Hugh and Bess (10 page)

  But a tasty one it was, for his income could certainly use amplification. Hugh could not stop himself from smiling. Then he recalled what he had been brooding upon on the trip to London. “Your grace, there is something else I would ask for.”

  The king frowned.

  “Not more land, your grace. Not a title. Just this: I would like to lead men in battle. I’m capable of it, I know. You yourself said that your brother praised me, and he wasn’t one to give it when it was undeserved. I can win men's respect; even now there are men from Glamorgan and from my own manors who would fight with me. I’ve already pledged to serve under my kinsman Warwick in this Scottish business, and I shan’t renege on that promise, but later—” Hugh looked down at his shoes. “It would be the greatest gift you could make to our family, your grace, to let us regain your trust by that means.”

  Edward said, “Very well. We’ll let you prove yourself.”

  “You won’t regret it.” Hugh relaxed. “Your grace, do you mind if I look at the window seat?”

  Edward stared at him, probably wondering if his relation's mind had been addled by this sudden improvement in his fortunes. “No.”

  Hugh walked to the window seat and stared down at it. There, carved awkwardly in the wood—his handwriting had never been a marvel—he saw his name. “Still there,” he said to himself softly. He smiled again.

  Hugh had last seen his mother deeply mourning the loss of her second husband, but otherwise in apparent good health, so he was shocked at the change he saw in her when he returned to Hanley Castle. Eleanor's face was gray and pinched with pain, her brilliant red hair had become almost colorless at the roots, and she hobbled when she could move around at all. She had some female ailment, the physicians told Hugh, that had crept up on her slowly and about which nothing could be done.

  On the last day of June 1337 she died, surrounded by her children. As she drew her last breath, having spent most of the previous night and the morning drifting in and out of consciousness, her children sought comfort from each other: little Lizzie clutching her oldest sister Isabel's hand; the girls who had been made nuns praying together; Gilbert pretending not to need the hand his brother Edward shyly placed on his shoulder. William and John, the youngest two boys, turned to Hugh. He put an arm around each of them and stayed silent while William cried and while John endeavored not to. After a while had passed, he said, “You are very tired, both of you, and so am I. I want you to have something to eat and then to rest. I need to ride to clear my head. Then I’ll come back and you shall share my chamber tonight. Just like you used to do. Would you like that?”

  They nodded and dutifully left the room. Seeing that Isabel was consoling Lizzie and that the rest were bearing up as well as could be expected, Hugh stood. He was so tired from his vigil by his mother's deathbed that he felt lightheaded, but he needed fresh air more than sleep. As he made his way out of Hanley Castle, he noted that all the servants, even those with whom he had been on the most informal terms, were suddenly treating him with extreme deference. He could not put his hand on a door without having one or sometimes two people spring ahead of him and hold it, and someone must have guessed intuitively that he would want to ride, for no sooner did he ask for a horse than his favorite palfrey stood saddled before him. Any remark any of them made to him was prefaced by “my lord.”

  The ride to Emma's was a short one, but he took it slowly because of his fatigue. Word of his mother's death had reached her household before Hugh did, for the servants’ faces were somber, and they bowed deeply to Hugh when he rode up. Emma herself, when she came out to greet him, had put on black robes. “My lord,” she said, and curtseyed.

  “Not you too,” he protested, and kissed her cheek. “Will you go for a ride with me?”

  She nodded, and soon they were seated together in a secluded spot on a hill where on other fine summer days they had often brought a meal, ate it off a blanket they spread, and then kissed to their heart's content. Today, however, there was nothing but talk between them. “I’ve wished so often to come into my inheritance, Emma. But I didn’t know what I was wishing for! She was only forty-four, you know. I’d give anything to have her back now. I feel so guilty.”

  “All heirs dream of getting their land, Hugh, I think. You have no cause for guilt. And you were a good son to her. I visited her a time or two while you were away, and I asked if there was something I could do to help her. She always said no, that you had made sure she had all she wanted or needed.”

