Within the Hollow Crown (8 page)

   As the royal party had trotted down to the river at Southwark, some rougher elements of townsmen had come streaming up from the beer gardens and brothels of Bankside and recognized them. They had shaken their fists at Bolingbroke—for no other reason apparently than that he was the haughty Duke of Lancaster's heir— and shouted for "King Richard and the trusty Commons!" But all the same, Richard had been glad to see the strong escort which Sir Robert Knollys, one of his father's trustiest comrades-in-arms, had brought out to meet them; and he was ready to wager that all his companions were as thankful as he to hear their horses' hoofbeats echoing once more beneath the battlemented towers of London Bridge.

   Once across on the north bank, life had seemed normal enough. Flemish ships were unloading as usual at the Steelyard wharf, prentices' voices shrilled their wares from the direction of Cheapside, and all along Thames Street merchants and customs men and porters jostled each other as they went about their business.

   But inside the Tower there was tension. The Lieutenant's lodgings seemed full of people. Thomas of Gloucester was there, and the Earls of Warwick and Salisbury and Sir Thomas Percy. Noticing John Legge, the hated author of the poll tax commission, talking anxiously to Hales, the Treasurer, Richard supposed that they must have come there for safety. But he had scarcely waited to speak to them. He had hurried straight to his private apartments, hoping to find his mother returned from Canterbury. All the way back from Eltham his anxiety for her had been mounting, for she, too, would have to pass across Blackheath. But no one had news of her and vivid pictures of violence immediately began to assail his imaginative mind. While Thomas Holland's boy held the basin for him to wash his hands, Richard had been annoyed to find them far from steady. But, noticing how scared the boy looked, he had managed to speak casually as he tossed back the fringed napkin. "Have them send someone to Westminster to make sure your grandmother, the Princess of Wales, hasn't gone there," he had ordered, suspecting that in concern for their own safety his older relatives had forgotten all about her.

   Throughout dinner people had cursed the peasantry. Characteristic remarks of each of them came back to Richard as he stood out on the Lantern Tower in the freshening breeze.

   "It's the fault of the small landowners—pandering to hired labourers and giving them any wages they ask," declared Warwick's resonant bass, seeing things only from the angle of his equals who still kept their own retainers.

   "I suppose they've got to get their corn cut somehow, poor devils!" observed de Vere's lighter tones with lazy tolerance.

   "A pretty pass the country has come to when our own villeins exploit us!" grumbled Gloucester, glaring at Richard as if the very fact of his being a minor made it his fault.

   And then Richard recalled his own voice wearily taking up the implied challenge. "Isn't it the inevitable result of dragging on the war and draining our manpower? Perhaps if we can keep at peace for a few years, now that Uncle John has concluded this treaty with Scotland—"

   And that, of course, had set Uncle Thomas off like one of his own incalculable cannon. "What's anybody got to gain from a patched-up peace?" he had snapped, in the grating voice which sounded as if he might explode at any moment. "Why, the peasants in this country are simply stuffed with loot from your father's conquests. That's just what's the matter with them. They've never been so well off and it's gone to their heads. Besides, if it comes to manpower," he had added, reaching rudely for the salt, "the Black Death killed far more of them than the wars."

   After that Richard had let the conversation flow over him unheeded. Useless to suggest to a pig-headed militarist that returning armies might have carried the contagion. Useless, come to that, to argue at all about the plague—a calamity so devastating that it swept through a country mowing down nearly half the population and creating an unheard of situation where there were not enough labourers and servants to go round. No doubt, as Warwick and Percy kept contending
ad nauseum, it was iniquitous of the survivors to seiz
e upon the aftermath of a common misfortune as an opportunity to rise up against their masters. But just conceivably, mightn't some of the iniquity be on the masters' side? Impossible to doubt, for instance, the sincerity of that wild-eyed priest who claimed that in the eyes of God all men were equal, or the provocation of the blacksmith. And there had been the girl, Rose, as clean and sweet as any fine heiress about the court, subjected to hunger and insult—and yet all the fine laws of chivalry in which he and his kind were so carefully brought up did absolutely nothing about distressed damsels of
that
sort.

