Hugh and Bess (27 page)

  London, strangely, had remained untouched for a while, a fact that even encouraged the king to summon Parliament. Bess, planning as always to accompany Hugh to their house in London, prepared for the journey as if all were normal, but no sooner had she made the arrangements than word arrived in January that the pestilence had become so fierce in the city that the king had postponed Parliament.

  Probably no one would have appeared for the session anyway, for by then, the whole countryside appeared to be standing still out of fear of the pestilence. After a very odd Christmastide at Cardiff, where half the guests behaved as if they were at a funeral and the other half appeared determined to drink and eat themselves insensible, Hugh and Bess had settled at Hanley Castle, believing that Cardiff with its busy port was too hazardous in which to stay. Though they continued to make all visitors welcome, few were on the roads, and those who came to see them on business did not linger after concluding their transactions. Even some of the paupers who regularly arrived at mealtimes stopped coming.

  “Gloucester's been hit, I’ve heard,” Hugh told Bess one morning in mid-January as she was sewing in her chamber. “Evidently barring its gates to anyone from Bristol didn’t do the trick.”

  Neither of them needed to say that Hanley Castle was only two dozen or so miles from Gloucester. Hugh sat on the window seat next to Bess and put his arm around her. After they had sat in silence for a while, he said, “I hear from William Beste that the Bishop of Bath and Wells is telling people that if they cannot find a priest to confess to in the face of death, they can confess to each other, even to a woman. If this keeps up, my dear, your sex may start having to give the sermons. Your imitation of poor Beste may serve you better than you anticipated.”

  “I don’t see how you can manage to laugh at this,” Bess said, almost enviously. “The pestilence in Gloucester! We could be dead tomorrow.”

  “So we could. But what are the alternatives to laughing, sweetheart? Some wretches have gone and killed themselves out of fear and despair even before the pestilence got to them. Why not at least make Death work for his keep? I can’t see praying all of the time or donning a hairshirt; God hasn’t seemed much impressed by those who do. I don’t think you’d be pleased if I took to copulating with anything on two legs, as some men and women have. I haven’t the head or the stomach to stay drunk all of the time, and there's not much point in gaming if the loser dies before he can pay up. So I’ll laugh.” He squeezed Bess's waist. “If you were taken, though, I would find it very hard to laugh. You won’t reconsider having me send you somewhere safer? Perhaps to stay with my aunt Elizabeth at Usk?”

  “No. Whatever is coming, I want to face it by your side. Hugh—”

  “Yes?”

  “All these years, I have wished that you and I could have children together. I have prayed for them, tried everything the midwife suggested. If it were not for the pestilence, I would have gone to Walsingham to beg Our Lady for a child. Now I am relieved that we have none, for I need not dread losing them as I do you. Do you feel the same way?”

  Hugh sighed. “Yes.” He crossed himself. “I said that I laughed, but I pray too, in hopes that God will come to His senses one day and call this off. Maybe this is His own heavenly joke, have you thought about that?”

  “If so, it has long ceased to be amusing,” Bess said.

  A few days later, a draper Bess had patronized in Bristol appeared with some cloth. Because of the pestilence, he told her, business was so poor there that he had decided to take his goods around to his best customers.

  Bess, compassionating the man's plight and not unmindful of the beauty of the rich cloth he showed her, bought almost all he had to offer. Sorting through the fine material and deciding what should be used for livery, what should be used for herself and Hugh, and what should be given as gifts, was a welcome diversion from thinking about the pestilence. Giving hard thought to such matters, and earnestly consulting with her tailor, made life seem almost normal for a few days.

  With Easter in mind, she had matching blue robes made for herself and Emma, still her closest friend though no longer her attendant, and had a new set of robes made for Hugh too, in the golden brown color that set off his eyes so nicely. “Very nice,” agreed Hugh as they modeled their new garments for each other a few days later. “When shall we get to wear them?”

  “Easter, silly. And no sooner,” she warned.

