Within the Hollow Crown (20 page)

   Soon they would be talking lightly of fripperies and fashions, but in that still moment they were both aware that to a mother who has put much of herself into her son it is sometimes given to see other women through his eyes.

   Through an open door at the far end of the room they could see Jacot coming, carrying the precious purple velvet on uplifted arms as though it were the Host, born along by an ecstatic wave of admiring women.

   Joan rose to her feet abruptly, seeming almost to spurn Anne from her side. "You have something which the rest of us haven't, however beautiful we may be," she said harshly, almost grudgingly. "Something that could hold a man like Richard to the gates of Death—and beyond…Not only his body, but his whole soul." It was not easy to know that she herself, with all her allure, had never been loved like that. To feel that she was giving place. Yet, bigger than her own sense of blank finality, a new prescience informed her, making her fear for this most problematic of her sons. "If only," she murmured, "he isn't too light a fool to find it!"

Anne fought down her own disappointments and handed Richard his unspoiled adventure with a smile. Agnes might weep and cling and make things difficult for de Vere. But
her
man must go to war with undivided mind.

   She rode out of the City with him because he wanted her to see the final muster of his forces at Highbury. And a fine muster it was. Almost every nobleman in the country appeared to have taken the field, and the common land for miles looked like a gigantic mosaic of richly coloured banners and surcoats and shining steel.

   "Most of them are Lancaster's, of course," admitted Richard. But seeing the pride in his eyes and being borne forward on the surge of excitement that animated his friends, she almost forgot that she herself was not English. And she could have kissed the crowds for cheering his military enterprise, knowing that their voices must be balm to heal his bitterness.

   "A good thing the Queen rides side-saddle, or she would be wanting to lead a charge in person!" laughed young Lord Stafford, who had been chosen as the King's aide-de-camp but whose gaiety and good nature made him popular with all parties.

   In the last few minutes before departure he and de Vere and Tom Mowbray crowded about her. And Anne knew that it wasn't just because she was Queen. There was a bond of gaiety and youth between them. Mowbray was particularly intrigued by the foreign saddle she used, and the others were teasing her and Agnes about the tall, horned head-dresses they were making so fashionable among their own womenfolk. "Though of course no Englishwoman can wear the ridiculous gauzy things with such an air as you Bohemians," allowed de Vere.

   "How can you expect them to when their husbands won't let them shave the backs of their necks?" retorted Agnes.

   "The Bishops say it's sinful," said Mowbray doubtfully. "But apparently Richard doesn't mind."

   "Richard is civilized," boasted Anne.

   "Besides, the Bishops aren't supposed to watch women dress. And I'd rather see my wife sinful than slovenly any day!" laughed Richard negligently. He had dismounted to gather a few sprigs of broom for luck and now, seeing Anne so piquant and gay in the midst of so much masculine attention, he came to her side and laid a hand on the queer wooden stirrup bar where her feet rested. "Planta Genista—my own flower. Does it grow wild in Bohemia?" he asked, handing her up the little nosegay. "It's funny, but everything always happens to me in June—when the broom is out."

   Anne shook her head and tucked the golden sweetness into the tight-fitting bodice of her
cote-hardie. "Nice things or nasty?
" she asked, spreading the spikes so that they showed bravely as a badge.

   "Both," he answered a little absently, his eyes still bright with excitement. "My father died in June. It was June when I first came to England. And then there was that awful week when the rebels held London. And now this. All the important things…"

   "It was winter when we were married," murmured Anne.

   But either he did not hear, or he missed the sad little implication. His gaze was still on the satisfying pageantry of his army, and it was not until a trumpet shrilled somewhere and their companions tactfully withdrew, that he realized the moment of parting had come. He turned to her then with his endearing smile. "Well, it is good-bye now, Anne," he said. "I have told Medford to see that you don't stay in London during the heat. There was a case of plague at Charing last week."

   She managed to smile down at him without showing any of the wretchedness in her heart. "I shall go to Sheen tomorrow," she assured him.

   "You like that better than Eltham?"

   "I love it best of all your palaces."

