Hugh and Bess (8 page)

  “You suffered too, for his wrongdoing. Emma, I am sorry.”

  “It wasn’t suffering, Hugh, compared to what some went through, but it is true, people stayed clear of us. My father was ailing anyway, and he died soon thereafter. I was alone then, and I thought I might as well go into a convent, even though I had no vocation. I was on the verge of doing so when Sir Alan finally spoke to me. His wife and children were long dead, and he wanted a companion to end his days with. He thought I would be good company because I had kept my father's house. I was grateful for the offer.” She twisted the wedding ring on her finger. “I was a good wife to him, and he a good husband to me. He died about six months ago. I miss him.” Emma swallowed hard, then smiled, though Hugh saw that her eyes were wet. “He was a respected man, though, and some of his respectability seems to have rubbed off on me, for the other tenants are quite civil to me now. One or two have been hinting at marriage with me.”

  “Are you considering it?”

  “I don’t know, Hugh.”

  “Why?”

  She shrugged. “I suppose it just seems a little early to decide.” Hugh stood. “Are you leaving so soon?”

  “No. I apologize. Prison manners. I got into the habit of moving around just to pass the time, and now I get twitchy if I sit for more than a few minutes.”

  “Hugh, it must have been dreadful being in prison for so long. How did you bear it?”

  It was his turn to shrug. “The last few months—after Mortimer was hung—weren’t bad. I could go out and walk on the castle grounds, and my brother Edward was allowed to keep me company. Mother and the rest of them visited whenever they could too.” He sat back down and shook his head. “Actually,” he admitted, “in some ways, the last months were the worst. When Mortimer and Isabella were running the country, I never had any hope of getting out, you see. But when the king took over at last, I kept thinking every time someone came to my door,
That's the king's order releasing me.
And of course, months went by and I stayed put as if nothing had ever changed. I had just about given up ho— Why, what's the matter?”

  Emma's eyes were streaming tears. “I—”

  “Well, it wasn’t all
that
bad. I got to take my meals in the great hall with the constable toward the end. The food wasn’t bad at—Please don’t cry, Emma. Christ! First I insult you last night, and now I make you cry. Please, Emma. I didn’t mean to make you cry.”

  He drew her closer to him and, without quite knowing how it happened, kissed her lightly on the lips. The fervor with which she returned the kiss shocked him, and he tried again, only to assure himself that he was not mistaken. He was not. “Sweetheart,” he whispered. He eased her onto his lap, still kissing her, and after a bit began to work at the fastenings of her headdress. Meeting with no resistance to the freeing of her hair, yet still not sure exactly what further liberties he would be allowed, he tentatively loosened the fastenings on the back of Emma's gown and slipped his hand underneath the fabric to cautiously lay a hand on her back, then wriggled it forward to cup a breast. Emma made no protest; to the contrary, her hands were now moving over him as eagerly as his were moving over her. Only when their mutual ardor caused the stool to tip precariously did she draw back. “Take me to your bed, Hugh.”

  “You mean
your
bed?”

  “Don’t quibble.”

  He picked her up, carried her through the curtain and set her on her bed, then took her into his arms once more. Hugh was by no means a virgin, but up until now he had been only with prostitutes. Mindless, brisk, and businesslike pleasure was nothing new to him, but touching and being touched with affection was new. The interval that followed, as he and Emma uncovered each other's nakedness and tenderly, leisurely explored each other's bodies, was perhaps the happiest he had experienced in his young life. So moved was he that when he lay spent against Emma some time later, he was astonished to find himself almost in tears. “Thank you,” he whispered.

  “’Twas my pleasure.” Her voice had a catch in it too.

  He eased himself off her and draped his arm around her shoulders. They had been lying together in contented silence for some time when she shivered. Hugh sat up to pull the coverlet over Emma and saw when he did that there was a bit of blood on her thighs. “Your monthly course?” he asked with some distaste. Intercourse during that time was forbidden by the Church, though of course what he and Emma had just been doing was not smiled upon either, so who was he to complain? Emma shook her head. “My God! You were a virgin?”

