The Traitor's Wife (38 page)

Leaky ceiling and all, a few hours after this exchange between Eleanor and the queen, on July 5, 1321, the queen gave birth to another girl. Edward gave Isabella the usual gift and pronounced the child's name—Joan, after both Isabella's mother and Edward's favorite sister—but the poor infant girl went otherwise quite unheralded in the weeks that followed.

Lancaster and a group of barons and knights had held a meeting at Dunstable at the end of June. The king had sent his steward, Bartholomew Badlesmere, to the assembly to urge that the destruction of the Despensers' lands cease and that the lords present their grievances before Parliament in the manner of civilized men, but Badlesmere instead had joined the king's opponents. After that meeting, the attendees had gone on to loot more Despenser lands, including Hugh the elder's beloved Loughborough. Eleanor had never seen her father-in-law so dejected as when the news came to him. Immediately afterward he departed the court to go to Canterbury, where he planned to pay a pilgrimage visit to Becket's shrine and await developments in the royal castle nearby.

Hugh the younger, cast down at his father's lingering anger at him, had stayed in London with the king, but with the opening of Parliament had deemed it prudent to reside on a boat, where he cruised up and down the Thames by day and visited the king and Eleanor at night when feasible.

With the king preoccupied, the queen ensconced in her (now dry) chamber following the birth of Joan, and the two Hughs absent, Eleanor, having been replaced in the queen's chamber by Joan of Bar, found herself relying on her son Hugh and the king's bastard son, Adam, for news. Hugh, now thirteen, and Adam, now fifteen, were the best of friends. Adam had spent most of his childhood at Langley, with a tutor, while Edward pondered his future. He had been inclined to have the boy enter the Church, where other royal bastards had flourished in the past, but Adam's own inclinations tended toward knighthood. For several years, he, like Hugh, had been a squire in the king's household. In a few years, Edward would find him a suitable wife.

When their duties were over, Hugh and Adam liked nothing better than to roam the city, dressed nondescriptly so as not to attract the attention of robbers. It was to their wanderings that Eleanor owed the news that came to her at the end of July.

“My uncles Audley and Damory have finally come to London,” said Hugh in his mother's chamber at Westminster, where Eleanor spent most of her time these days. She had thought it wise not to show herself much in the great hall. “So have Roger Mortimer and the Earl of Hereford.”

“Lord Mortimer is lodging at Clerkenwell,” said Adam. “The Earl of Hereford is at Holborn. Lord Damory is at the New Temple, and Lord Audley is at Smithfield. They entered the town today, all wearing green tunics with yellow quarters on the right arm with my father's insignia on them. To pretend that they are loyal to him, Father says.”

Adam's voice swelled with pride when he said, “Father,” and Eleanor once again thought it a great pity that the king's eldest son should have been born a bastard. As the king himself had derived so little pleasure from his role, however, perhaps Adam was better off for it. Her mind was too much on this news, though, to consider Adam further. “So they have come at last to London. Are they armed?”

“To the hilt,” said Hugh.

“Good God, Hugh! I hope they did not recognize you boys.”

“Not in what we were wearing.” Adam grinned. “We sat in a tavern with a bunch of them for two hours, and they paid us no mind.” He paused. “Lady Despenser, we heard that they want the exile of Lord Despenser and his father. Do you think that could happen?”

“I pray not, Adam.”

“But it happened earlier with my father's friend Gaveston.”

Hugh's usually cheerful face turned somber. He was growing up, Eleanor reflected sadly. Just yesterday, she had caught him eyeing the king's laundress as if the rather blowsy woman were Venus herself, and he was itching, he'd informed Adam the day before, to go fight the Scots. Eleanor prayed nightly that the truce stayed in effect. “Gaveston died, Mama. Didn't he?”

“Yes. But the situation is much different. The king and Gaveston relied on the earls' word that Gaveston would be safe with them. They broke that word, and he had been left with no means of resistance. Knowing that, your father is staying well away from his enemies, and he has soldiers on that boat with him.”

“If he goes into exile, will we go with him?”

Eleanor had asked Hugh that very question, but Hugh had only shrugged. “We'll deal with that when it becomes necessary, and I hope it will not,” he had said. Now Eleanor echoed her husband. “There is no point in worrying about this now, Hugh. Now that they are here for Parliament, some just agreement will surely be reached.”

Pembroke had enjoyed a few weeks with his new bride in France, which was fortunate, for as soon as the newlyweds arrived in England, Pembroke was summoned to court to negotiate between the king and his opponents. As the barons were threatening to burn London from Charing Cross to Westminster, and were even threatening the king with deposition, Pembroke's services seemed sorely needed. The Archbishop of Canterbury, and a host of bishops, had already tried to break the stalemate, and might as well have been talking to two sets of walls.

