Hugh and Bess (6 page)

  “Yes. Let me hear it.”

  He listened as Felton, speaking as gently as he could, told him a tale of horror upon horror. His father, hoping to cheat the queen of his execution, starving himself from the time he was taken to the time he was executed at Hereford. His father, wearing a mock crown of nettles, made to ride in chains from Llantrisant to Hereford on the meanest mount that could be found, hooted at by the crowd and pelted with dung and garbage in each town through which the procession passed. His father, finally reaching Hereford, being stripped naked for the amusement of the bystanders and having admonitory scripture verses etched onto his skin. His father being dragged by four horses to a fifty-foot gallows, his man-at-arms Simon de Reading being hung below him. His father not only being disemboweled while he was conscious but emasculated as well.

  A silence fell. When Hugh next heard Felton's voice next to his ear, it was strangely far off. “Shall I send the chaplain to you, Master Hugh?”

  “No. Leave me.”

  “Sir, I don’t think—”

  “I said leave me!”

  “Sir—”

  “Leave me, damn you!” He added, “Have someone bring me some wine. Plenty of it.”

  Felton slowly left the room. Some minutes later, a man arrived with the wine. Hugh shooed him out, seated himself on the window seat, and drank two large cupfuls rapidly. Two more cups followed in quick succession, yet poor as his head for wine had always been, the picture in his mind of his father being hacked to pieces was as vivid as before.

  Someone knocked on his door, then called his name. Hugh paid the caller no mind, and soon he heard the sound of retreating footsteps. Two more cups, and the knock sounded again. “Get the hell away,” he called. He knocked the cup over and stared at it stupidly.

  “Master Hugh?”

  The voice was a female one. After a moment, Hugh stumbled to the door and lifted the bolt. When the door swung open, he found himself staring at the castle laundress, Alice. She was in her forties, but when they had first arrived at Caerphilly, Hugh, missing the wenches he had enjoyed visiting in London, had wondered if she would do as a bedmate in their absence; she looked as if she might still have considerable lust in her. Then the world had turned upside down with the death of his grandfather, and he’d not thought of Alice again except as a source of clean shirts. “Ah, I was right. You were brought up too well for you to refuse a woman.”

  “They tormented him. They cut his—”

  “I know, lamb. Come.”

  She held out her arms and he stepped into them, then sank to his knees and began sobbing into her skirts, at first quietly, then harshly. Alice eased herself down to his level and patted him on the back as he huddled against her, weeping.

  His stomach sent a warning in just enough time for him to turn and heave onto the rushes the wine he had gulped. Again and again he retched while Alice supported him. “Please don’t tell the garrison,” he muttered when he could finally speak again.

  “I won’t. Come, let's put you to bed.”

  Despite her gender, Alice, through years of dragging washing around, was easily as strong as Hugh. She hauled him to his feet as summarily as if he were a recalcitrant sack of laundry, mopped his face with a towel, stripped him to his drawers, and assisted him into his bed. Too weak and exhausted to protest at the intrusion, Hugh heard her open the door and murmur to someone outside, then heard the sound of someone sweeping up the soiled rushes and scattering fresh ones in their place. The sound had ceased, and Hugh had almost gone to sleep when he felt someone climb into bed next to him and touch his shoulder. Hugh blinked. “
Alice?
”

  “Don’t be daft, lamb, my days for
that
are long gone. I’m here to keep you company. With all the grief you’re carrying, you shouldn’t be alone tonight. Just lie here and sleep.”

  She gathered him closer to her. Alice's ample bosom was as sweet and as comforting as his childhood nurse's had been, and soon Hugh had fallen asleep upon it just as he had on his nurse's when something had gone wrong in his small world so many years ago.

  When he awoke at last, the sun was high in the sky and Alice had left the bed. Rolling over and parting the bed curtains, he saw her sitting on a stool and glaring at his cloak, which she was brushing. “Alice?”

