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

by Margaret Campbell Barnes

  Standish loitered a little in opening the door for him. "It is bad news, I fear," he warned.

  Richard laid a friendly hand on his shoulder. The hours spent with Isabel had lowered the guard of his loneliness. "What else has life trained me to expect, Ralph?" he countered.

  So often he had been called from happiness to sudden deputations such as this. But instead of the three distinctive Plantagenet uncles who had awaited him in the past, he now found three respectful, ineffective knights.

  "Well, my friends?" he asked, disliking their nondescript faces.

  "Roger Mortimer, Earl of March—" began Bushey.

  "Your heir, sir—" added Baggot, trying to underline his colleague's preface with unnecessary information.

  "Well?" snapped Richard a second time, supposing that another worrying letter had arrived.

  "He has been ambushed by the Irish, and killed," concluded Green.

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Jehan Froissart came to England just as the whole nation was

  clamouring for reprisals against Ireland, and for once in his life Richard was too busy to show suitable hospitality and appreciation of the arts. He had been obliged to receive the celebrated French chronicler hurriedly, having his beautifully bound gift of love poems carried to his bedroom that he might scan it before sleeping, and then turning his guest over to the care of a kindly old knight while he himself prepared to lead the expedition to Ireland. There had been no chance to enjoy long, leisurely talks with one of the best informed men of the day, nor to glean some of those revealing little stories about his parents' youth which do not enliven official recordings. He would always regret that Froissart could not have come a few years earlier and seen England in the heyday of her peaceful culture which was his achievement—and above all that he should not have seen Anne!

  And now, just as everybody was busy with levies and shipping and victualling, Geoffrey Chaucer must needs be affected by the same spring urge, and choose this moment to send his latest crop of verses to his royal patron! The best thing to do, Richard supposed, would be to put the two men of letters together while he got on with the war.

  "Read the new poem aloud while I look through this armour," he bade Medford, loath as he was to forgo the first joyful impact of Chaucer's golden words.

  He went on indicating to a brace of squires which pieces of personal equipment he would take. But after a minute or two it dawned upon his absorption that nobody was reading anything. And, glancing up, he noticed that his secretary was staring at the unrolled parchment, looking very red about the tonsure and very white about the gills.

  "What has struck you so dumb, Medford?" he demanded, pausing with a pair of spurs in one hand and a jupon bedizened with leopards dangling from the other.

  "It's—it's not the sort of verse Master Chaucer usually writes," stammered the embarrassed bishop, whose Court life had accustomed him to flattery rather than frankness.

  Richard looked round the crowded room with irritation. York, who was sitting near him, was lamentably wheezy; and his son, young Edward of Aumerle, read verse with about as much expression as if he were crying the curfew. "Here, give the thing to me," he said, bundling spurs and jupon into the arms of his new French squire, Creton, who had come back with him from St. Omer.

  Richard took the verses to the window, beginning to scan them over as he mounted the shallow steps. Brief and pointful as they were, he found the subject matter scarcely credible. Forgetful of the roomful of people watching him, he read them over twice. And as he read his face flamed with anger—and with the tardy shame which the author must have meant to stir in him. Having yielded to temptation and seized John of Gaunt's estates instead of handing them over to Henry, he had tried to stifle his conscience with plausible excuses and think no more about it. And here was a mere vintner's son daring to criticize!

  "Oh, prince, desire to be honourable;

  Cherish thy folk, and hate extorcion!

  Suffre no thing that may be reprevable

  To thine estate, done in thy regioun.

  Show forth thy sword of castigacion.

  Dred God; do law; love trouthe and worthinesse And wed thy folk again to stedfastnesse"

  Reading such blunt reproof from so unexpected a quarter, Richard felt much as he had done years ago on receiving a wellearned thwack from the quintain.

  No wonder Chaucer hadn't waited upon him in person! From what source had he drawn courage to write the impertinent stuff at all? Recalling his other poems written on happier themes, one could not but realize how deeply they were imbued with the very essence of England. Had he not braved exotic ideas of culture by making a medium of his own tongue? Richard had the grace to be glad that there would always be Englishmen to take up pen or sword, not only against danger from abroad, but against tyranny at home. And that it would always be the gentle, law-abiding citizens who would be the first to fight.

  But that touched his conscience all the more. For he himself had been that kind of man. He crumpled the parchment in his hand and let it fall to the floor. Chaucer was only putting into telling words what a lot of shrewd Londoners said of him. Yet what did they know, any of them, about the difficulties that beset a king?

  "Desire to be honourable…" How could one deal honourably with men like Gloucester? Or lead an expedition to Ireland without money? And mightn't his pledged word have applied only to Henry's Hereford and Derby estates, which were all he had at the time of exile? It was all very well for shopkeepers with no knowledge of statecraft to condemn him as if he had robbed their idol of his money like a common thief; but it was more a question of power. How could a sovereign rule England while a third of it belonged to someone else? Lancaster had had the power, but had used it to feed his ambition in Spain. With Henry there was no knowing. One remembered only which side he had been on at Radcot Bridge…

  And then again—"hate extorcion." That would be a dig at fines levied on counties for half-forgotten risings, and for the promises of blank loans he had forced his wealthier subjects to sign. Of course, it had all looked very high-handed. But he had no intention of making his people pay up, any more than he had insisted upon the sheriffs reporting their grumbles. Couldn't the fools see that? When had he ever been ungenerous, or ground down his subjects? It was only that he wanted to hold the whole land in leash—particularly now that he was going away. So that as long as he lived there should be but one ruler—a benevolent one who saw to it that they had peace and prosperity—instead of a hydra-headed growth of self-seekers who would waste their substance in violence.

