Within the Hollow Crown (9 page)

   Once there he lingered of his own free will—as no doubt she had intended. The riot of richly coloured tapestries without which she never moved and the lovely garments her women were unpacking served to divert his interest, and ever since he was small he had loved to watch them brush her hair.

   "Oh, Richard, I forgot to tell you. There was one man who didn't smell at all, although his hands were work grimed," she said. "A fine black-browed giant of a man who seemed to have made himself their leader. He had the most marvellous brown eyes—"

   Richard smiled at her contentedly. When she sat like that by candlelight with her burnished hair about her shoulders it didn't seem at all ridiculous, that she could still thrill to the sight of a handsome man. "And did he kiss you too?" he asked, with only a trace of his former resentment.

   Lizbeth de Wardeaux had been clever enough to find the French perfume among the mountain of his mother's baggage, and he stopped her to take a leisurely sniff at it as she crossed the room with the painted Venetian phial held carefully between her tapering hands.

   "I think it must have been he who crushed my poor headdress," admitted Joan, her voice not wholly disapproving. "But you needn't be so sanctimonious about it, Dickon, because I remember now he said you had called in at his forge on the Eltham road and taken notice of his daughter."

   The disdainful toss of Lizbeth's high-born head was wasted on Richard. Subtle French fragrance of mignonette was wiped out by a vivid recollection of the reek of smoking horseflesh. He was back in that beamed smithy, and he suddenly felt sick.

   "He told me you took her part against some brute of a tax collector who had insulted her," went on his mother's voice, half muffled by brushed-out strands of gold. "It wasn't very wise of you, but they all seemed tremendously set up about it."

   Richard replaced the stopper of the phial and handed it back abruptly. "And did he tell you that I had seen him split the man's skull?" he asked savagely.

   The little lady-in-waiting stifled a scream and Joan was all concern at once, her shallow habits of vanity drowned as usual in the flood of her warm affections. "Oh, Richard—you poor thing!" she exclaimed, waving brush and tiring women aside. "And here have I been vexing you with the petty experiences of my own journey!"

   Encouraged by the familiar sound of her sympathy, he put both hands to his eyes as if to shut out the distressing picture—the kind of dramatic gesture which had always proved effective with both mother and nurse, insuring sweet consolation. But almost immediately, clutching at that manlier part of him, he walked nonchalantly towards the door. "It wasn't a particularly pleasant sight," he admitted, aping de Vere's habit of understatement.

   Either way he was play-acting, and miserably conscious of the fact.

   His mother, who had given birth to him almost on a battlefield, guessed that he must suffer abnormally from such sights and longed to comfort him as she had been wont to do when he was younger. These new efforts at self-reliance and reserve seemed to drive a wedge between them and she resented them as the handiwork of her brothers-in-law—and even Burley—who wanted to harden him. But she had the sense to realize that the boy must grow up, and pressed him no further.

   "There is just one thing, Richard, before you go," she said hurriedly, seeing that his hand was on the latch.

   "Yes, madam?"

   He waited politely and she rose and came to him, more troubled still about her second son. "Could we not have John fetched from the Savoy?"

   Richard always found the younger of his two half-brothers rather exhausting. "Why?" he asked, without enthusiasm.

   "Because I'm worried about him, being in your uncle of Lancaster's household. As I came across Blackheath I heard men shouting 'Burn the Savoy!'"

   Richard had heard it too, together with a lot of other wild suggestions. "Don't worry, my dear," he said soothingly. "Walworth won't let them get into London. He'll raise the movable bit of the Bridge first."

   But Joan was still uneasy. "Richard, why do they keep singing that ridiculous song? Something about never wanting another King John. As if Lancaster were trying to make himself…"

   "Oh, just because he has built himself a fine palace on the waterfront and likes to order people about and keeps ten thousand men, I suppose. You don't believe there's any truth in it, do you?"

