Hugh and Bess (17 page)

 
vi

 
July 1342 to March 1343

  IN HIS PRISON DAYS, ONE OF HUGH'S PASTIMES HAD BEEN to choose a wife for himself. He’d not based his choice on his situation as the imprisoned son of an attainted traitor, of course, for that narrowed his range of options, to put it mildly. Instead, he’d assumed that his father and grandfather were alive and thriving (he had the right to set the parameters of his own pastime, after all) and that his father's criteria would dutifully have to be followed. The girl had to be from a noble family, preferably an earl's daughter or better; no humble knight's daughters need apply. An heiress would be preferable but was not mandatory. As royal connections were more than welcome, English birth was not imperative; foreign royalty or nobility would make an interesting possibility. To these paternal criteria Hugh added his own special requirements: nearness to Hugh's own age, ample breasts, a sweet smile, and an eagerness to engage in all sorts of bed tricks in all positions and at all times. In Bristol Castle, by far the worst of his prisons until Mortimer's fall had eased his lot, he’d sit on the floor of his cell in the semi-darkness, ill-fed, ill-clothed, and chilly, his pale, thin face intent with concentration as he tried to pick a suitable bride. It was not a task he took lightly; this was a lady he would have to spend his life with. He could spend hours debating with himself on the subject, sometimes becoming so engrossed in his imaginary dilemma that he would fail to respond to a question or to a command and would have to be nudged back to reality by his guards. Such reminders might take the form of a gentle tap on the shoulder or a kick, depending on the guard. If it were the latter, it would lead to a second means by which Hugh had passed the time at Bristol: fighting with his guards. And as he was invariably outnumbered, a third occupation flowed naturally from the second: nursing his wounds.

Well, at least the fighting had helped him on the battlefield. But the marriage game hadn’t prepared him at all for Bess. If only he had chosen her as carefully as he had his imaginary bride.

  Did the girl know how pretty she had become? At the time of their first meeting, Hugh had thought her a pleasant looking lass who would without doubt grow into a reasonably attractive woman, but something had happened to her recently, something Hugh had not predicted. In a matter of a few months, she’d shot up tall and filled out, and her facial proportions had changed somehow so that her huge, expressive brown eyes dominated her serious face, turning it into one that Hugh found to be haunting and irresistible. Her long, thick hair, a rich brown in color, which had been her chief attraction when Hugh had first seen her, had not altered, but now that she had adopted the married woman's custom of hiding it in public, it had become a mysterious thing to be seen only at night when Hugh visited her. Too often for his comfort lately, he’d imagined it spread out over her pillow as she lay on her bed without a stitch on, awaiting his pleasure.

  God almighty.

  Now that Hugh recalled it, his father had almost married him to an Elizabeth Comyn, a woman eight years his senior and one of the heirs of the late Earl of Pembroke. Hugh doubted that the lady had been enthralled with the idea of marrying a cub like himself—he’d been only seventeen at the time—though her opinion would have counted for naught, of course. Hugh himself had not heard of the plan until it had been abandoned; whether his own objections would have counted either, he did not know. Something had put his father off the idea, most likely the fact that the unfortunate Elizabeth had given up her lands to him without him having to go to the trouble of getting her for a daughter-in-law. (Probably his father would have found a disinherited heiress rather poor company as his son's bride; in his own way he had liked harmonious family relations.) Having survived this plucking by Hugh's father, Elizabeth had married a Richard Talbot and had been restored to her lands at the time of the queen's invasion. Hugh had often wondered if his father had had other brides for him in mind, but aside from their stilted last conversation at Caerphilly Castle, the subject had not been seriously raised.

  In any event, Hugh's father could not have picked for Hugh worse than Hugh had picked for himself. A pretty, spoiled wench whose beautiful body aroused him unbearably and who loathed the sight of him.

  Elizabeth Comyn would have been better.

  “Hugh! I’ve called your name twice. What's on your mind, that you’ve lost your hearing?”

