Hugh and Bess (12 page)

  “Come now, they aren’t that ill-behaved,” Edward protested. He turned to Bess with an apologetic look. “Truly, my lady, they are not, but they had to ride in a litter for a very long ways, and when it was opened—”

  “They found their way to freedom,” Isabel put in. She gave her younger brother a kiss on the cheek. “You spoil them, Edward, always have.”

  “Perhaps,” Edward conceded. He blushed.

  His shyness appealed to Bess, who said, “I am sure they are good boys. There is nothing more wearisome than riding in a litter on a fine day like this.”

  Edward beamed at her, and Bess knew she had made a friend for life.

  As the Despensers bantered amongst themselves and made themselves agreeable to their eldest brother's chosen wife, the dinner passed pleasantly for Bess. But after dinner there was more trying-on to do, the tailor having been busy with Bess's wedding dress during the meal, and a crisis presented itself when the ruby brooch Hugh had given Bess could not be found. When Bess's puppy was seen wearing a look of indigestion, this gave rise to the direst of suspicions, which were alleviated only when the brooch was found under a pillow. The puppy, however, was far from having its name cleared, for further investigation turned up Bess's bridal slippers, which bore unmistakable chew marks. In the pandemonium of scolding and barking that followed, Bess's wedding nerves shattered. She threw herself on her bed, sobbing, and lay like that until Katharine cleared the room.

  “There is time to fix the slippers, my dear. And if not, no one will notice them.”

  “I don’t
want
to marry, Mama. I don’t want to manage his awful estates or to worry about bedding him. Or anybody. Please don’t make me be Hugh's wife. There are so many girls he could marry—can’t he find someone else?”

  Katharine held her as she cried a little more. “Child, it is only your nerves that are torn to shreds. You have been meeting so many people, and sitting through that long dinner, it is no wonder. You need some air. Why don’t you go ride a bit?”

  The prospect of a ride was tempting, especially as going to the stables would give her a chance to look at the snow-white palfrey that Bess had seen a groom lead into a stall rather furtively the day before. When Bess admired it, the grooms had been maddeningly vague about to whom it belonged, which had led Bess to suspect that it was yet another wedding gift from Hugh. But a horse would have to be made ready and saddled, and in the interim her sisters or her prospective sisters-in-law might well take the notion to join her. She wiped her eyes. “I’ll walk to the town instead.”

  Accompanied by the requisite page, Bess soon arrived in the thriving town that had grown up around Hugh's manor. But peace was as elusive there as it had been in the manor house. The street was full of people who had come to see her married, traveling to and from their lodgings and the manor house. As Bess's page was wearing Montacute livery, there was no escaping identification as the bride-elect. Stranger after stranger stopped to pay his respects, until Bess thought she would scream. Only one place appeared to be tranquil: the Abbey of St. Mary the Virgin, or Tewkesbury Abbey as all called it, where she was to be married the next morning. “Let us go in there,” she hissed.

  A monk, elderly and slow moving, greeted her as she stepped through the heavy wooden door leading inside the abbey. “My lady?”

  Evidently the old monk was shortsighted, for he was one of the few people in Tewkesbury who did not recognize the livery of Bess's father. “I am Elizabeth de Montacute.”

  “Ah, yes. Our lord's bride,” the monk said in such a reverent tone that Bess was momentarily taken aback before she realized that he was referring not to the deity but to Hugh.

  From his outstretched hand, Bess guessed that he was intending to show her around the abbey. More company, the last thing she wanted. Pretending not to have heard him, she broke away and hurried into the choir, muttering a prayer of repentance for her rudeness. Left in peace, for her page had stayed behind with her would-be host, she slowed her pace and looked up, then gasped at the beauty and intricacy of the vaulting above her head. Ribs, painted with gilt, joined each other to form floral patterns, colored in brilliant blues and reds. Light shone into the choir from seven stained-glass windows. The window on the far east represented the Last Judgment, the damned being hustled off to hell by an avenging angel as a kneeling, nude lady, who Bess later learned represented Hugh's mother, looked on. The four adjacent windows had been given over to biblical kings and prophets. As Bess turned to the last two windows, her gaze was met by those of a host of stained-glass knights, their coats of arms identifying most as ancestors of Hugh's mother, Eleanor de Clare. Hugh's own notorious father, resplendent in a surcoat marked with the Despenser arms, stared down coolly, daring anyone to question his fitness to stand beside so many great men.

