The Traitor's Wife (47 page)

“Surely the king must see the danger in all of this.”

“The king! Hugh le Despenser helped him revenge himself on the men who killed Gaveston, and he has become Edward's lover. For those two reasons, the king will neither see the danger nor do anything about it if he did see it. Don't look so shocked, Joan. It has become common knowledge that the king and Nephew Hugh are sodomites. Pages do talk. Only one adult person in England seems unaware of it, and that is Hugh's fool of a wife.”

“Your grace! Lady Despenser is my cousin.”

“And my niece by marriage, and a fool. She has been besotted with Hugh since the day she married him, and always will be. No one would dream of telling her the truth about him, and she would not believe anyone if he did tell her. After all, she bears Despenser's brats regularly; in her last letter to me about my son John she mentioned that there is another on the way. As if I cared!”

“First Gaveston, and now Hugh le Despenser. You have borne this nobly, darling.”

“Oh, don't mistake the situation, Joan. Edward has never shunned my bed, and at least his exploits out of it won't produce a string of bastards to be given lands and titles. I was willing enough to overlook his perversity. But when Hugh le Despenser seized my lands, dismissed my own servants…”

“But are not the lands in the king's hands?”

“Yes, and whatever goes to the king goes to Hugh, directly or indirectly. He is waxing fat now. But someday…”

She got up and gazed out the window. “Roger Mortimer has the right idea. He knows that there will be no good government in England until the Despensers are separated from the king. And he is willing to risk all to make that happen.”

“Your grace, how do you know this?”

“Because, Joan dear, he has told me so. Through my brother.”

“And how does he plan to separate them from the king?”

“That,” said Isabella coolly, “he has not decided upon yet.”

Seventeen-year-old Hugh le Despenser, his first cousin Hugh de Hastings, and his young uncle Edward de Monthermer watched the breakers from the ramparts of Dover Castle, to which they had taken their dice and their boredom on a hot August afternoon. “Think this will be the day?” asked Hastings.

The three young men, along with many others, were awaiting the king, with whom they were to sail for France, for Edward, rather to the surprise of Isabella, had agreed to pay homage to Charles. While his would-be entourage had gathered at Dover Castle, and an advance party had headed to France, the king had settled at the nearby monastery of Langdon.

“I hope so, because I can't afford to lose any more money at dicing,” said Monthermer. “What do you think, Despenser? Will he go or back out? What does your father advise?”

Hugh le Despenser winced, for he was always uncomfortable when the subject turned to his father, even in sympathetic company like that of Hastings and Monthermer. He loved his father and enjoyed spending time with him, but he had been in the wider world too long not to know that his father was disliked and that there was some justification for it. How much Hugh did not know, for his father was no more forthcoming about his darker activities with his eldest son than he was with his wife. “I've no idea,” he said a bit irritably. “Father doesn't discuss the king's business with me, nor should he.”

Hastings, who as nephew to Hugh le Despenser the younger and grandson to Hugh le Despenser the elder also had ambivalent feelings toward his relations, understood his cousin's discomfiture. Quickly, he said, “I'm in no hurry to go to France anyway, for I've a bride to meet. Did I tell you, Hugh? My mother has arranged with the king to purchase the wardship of Margery Foliot. Edward here already knows; he stood surety for Mother. Margery's quite pretty, I hear, and will bring Elsing manor with her. She has been a ward of the crown and staying in the Tower, but soon she will be coming to live with my mother at Marlborough, and then I shall see her. But I can't marry her until next year. Mother says she needs time to develop.”

“Or you do,” said Edward amiably. “Get that tavern maid you are always going on about to show you some things before your wedding night, will you, please? Or otherwise it will be a sad occasion.”

“I don't go on about that tavern maid!”

Despenser consulted an imaginary memoranda book. “First of August, 1325. Went to Black Chicken. Saw tavern maid; mentioned her to friends. Second of August, 1325. Spoke to tavern maid; mentioned her to friends. Third of August. Tavern maid talking to blacksmith. Greatly cast down; mentioned her to friends. Fourth of August. Tavern maid accepted hair ribbon. Elated; mentioned her to friends. Fifth of August—”

“Well,” said Hastings mildly, “she is a natural blonde.”

Despenser's page hurried toward them. “Beg pardon, sir, but a messenger just arrived downstairs. The king has changed his mind. He will not be going to France.”

“Why?”

“He says he is ill, sir.”

Not a person at court could ever remember having seen the king ill; he did not even have head colds. As the friends glanced at each other, the page added, “I hear that he will be sending his son Edward in his place.”

“You wished to see me, sir, and I have agreed. But I am rather surprised at your coming to Paris, when you are not supposed to be in France at all.”

