Within the Hollow Crown (3 page)

   Tom Mowbray, the Earl of Norfolk's heir, had just cantered back from a thrust barely good enough to save him from the backwards swing of the beam. "Your turn next, Robert!" he panted, as he passed de Vere.

   "Robert won't escape the sandbag! He never takes the trouble to practise," prophesied Lancaster's son, Harry Bolingbroke, who rose at dawn every day of his life to do military exercises, as behoved a nephew of the Black Prince.

   "I'll wager you a florin he does!" countered Richard Planagenet from his perch on top of a mounting block. But he spoke out of loyalty rather than conviction.

   "Make it two!" urged Bolingbroke, who was always comfortably sure of his own convictions—and usually so annoyingly right.

   But for once his judgment was out. Or was it that Robert de Vere had a genius for doing the unexpected, wondered Richard, noting the negligent way in which his friend couched his lance and how a kindly little gust of wind sprang up from the river and stirred the swinging target just at the right moment.

   Tom Mowbray hooted with good-natured laughter.

   "The wind blew the thing straight onto his lance!" said Henry disgustedly. But he called the page who was holding his purse and handed over the coins without resentment.

   "Milord of Oxford is always lucky!" grinned Bartholomew, the Master-at-Arms, chalking up a score equal to Mowbray's.

   "Does that go for love as well, Barty?" chaffed Richard. Being completely bilingual, he had been alternately singing snatches of a Provencal ballad and shouting ribald English comments at his fellow competitors; and everyone laughed because the handsome Earl of Oxford had ousted stocky young Tom from the fickle favours of one of the Princess of Wales' wards. But Robert, who was taller and older than the rest of them, rode back with a disarming grin, seemingly equally indifferent to his conquests in either field.

   Richard rolled over lazily onto his stomach. It was pleasant lounging there in the sunshine, watching his two cousins' exertions and his friend's indolent grace. If one half-closed one's eyes the bright morning light made all the people in the tilt yard look like little figures cut out of paper with their own violet shadows neatly folded over backwards for stands. There was old Bartholomew in his leather jerkin, Bolingbroke all done up in his first suit of armour, small groups of multi-coloured squires and—a little apart in gown of sombre velvet—the dear, familiar figure of Sir Simon Burley, who usually came to watch their sports. It was one of those golden moments when time stands still enough to paint itself upon a page of memory. Somehow Richard knew that in after years he would only have to turn back to this scene to recapture the quintessence of a youthful summer day, and was vaguely saddened because the bright sands of boyhood were slipping all too swiftly through the hourglass of his life.

   But all fanciful illusion was suddenly disturbed by a scattering of pages and servants, a spectacular splutter of sparks and the thud of Henry's heavy stallion charging purposefully across the yard. Success was a foregone conclusion; but the sun blazed so on his breast-plate that it was difficult to see.

   "A perfect thrust!" cried their delighted instructor, above a howl of applause.

   "Perhaps if we too had worn our new armour—" murmured de Vere a little maliciously, drawing rein beside the mounting block.

   "Old Barty didn't say we need. And it's only a quintain practice anyway," yawned Richard.

   Sir Simon Burley turned to frown at their deplorable flippancy. "That thrust was the effortless result of regular discipline," he was heard to observe. "None of your chancy successes achieved on the strength of spasmodic efforts just before tournament time!" He was addressing Sir Thomas Holland, Richard's grown-up half-brother who had strolled over from the palace. But the criticism was evidently for their benefit.

   Richard jumped down and greeted his half-brother affectionately. He enquired politely after Thomas's wife and gave him news of her ten-year-old son, whom he had recently taken into the royal household as a page. It made him feel pleasantly mature, being an uncle. But he wished Thomas hadn't chosen that moment to arrive. A couple of men-at-arms were steadying the quintain in readiness for a fresh essay and the redoubtable Master-in-Arms was coming in his direction. "Your turn now, sir," he invited, with that mixture of deference and command which the young King had to endure from all his instructors except Sir Simon.