  “Well, then, take mine off me so I won’t be tempted.”

  Bess obeyed, reading the invitation in Hugh's eyes. They had adjourned to their bed when Bess, caressing Hugh's bare back, brushed her hand against a rough spot on his skin. Hugh made a sound close to a purr. “Scratch there, sweetheart. It itches.”

  “What is it?”

  “Flea bite. They love me, always have. You hardly ever get them, do you?”

  “No. They must not find me very tasty.”

  “You’re tasty enough to me,” said Hugh, drawing her into his arms.

  In early February, several days after this conversation, the Despensers had a dinner that was somewhat grander than the ones they had had lately, as several local officials and their wives had ventured off their manors to join Hugh and Bess at their meal. Bess wished one of the couples had been less bold, for although the husband was an agreeable enough man, the wife, Lady Thornton, was easily the most garrulous woman in Worcestershire. “Now my head will
really
ache,” Hugh grumbled when he heard of the pair's arrival.

  “Your head hurts, my love?”

  Hugh shrugged and waved toward the accounts he had been going over since the evening before. “Probably all that reading. These days I have to hold everything closer to my eyes than I like to admit.” He grinned. “I may have to get some spectacles for reading soon if this keeps up. Do you think you’d still love me in them?”

  “I will have to consider the matter,” Bess said, trying to picture Hugh in the strange devices.

  As the talkative Lady Thornton was the highest ranking of the female guests, she had to be placed next to Bess, who spent the next hour or so nodding politely. She was about to intersperse yet another civil nod when her neighbor suddenly broke off in the middle of describing the robes her daughter had worn for her wedding five years before. “Your lord—is he ill?”

  Bess whirled, then blanched. Hugh had dropped his knife on his plate and sat staring at it. Beside him, his own neighbor was saying in a low voice, “My lord? My lord?”

  “Hugh!”

  Her husband staggered to his feet, knocking the chair backward so hard it crashed to the floor, and stumbled away from the table. Before he could reach the nearest door, he collapsed to his knees and began retching. As Bess followed him, someone screamed, “God save us. It's the pestilence!”

  The great hall erupted into chaos as servants, bringing the next course in, were thrust aside and their platters knocked to the floor as the diners rushed from their seats, most to flee the castle, a few to join the knot of people standing by their stricken lord. Bess paid no attention to any of the activity around her. She bent and put her arm around Hugh's shoulders. “I am going to put you to bed,” she said when he finally stopped retching. “Can you stand?”

  “Please. Go.” She shook her head and held him more tightly as he shivered against her. “I hate for you to see me like this. And you’ll be ill too. Please, Bessie. Go.”

  “No, Hugh. You need me to take care of you. If I fall ill, so be it. What is done is done.” She stroked Hugh's hair. “Let me take you to your chamber, my love.”

  Hugh sighed but said nothing. Bess became aware for the first time of the others around her as a squire touched her shoulder. “We’ll help him there, my lady.”

  She nodded and stood aside as the squire and another man hoisted an unresisting Hugh off the floor. Someone—she had no idea who—took her own arm and helped her up the winding stairs to Hugh's chamber.

  Alice the laundress, though well into her sixties, still remained in Hugh's service, having resisted Hugh's attempts to have her live in comfortable retirement on one of his manors. Though she had reluctantly ceded her heaviest duties to a younger woman, she had made herself indispensable in sundry other ways, as she did now by helping Bess guide Hugh to a stool and to begin undressing him. “Jesus help us,” she whispered as she removed Hugh's shirt. “My poor sweet lamb.”

  There under Hugh's armpits, smaller than a penny but unmistakable, were the black swellings that were the tokens of the pestilence. As everybody stared at this confirmation of their worst fears, Hugh himself finally broke the silence. “It looks as if I’ll be the first Hugh le Despenser in four generations to die in bed,” he said. “It's sadly overrated, if you ask me.”