Roger Mortimer smiled at the queen. “As some who are supposed to be in France are not in France, perhaps that is an excuse, your grace?”

“Perhaps. What is your business with me?”

“I shall get to that. Tell me, your grace, now that your son Edward will be coming to France as Duke of Aquitaine, what shall you do after he pays his homage?”

“Why, return to England, what else?”

“Yet you have tarried here long enough this summer.”

“I have expected all of this time to be joined by my husband, sir. And I might have been needed for other negotiations.”

Mortimer laughed. “The truth is, your grace, you've been in no hurry to return home. And who blames you? Not I. What, after all, have you to return to? A husband who can't win a war, who can't command the respect of his barons, who is fair game for any man willing to bed him.”

“How dare you speak of these things to me?”

“I dare quite a bit of things, as you shall see. And I only speak the truth, and you know it. But the list goes on. Your estates have been seized, your servants banished, yourself put into the keeping of Hugh le Despenser's little wife. Is that what you wish to return to, your grace? If so, you are a fool.”

“You have overstepped your bounds, sir. Leave me.”

“No, I won't.” Mortimer took the queen by the wrist and looked straight into her eyes. “I know you are not a fool, and that is why I am here now. To offer you the chance of your lifetime.”

“I do not understand you.”

“In a matter of days, your son will be here. With him here, why should you come back to the king like a little lapdog returning to her master? Put conditions on your return. I'm sure you can think of one.”

“That the Despensers leave the king.”

“Excellent.”

“But he will never agree to that.”

“Probably not. But you have the heir to his kingdom with you, don't you? One king can be put down, another brought up. It's that simple, your grace.”

Isabella started. “You mean the king—an anointed of God—should be deposed?”

“Only as a last resort.”

“Last resort, first resort—that is outrageous!”

“No,” said Mortimer. “
This
is outrageous.” He tilted the queen's chin upward and kissed her.

G
LADYS DID NOT KNOW WHETHER TO LOOK UP, DOWN, OR AROUND FIRST as she entered the chamber in Sheen Palace that had been allotted to Eleanor. Up, the ceiling was painted a brilliant blue that the English sky only occasionally attained. Down, the floor was covered in carpet so thick and soft that walking on it took a bit more effort than usual. Around, there were the goldfinches—forty-seven of them, Gladys later counted—singing a greeting to the ladies as they stepped into the chamber. “My lady, this is fit for a queen!”

Eleanor, though no stranger to luxury, was equally taken aback. “My uncle told me that there would be a pretty chamber for me, but I was hardly expecting this.” She looked at the bed, where several bolts of cloth in Eleanor's favorite greens and blues lay, begging to be made into robes, and on a table, where a romance, fresh from the hands of the illuminator, rested.

“Well, if Isabella knew what quarters the king was giving you, she'd be home in a trice to boot you out,” Gladys said dryly. “When is she returning home, anyway?”

Eleanor shook her head. “Young Edward did his homage several weeks ago, and the French king said he was satisfied. There is no reason for her to be tarrying there. But I suppose Edward might want to travel around there a bit. After all, he is half French, and has never seen the land.”

“Why he'd want to see it, I don't know,” said Gladys, like a good Englishwoman. “There's plenty of England for him to see.”

“There is no accounting for tastes,” Eleanor said dryly. She stretched out on the bed contentedly and smiled as the babe she carried within her, due in December, gave a sharp kick.

The king and Hugh came to visit Eleanor and her charge John of Eltham a few days at Sheen, then moved on to the royal manor at Cippenham, near Slough, in late October. It was there one chilly morning, as the men lay together in Edward's chamber, the bed curtains drawn tight against intruders, that the knocking came, a knocking that was insistent yet so light that neither man could have guessed the fate for each that it portended. Finally, Edward yawned, “Enter.”

A scrawny page spoke into the bed curtains—gossip had advised him never to pull at them, for one never knew whom one might find inside them. “Beg pardon, your grace, it is Bishop Stapeldon. He craves a word with you immediately.”

“
Stapeldon?
” the king echoed. “Why, he should be in France! What is he doing here?”

“I don't know,” admitted the page. “But he is here.”

This point being unanswerable, the king dismissed the page. Hugh having retreated to the antechamber where he nominally had a bed, the king's valet and Hugh's valet set to work, and the bishop was ushered in shortly thereafter.

It was the bishop who could have used the attention of a valet, however. Walter Stapeldon's hair was untidy, his clothes travel-splattered—and he was not, the king suddenly realized, even wearing his normal attire. He looked like a traveling peddler whose business had hit a dry spell. “Sir, what is the matter here? Why have you returned from France with no warning? Where are your men? Why are you dressed as you are? Do the queen and Edward follow you?”