   Richard mounted his white mare without more ado, gentling her to the starting point. He even made some gay quip to the young squire who handed him his lance. But his grip on the thing was a thought too tense, his brows knitted. He wished now that he hadn't waived his right to ride first. How could anyone be expected to tilt immediately after Bolingbroke? To compete with his expensive armour and his solemn practising and his one-track mind? The morning had been so enjoyable until now, he thought, screwing up his eyes almost angrily to sight the target. In a moment he would be charging across the enclosure, filled with exhilaration. But first there was always the split second of shivering fear. Fear of what, he wondered for the hundredth time. Fear of being afraid—of making a fool of himself? Did other lads experience it? Or was it because there was always that extra little hush before
he sped a hawk o
r pulled a bow? Just because he happened to be a king…And because he was always aware of Thomas or someone watching to see if he were shaping like his father.

   Thomas Holland thought the world of his illustrious stepfather and had been knighted by him on the field in Spain. How paltry all this childish pother about a contest with light-weight lances must seem to him! The bare thought of it made Richard spur Blanchette into a nervous start.

   But he was off and the breeze was in his hair. That cold, silvery feeling like plunging into the river for a swim had braced him. His slim, lithe body felt supple in the saddle. Life suddenly was a joy, an adventure. He and Blanchette were as one and his blood warmed to a lovely confidence. Onlookers, repressions, criticism—all were forgotten in the thrill of thundering across the Eltham yard. Only the quintain swam before his vision—a worn wooden post and crossbar transformed by imagination into the splendid figure of some doughty opponent. At the right moment he raised himself in the stirrups. With perfect timing arm and lance swept back ready for his own graceful, unorthodox thrust; so that Thomas and Burley and the grizzled Master-at-Arms almost fancied they saw the Black Prince ride again. Then all in the last few yards Richard had to remember Bolingbroke's correct and carefully perfected thrust— and Burley's approbation. He, too, wanted the old man's approbation. The quintain was flying towards him. Richard's quick brain flew faster. "If I draw my elbow in now—just a fraction, the way Uncle Thomas is always nagging about—I've still time…"

   According to all military ethics the effort should have been successful. He put all he had into it so that the thrust shook his slender frame from toe to shoulder. But the lance caught only the edge of the target and glanced off, almost unseating him. And as he ducked instinctively the heavy bag of sand at the opposite end of the bar swung round and hit him soundly on the back. The ignominious fate ingeniously designed for all who muffed their stroke.

   Even when he had pulled his mare, sweating and slithering, to a standstill the blow still jarred. To tough, stocky Mowbray or steelplated Bolingbroke it would have meant little. Robert was clever at concealing all he felt. Richard hated himself for being sensitive and unaccustomed to rough handling. He stopped to pat Blanchette because he was blinded by tears. Tears of rage and shame. His companions' laughter reached him from a long way off. "How
dare
they laugh at me! I am their King," he caught himself muttering childishly; but strove to chase the ignoble thought away. Of course, it was the same good-natured fun he had been poking at them— all part of the precious good comradeship which had made him purposely forgo his prerogative to ride first. Only—only—there was something: in him—some part of him—that no man must laugh at. And it was so difficult to know which part of him minded so much that humiliating, body-shaking thwack—the cosseted mother's darling who would probably bring up his breakfast because of it—or that part of him which he inherited from his father's father, right back into the austere past, and which he had to guard from indignity.

   He wheeled his mare and looked with envy at the others, untrammelled by such dual personalities, and rode slowly back to them. His back was a little more rigid, his chin held a little higher. Only Robert and Sir Simon would know by the wet brightness of his eyes how awful he felt.

   "Better luck next time, Dickon!" called Thomas, trying to swallow the slur on the family prowess.

   "I'd better have stayed at Canterbury—making an exhibition of myself like this…" muttered his shamed relative.

