Richard got up and began to tramp the Round Tower room again. If only he could see Isabel and explain why he couldn't keep his promise about Windsor and why she must go back to France. That it wasn't because he didn't want her…
The sound of Hodge's key turning in the lock cut short his reminiscences. The heavy oak door swung inwards. Any visitor was welcome, even if it were only the Constable. But today Thomas Swinford didn't even descend the three shallow steps into the room. "Your tailor has brought the suit he was making," he said, trying not to look at his prisoner's rather threadbare one. "He seems to think you must be cold."
"I am very cold," agreed Richard. "But won't you come in and talk a minute? I haven't the plague."
The Constable avoided the friendly overture with obvious embarrassment. "I don't think the King would mind his coming to try it on," he said in his vague way.
"The King?"
"King Henry."
"But, of course. How stupid of me!" apologized Richard. One must try to get used to it.
Swinford seemed only too glad to withdraw and make way for the visitor from the outside world. To him it was only a tailor come to try on a suit. To Richard it was someone from home. Someone who loved him and before whom he was a king again.
Jacot's face worked painfully. Clearly he was torn between joy at seeing his master and shock at finding him so shabby. Each tried to say the appropriate formal thing. Hodge was lounging in the open doorway, and presently a castle servant came in with a linen-covered basket, thumped it down on the table and departed. Jacot's fingers—usually so nimble—fumbled at the wrappings of his handiwork. "I shall have to take in all the seams," he said, tears gathering in his eyes as they noted the change in his master's figure since the cloth had been cut.
"Oh, come, Jacot! You wouldn't have me bulge like my uncle of York, would you?" rallied Richard. "My wife would have hated it, you know."
Jacot, already on his knees trying on the new hose, looked up in surprise. Never since the late Queen died had he heard the King speak of her so normally, or exhibit such sweet patience.
The dull February afternoon was closing in and the old familiar luxury of being fitted for new clothes made Richard forget for a moment his sorry status. "Get us a torch, Hodge," he ordered. There was still that quality in his voice which made people obey him. Hodge moved away and they could hear him on the outside staircase shouting to some underling.
"The little Queen?" asked Richard, the moment his back was turned.
"Quite honourably treated," Jacot reassured him, in the same urgent undertone. "The Prince of Wales himself—begging your pardon, sir—young Harry Bolingbroke—rode out to pay his respects to her. And when her servants saw him coming she had the drawbridge raised."
Richard's face lit up with joyful affection. Even the new tunic he was putting his arms into was forgotten. But almost immediately a fresh thought tormented him. "You don't think Bolingbroke sent him purposely? That he means to get a dispensation and try to keep her here for his son? To promote fresh haggles over France."
"It is in everybody's mouth—"
"But my messages to Charles of Valois? They were sent, Jacot?"
"Standish assures me so. But the French king is suffering from a bout of madness."
Then it was true, what Queen Isabella had hinted at St. Omer. But that the malady must afflict poor Charles at a time when his daughter so sorely needed protection!
"The next time young Bolingbroke went to Leeds he was clever enough to take your poor dog, who had been pining; and little Madame let them in. She kept the hound, but would have none of Harry!" chuckled the tailor. "And last week the new king found a sharp weapon in his bed…"
Richard forgot that he was cold or hungry. Here was the sort of news that warmed a man through and through. "Who put it there, Jacot?"
"Some maidservant, probably. It is thought by Queen Isabel's orders." Jacot took immense pride in his royal countrywoman. But he began hastily taking in a seam as Hodge returned and stuck a lighted torch in the iron wall bracket.
"What sort of a weapon?" Richard asked cautiously.
Hodge was back at his leaning post, picking his teeth with a goose quill. In any case, it was improbable that he understood more than a word or two of French.
"A spiked mace. You know, sir. The kind of thing the Cœur de Lion used."
Richard stifled a delighted splutter of laughter and turned it into a cough. "Then I think it must have been—another lady," he said.
When Jacot suggested that he should stand by the raised window seat at the far end of the room for a final fitting, he went there in a kind of dream. It was as if all his friends were rallying round him again. "Oh, Lizbeth and Salisbury—and my sweet Isabel—that you should do these things for me!" His heart sang. He smoothed the warm green velvet of tunic and matching houppelarde with appreciative hands. It was good to feel well dressed again, and Jacot had chosen his favourite shade and put his finest work into it. "It's really too fine to wear every day," he said. "I must keep the old checkered suit for when the weather gets warmer."
But the tailor was folding it purposefully into a parcel.
"Why?" whispered Richard, with a hand on his wrist and his eyes on the unpleasing silhouette of Hodge.
Jacot went down on his knees to search diligently for something he hadn't dropped. His back was towards the door, his lips mouthed the words towards Richard. "Because Thomas Holland is in Chester with three thousand men. He will put this on. Up and down the country, everybody has seen you in it. You and he have passed for each other before. As he marches southward people will think you have escaped, and more and more will flock after him. Already they are muttering against the usurper, and Northumberland swears he meant him only to get back his lands—not to lord it at Westminster."