  Back and forth swayed Richard's thoughts, like the good and the bad wrestling within him. In spite of all his plausible reasoning, he knew that he had been behaving outrageously. The ill-controlled forces of his baser self had been gathering momentum with the mounting sum of his misfortunes. A man needs love and laughter to keep him sane. And he had only to love a thing, it seemed, to have it taken from him.

  Even the love of his people was rapidly turning into fear. Well, let them whine like whipped dogs, fearing and mistrusting him, if they wanted to! Hadn't he himself been bludgeoned into subjection as a boy? There were times when all that was bad in him took a savage delight in being feared.

  But fear makes men do strange things. And it was this unrest against which Chaucer was presuming to warn him. "Wed thy folk again to stedfastnesse," he had implored, evidently torn between anxiety for him and for England. Presumably, the man man knew himself safe from royal displeasure because the same pen had written such lovely things about Anne. Perhaps he was saying things now, in the only way he knew, for Anne. If Anne were here she, too, would say "Love truth and worthiness, dear Richard." And perhaps one wasn't being too truthful, even with oneself…But then, of course, if Anne were here everything would be different.

  Richard stooped to pick up the crumpled ball of parchment, absently smoothing it out as he came down slowly from the window seat. Not one of the men in the room so busily engaged in preparatio
ns for battle had any idea that a spiritual skirmish, far more important to their future, had already been fought silently in their midst—and partially lost.

  "What a mercy the King signed a long-term peace with France before all this trouble started in Ireland!" the Duke of York was saying to nobody in particular. Poor York! Trying, as ever, to gloss over some passionate complexity in a nephew he couldn't even begin to understand.

  "So people are just beginning to realize it!" remarked Richard caustically, coming to join him.

  "Now you've to go and avenge Roger they must be thankful you're not leaving our shores open to a threat of invasion," minced Edward of Aumerle.

  But fear of a very different kind of invasion lurked at the back of Richard's mind. Charles of Valois was sound enough, with his daughter Queen of England. But the whole coast lay open to Henry. And Henry was a potential danger now, with only Roger's youngster balking his way to the succession. Probably the Yorks were too stupid to think of that. Or were they? Richard's gaze dwelt appraisingly on his cousin, while he himself did some quick thinking. He wasn't yearning for Edward's company in Ireland, but there was plenty of mischief a conceited young scion of the family might get up to in England…

  "I shall want you to act as Regent for me while I'm gone," he told his uncle. "I will see to it officially tomorrow."

  York rose formally. "I will do my best, Richard, since you so honour me. But I am getting to be an old man—"

  "And never amounted to much anyway!" thought Richard. But there was no one else of sufficient standing whom he could trust, except perhaps the able Bishop of Carlisle. And one couldn't very well pass over an uncle. He turned with intentional abruptness to Aumerle. "You, Edward, will come with me," he ordered.

  Aumerle's effeminate features flustered with confusion, and in that moment Richard was sure that his command had clashed inconveniently with some previous plan. Though probably the foppish sycophant wouldn't be much of an asset to any party. Replicas of trusty leaders like Knollys and Stafford weren't two a groat nowadays.

  "And Bolingbroke's young son, Harry, can come along too," he added, looking with disconcerting directness into Aumerle's startled eyes. "It'll be useful experience for his future wars with France, if his father should ever succeed me."

  "My dear Richard!" protested Edmund of York. "Everyone says he is a promising, upstanding boy—but surely too young to fight!"

  To his uncle's annoyance Richard burst out laughing. "Funny, how familiar that sounds! Burley used to say those very words, surely? When you and the other uncles were trying to hound him into sending me on some campaign before I could couch a lance. And do you remember how shocked your bloodthirsty brother Thomas was because the Black Prince's son had never even seen a man killed? Well, he's seen plenty now! The trouble is that so few of the decent ones are left alive." Richard broke off in mid-tirade. Now that he was a widower, laughter so often degenerated into bitterness. "Oh, don't worry," he soothed, seeing that York's affronted face had taken on a yet more florid hue. "There will be no need for young Harry to fight. He may come in quite useful in other ways."

  Aumerle said nothing. He knew well enough that Richard wanted Henry's son as a hostage. Richard was so damnably clever like that. You thought you'd got him in check, and he was always a move ahead of you. Life seemed to have taught him more expediency in thirty-three years than most greybeards assimilate in a lifetime. "This expedition is going to cost coffers of money," he grumbled, picking up a long list of levies.

  "Yes," agreed Richard, returning briskly to the work in hand. "And without the Lancaster estates we couldn't restore law and order in Ireland at all."

