The Traitor's Wife (82 page)

“So where do you think he is?”

“Corfe Castle,” Kent answered promptly. “A friar told me that he is there.” Kent had clearly had enough of these tedious details. He leaned forward, tapping an excited finger against his wine cup. “I am going to set him free, and restore him to the throne. But to do so I must have help, and that is why I am here tonight.”

William stole a look at his stepson, sitting next to Berenger, but Edward's dark eyes, like his father's had been, were unreadable. He said hesitantly, “Restore him to the throne, my lord, assuming he is really alive to be restored? With all of his shortcomings—”

“He is my brother,” said Kent simply. “I betrayed him in France, when I joined the queen. I betrayed him at Westminster, when I shouted in favor of his son. I'll not betray him again, now that I know he is alive.” The earl drained his cup. “It is best that I be on my way, Lord Zouche. You being out of favor with the crown, it won't do for me to be seen much around you. But talk to Sir Ingelram here. I will await to hear from him what you choose to do.”

He left the room, and soon William from his window saw him galloping away toward London. Only then did he ask, “Sir Ingelram. Do you believe the late king is still alive?”

“No. I believe he is dead. Murdered.”

“But you have allowed the earl to believe that you think him alive?”

“No. He knows I have my doubts. He knows we all have our doubts— there's several of us he's spoken to, you see. He humors our doubts, waits for the day he can show us his brother alive and well.” Berenger poured himself some more wine. “But if this can be used to stir the people against Mortimer and the queen…”

“Who else is he speaking to?”

Berenger smiled. “A wider range of people than you might think. Men like myself who were associated with the Despensers, of course, who never have borne the Earl of March any goodwill. But there's others too, like yourself, who once followed him and now have reason to want him gone. Men who are ready for a change, all of us.”

“Lancaster?”

The old knight shook his head. “There were some moves by the Earl of Kent in that direction, but the Earl of Lancaster preferred to take a different path against Mortimer. Now he's got Mortimer's spies on him and couldn't help us if he wanted to.”

“The Earl of Kent abandoned the Earl of Lancaster. What makes you think he won't do the same now?”

“Intuition, I guess. He does feel great guilt for leaving his brother to that she-wolf of a queen. And there's always been something rather lackadaisical about the Earl of Kent. Not now. He's taken this to heart.” He shrugged. “If I'm wrong, and he betrays us or bungles this business, you don't need me to tell you that we're dead men. I'm willing to take the risk, myself. My world as I knew it ended when they killed the Earl of Winchester.” Berenger crossed himself and then touched Edward on the shoulder. “He was like a brother to me.”

“What does the Earl of Kent want from us?”

“Money, at the moment. I'm going to raise some on my lands in Cambridge.”

William sipped his wine and pondered. Never in his life, he decided, had he heard such a harebrained scheme. The fact that the Earl of Kent, whose accomplishments thus far in life had not exactly been impressive, was at its head and that his accomplice was a man who was highly lucky to have escaped execution along with the Despensers hardly inspired confidence either. Every bit of common sense Zouche possessed warned him off.

But what had common sense done to get Eleanor back? “Tell the earl I'll give all that I can. Starting with monies from my own lands in Cambridge.”

Eleanor's first few days of captivity had been relatively busy. After collapsing in a faint in front of the king and his council she had awoken to find herself back in her old quarters in the Beauchamp Tower, with two of Mortimer's men standing over her. Then, and for several days thereafter, they had questioned her. Eleanor had admitted her guilt. Some of the jewels, she had acknowledged, were still in Hanley Castle; the rest had been brought as security to Benedict de Fulsham, who was in no way involved in her felony. She did not know the whereabouts of any goods belonging to Hugh or his father, except for those she had taken from the Tower and the few worthless items that had been left behind on her Clare lands. Her husband, William la Zouche, had known nothing of her actions, nor had Gladys or any of her children. She'd begged, over and over again, to be allowed to see the king and explain. Surely he, or his kindly wife, could understand how grief-stricken and angry she'd been.

