Within the Hollow Crown (40 page)

   Richard said a few words to hearten the anxiety of Lancaster, who sat at his right hand, and then allowed his jaded gaze to wander over the familiar trappings of a tournament which once had seemed so fair. The place was packed, and people looked down from the battlements of the city walls. Because comparatively few feminine head-dresses were seen to rise among the more sober velvet caps of the men, he was all the quicker to notice Dalyngrigge and Lizbeth seated in the enclosure immediately below him. How like Dalyngrigge to bring his women up tough, thought Richard, with a smile. Or could it be that even after that night at Bodiam Lizbeth still sought every opportunity to come to Court? But when the heralds had blared his arrival and everyone had stood and shouted, he was sure she had not turned around. And although she sat immediately below him, she went on calmly eating comfits

from an ornamental box.

   During a pause while the combatants were being shriven before their entry, Richard's attention settled on the box. It was a small, exquisitely worked affair cased in mother-of-pearl. He leaned forward and told an official to attract the lady's attention.

   Lizbeth and her husband rose immediately and made obeisance, while Richard greeted them as if he had not seen them for many months. "A lovely comfit box you have there, Lady Dalyngrigge," he commented conversationally.

   "My husband brought it back for me from his last voyage, sir," she answered.

   "I see," smiled Richard. "One of those tactful gifts a man buys his wife after a three days' foray?"

   "Just a little trifle I picked up in Calais," explained Edward Dalyngrigge, who seldom bought anything if he could acquire it more adventurously. And since both the King and the Duke, his uncle, were known to be amateurs of good craftsmanship, he handed it up for closer inspection.

   Richard passed the familiar box to Lancaster, as much to distract his anxious thoughts as for any other reason. "Do you remember this, Uncle?" he asked.

   Lancaster took it with unsteady fingers. "Why, yes, Richard. I brought it to you from Aquitaine that first winter you came to England." He laughed with the nervousness of a man undergoing great strain. "A present from Bordeaux to cheer you!"

   "I thought I couldn't be mistaken," mused Richard. "I used to play with it when I was sick with the cold."

   "What became of it?"

   "The last time I saw it was in a room at the Wardrobe," said Richard slowly.

   Dalyngrigge looked badly flustered. "I had no idea. But since it appears to belong to your Grace, I am sure my wife will forgo—" he began.

   But the King wouldn't hear of it. "You know what the Book says, my dear Dalyngrigge—'a faithful wife is above rubies!'" Before handing it back, he snapped open the familiar clasp and helped himself to a comfit. "Let me see, where did you say you—er— picked it up?" he inquired negligently.

   "Somewhere near the Citadelle, I think. Ports like Calais are so full of curio stalls…I really forget…" stammered Dalyngrigge.

   "Perhaps by the time we meet again you will be able to remember," suggested Richard meaningly.

   As he handed the box back to Lizbeth their eyes met. And something in the look she gave him made him remember that she and his mother had been present when Lancaster had given it to him, and that she, too, might have recognized it. He understood why she had sat just there, and why she had not thought it necessary to turn around. Pride would never prevent a woman of Lizbeth's passionate temperament from seizing every opportunity of seeing the man she loved.

   Richard's attention was claimed from the Dalyngrigges by a preliminary fanfare of trumpets. He took the ceremonial baton from young Holland, who was acting as Marshal in Mowbray's place. The barriers at either end of the lists were being opened to admit the combatants and their attendant squires. Hundreds of heads turned first this way and then that like a field of coloured flowers blown by a variable wind; and then the expectant crowd settled down into a silence so tense that it might have presaged an execution rather than a sport.

   "Bolingbroke is the favourite—" A spectator's voice trailed belatedly into the silence as men passed along the benches making up last-minute bets. Unsoothed by happiness, Richard knew a sharp prick of jealousy for his cousin's popularity and prowess. But, having practised with both protagonists from boyhood, he knew their thrusts as well as his own. He knew that Norfolk, hoping one day to distinguish himself on some holy crusade, rose early and practised daily. And that while Henry Bolingbroke was by far the finer general and strategist, he stood little chance against Mowbray in the lists, where surprise tactics were ruled out by chivalric convention. But he waved aside all proffered wagers. This was too personal an affair for either him or Lancaster to bet on.

