The Traitor's Wife (23 page)

“I will if you will lie down beside me. Here. This is my good side.”

She stripped down to her shift and lay down on Hugh's right, where his wounds had been minor. She guided his hand to her swelling belly and stroked his hair as he drifted off to sleep. Soon she was asleep too. So Hugh the elder found them some few minutes later. He drew the bed curtains around them and softly slipped out of the room.

Hugh was still convalescing when Eleanor, sitting by his bed as usual, was summoned to the king. There he sat in the great hall, along with the queen, Hugh the elder, and two men.

She uttered a cry of delight and ran forward when she recognized the older of the men, for he was her stepfather. As she stepped from his embrace, she saw that the second man was a stranger to her. He was broad-shouldered, with dark hair. His rugged, rather overbearing handsomeness did little to appeal to Eleanor, who preferred Hugh's wiry body and sharply etched features, but she could see where other women might find him attractive.

“Lord Monthermer and Lord Roger Mortimer have been sent home by the Bruce without ransom,” said the king.

Mortimer. Eleanor stole a glance at her father-in-law. A Mortimer had slain his father at Evesham, when Hugh was but a child of four, and had grossly dishonored the body of Simon de Montfort. Hugh had been left with only the faintest memories of his father, but his mother had taught him to emulate him, and though he was too sensible to hold the Mortimer in front of him responsible for a killing committed many years before his time and almost before Hugh's own, he would gladly have excused himself from the young man's company were it not for what Mortimer had brought with him. Hugh said quietly, “He also released your brother's body, Eleanor. Here it is.”

For the first time, she saw the plain coffin. Without thinking, she started as if to lift the lid, but Ralph stopped her. “It is not a sight for your eyes, Eleanor. I have seen him. He is your brother, though. Trust me.”

Eleanor turned her head away. After a few minutes, she said quietly, “I shall write Maud. I am certain she will want to have him buried with our ancestors at Tewkesbury.” She managed to smile at her stepfather. “Lord Monthermer, I am grateful the Lord has returned you to us.” She paused. “And you, Lord Mortimer. Lord Monthermer is my stepfather, so I naturally spoke to him first, but I am glad he spared both of you.”

“Oh, of course,” said Mortimer carelessly.

“Were you treated badly?” Eleanor asked.

“To the contrary, I was feasted,” said Ralph. He shrugged apologetically. “Once I saved the Bruce's skin from the first Edward, by warning him so that he could flee, and the Bruce did not forget that, it appears.”

“Had you not done so, things would be quite different now,” muttered Mortimer.

“True,” said Ralph coolly. “But this was a fair fight. What happened years before was a trap, and I do not like traps.” He turned away from Mortimer and said, “He treated Gilbert's body with great respect, sitting vigil with it all night in the church to which it was carried. He mourned your brother, as a matter of fact. You should know that.”

The Clares were relations of Robert Bruce, as was Mortimer. “It comforts me, sir, and I will make certain that my sisters and the Countess of Gloucester know it too.”

“In addition to sending us the body, he has sent the Great Seal, which the king lost in retreating, and the king's shield.” Mortimer held it up almost in triumph. Eleanor saw Edward flinch.
Retreat
was not a word with which the first Edward would have expected someone to use in conjunction with the word
king
.

“It is magnanimous of him,” said the king with a sigh.

For some minutes the men traded news of the battle: who had returned, who had died, who would be ransomed, and who was as yet unaccounted for, while Eleanor, unnoticed, went to Gilbert's coffin and knelt beside it.

Mortimer said abruptly, “So what of the Countess of Gloucester? Is she with child?”

He was looking at Eleanor. “I do not know, Lord Mortimer.”

“Aye? I think it would be a subject of the greatest interest to you.”

“I do not take your meaning.”

“Come now, Lady Despenser! Surely the thought has entered your mind. If Gloucester left no heir, you and your sisters will be rich women, even with the Clare inheritance divided into thirds.”

The thought had not entered Eleanor's mind, in truth. She blushed as all those present stared at her. Her father-in-law came to her rescue. “My son has been gravely ill from his wounds these past few days, my lord. It was thought until recently that he might not recover. My daughter-in-law has scarcely had time to consider the future between her grief over her brother and nursing her husband.”

“Aye? A devoted wife as well as a potentially rich one. Sir Hugh is a lucky man.”

“He is indeed,” said Ralph coldly. He put his arm around Eleanor. “There will be time to consider this later. My stepdaughter's grief is still fresh.”

Mortimer turned away from Eleanor and began a conversation about the situation in Ireland, where he had been stationed up until this foray into Scotland.

