The Lion and the Leopard

by Mary Ellen Johnson

  I know you have duties. I know you must obey your king and your lord. But still...

  When he left she hid her tears, made even more ungovernable by pregnancy, until he was out of sight. After completing her daily duties, she'd retreat to her chamber where she tried to reason away her fears, whittle her love to manageable proportions, and remind herself of how she must play the part of an ordinary wife. Simply a partner. A helpmate. Competent, assured, busy, a woman who was not in the grips of this unholy obsession.

  As her time neared, Maria wrote to her family, requesting her mother's presence. She'd begun to receive missives from Hugh and Eleanora, but the letters contained not so much as a mention of Henrietta. At first Maria had vowed that she'd never beg her mother for forgiveness, but as she herself readied for motherhood, she yearned to re-establish some sort of relationship. 'If you'll but come,' she wrote, 'I swear I'll be the daughter you always wished.'

  Maria was delivered of her son, Thomas, with her sister-in-law, her maid and a midwife at her bedside. Phillip was in York with the earl of Sussex. Henrietta remained at Fordwich.

  * * *

  The Treaty of Leake destroyed the effective unity of Thomas Lancaster's opposition party. Agreement between the king and Lancaster himself, however, proved fleeting. Lancaster soon retreated to his estates where he sulked over the treaty, as well as the recent appointment of Bartholomew Badlesmere as Steward of the Household—a post which Thomas, as hereditary steward of England, felt he should control. When a two year truce was finally signed with the Scots at the end of 1319, His Grace blamed Lancaster's uncooperativeness for terms he considered humiliating. Lancaster, in turn, blamed the king.

  At Deerhurst, Maria anxiously awaited her husband's return. As fall deepened into winter she bundled up little Tom, now nearly a year old, climbed the stone stairs to Deerhurst's north facing battlement, and strained for the first glimpse of Phillip's banner. Her bitterness toward him for so often leaving had long ago dissolved into an aching loneliness. She no longer cared whether her feelings might be unseemly. She wanted only to look upon his face, hear his voice, rest again in his arms, and share their son.

  Her days revolved around little Tom and her duties as mistress of Deerhurst. Both her indoor and outdoor seneschals were competent, but Maria periodically rode across the estate with her overseer, Timothy Maudelyn, and went over the household accounts, which ran from Michaelmas to Michaelmas, with William, the chamberlain. She politely entertained the occasional guest or traveler, and supervised the household staff and her maids, including little Tom's nurse, Joscelyn—a fat, motherly woman who doted on the child. In her small solar Maria oversaw the sewing, embroidering, knitting and personally executed most of the spinning, using distaff and spindle.

  Just as Henrietta had taught her.

  While ordering the changing or freshening of floor rushes or instructing the gardener on the variety of cooking and healing herbs to plant, Maria could almost hear their voices blend. Sometimes she found herself using similar words and phrases and treating servants as she'd seen Henrietta do, though she never felt like true mistress of Deerhurst.

  I am only play-acting, like a child stumbling about in grown-up clothes.

  She felt little intrinsic pleasure in her duties, though she decided that was understandable enough. With Phillip absent, so was half her reason for existence. Little Tom provided the rest.

  Maria often thought that if angels could be seen, they would look—and act—like her son. She fussed and worried over him so much that Joscelyn chastised her for her overprotectiveness, but she didn't care. Half the children born did not live to the age of five, and at the slightest sign of fever or cold, Maria administered steaming herbal baths and calamint tea and syrup. If Tom were listless or irritable she worried he had contacted smallpox or some dread disease like St. Anthony's Fire. She kept him always near her in the solar, whether when playing or napping in his elaborately carved cradle—a gift from Richard of Sussex.

  At Tom's baptism, the earl had also sent a dozen exquisitely detailed robes and Queen Isabella even bestowed upon the child a silk robe trimmed in ermine. Isabella had been recently delivered of her third child, Eleanor of Woodstock, so Maria attributed the queen's surprising thoughtfulness to happiness over the birth of her first daughter.

  From her own mother Maria heard nothing.

  St. Remigius' Day passed, and with it the end of harvest time. Rents were paid and leases fell due and fall drifted toward winter. For the past weeks, Maria had haunted the battlements, always looking south. A feeling of foreboding weighed on her as insistently as the storm clouds obliterating the horizon.