  “Ah, there you are. That fool page of yours had no idea of how to treat your clothes, Master Hugh. This hasn’t been properly brushed for months, I’ll wager. You’re well rid of him, I say.”

  “That's good.” He hesitated. “Thank you, Alice. For last night.”

  She smiled at him. “Sometimes only a woman will do for a man, and not in the usual way.”

  He slowly sat up and ran a hand over his throbbing head. “Once I’d heard that rumor, I suppose I knew in my heart that it was true. And I knew that if they did catch him, there’d be no hope, not after they executed my grandfather. But to die like that—” He shuddered.

  “Best not think of it, or you’ll be getting yourself in the same shape you were last night. And you’ve other things to think of now. Your own head, mainly.”

  Hugh unconsciously ran his hand along his neck. “I wonder if they’d kill me,” he said almost detachedly.

  “Why not? They killed Simon de Reading, what for no one knows except that he was loyal to your father to the end. I suppose you’ve not heard about the Earl of Arundel?” Hugh shook his head. “They beheaded him the day after your father was captured. Him and two of his followers. All he did that anyone can think of was to marry his son to your sister and get some of Mortimer's lands.”

  “Christ.” Hugh crossed himself. He slid out of bed and looked about for his clothes.

  “Shall I call a man for you? I can undress a gentleman a lot better than I can dress him.”

  “I’ve been managing on my own.” He took the newly brushed clothes that Alice handed to him and began pulling them on. From behind his shirt he asked, “I don’t know what to do. Stay here? Flee abroad?”

  “The garrison was talking over your situation last night before I came to you. Most seemed to think that you should stay right here. Even if you were to dress in borrowed clothes and hide your face, the queen's men were bribing the people around here very generously when your father and the king were hereabouts. They’d have an eye out for you, and you favor your father a great deal. You could travel by night and hide by day, I suppose, but every man around would be combing his stables for you once word got out that you were at large. Here at least you can hold them off for a time.”

  Hugh winced. “My head aches too much to follow that, but I think I agree.” He bent to retrieve the wine cup from where it had fallen the night before. Turning it in his hands as if he were reading his fortune in it, he said, “I know John de Felton will be loyal, but what will that count if the garrison deserts like my grandfather's did? Do you think they’ll stay?”

  “Only one way to find out.”

  “Even if they desert me, I’ll stay as long as I can.” Hugh looked at the doorway where his father had stood just a few weeks before, a lifetime ago. “I’ll be damned if I let the queen complete her collection of Hugh le Despensers.” He winced again as a jab of pain shot through his head. “Though I’m not sure I’d mind at the moment.”

  The garrison did not desert him. When the queen's forces arrived just hours later to seize the castle and Hugh, they found the gates shut up against them. Several times over the next few months the queen and Mortimer tried to entice the garrison with a pardon, expressly excepting Hugh's life, but they continued to resist the royal forces, even when the second Edward resigned his throne to his young son and all hope of resistance seemed futile. Hugh often wondered what had kept the garrison so loyal. Had it been regard for Felton or merely an abhorrence of seeing a man as young as he die on the scaffold? Or had it been respect for Hugh himself? Whatever their reasons, it was the men of the garrison who allowed him to hold out until mid-March, when the nominal king offered yet another pardon. This time, Hugh was promised that his own life would be spared. Knowing that no better offer would be forthcoming and that even these men's loyalty had its limits, he surrendered Caerphilly Castle and watched in its great hall, under guard, as Felton and the rest of those who had stayed true to him filed outside to freedom. Even a tearful Alice was with them, having left Hugh a pile of clean, crisp linen shirts to remember her by.

  Then they were all gone, and just Hugh and his captors were left at Caerphilly. The commander of the besieging forces, William la Zouche, had treated Hugh kindly and considerately when taking him into custody, but not all of his men were so well disposed toward him, Hugh found when Zouche left the room. “Take a look around you, Despenser,” said one of the guards as they prepared to lead Hugh to the far-off chamber in which he would be kept as the crown's prisoner. He was a young man, not much older than Hugh, and he had the look that Hugh would come to know well over the next few years: the appearance of someone who had realized that he was free to treat Hugh just as he pleased. The guard waved to encompass the splendor of the great hall. “You might never see this again, you know.”

