Authors: Susan Higginbotham
“Well, you could ask that pretty Joan; she chose Holland, after all. Or you could ask me. I chose my second husband.”
“How?”
“I liked him, and he was a good man. And I knew that if I did not choose him, the second Edward would choose someone for me who might not be to my taste. As he did when I was widowed not many months after I married my second husband.” She sighed. “It was a happy marriage while it lasted, child.” She smiled. “And Theobald was persistent, which also helped his cause.”
“Well, Sir Guy hasn’t been that. He has said nothing about marriage.”
“Oh?” Elizabeth de Burgh stood. “My, this cold weather makes my bones ache. Perhaps Sir Guy will be more forthcoming when he comes here.”
“Here?”
“He is expected tomorrow.”
Guy Brian indeed arrived the next day and was put by Bess's side at dinner, where he and Bess made stiff, awkward conversation about the state of the nation. Bess was ready to scream with relief when the last course was served and Elizabeth de Burgh rose from her splendid chair, signaling to the company that they were free to leave themselves. “Shall we go for a walk around the bailey, my lady?”
It was bone-chillingly cold outside, and the bailey of Usk Castle was hardly a point of interest, but Bess agreed and sent her man for her warmest cloak. When both Guy and Bess were suitably attired, they entered the bailey and began walking in a circular path. “I believe you can guess why I am here, my lady.” She nodded. “The king has approved of what I am going to ask you, which is to be my wife.”
“I thought so.”
“You’re under no compulsion, my lady. You can refuse if you wish.” Bess smiled, and Guy went on, “I know, I know, that isn’t what I should be saying. I should be telling you of my virtues, in the most humble way possible, and extolling your beauty and grace. And I do find you beautiful and graceful. But I’m not much with words, and I don’t want you marrying me because you feel that you’ve been placed under duress.”
“No, I feel no duress. The king has made it clear that he wishes the match, but I know he is not a man to bully a woman into taking a husband she doesn’t want.”
“Indeed, we are lucky in our king.”
“Sir Guy, there is something you must realize. I am barren. In all of my years of marriage with Hugh, I never quickened with child.”
“I have known women not to conceive with one man and then to conceive with another.” Bess frowned, and Guy hastened to add, “Mind you, my lady, it is no aspersion upon the man's—abilities, might I say. But I have seen such things. And you were very young when you came to Sir Hugh, and are young still. It may be that God would bless our union with children were you to marry me. But if not—well, I have a daughter of my own to inherit my estates if we are not so fortunate as to have a son.”
He fell silent, perhaps thinking that he had been too hasty in anticipating a favorable response. Then Guy said, “You might think it is only for your wealth and your beauty and your potential for giving me children that I wish to marry you. It is not true, my lady. I have heard much about you to make me respect you.”
“Oh?”
“From your tenants, from your husband's aunt, from your brother, even from the king and queen. They have told me how you succored others during the pestilence, with no thought for your own person.”
“That is no credit to me. I did it for Hugh's sake, and in the days and weeks after he was taken, I did not care whether I lived or died. Were it not for that, I would have shut myself up fast like so many others.”
“I do not believe you. I think that you have more courage than you give yourself credit for, Lady Despenser.”
They began their second turn around the bailey, Bess still waiting for a sign. But as Elizabeth de Burgh had asked, what heavenly manifestation did she expect? Wasn’t it enough, perhaps, that a man she knew to be of good character, approved by the king and held in esteem by all who knew him, had come here to ask her to be his wife?
All around her, those whose lives had been shattered by the pestilence had found the will and strength to begin again. Should she be no less brave than the lowliest of her tenants? Why, she was the daughter of the Earl of Salisbury, who’d risked his very life for the king that long-ago night at Nottingham Castle. She owed it to him to show a little daring, and to Hugh and to so many of the others who had died of the pestilence. They had faced death or the threat of it without flinching; she could at least face life with the same courage. Perhaps Guy was right; perhaps she had possessed it all along.
Yet was this the right man? For the first time since his death, she felt a tinge of irritation at Hugh. It was easy enough for him to urge her to remarry, but to what man? She sighed, and Guy looked at her inquiringly. Deciding that her suitor was due honesty, she said, “Hugh told me that he wished me to remarry; those were almost his parting words to me. If only he had given me a little guidance as to the man I should choose.”
Guy cleared his throat. “Surely a dying man can’t be expected to remember every last niggling detail, my lady.”
Bess started, and then laughed—the first time she had done so since Hugh was alive. And there, she realized, she had her sign. Hugh had joked even in the face of death; above all, he would want to see her married to a man who could make her laugh.
She took a deep breath. “I will marry you, Sir Guy.”
As the words left her lips in a whisper, relief surged through her body. Hugh had been right; she did not wish to live the rest of her life alone. It would be good to be a wife again. And who could say? Maybe God in His grace, having seen fit to allow her to survive the pestilence for some inscrutable reason of His own, would let her bear this man the children she had never been able to give to Hugh. She found herself smiling. “And who knows? The king might even build that Round Table of his after all.”
“My lady? I did not catch all of what you said.”
“Only the first part was of any consequence. I will be pleased to be your wife.”
Guy took her hand. “Then I thank you, my lady.” He stepped a little closer to her. “Shall we try each other out?”
She nodded a little nervously, and he drew her in for a kiss, one that was light at first and gradually became more insistent. It was easier, and more pleasant, kissing Sir Guy than Bess had expected. “Shall we go in and tell her ladyship of our match, Bess?”
“Yes.” She hesitated. “But I wish to visit the chapel for a little while, Guy. I will be with you again presently.”
He nodded. “I understand. Take your time.”
Inside the chapel, Bess lit a candle, knelt, and prayed. Then she sat up and waited. She would have preferred to have been in one of her own chapels rather than Elizabeth de Burgh's, but Hugh could find her anywhere. After a short time, she asked, “Did I do the right thing?”