  Something dreadful has happened. I know it.

  Because the danger remained unfocused it assumed life shattering proportions. Phillip was dead; her family had all perished of a plague; Tom's recent cough would prove fatal.

  Finally, Maria spotted a troop approaching along a road white with a recent dusting of snow. The afternoon light was too uncertain for proper identification of the banners but Maria was certain Phillip had returned. Rushing to the solar she changed into her best kirtle and awakened Tom from a nap.

  "Papa's home, sweetheart!" she cried as they entered the inner bailey where the troop was already dismounting. Then she halted, stunned. Upon their jupons the knights bore, not the blue of the Rendell wolf, but a red leopard's head. The man who turned to her with a glad cry was not Phillip but her father.

  "Poppet!" Hugh crushed her in a fierce embrace. "How I've missed thee." He began to cry, and when he finally drew back Maria saw that his face was thinner and more lined than she'd remembered. In two years' time he'd aged a dozen. "And is this my grandson?" he asked, as she led Tom forward. Hugh bent over, favoring his bad leg, to bestow a shaky smile on his grandson.

  Eleanora bustled forward to hug Maria. She smelled of lavender; Henrietta had used lavender perfume. Maria closed her eyes. Suddenly, she knew the reason for their appearance.

  "We have come to take you home," said Eleanora.

  Maria searched her twin's face. "Mother is dead, isn't she?"

  "Aye."

  Maria inhaled shakily. "When?"

  "Near Michaelmas. Of a sickness to the lungs, as have so many these past months."

  "Why did you not write? Why didn't Mother send for me when she took ill?"

  Eleanora made a great show of removing her gloves.

  "Did she ask for me before she died?" Maria pressed. "What did she say? Oh, I should have been there. I have known something was wrong. 'Twas Mother calling out to me, begging me to return."

  Eleanora bent down and beckoned to Tom, who stuck his thumb in his mouth and refused to obey.

  "Why are you avoiding me? Why will you not tell me about Mother?"

  Hugh opened his arms and when Maria went to him, enfolded her once again in a tight embrace.

  "Did she die an awful death?" Maria swallowed down an anguished sob. "Did she forgive me for Lord Leybourne and did she miss me very much?"

  Hugh could not meet her eyes. "She passed so quick she didn't have time to mourn for anyone."

  Something was not right here. Hugh and Eleanora were not behaving as they should. Maria's mind began whirling with all manner of possible events concerning Henrietta, all involving her in culpability. "You do not blame me, Papa, do you? Do you think Mama died of a broken heart?"

  "Stop it!" Eleanora cried. Tears slid down her face but they were more of anger than grief. "Mother did not die because of you or anyone. She died of a murrain, that's all. And from the hour of Edmund Leybourne's death she never once mentioned your name, so do not torture yourself with fantasies of what might have been and never were."

  When Eleanora's meaning registered, Maria's sorrow began to harden until she felt dead inside—as dead as her mother. Henrietta had used her as a marriage pawn and when her usefulness had ended, erased the very thought of her. Henrietta hadn't anguished over their estrangement; she'd given it no thought at all.

 
Maria raised her eyes to the darkening sky, to the snowflakes drifting sporadically to the hay glutted earth of Deerhurst's bailey.

  "Now I know," she whispered. "I think I've always known."

  Chapter 13

  Westminster, 1320-1321

  The winter of 1320 proved the severest since the years immediately following Bannockburn. Leaving Deerhurst in the competent hands of Timothy Maudelyn, Maria and Phillip had returned to Fordwich and it was here they passed the brutal months. Snow climbed halfway up Fordwich Castle's outer curtain and drifted against the portcullis and outer gatehouse. Violent winds blasted through drafty passageways, flapping wall tapestries and extinguishing struggling torches. Chilblains were a universal affliction, as were perpetually aching extremities. Maria was certain she'd never again be warm.

  During Phillip's stay he'd proven himself a competent administrator. He'd also been prescient enough to have the castle's dungeon storerooms filled with wheat and other necessities, but elsewhere Englishmen went hungry, especially the poor. Poaching became commonplace. Hunting in the forests was reserved for the nobility, but with the worsening food shortages, peasants dared sneak an occasional hare or hart. By royal edict, death was ordered for any villain caught hunting in King Edward's private preserves, or those of his barons.

