The Traitor's Wife (49 page)

“Edward,” she muttered drowsily a few hours later. She stroked the golden hair on his chest, burnished by the light of the setting sun. “Edward, are you awake?”

He stirred and smiled. “Ned,” he yawned.

“May I tell you something, Ned?”

“Anything.”

“You won't remember this, but when I was little and you only in your teens, Gilbert and my sisters and I came to visit you at Langley. You had your boat, and I wanted so badly to ride in it, I could have cried. But I was shy, so timid that Mama was even thinking of giving me to God, like my aunt Mary. She thought I would never be able to assume the duties of a great lady like herself. I wasn't supposed to have heard of her plans for me, but I had anyway, and that made me all the more shy, because I was scared of being sent away. And that is when we came to visit you.

“Gilbert, of course, asked to get into the boat; he was never shy a day of his life, poor boy. But I didn't dare to ask for myself, because I knew all the women around me would disapprove, and you intimidated me so, with your muscles and height. So you helped Gilbert in, and got in yourself and then you looked at me back on the shore. 'Nelly? Would you like to come?' I don't think you'd ever spoken to me directly before; I was always hanging back, or always with my governess. Gilbert answered before I could get any words out. 'Nelly would like to come,' he said. 'But she's too shy to ask you, and besides, it isn't ladylike.'

“And then you looked at me and laughed. 'I am shy too, Nelly,' you said. 'And as for it being unladylike, I have been told I am unkinglike too often to care whether you are acting like a lady. Come, sweetheart.' And then you stepped out and helped me in, and on that long ride—it seemed to last forever— you talked to me, and made me laugh, and I felt like a queen. I never was as shy as I had been, after I got out of that boat, and there never was any more talk of making me a nun.” She swallowed hard. “I think it was then that I fell in love with you, quietly, so quietly that I did not know myself until today how much I loved you. And when Hugh told me he and you were lovers, I was angry at both of you, but I was also so jealous, that you had chosen him and not me.” She rested her head against his shoulder. “So that is why I came here today.”

“I've always had the gift of loving the wrong people,” said the king ruefully. “First, when I was fifteen, there was my stepmother—a woman only a few years older than me! Thank the Lord I kept my infatuation to myself before it passed, though I've often wondered if my father didn't guess, and if that wasn't one of the reasons he disliked me so. Then there was Lucy, a peasant girl. Piers and Hugh, of course. And another, Nelly.”

“Another?”

“For years, whenever I've made love to Isabella, it's your face I've pictured.” He kissed her.

“I never knew.”

“Don't you remember that time on the boat, after Margaret's wedding? I wanted you that night.”

“I didn't know.”

“It seemed best to leave the matter lie, but you intervened. Thank you, Nelly.”

She felt tears come to her eyes. “But you know this cannot last. It would shame my children, shame Hugh. I cannot do that to them, Ned. I have been foolish and impulsive and wrong, but I am not so bad that I can brazen this out, day after day, and feel no guilt. We must end it today, just as I started it.”

“Yes,” he said quietly. “I think you are right.” He smiled. “Hugh loves you dearly, Nelly. What he and I do makes no difference there.”

“I know, and I love him. And I have never had a secret from him in my life.”

“Doesn't everyone deserve to have one secret?”

“Mine will be that for a few hours, I loved the King of England, and it was the most beautiful few hours of my life.”

She kissed him and started to get out of bed, but he stopped her. “Once more, for old times' sake, Nelly?”

Eleanor hesitated. Then she smiled and rolled back into his arms.

“So, Kent. You said you had news from your brother Thomas.”

The Earl of Kent nodded and looked at a letter, which bore a date of July 1326. “Edward's been planning against an invasion. Thomas is to be put in charge of Essex and Hertfordshire and East Anglia—”

“If only that fool Edward knew!”

“Archbishop Reynolds—”

“Edward's play-acting bishop, God help him. Go on.”

“Archbishop Reynolds and Ralph Basset are in charge of Kent. The Earl of Arundel will have Lincolnshire. Bishop Stapeldon is to array troops in Devon and Cornwall—”

“Stapeldon!” said Isabella. “I could spit when I hear that name.”

“Old Despenser and Henry of Lancaster are to supervise the Midlands.”

“Henry of Lancaster,” said Mortimer thoughtfully. “How well can he be disposed toward the king? After all, he's never inherited his brother's estates.”

The Earl of Kent shrugged. “Edward let him have the earldom of Leicester, but there was unpleasantness between them when Henry put a cross up to the Earl of Lancaster's memory. Leicester claimed that he was only concerned for the welfare of Lancaster's soul and that the Church prayed for even heretics and Jews. Edward seems to have dropped the matter after that.”

Isabella frowned. “Of course, Henry was married to Maud, Nephew Hugh's older half sister. That might work against us, although fortunately she's been dead for a while now.”