   The Duke's face was ashen. How cruel that an old man should

have to come to see his son killed! But Lancaster had been reared in a sterner age and scorned to stay away. Yet apparently he, too, foresaw the issue. "Tom will kill him…" he muttered, while trying to show a brave front to his world.

   Richard felt profoundly sorry for him. Suspicion had long ago died down between them, they had many interests in common and had drawn much closer together during the years when Henry had been so much abroad. Richard turned aside while his cousin kneeled to receive a father's blessing.

   When both Bolingbroke and Mowbray had sworn to the truth of their accusations and clanked to the barrier to bend a knee formally before their king, they might have been strangers. Encased cap à pie in plated armour, they were unrecognizable save for the arms emblazoned on shield and jupon. Only their eyes showed through their open visors. And yet they and he had played together as boys. As they strode away to their waiting chargers the smell of freshly thrown sand, stirred in the heat by their mailed heels, assailed Richard's nostrils, carrying him back through the years. Back to that summer's day at Eltham which, by reason of an abrupt plunge into tragedy, would epitomize for ever the carefree essence of lost youth. The battered quintain, the roses on the garden wall, Simon's dear face and Robert's laughing friendship. The thump he himself had caught from a muffed thrust, and even the faint feeling of nausea. He had only to shut his eyes to see Henry and Tom as two stocky youths arguing with old Bartholomew about the score…It had all been friendly rivalry then. And now they were trying to kill each other. Richard felt so much older than either of them. And death was so irrevocable. So much more irrevocable than young men realized until it had struck at some loved one and shorn all life of meaning.

   More trumpets sounded. One at either end of the lists, the opponents sat still and tall upon their chargers. Bolingbroke's, in blue and green trappings, was held by his squire, Sir Piers Exton, himself no mean exponent in the lists. The sun, glinting on Mowbray's shield, picked out some of the noblest quarterings in England. Their great lances were being handed up to them. Another fanfare, and before long one of them would be lying dead beneath the uncaring sun. One thought was in a thousand minds. Which of them would it be? To John of Lancaster it meant everything. To Richard—personally—so little. To him, it would be the man who was left alive who would matter. Supremely, perhaps. Henry, flushed with triumph, a new idol for the nation? A menace growing cancerously in Gloucester's place. Or Tom Mowbray, who knew the secret of his king's guilt? Mowbray, who spun from winning side to winning side like a gilded weather-vane. One would never feel safe with such a man in the realm…

   "In the realm…" At that moment the idea came to birth in Richard's brain. How stupid of him not to have seen that this was the moment he had been waiting for for years! They had deserted him at Radcot Bridge. But for them Burley would never have been butchered, nor Robert de Vere exiled. Death was too good for both of them. What was it Chaucer had written about death? "Through me men come unto the Well of Grace, where green and lusty May doth ever endure." A delectable place, which Richard longed for. Surely, it was the living who were to be pitied?…

   He glanced down and saw Lancaster's hand tensed against the dark velvet on his knee. The fine sword hand of a man who had once been strong and lusty. And the sight of an old man's veined hand mingled pity with Richard's motive of revenge. It moved him to action. He sprang to his feet and flung the baton he had been holding into the lists. It struck against a stanchion and rolled glittering to the centre of the barricades.

   The effect was magical. Even at that moment, some base part of him found pleasure in the instant reaction to his power. Heralds, sounding the charge, stopped in mid-blast, their cheeks still absurdly inflated. "Hold! The King has stopped the combat!" yelled the untried Marshal, rushing between the combatants to confront an almost unheard-of contingency. Lancaster seemed to crumple with relief, a smothered thanksgiving on his lips. The crowd rose to a man, in staring silence. The two champions, already crouched like tigers for the attack, relaxed dumbfounded.

   And then, almost as much to his surprise as theirs, Richard heard his own voice, trailed by an impersonal echo coming back from the high city wall, solemnly pronouncing sentence of banishment upon them both. Henry Bolingbroke, Earl of Nottingham and Derby, he banished for ten years; Thomas Mowbray, Duke of Norfolk, for life.