  “Do you like it, my lady?”

  Bess whipped round and saw Hugh standing beside her. “What are you doing here?” she asked, realizing too late the impertinence of her question, for if there was one person in Tewkesbury not a monk who had the right to be in the abbey, it was surely Hugh.

  Hugh seemed unoffended, however. “I came here to pray for the souls of my parents. The monks do so regularly, of course, but I’m inclined to think that my father could still use some more help.”

  “Oh.”

  “Well? What do you think?”

  “It is beautiful,” Bess admitted. “Did you commission this work?”

  “No. I am seeing through what my father began and what my mother continued after his death. Should you like to see their tombs, my lady?”

  Bess did not, but she nodded and allowed Hugh to take her arm and lead her to a chest-like tomb, its many niches occupied by figures of Christ, the Apostles, and a host of saints. In a recess within the tomb lay the effigy of Hugh's father, dressed in the same manner as his stained-glass counterpart and looking on the whole to be quite pleased with his beautiful surroundings. Bess was half curious to know whether any of his quartered remains had been salvaged, but it was hardly a question she could ask his son. Then Hugh to her surprise said dryly, “In case you are wondering—most people do, I’m sure—he is all here, within reason of course. The men who had the task of reassembling him, so to speak, were rewarded very well by my mother.”

  “I should think so,” said Bess lamely.

  Hugh crossed himself, and Bess tactfully moved a distance off while her husband knelt and prayed for a short time. He caught up with her as she was heading toward the Lady Chapel. “My mother and stepfather are in here, Lady Bess. There's my mother's tomb.”

  A lady's effigy gazed up at an intricately carved canopy. Hugh's mother lay with hands clasped in prayer, as had her first husband. Though the effigy wore the headdress that no respectable lady would be seen without, even in death, the sculptor had left some stone hair, painted in a red as vivid as the colors of the lady's robes, visible. “My mother asked that her tomb resemble that of her uncle, the second King Edward. She was very fond of him, poor man.”

  “It is very fine. But why didn’t she ask to be buried with your father? Did he ill-treat her?”

  “No. He loved her and he was a good husband, save for—” Hugh shrugged. “They loved each other very much. But she loved my stepfather too, and in the end she did not want to choose to lie near one over the other. She fretted about it a good deal toward the end of her life, poor thing.” Hugh half smiled. “To ease her mind, I finally told her that I would place her at an equal distance between their tombs, and so you see I did.”

  “Do you miss him?” Bess asked daringly.

  “Every day.” He tapped Bess on the nose. “You’re wrinkling it in disapproval, I see, but I too loved him. He was the only father I had, after all, though I did get on well with Lord Zouche.”

  “Are you like him?”

  “No. He was much more clever.” He smiled at Bess. “Sweetheart, I know it can’t be easy, marrying into a family with a reputation such as mine has, but there is nothing to fear, from me or from my father's ghost, I assure you. Will you let me show you that I can be a good man and a good husband to you?”

  Taken aback by his frankness, she nodded. Hugh bent and kissed her lightly on the lips, so quickly that she was in doubt a moment later as to whether the kiss had taken place. “I have not asked you why you are here, Bess.”

  “I needed to be away for a while. The wedding preparations—”

  Hugh laughed. “Poor Bess. My robes have been ready for weeks now, and all I have to do tomorrow is put them on and get on my best horse. It's different for a bride, isn’t it? If you came here for peace, then I shall leave. You have a man with you, I assume, to take you home?”

 
Home.
The word jarred, though in less than a day, the manor of Tewkesbury would indeed be her home. “Yes.”