  Hugh looked up at the corbel of his father and felt the ache in his chest that had never quite left it since the news had come. “If only he’d known,” he said. “He could have spared himself the investment.”

  The guard glared. “Think you’re amusing, Despenser? Shut your trap.”

  So began the next four years of his life.

 
iii

 
June 1341: Hanley Castle

  HUGH SAT UP IN BED AND, AS USUAL, LOOKED AROUND him before arising. Though it had been nearly ten years since he had been the crown's prisoner, he still felt the need every morning to check his surroundings to assure himself that he was a free man. The need was even more compelling on occasions like this one, when he’d awakened from one of his bad dreams. They all ended the same way, with the sight of what he’d been spared in life: his father hanging naked in the air before he was cut down, castrated, disemboweled, beheaded, and quartered. Then the queen's men came for Hugh himself with their noose.

He took a couple of deep breaths, reminding himself that all this was in the past and that he had nothing to fear. His own life was a good one. He was healthy, rich, and still relatively young, with no great sins on his head. He had led men in battle with success and was on reasonably good terms with the king, though they would never be intimates; in any case, his father had been so close to
his
king that this would probably have to suffice for whole generations of Despensers. He had no enemies, personal ones at least; if—or, to be more accurate, when—he died, it might be violently at the thrust of a French or a Scottish sword, but it would be an honorable death in battle, the death of a knight.

  And what was he doing thinking of death anyway, when he was quite content, except for one thing?

  He lay back again, taking more comfort in his surroundings. There was his familiar carved bed with the coverlet of material his mother had chosen for him. There was the pleasant feel of fine linen sheets against his bare skin; in prison, he’d always slept fully clothed, feeling too vulnerable and often too cold to do without his garments. If he parted the heavy bed curtains that matched the coverlet, he would see he was in his familiar chamber at Hanley Castle, overlooking the River Severn. Stretched out by the fireplace would be his favorite dog; Hugh could hear him having his nightly scratch. Although the dog's presence in his chamber at night violated every principle of civilized living his chamberlain held dear, Hugh let the animal stay. The four years he’d spent as a captive without friends had made him appreciate the ones he had now, human or canine.

  The most reassuring sight, however, was that immediately to his right: Emma, sleeping beside him. No; not sleeping now. She was awake and put her arms protectively around him. He was still shaking, he realized; he must have screamed himself awake as he did on occasion.

  “It's early, Hugh,” she said gently. “Go back to sleep now. All is well.”

  But it wasn’t, of course. That very day, Emma was going to leave him.

  He’d first met Emma when they were each twelve or so, several years after his mother had come into her third of the Clare inheritance, a third, he had become more and more acutely conscious, that would someday be his own. His father was full of schemes to make his share an even larger one, but Hugh was cheerfully unaware of the full extent of these ambitions, much less worried about to what they would lead.

  On a fine day in the early spring of 1321, soon after the Clare property of Hanley Castle had reverted to his mother, Hugh, now serving in the king's household, paid a visit to the family's new estate. He’d been riding off a heavy dinner when he came to a rutty area, too treacherous to go through at a fast pace. As he reined in his horse, he saw a flash of blue at a distance. Drawing closer, he saw that it was the cloak of a girl of his own age. Walking on a tree that had fallen across a stream, she was balanced as precariously as the acrobats he’d seen at court. Unlike the acrobats, she was encumbered by her gown and cloak, the skirts of which she had to hold with both hands to keep from tripping her up. Still, she was making it across the stream, though so slowly that Hugh, realizing that he had been holding his breath, had to let it out. As he did, his horse took a step forward and snapped a twig underneath its feet. With a yelp, the girl swung sideways, made a vain attempt to right herself, and fell into the stream with a prodigious splash.