  “Little enough.”

  “Enough to make her content and at ease, as much as she could be, poor lady. It was a mercy she did not linger; she was in dreadful pain sometimes, Hugh, in places where she would probably not tell a man. She was a brave lady.”

  “Yes,” said Hugh, and crossed himself, as did Emma. “I loved her dearly. I’ll miss her.”

  For a time they sat still together, Hugh brushing at his eyes from time to time as Emma let him grieve in silence. Finally, he stood and looked at the valley below him, dotted with fat sheep. They were his sheep now, as was everything he could see. And over in Wales lay Glamorgan, the acquisition of which had enriched and destroyed his father in a few short years. Now it too had become his. It was both a tragedy and a marvel, he thought, how the ceasing of a human heartbeat could change so much in so short a time. He cleared his throat. “Lord of Glamorgan, Emma, whether I like it or not. Do you think I’ll be a good lord?”

  “The best,” she said, and patted his cheek. Hugh retained her hand for a minute, then brought it to his lips. “I’d better get back to my castle,” he said.

  The next few months passed in a flurry of firsts. His first expedition to Scotland as a banneret, his first summons to Parliament. Hugh had not entirely expected the latter, having half assumed that as a Despenser his chief duty in Parliament would have been to stay a hundred miles away from it. Yet the summons came nonetheless, and as no self-respecting lord could come to Westminster without a full contingent of followers, he was trailed by a dozen men when he rode into the city.

  Emma came with him too. With William being educated at Glastonbury, Lizzie boarding with the nuns at Wix, and John serving as a page in the queen's household, Hugh's own household was empty of brothers and sisters. Emma had begun to live openly with him, though nominally she had her own chamber to which to retire at night. Hugh's confessor had shaken his head at this sin on his master's part, but he contented himself with the reflection that now that Hugh had come into his lands, he would surely marry someday and that a marriage on Emma's part would duly follow. It was lucky, the confessor often thought, that no bastard had resulted from the affair.

  On his last visit to London, Hugh had stayed at a cramped inn. His fortunes having changed since then, Hugh had leased a handsome house overlooking the Thames for his stays in the city. It was a large house for a single man to rattle around in, and after consideration he had asked Emma to join him there. By doing so, he knew, he was in effect proclaiming her his official mistress, for although she had traveled with him before, it was only between his own estates, where none but the locals paid attention to their lord's comings and goings and to the question of with whom he came and went. Now, as he would be visited by some of the friends he had gradually acquired over the years of fighting side by side, Emma could not remain hidden away. Besides, Hugh was proud of her. With her unusual but striking looks and the elegant robes and handsome jewels Hugh had insisted on presenting her with when he came into his inheritance, she was the match of any countess. If only he could marry her! But as dearly as he loved her, he was at heart a realist, and he knew that such a marriage would do nothing to bolster his improving fortunes.

  One Parliament followed another. All during this time, the English and the French had been tweaking each other's noses, daring the other to begin a war, and in the summer of 1340, near the harbor at Sluys, each side got a taste of what was to mark the next hundred years to come. Hugh, master of his own ship now, would never forget those hours in the English Channel. Men fought hand to hand, the decks on which they stood slippery with blood and rocking madly from side to side. From another ship, a group of English ladies, brought to stay with Queen Philippa in Flanders, watched in terror as men toppled into the sea, some dead, some dying, some frantically hoping to escape. When it was over, though, it was the English who were able to make the joke that if the fish in the sea could speak, it would be French that came out of their mouths.

  The king took a nasty wound on the thigh and spent some days recuperating on the cog
Thomas
, where Hugh was rowed over to join him one evening. After wishes for the king's speedy healing had been expressed and some business matters had been discussed, Edward said, “I’ve been considering your marriage, Sir Hugh.”

  “My marriage?”

