Within the Hollow Crown (29 page)

   Henry Bolingbroke must have sent out scouts and got wind of his approach. With superb generalship he must have withdrawn his own men secretly from Waltham and gone by forced night marches to meet him. Henry, who never waited for his enemies to move first, must have set a trap for him.

   And Robert de Vere had walked into it. Gaily singing one of his latest songs, no doubt, thought Richard savagely. And, finding himself surrounded, he had surrendered without so much as a shaft loosed from those bows or a thrust from one of those shining pikes. And—as if that were not enough—he had deserted his bewildered followers and saved his own skin by running away. Like John Holland on Hackney marshes.

   Richard's whole body writhed at the thought of it. He got up and prowled about the darkening room because there are some mind pictures that the body cannot endure in stillness. "With forty thousand men!" was the constant burden of his thoughts.

   Last night, after the news had come, he had lain tossing and turning on his bed, trying to find some possible explanation. Henry's men must have had some new weapon—one of Gloucester's new cannon perhaps, with a range which had rendered bows useless. Or a mist might have come up over the low-lying river country blotting out everything, just as here it was shrouding even moat

and walls.

   But, try as he would, there was nothing to be found but ridicule and shame. The comedy of an unfought battle which chroniclers like Froissart, writing of his reign, would record for all time. Apart from the ghastly consequences of defeat, he—Richard—and his cause had been hopelessly let down. "Gloucester was right. These are the kind of young men who pule for peace with France!" people would be sure to say, pointing the finger of scorn. Couldn't Robert have seen, curse him, that the more one advocated peace the less one could afford to be a coward?

   In those first hours of bitter disappointment it seemed to matter so much more about Robert than about the battle. If the worst came to the worst and Burley and Brembre were executed, they would still have been real people, a living memory at which to warm one's heart. But although Robert might elude his enemies and live on, the friend Richard had loved best had never really lived at all, save in his own imagination. Only the familiar, attractive husk of him which was still so painfully dear.

   With a life so set apart from other men's, it was largely through the strength of his affections that Richard had touched reality. And because all that inner gallantry that he had taken for granted had been proved an illusion, a sense of futile unreality gripped him too. Even the everyday furnishings about him seemed momentarily unreal, so that he found a voice in his consciousness affirming desperately, "It is I who am here, touching this table, enduring this hell. I really am I—here, now—and nothing can stop it." The very realization of his own present existence in the midst of all that seemed unreal beat upon his brain until his heart quickened suffocatingly in fear of he knew not what. And then the low arched door opened and Anne came into the room, and everything became real and normal again.

   "Why, Richard, sitting alone in the dark!" she reproached, and the very homeliness of her words was a comfort.

   She went straight to him and he caught at her hand. "In outer darkness, ever since you left me," he admitted. "You've been gone a long time, Anne. What have you been doing?"

   "Trying to comfort Agnes," she told him quietly.

   "It must be pretty awful for his wife, too," he said, ashamed that he had forgotten about Agnes.

   Anne went to the door and called to the anxious servants. "Bring candles, Martin. The biggest you can find, and put them everywhere. And come, one of you, and heap up the fire." She came back bustling and shivering a little. "I am sure these rooms are damp. They never get any sun."

   "That I should have brought you here—a daughter of the Caesars—" he began.

   But she was making conversation as one does to cheer the sick, rather than grumbling. "Since you are here, my love—" she whispered, with a little secret smile that brightened life for him more than all the lights the servants brought. "I really came to tell you that we have a visitor. Your Uncle Edmund. I have just spoken to him outside the Lieutenant's lodgings."

   "Uncle Edmund? Here?"

   "You know how long he takes to puff up the stairs—"

   Richard was all action immediately. "Go down, Martin, and light the Duke of York," he ordered.

   But Edmund of York's round, red face was already visible at the top bend of the stairs, and soon his scarlet-clad girth was filling the doorway. Anxiety sat incongruously upon him and he was badly out of breath. "My—dear—nephew!" he panted portentously.