  She kissed him and pulled him back against her. “Whom better to give my maidenhead to?”

  “But you were married—”

  “Sir Alan was incapable, at least for this. There were ways I could please him, but this was not one of them.”

  “Emma, forgive—”

  For an answer she kissed him again. “I have always loved you, Hugh,” she said simply. “I fretted about you—secretly, of course—all the while you were in prison. I cried back there because I could not stand to think of you being unhappy. I never planned to lie with you, but now that I have I cannot regret it. I was faithful to my husband, and would still be so if he were alive, but I cannot be now that he is dead. Not with you here before me.”

  “What if I’ve got you with child?”

  “Then I’ll call him Hugh if it's a boy, what else?”

  He laughed, and in due time they were making love again. Afterward, she dozed in his arms. Hugh, exhausted from the morning's activity and his dissolute evening, fell fast asleep. There was nothing in his present situation that should have caused the nightmare that had plagued him since his father's death to recur, but it did, and his scream roused Emma from her own half-sleep. “Hugh! What is the matter?”

  He was so disoriented and shaking that he could not answer her for a time. Finally, he came to himself. “A dream. You must think me a weakling,” he muttered.

  “No, I don’t think that at all. Come. Sit up and let me give you some wine. You are deathly white.”

  She rose from the bed, squirmed into a shift, and padded away through the curtain, barefoot. By the time she returned with a cup of wine, he had recovered enough to admire the contours of her body under the shift. “What were you dreaming of?” she asked gently.

  “My father.” Hugh took the wine but did not sip it, instead staring off into space. “They did horrible things to him. Did you hear?” She nodded and squeezed his hand tightly. “And I dream of all of them. I thought that when I was free, the nightmares would go away. I didn’t have one last night.”

  “I doubt you would remember if you had. Hugh, they
will
get better in time. You have been free for only a short time, after all.”

  “I think sometimes I should have died with him, Emmy.”

  She wrapped her arms around him and rested her head upon his shoulder. “Hugh, you know that is not so. He did some terrible things and you did nothing.”

  “I should have insisted he stay at Caerphilly. Forced him, somehow. Or gone with him and faced the worst.” He forced the next words out. “Sometimes I think he left me behind there to spare me. He knew they’d kill him and that if I were with him, they’d probably have killed me as well.”

  “If that was his purpose, it was a good one. He loved you, after all. You mustn’t feel guilt for his wanting to protect you.”

  He shrugged and took a sip or two of wine. “My mother will think I’ve been put back in prison. I’d best be gone.” He pulled on his shirt, then turned to face her again. “Marry me, Emma.”

  “No, you oaf.”

  “Well, I’ve heard
that
somewhere before. But why not, for God's sake? You said you loved me.”

  “I do, too much to let you make a mistake like that. You must marry the daughter of a great lord like you will be.”

  He laughed. “A great lord! Christ! I’m not even a knight, Emmy. I’ve been released only on the king's sufferance, until Parliament decides what it wants to do with me. One ruffle of the royal feathers and I’m bound to find myself back in Bristol Castle.”

  “All the more reason you should not offend the king by marrying me. You are his kinsman, after all.” Emma stared at her hands. “I would dearly like to marry you, Hugh. But it is a step you would regret in time.”

  He sighed. “Yes,” he admitted. “Perhaps you’re right.” Some part of him, he knew, was relieved that she had refused. He glared at Emma anyway. “You always were irritatingly sensible, as I recall.”

  “More so than you, two days out of prison and asking the first woman you lie with as a free man to marry you. I
was
the first, I hope?”

  “The first and the very best ever.”

  She smiled at him, then wrapped her arms around his neck and kissed him soundly. “Hugh, it will be awhile before you find your lady, I think. In the meantime—”

  “In the meantime—”

  “Let us ride toward Hanley Castle together. I want to see if you are as awkward as you say. If you are, then I shall win the race we shall have.”