  “About time you thought of it yourself, isn’t it? Now, see here. William de Montacute has a daughter. Several, as a matter of fact, but the girl in question is thirteen or so, I believe. A marriageable girl; indeed, she's a little widow. High time she married again. A good alliance for you. She's not an heiress, of course, but she’ll bring her dower from her Badlesmere marriage, which is ample, very ample. Montacute will like the idea too, once he gets out of France.” William de Montacute, the Earl of Salisbury, had been a prisoner there for several months. “They’re not in a position to argue with a reasonable ransom now that the sea is full of Frenchmen, so I think he’ll be home soon. He’ll like it, I daresay, making his little girl Lady of Glamorgan. So what of it, Despenser? Why not marry the Montacute girl? Oh, and she's a pretty thing, so you needn’t concern yourself on that score.”

  Hugh stood open-mouthed. Marriage to an earl's daughter, and that earl the king's closest confidant? He could hope for no better a match, he knew. Only a fool would say no to such a proposition, even if it had not come from the king himself. And yet at that moment, he could think of nothing but Emma. For nine years they had been all in all to each other.

  Yet it was she herself who had left him free for such a match on that July day when they had first come together in her bed. He gulped and knelt. “I would be honored to marry the young lady, your grace.”

  After Hugh awoke from his nightmare, he tried to obey Emma's advice by going back to sleep. Instead, he lay there, listening to her breathing beside him and reflecting that it would be the last time they lay together. It had been nearly a year since his conversation with the king, but all was at last settled. William de Montacute had been released from captivity and had given his consent to the marriage, after which the Pope had duly granted Hugh le Despenser and Elizabeth de Montacute a dispensation to marry. So later that morning, Hugh would be setting off to Tewkesbury to await his bride.

  Emma would be going back to her own home. Though there had been nothing meretricious about her relationship with Hugh, he had nonetheless given her many gifts over the years, and the possessions that she had accumulated in the chamber that had become known as hers had taken longer to pack than either she or Hugh had anticipated. Watching his servants place her worldly goods into their coffers and load them onto a cart, Hugh had realized that there would soon be no sign in Hanley Castle, or any of his other residences, that Emma had ever lived there. His only keepsake from her was a ring that she had given him a couple of years before. Hugh wore it on the same hand as a ring that had belonged to his father, his one tangible reminder of the man other than his tomb at Tewkesbury Abbey. As he watched the rings glisten side by side, he wondered if Emma might as well be just as dead to him.

  But she was stirring next to him, and he reached for her and held her close until she fully awoke. “Hugh, you hadn’t had your bad dream for years until just now. Is something troubling you?”

  “Only you leaving. That's enough, I suppose.”

  “Hugh, I must leave. I am no—”

  “I know. You’re no adulteress, and I’m not a knave, as much as I wish at the moment we could be both. Christ, I’ll miss you, though.”

  Parting upon his marriage to Bess had been a mutual decision, though Hugh knew only too well that he could have been talked out of the notion had Emma been less principled. But she had said, “I love you, Hugh, but I will not lie with a married man, even one whose bride is too young to be a full wife to him just yet. We must part now and live the rest of our lives as friends only.”

  “Friends only,” Hugh had agreed, and his new chaplain, William Beste, had heartily approved when a less enthusiastic Hugh told him of the plan. Infidelity, he had reminded Hugh, had been the first of his father's great sins, and it was one Hugh should strive in particular to avoid. “But he was unfaithful with the old king. So what if I just avoid our king's bed?” Hugh had suggested. “I wouldn’t have a problem there at all. Neither would the king, I’m sure.”

  Beste, whom Hugh had chosen for other virtues instead of a sense of humor, had merely shaken his head.

  Emma said, “I will miss you too, Hugh. But we have been separated before, when you have gone off to fight. It will be hard, but I will get used to it.”

  “You can think of this as a very long fight, perhaps?” Hugh smiled in spite of himself. “Emma, I wish you’d consider this. Let me find a husband for you. Someone who will be good to you, who will protect you. Someone not liable to drop dead next week, perhaps. Someone such as Sir—”