Hugh and Bess (7 page)

  Hugh scrambled down from his horse and reached the bank as the girl rose from the shallow water, dripping from her head to her toes. Somewhat disappointed that he would not have the chance to heroically save her life, he gave her his hand, but she ignored it and stepped onto the bank with as much dignity as she could muster under the circumstances. Her eyes, Hugh saw, were blazing, and they were also mismatched, one blue and one brown. “Did you make that noise?” He could only nod. “Oaf!”

  “You were a fool to try to walk across it.”

  “I do it all of the time! How was I to know some idiot boy would make a racket?”

  “If a little noise like that scares you so easily, you should have stayed on the bank where a girl belongs.”

  Having reached a verbal impasse for the time being, they glared at each other until Hugh remembered the chivalrous training he was receiving: a knight did not let a lady, even a peculiar-looking one who looked as if she might claw him with her nails, shiver in the cold while he enjoyed a warm cloak. Hugh took his off and handed it to her. “Here. It’ll warm you a little.”

  “That's useless. My wet clothes will only get it wet too.” She put it on, however, and Hugh saw her expression change when she realized from the fur inside how costly it was. Her face turned scarlet. “You—You must be—”

  “Your new lord's son,” said Hugh, thoroughly enjoying her discomfiture. “His
eldest
son,” he added, doubling his pleasure as he saw her turn even redder. “There's Hugh le Despenser the elder, my grandfather; Hugh le Despenser the younger, my father; and me, Hugh le Despenser the Oaf.” He considered adding that she was in his family's deer park, where she had no business, but decided to reserve this point for later.

  “I—” She curtseyed. “I beg your pardon. I am shortsighted.” She began to slide the cloak off. “I must go. Thank you for the cloak.”

  She was openly shivering, and wherever she lived, it would take her a while to get there. Probably letting the smart mouthed wench catch her death of cold would be unchivalrous too; a knight's life was not always an easy one. “That's silly; you’ll freeze. Keep it on. Get on my horse and let me take you to the castle. Someone can find some dry clothes for you to borrow and bring you home.” Whose clothes he could not imagine; though the girl was tall for her age, she was so skinny that his mother's robes would hang on her, and his oldest sister's robes would barely reach past her knees. He decided to leave that dilemma up to the womenfolk.

  The girl was too cold to argue, it seemed. By the time Hugh got her on his horse, she was shivering so hard that she could hardly stay on without his assistance. Hugh pulled her closer to him on the saddle and gathered the cloak more tightly around her, nobly conquering his distaste for the females of the human species and their surefire way of spoiling perfectly good rides with their falling-into-water antics. A boy, he knew, would have stayed on the stupid tree. He heaved a martyred sigh and clucked at his horse.

  At Hanley Castle, the servants took one look at the girl, now almost blue with cold, and hustled her upstairs to his mother's chamber, where she was wrapped in blankets and put in front of a fire. (Someone also took the trouble to ask her name, which Hugh certainly hadn’t.) Though Emma, as she turned out to be, soon looked warm and comfortable, the occasional minatory sneezes she let out alarmed Hugh's mother, who to Hugh's utter disgust ordered that instead of being sent home straightaway, she be put to bed in his sisters’ chamber and kept at the castle overnight, a message having been sent to her parents accordingly. Hugh comforted himself with the notion that Emma's sharp tongue would irk her companions and that she would be in high disgrace when morning came.

  Instead, when the children broke their fast the next morning with watered-down ale and bread, Hugh discovered that overnight, his sisters had become devoted to Emma, who was several years older than Isabel, the eldest of the Despenser girls. Joan was too young to do much more than gaze worshipfully at Emma, and Nora was only a baby, but Isabel was a different matter. Already she and Emma had entered into a few of the private jokes that girls were so fond of, for they said things that were absolutely not humorous at all and laughed at them as heartily as if the king's jester had been putting on a command performance. Isabel had contrived to give Emma one of her girdles and would have given her one of her best jewels if Emma had not had the wisdom to suggest that Isabel's mother should be consulted. Worse, though Isabel and Emma whispered when they said it, Hugh distinctly heard the word “oaf” when they looked in his direction. All of his sisters, even baby Nora, were in tears when Emma, resplendent in her dried and brushed clothes and her new girdle, left (not on a dung-wagon as Hugh had hoped, but on Isabel's own palfrey and escorted by a page). Only through promising to return in a few days to visit did Emma stem the flood of emotion.

