land to
a shameful death or imprisoned, exiled, and disinherited them. He had broken his coronation oath. He had stripped the realm and done all that he could do to ruin it. In doing all of these evils he had shown himself incorrigible without hope of amendment. These things were so notorious, Orleton concluded, that they could not be denied.

  “But I do deny them.”

  “It matters not whether you do or not, because the people, as one, have demanded that you resign your rule to your son.”

  “And if I do not?”

  “Then the people will choose someone more suitable, someone more experienced. A grown man, perhaps, not one necessarily of royal blood.”

  A long silence ensued as all present stared at Edward. Mortimer? Was that whom they had in mind? Madness! His sons, his brothers, his cousin Henry, his nephews all stood closer to the crown than Mortimer; none of them would consent to have that upstart reign over them. There would be civil war. Did he want to subject his sons to that? To risk destroying his royal line? He shook his head, unaware of the tears falling down his face, and said, “I will not see my own son disinherited. If the people are that dissatisfied with me, I will resign the crown to him, and only him.”

  The stares turned to smiles or at least looks of relief. As Henry of Lancaster ushered the king respectfully out of the room, Edward's sobs began to mix with wild laughter. For the first time in his reign, he had done something that met with the wholehearted approval of the land.

  The next day, William Trussell, acting on behalf of the whole realm, renounced homage and allegiance to the king. Thomas le Blount, the king's household steward, broke his staff of office. The royal household was no more.

  Edward the Third was crowned on February 1, 1327. Isabella celebrated by granting herself a dower of twenty thousand marks per year—over thirteen thousand pounds. It was nearly triple the generous income she had received before the confiscation of her estates.

  “They have appointed a regency council to advise the king. Archbishop Reynolds, Archbishop Melton, the Bishops of Winchester and Hereford—”