  Hugh reached for his remaining clothes and grinned. “Don’t be so sure, sweetheart.”

  He and Emma had been lovers ever since that day. Lovers—and, more important, friends. Hugh got on well with his mother and with his stepfather, who was none other than the William la Zouche who had captured his father and who had taken Hugh's surrender at Caerphilly. (His mother was not one to hold grudges.) Those younger brothers and sisters who were at home followed him about like ducklings after their mama. In those early years after his release, however, and especially in the first few months, when everybody but his own family members looked at him as they would upon a dog who might or might not bite at the least provocation, Hugh sorely needed a confidant of his own generation, and it was Emma who filled this void. During the summer and autumn of 1331, he visited her at her own home, during the day, for even if he had been knavish enough to try to sneak her into Hanley Castle under his mother's nose, there would have been no place to put her. His hero-worshipping younger brothers, Gilbert and John, had begged for the honor of sharing his bedchamber when he returned from prison, and Hugh had obliged. (His Zouche brother, William, the youngest of them all, was but an infant and still preferred the company of his wet nurse.) Gilbert and John had built Hugh's single act of valor, holding Caerphilly Castle against the queen, into an epic worthy of Homer. They went to bed earlier than Hugh, of course, but when he entered the chamber and slipped under the covers, whichever brother was lying there would pop awake, snuggle close to him, and whisper something like, “Hugh, was it exciting? Were you frightened?”

  “Not me,” Hugh would say, lying but mindful of the needs of his small audience.

  During the years of captivity that had followed his surrender (a scene that never failed to elicit groans from his brothers when Hugh told it), he had vowed to go on pilgrimage to Santiago if he was freed and pardoned. God having kept his end of the bargain (albeit somewhat tardily, in Hugh's humble opinion), Hugh kept his the following spring, first paying Emma and her bed a visit before enduring the rigors of self-enforced celibacy. It was his first time abroad, and besides the interests of foreign lands, he enjoyed the anonymity of his pilgrimage, where he traveled not as Hugh le Despenser, the son of a notorious man who had died a traitor's death, but as plain Hugh, a gentleman of modest means with some knightly training. Well provided with money, and skilled enough with his sword to repel any of the rogues who preyed on those traveling the pilgrim route, he would not have been sorry to have remained wandering overseas were it not for his family and Emma expecting to see him return. So he thought, at least, until he stood aboard the deck of the ship that was taking him back home and caught his first glimpse of the English coastline, barely visible through the mist. He felt himself smile, and he smiled even more broadly when he stepped on land just in time to be greeted by a rain that was too light to make travel impossible and too hard to make travel comfortable. In Spain the sun had shone every day, and now that Hugh thought about it, that was simply unnatural.

  Back in England, having first hurried to Hanley to spend a joyous afternoon in Emma's bedchamber, he moved onto the manors that the king had granted him as a form of recompense for his father's and grandfather's much more extensive estates, all of which had been forfeited to the crown. Running them, and helping his mother with her own estates, someday destined to be Hugh's provided that he stayed on the king's good side, kept him busy. Still, though nothing he was doing was bringing the name of Despenser into ill repute, nothing was giving it any new luster either. Fortunately, the Scots soon remedied this situation.

  Hugh rode off to his first battle in the summer of 1333 with mixed feelings. He had a certain liking for the Scots. Briefly during the second Edward's reign, he and a couple of other youths had been hostages in Scotland. He had been treated well by his hosts, and his short stay there had passed pleasantly. Besides, like his mother, he held to the principle that no one who had sent Mortimer home in humiliation, as England's old enemies had in 1327, could be completely without merit. Too, it was humiliating to be riding in the retinue of his cousin Edward de Bohun as a mere man-at-arms when the Bohuns and all of Hugh's other male relations had been knights, or even knight bannerets, for years. Yet when battle was joined at a place called Halidon Hill, Hugh's ambivalence and shame deserted him, and he fought fiercely, sharing in an English victory that no one had seen in a generation.