Richard felt his heart racing: "It's a lean hope, Jacot," he whispered back, still watching Hodge.
"But still a hope, sir. Even Queen Isabel is planning to ride out and join them and has sewn all the white hart badges onto her people's liveries again."
Richard smiled tenderly. Fastening the purse she had made him onto his new belt, he remembered how laboriously she sewed. "Why should she and Tom take such a risk for me?" he sighed.
He would have liked to point out how hard it would be for her—seeing Tom coming, looking the spit of himself, and being just Tom. And Jacot would have liked to remind him of risks he—Richard Plantagenet—had often taken for his friends. But Hodge was beginning to shuffle impatiently and to rattle his bunch of keys.
Jacot rose to his feet. The King was standing in the window embrasure. The tonsured patch on his head and his small beard had almost grown again and, thanks to the new green velvet, he looked much as he used to look at Westminster or Sheen. Neither of them could think of any excuse to prolong the precious visit. "I almost forgot, I brought you a new purse, sir," said Jacot, noticing the shabby one.
But Richard only shook his head and smiled at him. "This one will last me," he said, stepping down from the window.
He shook his tailor by the hand. "Good-bye, and thank you—for everything," he said, and walked with him to the door. But as Hodge was fitting his key into the lock he spoke again as if inquiring casually after some mutual acquaintance. "I suppose you never really found out what happened to Mundina?"
Jacot started. "She—wouldn't want you to know," he muttered evasively.
Richard laid a hand on his shoulder. "Jacot, my friend," he urged, "it may be a very long time before I see you again."
Pausing in the open doorway, the tailor shifted his parcel more comfortably under his arm. "I only know that a tall, dark woman was suspected of alchemy and burned as a witch in Calais," he said.
Somehow Richard felt that he had always known it. Hadn't Mundy said that she would give her body to be burned for him? And was not the expiation enough? Might not a merciful God, who had accepted the sinner's spikenard, let her burn here, and not hereafter? "By the Governor's orders?" he asked,
knowing already that Mowbray had double-crossed him twice.
The departing Jacot shrugged expressively, as only a Frenchman can. "At least he did nothing to prevent it. It was, perhaps—convenient—"
So banishment for life had not been too long. Not an hour too long.
When the door had clanged shut and Richard was alone again the silent room seemed full of these people who had loved him. He told over like the beads of a rosary all the things they had done for him, and all they were yet doing. Even if he were ill-beset, he had been rich in the gifts of love. Life was never as unfair as it seemed. He was no longer alone, caught like a rat in a trap—waiting to die, with his story only half told. He was in the middle of an adventure that spanned dissolution, and whatever happened his story would go on and merge again with theirs. The hope of present rescue and freedom sustained him. A strange gaiety consumed him. Or was it, he wondered, just that he was growing a little light-headed with hunger?
The smell of supper was unusually good. All the more so because Hodge appeared to have gone off duty. The round-faced country lad who brought it was at least clean. He set a brass candlestick at one end of the long table and then brought a couple of dishes and a flagon of wine. "Quite a spread tonight, sir," he said, in his wide Yorkshire dialect.
Richard tried not to lift the covers too eagerly. Roast chicken and spiced venison. His nose had not deceived him. He hesitated, knife in hand. It might, of course, be poisoned. Gone were the days when a ceremonial taster stood behind his chair and kneeled for the first spoonful. But what risk was too high for the thrill of eating venison again? He could have clumped the clumsy kitchen lad for dropping the sauceboat and wasting some of the precious contents among the straw.
He tried to restrain his exaggerated annoyance and eat with some semblance of good manners. "You look excited tonight, Perkin," he remarked good-naturedly, as the full plate of meat warmed him. "What is it—a wager or a wench?"
Apparently it had nothing to do with Perkin's own crude life. "It's guests from London, supping in hall, sir. I got to hurry an' help clear. They said to be sure an' give you a good supper, sir. An' Sir Thomas, he sent the wine."
Richard looked up with arrested fork—an implement of table nicety he had brought from France. "You don't happen to know who the guests from London are! Or anything of their business?" he asked warily.
But as Perkin said—and as Richard was accustoming himself to feel—"Who'd be tellin' the likes o' I?"
Moved by fellow feeling, Richard offered to wait on himself. And long after the lad had hurried away to the bustle and fun of the hall, he sat alone at his long table, leisurely finishing his meal. From time to time, before the door was closed, he had caught a snatch of song or drunken laughter from the guests. But he did not envy them. For the first time in weeks he was warmed and fed. He had even thrown his fine new houppelarde over the back of his chair, leaving himself freer to deal with the dishes. It had been thoughtful of Sir Thomas to send the wine. In imagination, Richard Plantagenet was giving a feast for his own friends, talking to each one of them with wit and charm as he was wont to do. As time went on and the flagon emptied, he even began to sing to them—softly, in that caressing tenor of his. That foolish chanson that he hadn't sung for years:
"Light all the candles for my friends,
Warm, love, my heart with laughter.