“We shall just have to wait and see.” Mortimer pulled the list out of Edmund's hand to scan the other names, ignoring the Earl of Kent's frown. Since allying himself with the queen, Mortimer had a tendency to forget that he himself was not of royal blood, particularly around Edmund, who was only twenty-five and who still smarted from his humiliation in Gascony. But it had been Edmund's doing that had secretly brought his brother Thomas to the queen's side, not Mortimer's, and it had been Edmund's efforts that were now bearing fruit in the form of this letter from Thomas. He had to resist the urge to snatch it back from Mortimer, who in any case had started laughing too hard to notice Kent's irritation. “'And our lord the king himself will make his way to the March of Wales to rouse the good and loyal men of that land and will punish the traitors!' Oh, yes, he'll rouse them—to our side, particularly if he has Nephew Hugh at his side, as he must be planning to, as this charming battle plan doesn't mention him elsewhere. Why, all of South Wales would love to see Despenser hang.”

“You yourself are not too popular with the Welsh,” Edmund reminded him quietly.

“But it is our queen and the Duke of Aquitaine whom the people will be rallying round,” said Mortimer coolly. He stood and stretched. “Time we repaid all of this preparation with an invasion, don't you think?”

“So what next?”

“I go to Hainault and put a fleet together.” He turned to Isabella. “I thought of taking young Edward with me, so that he could ogle that Philippa girl he seems so taken with, but perhaps he's better off with you in Ponthieu. We don't want your fool husband persuading him to come back while your back is turned.”

“I can manage my son quite well,” said Isabella. “I am to go to Ponthieu?”

“Yes, and exercise your fatal charm to get us more men and cash, my darling.” He glanced at the Earl of Kent, moodily toying with his brother's now restored letter. “I would like you to assist me in Hainault, my lord.”

Mollified by the respect in his voice, the earl agreed.

In days to come, Mortimer and Isabella would agree: God was on their side, for how could He have sent better weather? Their fleet of ninety-five ships, half of them small fishing vessels, was simply skipping over the Channel toward the Suffolk coast.

In their ships was an army of fifteen hundred men, many of them mercenaries, and an array of English expatriates. All but two of them were in a festive mood.

Joan of Bar's misery was purely physical; though she crossed the Channel quite often, each journey made her as seasick as her first. Young Edward, on the other hand, though he had not inherited his father's despicable taste for rowing, was every bit as much at ease aboard ship as the king. His misery was one of the mind. First, there was the sweet Philippa of Hainault. An objective onlooker could not call the plump, dark maiden beautiful, but Edward had never met a person so utterly comfortable to be around. The misgivings he had begun to have about his prolonged stay on the Continent had been instantly dispelled by the joyous news that his mother had arranged a marriage between the two of them, in return for the Count of Hainault's military help. But the count was no fool; he was not about to send his daughter to England until the queen's position was secure; and in any case a papal dispensation would have to be obtained because Edward and Philippa were cousins of a sort. So Philippa had stayed behind in Hainault.

Second, there was the king. Edward knew all too well that his father did not measure up to the kingly ideal set by his own father, the first Edward, and his great-grandfather, the second Henry. He was a blunderer, like his grandfather the third Henry. Yet Edward I, so the story went, had been loyal to his father Henry III, and had saved the crown for him from Simon de Montfort. Wasn't that the role Edward should be playing, the loyal son?

His mother had told him repeatedly that their mission was to remove the Despensers from the king's side, nothing more. After that, if the king agreed to certain conditions, all would be well. Only when Edward became too persistent about learning what the conditions were had the queen, her nose wrinkling, told him the truth about the relationship between the king and Hugh le Despenser. So deeply disgusted had Edward been at that point that he had thrown his father's last letter to him in the fire unread. How could the king look real men in the face? And yet, after a few days, Edward's loathing had faded a bit. He'd always felt at ease, loved, in his father's presence. How could he dislike someone who cared for him so much?

Third, there was Mortimer. In his more recent letters, the king had hinted darkly at some impropriety between his mother and Mortimer. Edward, especially after being told of his father's perversities, had shrugged this off; it was common for a weak king to accuse his queen of adultery if there was no other fault he could justly find with her. (Look at Louis and Eleanor of Aquitaine, he reminded himself.) But the desire that Philippa had awakened in him had made him more sensitive to the signs of it in others, and he had seen the looks his mother cast at Mortimer when she thought no one was watching. Well, no wonder, married to his father with his loathsome tastes. He would have to watch her, to make sure Mortimer did not take advantage of her vulnerability. For though Mortimer had very admirable traits—how many had escaped from the Tower of London?—and was never anything but deferential to Edward, the boy was not quite sure of him.

The Suffolk coast was now visible. Edward shook his head. Earlier that September, his father, in another of his harebrained schemes, had actually sent English ships to attack the coast of Normandy, evidently with the idea that the expected invasion would come from there. Good God, had the man never heard of false intelligence? Could he do nothing right? Surely Despenser with all of his tricks should have known better. Needless to say, the invasion had failed mightily, and whatever had become of the ships that had been sent limping back to England, they were not here in Suffolk. Neither were any others. The queen and her men would land entirely unopposed. God was with them, as his mother had said time and time again.

But for a fleeting moment, Edward wished He might have been with his father.