The Traitor's Wife (92 page)

“No!” said Lizzie.

For an hour or so more they visited, catching Hugh up on the news. Eleanor was pleased to be able to report that the Countess of March had been well treated by the king and had not lost her own inheritance. Queen Isabella had been brought by the king to Windsor for Christmas and was still staying there. Her outsize dower had been taken from her, but the king had granted her three thousand pounds a year—a perfectly respectable income for a dowager queen.

“Three thousand pounds more than she deserves,” said Hugh with rare bitterness. He glanced at William. “Zouche, may I see you alone for a few minutes? We can walk on the castle grounds. I'm allowed. Business,” he explained.

William nodded and followed Hugh outside, noticing that he walked with a limp. “Did Gurney do that to you?”

Hugh grimaced. “I was rather free with my speech to him one evening, and he kicked me with his boot in the ankle. It only bothers me when it's damp. Trouble is, of course, in England it's almost always damp.”

“Christ!”

“I repaid him in kind. He didn't bother me much after that.” He drew his new cloak closer around him. “It's Gurney I wanted to talk to you about. The first few months I was here, he'd bait me. Mainly about my father and the king, telling me what they did with each other and suggesting I shared their tendencies. I don't, by the way; there's days where I could take the laundress here if she weren't every bit of sixty. Well, anyway, I'd get angry like a fool and insult him; then he'd have a go at me. That's where my ankle came from. It passed the time, at least. Then he went through a spell when he didn't see much of me at all. He had the good burghers of Bristol to fleece in various ways, and that took a lot of his time. Then he started coming again. Drunk, and prone to babbling, without any regard to whom he was babbling to. Toward the end I thought I should be in Holy Orders, he was confessing so much to me. One night, he told me what he did to the king. I suppose his conscience was finally catching up with him. You heard how they killed the king, Lord Zouche? The spit?”

“Yes. There were rumors at Parliament.”

“Does Mother know?”

William shook his head. “She knows that he was murdered; she believed that from the start. I don't think she's heard anything more. I've done my best to keep the rumors from her. I suppose she thinks he was poisoned or smothered, and I intend to let her keep on thinking so.”

“Thank you, Lord Zouche. That's what I was worried about. She was very fond of him, you see. I couldn't bear to have her know that he died that way.”

“Neither could I.”

They walked around in companionable silence for a while. Then Hugh said, “I suppose the king will set me free eventually. When he does, I want to go on pilgrimage, as a thanksgiving.”

“Where to?”

“Santiago.”

“That's where your aunt Aline's gone. She was planning to do it by foot.”

Hugh laughed. “My aunt! I'll have to crawl then, to outdo her. My grandfather went there too, you know.” He made the sign of the cross. “There are nights I can't sleep, thinking of him being tried here, his last night here in chains. Gurney, always thoughtful, showed me where they kept him. Mortimer certainly picked my accommodations well, didn't he?”

“There's every reason to believe you will be released soon.”

“Once I finish with Santiago, Lord Zouche, I may just stay over there. Or Italy.”

“In God's name, why?”

Hugh shrugged. “What's for me here? I've no lands, I'm penniless, I'm not even a knight. Ladies won't exactly be clamoring for me as a husband now. I used to be a decent fighter, and I suppose I still could be once I got into practice again. I can hire myself out as a mercenary.”

“Hugh, you know full well your mother won't allow you to stay penniless, and I'm sure the king would let her alienate some lands to you. The knighthood will come. So will marriage.”

“Yes. But the king has been taught to believe my father was the antichrist. So has all of England. Isabella and Mortimer being gone hasn't changed that. I don't think there'll be any royal favor for the likes of me. I'm better off just starting off on my own somewhere where no one knows about Father.” He sighed. “Forgive me, Lord Zouche. I'm feeling sorry for myself. It happens at times.”

Zouche said, “The king is still feeling his way, you know. After being led around by his mother and Mortimer for four years, he's uncertain, I think. Once he gets more confident, he'll be more at ease with the idea of setting you free. And he'd be a fool not to want to make an ally of you, not with what you'll inherit someday. Don't give up on England so quickly. Make your trip to Santiago, and then come home. We'd all miss you, for one.”

Hugh shrugged noncommittally, but he seemed a bit more cheerful as the men turned back toward the castle, Hugh walking quickly in spite of his limp. William pointed at his ankle and said, “I hope Gurney paid for that dearly.”

“Oh, he did, but I'm afraid I might have hampered the search for him a bit. They may be looking for a man with two front teeth. When I finished with him, he had but one.”

“Awkward for you, isn't it?” said Eleanor's aunt Mary to William. “I mean, it's not every man who buries his wife's first husband
after
he's become the second husband.”

As far as William could tell with her nun's veil and wimple, Mary was a handsome woman of fifty or so, slightly tall for her sex, with strands of graying hair peeking out from beneath her headdress. Unlike her late brother the king, she was naturally gregarious, and after Hugh's funeral mass she had lost no time in trotting her horse up beside that of her niece's new husband. (“New to me, at least. And new to her, almost, considering how long you were kept apart.”)

