Within the Hollow Crown (45 page)

   "True," agreed Richard, who had almost forgotten the lad's existence.

   "In view of this the Duke has left his army in Chester and come with half a dozen followers to the castle of Flint—halfway between his army and yours," announced the Archbishop.

   "The Duke?"

   "The Duke of Lancaster."

   "Ah, yes."

   "'Give me back my son and my lands,' he says, 'and I will disband my men and renew my allegiance!'" quoted the Archbishop.

   "It sounds so reasonable that I wonder he doesn't come and ask for them himself," remarked Richard. "If that is
really
all he wants—"

   Northumberland laughed unpleasantly. "Conway is very strong and the sea lies at your gates. With the Duke and his son both in your hands—"

   "Conway
is strong, and the Welsh loyal," broke in Salisbury, hi
s valiant old heart good for yet another losing fight. "We could hold out here, sir, until England has come to her senses."

   But in this strange new clarity Richard could see things from the viewpoint of the man he had been when Anne was taken from him. He recalled Chaucer's warning words. It was not so much England that had lost her senses, as he. And with that excellent memory of his he remembered a bargain he had once made with Burley—and with himself. Before Radcot Bridge. "Let me fight just this once for the power that is my own, to rule as I will—and I swear on all I hold sacred that never again will I risk plunging England into civil war." Well, he had had his way. And those splendid eight years of his which had put England on her feet again…

   "How do I know that Bolingbroke has come to Flint, in good faith with only half a dozen men?" he asked, wondering why he must do all the trusting.

   "We are prepared to swear it on the Host," offered Thomas Arundel.

   Richard led them to the chapel and solemnly, in the sight of all men, they laid their hands upon the Lord and took their oath. After that, no man could doubt their integrity.

   While they were served with food, Richard gladly exchanged his brown habit for the furbished-up suit of green and gold and blue, and had Tom Holland put a gold circlet round his head to hide the tonsure. He would have liked to wear his ermine cloak, but it had been abandoned at Milford.

   He left such soldiers as he had at Conway, and set out with only Northumberland, Arundel and his own personal followers. But half-way along the road, he was ambushed by Bolingbroke's men and led, a prisoner, into Flint castle.

   It was checkmate this time. Henry came to meet him in the courtyard. Cold with fury, Richard noticed that he was even wearing the ermine cloak, which had presumably been looted by Aumerle. "I came prepared to give you back your father's lands," he said. "Was such treachery necessary—or becoming—in John of Gaunt's son?"

   Bolingbroke muttered something about sending an escort to protect him.

   "About the same as you had at Radcot Bridge," reckoned Richard, glancing round at the closely ranged spears hemming him in. "Rather excessive, surely, to protect me from a few decent Welsh ploughmen and a flock or two of goats."

   His cool voice had still the power to lash. In spite of sartorial disadvantages, there was no mistaking which man was king. And Bolingbroke was painfully aware of it.

   "I want only what is my own," he reiterated. To brazen out his embarrassment he began snapping his fingers and making friendly overtures to an old hound ambling across the courtyard. The creature was so unkempt that he had no idea whom it belonged to.

   But Mathe heard the snapping fingers and must have caught the familiar scent of the cloak. Many a time had he nuzzled and dozed comfortably against it. He padded towards the enticement, passing his master by, and rearing his lean body with an effort laid his two forepaws on Henry Bolingbroke's shoulder.

   Henry saw the look on Richard's face. "I'm sorry. I didn't realize…" he muttered, pushing the bewildered hound aside.

   Richard recovered himself almost immediately. He would have died sooner than let his enemies look upon the vulnerability of his real soul. All his life he had been like that. "Don't worry, cousin," he said lightly. "The dog is so blind I ought to have had a kindly arrow put through him long ago. But, as you see, he still likes to be in the fashion. And he is very wise."

   "Wise?" Thomas Arundel had the effrontery to ask.