  The man riding up beside him was none other than Richard Talbot. Hugh could hardly tell him that he had been wondering what would have happened if he had married Richard's wife. “Sorry.”

  “You’re missing that young wife of yours,” said Talbot. “Indisposed, was she?”

  “Yes.”

  “Who knows, Despenser? You might have an heir waiting for you when you return.”

  “No, she said it was a bad cold,” said Hugh hastily. No point in telling Richard that his wife would not let him near her without raising a ruckus, but also no point in starting an impossible rumor. Richard was a gossip.

  Richard would not be stopped. “That's how I started out, I hear, as a cold.”

  Hugh and Richard had started their rather unlikely friendship when Richard had served as one of Hugh's mainprisors after he’d been provisionally released from prison and was awaiting a final pardon from the king. The mutual liking that had grown between them had been strong enough to overcome the grudge that Richard might have justly held against the Despenser family for the harsh treatment of Elizabeth Comyn. The lady herself was still a little frosty with Hugh, though he’d gotten a chuckle out of her the last time he’d visited at Goodrich Castle.

  “Who's ill?” Oliver Ingham, seneschal of Aquitaine, rode up with a frown. He was an even more incongruous companion for Hugh than Talbot, for Ingham, though he’d gotten on well with the Despensers and the second Edward in their day, had jumped ship at the precisely right moment and had ended up as a member of Roger Mortimer's inner circle. So close had he been, in fact, that he’d been arrested at the same time Mortimer had. Yet within a few weeks he’d been freed, and in due course he had been reappointed to his old post in Aquitaine and had been there ever since, save for the occasional trip to England like the one he was taking now to bring back troops.

  “Despenser's wife,” said Richard with a wink.

  Ingham missed the wink. He was a crotchety man, a trait that Hugh would have attributed to age and failing health had not he known that Ingham had been no less cranky in his prime twenty years before. Perhaps, thought Hugh, he had assimilated to new regimes so readily because he treated everyone pretty much in the same manner: as a child who needed a good talking to. “Don’t tell me you are planning on heading back to her, Despenser. We need to be making time.”

  “She's fine. It's just a summer cold,” said Hugh wearily.

  Ingham nodded and began telling Hugh what he had already told him—he was a man who tended to repeat himself—but Hugh did not protest, as Ingham's droning allowed him to think his own thoughts. Since the Count of Montfort had been imprisoned, the Countess of Montfort had taken over the command of his force. “It's said that when Blois's troops arrived in Hennebont, she rode through the streets, urging her men to victory. And a victory they had— for the time being anyway. Killed the French whoresons by the score. But they came back and tried to besiege the place. They gave up and left soon enough, though. Cowards.”

  “And the countess? Where is she now?”

  “Brest, with none but Walter Mauny's men to help her. Our king promised thousands, and where the hell are they?” He shook his head with disgust. “She can’t hold out forever.”

  Why not? Hugh thought. Bess certainly could
.

  “The worst part about being besieged,” said Edward le Despenser a month or so later, “is not being able to send a letter to Anne. Or to receive one.”

  Hugh, without thinking very hard about the issue, could have come up with even worse things about being besieged, such as starving to death or being taken captive, but he forbore to point them out to his brother at the present time. Instead, he confined himself to a sympathetic nod.

  Ingham and Hugh had been bound for Gascony, but upon landing at Saint-Mathieu and seeing how vulnerable the countess's position in Brest was, it had been decided that Hugh and his eighty or so men would stay to aid her. He had arrived just in time, for by August Brest was surrounded, shadowed by fourteen Genoese galleys in its harbor and ringed by French troops on the land. More English troops were on the way, Hugh had kept assuring the countess, but there was no sign of their approaching. In the meantime, those in Brest had little to do but wait for their relief. Hugh had been through this long before at Caerphilly Castle, but Edward had not, and the strain was beginning to tell on both him and Gilbert, who was also serving in Hugh's retinue. Pleased as Hugh was to have them with him, he was relieved in a way that John, his youngest full brother, was in the queen's household and that William, his half brother, was safely at Glastonbury Abbey, where he was to become one of the monks. Two brothers to worry about were enough.