  By choice, His Grace remained isolated from his subjects' problems. The meals Edward enjoyed were sumptuous affairs, containing a variety of dishes lesser folk could only dream about. At Edward's side sat his now inseparable companion, Hugh Despenser, who had risen to a position of favor unparalleled since Piers Gaveston, dead now seven years. As Chamberlain of the royal household, Hugh the Younger enjoyed constant personal contact with Edward, and as his hold over the king tightened, his greed and that of his father, Hugh the Elder, surfaced in an alarming manner. Both Despensers coveted land—anyone's land—and they proceeded to obtain it by lawful means or no. Resentful and frightened, England's noblemen, led by the increasingly bitter Thomas of Lancaster, laid plans to thwart the favorite's ever-increasing power.

  "If it comes to force of arms," Roger Mortimer of Wigmore said, "We will wield a sword to protect our lands. I'll not suffer lightly anyone trying to carve up Marcher property for his own desires or reaching higher than he should."

  Strange words coming from a man known for his ambitions, but as the Despensers' actions grew ever more outrageous, other magnates openly agreed. It was not long before Hugh the Younger provoked them beyond endurance.

  Hugh the Younger had married His Grace's niece, Eleanor. Eleanor was the eldest daughter of the last earl of Gloucester, Gilbert, who had died in the first ill-fated charge at Bannockburn. Hugh's marriage made him co-heir to the great Clare estates, which suited his ambition of becoming a member of the highest aristocracy. Since Bannockburn, death had depleted the ranks of England's earls from fifteen to six. Fresh blood was needed at the top and Hugh was determined to provide that blood. Wishing to base his future greatness upon a Marcher principality in south Wales, Despenser moved to concentrate all the Clares' territories, as well as any other available land, in his hands.

  Declaring that Hugh Despenser had "despised the laws and customs of the march," a coalition of Marcher lords rose against him. It was led by Roger Mortimer and his nephew, Roger of Chirk.

  Behind that confederation stood Thomas of Lancaster.

  In April of 1321, the Marcher barons, wearing a special green uniform with a yellow sleeve on the right arm, torched the lands of both Hughs. Phillip Rendell rode with them. Not only were his brother Humphrey's lands threatened but at one time the favorites had even expressed an interest in Deerhurst—an interest soon thwarted, Phillip was certain, by Richard of Sussex.

  Across the Clare estates he and the Mortimers and the other Marcher lords rode, putting to torch thousands of acres and hundreds of manors, slaughtering or robbing the Despensers of tens of thousands of sheep, oxen, cattle, hogs, and horses. The night sky pulsated as flames annihilated acre after acre, driving animals and people before their wrath, destroying manor houses, outbuildings, food, furniture, and gold and silver worth thousands of pounds. Over brutal mountain areas and gentle farmland the Marchers raced—into the Wye Valley with its lofty cliffs and snaking river, through forests planted to pen in sheep—burning all they saw. An effluvium of smoke, the stench of roasting animals replaced the fragrance of meadow grass, fresh water, new-turned earth. Cinders raced the night wind, a glowing mirror of the stars beyond.

  As Phillip executed the swift strikes, he experienced a fierce joy. He felt himself one with the darkness, an anonymous bearer of the flame. He was exhilarated by the pounding vibration of his running horse between his thighs, the hot wind, the flames clawing the night.

  When the pillaging was over, he and Roger Mortimer and the other Marcher lords withdrew to their castles to await the Hugh Despensers' next move.

  But Thomas Lancaster acted first. He called barons and clergymen to his castle of Pontefract and in July, accompanied by an unprecedented number of magnates, marched on London. With Lancaster rode a large army that encamped in the villages to the north of the city.

  The time had come.

  Edward II must either give up his favorite or give up his crown.

  * * *

  Royal Westminster, the seat of England's government, was located just beyond London's walls and adjacent to the River Thames. Westminster Abbey, founded by Edward the Confessor, and its palace comprised the major buildings. Two thoroughfares serviced Westminster and it was from the north, along King Street, that Thomas Lancaster and England's barons rode on August 14, 1321. Knowing he had no choice, King Edward had hastily convened Parliament to deal with the matter of the Hugh Despensers. His barons were in no mood to compromise. To signify their unity they wore on their arms a white band; already the convocation had been nicknamed the Parliament of the White Bands.