How Mortimer had learned of her felony she did not know. Tom, hearing the charge against her as he and Hugh stood shackled nearby, had cried, “No! I did it. Not the lady! Not the lady!” before being dragged away. It was clear, then, that he had not been the one to incriminate her. (She herself, hoping to save him from hanging, had insisted that she had tricked him into believing that the possessions he took were hers by right.) One of Mortimer's spies among the guards, she surmised, had noticed Tom's comings and goings, heard that he had left the Tower for her household, pieced the information together, and told Mortimer. He had held on to his knowledge until it suited his purpose to inform the king. Probably, she supposed, he had planned for her to marry one of his puppets. When she had run off with William, he had sprung the trap laid for her.

No audience with the king had been granted, and Mortimer's men, not daring to use more forceful methods to get the king's first cousin to confess more freely, had at last left her in disgust. Eleanor had then prepared herself to die. Theft was enough for a death sentence, and theft from the crown… Would she burn, the female punishment for treason, or hang? She'd occupied a good deal of her time wondering which Mortimer and the queen would choose for her. Then she'd occupied more time considering whether she should try starving herself, as Ogle had told her Hugh had. Suicide was a mortal sin, but if she ate just enough to stay alive, she might be so weak that she would die quickly.

But the court had left London by late February, and she was still in the Tower, still alive. The saddlebags she had brought on her journey, containing some changes of clothing and some toiletries and other necessities, had been brought to her, as had a proper bed. (She'd had only a pallet when she first arrived.) So it appeared that perhaps she would not die, after all. Was the plan, then, just to let her languish in prison, like her son?

She picked up the rosary that had been in her saddlebags and began to pray. Praying, though apparently quite useless, passed the time.

By midsummer, her guards had warmed up to her and began to tell her news. Philip of Valois, who had become king of France after King Charles's widow had given birth to a mere girl, had been demanding for months that Edward pay homage to him. Though Isabella had icily responded that the son of a king was under no obligation to pay homage to the son of a mere count, England was in no position to stand by such hauteur. The treasury was nearly empty, and the money that had been sent by the Scots pursuant to the treaty had gone straight to the queen's own well-manicured hands. With no money to fight the French, the king, using money loaned by the Italian house of Bardi, sailed to France and did homage on June 6. The very next day, Robert Bruce died in his bed. The heir to the Scottish throne, little Joan's husband David, was but five years old.

On a more personal level, Eleanor learned that Tom and Hugh were still alive, but were in Newgate. Benedict de Fulsham, despite Eleanor's vociferous protests that he had done nothing more than lend money to her, had also been arrested and imprisoned to Windsor Castle, though he had been released on mainprise shortly thereafter. Mortimer probably held a grudge against Benedict; he like many other London merchants had been a supporter of the Earl of Lancaster.

It was about this time when a letter from William finally reached her. William had obviously written the letter with the idea that it would be read by one of Mortimer's men, but despite, or perhaps because of, its bare simplicity it reduced her to tears. Her children were well, he wrote, and had received visits from both their Despenser aunts. All three of the nuns had been allowed to visit in May. All of them longed to see her and prayed for her every day. He himself missed her beyond words and was doing all he could to see her set free.

She tucked the letter under her pillow and slept with it in her hand every night.

William did not tell Eleanor that he and her father-in-law's retainer, Ingelram Berenger, had borrowed five hundred pounds together in March and that they were getting ready to borrow another three hundred pounds in July. Nor did he tell her that the Earl of Kent had gone to Avignon, officially to press for the canonization of the late Earl of Lancaster, unofficially to enlist papal support for the freeing of his brother. From there, he would move on to Paris, where he hoped to get a favorable response from Henry de Beaumont and several other exiles who had fallen out with the Earl of March.

In August, Eleanor was sitting at her window watching the activity outside— almost her sole diversion—when she saw the Earl of March striding across the green toward the Beauchamp Tower. In a few minutes he was standing before her. “I've news for you, my lady. The king and his council have agreed to let you go free, under your supposed husband's supervision. Here is the order.”

He held it up, then snatched it away as Eleanor reached for it. “Not so fast, my lady. There are conditions that you must meet before you go free.”

“The king's conditions?”

“No. My conditions. They're straightforward enough. You give me Glamorgan, Tewkesbury, and Hanley Castle.”

“You cannot bully me into doing that.”

“It worked well enough for your late Hugh, did it not? But I'll give him credit for results where it is due, for he labored under a disadvantage that I am not. He was dealing with honorable women of irreproachable character, like your sister Elizabeth. I am dealing with a common felon.”