Michael Jecks - Dispensation of Death

Baldwin said, ‘But that is interesting. Did you find her friendly?’

‘You suggest I may have shoved my hand up her skirts? Sir Baldwin, were I to do that, my wife would be most displeased. It is not the sort of behaviour which is expected of a knight. Well, not here or in London.’

‘Meaning that you would expect such rough treatment from a horny-handed rural fellow like me?’ Baldwin smiled. Simon could see that this smile never even tried to approach his eyes.

‘Oh, Sir Baldwin, please. There is no need to be like that. I meant no insult, my friend.’

‘Oh, no. I am sure you would only offer an insult when it was necessary and you felt justified.’

‘Quite. I am glad we understand each other.’

‘I think we do, Sir Hugh.’

‘I am glad to have had my stallion returned, anyway.’

‘Ah yes. And I was glad too. We collected some of the man’s belongings before the fire.’

‘Clothing? Was he your size?’ Despenser wondered with an insolence that scalded, glancing at Baldwin’s shabby tunic.

‘I am not like you, Sir Hugh. I didn’t look for items to snatch from a dead man. He left some interesting reading, though.’

‘Reading?’

‘Do you indenture all your servants?’

Sir Hugh was still now, his eyes unmoving. ‘Often. Yes.’

‘I suppose you have to buy loyalty. However, to ensure that we are both perfectly acquainted, let me just say that I intend to move all obstacles in my search for the true culprit of the other night. I will find him.’

‘The culprit ? How quaint. I thought that the dead man was the “culprit”.’

‘Perhaps,’ Baldwin said coldly. ‘And perhaps the culprit still lives. As does the man who ordered the attempt on your life yesterday.’

‘Do you know anything about that?’

On hearing the eagerness in his voice, Baldwin gave a very slow smile. ‘Oh, no more than you yourself, I expect.’

As they left Sir Hugh and walked away, Baldwin was struck by the feeling that Sir Hugh’s reaction to his words was not quite right. Surely he should have been distressed to be left in the dark, or furious that the archer was unknown and his paymaster anonymous, but when he glanced back over his shoulder, all he saw in Sir Hugh’s face was a cold and unfeeling calculation.

It was a little less than an hour later that Queen Isabella saw Sir Hugh.

She nodded to the priest at the end of her Mass, and made her way back through the little door under the careful eye of Madam Eleanor. The woman was insufferable. She would not leave the Queen alone for even a moment. It wasn’t enough that she had seen to the removal of Isabella’s royal seal and her beloved children, now she must steal all Isabella’s spare moments too.

Despenser was waiting in the corridor with a face like thunder. He beckoned his wife and spoke to her with the deliberate precision of extreme rage, then span on his heel and strode away, his tunic snapping crisply with the speed of his march.

‘Lady Eleanor? Your husband looks most angry.’

‘No. He is fine. It is your husband who has lost his wife,’ Eleanor said tartly.

This wife of Despenser, Isabella thought, could once have been her friend and companion, but when her husband Sir Hugh first made his most improper suggestions, and Isabella told her of them, Eleanor was not surprised. She seemed to have expected something of the kind.

It was nothing new, true enough. Isabella knew that her brothers had enjoyed the favours of women while they were princes. It was natural. They were men, and a prince or King had rights. A man like Despenser, who was setting himself up as a prince in all but name, clearly felt he deserved the same dispensation. Somehow he had persuaded dear, weak Eleanor that he should be permitted similar latitude. And he would, of course, have asked his close friend the King before making his suggestion.

At the time she had thought it was one of his jokes in bad taste. Asking her to join him in the King’s bed … then suggesting that the King could be there too …

Beds were for couples, she’d responded icily, and he had laughed, as though her view was deliciously quaint. And soon thereafter her husband had begun to view her with a degree of suspicion, as though she had betrayed him in some way. It had been a coolness in those days, little more. But then Sir Hugh had tried to force her to swear to support him no matter what, pinning her against a wall with his hand about her throat, as though he could scare her — her ! The daughter and sister of a King, not son of a brain-addled knight of poor birth like him. But afterwards, when she refused and spat out her rejection of him and his evil ways, Despenser had grown cold, and she had wondered whether he would actually dare to throttle her right there in the hallway, as though she was just some servant girl, a wench from the stews or a cheap alehouse.

The grim suspicion had never left her husband’s face after that, as though Despenser had told him that she had refused to declare her devotion to him, her husband.

Despenser would be happy to see her destroyed. He had told her as much, but by then their enmity was so deep-rooted there was no surprise in the revelation. And she knew about her other enemies. Dear heaven, there were so many! Most of them hating her purely because she was French. Not for any rational purpose, but just because of the accident of her birth. They were determined to see her removed if they could. Perhaps Despenser had stirred up hatred against her, spread lies to malign her reputation at court? Some would have needed little supposed evidence of her misdeeds, of course. There were many who would look on her as an enemy because they coveted her lands, her manors, her riches. Walter Stapledon. She knew she was hateful to him, and she knew why: he wanted the tinmining. It was worth a vast sum each year, and with Isabella’s control of the better mines, Stapledon’s jealousy knew no bounds. She’d seen it in his eyes.

He had attacked her with every means at his disposal. First, there was the removal of her servants, her chaplains, her physicians. Then her estates were sequestrated, her children taken from her, and now, the final indignity, even her seal was snatched and given to her gaoler, Eleanor, Despenser’s wife.

Alone, without money, her family taken from her, all the trappings of her wealth removed, she had been able to spend much time considering her situation. It was not pleasant. She had been a royal princess in the House of Capet, and she was used to being treated in a manner suitable to her rank. Not now, though. She was reduced to penury, to the status of a humble petitioner by that gripple miser, her husband. And most recently, she knew, Despenser and Stapledon had attempted to have her marriage annulled by the Pope. Oh yes, she knew of all these little schemes of theirs. Just as she had known that Mabilla was intended to be Despenser’s especial spy. Mabilla was the one who searched through her clothing and writing tools to see how on earth she had managed to get so many messages to her brother.

But they would not succeed in blocking her channels of communication any more than they would succeed in having her marriage declared void and her children declared bastards.

Poor Sir Hugh, he had looked so anxious this morning, she thought with a smile. Usually all he exuded was a vicious cruelty when he visited her. Not today. Today, for once, the fear was all on his part, no one else’s.

It was delicious .

At about the same time, Simon and Baldwin were returning to the Great Hall again, after taking Blaket’s advice and seeking a small meal to settle their bellies. There they met Bishop Stapledon almost as soon as they entered.