Eleanor paid no attention to it. She had spoken truthfully about not thinking of Gilbert's inheritance, so all-consuming had been her fears for Hugh. But now she remembered odd looks she had been given over the last few days when she had emerged from Hugh's chamber, remarks she had not fully understood. She had even heard someone whisper, “If Sir Hugh dies, there will be
three
wealthy widows for the king to parcel out,” and so horrified had she been by the first four words that she had paid no attention to the ones that followed. Of course, she and Elizabeth and Margaret would inherit their brother's estates if Gilbert had left no heir—and the only child Maud had produced previously had been short-lived. Was she indeed a rich woman now?

She wondered if Hugh had thought of it. But she was certain of one thing: It had been inexcusably gauche of Mortimer to mention it, with poor Gilbert lying feet away in his coffin. She heartily wished him back in Ireland.

In his bed, Hugh started awake.
If Gilbert de Clare died without an heir, I could be Lord of Glamorgan.

It was the first time the thought had occurred to him, for in the midst of battle and flight not even Hugh was capable of reviewing his landed status, and he had been too sick and weak after the escape to concern himself with the Clare inheritance. But now the words ran though his brain again and again.
Lord of Glamorgan
. And then,
Earl of Gloucester
.

He sat bolt upright in bed for the first time since he'd been carried there and gestured to a page. “Fetch me my father.”

“He is an odious man!” Eleanor jabbed her needle fiercely into her embroidery hoop. Joan of Bar, who had made the mistake of telling the other ladies that she thought Mortimer handsome, started.

“He is outspoken,” said the queen thoughtfully.

“If such rudeness and effrontery can be called that! Not a word of condolence for my dear brother, who was a greater man at twenty-three than that nasty creature could hope to be at forty. And to insinuate that I should see his death as a boon!”

“He only pointed out the obvious, Lady Despenser. You cannot blame the man for that.”

“And what is my inheritance—if I have one—to him?”

“Glamorgan,” said Lady Vescy. “Do you not know the importance of Glamorgan, girl? As the eldest, you are bound to get that as your portion, and Mortimer, though he has hitherto been serving in Ireland, is one of the most powerful lords in the Welsh march. It is everything to him who gets Glamorgan.”

“Yes,” said Eleanor thoughtfully, “I seem to remember that my father and the Mortimers were in a dispute over Wales.”

“The Mortimers have been in disputes with everyone over Wales, English and Welsh alike. It's no marvel that they should wonder which of you sisters will have the lordship of Glamorgan, if at all.”

“If I have to have Roger Mortimer as a neighbor, I hope I don't get a single acre of it.”

“Somehow,” said Lady Vescy, “I doubt your husband would share your opinion.”

Hugh was all but on his feet when his father arrived in the sickroom. “Father! Have you heard whether the Countess of Gloucester is with child?”

“I have not. Strangely, Lord Mortimer asked your wife the same question a few minutes hence. It seems you are thinking on the same lines, which has surely never happened before when our family and the Mortimers are concerned. Lie down. You are still not strong.”

Hugh obeyed, but caught at his father's hand. “Do you not understand what it means? Eleanor as the eldest will get the best lands, and that is Glamorgan. Glamorgan!”

“I understand full well what it means. Danger.”

“Not in the hands of the right man.” Hugh settled back on his pillows, with a tired but visionary look on his face.

Hugh looked at his son thoughtfully. From a very young age his son had been wont to go his own way, and no amount of discipline, even the occasional caning, had stopped him. Hugh, in truth, had not tried all that hard. Perhaps his own lack of a father had something to do with that; though he'd had a loving grandfather and his stepfather had been pleasant enough to him, he'd remembered and heard enough about his father to miss him deeply, and his death had left a void in Hugh's heart that nothing had completely filled until his own children had been born. He loved them all, but perhaps inevitably, his deepest love had been bestowed on his eldest son, and Hugh, for all the rows they'd had over the years, had fully reciprocated. As a small boy, he would wander away from his nurse and seek out his father for no better reason than that he wanted to be near him; many a council meeting had Hugh spent with his little son on his lap, the boy sometimes watching the proceedings alertly, other times sleeping soundly against his father's chest. When he was older and had become an expert hunter—and, Hugh knew, an expert poacher—he had proudly had plates of venison brought to his father's table; it seemed churlish to inquire too closely about its provenance.

Eldest sons and their fathers were often in an uneasy relationship; many a father who'd reached his fifties, as had Hugh, was conscious of a feeling, not always well hidden, that it was time to make a graceful exit and get land into younger, more capable hands. Not so his son; he'd taken the manors that Hugh had granted him gratefully, never asked for more. Was it because he'd found other ways of getting money? Once, in a rare unguarded moment, Hugh had mentioned the Bardi, the great Italian bankers, and his father had started: What the hell did a man with an income of only two hundred pounds a year need or want to do with the Bardi? And then there were Gaveston's ridiculous accusations of piracy. Sheer nonsense, as so much of poor Gaveston's remarks had been, but Hugh had not been able to shake them off. He'd looked more carefully at the necklace his daughter-in-law wore every day: not of English workmanship, not of French either. Something that might have come on a ship from Italy, one that had been plundered…