“It was a trifle odd,” admitted William. What was oddest, he thought to himself, were the tears that had clouded his own eyes as Hugh's coffin, draped in cloth of gold, was at last lowered into its resting place near Tewkesbury Abbey's high altar. Through Eleanor and the children, he'd come to like the man he'd barely known in life, numerous as his sins were.

“Well, it was a beautiful ceremony,” said Mary briskly. “You served him well with that. Pity his eldest son couldn't be here.”

“We thought of postponing the funeral until he was released, but not knowing when that would be, we decided to have it now.”

“How is he faring?”

“Well. He was a little low in spirits when we saw him, but his brother Edward's been staying with him, which has cheered him up quite a bit, it appears from his letters. And he's had other company besides.” William smiled faintly, for he could not tell Mary of the very special visitor he had arranged for Hugh to have periodically. Guinevere, as she had dubbed herself, might not be the Queen of England, but she was certainly the queen of the whores of Bristol. Any man who was not rejuvenated by her golden hair and her inexhaustible inventiveness might as well start building his own tomb.

“There are my fellow sisters, Eleanor's girls. I must see them, poor dears, and compare convents.”

“You will stay with us at Tewkesbury manor, though?” He added, “Tomorrow night we can play at dice.”

Mary's face lit up. “Ah, Lord Zouche, I see my niece has told you all about me! She never did have luck at dicing. Perhaps you shall be better.” She clucked at her horse and moved on.

Eleanor took her aunt's place. Though William had watched her dress that morning and had of course stood beside her in the abbey, he still blinked to see her in her black robes again. He pressed her hand as their horses moved companionably together. “This has been a hard day for you, sweetheart.”

“Yes. But at least he is lying in peace and quiet now, away from all those dreadful people gawking at him. And I shall have a lovely tomb built.”

Lady Hastings, trailed by her children, their spouses, and a youth Eleanor did not know, joined them. “It is good to see how many people came to pay their respects to Hugh.” It was indeed a good-sized gathering: Hugh's relatives, Eleanor's half brothers Thomas and Edward de Monthermer (
Sir
Thomas and
Sir
Edward now, Eleanor reminded herself), her half sister Joan (a nun at Amesbury), some of William's own family, retainers and friends of Hugh and his father, Hugh the elder's relatives, William and Eleanor's household and councilors…

Eleanor smiled. “To think that if all of us had been together just four months ago, we would probably have been arrested for plotting. But Bella, where is Amie?”

“With the queen as one of her damsels, isn't that good news? After Mortimer fell, I wrote to the queen and told her who Amie was and asked if she would give her a place in her household. She agreed and Amie has been there for a couple of weeks now. I shall miss her, but I live very quietly now, and she is too pretty and outgoing for that sort of a life. She will meet a good husband at court, I hope.” Bella gestured toward the young stranger proudly. “But you have not met Nicholas, my brother.”

From his horse, Nicholas nodded at Eleanor in a manner so like that of his father that Eleanor's heart ached for a moment. “I didn't see my brother Hugh more than a few times, Lady Despenser, but I was fond of him.”

“And he must have been fond of you, Nicholas. I hope you shall come stay with us for a while soon.”

“Is it true that you have plans to renovate the choir of Tewkesbury Abbey?”

This was such an unlooked-for question that Eleanor looked in confusion at her sister-in-law. Bella laughed. “Nicholas's passion is architecture, Nelly. He was staring at the ceiling the whole time mass was being said for poor Hugh, wondering how it could be improved!”

Nicholas blushed. “I meant no disrespect, Lady Despenser, but it has such potential.”

“I quite agree with you. Now that things are different the monks will be able to make the improvements they wanted, and I will give them whatever help they require.”

Nicholas was still going on excitedly about the abbey when the funeral party arrived at Tewkesbury manor, where a meal had been prepared for the mourners and a large group of poor people. Eleanor, presiding at the high table with William, was half-ashamed as chief mourner to be talking so animatedly with those around her, but after running off with William she could hardly call herself an inconsolable widow. Tomorrow, though, she would return to Hugh's grave with its constantly burning candles and spend some time alone with him. She would pray for him and remind him that she would love him forever.

In any case, Eleanor saw as the meal ended and the guests were preparing to go their varying ways, no one else in the room, including those who had loved Hugh dearly, was particularly gloomy either. It had been, after all, so long since Hugh had died, and so long since many of them had seen each other. Edward, who had left his brother for a couple of days to attend the funeral, was chatting with his cousins, looking more relaxed than Eleanor had seen him in years. Mary, who had seldom ventured from Amesbury during the Mortimer reign, was laughing with Hugh's sister and daughters. Ingelram Berenger and William were talking horses. Eleanor could not see precisely what the little ones were up to, but Lord Zouche the dog ambled by licking his lips very complacently.

“My lady?”

In looking around for her youngest children, Eleanor had not noticed the messenger approaching her. She opened the parchment he gave her—nearby, William was opening a similar parchment—and gasped, “Mother of God!”

“Why, what is it?” said Lady Hastings.

“The whoreson!”

“Nelly?”

Eleanor looked at William, who was staring open-mouthed at his own letter. “It is John de Grey. We are being summoned to Canterbury on his petition.”

“Sir John?” Lady Hastings said, puzzled. “Why?”

“He is claiming me as his wife.”