   "No. But
my
John's so hot-headed. He couldn't tamely accept their insolence. If he heard them, he wouldn't let people even say it. He'd rush out and start a fight or something…"

   "If he wants a fight why didn't he go with Uncle to Scotland?" asked Richard.

   But their mother scarcely heard him. "He sees no fear," she was murmuring complacently.

   Richard laughed without much enjoyment, quick to appreciate her unconscious comparison between John Holland and himself. It was so unfair, when she had just headed him off from rushing into danger on her behalf.

   "He's your favourite son, isn't he?" he said, more as if he were stating a well-known fact than asking a question.

   But one couldn't expect her to answer an impertinent remark like that, and when she looked at him in hurt reproof he felt a brute. "Of course I'll send for him," he promised, kissing her reassuringly. "Tonight, before the tide turns. But Thomas or the Lieutenant will have to sit up for him. I'm going to bed."

At the foot of the stairs leading to his bedchamber Richard found de Vere and Mowbray waiting for him. "I've come to say good night and ask you to excuse me, Richard," said Mowbray, stepping forward into the circle of light thrown by a torch stuck in an iron bracket on the wall.

   So many things had happened since they left Eltham that Richard had almost forgotten a messenger from Norfolk who had waited upon him. "Ah, yes, of course. Your people want you to go up to Framlingham until all this bother has blown over," he recalled. "I think you'd be wise to get away early, Tom."

   But Mowbray hung about scowling at such womanish caution, evidently hoping that Richard would disregard his relatives' wishes. "I'd much rather stay," he muttered. "It's horrid missing all the fun."

   "It may not be so funny as you think!" consoled de Vere, without moving from the shadows where he was standing. Through an arrow slit in the thickness of the stair turret he could see an angry red glow of which the others were unaware. Somewhere on the opposite bank up Lambeth way.

   Mowbray ignored him. He wasn't the only one who was sometimes annoyed by the confident way in which de Vere answered for the King. After all, the fellow wasn't even related to him except by some distant marriage. "Good-bye, Richard," he said with grave sincerity. "I would far rather stay with you—particularly if things
do
get worse."

   It was nice of him, Richard thought. He grasped his hand and resisted the usual temptation to rumple his hair. "I know," he answered, with mutual regret. "A pity we couldn't have had a few days together at Westminster so that I could have shown you the new pup. Mathe, I've called him. And I've a colt out of that dappled grey." He and this country cousin of his had a passion for dogs and horses and hawks in which the more sophisticated Robert did not share, and some of their happiest hours were spent pottering round the royal kennels and mews. "
We're
safe enough here, Tom, but see that your men are well armed," he warned with a sudden access of concern for him. "The Lieutenant of the Tower was telling me at supper that a fellow with the ridiculous name of Jack Straw is making trouble
north of London now, up on th
e Hampstead hills. Oh, and Tom—"

   "Yes?"

   "You'll be riding out of the City through Aldgate, won't you? I wish you'd tell Geoffrey Chaucer he's welcome to move into the Tower if things get ugly on that side. He lives over the gate, you know."

   "Yes, of course I will," agreed Mowbray, glad to have at least some small behest to do. "You mean that waggish-looking little man who controls the Customs down at the wool wharf?"

   "And writes such amazingly good verse—although you'd be no judge of that!" teased de Vere. "He's been a sort of household necessity with one member or another of your Plantagenet family for years."

   He and the King stood together watching Tom go—a pleasant, dependable-looking lad without any social graces, although he was descended on the distaff side from Edward the First. Richard had always felt an easy affection for him; but somehow tonight— when everyone seemed keyed up and different—he was conscious of parting with a doglike devotion which might be precious. Naturally de Vere's feelings were different. "The heir to the mighty Bigods goes home!" he remarked, as if his departure left the two of them free to take up their undivided companionship in peace.

   Richard noticed the faint sneer in his voice. "You don't really like him, do you, Robert?" he asked regretfully.