   Thomas was fond of him and told him not to be a young fool. "You're not up to their weight," he pointed out with rough kindliness. And Burley came and stroked Blanchette's sleek neck and smiled up at him. "Plenty of other people make exhibitions of themselves, Richard, and haven't the wit to know it," he said. He was thinking particularly of Gloucester and his friend the Earl of Arundel when they lost their tempers in Council but, attracted by a sudden burst of merriment, his keen grey eyes passed from his pupil's flushed face to the spectacle of an unseated horseman in modish pink picking himself up from the dust, and he was glad to accept the opportunity of pointing his words more lightly. "Look at young de Vere there! A worse miss than yours—and he's laughing all over his impudent face!"

   But no laughter lightened Richard's. "Any one can afford to," he answered bleakly, "who does it purposely to keep a friend in countenance."

   The sun climbed higher and the practice went on. But the roses had begun to languish and the early morning enchantment to fade. It was often so when one grew tired. Bolingbroke's swagger became more insufferable and Bartholomew's voice more raucous. Richard felt hot and sticky and wanted to be sick. Although he never stopped the sandbag again he achieved no spectacular success, "I could have killed you for doing that just now!" he broke out irritably, when at last he and Robert found themselves alone again.

   "Doing what?" asked de Vere guilelessly, reigning in in the shade of the wall. It wasn't always easy being friends with a fellow who was as clever as he was sensitive.

   Richard had had enough. He dismounted wearily and sat down on a bench, pulling off his lance hand gauntlet. "Oh, I admit you're a good actor. But you can't fool me—or Burley. Muffing your thrust just because I'm so in-c-competent!"

   "You're not incompetent." Robert handed over his horse to be rubbed down with Blanchette and came and stood argumentatively before him. "Look here, Richard, if you'd only use that devastating perception of yours where it's needed you could figure it out for yourself. Don't you see you're up against some of the best trained athletes of your age? I wager you in a few years' time, Harry and Tom will be two of the most famous champions in Europe. I'm just erratic, of course. Brilliant at times—hopeless at others. But you—in any other company at all—would be steadily well above average."

   "Oh, I've had the best instructors, if that's what you mean!" agreed Richard bitterly.

   "Steadily and deservedly above average," repeated de Vere, ignoring the interruption. "And that in spite of not having a powerful physique."

   Richard swung the gauntlet moodily between his knees. "It's not only physique. I let outside things affect me."

   De Vere sniffed derisively. "Would you like to be smug and stolid like your cousins?"

   Emerging from his glumness, Richard glanced across at them and smiled.

   "Very well, then," said de Vere. "Let's thank God we are not as other men and go on being temperamental!"

   "It's all very well for you—you can hide it."

   "Everything's easier for me—or for any of us, come to that."

   It was just such flashes of intuition that made Robert so precious; and Richard had wanted that particular sympathy so much that it almost unmanned him. "People don't realize—how awful it is sometimes—being me," he stammered incoherently.

   "They
must
be fools!" said de Vere quietly.

   Richard picked up his discarded lance and began stabbing savagely at a little tuft of toadflax that reared its yellow glory bravely from the beaten earth. "And then there's my name—the same as that first Richard Plantagenet's. The very sound of it makes men expect miracles."

   De Vere flicked distastefully at the dust still clinging to his pink tunic. "I don't see that his military prowess did England much good," he observed.

   "No," agreed Richard, wondering if military prowess ever did—except that the lack of it left one open to attack and only a clod wouldn't want to fight efficiently in defence of his own land. "I often wish my brother Edward had lived. I scarcely remember him. But being three years older than I he always seemed so much stronger and more—more like they want me to be."

   De Vere stopped a passing page and told him to bring some wine. He always knew by the fading colour in his friend's cheeks when it was needed. "But Richard, you know most of the time you enjoy being King—" he objected.

   "Yes, in a way I do—in spite of
ces maudits oncles."
Richard laughed ruefully and made room for his companion to sit and drink beside him. "Perhaps it's the only way I can get even with selfsatisfied fellows like Harry Bolingbroke."

   The young Earl of Oxford tossed off his wine and stretched his elegant long legs before him. "But that isn't the only reason," he said, regarding his well cut hose with satisfaction.