The Traitor's Wife (99 page)

“She cried out, Mother! She is in pain, I know!”

“Of course she is in pain, Edward. She is having a baby.” Eleanor took her son's arm and managed to steer him in the direction of the great hall. “But you are only making yourself miserable by standing here listening at the door, and she would be upset too if she knew you were here.” She looked around for William, who was supposed to have been minding Edward. “Where is your stepfather?”

“I begged him to go for a physician just in case. Mother, what if she dies?”

“Edward, everything is going perfectly normally.”

“But what if something happens?”

Eleanor almost caught her son's worry. He was deeply in love with Anne, she knew; what would become of the most vulnerable of her sons if something did happen to his wife? “Edward, I will not lie and say there is no danger. There always is, you know that. But everything has gone well so far. She is not overtired, she is dilating nicely, and she has the best midwife for miles around. And she has me! I helped with your aunt Bella's children, and your aunt Margaret d'Audley's first child, and others besides. Why, I helped with the king himself! And some of the other royal children as well. She is being taken very good care of, I promise you. But first babies are slow. Your brother Hugh was no quicker than this, and I bore ten healthy babes!”

“But Anne is so small!”

“Small, but not delicate. She is very healthy.”

William came in and looked apologetically at Eleanor. “The physician will come as soon as he can, Edward.” He did not add that the physician had said he knew far less about babies than the midwife.

“Shouldn't you be going back there, Mother?”

“I came only to tell you Anne was doing fine,” said Eleanor patiently. She looked outside. It might help if some imaginary errand were invented for Edward, but if Edward tried to sit a horse in his present state of mind, he would probably break his neck. “Sit by the fire, Edward, and have some wine. It will relax you, perhaps.”

“All the wine in Bordeaux couldn't do that,” William whispered in her ear sympathetically.

It was dark when Eleanor entered the hall again. Edward had been up since the middle of the previous night, when Anne had felt her first contractions, and he had finally dozed off in front of the fire. She touched him on the face. “Come see your son, my dear.”

“Son?”

“He is a fine boy, and Anne is doing well. Come with me.”

Edward followed her dazedly. Edward's imprisonment in the Tower with his newborn sister Elizabeth had given him baby-minding skiIls rare in males, but he was out of practice, and after embracing Anne he took his new son with a mixture of such extreme caution and wonderment that the competent but gruff midwife smiled. “I would like to name him Edward, love,” said Anne. “After you and after the late king.”

“Edward it shall be,” said the new father. He stared transfixedly at the sturdy boy, whom his king would one day name a Knight of the Garter.

Eleanor had not seen Edward wear such a blindingly happy smile in his life, not even on his wedding day. “Let us leave them alone,” she said softly.

William found the lump soon after Twelfth Night. He had been making love to Eleanor when his hand, caressing her right breast, felt something hard and unyielding in it, not the softness underneath silkiness to which he was accustomed. Startled, he touched it again, and then had his attention distracted, most successfully, by Eleanor. For the time being he forgot about it, but when they snuggled together afterward, he said, “My dear. I felt—”

“I asked the midwife. She said that many women of my age get them, and they are usuaIly quite harmless.”

“Ah.”

Eleanor was grateful when she heard him snoring a few minutes later. She herself had noticed the lump months ago, while bathing, and she was certain it was getting larger. The midwife had frowned when she heard of this. And Eleanor's own mother had complained of such a lump in the months before she had died, aged only thirty-five. All this would distress William, as would hearing that the lump was sometimes quite painful. So she would not tell him these things unless he asked, and she hoped he would not. Men, after all, knew precious little about women's workings and were not enthralled with hearing about them.

And in any case, she could not possibly be dying. She felt quite well, save for the occasional pain. And how could God let her leave her young children? John was only eleven, Lizzie not yet ten, William only six.

But the Lord had taken her old charge, John of Eltham, only the autumn before; the young man, only twenty, had died of a fever, in Scotland. And on the last day of February, He took Eleanor's husband.

Eleanor had thought little of it when William caught a bad cold. Since his last Scottish excursion in the summer and fall of 1335, he had been prone to chills in winter, and usually some rest in bed, combined with soup and an herbal remedy Eleanor had learned from Sister Gwenllian at her last visit to Sempringham, put him on the mend quickly. But this time was different. She was sleeping soundly next to William on the third night of his illness when he croaked, “My love.”

Eleanor turned to her husband and touched his arm. He was burning with fever. “William! Good God!” Her scream brought William's squires in the adjoining room to their feet. “Get him a physician!”

