The Traitor's Wife (19 page)

To the barons' dismay, Edward had drawn closer to his French father-in-law, and in the spring of 1313, as the glow of the birth of an heir was beginning to wear off, he accepted the French king's invitation to visit him in Paris, where Isabella's brothers were to be knighted. The trip was hardly a jaunt for Edward—there was diplomatic work to be done as well as feasting—but the barons grumbled nonetheless.

Back in England, the peace efforts resumed, complete with Gloucester, Richmond, and papal envoys, and in October 1313, they at last bore fruit. More worn down with time than anything else, the king and the earls entered into a treaty.

“The king cannot but be pleased with it,” said Hugh the elder. “Nothing branding poor Gaveston the king's enemy; no one removed from court—not even me as Lancaster has wished—and Henry de Beaumont and Lady Vescy are no longer outlawed by the Ordinances. Lancaster and the others must kneel before the king and accept his forgiveness, and that cannot be something they are stomaching well.”

There was no satisfaction in Hugh's voice, though. After a brief improvement, his son Philip's health had rapidly declined, and just weeks before, he had succumbed to consumption. Hugh had reached his deathbed just in time to be recognized by his son; shortly after Philip's burial at the house of the Augustinian friars in London, he and his elder son and daughter-in-law had returned to Westminster, where Parliament was in session, though it was clear from Hugh's bearing that his heart was not in his duties as a peer. He continued tiredly, “There will be a banquet, of course, to mark their reconciliation. There always is.”

The banquet, hosted by the king, took place several weeks later. The entire court was present. From their table a distance from the dais where the king and the earls sat, Eleanor and her husband watched as the king embraced and kissed earl after earl. Warwick and Lancaster more or less submitted to their embraces, and the king's was hardly heartfelt either, but all were more gallant when it came time to approach the queen. With each embrace, Hugh's lip curled more and more perceptibly.

“It'll not last long,” he said, yawning.

“Really, Lady Despenser! You must be half fish.”

Isabella de Vescy, restored to the queen's household, looked none too happy about it at the moment, for the crossing from Dover to France on the last day of February 1314 was proving to be a rough one. Joan of Bar, the Earl of Surrey's wife, also looked queasy, but Eleanor turned back to the ladder and the boy waiting to assist her up to the deck. “If none of you wish to go up, then I will go by myself. It is wonderful—the waves just high enough to give you a bounce, and the salt on your cheek.”

“Why not take service as a cabin boy, Eleanor?” asked Joan, Eleanor's first cousin, humorlessly. Joan had cause for her grumpiness, Eleanor reflected, because her husband had recently set up open housekeeping with his mistress, who had already borne him a fine bastard. Rumor had it that he was trying to get his marriage annulled, although as he had received a papal dispensation to be married in the first place, his chances appeared somewhat dubious. Eleanor, therefore, only laughed and ascended the ladder.

Up on deck was her brother, who along with Henry de Beaumont and others was there to accompany the queen on her second visit to France in less than a year. Although the English royal couple's visit to Philip the previous year had been a cordial one, issues remained to be worked out, and Edward, having concluded his peace with his barons, had come to France briefly in December to meet with the French king. His stay had been but a brief one, and with the Scottish situation growing ever more alarming, it was decided to send the queen to France to intercede with her father while her husband and most of the English nobility stayed at home.

Gilbert turned as Eleanor's head emerged from the hold. “Is that you, sister? Shouldn't you be holding a basin for the queen or something?”

“She has her damsels to do that, and in any case she is bearing up well this time. It is Lady Vescy and the Countess of Surrey who are seasick today.”

“Well, I am glad, because it is good to have some privy conversation with you.” He smiled awkwardly, for their breach over Gaveston had been slow to heal. Margaret, who had been granted dower lands by the king and was living very comfortably, had still not forgiven her brother, despite Eleanor's efforts. “I feel as if I am somehow shirking a duty, coming here with the queen, for we are heading to war with the Scots, you know.”

“I hope it will not come to that.”

“How can it not, Nelly? The king has summoned us earls and the barons to be in Berwick in June. We will be the superior force, but Bruce is wily, and even our grandfather the first Edward could not subdue him. I just hope our uncle is a match for him.”

“He is no coward.”

“But he has never led a large campaign before, and he hasn't that single-minded quality our grandfather had.”

“Perhaps you underestimate him, but I know nothing about these matters.” She shrugged in a pretty manner that she had learned from the queen.

“You should care, because your husband and father-in-law will certainly join in whatever takes place. But enough of this talk. How are your children?”

Eleanor knew it cost Gilbert pain to ask this question, for his one child—a boy—had died soon after birth. “Hugh sits a horse beautifully, but I wish he had more interest in his lessons! It is all his tutor can do to get him to sit still for five minutes. Isabel prattles and prattles now—to think I was worried that she was slow to talk! I hope after this I can go and stay with them a while.” To talk of her children before her brother seemed almost like gloating, so she changed the subject. “Have you heard from Elizabeth? Does she mean to stay in Ireland?”