“Yes. He's a good man. But if he's a better kisser than I am, I don’t want to hear about it, sweetheart.”
Bess smiled. “You won’t,” she promised. “God keep you, Hugh.”
Author's Note
BESS AND GUY BRIAN MARRIED SOME TIME IN 1350 AND had at least four children together, three boys and a girl, before Bess's death in 1359 at Ashley, a manor she had held in jointure with Hugh. Bess was buried next to Hugh in Tewkesbury Abbey. Guy, who never remarried and who survived Bess by thirty-one years, had his own tomb constructed opposite that of Hugh and Bess. Both canopied tombs, among the finest of their time, can still be seen today.
The Lady Chapel at Tewkesbury Abbey that Bess and Hugh visited before their wedding was torn down during Henry VIII's dissolution of the monasteries. The details of Eleanor de Clare's tomb are purely fictitious, as no description of it or even of its location in Tewkesbury survives.
Guy Brian enjoyed a successful and varied career in Edward III's service and was created a Knight of the Garter in 1370. One of his Garter companions was Hugh's heir and eldest nephew, Edward, who was named to the Order in 1361. Edward, regarded by the chronicler Froissart as a model of chivalry, had a shining but sadly brief career; he died in 1375, aged only thirty-nine.
Bess and Guy's oldest son, naturally named Guy, married Alice de Bures, whose household records form the basis of a study by ffiona Swabey entitled
Medieval Gentlewoman: Life in a Widow's Household in the Later Middle Ages.
Joan of Kent's husband Thomas Holland died in 1360, Joan having borne him five children. After his death, Joan married Edward III's eldest son, the Black Prince, in what is usually considered to be a love match. Their eldest son, Edward, died young; their second son, Richard, ascended the throne as Richard II. Joan died in 1385, reputedly of grief when Richard refused to show mercy to his half-brother John Holland, who had murdered Ralph Stafford.
Bess's brother William died in 1397, having had one son by his second wife. Tragically, William accidentally killed his son at a tournament in 1382. William was survived by his wife and was buried at Bisham Abbey, the resting place of his father.
Hugh's mistress, Emma, is a fictitious character, as is his laundress, Alice. Hugh's cause of death on February 8, 1349, is unknown, but it seems likelier than not that he was a victim of the Black Death, called simply “the pestilence” at the time. It would revisit England many times over the next few centuries; Bess, dying in 1359, at least was spared its second great outbreak in 1361.
Some readers may have wondered why neither Joan of Kent nor Bess's mother, the Countess of Salisbury, drops her famous garter to be picked up by Edward III. Sadly, this well-known legend is now regarded by historians as apocryphal, though the exact origins of the Order of the Garter and its motto remain obscure. Even the date of its founding is in dispute. I have followed Ian Mortimer's theory, found in his biography of Edward III,
The Perfect King
, that the Order was established in April 1349 and that part of its purpose was to raise the spirits of a nation that had fallen into despair due to the pestilence.
Edward III never did resume work on his Round Table house, the Order of the Garter having become the preeminent chivalric institution of his day. The house was torn down during remodeling around 1358 to 1361. Its remains were excavated in 2006.
Estimates of the English death toll from the pestilence of 1348–49 vary, but the most common figure is that a third of the population perished. The fortitude with which the survivors bore this catastrophe and rebuilt their lives is remarkable. In
The Black Death
, Philip Ziegler comments on the stoicism displayed by so many at the time: “With his friends and relations dying in droves around him, with labour lacking to till the fields and care for the cattle, with every kind of human intercourse rendered perilous by the possibility of infection, the medieval Englishman obstinately carried on in his wonted way.”
Read on for an excerpt from another novel
by Susan Higginbotham
THE TRAITOR'S WIFE
ELEANOR DE CLARE, SOME CHAMBERS AWAY FROM HER uncle and his friend in Westminster Palace, had been passing the morning less pleasantly, though more decorously. Though in her naiveté she was quite content with the drape of her wedding dress, the styling of her hair, and the placement of her jewels, her mother, aunts, sisters, and attendant ladies were not, and each was discontent in a different way. As her hair was debated over and rearranged for the seventh time, she snapped, “Enough, Mama! I know Hugh is not being plagued in this manner. He must take me as I am.”
Gladys, a widow who had long served Eleanor's mother as a damsel and who had agreed to go into Eleanor's household, grinned. “Aye, my lady, and he won’t much care what you are wearing. It will be what is underneath that will count.” She patted Eleanor's rump with approval. “And he will be pleased.”
Elizabeth gasped. Margaret tittered. Eleanor, however, giggled. “Do you truly think so, Gladys?”
“Of course. You’re well developed for your age, and men love that. And you will be a good breeder of children, too, mark me. You will have a fine brood.”
“You can tell me, Gladys. What will it be like? Tonight?”
Eleanor's mother, Joan, the Countess of Gloucester, had been sniffling sentimentally at the prospect of her first daughter's marriage. Now she raised an eyebrow. “Your little sisters, Eleanor—”
“They shall be married soon, too, won’t they? They might as well know.”
“We might as well,” Margaret agreed.
“Each man will go about his business in his own way, my lady. But I’ll wager that he will be gentle about the matter.”
“Will I be expected to—help at all?” At thirteen Eleanor was not quite as naive as she pretended, having heard enough courtiers and servant girls whispering to piece together what happened on a wedding night, but it had occurred to her that no one was fussing over her hair now.
Gladys had been left entirely on her own by the gaggle of women, who were plainly finding this entertaining. When Gladys paused before answering, Mary, Eleanor's aunt the nun, piped up, “Well, answer, my dear, because I certainly can’t.”