  Inside Westminster Hall, His Grace studied the determined faces of the assembled lords. Though an inner fury raged, he also realized his helplessness for he no longer possessed the power to force his will. England's entire peerage stood against him.

  Someday, he thought, balling his fists, I will make you all pay.

  He hated his barons—always carping at him and blathering about "Nephew Hugh's" influence when Hugh Despenser was worth the lot of them. But for now Edward knew he had no choice. He must either banish the Despensers and return all their property or risk losing his throne.

  From the hall's gallery, rising twenty feet from the floor, the lords clustered in small groups, their eyes constantly straying toward the entrance through which Thomas Lancaster would momentarily arrive. The Marcher lords were still dressed in the dramatic green and yellow that they had worn during their raids.

  I hate you most of all, thought Edward. You arrogant Marcher lords who think you owe not allegiance to any man. You who think just because you patrol the Welsh border you can make your own laws and create your own principalities without regard to a king's sovereign rights.

  His gaze came to rest on the most powerful Marcher of them all, Roger Mortimer of Wigmore. Descended from the Welsh princes and the legendary William Marshal, Mortimer was dangerous, ambitious, and following his successful Irish campaign against the Scots, the only military hero of Edward's reign. The king was beginning to fear as well as despise him.

  A blast of trumpets announced the arrival of Thomas Lancaster. As Lancaster approached Edward, the king noted that Thomas's bearing was as regal as if 'twas he who ruled England. He was also wearing near as many jewels as belonged to the crown. Lancaster's scarlet and vermilion riding cloak swirled about his narrow shoulders, displaying beneath a purple and gold super tunic.

  Edward suppressed a smile. No wonder Piers nicknamed you "The Fiddler." Not even a Frenchman would attire himself so garishly.

  Westminster was so silent Lancaster's footsteps echoed off the cavernous roof clear as the ringing of St. Martin's at curfew. Lancaster obviously enjoyed being the center of attention. Neath
his liripiped and plumed hat, his small mouth curved in a half smile. Lancaster had reason to smile. He had re-emerged from the Treaty of Leake and his period of isolation as still the most powerful man in England, next to the king.

  As Lancaster swaggered to a stop before him, Edward squeezed the arms of his throne until his knuckles whitened. For a moment he thought Lancaster would not bend his knee to him. Lancaster took his own most gracious time—and made the obeisance appear contemptuous.

  The two men exchanged stiff greetings. Thomas then nodded to Richard of Sussex, who stood to Edward's right, and took his place among his supporters in the gallery.

  With that, the Parliament of the White Bands officially began.

  * * *

  Long shadows crept across the barnlike expanse of Westminster's hall, crawling across its two-hundred-forty-foot length to England's sovereign, slumped in his gilt edged chair. After five days of wrangling and threats, Edward had agreed, on this day of August 19, 1321, to sign a decree without parallel in English history. Though members of the nobility had previously been banished—witness Piers Gaveston—all had been foreign born. Never before had a true Englishman been formally exiled. Until today.

  Edward's hand hesitated over the document. He tugged nervously at his reddish gold beard, then turned to Richard of Sussex. A look passed between them. Richard bent near, his tawny head appearing even darker contrasted to Edward's bright curls, topped by a jeweled crown. Thomas Lancaster shifted impatiently in his seat. His hand edged to his dagger. Roger Mortimer looked to the entrance, as if momentarily expecting Edward's royal guard to break through.

  "Treachery," someone hissed.

  Richard of Sussex straightened. His eyes swept the gallery. Edward looked down at the document, then back up to Richard as if he were king. The papers rattled in his hands.

  Richard nodded. Edward returned his gaze to the decree. It stated that the Hugh Despensers were 'false and evil councilors, seducers, conspirators, disinheritors of the crown, enemies of the king and his kingdom.' It was false, all of it. And yet... Edward's sigh echoed in the expectant silence. Leaning forward he signed the decree that forever banished Hugh the Younger and Hugh the Elder from England.