But there was nothing the physician, or Eleanor, or even the local wise woman whom she called in as a last resort, could do. For days William drifted in and out of consciousness, sometimes speaking coherently, sometimes speaking deliriously, always breathing with the greatest difficulty. Eleanor sat clinging to his hand, hoping to pull him back to health from sheer force of love. But on February 28, he came to himself after a long period of delirium only to say, “My love. I named you my executrix in my will a while back. There's no need to change that, is there?”

“No, William.”

“And you will bury me at Tewkesbury? In the Lady Chapel?”

“Yes, William.”

“Maybe in a tomb not quite so elaborate as Hugh's…”

Hugh's tomb contained dozens of niches, the largest for intricately carved figures of Christ and the Apostles, the smaller ones for figures of various saints. The figures surrounded a recess in which Hugh's armor-clad effigy stared rather complacently upward. William had not let Eleanor hear of his opinion that Hugh needed all of the saintly intercession on his tomb he could get, but Eleanor had somehow guessed it. She half-smiled. “All right, William. But surely it is too early to worry about these things—”

“I should like to make my confession now, my love.”

The children—Alan, hers, and little William—had all been summoned home, and when William had been shriven she led them into his chamber. The Despenser children hung back a little as the Zouche children and Eleanor went to the head of the bed, but William said weakly, with a smile, “All of you. I want to say good-bye to all of you.”

One by one, each of the children went to William's right side as Eleanor wept quietly on his left. William managed a few words for each. When all had done, he lifted his right hand with an effort and patted Eleanor on the cheek. “Don't cry, my love.”

“I can't help it, William. I love you so much.”

“Is your lute nearby?”

Startled out of her tears, Eleanor replied, “I suppose so.”

“Have someone fetch it, and play and sing to me as I sleep. It will make me happier than anything I know, to hear your sweet voice.”

Hugh left the room and returned with the lute, which he placed into Eleanor's hands. Obediently she played and sang love song after love song, her voice quavering at first, then gaining strength. She started to sing a song she had not sung in years. It had been one of her husband Hugh's favorites; strangely, it had been Isabella's and her uncle's too. How odd! She faltered, started singing it again, never taking her eyes off William. He had been smiling all along, first with his eyes open, then with them shut, and now she saw that he was asleep. She let her voice trail off and leaned over to put her cheek next to his. “My love?” she whispered. “Oh, my love!”

How long she sat there weeping over his body, she never knew, but the room was dark when she let Hugh help her to her feet. “Come, Mother,” he said gently, a husky edge to his voice. “You must rest now.”

The king had called Parliament for that March—William had been summoned—and as word got out at Westminster of William's death, the condolence letters began to arrive at Hanley Castle, where Eleanor had gone to stay. Dressed in the black robes she had worn to Hugh's funeral, she listened listlessly at first as a clerk read the letters to her and her eldest son. Then she frowned as he began to read one bearing a particularly impressive seal. “The Countess of
Gloucester
?”

“That is Aunt Margaret, Mother. The king created Hugh d'Audley Earl of Gloucester at Parliament. He created six earls—William de Montacute is the Earl of Salisbury, William de Clinton is Earl of Huntingdon—”

“Earl of Gloucester! Why, Hugh d'Audley was nothing but a traitor to my uncle, who loved him so dearly that he married him to Margaret, and what has he done for the present king to be made Earl of Gloucester? My father's and my brother's title to be given to that upstart, who has no Clare blood! When you—”

Hugh said, “I know what you are thinking, Mother, that I am your father's eldest grandson and should have been given the earldom, but that will never be, Mother. Not with Father's history.”

“But you have served the king loyally! Every bit as loyally as that Audley creature! And Edward has been so stingy with you—only those little manors of yours, and those not even for you to hold in fee. Just because you are Hugh le Despenser's son!”

She fumed a little longer. Hugh, though he himself had been chagrined to hear of Audley's earldom, consoled himself with the thought that the news had at least temporarily roused his mother from her grief over William. “I suppose that is solely why Margaret wrote to me, to show off her new title. Countess of Gloucester!” She muttered under her breath, “Bitch!”

Perhaps she was too roused. “All right, Mother. What's the next one say?”

“From Lord Thomas de Berkeley. His condolences on your loss, et cetera. Oh, my lady, and he wishes to see you next week. He knows your grief is fresh, and will only trouble you for an hour or so. He and his wife.”

William la Zouche had served on commissions with Lord Berkeley over the past few years, and the two men had gotten on well enough, but their wives, Hugh le Despenser's widow and the Earl of March's daughter, had never met. Eleanor shrugged. “Tell him he may come at his earliest convenience. I am not leaving here anytime soon.”