“This must end, your grace.” Pembroke took a deep breath. Although his sympathies edged closer to the side of the king's opponents than to that of the king and the Despensers, his own father and uncles, half brothers to Henry III, had been deeply unpopular in England themselves at times, and he could understand the king's stubborn refusal to give way to the barons. Yet this could not go on. Nothing was getting accomplished; already in May a delegation from Gascony had gone home, unheard, after spending three weeks seeking an audience with the king, Hugh the younger, or himself, all of whom were too preoccupied with this crisis to see them. “You will lose your kingdom at this rate. Have you the money to fight these men now? You know you don't, not the money or the men.”

“Hugh has been the epitome of loyalty to me.” Pembroke shifted uneasily. During the barons' meetings, Bartholomew Badlesmere, with a convert's enthusiasm, had produced a document in which he claimed that Hugh had declared that homage was owed to the crown but not necessarily to the person who wore it. The Bishop of Rochester had denounced the document as a forgery, and Pembroke suspected he was correct. Yet the charge had stuck. “He has never wavered from my side, neither he nor his father. Why should I send them off to please these men?”

“It is for the common good, your grace. With them gone England can yet be united and strong, and you will reign in power and glory.”

“And without the man I hold dearest in the world.” The king looked out upon the Thames. “There he sails as we speak, Pembroke.”

“For God's sake, man, consider! They have threatened you with deposition. They may have the numbers and the men to do it. Think of your successor, a mere boy of nine. You will be handing the government over to Lancaster, you know. He would be worse than Des—your grace, you must not for any living soul lose your kingdom. He perishes on the rocks who loves another more than himself! I can say no more, your grace. If you are not convinced, you never will be, and you will suffer the consequences.” He added deferentially, “I fear.”

From a corner in the room, skirts rustled. Both the king and Pembroke had forgotten about the queen, who with the infant Joan had arrived at Westminster from the Tower only a day or so before. She stood and walked a few paces over to the king, only to drop at his feet. “Your grace, I beg that you listen to the good Earl of Pembroke. Would you risk your crown, your child's crown, for this man who is so unworthy of you? Your grace, I have been your faithful queen and consort, borne you four thriving children, supported you in all. And now I am asking you only one thing. Banish them! 'Tis for the good of the realm, my lord. I have come to love this England of yours. If you cannot do it for my sake, do it for hers.” The queen bent her head and kissed the king's robe.

Pembroke, astonished at this impassioned speech, sank to his knees also. Looking at their downturned heads, the king felt a strange mixture of annoyance, admiration, and weariness. Weariness predominated. He raised them to their feet. “Pembroke, have the Archbishop of Canterbury summon the barons here forthwith.”

As a squire in the king's household, on August 14, 1321, Adam had every right to be in the great hall at Westminster where the leaders of the Church, the earls, and the barons had assembled, although his friend Hugh le Despenser had been advised to keep distant of the proceedings.

The group dropped collectively to its knees as the king entered, flanked by Pembroke and the Earl of Richmond. In response to an impatient gesture by the king, the magnates arose and waited for the king to speak. They did not have to wait long. In a cold, clipped voice, the king said, “Out of necessity, and at the urging of the great men of the realm and my beloved queen, I have agreed to the exile of the Hugh le Despensers, father and son.”

He turned and walked out of the room. After a few minutes Adam slipped out also. Someone, he thought, should tell his cousin Lady Despenser of the news.

“You wished to speak with me, my lady?”

Though Adam had hastened to Eleanor with his news, he had been forestalled by the king himself, who had told Eleanor in the gentlest possible manner. “Yes, your grace. Why did you urge the king to exile my husband and his father?”

The queen stared at Eleanor coolly. “You are rather presumptuous, particularly in light of your husband's position. It is not for me to justify my actions to you. But to satisfy your curiosity, I believed it was for the good of the realm.”

“My husband and my father-in-law have always been loyal to the king. Who has been more loyal than they? How will the realm be served by exiling them?”

“You seem to have forgotten, my lady, that your husband brought this on himself. His greed has made him many enemies in the March.”

“That was between him and them. That is no cause to exile him, to take him away from the land of his birth! Where will he go?”

“That is his concern, isn't it?” The queen lifted her hand in dismissal. “Under the circumstances, it would not be mutually beneficial for you to continue to attend me, I gather, but you and your children may certainly stay at court if you choose.”

“With all respect, your grace, it is my uncle who shall determine whether we may stay at court, not you.” She curtseyed and backed out of the room.