Hugh and Bess (2 page)

 
Prologue

  THE EARL OF SALISBURY, WILLIAM DE MONTACUTE, HAD been telling the same story since his eldest child was four years old. Over the years, it grew longer as the world acquired more Montacutes, and it might have assumed an embellishment or two or three, but it was told so often, and was so important in the Montacute annals, that it never needed a name. It was simply The Story.

Once, the story went, there had been a weak king, the second Edward. Not a bad man, not a cruel man, but one who would have been better off being almost anything than the king. (Yes, God made kings, but some might have been better off not being so. The Almighty's ways were inscrutable.) He had a knack for choosing friends whom everyone else in the kingdom hated, and none had hated his last friends, the elder Hugh le Despenser and his son the younger Hugh le Despenser, as much as did the king's own queen, the lovely Isabella. So much had she hated them that in 1326, having traveled from France, she had returned with an army, killed her husband's friends, forced the king from his throne in favor of his young son the third Edward, and shut the king away where he could never rule again.

  Although the third Edward was still a mere boy, he might have ruled well with the help of his wiser elders until he grew to full manhood. But the beauteous Queen Isabella had not come to England alone. She had come with a cruel man, a greedy man, named Roger Mortimer, who would have liked to have been king himself if given half a chance. From the day he and the queen stepped ashore, it was Roger Mortimer who had ruled England, taking as many lands and titles as he could grab, and treating the young king himself with no more respect than he might have shown one of his own pages. And less than a year after the second Edward had given up his crown, Roger Mortimer had had the old king killed. (William de Montacute would never tell the children how. The Montacute boys had found out, though, and chuckled about it nervously behind their hands. The Montacute girls were content to leave the matter be.)

  And then Roger Mortimer—who had made himself the Earl of March—did another thing just about as wicked as that last. He led the king's kindly, naïve half-brother, the Earl of Kent, to believe that the second Edward was still alive. When the Earl of Kent fell into the trap, Mortimer had had his head cut off. (Here, all the Montacute children's eyes turned toward their companion, Joan of Kent, who had been little more than a baby when her father was killed and who found the story as interesting as did the Montacute children. If Joan of Kent was any indication, the unfortunate earl had been a very handsome man.)

  But the demise of the Earl of Kent made all the children sit up straighter, for the best part of the story was to come— Papa's. Though Papa was a good decade older than the third Edward, who was only a lad of seventeen, he was fond of the young king and was distressed to see the wicked Mortimer and his poor, deluded mother push him aside. (William would never say anything bad about Queen Isabella; it would have hurt the king's feelings.)

  “The king had a son the June after the poor Earl of Kent died,” Papa would say, with another nod toward pretty Joan. “A sturdy, fine lad he was. It wouldn’t have done for the king to be skulking around and having orders barked at him, not with his son looking toward him as an example. And Mortimer was growing worse every day. He’d walk side by side with the king, even. Let his servants eat with the king's. Remain seated when the king entered the room. And once he’d killed the Earl of Kent—the king's own uncle, you remember—no one knew who was going to be next. The king's other uncle? The Earl of Lancaster? The king himself? We knew we had to eat the dog, or the dog would eat us.”

  “And then you went to Nottingham Castle!” said Bess de Montacute.

  “Then we all went to Nottingham Castle,” agreed her father. He was taking his time now; his audience was sitting open-mouthed. “For a council meeting. I thought that was going to be my last day on earth. Mortimer had his spies, and I had a few of my spies, and the king had his spies, and all of us had been spying aplenty. First thing that morning, Mortimer summoned me and my mates in front of him. He knew we were getting tired of him. It was October of 1330, you see, and the king would be eighteen in a month. Mortimer asked us, one by one, what we were doing. All of us stayed silent—except for me. I told him that I would do nothing inconsistent with my duty to the king. Left him speechless for a moment or two, which was a feat where Roger Mortimer was concerned, I’ll give myself that.”

  The children waited expectantly as their mama cast an admiring look at her husband.

  “He wanted to have me arrested then and there, I knew, but couldn’t think of a good reason to justify it, so he let me and the others go. And go I did, into the town; I thought it best to stay clear of the castle for a time. There I happened across a man named William Eland—or he happened across me. He knew what had gone on that morning, and he guessed what was in our minds. He told us about something only he knew about the castle.”

  “A secret passage,” said young Will reverently.

  “Right, a secret passage, all covered with bramble, but one that led straight into the castle. I knew then that a gift had been handed to me straight from God; it was now or never. So I got to the king through Eland; he stayed at the castle, you see, and had no difficulty finding an excuse to speak to his grace. And late that night, we climbed through the tunnel into the castle.”

  “It must have been damp,” said Bess. “And full of spiders.”

  “Some as big as my hands put together, Bessie. Well, there they were in Mortimer's chamber: the queen and Mortimer and their cronies, meeting—deciding, we found out later, how to get rid of my friends and me. We came up the tunnel, made our way up a flight of stairs, and there we were by Mortimer's chamber. It would have pleased us to do without bloodshed, but Mortimer's man at the door attacked us with a sword, so we had to kill him. Shoved past him and ran into the room. Mortimer had an armed guard inside too; we had to kill him also. But we didn’t have to kill Mortimer; him we arrested. When the sun rose that morning, the king announced he would rule on his own. And so he has, ever since. And though he and I were good friends before that, we’re even better ones now. There's nothing I wouldn’t do for the king, or him for me.” William pointed to his belt proudly. “And that is why I am the Earl of Salisbury today, and your mama a countess.”

  “And why you children must marry suitably,” their mother had started to add over the years, gently yet firmly. But none of the children paid much attention to this postscript, at first.