   For a moment she felt his hand, hard and friendly, gripping her ankle. "Then I shall give it to you," he promised. "And you won't be too lonely, with my mother away at Wallingford?"

   Already Anne was living a moment ahead of time and knew just how lonely she would be without his impatience and his laughter. "Oh, Richard!" she whispered urgently, seeing the uncles and a posse of important people coming to take leave of her.

   Something of her urgency seemed to impart itself to him. "My dear!" he whispered back, with a new tension in his voice which showed that he recognized her as something essential and permanent in his life as opposed to even the most exciting episodes.

   Instinctively their hands met. He pressed closer to her dappled jennet and she bent over him. "You will write to me, Richard?"

   "Because you will miss me?"

   "Because I shall be so anxious. I must know, Richard. Suppose— suppose you were wounded—"

   She saw him no longer as he was, erect and smiling, but lying on the cold earth, earth-cold himself and dabbled in blood. And now that his mind was wholly centred on her he read the thoughts that pictured him so.

   The adventure took on a more sombre aspect.

   "Of course I will write," he promised gravely.

   Thomas of Gloucester was bearing down upon them, tearing without delicacy through their precious moments. Anne glanced at his hard face with loathing. "Soon?" she urged.

   "As soon as we reach Scotland, sweet." Richard kissed her hands, then released them quickly as though his uncle's detested presence profaned the action, and snapped his finger for his waiting groom.

   In his thrustfulness Thomas Plantagenet had overheard their words. His clanking armour and blood royal jupon blotted out the summer sun. "Once we get to Scotland we shall need every man," he observed dourly. "It will be no time for dallying."

   Instantly Anne became a stiff-necked little piece of imperial pride. Rudeness always made her like that; and spiritually or physically, she would sooner starve than be beholden to this bully for a crust. "I will send Sir Meles with you as my messenger," she said haughtily, beckoning to one of her own Bohemian followers.

   Richard was in the saddle, gathering helmet and gloves from a page. Only his wife's example kept him from an outburst of rage. Anne never lost her temper or flared out at people, yet underneath her politeness there was a sharp edge of anger on his behalf. And somehow, deep down in that hidden part of him which had always feared Gloucester, he no longer felt alone. "If Sir Meles will ride in my own company we will make ourselves responsible for his comfort," he said formally, trying to emulate her self-control. "Stafford, we commend this honoured Bohemian knight to your charge, so that once we are safely across the border he may return with news for the Queen."

   Anne's quaint, elusive beauty flamed like a rose. Although they both ignored Gloucester, the romance of a private pact had had the bloom knocked off it by publicity. "It will be the first love letter I have had from you," she said half reproachfully, as Richard, wheeling his horse, passed close beside her for a final word.

   He looked back at her with warmth and laughter in his smile. She could almost have sworn that a spark of the passion she waited for was in his eyes. "I will see that it is a good one," he promised.

   Another shrilling of trumpets—a stirring of serried ranks—a trembling of productive soil beneath the beat of martial hoofs. Quite unself-consciously, Richard turned to wave to her from the head of a column where the proud banners were thickest. And then he was gone. A normal, peace-loving young man swallowed up in a welter of war.

beloved gardens, waiting for her letter. She even begged for the big painting of Richard, gorgeous in his coronation robes, which the French artist Beauneveu was working on, to be brought from Westminster. But the portrait was stiff and wooden. The lips wouldn't break into a smile for her, nor the eyes light up. And anyhow, she couldn't remember him like that.

   So she sent for young Tom Holland to keep her company. He looked more like Richard than did the portrait, and it had nearly broken his heart when it was decided that he was too young to go to war. To cheer him and herself, Anne had Richard Medford fix a large map across an embroidery frame. And every day the three of them would hang over it, measuring the distance the army must have travelled. "Your Uncle Richard must have reached Oxford today"—or Coventry or Derby—Anne would say, sticking one of her new-fangled silver pins into county after county, always farther and farther northwards. And long after the lovable lad was asleep and dreaming of future laurels she would lie awake listening to the breeze stirring the riverside willows and telling herself like any sentimental dairymaid that the same stars shone over her love.

