The Traitor's Wife (65 page)

Gladys's voice was one that carried. “My good woman, you border on treason.”

“Ah, the rope wouldn't hold me. So I'll say what I please. But I'll have done, because I
am
done.”

She moved away to rejoin Eleanor.

The day was fine and warm, and from a distance William could see three tradesmen's boys, having delivered their goods, playing a spirited game of tag before they went back to their masters. Thinking of the three little nuns, shut away forever from such amusements, he turned toward the guard, who had once or twice picked up the Despensers' ball when it landed near his feet and thrown it back to the children. “Can you take them to the menagerie?”

“It is not secure, sir—”

“The little ones and the women won't escape, and I'll watch Edward myself.” He handed the guard a coin. “No harm will come of it.”

The guard shrugged, and William whistled. “Come! Let's go see the lions.”

Though the menagerie at the Tower of London was not in those days open to the public, a handful of visitors, mostly rich merchants who supplied goods to the new court and their families, had been allowed in. The approach of the five well-dressed people under guard caused a bit of a sensation, the more so as the knowing began to guess their identity, and for a moment William regretted his idea. Eleanor seemed to shrink within her robes, though Gladys, a large woman, glared with such effect that only the boldest spirits continued to stare. Gilbert and John, however, were oblivious. They ran to the cages, dragging the others along. “Look, Mama! The lion is still here. And the monkeys!” Gilbert turned to beam at William. “Lord Zouche, we went here all the time before Father went away, and then we stopped going. Have you been here before?”

“Several times.”

“It's wonderful, isn't it? Look, John, at the monkeys! See the one here? He's picking fleas off the other, to be kind. Do they have names, Lord Zouche?”

“Mortimer and Isabella,” offered Edward, so softly that no one could hear him but his mother and William.

Eleanor giggled and said in an equally soft voice, “Our Isabella here is being much too discreet.”

“Come now, you two,” William said good-naturedly. He raised his voice. “I believe they are called Samson and Delilah, Gilbert.”

“Tat!” said John, pointing at the lion.

Gladys glared at the beast. “With you out here, how come there's so many mice in there?”

“We need a cat to chase them,” said Gilbert. “Or a dog to scare them off.” His chubby face turned wistful for a fleeting moment, but just for long enough to give Zouche an idea.

Thomas Wake shook his head as he looked inside the basket Zouche bore. “And who is going to exercise this creature, Zouche?”

“Gilbert and Edward can. The guards are always stationed nearby; they can bang when they want out to walk him. Come, Wake. They're boys, for God's sake, cooped up here with two women. A dog would help them pass the time, Gilbert in particular. He's but five years old, you know.”

“Very well,” said Wake. “But don't get your hopes up, Zouche.”

“I don't understand you.”

“Despenser's little widow, Zouche. She's nice-looking enough, I'll warrant you, and amiable enough, for a traitor's wife at least. But if she gets out of here she'll either have nothing to live upon, in which case you'd be a fool to marry her, or she'll get her lands back, in which case the king will marry her off himself. Or, of course, she might take a vow of chastity. She was fair besotted with that husband of hers, you know. The guards who have taken her to the chapel say that she prays and cries for him there. No, I don't think you stand a chance, Zouche.”

“I'm not trying to marry the lady, Wake. I'm just giving her sons a dog to pass the time.”

“Oh, of course,” said Wake. He was much younger than Zouche, twenty-nine to Zouche's midforties, and Zouche was beginning to find him insufferable. With a scowl, he turned on his heel and headed toward the Beauchamp Tower, his basket barking with an indignation that matched his own.

“Have them name it William,” Wake called after him as he left. “That way, the little widow won't forget you while you're gone.”

O
N A RAINY AFTERNOON, EDWARD AND GILBERT LE DESPENSER SAT glumly in a window seat at the constable's hall at the Tower, while John le Despenser and their puppy bounded about heedlessly, interfering in every way possible with the meal that was being served to the garrison. “Edward, will she die?”

“No,” said Edward with a confidence he did not feel. “She had all of us, didn't she?”

“But that was before Papa died,” Gilbert said. “And Grandfather.”

“It's not
contagious
, Gilbert. Don't you remember when John was born? She did fine.”

“But she was hurting when we left, so badly.”

“That's what always happens, Gilbert, when a baby is born.”

Gilbert considered this for a moment. “Not with me,” he said firmly. “I wouldn't have hurt Mama.” Before Edward could contradict him, he said, “I wish Hugh were here. Don't you?”