As the months passed, Richard began to realize that his popularity had begun to wane when a crowd of English sportsmen were cheated at the last moment of the stirring contest they had travelled so many miles to see. There had been no reparation, no sop to their disappointment in the shape of a secondary event. As for Bolingbroke and Mowbray themselves, just as a felon often prefers a flogging to imprisonment, so banishment seemed to each of them a harder sentence than his fifty-fifty chance of death.

   Richard had tried to be as fair as possible about it. Both had disturbed the peace of his realm, but because treason had not been proved he refrained from confiscating their estates, although— since one or other of them must be lying—one inheritance at least was legally forfeit to the crown. Rather than send forth a guiltless man penniless, he allowed each of them to appoint an agent to manage his affairs and send abroad the profits. And, as usual, he was mindful of the underdog, taking care to see that none of their dependants or tenant farmers suffered. But he could not explain all this to the man in the street; whereas Sir Piers Exton, who had been left in charge of the Hereford lands, started such lying rumours that the county sheriffs were given orders to report on all things spoken against the King.

   Lancaster aged sadly after his son's banishment. "When you made it ten years, Richard, were you thinking that by that time the little Queen will have grown up and you may have sons of your own? So that Henry wouldn't be so dangerously near the succession," he had asked, the last time Richard had gone to visit him.

   And Richard had answered carefully, "I promise you, dear uncle, that as soon as I have a son of my own Henry may come home—whether the ten years be up or not."

   But his uncle had lived only until Isabel was eleven. He slipped away quietly with the close of the century. The death of John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster—whose name had been a household word in many lands—was a great event. The King had him laid to rest in St. Paul's Cathedral, with his great lance and shield beside him.

   And now Richard was truly alone. New men sprang up—lordlings like Bushey, Green and Baggot—but after the great barons of the fourteenth century they had little power, and less personality. For Richard the rooms and passages of Westminster were empty. Mundina had never come back from Calais and Jacot had searched Bordeaux in vain.

   And then came disquieting news from Ireland. One autumn morning Richard received a letter from his heir, Roger Mortimer. The last time he wrote, English and Irish had been on good terms and even intermarrying. But now it seemed some sudden ferment of unrest had moved the chieftains to revert to their old ways, plundering, raping, and murdering colonists within the supposed safety of the Pale. Long after the torches were lit, Richard sat with his Council, planning to send military reinforcements and dictating instructions and advice for Mortimer.

   But the next day, soon after breaking his fast, he laid aside state papers. Having once enjoyed such happy family life, he knew better than most that a ruler must sometimes relax with his equals. He held his clerks and squires in affection, but had never been such a fool as to make intimate confidants of any of them. "I am going to Windsor," he said.

   It was a long time since he had included people pleasantly in such projects. He just said he was going to a place, and his household servants exerted themselves to have everything ready punctually as he wished. They knew that he did not suffer fools gladly. Even Standish did not dare to suggest that he should wait

until the rain ceased.

   Richard rode to Windsor in silence—a little ahead of the small, unofficial retinue he took, his face a set mask in the shadow of his hooded cloak. As he passed through Hounslow and a score of other villages there was little cheering. And as he rode he thought the hard, cunning thoughts of a man fighting a lone hand.

   But once within the walls of Windsor he shed his surliness with his sodden cloak. Swift, graceful, agile—immaculate as ever—he strode along the galleries to the little Queen's apartments. As usual when he visited her, he forbade anyone to announce him. He wanted to assure himself that she was well cared for whether he came or not. He even stood listening for a moment or two outside her door, and at sound of her voice coming thinly through the heavy oak his firm lips relaxed into a smile. He pushed the door open softly and stood just inside, and presently, when her two French waiting-maids looked round, he laid a warning finger on his lips. Marianna and Simonette were quick of wit and—like many women about the French court—imagined themselves enamoured of the handsome English king. They glided from their mistress's side and out of the room, his smile amply rewarding them as they passed.