Hugh and Bess (5 page)

  Hugh, trying to help his father and the king in sundry ways and wondering if his presence was of much use at all, had some time to consider the matter and to talk to some of the garrison about it. After a few ales late one night had loosened some of the men's tongues, the name Hugh kept hearing was Llywelyn Bren, who’d led an uprising in the area some years ago, when Hugh had been a mere lad. Llywelyn had been taken to the Tower—indeed, his wife and children were still there, now under the care of Hugh's mother—and then removed by his father, who’d had him hung, drawn, and quartered at this very castle. It never should have happened, the garrison told Hugh, as the man had been promised his life in exchange for his surrender; Hugh's father had taken it upon himself to execute Llywelyn anyway. The locals hated his father for this act and had not forgotten it. Hugh le Despenser the younger was living in a world of dreams, the men of the garrison said, if he thought the men of Cardiff would come to his aid.

  Hugh kept this information to himself, doubting that it would be a topic his father would relish discussing. Instead, he went on helping as he had been helping, keeping up the pretense that their efforts would be repaid. But his father must have been thinking along the same lines, for in late October, he and the king decided to move to Caerphilly Castle. The populace there might not be any less hostile, he heard his father telling the king, but at least the castle itself was better fortified than Cardiff. If, his father hastened to add, things came to that.

  So the tiny court moved itself to Caerphilly. Built by Hugh's maternal grandfather, the red-haired Gilbert de Clare, it was Hugh's boyhood favorite of all his family's castles. It was huge and sprawling, full of hiding places for a lad, and Hugh felt a return of his old affection for it when they passed through its gates. His father's spirits had risen too, for he had spent a great deal of money some months ago in renovating Caerphilly's great hall, even hiring the king's own carpenter, and was glad of the chance to show off the result to Edward. “Hurley did himself proud, don’t you think?”

  “It's magnificent,” said the king. “If only Gilbert the Red could see it now.”

  “Judging from the ones I have, the man wasn’t much on beautifying his castles, just fortifying them. I doubt he’d approve.” Hugh le Despenser the younger grinned at his son. “Your mother will, though. She was born here, you know. Well, not smack in the middle of this hall, of course. In one of the chambers over there.” He pointed toward a wing abutting the great hall. “I’ve had work done there, too. Next time your mother comes to stay, she’ll have a chamber fit for a queen.”

  There was a rather awkward silence, which Hugh inadvertently made worse by glancing up at one of the corbels below the great hall's roof rafters. It was a head of Queen Isabella, wearing a magnificent stone crown. His father's eyes followed his. “It seemed like a good idea at the time,” he said ruefully. “Anyway, the king's over here.”

  Edward chuckled. “Don’t look so distressed, Hugh. We’ll say the queen is a representation of my mother. Why, I think I even see the resemblance now that I think of it.”

  His father grinned. “And here's me, and there's my sweet wife. The heads were all Hurley's idea, in any case. I shall find it strange to have a meal with oneself gazing down upon oneself.”

  They had finished admiring his father's improvements and were sitting down to eat when a man entered the great hall. Though the man was not in livery, Hugh, his eighteen-year-old eyes sharper than his father's or the king's, recognized him from a distance. “Father? Isn’t he one of Grandfather's men?”

  “Yes.” His father rose and met the man as he crossed toward the high table where they had been sitting. “Man, have you news from Bristol?”

  “Yes, my lord. My lord—”

  “Yes? Speak out.”

  “It is bad news, the worst. The Earl of Winchester surrendered Bristol Castle to the queen's forces. He had no choice; the garrison would no longer fight for him. He held out for six days nonetheless, but—”

  “Where is he? Is that whore holding him prisoner? Edward! We must save him.”

  “My lord, it is too late. The earl was tried as a traitor the very afternoon of his surrender. He was condemned to death by a council convened by the queen and her paramour. The sentence was carried out the next morning.” The man crossed himself. “The earl died two days ago, my lord.”

