Within the Hollow Crown: A Valiant King's Struggle to Save His Country, His Dynasty, and His Love

by Margaret Campbell Barnes

  "How often she kept me from hitting Henry!" he recalled. And

  how she had held in check his smouldering hatred of Gloucester and Arundel! The quill scratched on again.

  "Beauteous her form, her face surpassing fair."

  Her face surprassing fair…Richard Plantagenet laid his own face on his arms and sobbed, smudging the parchment still more. But he must hurry. In an hour's time the cortège was to assemble outside the palace of Westminster, where he sat writing. And he wanted his words to go with Anne to her last resting place in the Abbey, so that all should know how wonderful she was. Later they would be carved upon her tomb. "She passed away into eternal joys," he concluded, and laid down his pen.

  "Oh, Anne, my darling Anne, God give you eternal joy! But how can you be happy while I, the other part of you—"

  He rose hastily, called to Richard Medford to take the thing, and strode through the still passages to his bedroom that they might dress him for his wife's funeral. The new mourning Jacot had made for him was already laid out. His pages and squires waited with downcast eyes so that they might not seem to look upon his ravaged face. They washed and shaved him in heavy silence.

  Never had Richard dressed more carefully. Anne had always been so interested in what he wore. He fastened the silver belt himself because it had been her birthday gift last Twelfth Day. "Yes, my love, occupy your fingers with such foolish trifles," she must be saying compassionately, "so that your heart has time to grow gradually into its loneliness."

  When he was ready he looked himself over critically in the metal mirror as he always had done, to see if he were well-groomed enough to meet her. The black brocaded houppelarde suited him, with his fair skin and red-gold hair and beard. But he was almost shocked to see how young it made him look. Only thirty, like many a gallant going a-wooing. And all happiness behind him.

  He went to a window and looked down at the great concourse of people gathered to do honour to his Queen. He had summoned them, knights and wives, out of every county. It seemed so short a time ago since he had dictated the words to Medford. "Inasmuch as our beloved companion, the Queen, will be buried at Westminster, on Monday, the third of August next, we earnestly entreat that you (setting aside all excuses) will repair to our city of London…We desire that you will, the preceding day, accompany the corpse of our dear consort from our manor of Sheen; and for this we trust we may rely on you, as you desire our honour…Given under our privy seal at Westminster, the 10th day of June, 1394."

  His invitation had been a command. Such wording had brought them all. He went down to join them, and their respectful silence greeted him. Only the occasional whinny of a horse or the impatient clink of a bit broke the silence as he took up his place in a procession which began to move, like an endless black serpent, towards the age-old Abbey where Anne's embalmed body had lain in state for weeks.

  Richard was conscious of the warm summer sun on his face— the mocking summer sun which once he had so blithely loved. Of the deep bell tolling. Of the sad dirge of priests and the uncontrollable sobbing of London women. And then the maw of the great monastic building swallowed him up and the chill of it smote into his soul. Here he had come each evening to kneel beside her. Here for both of them was the end of mortal life. For here, during the long cold centuries, their speechless effigies must lie among the dusty violet shadows, staring unseeingly at time as yet unborn. Other lovers would stare at them, wonder about them a little, perhaps. For their enlightenment he would see that he and Anne lay hand in hand. Already he had spoken to Lote and Yevele, the masons—and to an expert brass worker—about it. And how shocked the uncles had been! So human a touch had never been wrought—and on a royal tomb and during the lifetime of one of them! But then his own life was finished too, and never had a royal marriage been like theirs.

  He was walking slowly up the aisle, just as he had walked on their wedding day. Only then Anne had been beside him, instead of lying beneath the great raised catafalque around which the priests and singing boys were gathered. Just as then, the Abbey was ablaze with candles. He had sent for wax specially out of Flanders. There must be nothing gloomy or niggardly about Anne's funeral. They shone like stars from the high altar, and made tall lakes of soft light about her little coffin.

  And then, as the shifting haze of incense swung by a score of thurifers cleared a little, Richard saw the yawning gap of the vault beneath the stone-flagged floor. He came upon it so suddenly that Standish put out a hand to stay him; and with it came realization. He and Anne had come to the end of their road together. It took all his kingly training not to cry out. To tell all these solemn priests and officials that he would not let them put her beloved body down there. The beloved body that he had burned with passion—the tender fingertips he had so often kissed lest they be nipped in wintertime. Alone, in the cold dark, waiting for him to come.

  "Libera me, Domine, de morte aeterna, in die ilia tremenda…" intoned Archbishop Arundel, as colourless as Simon Sudbury had been vibrant.

  In a detached sort of way, Richard measured the depth of the vault. Grave-diggers' ropes trailed gruesomely on either side down to the level of the crypt. It should be deep enough to break a man's neck. If he took a step or two forward—now—there would be for Anne no waiting alone…

  But it was one thing to meet death violently, as Stafford had done. To go unshrived and unhouselled to one's Maker through no fault of one's own. But to take one's own life? So that men buried you at the crossroads with a knife through your body to keep your lost soul from wailing over the heath o' nights. That would be to lose Anne forever…

  "Deus, cui proprium est misereri semper et parcere, te supplices exoramus pro animaet famulae tuae Anna…"

  But of course the words had nothing to do with Anne. Anne was a living spirit. A joyful, tender essence which could neither be entombed in cold marble nor barred behind the gates of Purgatory. Something beautiful that would always be about him. Something that even in the midst of the most ordinary occupations he must always catch at, and listen for and hold. So that never could she try to make contact and find no one there, at the listening place of his soul.