  Eleanor, Hugh's mother, was no better than her daughters. Several times over the next few hours she commented on how well mannered Emma was (
Fooled you
, Hugh thought), and Hugh heard her telling Gladys, her damsel, how nice it would be to have a companion for the girls who was young enough to be a friend to them yet old enough to provide some guidance to them. After that, events took their inevitable course, and two mornings later, their mother announced that Emma's parents had consented to allow their daughter to come to live with the Despenser girls. Of course they had consented, Hugh thought. It was an honor to be singled out thusly by the Lady of Glamorgan, and Emma's parents, members of the local gentry who were tenants of the Despensers, could expect that her undoubtedly modest dowry would be added to by the lady when it came time for Emma to marry. With those peculiar eyes and that tongue of hers, she would need all of the help she could get on the marriage market.

  So that very same afternoon, she arrived, bringing with her a coffer containing her small wardrobe. Hugh had expected, perhaps hoped, that she would have another go at insulting him, but having made her one blunder, she spoke to him with all of the deference due to him as the Despenser heir. Soon he became as accustomed to her as he was to his sisters, and as little interested in her doings as he was in theirs. In any case, he hardly saw her, for as part of his knightly training, he was usually living at court and joining it on its travels.

  It was in his seventeenth year, during the Christmas of 1325, that he first saw Emma as something other than his sisters’ companion. He’d not been around her in months, and those months had wrought a dramatic change in her, so dramatic that Hugh, thinking of the time he had held her close to him on his horse as they rode back to Hanley Castle, cursed himself for having made so little out of the opportunity. Emma was still tall, but she’d become slender rather than skinny, her sharp features had become interesting rather than simply stark, and she’d developed a bust. An exemplary bust, Hugh decided, contemplating it as closely as he dared, and could, under the modest robes Emma wore. So intently and unsubtly did he admire it that one of his cousins had waved a hand in front of his face, and the following morning, his father himself decided that a father-son ride was in order. Toward the end of the ride he’d said, not at all in relation to the illuminating conversation about the wool trade that they had been having, “That girl Emma has become a fine wench, but you’d best stay away, son. She can’t be your wife, and your mother and sisters are too fond of her for her to become your plaything. Leave her be and let your mother find a suitable match for her.”

  Did his father really think he was capable of seducing her? This was flattering, at least, for as far as he could tell the attraction between them was purely one-sided. Yet he might have been tempted to disobey his father and try anyway had not Emma's mother fallen fatally ill a few months later. Emma went home to nurse her and remained there after her death to keep her widowed father company, at his request. Probably, Hugh realized later, her father had been not so much lonely as cautious; it was becoming less and less desirable to be allied with the Despenser family. Just a few months before, Emma's father, who had done some estate business for Hugh's father, had found an excuse to be relieved of his duties.

  Then came the Christmas of 1326, with Hugh's father executed a month before, his grandfather two months before, and Hugh himself under siege at Caerphilly Castle by the queen's troops. Emma's extraordinary bosom no longer mattered much. Nothing did, really, that Christmastide.

  It was on a July day in 1331, the day after Hugh had been released from his captivity at Bristol Castle, the last of the various places that he’d been imprisoned, that he next encountered Emma. His mother had hastily arranged a feast to celebrate his sudden homecoming. Hugh, rather the worse for wine, had been watching from his seat of honor as the trestle tables were cleared for the dancing to begin when he saw Emma standing across the room, dressed in widow's garb. He had not known she had ever married; it was disconcerting to realize how much had happened in the four years of his imprisonment. He’d thought about her occasionally in prison, as he thought about everyone he cared for and never got to see, but as the months turned into years he’d forgotten his baser longings for her; he had even ceased to recall her features distinctly. But now that he had seen her, Hugh suddenly felt an intense ache in his groin. He rose from his seat and made his unsteady way over to her. “Emma,” he said, taking her hand. “I’ve missed you.”