   Richard gripped his hand and settled him in the largest chair. "How kind of you to come!" he exclaimed without ceremony.

   "I'm afraid I've only bad news for you."

   Richard and Anne hung on his heavy words. "What did they decide this morning?" they asked, almost simultaneously.

   The Duke mopped his brow unashamedly with a handkerchief which Anne had made for him. "It's the death sentence, Richard. For Salisbury, Brembre, Chaucer—and poor Simon Burley."

   "Mother of God!" cried Richard, walking away to the window.

   "And Robert de Vere—if they can catch him," added York, trying to sound decently sorry.

   Anne came and sat near him, laying pleading fingers on the arm of his chair. "But couldn't you—weren't there any members who—"

   He covered her hand with his own white, podgy one. "I did what I could, my dear."

   "They tell me you quarrelled with Uncle Thomas over it in Council," put in Richard appreciatively, from the window.

   "There are some things that even an easy-going person like me can't stomach," admitted York, with rare sincerity. "But Gloucester and Arundel are on the crest of the wave just now. That French ship they captured in the Channel turned out to have her holds stuffed with good Chartreuse and—"

   "Oh, don't tell me!" implored Richard bitterly. "And they were clever enough to refuse all profit on her, just to show up my extravagance, and now London is flooded with duty-free wine. Isn't that so? And isn't it the sort of thing
that would
happen at the right moment—for
them
?"

   "I'm afraid you're right, Richard. Normally, there are scores of moderate, level-headed members and citizens who think these two go too far, and who would have been profoundly shocked at the idea of a man like Burley being hanged, drawn, and—"

   "Don't!" cried Anne, and in a moment Richard was standing beside her, pressing her cowering head against his side. "Not that, York! For God's sake, not that!" he protested. But no cruelty nor indignity was too great, it seemed, for any man who had been his friend. Across Anne's stricken head the Duke made an expressive gesture indicating that the same fate was in store for all four of the impeached.

   Nobody moved for a minute or two. Only the licking flames on the hearth broke the silence. And then Richard's slow, sorrowful words. "Simon Burley was like a father to me. Sometimes I've wished to Heaven he
were my father!" He bega
n to pace up and down, beating fist to palm. "I'd do anything— anything…" he muttered.

   "You've already done a good deal," York reminded him. And perhaps only he knew how near Richard had come to losing his crown over it.

   Anne lifted her tear-drenched face to look at her husband. "Do

you mean that, Richard?
Anything
?" she asked.

"Of course."

   She got up slowly, almost like an old woman. "Then let me go to Arundel's house and beseech him—"

   Richard stopped short and stared at her. "You must be crazed!" he said.

   She went towards him steadfastly. "But you said just now—"

   "I said I would do anything. But I can't go on bended knee and beseech my own subjects—"

   "Everybody knows you can't. But I'm asking you to do something much harder, Richard. For Brembre and Salisbury, Geoffrey Chaucer and—Simon Burley." Seeing his face still adamantine, she clung to his arm. "Oh, Richard, remember that I love him too. And that I, too, want to do something—anything—to atone for the trouble I caused when I wrote to the Pope about granting Robert a divorce."

   Richard caressed her absently. Although nothing ever could make him angry with her, he knew how much her ill-considered action must have enraged all Philippa's important relatives, who were mostly his enemies, and how often he had caught Anne worrying about it. But this suggestion of hers was unthinkable.

   "There is nothing more any of
us can do,"
York was saying. "And if the Queen sees Arundel privately there is
just
a chance."

   "Send my wife as suppliant to a soulless fiend like that? A man with a reputation for raping nuns—"

   "I know how you feel, Richard. But Standish and some of her ladies can attend her. And if she should be able to save the life of any one of those four you'd both be glad all your lives."