   Richard looked through him as if he were not standing there. "He heard someone once say to me, 'Only a king is good enough for Mathe,'" he explained, looking straight into Bolingbroke's hard, predatory eyes.

Thirty paces across from door to window, and thirty back again. Ten paces from door to empty hearth and then, if one took extra long steps, fifteen to the fat stone pillar in the middle of the room. After five months as a prisoner in Pontefract Castle Richard could gauge the distance with his eyes shut. He knew exactly where the iron brazier stood, and his narrow bed and the long refectory table where his meals were served.

   Once more round the circular walls and back to the window again. Partly to keep warm and partly to keep fit. Foolish, perhaps, to mind so much about keeping fit when he was probably put away here to die. But for some reason which he himself scarcely apprehended, it mattered supremely. Instinctively, although he tried not to think about it, he was trying to fend off the foul fate of the second Edward. That horror with which his tender adolescence had deliberately been violated. It was because he had always been fastidious that he was trying to keep up his strength. "If they mean to kill me, at least let me go out with some sort of dignity," was his nightly prayer. And so far, although he had often eyed the cesspool beside the stables with apprehension and noticed a stairway leading down to some dark dungeon beneath his room, apparently nobody had suggested incarcerating him in either. All Bolingbroke's minions had done was to try to starve him, slowly.

   Being no gross eater, he had reacted disappointingly to their endeavours. Never had he felt in more full possession of all his faculties. "And if I lose much more weight I shall be able to hide behind that pillar and hit Hodge over the head when he brings my miserable supper," he thought, limbering up his unused muscles.

   But one couldn't go on exercising one's body without growing still more hungry. And it didn't take nearly as long to chalk up the dragging days and months on the wall as to live them. October, November, December of 1399. And then January and February of

1400. Nearly half a year in all. Well, at least he had lived into the new fifteenth century. And now it was St. Valentine's Day. How he used to ransack the goldsmiths' and jewellers' wares to send Anne a surprise gift on Valentine's day! Would that he could send her something to-day!

   To one of Richard's temperament imprisonment was torture. And just as he was being starved of food, so here in the Round Tower he was being starved of beauty. At first Sir Thomas Swinford, the Constable, had let him use a room with a pleasant view in the Gascoigne tower and sit on a garden seat outside. Swinford had shown him what clemency he dared, remembering perhaps past kindnesses to his kinswoman, Katherine. Richard had been properly fed and warmed then. Thomas Holland had been with him, and humbler friends allowed to visit him. They used to come and tell him about Henry's grand coronation and find out for him what was happening to the little Queen.

   And then John Holland, of all people, must needs rush back to England, to tempt fortune in his half-brother's cause. John Holland, who always brought trouble, running away when he was needed and striking violently when he should stay his hand. He had struck ill-advisedly again before the time was ripe. Before Parliament had had time enough to find out that one King costs as much as another, or the people to tire of Bolingbroke's heavy hand. Poor misguided Salisbury had joined him, leading a Richardian revolt to disaster. Stringent orders had come immediately from Westminster. And since then Richard had been in the Round Tower, completely cut off and helpless.

   He minded even more for Isabel than for himself. Would Charles never heed his frantic messages and bestir himself on her behalf? For the hundredth time Richard reached up to test the iron bars of his window. But his captors were taking no chances; and outside he could see nothing but a square of snowbound sky and the top of a withering bay tree growing in the kitchen courtyard.

   There was nothing to do but sink back upon the hard window seat and try to warm one's fingers over the brazier. And go over and over the brief, irrevocable events which had transformed a despotic King of England into a subject's helpless prisoner. The blasphemous treachery of the Archbishop, the veiled bullying of Bolingbroke. The excitement at Lichfield when he had very nearly escaped, letting himself down from a window to join loyal supporters who had repeatedy harassed Bolingbroke's hurrying army. After that Henry had taken away his horse and given him the meanest mounts he could find. Lest he try to escape a second time, he said. But Richard knew it for the vindictiveness of a man who feels inferior. Bolingbroke was seizing a chance to lessen his cousin's personal appeal to the people. A touch of buffoonery so soon strangles pity. And no one could out-king him entering into London on a winded, spavined nag. Richard, who had never in his life bestridden any horseflesh that wasn't blood stock, had tried to look unmindful of the insult and to ease the poor, chafed brute along as best he could. But even now he could not bear to recall the cruel ignominy of that journey.