  Hugh pointed out the window toward the row of Genoese galleys. Bobbing in the water, they made a pretty picture; sunk beneath the waves, they would have made an even prettier one. “Pity our father isn’t here. He pirated one of them, do you remember? He’d have kept them from ever reaching the port.”

  “One pirate in the family is enough,” said Edward. He had begun to pace around the room. “What if she's with child?”

  “Then you’ll have a pleasant surprise waiting for you when you return to England.”

  “Aren’t you worried about Bess? What if she's with child?”

  Because the two older brothers were alone together, Hugh said, “There's only been one virgin birth known to man, Edward.”

  This confidence at least made Edward stop pacing. “What? You haven’t—”

  “She's put herself off limits.” Hugh decided it was his turn to pace.

  “Surely she's old enough?” Edward saw the look on Hugh's face. “I’m sorry, Hugh. I don’t mean to pry.”

  “It's one way to pass the time.” He shrugged. “I came to her bed the night before we left Cardiff. She sent me packing. Obviously, the girl is oblivious to my charms.”

  “Had you been getting along?”

  “So I thought. The girl's never been madly in love with me; I knew that from the start. But I thought she was thawing. And then—”

  “You must have taken her by surprise,” said Edward. “Women have strange moods, Hugh. Even Anne does. We’ve quarreled during them.”

  “You and Anne have quarreled?”

  Edward's face took on a look of deep concentration. “Two or three times,” he admitted after thinking for a while.

  Hugh snorted. “I wonder Anne hasn’t sought an annulment.” He shook his head. “I keep telling myself that, Edward, that it was just a mood of Bess's. I was a little tipsy, too; that puts her off, I know. Maybe I shouldn’t have surprised her; maybe I should have told her before what my intentions were so that she could commiserate with her ladies first.” He grimaced. “Of course, I didn’t help matters by lying with Emma later that night. My only lapse since we married, but Bess caught me.”

  “Christ, man! How drunk were you?”

  “Not much at all, not enough to make an excuse of it. Just acting like a tom fool.” He drummed his finger on a ledge. “Now I wonder if I’ll even have a wife to come home to.”

  “You will, Hugh. She can’t hold one night against you, surely.”

  “You might be underestimating my Bess.” Hugh half smiled. “But aside from that, I keep thinking, what if the girl just can’t abide me? What if it's a marriage like poor Isabel's to Arundel, or like Mother's cousin Joan of Bar to the Earl of Surrey, or like our grandfather Gilbert de Clare's marriage to that Alice de Lusignan?” He eyed the ships again and lowered his voice. “Except that in those marriages the loathing was mutual, and I’ve come to love Bess, Edward. Much as I loved Emma, I love Bess more.” Hugh shook his head. “Jesus, I’m rattling on, aren’t I?”

  “It will come aright, Hugh. I’m certain of it. Bess is a sweet girl. She's young, that's all, barely out of childhood, really. I was lucky that Anne was ripe for marriage when I met her.” He smiled. “She's so beautiful. I still can’t believe that she chose to have me for a husband.”

  “I can’t believe it either,” Hugh said, relieved to be falling back into this joshing mode, for taking advice from his younger brother had been rather unnerving. Still, Edward had cheered him a little. “Shall we wager whether your Anne will deliver yet another boy to the world?”

  From high atop the castle there came shouts, followed by a peal of bells. The door banged open, and Gilbert ran inside. “They’ve spotted ships! English ones.”

  Entering the chamber at Hanley Castle where she and Hugh did business, Bess stared furiously at Hugh's chamberlain. There with him was Emma, eyes cast down, standing next to one of Emma's own manservants. “You told me that Lady Welles's man needed to see me urgently about an estate matter. You did not tell me that his whore of a mistress would be present. If I could dismiss you, I would.”

  “My lady, please do not blame your lord's man. I begged him to deceive you. Only allow me to see you for a short time, and I will never trouble you again.”