He found her light as thistledown, surprised and not a little indignant. "But I want to ride him and he likes me!" she protested.
"I was only afraid that he might bite you, little one," explained Richard. "Usually, he does things only for me."
He set her gently on the coveted steed, whispering something to Mathe as he did so. Proudly and carefully, the sagacious old deerhound bore his precious burden across the tent to her father's throne, with Richard walking on one side and the small Orleans boy on the other. French and English were delighted at the impromptu pageant. And when Richard lifted Isabel down she ran and kissed Mathe's forehead while he nuzzled against her fearless hand. "What tricks does he do for you, my lord?" she wanted to know, between shrieks of delicious childish laughter.
Richard snapped his fingers and the handsome creature rose on his hind legs to place a paw on each of his shoulders, regardless of cloth of gold and ermine.
Both children watched with shining eyes. "One day will he do that for Isabel, sir? When she is Queen of England?" inquired little Charles of Orleans.
"I hope not, or he will certainly knock her over!" laughed Richard, envying the Duke so delightful a son.
The spontaneous interlude had broken up formality, and when it came time for parting the two children kissed with tears. Richard tactfully withdrew to discuss some minor point with Lancaster while Isabel made her adieux to her parents, and for her sake they were cut as short as possible.
"You will see them again," Richard comforted her, when the horses were ready.
"I know I can trust her to you, my son," said Charles.
"My own cousin, Philippa de Courcy, will look after her at Windsor," promised Richard. "And my own old nurse, when she comes back from Bordeaux."
So they rode briskly back to Calais. Isabel had been up betimes to be dressed and the next day would be her wedding day. When they lifted her from her litter she was fast asleep.
Richard went to his own room in the Citadelle. The room in which Gloucester had died. He knew that people were watching to see if he would avoid doing so, and that they would judge his conscience accordingly. When his body squires had divested him of the cloth of gold and all the royal insignia he stood looking at the bed. Especially he noticed the high down pillows in cases of fine linen, each embroidered with a chained, crowned hart. The very pillows, probably, with which Mowbray had had Gloucester smothered. Not unnaturally, he decided to sit by the fire for a while. And also he bethought him of a piece of pearled braid that didn't set properly on his wedding tunic. Jacot had better come and see to it, against the morrow.
Weary as he looked, Jacot came obediently. "Only he and the King could possibly find a fault in the cut of that white velvet!" the squires exclaimed, once they were outside the door.
"Well, what did you find out?" asked Richard, as soon as he and
his tailor were alone.
"It is true, what milord of Norfolk told your Grace," corroborated Jacot, beginning to refold the faultless garment. "Mundina left Calais at the end of the week."
"Which way did she go?"
"By what they tell me, I think she took the road home."
Jacot was still bending over the hymeneal velvet and his voice dragged uncertainly. He had always feared Mundina more than he had loved her. And he wasn't at all certain what Mundina would want him to say.
"You gathered nothing more about—my uncle?"
"No, sir. Some say that he was smothered, some that he was poisoned, and others that he died in his sleep."
The King sighed. "You sound tired, Jacot," he said. "All this spate of wedding garments must have been a strain on you. You'd better go to bed, and start for Bordeaux in the morning."
He had no idea that Jacot knew the journey to be useless, and had no desire to go.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Strengthened by a French alliance, and with a Council of eighteen supporters overriding Parliament, Richard became more and more absolute. Isabel's dowry and the subsidy on wool which he had wrung from the Commons went far towards resolving his ever pressing financial problems. And before the year was out a private quarrel had delivered Bolingbroke and Mowbray into his hands.
But their quarrel, blowing up so suddenly, had shown what dangerous rifts lay unsuspected beneath the smooth surface of his autocracy. It should have taught him that men do not dare to tell things to a despot and that because his ear was less accessible he was losing touch with the pulse of his people. Losing that gift of imaginative insight by which he had ruled so instinctively and so brilliantly. But he did not want to look back to any element of that other life, nor realize, while there was yet time, the unreal security in which he lived. By a series of monstrous blows, all those whom he had loved so devotedly had been taken from him. Ill-beset indeed he was. Even Mundina, who had first said it, seemed to have walked out of his life. And nothing seemed left but the making of a new, cold world of his own, building further and further away from warm reality.
At times his mind was still informed by Anne. But his sense of humour was drying up within him, and without that to keep him sane he was beginning to believe that because he was a murderer— no matter what the provocation, no matter how often other men killed—God would not let him find her again. And that being so, his restless mentality impelled him to fill his days with some sort of effort, of which the ethics scarcely mattered.
Bolingbroke and Mowbray had each accused the other of treason. Searching for some cause, Richard saw ambition on the one side and fear on the other. It touched his pride that two of his contemporary associates should be wrangling in public about an alleged plot to take his life. At first he joined with Lancaster in trying to reconcile them and hush the matter up. But the quarrel was too savage, the honour and safety of each too deeply involved. Bolingbroke had even accused Mowbray of embezzling money granted for the upkeep of Calais. Finally, they had thrown down their gauntlets at each other's feet. By all the laws of chivalry there was but one inexorable solution: single combat to the death.
So Richard found himself sitting in the royal pavilion overlooking the lists at Coventry. The proud old Midland city had been chosen for convenience' sake, because one protagonist had estates in the north and the other in the east, and every man who called himself a sportsman wanted to see England's two foremost champions fight. They came flocking from every county, but few of them brought their wives. Since the combat was a l'outrance, the culmination would scarcely be a pretty sight for women.
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.
Chapter Thirty
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 e
ach 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.
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