   He had been almost thankful when the Tower gates had closed behind him. At least they shut out ridicule, which was a new thing for him to bear—and the hardest of all for one as sensitive as he. But scarcely was he installed when a swarm of litigious Lancastrians had been sent to argue with him. They had argued endlessly and he had refused to answer, demanding only the right to meet Bolingbroke face to face. Bolingbroke had come at last, supported by Thomas Arundel and a very unwilling York. At sight of them, all Richard's Plantagenet rage had flared up. Scene followed scene. The kind of scene which left him devastated.

   They accused him of murdering his uncle and unjustly impeaching Richard Arundel. Of violating his coronation oath by failing to maintain the laws and to do justice in mercy and truth. Of choosing unwise Councillors. Of failing to keep the peace within his own realm. And when they couldn't think of any more charges, they repeated the same ones over and over again in different words. When Richard heard them talking about mercy and peace, and remembered how often he had been contemptuously dubbed a peacemonger, he had laughed hysterically in their faces. But there was little he could do. They had appointed fresh ministers and sheriffs in his name, issued false writs and used his seal to summon an illegal Parliament packed with Lancastrian supporters. And finally they had brought him to Westminster Hall and read out their monstrous indictment and demanded his deposition. The lovely building he had perfected, and which he and Anne had hoped to use as the setting for so much happy pageantry, had become the scene of his final humiliation. Even if he ever got out of Pontefract alive, he felt that he would never again be able to re-enter that much loved place. Just to stand within the doors would be to relive that soul-crushing ordeal when he had been forced to forswear his holy anointing and give back his inherited crown. He had given it back to God. Not even that packed, hostile assembly had been able to make him say that he gave it to Henry. And now, lying awake on his prison bed through the interminable nights, he could still hear Henry's harsh voice urging some fantastic claim to the succession, and utterly ignoring the Mortimers. Pretending to the world that a perjured king had handed it to him like so much conscience money, of his own free will. "The most self-righteous usurper the world has ever seen!" as the Frenchman Creton had reported to his own king in Paris.

   Maybe it would have been manlier to have killed himself. The thought had often tormented Richard. But never again would he do anything which might separate him eternally from Anne.

   The only thing he had brought himself to plead for had been that he might be allowed to see the little Queen. He scarcely knew how he could face her. But all that really mattered was that he could go and comfort her and try to bind up that broken, passionate young heart of hers. Making a show of magnanimity, Henry had promised that he might go to Leeds, in Kent, on his way north and bid her good-bye. But already ordinary citizens and yeomen were shocked by so ruthless a
coup d'etat
, and the very reversion of their sympathies deprived him of a privilege accorded to any common criminal. Friendly demonstrations in so many towns and villages had frightened the officer in charge of him into disguising him in foresters' clothing and hurrying past Leeds castle, where feeling ran so dangerously high.

   Richard got up and began to tramp the Round Tower room again. If only he could see Isabel and explain why he couldn't keep his promise about Windsor and why she must go back to France. That it wasn't because he didn't want her…

   The sound of Hodge's key turning in the lock cut short his reminiscences. The heavy oak door swung inwards. Any visitor was welcome, even if it were only the Constable. But today Thomas Swinford didn't even descend the three shallow steps into the room. "Your tailor has brought the suit he was making," he said, trying not to look at his prisoner's rather threadbare one. "He seems to think you must be cold."

   "I am very cold," agreed Richard. "But won't you come in and talk a minute? I haven't the plague."

   The Constable avoided the friendly overture with obvious embarrassment. "I don't think the King would mind his coming to try it on," he said in his vague way.