  "Sanctus, Sanctus, Sanctus Dominus Deus Sabaoth. Plemi sunt

  coeli et terra gloria tua. Hosanna in excelsis. Benidictus qui venit in nomine Domini. Hosanna in excelsis."

  A sort of spiritual ecstasy upheld him, as if she had been spared from Heaven to comfort him in this most mutilating moment of his life. Never again could they two be separated as when he had been in Scotland or Ireland, and she at Sheen. Whenever he was tired or disillusioned, or wanted to tell her something funny, she would be there—closer than his eyes or hands. She would laugh through his brain and linger in his senses, wrapping him round with the tenderness of her love. And she would be more utterly his than ever, because no one else would see or hear her or know that she was there.

  But that was a selfish thought. One that she, of all people, would deplore. There were so many others who loved her. Not in the way that finishes life, but to the point of tears. Geoffrey Chaucer, who had perceived the beauty of her soul—and young Tom Holland, whose eyes had been red for days. He must bestir himself out of this introverted melancholy and try to comfort them for Anne's sake.

  Richard looked about him for the first time with seeing eyes. At Mowbray, leaning on his sword, motionless and reverent as a crusader—at Lancaster and York, looking as if they had lost some cherished daughter of their own—at Gloucester, expressionless, standing a little apart. He saw household servants weeping unashamedly as bearers wearing the white hart badge began to lower the coffin, and looking to the humbler places in the nave, he made his usual unobtrusive sign to Mundina whose keen eyes probed only at the sorrow in his soul.

  The priests had ceased intoning, monks and choristers no longer sang. There was only the slither of ropes and the straining of the bearers. And then the sad silence was broken by a dull banging of the great West door, and footsteps coming louder and louder up the aisl
e. Spurred footsteps that began to grate across Richard's consciousness before his ears had really heard them. Even at that solemn moment, heads turned furtively. Priests stood arrested in the performance of their office. Archbishop Thomas Arundel, standing on the altar steps, looked down the pillared length of aisle, and because he was blood relation of the intruder his hand trembled on the illuminated missal which a kneeling acolyte held for him.

  There was a moving aside of crowded people, a murmured protest and a thrusting. The King watched and waited, his brow black with Plantagenet rage. Opposite to him, across the open vault, appeared Richard Arundel, shoving his way into the place left for him beside Gloucester. Arundel, carelessly dressed and mud-splashed, with Richard's carefully worded invitation in his hand. Arundel, clattering in half an hour late for the Queen's funeral. The insensate brute who had dared to keep her waiting in her lifetime, and had let her kneel to him.

  John of Lancaster glared at him. Chaucer, whose life she had saved that day, stepped forward to bar his way. Even Edmund of York said "Hush!" and waved shocked hands.

  But something snapped suddenly in the King's overwrought brain. The imposing scene lost reality and all the tall candles ran together into one piercing swordpoint of light. All he saw clearly was the dark vault yawning before him and Arundel's hawk-nosed face on the other side.

  Joy—that forgotten thing—surged up in him. The joy of some leashed beast within him breaking its bonds. To the horror of all beholders, he leapt the grave and caught Arundel a stinging blow on the mouth, so that the blood flowed. All the savagery of his ancestors momentarily possessed him, and Richard was so much stronger than he looked. The earl reeled backwards, striking his skull on consecrated flagstones.

  Richard was vaguely aware of the gasp that went up, of people running and the sharp echo of overturned faldstools. Of Arundel's groans, and Gloucester bending over him, the anticipatory smirk wiped from his face.

  "One day I will kill you both," Richard vowed. "But this is not the time or place."

  Aloud he said nothing. There was nothing to be said. He strode out of the Abbey alone, by some side door, to face the perpetual darkness of his joyless life.

  Part Three

  "Through Death men come unto the Well of Grace, Where green and lusty May doth ever endure." —CHAUCER

  "Je te salue, heureuse et profitable Mort!"

  —RONSARD

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  It is high time you married again!"

  The words had hammered on Richard's brain all day. And the raucous voice of his Uncle Thomas, saying them. Saying them in full Council, of course, with Arundel and Warwick to back him. Where everyone took it for granted that a king owed it to his State, and even York jibbered about the necessity of getting an heir. Whatever Lancaster had felt, he had declined to enter into the debate. Richard had been thankful for his silence, although he knew that most people cynically attributed it to the fact that his own son, Henry Bolingbroke, stood second in succession to the throne.

  The matter had been bound to crop up. Richard himself was well aware that Parliament had been wanting—and not daring—to broach the subject for months. He had been a widower for two years and whenever he rode abroad he saw the same dictum reflected more humanly in his subjects' eyes.