  York had been too profoundly shocked by their seizure to discuss the matter. "If you were to call a Parliament I am sure they wouldn't be unreasonable about a grant," he suggested, without much conviction.

  But to reassemble Parliament was to hand over the power when Richard wanted it most. Better to gamble with the pieces one held and get this necessary Irish business over and done with, and return to England as soon as possible. "There isn't time, Uncle. When I come back," he evaded, making a note to send for Henry's son before Edward could spirit him away.

  Later in the day, when York and Aumerle had gone back to Langley, Richard had the royal coffers opened. Something furtive in his cousin's manner had made him decide to take all his plate and money with him. And—more important still, perhaps—the crown. Holding the hollow, shining thing in his hands, he thought back upon the long train of his ancestors who had worn it, and wondered who would wear it next. "If one of my cousins had to be murdered, why couldn't it have been Henry Bolingbroke and not Roger Mortimer?" he wondered, for the hundredth time.

  Not until everything was in readiness for the expedition did he go again to Windsor. Isabel must have been counting the days, but he simply hadn't had time. And when he went it was May. Maytime in England, wiping out all her sullen winter greyness with the perfection of a single smiling hour. Hawthorn bushes flung a froth of pink and red and white against the darker trees of the forest, and the Thames meadows were just that hopeful shade of green which wilts so soon before the summer heat. Cooling his horse's feet in the silver shallows at Runnymead, Richard lingered to look and look, and store the loveliness—just as Anne had done that day before she died, by London Bridge.

  But there was no time to dally by the Thames. This was a much more official visit than his last. He was received into the vast castle in state. Isabel welcomed him in the wonderful dress the Paris goldsmiths had trimmed for her with golden birds sitting upon branches of pearls and emeralds. Her very grandest dress of all.

  "I have to go across to Ireland," he told her, "and I have brought Roger Earl of March's widow to look after you while I am away." Knowing her tender heart, he foresaw that soon it would be she who would be caring for poor Eleanor Mortimer.

  But Isabel had grown impatient waiting for him and was in a tantrum as regal as her gown. "Why do I have to stay here with any of them? Am I not Queen?" she demanded. "Your first queen went everywhere with you!"

  "Never campaigning," said Richard shortly.

  "Madame de Courcy says you were wildly in love with her and slept with her every night. And that when she died you risked the plague to hold her in your arms. And that afterwards you burned down—"

  "I will speak to Madame de Courcy."

  Richard's eyes were cold as ice. Isabel had never known him to speak or look like that. And as he turned aside, experienced courtiers made way for him in apprehensive silence. They never heard what he said to that haughty, extravagant lady before he sent her packing. But hard-pressed for money as he was, he instructed Medford to settle all her bills, because she had been Robert de Vere's wife.

  When he went to take his leave of Isabel he found her in floods of repentant tears. There was a different look about her and dark smudges beneath her candid eyes. It wasn't her fault that Roger had been killed, thought Richard with compunction, and that things looked very different for her, for him and for England. Roger's son Edmund was even younger than she, and there seemed scarcely time to wait for two children to grow up.

  "I had no right to lose my temper just now, my poor sweet," he said, helping to dry her tears. "You must try to bear with me because I have so many worries."

  "I am sorry, Richard. About adding to your worries, I mean," she told him, her voice still erupting with a stray sob or two. "But I love you with all of me, and you love me only as you love Mathe."

  "You give me more than I deserve, and I am more grateful than you will ever know," he said. "But you must put all this ridiculous idea of rivalry out of your head. I allow no one—not even you, Isabel—to discuss her. But you are growing up and I owe you the truth." He set her before him and tried to make her understand. He was almost as white and shaken as she. "Nobody and nothing on earth can ever take the place of—my wife. But you are God's last solace to me, dear child, and I adore you. And some day soon, when I come back from Ireland, you shall
come to London and really be my queen."

  Her tear-stained face was transfigured. The streets of London were paved with gold for her as surely as Richard Whittington had told her they had been for him—years ago when he was a poor boy and not a rich Mayor. "You promise, Richard?"

  He kissed heir gently on the forehead. "I promise."

  She flung herself upon him. "Then come back soon, Richard! Come back soon!"

  Richard had no idea when he would be back—or whether he would get back at all. Something completely outside his careful reckoning had happened when Roger had been killed.

  When he went with his little queen to hear Mass he was conscious of the paradoxical selfless peace of a soldier going into battle whose fate is out of his own hands. Again that keen awareness of beauty invaded him. It uplifted him so that all cunning and bitterness seemed to fall away. It was difficult to believe that he was his uncle's murderer or—if he were—it seemed that God had in some miraculous way wiped out the guilt. He felt as if Anne and all those whom he had loved were very near him, and the veil dividing him from the company of Heaven no more impenetrable than the haze of incense rising before the altar. In this uplifted mood he waved the choristers to silence and chanted some of the beautiful words as a solo. "…increase and multiply upon us Thy mercy…that we may so pass through things temporal, that we finally lose not the things eternal…" Priests and laymen listened spellbound. His true, sweet tenor was an inspired joy, and the memory of it lingered in the chapel of Windsor long after he was gone.