“Yes,” said Edward. “I do.”

The door swung open and Gladys walked in. She walked slowly, for it had been four hours ago that the boys had been hustled out to the constable's hall, and she had been on her feet the entire time, but as the boys hastened to her they saw she was smiling. “You have a baby sister now,” she said. “Elizabeth. Your mama is very tired, but she is well, and she wants you to come and see her as soon as she and the baby are cleaned up a bit.”

“Take the brat to London Bridge so that the proud father can have a look, why don't you?” said one of the men in the hall, overhearing, to his mates.

Gladys, forgetful of her aching joints, would have cuffed the man, but his companions, many of whom had become rather protective of the widow and her brood, beat her to it. Edward, always alert to any slight upon his father, had heard the remark too, but for once he did not care. He could feel nothing but gratitude that his mother was not going to die after all.

Eleanor lay behind her bed curtains as Elizabeth suckled her, making her pleasure manifest with much smacking and gulping. Never before had Eleanor nursed one of her own children, and though Lizzie's hunger for the breast kept her up at all hours of the night, her birth and her constant presence had worked more of a healing upon Eleanor than she had ever thought possible. Though she still mourned Hugh, grieved for the loss of her middle daughters, and worried about her two oldest children, the desolation that had settled over her had lifted. No longer did she cry herself to sleep every night, and her dreams—in between night feedings—were no longer something to be feared.

Lizzie ceased smacking and contentedly closed her eyes, which were slowly turning to Hugh's dark shade of brown. After burping and changing and swaddling her, Eleanor placed her in the rough cradle that two of her guards had brought to the Beauchamp Tower in May. From its ungainliness, Eleanor suspected that they had made it themselves, but her heartfelt thanks had been received with embarrassed mutters, as if she had caught the men in some indiscretion.

As her shift was the worse for wear after Lizzie's last resounding burp, she opened a trunk to get a fresh one to sleep in and gazed inside as the candlelight revealed the faint outlines of the array of gold plate and florins concealed beneath the clothing, all taken from the storeroom in the Tower. Before the three girls had been sent away, Eleanor would not even have taken an apple from someone else's tree, and yet now she must have accumulated at least several hundred pounds of stolen treasure, all of it brought to her by the faithful Tom. Now that God had brought her Lizzie, Eleanor longed to restore the goods to their rightful place, even if doing so meant that they would line the queen's own chests. But she did not want to hurt Tom's feelings or to put him to further risk, so she had simply told him that she was afraid that harm would come to him if he did not stop.

She would give the loot to the Church; that was it. Surely the king would see fit to let her leave here someday, and then she would offer up the treasure at holy shrines, bit by bit. God was bound to forgive her then, and the treasure would go to better use than it would be gracing the queen's own groaning tables. This problem solved, she climbed back into her bed and drifted off into a peaceful sleep.

William la Zouche would have stopped in to see the baby and the puppy (which a delighted Gilbert had in fact named Lord Zouche, to the infinite amusement of Thomas Wake), but in June he had joined the court at York, where the English were preparing to do battle with the Scots. Isabella and Mortimer, remembering the great success they had had with Jean de Hainault and his mercenary troops when they invaded England, had bought his assistance again, and York was teeming with homegrown troops and the Hainaulters.

The queen held a splendid dinner to welcome Jean de Hainault, but the English soldiers were not in a welcoming mood. It was one thing for the queen to rely on foreign assistance when she had been desperately trying to save England from the Despensers; it was quite another when there was Scottish booty to be had, and why should good fighting Englishmen be forced to share the spoils with a pack of foreigners? The dinner had scarcely progressed to the second course when a fight broke out between the English soldiers and the Hainaulters, spreading into the city's streets. By the time order was restored by the king and his elders, dozens of men lay dead.

It was a bad start to a miserable affair. Several months before, despite having been ill for some time, Robert Bruce had journeyed to Ulster, which had been in disarray for some years and had edged toward chaos after the death of the Earl of Ulster in 1326. The earl's heir, Eleanor's young nephew William de Burgh, was but fifteen years old and had yet to be knighted. Still in England, with little military or governing experience, he was hardly in a position to take over his Irish lands. With the idea of eventually securing William de Burgh, who was Bruce's nephew as well, as an ally, the Scottish leader had determined to take control of the situation in Ulster himself. He had left his lieutenants, James Douglas, Thomas Randolph, and the second Edward's faithful friend Donald of Mar, to deal with England.