   For the first time in his life Richard found himself looking tentatively over the top of the code that shielded him. And he found there was something there—something alive and logical. Food for thought at any rate. This absurd rising would have to be put down, of course. It was becoming a menace to all the decent comforts of life. But he couldn't feel that the poor ignorant wretches were his enemies. He was touched that they should have appealed to him for help; rather set up, too, to find that they believed he had that much power. And he wished he could think out something to do about it.

   That was why he had given the others the slip after supper and come up here, telling Standish to say that he was tired after his journey. Often of late when he wanted to sort out his mind he had used this subterfuge, without realizing what a handle it gave the Lancastrian clique to stress his supposed delicacy. Indeed, he scarcely believed that such a clique existed. There might be people who thought it would be better for the country—or for their own private ends—that his powerful, experienced Uncle John should reign. Yet the man who always
seemed
to be clutching at the power was his youngest uncle, Thomas of Gloucester.

   But up on the battlements in the limpid evening light, with the sky turning to a pageant of crimson and gold behind the towers of Westminster, all these problems seemed rather a nuisance. And very remote. Why, only yesterday he and Robert and the rest of them had been tilting at the quintain, and tournaments and river parties and all the pleasant things of summer had still seemed quite important. Richard wished it could always be summer. Instinct in him was the desire for warmth and colour. These long June days were the nearest semblance now to the fading memory of his beloved Bordeaux and could wrap him in the old contented indolence against which Burley was always urging him to struggle.

   A clatter of horses hurrying along Thames Street roused him from his southern habit of day-dreaming, and the sight of a gaily painted charette in the midst of them suddenly drove all other thoughts from his mind. His mother was coming home. The drawbridge was going down over the moat, the sentries at the Byward Tower were springing to attention. Peasants and problems forgotten, Richard Plantagenet dived down the dark spiral of the stairs, taking the worn steps at dangerous speed. By racing along a gallery he arrived in the courtyard just in time, no dignified king but an eager boy with shining eyes and wind-swept hair.

   He had outstripped his half-brother, who was coming more soberly from the hall. Grooms and pages he waved aside and, swinging himself onto the high steps of the charette long before the lumbering vehicle had come to a standstill, he thrust his head through the unglazed window. Chattering women filled the barrelroofed interior with the flutterings of an agitated dovecot. But his mother was there, illuminating the dim interior with the russet flame of her hair and the unfailing radiance of her smile.

   "I've been so worried about you, precious!" he cried, kissing the soft hands which were the only part of her he could reach.

   Joan of Kent made quite a to-do fussing herself and her bunchedup skirts and flowing sleeves through the narrow wooden doors, so that he had to stand aside and let her tall firstborn, Thomas, lift her down. Between tears and laughter, she embraced them both. But there was mud on the satin of her gown and her high, veiled headdress lay crushed and torn in the hands of her youngest lady, who skipped out after her.

   "It was those ruffians on Blackheath," she tried to explain, as Gloucester and Bolingbroke and her small grandson crowded round to welcome her.

   "What did they do to you?" asked Richard, tenderly wiping a smear from her cheek with his newfangled handkerchief.

   Although obviously still rather breathless from some recent ordeal she was quick in their defence. "Oh, my men couldn't help it, Thomas," she expostulated. "There were simply swarms of people and somehow or other they had collected a lot of pikes and things—"

   "They could easily have murdered us all!" dramatized the dark vivacious girl carrying the crushed headgear.

   Apparently Gloucester felt there were worse calamities. "Or held you as hostages," he scolded. "And then our hands would have been tied!"

   Holland met his glance with full appreciation of what seemed to both of them a crazily lost opportunity. "Thank God they hadn't that much sense!" he concurred piously.

   But Richard wasn't concerned with military tactics at the moment. "They didn't really
hurt
you, did they, madam?" he persisted, urging his mother to come in and rest.