  Hugh, along with the king, had joined his father in the middle of the hall. He saw his father lurch to the side and into the king, who kept him from collapsing. It was Hugh himself who managed to ask, “How?”

  “Beheaded, Master Hugh.” He hesitated. “They dragged him through the streets and hung him first. The whoresons who had the arranging of it made him wear his surcoat with his arms reversed. His head was sent to Winchester. His body was put back on the gallows. It was still hanging there when I left Bristol.”

  Hugh's father, still propped up by the king, was breathing harshly. It was the only sound in the great hall. Hugh, standing on his other side, took his hand. “Come, Father. Let me take you to your chamber.”

  “No.” His father managed to stand upright. “No. I need— I must—”

  He staggered out of the hall. Hugh would have followed his father, but the king, a powerfully built man, stopped him merely with a touch of his arm. “Best leave him alone for a time, Hugh.”

  “But he's distracted, your grace.”

  The king shook his head. “I know your father well. He needs time alone. When the time is right, I will go to him.”

  “When? Tonight when he lies in bed?”

  Hugh could not believe what had come out of his own mouth, and he had said it loudly enough that the words echoed through Caerphilly's great hall. He waited for the king to knock him to the floor. Instead, Edward said, “I am forgetting that the Earl of Winchester was your grandfather. I grieve for him, too. He was my friend in my father's court when I had almost no others, one of the most faithful men I ever knew. Something in you has always reminded me of him.” He turned to the earl's man. “Tell me of my daughters and Lady Hastings.”

  Lady Hastings was his aunt Bella, one of his father's sisters. The king's daughters had been in her care at Bristol. Hugh waited long enough to hear the man inform the king that his daughters were safely in the queen's household and that Lady Hastings had been escorted to her dower lands on the day after her father's execution. Then, unable to hold back his sickness any longer, he ran from the great hall and vomited in the nearest bush. Finding himself alone, he heaved himself to his feet. He made his shaky way to his own chamber and huddled in the window seat.

  Up until now, he’d dismissed the queen's invasion as an annoyance that could be got over, much like the time a few years back when his grandfather and his father had each been sent into exile by their enemies. His father had taken to piracy, his grandfather had gone to Bordeaux. Each had come back safe and well, and their enemies had been vanquished. So Hugh had thought would happen this time.

  But all of their enemies had not been vanquished. Roger Mortimer had been left alive. And he and the queen together had killed Hugh's sixty-four-year-old grandfather—who had never been their chief foe. It was Hugh's father who was the queen's quarry, and there were fewer than a hundred people and Caerphilly Castle standing between him and the queen. Probably there would soon be fewer. Men had left the king's household at Cardiff, and now that Hugh's grandfather was dead, more might find it prudent to desert.

  How could he have been so foolishly optimistic?

  It was best, perhaps, not to think just now about how much he had loved his grandfather and would miss him. Instead, he knelt and prayed for the Earl of Winchester's soul. Then he prayed for their own skins.

  His father did not reappear until the next morning. He had obviously not slept the night before, for there were dark circles under his eyes and he was wearing exactly what he had worn the previous day. The king, who a servant later told Hugh had spent the entire night sitting up with him, looked scarcely better. Yet the two of them made some pretense of normality, sending out yet more summonses that went unanswered. Overnight the household had shrunk even more. Hugh, waiting the next morning for shaving water that never came, discovered that his own page was one of the deserters. He’d taken off with his father, one of the king's household knights.

  On All Hallows’ Eve, the last of the royal clerks disappeared. With the exception of the garrison at Caerphilly and a few stray servants, the second Edward's court was down to a dozen men.

  Several nights later, Hugh was shaken awake. “Father?” he muttered.

  His father sat on the bed beside him. Coming to full consciousness, Hugh was not all that surprised to see him there. Since the Earl of Winchester's death, Hugh the younger could be seen wandering around Caerphilly at all hours. He had also virtually stopped eating, usually doing no more than rearranging the meat on his plate. “I came to tell you that we are leaving Caerphilly tomorrow morning. The king and I and a few others.”