  Bess gave him the smile he wanted. With the help of Alice, who was weeping noiselessly, she assisted Hugh into bed, realizing as she arranged the sheets around him that he was feverish. If the pestilence took its usual course, Hugh would soon be delirious. She looked around and saw with something approaching relief that Hugh's confessor was there. “Shrive him now before he is too ill to manage it,” she said in a more commanding tone than she had intended.

  Beste nodded. “I shall. I must go prepare the Sacrament, my lady.”

  Bess pressed her cheek against Hugh's as they waited. He was warmer to the touch than he had been just minutes before. Already, it was plain he was having difficulty focusing his thoughts. “My will's made, Bess. It's in the hands of—” He frowned, trying to recall the name of his own steward, who was standing not far off.

  “I know where to find it, my love.”

  “Is Beste coming back?”

  “Yes. Of course.” But she wondered if he had taken the opportunity to run away as so many did when the pestilence struck.

  Beste, however, returned presently. Bess gave her place to him and watched from a distance as Hugh managed to take communion and to confess his sins. Twice Hugh's confession was interrupted when he coughed up blood. When Beste had finished, he said, “I shall stay, my lady. It is my duty as his confessor and his friend.”

  Bess's eyes filled with tears, and she hated herself for having thought the man might desert Hugh.

  But with one person ill, others would surely fall victim to the pestilence as well. In the same authoritative voice as before, Bess heard herself giving orders to Hugh's steward. He was to let it be known that any person who helped her with Hugh and with the other sufferers would be paid handsomely, as would those who continued to discharge their duties as before. Anyone who left Hanley Castle during this crisis would get nothing.

  “Termagant,” murmured Hugh. He managed one last smile. “That was one way of chasing off Lady Thornton, you’ll admit.”

  By the time dusk fell, Bess, tending Hugh with the help of Alice, heard through the handful of servants who dared to enter the chamber that several others in the castle had fallen ill, and that the pestilence had reached the tenants of Hanley as well. She paid little attention, though, for Hugh was delirious, sometimes crying out in agony, sometimes trying to fight off imaginary opponents, sometimes muttering vacantly.

  After another long day of misery for both Hugh and Bess, a knock sounded at the door at around sunset. “Come in,” Bess said dully, then turned. “Emma!” She entered Emma's waiting arms. “He's so ill,” she whispered. “Nothing I can do eases him. Nothing.”

  Emma let her cry for a few minutes, then gently disengaged herself and looked at the bed where Hugh lay groaning. “I came here to help. Tell me what I can do for you.”

  “Wait! Your husband and children.”

  “They have no need of me now. They died a few hours ago.” Bess made a move to comfort her friend with a touch, and Emma shook her head. “Say no more about it, or I shall break down.”

  As time passed, Hugh became more agitated, crying out and even trying to rise from his bed. Bess had heard the stories of pestilence sufferers jumping from windows, their derangement having given them strength to fight off all who might stop them. It would break her heart to do so, but if tying Hugh to his bed like a madman was necessary to keep him safe— “Bess!” her husband cried.

  She bent instantly and touched his face. “My love, I’m right here.”

  “Bess,” Hugh whispered contentedly. His face relaxed and he was quiet.

  Emma said, “Your voice comforts him. Perhaps reading to him would help.”

  “Get my Book of Hours,” Bess said to a servant.

  Throughout the rest of the day and night, Bess and Emma read to Hugh from whatever book happened to be at hand—Bess's Book of Hours, a romance, even the household account books that Hugh had been reviewing before he was stricken. Alice too took her turn. She could not read, of course, so she told him tales instead, some so bawdy that Bess, hearing snatches of them occasionally, would blush despite herself. Hugh gave no sign he understood any of what was said to him, but he seemed far less agitated, and for that Bess would drone on and on until she became hoarse or started nodding off over the pages. Then Emma or Alice would take over. William Beste, stopping in now and then as he made the rounds between Hugh and the others who had fallen ill, read also on occasion, but to no good effect. His male voice had no soothing effect on the patient; it seemed to be female voices alone that calmed him.