   Her musical, full-throated laughter was reassuring. "No, no, of course not,
ma mie.
Why should they? They've nothing against
me
." As she walked buoyantly into the hall she was human enough to glance round with malicious enjoyment at Gloucester and the rest. All men whom the insurgents had reason to hate, presumably, since their consciences told them they would be safer in the Tower. "The people don't forget that I am the widow of their idol. Besides which, they've always liked me for my own sake." She preened herself provocatively before the empty hearth in her plumage of blue and green and gold, and laughed beneath her painted lashes in the way that always made Richard feel uncomfortable. "Why, I believe if I'd been a statesman I could have twiddled them round my little finger. Made them do anything…" She stood twiddling the rings on her fingers instead and most of the men watching her shuffled themselves into a sheepish, admiring semi-circle that mutely admitted her Circean powers.

   "Everything except go away, madam," her youngest lady presumed to remind her, with a sidelong smile at the attractive king. Lizbeth de Wardeaux was both amorous and pert, and Richard often wished that his mother would box her ears. But Joan was the soul of good nature and allowed her household far too much licence. And noticing the strained lines round her eyes, he was more concerned for her than with the wiles of a pretty Sussex heiress. So he called for food and wine and coaxed her a little apart from the barrage of questions her women were answering so excitedly.

   "You were really badly frightened, weren't you, my sweet? And only trying to put up a brave show so that those fools shouldn't panic?" he asserted intuitively, unfastening her cloak.

   Joan drooped a little in the comfortable chair Ralph Standish set for her, letting a shower of small possessions slide from her lap and enjoying a brief luxury of self-pity from which all assumption of bravado had vanished. Her other two sons were obtuse and violent, but somehow one could always tell Richard even the silliest things. "They crowded round so. Such a lot of strange, rough faces," she murmured, leaning back gratefully. "I didn't mind so much until they insisted upon climbing on the carriage steps and kissing me… Because I am a Kentish woman, they said…"

   Richard's face flamed as if someone had struck him. "Kissing you!
That filthy rabble…How dared they? Oh, how dared they?" h
e shouted furiously, unwittingly drawing attention to the indignity she had suffered.

   Joan drank a glass of spiced wine and felt better. "I think they only meant to be friendly," she said, and seeing how profoundly she had shocked the assembled company found herself struggling with an urge to hysterical laughter. She was able to view them objectively. They were all so solemnly blue-blooded, whereas she, although a Plantagenet's granddaughter, had seen other aspects of life and begotten her first batch of children in a commoner's bed.

   "Friendly—with
you, madam! One might as well speak of swin
e singing to the stars!" reproached Robert de Vere.

   Richard looked round appealingly at his uncle and the lords enjoying his hospitality. "Let's go out now," he urged. "Take every available man-at-arms and clear the heath."

   His arresting young voice rose so confidently above the jumble of horrified questions and exclamations that Joan, anxious for his safety, immediately began to make light of the affair—although actually she need not have bothered, for there was no eager response from the indignant nobles. "They didn't mean any harm, Richard," she hastened to assure him. "In fact, most of them were quite respectful. It was only that they smelled so vile."

   Seeing that he was not yet dissuaded, she sought to create a diversion. "I can still smell their grimy fingers," she complained, shaking out the folds of her dress with fastidious fingers. "Tell them to prepare me a bath, please, Ralph. And Lizbeth, run and get that French perfume the King bought me. Give me an arm, Robert de Vere, you born flatterer!"

   She rose from her chair with all the ruffle of an acknowledged beauty, accepting gloves and purse and herbal nosegay with a smile that made men feel privileged to pick them up. The very austerity of the old stone-walled room warmed to her presence as she paused to stroke the soft texture of milord of Oxford's ringed velvet sleeve. "You must tell me your tailor's name, Robert," she coaxed with laughing envy, "and I'll have him make me a dress in that same becoming shade to replace the one that smells of peasants." She played up to his compliments with affectionate badinage, then yawned and thought she would go to bed; so that Richard was forced to abandon his sensible project and—drawn by her smile— accompany her to her room.