  What did they take him to be, he wondered furiously. A pawn to be bartered irrespective of feeling for some foreign alliance? Did they see him in their bovine minds as a bull or a stallion, to be mated solely for the purpose of producing high-bred stock? And in any case, what did it matter about an heir apparent, with Roger Mortimer, his late Uncle Clarence's grandson, whom he liked and trusted, doing so well in Ireland? Of course, if it had been a question of the succession passing to Henry, who could be relied upon to plunge England into war within a few weeks…

  Richard rose impatiently from his half-finished dinner at Westminster and called for his barge to be brought to the landing stage. When he gave an order these days he gave it without a smile, and men ran to do his bidding. They loved him still, their hearts still bled for him—for had they not known the Queen, and been privileged to see the happiness of his private life? But there was none of that good-humoured badinage which had once made them feel part of some delightful pageant. The King seldom troubled to explain to them the why or whither of a journey. His voice had a clipped authority; and although he laughed and said the polite things in public, his eyes never smiled. He never mentioned Anne's name.

  He spared no time on masques and tournaments but went about with a quiet, calculating look, as if he were planning something bigger and biding his time. All the people he had loved so loyally were dead except Mundina, who had left the Wardrobe house in Carter Lane to be with him. He played chess with her of an evening, and applied the same technique to statecraft during the day time. One game was as fascinating as the other to a man who had only his brains left to live upon. And as long as he lived Richard meant to be a move ahead of his opponents' knights and to keep the king out of check. It pleased him that he no longer had need to explain even his most startling movements to anybody. He held England in the hollow of his hand.

  "To Sheen," he ordered curtly, as soon as he had stepped aboard.

  He saw Standish and young Holland exchange glances. It was two years since any of them had been to Sheen. Two years since he had held his dying wife in his arms through the long June night. Two years to the day. Probably that was what had prompted Gloucester to probe the wound.

  Although Richard's mind worked inwardly, his unsmiling eyes were extraordinarily observant. As he sat under the silken awning, sped forward by the rhythmic muscles of his watermen, he noted everything going on on either bank and stored it up, subconsciously, for future use. It was a habit acquired early from Michael de la Pole. He remembered what meadows looked prosperous and which of the landowners, living in their stately riverside mansions, had sided with the Merciless Parliament. It wasn't that he intended to harm them, but so that he could hold it over them. He wanted power to render his enemies impotent. To reverse the humiliating position of his youth. The acquisition of power had become almost an obsession. And now that love was denied him, and pleasures palled, his mind had room to play with hatred.

  He left his escort by the Sheen water gate and strode up alone through the neglected gardens. Anne's unpruned roses bloomed in wild profusion. Because their sweetness tore at his heart he brushed brusquely past them, scattering their loosened petals with his swinging sleeves. The smooth lawns where Chaucer had been wont to read to them stood high with tottle grass, and cobwebs spanned the richly glazed windows. Inside the palace all was shuttered and desolate. The few remaining servants, caught in their undirected sloth, stared at him unbelievingly as though he were a ghost.

  Either their wits were slow, he supposed, or they had grown used to ghosts. But the way they stared sent his thoughts back to the bustle there had been that other June, when he had arrived unexpectedly, mudstained and sore with slander, and Anne had healed him. And to Robert de Vere, an expensive, tinkling echo out of the carefree past. Robert, who had been savaged to death in a boar hunt on foreign soil, but whose body he had had honourably brought home because of the numbed sort of love he still bore him.

  Richard went straight to his wife's room.

  Though bathed in the clear light of a summer's evening, it looked cheerless and bereft. But he had had to come here once again to sort out his mind before settling this question of remarriage which was being forced upon him.

  He stood just inside the door and rammed home the bolt behind him. His nostrils dilated, hunting some lost scent; but only the impersonal dankness of a scrubbed and unused room came back to him. Instinctively, as one dodges a lacerating swordpoint, his eyes avoided the bed. After one quick comprehensive glance at the rest of the room, he went slowly to a cunningly carved armoire between the two tall windows. Mundina had told him there were papers there. Papers belonging to Anne. Things treasured by her, perhaps. Trifles that no one had
dared to touch because of the plague.

  With the westering sunlight emphasizing the new faint lines about eyes and mouth, Richard drew a key from his wallet and opened the armoire. And here was the alchemy he sought. Faintly, yet more poignantly than sight or sound, the subtle perfume that had hung about Anne's clothes drifted out to him, transmuting time. Avidly, his whole being rushed out to meet it; but after that first heady whiff it had no more power to intoxicate his senses with the past. The long line of lifeless dresses were just dresses. Even the faded pink one against which he pressed his cheek. Steadying himself, he jerked open an inner drawer. He lifted out the contents one by one. The heavy necklace he had loosened from her neck the last night he had been here; the faded sprigs of broom he had given her—and forgotten he had given—all those years ago before he went to Scotland. A roll of his letters from Ireland—the love letters she had wanted, tied with a gay ribbon, and already yellowing. The original of a poem in Geoffrey Chaucer's fine script.

  "So passeth al my lady sovereyne,

  That is so good, so faire, so debonayre,