  “Welcome home, Hugh.”

  He took her arm and lurched through the nearest doorway, which fortunately happened to lead outside. “Sweet little Emma,” he whispered, backing her against a wall and kissing her.

  “Hugh!” Emma wrenched away and glared at him. “You are drunk.”

  “But I know who the prettiest lass in this castle is. Please, Emma.” He tried to kiss her again but succeeded only in kissing the wall behind her as she yanked to the side. “Don’t be so cruel, Emma,” he complained, rubbing his sore lip. Undaunted, he put his hand on what he thought was her bosom and ended up touching her shoulder instead. He frowned in disappointment at its lack of softness.

  “Hugh! You have been in prison for so long and are so far in wine that I will forgive your boorish behavior, but enough is enough. Stand back and listen to me. If I allow you to visit me tomorrow, will you leave me alone now?”

  “Tomorrow,” he repeated carefully, as if Emma had coined a new word.

  “Yes, tomorrow. At the house my father had.”

  “Your father's house,” agreed Hugh. “Tomorrow.”

  “Yes. My father's house, tomorrow. Now leave me in peace. I shall have my man take me home.”

  She walked away briskly, leaving Hugh to make his meandering way inside, where in due time he was put to bed, a production that Hugh foggily recalled afterward as involving at least two of his mother's servants and perhaps his mother herself. Dim as his memory was on this particular point, it was achingly sharp when it came to his ill behavior with Emma, and late the next morning, thoroughly ashamed of himself, he rode to the manor house where Emma had lived with her widowed father. There were more ruts on the path between Hanley Castle and Emma's house than he remembered, or perhaps it was only that his horse had managed to find each of them, every one of which sent a jolt of pain through Hugh's throbbing head. Despite the difficulty of concentrating, he managed to keep the red rose he held from being crushed. “For you,” he said when he was left alone with Emma. “I’m sorry I acted like such a knave.”

  “It's beautiful.”

  “But you appear to have a garden full of them, I noticed when I arrived here.”

  “Yours is prettier than any of mine. It's much more red, for one thing. Come. Sit and talk for a while.”

  Emma's house was a small manor, with a kitchen, a great hall, and two private chambers, along with some outbuildings. Hugh sat uneasily in the seat Emma offered him in her own chamber. The sleeping area was curtained off from the sitting area, but Hugh knew what lay behind the partition. He had never been so close to the bed of a lady, and it had been a very long time since he had made conversation with one either, except for his mother and his sisters when they had visited him in prison in his last months there. Having sat on the stool offered to him, he decided to start by elaborating his apology. “I don’t know what came over me, my lady. Well, I do know; too much wine. Father told me once that I couldn’t hold it all that well. But—”

  “Hugh! Since when did you call me ‘my lady’? Please. We have known each other too long for such formality, haven’t we?” Seeing that Hugh still was at a loss for words, she added, “Is it odd, being free after so long?”

  Hugh grinned in relief. “It's very odd. I awoke this morning and fretted about how I was going to get permission to go out and see you. I’d just remembered that I didn’t have to do so when I heard this rustling outside, and I thought,
There's my guard, after all.
But of course it was just one of my mother's servants, coming to help me wash and dress. I’m not used to being waited on anymore, it's so strange, and I’m so awkward on a horse now, I’m surprised I made it here alive.” Remembering that he had been told it was ill mannered to speak of oneself too long with a lady, he said, “I am sorry to see you have been widowed. Who was your husband?”

  “Sir Alan Welles.”

  “Sir Alan Welles? Wasn’t he in his sixties?” Emma nodded. “Emmy, why’d they marry you off to such an old man?”

  She shrugged. “There was no ‘they’ about it, Hugh. Once your father—er—died, with my father having done some services for your father—”