   Not to have noticed it before was one of those naïvetés which de Vere loved in Richard, but which at times he found exasperating. "Isn't the shoe rather on the other foot?" he laughed. And seeing that Richard, already part way up the stairs, looked round at him inquiringly, he shrugged with suitable diffidence. "I wish I had your modesty, Richard!" he said. "Can't you see the fellow's jealous of me?"

   He had stepped into the patch of wavering light and Richard wondered almost resentfully why a few people should be so unfairly favoured and self-possessed. "Oh," he said unresponsively, and lingered a little, vaguely comprehending the kind of hurt he must often have dealt his more defenceless cousin. But a page came along at that moment to light him to bed, and instead of pursuing the subject he called carelessly over his shoulder, "Come and talk while they undress me, Robert."

   De Vere followed him into his room, lounging over to the deepset window while Richard sat on the edge of the bed for Standish to unpeel his long silken hose. Although normally the exquisite Earl of Oxford would have left so menial a task to the servants, he was careful to draw one of the heavy tapestry window curtains so as to shut out a warmth from the west which might have passed for the afterglow of a June sunset. "Did you hear that some of the colleges up at Oxford are seething with Wycliffe's tenets and all in sympathy with this rebellion?" he asked tentatively.

   "And what Oxford thinks today London will think tomorrow?" mused Richard absently, staring into a small fire of scented cones.

   De Vere rose and began to prowl about the room, picking up a book here and a jewelled trifle there. "Richard, you do want me to stay with you, don't you?" He chose the moment when his friend's bright head was momentarily eclipsed by a freshly warmed nightshirt. "You don't feel that perhaps I ought to go back to Oxford? Naturally, my presence would stop any nonsense on my own estate."

   Richard, whitely arrayed, handed day shirt and belt to a kneeling page and began thoughtfully smoothing the soft doeskin of his discarded tunic. "I don't know. I'm not sure. Perhaps you
had better go, Robert. You could start out with Mowbray in th
e morning. Some of the eastern counties are affected and we don't want this thing to spread."

   An almost inaudible sigh of relief passed between de Vere's even teeth. "But you won't have anyone to talk to—anyone reasonably young, I mean," he began to protest, taking the furred bedrobe from Standish and putting it almost tenderly about the King's shoulders.

   "I shall have my cousin Henry. And if the worst comes to the worst he'll be able to advise me about withstanding a siege," said Richard lightly.

   "And what he doesn't know your bellicose brother Thomas probably does," laughed de Vere.

   But Richard hadn't yet quite outgrown the younger-brother attitude fostered by his mother. "Have you noticed, Robert, that he hasn't been looking too well lately?" he asked anxiously, standing up to belt the soft folds of fur about him. "Sort of thin and yellowish, like my father was…"

   "He's probably caught the same bug in Spain," suggested de Vere flippantly. He had nothing in common with Thomas Holland and rather resented the respect Richard showed him.

   Richard didn't answer. He was hurt that Robert should have taken his dismissal so much more readily than Tom.

   "You don't really mind my going?" asked Robert, quick to sense this.

   But Richard had moved to his
prie-dieu and looked someho
w sacred and aloof with the lighted tapers on either side him. They seemed to kindle a flame within him. "You know I mind horribly," he said, turning the vellum pages of his missal. "But there is England to be considered."

   He had looked like that at his coronation and Robert de Vere, who understood him even better than he loved him, knew that in such exalted moments he had gone away somewhere far beyond his influence.

When Richard rose next morning his two best friends had gone, but the Tower seemed more full of people than ever. John Holland was there, of course, protesting loudly that he had only been persuaded to leave the Savoy in order to allay the nervous apprehensions of his mother. And the Archbishop of Canterbury had just ridden in.

   In these changed circumstances Richard was genuinely pleased to see Sudbury, but surprised that he should have brought so many of his clerks and servants. "What brings your lordship here so early?" he asked, wondering how on earth his poor harassed steward was going to feed them all.

   "Haven't you heard, sir?" quavered Sir Robert Hales, hovering anxiously round his spiritual superior.