   But when at last Sir Meles came riding in it was no love letter he brought. Only a hasty, outraged scrawl telling her that Stafford had been murdered.

   "Not
Stafford!"
she cried, letting the slim, red-sealed roll of parchment flutter to her lap half-read. "Everybody loved him. He was what Chaucer calls 'a gentle parfait knight.'"

   "Surely no one could pick a quarrel with
him,'' cried Agnes, wh
o was in attendance.

   "I'm afraid the quarrel was picked on our behalf," their compatriot told them sadly.

   "By whom, Meles? By whom?"

   Meles didn't answer immediately but asked leave to send Tom Holland on some errand. And Anne, with heavy heart, read the full sum of her husband's rage and humiliation. "I see now why you sent the boy away," she said slowly. "It was his uncle. The King's own half-brother, John Holland, Agnes. Oh, how awful!"

   Both women looked to Sir Meles to fill in the details. "It all started with a servants' brawl," he explained. "Some of these English can't abide a foreigner and Holland's men lost no opportunity of jibing at mine. When we were come to a town called Beverley they jostled us out of all the best lodgings, and Stafford's men, knowing the King's hospitable wishes, rushed out on our behalf. A squire got killed. Accidentally, I believe. But it had to be John Holland's favourite squire. And as soon as it was dark he rode like an avenging devil through the streets and stabbed milord Stafford as he was riding home from supping with the King." Horrified silence greeted his words, and hung in the room. "Apart from the killing of his squire, that younger Holland always was jealous of any favour shown to another, they tell me," he added.

   "And Stafford?" asked Agnes.

   "Poor Stafford was taken unawares—bemused by a pleasant evening and singing as he rode. He hadn't even had time to sort the matter or to offer his regrets. And Holland stabbed again and again and left him lying between blood and garbage in the gutter."

   Anne covered her face with both hands. The letter she had so longed for lay, a besmirched thing, among the rushes at her feet. "Oh, Meles!" she shuddered. "And only the other day I was talking to him, and he was so kind and cultured. Richard thought the world of him." She looked up anxiously. "Whatever will the King do?"

   Meles went thoughtfully to the window where Agnes was standing. Without subterfuge he handed her a letter from Robert de Vere, but she hadn't the heart to open it. "What
can he do, madam,
" he asked, turning back to the Queen, "but have him put to death?"

   Anne stretched an entreating hand. "But, Meles, his own brother—"

   "There is no love lost between them."

   "I know. But don't you see—his mother…
Their mother. Oh, no
, the King can't have him put to death! It would break her heart— and his, too, because it would always come between them."

   But, moved by her distraction as he was, Meles took the man's view. Only a few days ago he had had to look upon a much more passionate grief. "What about Stafford's father?" he argued. "With a son so full of promise. Stiff-jointed as he is, the old Earl has already ridden all those miles to beg justice from the King."

   
All those miles. Richard so far away with all this worry on hi
s mind, and she not there to ease it. Anne rose and joined the others. "Don't you see, my friends, that I am in some way responsible? If only I hadn't fussed about that letter!"

   "It was only natural, madam, with a husband going into battle," soothed Meles.

   But instead of soothing her, his words only brought to mind that vivid picture of her young husband lying grey-faced on the ground. Perhaps even now the only battle that mattered was over…And his last thoughts of her had been tinged with annoyance…"How Richard must hate me!" she cried, twisting her handkerchief into a fevered ball.

   Agnes Launcekron only laughed and put kind arms about her. She who was too happy-go-lucky ever to spoil a present moment by dodging a future which had not yet caught her. Romance for her lay warm to hand, in Robert's letter; and she was a woman who exuded happiness. "Nonsense, dear Anne! All these weeks of anxiety are making you morbid," she declared. "Don't you remember how the very day we last saw Stafford, you were boasting to that solemn cousin Mowbray that Richard was civilized? So why should he be unreasonable and blame you? It was
he
who should have thought about exchanging letters. As Robert did."