Within the Hollow Crown (43 page)

   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.

   "Oh, Richard, I didn't know you could sing like that when you are really serious!" whispered Isabel, as they came down the aisle after the blessing.

   "Didn't you?" he whispered back teasingly. "Then I must learn some wild Irish songs to frighten the life out of you with when I come home."

   All the distinguished company streamed after them, and out in the sunshine their brightly caparisoned horses were waiting. At the west door pages served them with comfits and wine.

   "What a funny meal!" laughed Isabel, trying to be gay as she was sure his first wife would have done.

   "A sort of stirrup cup! Or is it a loving cup?" said Richard, dropping a sugared grape into her wine for luck.

   He entrusted her solemnly to his uncle and made his formal farewell.
"Au revoir, ma petite reine,"
he said, embracing her fondly so that many of the women wept. But as he went quickly to mount his horse, a warm, playful breeze caught at his cloak, the scent of lilac assailed his nostrils and the familiar reach sparkled enticingly in the sunshine. It seemed so senseless to be going to war. Half-way down the steps he stopped and turned, and saw the look on Isabel's face. She was scarcely twelve, and because of all the staring people she was trying so bravely not to cry.

   He went back and lifted her in his arms, kissing her again and again. "Good-bye," he said, in plain homesick English, which was the only language to meet the elemental simplicity of his mood. "Good-bye, dear child, until we meet again."

Richard landed at Waterford on the first day of June and waited almost a week for Aumerle and his detachment to arrive. Fuming, he marched his own men to Kilkenny, only to wait another fortnight before they caught up with him. Time, for Richard, was the prime factor of the enterprise; for though his face was set towards Dublin, half his preoccupation was with England. And all the while Aumerle grumbled about adverse winds and bad roads and lost equipment. How much of Aumerle's mishaps and excuses were due to inexperience and how many were deliberate, it was difficult to assess.

   All through the wilds of Wicklow the English archers were harried by elusive hordes, who would swoop down suddenly from the hills to snipe, or lie in ambush behind boulders in some eerie glen. Their losses were heavy. Could they have stood on firm, familiar ground, the Irish—fine fighters as they were—wouldn't have stood a chance against their discipline and marksmanship. But Art McMurrough, who styled himself King of Leinster, was far too wily to come out into the open. Let the English pigs bog themselves again and again until their patience was exhausted, their fine clothes ruined and their baggage lost!

   Richard wanted to meet him personally. He had done so before, and knew just how to appeal to the man's rough generosity and how to play on his childlike vanity. But, thanks to Aumerle, he had already been three weeks delayed. He was obliged to leave York's son to negotiate with Art and to press on to Dublin. But he gained little by entering the capital. Owing to McMurrough's guile and the young Earl's ineptitude, unconditional peace was all the Irish would discuss, offering no redress for the rising and the slaughter of their Lord Lieutenant. In a fine fury Richard retraced his steps, searching fruitlessly for a chieftain with whom he could parley, and trying to bring the enemy to battle. Many of his best companies were cut off by bogs in the process, and in the end there seemed nothing for it but to get his depleted army back to Waterford.

   And there, awaiting him, was the news he had feared from England.

   "Henry has come from France," wrote York, shakily.

   "The Duke of Lancaster has landed at Ravenspur, in Yorkshire," reported the messenger, who had already been waiting some days.

   "The only Duke of Lancaster I know is dead," snarled Richard; and gave orders to his captains to have their ships ready to sail in two days.

   But the grey sea looked high as the mountains. His fleet stood a good chance of being scattered. York's messenger had been weeks coming. Henry might be anywhere by now.

   "Send Salisbury across first to rouse North Wales, while we wait for all the stragglers and then cross into South Wales," suggested Edward of Aumerle. "Then we can consolidate at Chester."

   By this time Richard trusted Aumerle no farther than he could see him. But there was enough sense in the advice to draw backing from Salisbury, whose loyalty was above suspicion. Against his own better judgment Richard waited a week for the remainder of his morassed army, and let Salisbury embark. He had done a thing foolish enough to make the Black Prince turn beneath his burnished tomb at Canterbury. He had divided his army.

   Aumerle had cozened him into making a false move at last. For two months Richard had been obliged to take his eyes off the game, and by the time he had brought the small remainder of his archers into Milford Haven the whole face of the checkerboard had been changed. His two knights, Bushey and Green, had been taken. Bolingbroke, by one of his brilliant flanking movements, was at Bristol. And the King in check indeed!

   Rumour was rife even in the little South Wales seaport of Milford. And rumour had it that Salisbury's army had already been dispersed—some said by force, and some by treachery. Richard didn't believe it; but it was being so carefully fostered that even his own Cheshiremen began furtively tearing the white hart from their sleeves and letting each other over the town wall by night.

   More reliable news had been gathered by the page left in charge of Mathe. It was Arundel's brother, recently promoted to the See of Canterbury, who had crossed the Channel the moment the King's back was turned and made it his business to tell Henry Bolingbroke about the seizure of his father's estates. And the Archbishop had gone armed with a long list of signatures of important people who promised to support him if he came back and claimed what was his own. Northumberland and his son, Percy, had been among them. And Bolingbroke had needed no second bidding.

   It had been easy for John of Gaunt's son, marching in a martyr's cause through Lancaster, to augment his little band of followers to the size of an army. But Thomas Arundel had been cleverer than that. Like his late brother, he was a master of propaganda. He had worked on the fears of a people ripe for panic. He announced that the King meant to impose unheard of taxes to pay for the Irish campaign, and that if they resisted he had arranged that his French father-in-law should send him aid. "I, your Archbishop, have just come back from France and it's the talk of Paris," he said. Even the Mayor of London was willing to believe that Richard would take away the City's charters and privileges, as he had done once before. And as Bolingbroke marched westwards, so volunteers poured out to meet him, in such numbers that he couldn't feed them all.

   Obviously it would be necessary to make a stand somewhere until such lying rumours could be disproved. But every plan or movement of Richard's seemed to reach Bolingbroke's ears, so that he was scarcely sorry when Aumerle openly deserted, taking a considerable part of their army with him. Richard sent a messenger to Salisbury altering their rendezvous from Chester to Conway, and set out immediately. In order to outwit the vigilance of enemy spies, he disguised himself as a travelling friar. Clothes, baggage and even his gold altar plate had to be abandoned. Only Mathe he hadn't the heart to leave, and a sort of rope sling was made for him between two horses.

   It was almost impossible to keep an army together over the rough coastal tracks. Hungry, unwashed and weary, Richard and his little band of faithful followers pushed on. Carmarthen, Harlech, Carnarvon, Beaumaris. In each castle the Welsh were loyal enough, but they were pitifully poor. Owen Glendower, their national hero, was a king's man. But they had no rich banquets or state beds to offer. There were nights when Richard was thankful to throw himself down on straw like his groom, and sleep as soundly from sheer exhaustion.

   But they reached Conway at last. Conway with her walled harbour. Conway with her beautiful white towers safely flanked by the sea.

   Instead of bristling with activity, the great castle seemed half asleep. No one came out to meet them. Watchmen called down a careless challenge, mistaking their king for some mendicant friar with a jaded, ragged band of pilgrims. Evidently his messenger had been murdered or waylaid. When Richard entered in under the hastily raised portcullis he noticed that the battlements were sparsely manned, and the stables in the outer bailey half empty. But Salisbury was there, a faithful if perplexed old friend. Watching him shuffle down the keep stairs, Richard realized that the best days of his soldiering were over, and a sharp reprimand died on his lips.