   Neither of them had ever seen the "middle" uncle behaving with such reasonable dignity, and because he sounded almost like Burley, Richard gave in. "I suppose you are right," he agreed reluctantly. "But will you arrange for some of your people to go with her? I don't want her—to encounter any unpleasantness—in the streets."

   "Willingly," promised York.

   To hide the hotness of his face, Richard bent over a chessboard

on which the pieces stood just as he and Anne had left them, when trying to pass away the dragging hours of suspense. Experimentally, he moved a red pawn so that the white king was in check from a bishop and a knight. "It has come to something—when I have to ask that," he said.

   Even Edmund Plantagenet, unimaginative as he was, regretted at that moment any part he had taken in his nephew's humiliation. "You are right," he said kindly. "And I am sure that Lancaster would agree."

   Richard looked up and smiled at him. "Won't you stay to supper?" he asked, with genuine invitation in his voice. He must be sadly bereft of real friends, he reflected, to be really wanting him. But when York refused, Richard didn't press him. His own quick initiative told him that it had cost the man a great deal to come, and that beneath his well-fed unctuousness he was fidgeting to get away before the convenient mist cleared and any of his friends should see him. "I should take Anne away to the West of England for a while until this blows over," he was advising, kissing her hand and fussing for his gloves. "After all, the next piece of luck may well be yours."

   "It would be refreshing if you could think of any that's likely to be!" smiled Richard, with an attempt at normal insouciance.

   York pursed his fat lips. "Lancaster might come home," he suggested. "John Holland says—"

   "John Holland! I thought he was supposed to have gone on a crusade?"

   "He's just back from Spain. Oh, it's all right, Richard. Even the opposition don't want him in the country. They've given him an appointment abroad—in Aquitaine, I believe."

   "In my own Duchy! Without my consent!"

   Having had a hand in the appointment, the Duke ignored the criticism. "It appears that Lancaster has failed to substantiate his claim to the throne of Castile," he said.

   "Why, then, all those men and all the money the Commons voted him were wasted!" exclaimed Anne, seething because they would grant Richard nothing.

   "But he has managed to marry one of those gawky daughters of

his to the Castilian heir," added York, pulling on his gloves at last.

"How like him!" laughed Richard.

   Anne turned to him eagerly. "Why don't you write to your uncle of Lancaster? Perhaps, if he came home now—"

   Richard's face brightened. "It's an idea. But he wouldn't be in time to prevent—"

   Anne caught at the departing Duke. "
You
don't believe Lancaster was treacherous, do you?" she demanded, with the disconcerting forthrightness of her sex. Caught off his guard like that, York forgot that a direct reply must of necessity incriminate either one brother or the other. "If he were, he wouldn't have taken all those men out of the country, would he?" he countered conclusively. "I should take the Queen's advice, Richard, if I were you. It might end this uncomfortable quarrelling and instability for us all." From the doorway, he added with gusty emotion, "It's a long time since I last saw John!"

   "And, quite understandably, the poor fellow's getting rather tired of having to look at Thomas," observed Richard, as soon as the door swung to behind him.

   He leaned against it and took Anne in his arms, kissing her closed eyes and her sweet, responsive mouth. "I hate your going," he said, crushing her little body possessively against his own.

   "I hate it terribly myself," she whispered. "But I will put on my most becoming dress—"

   "Not the pink one. That is only for me!"

   "Of course not, imbecile! But something a little bizarre that will give me confidence." Womanlike, she was already planning an alluring toilette; but she dared not tell him that she would even try to enslave the senses of a notorious libertine to save him the pain of losing Simon Burley.

   "I will give Standish special instructions to take care of you," said Richard. "And you will take Agnes?"

   Anne shook her head. "Agnes's eyes are red as winter berries, and she is afraid to leave the window overlooking the Byward gate in case Robert manages to send her some message."

   "You think he will try to reach her?" In spite of everything, a

note of relief lightened Richard's voice.