  “Good day to you, then.” He kissed her hand this time and turned away. Soon Bess could hear him conversing with someone, probably the monk who had greeted her. Left alone at last, she was at a loss for what to do. As she was in the chapel, it seemed most natural that she pray, but except for her first husband, whom she’d barely known, she had no dead to pray for, or at least none whom she had known more than fleetingly. Nor could she in good conscience pray that something prevent her wedding the next day, not in the chapel built by Hugh's own family. She would have liked to have prayed that she have a noticeable bosom on her wedding day, like Joan of Kent's, but not only did this seem somewhat frivolous, it would take more of a miracle at this late date than the Lord was perhaps willing or even able to provide. Flummoxed, she finally prayed that her wedding day would be a sunny one and that her slippers could be mended.

  Both these small prayers, it turned out, were answered, though this heavenly benevolence made Bess's wedding morning no less a nervous one for her. As she was assisted onto her new white palfrey, which wore a spanking-new saddle that was bejeweled almost as finely as Bess herself, she was certain that she would fall off, exposing her legs and God only knew what else to Hugh's household, all of whom were standing around watching her as if they had never seen a girl getting married before. She would be the laughingstock of Tewkesbury for years to come. She stayed on, however, and also managed to avoid sitting on her thick, dark hair, which she normally wore in a single braid but which on her wedding day fell unbound to her hips.

  The palfrey flicked its beribboned tail as two of her father's youngest and most handsome pages led Bess slowly toward Tewkesbury Abbey, followed by a horde of wedding guests. Bess was relieved that the recent birth of a son to Queen Philippa had kept the king and queen from putting in an appearance, although if they had it would have given the people standing alongside the well-worn path to the abbey something to stare at besides the bride. There were plenty of them standing there, for aside from the frantic cooking for the wedding feast to be held later that day, only the most essential work of the manor was being done. Everyone, even those too lowly to attend the wedding mass, had been invited to the feast.

  A woman cackled to her companion, “Pretty little chick, but not ready for our lord to bed, I’ll wager!” Bess, whose mouth had been fixed into a smile, forgot herself and glared daggers at the woman. She sat up straighter and thrust her chest forward a bit, trying to create the illusion of a bosom.

  Hugh had already arrived at the abbey door when Bess appeared. As he was merely the groom, and a familiar sight in Tewkesbury, his progress had not excited much interest beyond a few cheers, though he had been followed by a half dozen knights and cut an impressive figure in his new reddish robes, which set off to good effect his auburn hair and beard, dark brown eyes, and lean body. He smiled at Bess as she was assisted off her horse and led by her father to stand at Hugh's left side. “You’re lovely,” he said, so softly that no one but the immediate bystanders could hear.

  Bess listened as Hugh's chaplain, William Beste, asked the bystanders if they knew of any reason why she and Hugh should not be joined together in matrimony. No one obliged her by saying yes. As the chaplain dutifully recited the terms of the dispensation the couple had received, Bess, looking at the chaplain without seeing him, began to consider whether she would have to keep her hair covered from now on. She’d not covered hers after her first marriage, as there could have been no pretense that she was anything but a virgin, but now that she was old enough to bed Hugh in theory if not in fact, she would probably be expected to conceal it. This was a pity, she thought, as her hair had always been considered her greatest beauty. Perhaps—

  “I will,” Hugh said firmly.

  Bess jumped as Beste began asking her if she would obey, serve, love, honor, and keep Hugh. Weakly, she agreed with that, and everything else that was asked of her, until Hugh's small nephews, conscripted into the ceremony at the last minute, swaggered up with a pillow on which lay a gold ring set with sapphires. Hugh took the ring, and little Edward and little Thomas beamed as the chaplain blessed it. Evidently, the most important part of the ceremony had been accomplished, in their eyes at least.

  “With this ring I thee wed,” Hugh said, and smiled again at Bess. He slid the ring onto her finger. Bess felt the tears sting at her eyes. There would be more blessings to follow, and a mass to be said inside the abbey, but she was now irrevocably Lady Despenser.

  Hours later, the wedding and the wedding feast over, Bess and Hugh knelt by the bed that was to be hers while Hugh's chaplain blessed it. As it was known that she and Hugh would not yet be lying together, she did not have to put up with the indignity of being put into the bed with him while the guests made bawdy jokes. Instead, the crowd quietly departed, followed by Hugh himself.