Spill gaiety, e'er youth's grace ends—
Hold courage for hereafter."
He broke off abruptly on the last cadence, his glass still upheld against the candlelight that he might see the royal purple of the wine. He heard footsteps and voices. Heavy hurrying footsteps, climbing the stone stairs outside. The visitors from London, perhaps? Their own party must have fallen flat and they had come to finish up at his. Let them come. He'd show 'em. What was it Anne had said? "You and Robert could make a party out of a couple of candles and a bottle of Bordeaux, couldn't you?" He rose to his feet hospitably, if a little unsteadily, waiting for the inevitable Hodge and the grinding of the lock.
But there was no Hodge. A gust of cold night air and the sight of four strangers sobered him instantly. But they weren't all strangers. The dark, beetle-browed man at the back was Sir Piers Exton, Henry Bolingbroke's squire. And each had a weapon in his hand.
So it had come at last. It was actually happening. Four men had come to murder him. He laughed shortly, remembering how he had made sure that Gloucester had a good supper at Bodiam before he died. As he set down his glass his fingers closed over a table knife. His eyes went light as steel. There was no need for words, and none were ever spoken. The intruders' intention was written on their faces. They huddled for a moment or two on the shallow steps, blinded a little by coming from the outside darkness; and taken aback, perhaps, by the candlelit elegance of the man whom they had come to kill.
That moment's hesitation gave Richard the advantage. They had made no plans, expecting him to cower. Never had it occurred to them that their victim might take the initiative. He snuffed the candles with his palm and caught the first man under the chin before he had time to descend the bottom step. The knife drove straight into his throat as Walworth's had once driven into Wat Tyler's. The brutal lightning stroke had graven itself firmly in Richard's memory.
As the man pitched forward the others came at him like unleashed hounds. One of them stumbled over his dead comrade. They were armed only with clubs and axes. "Henry would rather produce my body whole," ran the thought in Richard's mind, as he backed behind the table.
Once his knife got Exton on the shoulder, but the man held back behind his hirelings as if reluctant to do the deed himself. And now they were coming round the table. The fat man on the floor had picked himself up. Richard dodged behind the central pillar. Round and round he dodged, missing their thwacks by a hair's-breadth so that they slashed sickeningly against the stone. It was like some macabre game, practised to perfection. Through the desperate exultation of the fight Richard remembered how he used to play it long ago. Four murderers and an archbishop. Usually Robert had been the murderers and he, had been Becket. And sometimes—when he had been on top of his form—the Archbishop had escaped with his life.
But the real murderers were pressing him hard. If only Robert were here now! Doubling by the steps, Richard slipped on a stream of blood and a tall man with a face like a goat slashed at his left arm with an axe, severing a muscle. The pain was excruciating. But those interminable marches in Ireland and Wales must have toughened him. He reached up to the wall bracket and threw the torch to the stone floor, grinding it out with his heel.
With the room plunged in darkness, the advantage was his again. He could hear his assailants stumbling and cursing as he eluded them, moving catlike in his soft leather shoes. Six paces from pillar to chair, and he had picked up the trailing houppelarde. He let the fat man come within almost an inch of him, then threw it over his head and stabbed him.
It was then, leaning against the wall to get his breath, that he noticed the open door. So confident had they been that they had not thought to shut it, and even the meanest castle servant must have shrunk from the night's foul deed. From where Richard stood, it was only an arched oblong of faint light; but it was the way to freedom. If only he could reach it and turn their borrowed key on his assailants. Outside were the stars and the night air to cool his sweating body, and some wild chance of joining his friends.
He began to tiptoe cautiously along the wall. Only Exton and the goat-faced man were left. But their eyes were becoming accustomed to the gloom. The goat-faced man was after him, between him and the door. He was crouching to spring. Richard's right hand shot out into the darkness and toppled the heavy iron brazier against him. He went down clutching the table cloth. Wine, dishes and candlestick crashed over him. And, trying to free himself, he clutched at Richard's wrist. At his only usable wrist, so that he was powerless to shake him off. Richard set a foot upon his throat—pressing, pressing…The goat-faced man's breath whistled in his windpipe, but still
his frantic fingers were fast as a steel trap. Freedom was only a few yards in front, but Exton was somewhere in the darkness behind. Exton had heaved himself up onto the chair. Exton was swinging his cudgel upwards to strike. Richard struggled desperately to free himself. He dug his foot into the yielding flesh. God, would the man never die! Just as the clutching hand on his wrist slackened, Exton's cudgel came down on his head. Exton was a champion in the lists, and there was no need to strike twice.
Richard's whole world reeled. His knees sagged beneath him to the stone floor. A rush of blood beat at his eardrums. But out of the engulfing darkness he could still see the open door. And the light was growing brighter—an ineffable light, more splendid than the stars. It showed him the way to unimagined freedom. With an effort which was more of the spirit than of the body, he got to his feet and staggered a few steps towards it. He heard his own voice, glad and unafraid, cry, "Anne! Anne! I'm coming…"
Within the Hollow Crown Page 36