Elizabeth's twenty-three-year-old husband, son of the Earl of Ulster, had died suddenly the previous June, leaving her with a boy, William. Gilbert shrugged. “The Earl of Ulster looks after her well, and I daresay scares off any suitors who might have an eye on her dower. As long as she is happy there, I shall not press for her to come home.”

“How is Maud?”

Gilbert's face changed. “She sorely feels that we have had no living child, and it affects her temper. Young as she is, sometimes she reminds me of a bitter old woman.”

“I am sorry, Gilbert. But there is hope; you know you can have children together, and you are but young.”

“I envy your marriage, Eleanor. You and Hugh seem happy together.”

“I am lucky, for there is no one to me so dear as he.”

“And he seems very fond of you. How unlike our poor cousin downstairs! I'll swear, the day she was married to him, Surrey already had his eye on another woman! But this is gloomy talk once more. Let us walk to the ship's railing where we can look at the water better. You like that, I know.”

Philip of France had spent the last seven years suppressing the Knights Templar, a group of monastic knights that had gained fame, wealth, and enemies over the years. Seeing a chance to line his coffers, Philip had arrested every Templar in France in 1307 on trumped-up charges of heresy, idolatry, and even sodomy; through torture, he gained a number of confessions, which in turn led to a papal inquiry and the eventual dissolution of the order. The inquiry in many countries, including England, had been a halfhearted one; the Templars in England had been allowed to confess and do penance, after which most returned to secular life with small pensions. In France, however, thirty-six men died, apart from those tortured. The wealth of the Templars passed to the French crown.

Among those who had confessed was Jacques de Molay, the grand master of the Templars. Having done so, he was awaiting his sentence in front of Notre Dame when he recanted his confession and declared himself ready to face death. It came on March 19, 1314, at Philip's order, in front of the royal palace. Rumor had it that as the flames engulfed him, Molay cursed the Pope and the French king.

Isabella and her party were not witnesses to this event, Isabella having stayed only a short time in Paris before departing on pilgrimage to Chartres the day before Molay's death. The court was still talking of little else, though in whispers, when Isabella and her household returned to Paris at the end of March. If the queen was shaken by the curse laid upon her father, or if she felt any moral revulsion at her father's conduct, she did not reveal it to her horrified ladies, who in turn did not dare discuss the subject with Isabella.

Philip went about his business—it was probably not the first time a dying man had cursed him, as Philip had also persecuted the Lombards and the Jews—suavely, and graciously welcomed his daughter and her ladies to his court. Eleanor trembled as the queen presented her and the others to her father, who had countenanced such wickedness and brought a curse upon himself; yet Philip the Fair received the ladies with perfect courtesy, even remembering enough about their backgrounds to inquire about their relatives by name.

The Pope would be dead within a month. The French king himself would be dead within eight months, and all of his sons would be dead without male issue by 1328, leading to the Hundred Years' War, but no shadow of those events hung over the French court during the next couple of weeks as the court welcomed Isabella back among its midst. Nearly the whole family was together, Philip noted cheerfully: Isabella; her three brothers, Louis, Philip, and Charles; and their wives, Marguerite, Jeanne, and Blanche.

As she had been the year before, Isabella was much admired by all, her face being lovely as ever and childbirth having given her figure a nice rounding it lacked before. Rather to her own surprise, Lady Despenser also attracted a certain amount of admiration, which Eleanor attributed partly to the beautiful robes that Hugh had allowed her to have made for her trip to France and partly to the lack of any other redheaded woman at the French court at the time. The men of the court would not have completely contradicted either of these theories, but they would have also noted Lady Despenser's full bosom, sweet speaking voice, and appealing countenance. Beyond this, Eleanor had the fascination that came from unattainability, for even when dancing with another man she was very much the wife of Hugh le Despenser, notwithstanding the fact that he was across the English Channel.

Two of the most charming of the knights were Philippe and Gautier d'Aunay, brothers. They had a younger companion, Jean, and it was he who always seemed to be at Eleanor's side when it was time to dance.

Eleanor was no flirt—she had been married before she had developed any expertise in this area, and once married, she had found no reason to look at any other man beside her husband. Yet she had improved her social graces since joining Isabella's court, and she found no difficulty in bantering with Jean, even if the meaning of some of the glances he sent her way escaped her entirely.

“You have made quite a conquest, Eleanor,” said Joan of Bar one morning as Isabella, her sisters-in-law, and their ladies sat at their needlework, the men having gone hunting.

“What on earth do you mean?”

“How can you ask? That knight Jean was at your side all evening.”

Eleanor pondered this and found it to be true. “I suppose he was, but there was nothing improper in his conduct. If there had been, I would have had my brother deal with it immediately.”

“What did he talk of?”

“Truly, Joan, I think it no concern of yours,” snapped Eleanor. They had in fact mainly discussed the recent business in England, during which Eleanor had become very heated in defense of her late brother-in-law Gaveston, but she saw no need to mention this with the queen within earshot.