 
January 1341 to April 1341

  STRICTLY SPEAKING, BESS TOLD HERSELF, SHE WAS NOT eavesdropping on her parents, for she had been curled up in a window seat, half dozing, when they came in, and before she could say a single word, they had launched into a conversation that plainly was too important (and too interesting) to bear interruption. And she had been told many times not to interrupt; it was a bad habit of hers. So she would not do so now. Instead, she drew her feet up where they could not be seen and quietly rearranged the heavy drapes to screen herself more securely from view.

“The king himself proposed the marriage,” her father had said when he first came into the room. “And there's nothing to be said against the man, Katharine. Everything for him, as a matter of fact. He's a good fighter. He's rich. He's the king's near kinsman and a great-grandson of the first Edward. So how could you possibly object? He’ll make an excellent husband for her.”

  So it was true; her parents were at last arranging a marriage for Joan of Kent, who though her mother was still alive had been raised with the Montacute children and with the king's children after the wicked Mortimer had been hung at Tyburn. It was high time the girl got married; all of the Montacute household had been saying so. Joan was almost thirteen, less than a year younger than Bess, but unlike Bess, who at thirteen and a half still had simply a chest, Joan had breasts, unmistakable ones, even under the modest robes she and the Montacute girls wore. More than once Bess had heard her mother tell her brother Will, when he was visiting from the king's court where he served as a page, that he should not stare at Joan's breasts. “I realize it is difficult not to, with them poking forward as they do,” Katharine had said tartly. “But you must try. My, that girl needs to be married, and soon!”

  Bess herself had been married several years ago to Giles de Badlesmere, soon after Papa became an earl and she had become a desirable match. Then after only a year of marriage—if one could count living with her parents while her grown husband lived on his estates as a marriage—Sir Giles had fallen ill, leaving Bess a widow at the age of eleven. Her husband had sent her gifts on occasion and had visited her several times, but she had known him little better than any of the other men who came to visit her parents, and though she dutifully prayed for his soul, his death had otherwise meant little to her. She was vaguely aware that she had been left quite prosperous by the brief union, and she had a sense that suitors had approached Papa about her now and then, but none had been quite right, it appeared. There seemed to be no great hurry; after all, she had just started her monthly courses a few months before, and her figure was still so far from womanly that had she put on her brother Will's clothes and hidden her waist-length, thick, dark hair, she could have taken service as a page.

  But Joan was a different matter altogether, yet Mama did not appear happy. “Nothing wrong with him! His father executed as a traitor, his grandfather executed as a traitor, his great-grandfather killed fighting for Simon de Montfort against the king—”

  “So, at least
he
wasn’t executed as a traitor, Katharine. And the great-great-grandfather was quite respectable, I understand.”

  Bess's mother did not laugh. “I suppose one should feel pity for the man; he can’t help his parentage, but what girl would want to call herself the wife of Hugh le Despenser?”

  “Despenser wouldn’t have suggested the match himself, I imagine. He knows full well of his family's disgrace and that some are loath to associate with him; it's probably what has kept him single all of these years.”

  “Indeed,” said Katharine, finding a straw to grab upon. “He can’t be young, is he, William?”

  “He is two-and-thirty.”

  “Two-and-thirty! William, that's far too old for a girl of thirteen.”

  “Bess will mature soon. And Badlesmere was in his twenties himself, Katharine.”

  Behind the curtains, Bess gasped, covering her mouth just in time.
She
was to marry Hugh le Despenser?

  Soon afterward, Bess's parents had left the room, and she had made her way back to the chamber she shared with Joan of Kent and her sisters just in time to be told that her father and mother wished to speak to her. She had been summoned to her mother's chamber, where Bess's parents had broken the news to her gradually, so much so that Bess, who had been worried lest she give away the fact she had been eavesdropping, had been almost lulled into believing she had misunderstood. So distressed had she been when she realized that she had heard them correctly that she had not had to feign shock. “I don’t wish to marry him. I do not like him.”

  “Like him, Bess? You’ve never met him.” Her father smiled tolerantly.

  “I could not like a man from such a horrid family.”

  She had expected more help on this score from her mother, but Katharine, whatever her opinions might be in private, was a woman to stand publicly with her husband. “It is not for you to refuse this match, Elizabeth. You will marry him. You are a widow, after all; it is most suitable that you remarry.”

  “Why can’t Joan marry him? Her father was beheaded too. They would have much more to talk about.”

  William's lip twitched upward, but he still managed to say testily, “Hugh asked for your hand, not Joan's. In any case, he would have asked in vain, because we have decided that Joan will marry your brother Will, quite soon as a matter of fact.”

 
So now he can stare at her breasts all he likes
, Bess thought, then remembered the matter at hand. “I don’t
want
to marry him, Papa.” She looked up into her father's face and gazed at him sadly with her large brown eyes, a trick that up to now had never missed with her father, though Bess to her credit had used it sparingly. “Please don’t make me.”

  “I must, child. I cannot have you dictating to me whom you shall marry. I would not marry you to a man I did not esteem; you should know that. His father did disgrace his family's name, but Sir Hugh has done much to restore it. I will allow you to sit with us when he comes to visit tomorrow or the next day. You will see for yourself that he will make a good husband for you, and you will get a chance to come to know him.”

  “And Hugh is a rich man,” added Katharine. “You will be Lady of Glamorgan, and have many castles, you know. It won’t be bad, I promise.”

  Nor, thought Bess, had she promised that it would be good.

  Bess's one consolation during the conversation with her parents had been that she would get to break the news to Joan of her own fate, but even here she was balked. “I have heard, Bess. My mother told me when she was visiting here the other day.”