  “Why?”

  “The king thinks we can raise some support if men see him in person, rather than staying behind these castle walls. He may be right. And there's always the possibility that we might make it yet to Ireland.” He fiddled with a ring on his finger. “Anyway, it's worth a try, I suppose.”

  “So where will we go next?”

  “Not you. You’re staying here.”

  “Father?”

  “The king's leaving a great deal of money here. We need someone to guard it.” His father's shoulders slumped. “Do you know what that whoreson the Earl of Leicester did? He and his men were supposed to be joining your grandfather to help guard against the queen's invasion. Instead they seized the money he’d brought to Leicester Abbey for safekeeping. If he’d only kept faith—” He shook his head. “Anyway, that's our plan. Between you and John de Felton, Caerphilly will be in good hands. I know you’re capable of defending it.”

  “Thank you, Father.”

  His father shrugged. “Who knows, perhaps the king is right and we’ll soon defeat the queen. In which case it’ll be high time to find you a pretty, rich bride. All else being equal, who would you like? A blonde or a brunette? Not all that many redheads like your mother.”

  “A dark brunette,” Hugh said, thinking of the silver blond queen.

  So was his father. “Aye, we’ve had enough of the fair Isabella, haven’t we? Very well, a brunette she shall be. With a magnificent bosom.”

  Hugh blushed, remembering a particularly buxom fishmonger he’d admired at the Tower just a few weeks before. “I didn’t realize I was so unsubtle.”

  “You are, but I’d have you no other way.” Hugh's father managed a half smile, then stood. Hugh, following suit, realized with a start that he was a couple of inches taller than his father. Long accustomed to having to look down to speak to his petite mother, he must have only recently gained this height over his father. “Hugh…”

  “Father?”

  “If—if anything goes awry, look after your mother and the children.”

  “Of course, Father.”

  “And look after yourself. Don’t do some of the fool things that I did.” His father sighed and headed toward the door. “We’ll be ready to leave at first light tomorrow.”

  And so they were, accompanied by an entourage far smaller than most royal hunting parties Hugh had seen. The king smiled at him as they mounted their horses. “High time you were knighted, Hugh. When I come back I’ll do it. I’d do it now but you deserve more ceremony.”

  In spite of Hugh's misgivings, his spirits lifted. Sir Hugh! “Thank you, your grace.”

  “My pleasure.”

  Astride his own chestnut horse, his father reached over and ruffled Hugh's hair, a gesture he had not used since Hugh was a small boy. “God keep you, son.”

  “God keep you,” Hugh echoed. From a guard tower a few minutes later, he stared at the king's party as they rode away from Caerphilly Castle, until at last he could see them no longer.

  Weeks passed, during which Hugh and his companions at Caerphilly heard only rumors, most of them contradictory and none of them readily verifiable, about the whereabouts of his father and the king. Then toward the end of November, Hugh, preparing for bed, responded to a knock on his door and found John de Felton, the castle constable. “There is news at last of your father and of the king. News from one whose information can be relied upon.”

  “Yes?”

  “The last rumor we heard was true; the king and Sir Hugh were captured not far from Llantrisant. The king has been taken to Kenilworth, where he will be kept in honorable captivity. Master Hugh, it grieves me beyond measure to tell the rest. Your father was taken to Hereford. On the day before the feast of St. Catherine, he was executed.”

  November 24, less than a month after his grandfather had been killed on October 27. Hugh felt himself begin to shake. Trying to regain some mastery over himself, he said, “He was used as they did my grandfather?” He saw Felton hesitate. “Tell me!”

  “They used him—as he did Llywelyn Bren.”
Drawing, hanging, disemboweling, beheading, and quartering.
Felton put his hand on Hugh's shoulder, but nothing he could do stopped the world from whirling around, and something in Felton's face made Hugh realize that he was still holding something back. After a while he said, “I hesitate to tell you the full story, but it would be an ill thing if you were to hear it from a foe instead of a friend.”