A Burnable Book (34 page)

Joan dropped the king’s hand and looked around, matching Oxford’s flourishes and volume with her steadiness and grace. “The Duke of Lancaster has had many opportunities to take your life since your coronation, Your Highness. How often have you hunted together in Knaresburgh Forest, when a stray arrow might have taken you in the back? Instead he has protected you, Richard: from enemies, from slander, from treason. All of this while others conspire against you.”

“No, Your Highness!” Oxford protested. “I beg you, sire, don’t believe these words from your mother’s false mo—” He caught himself before voicing the irrevocable insult, then straightened his back. “The Countess of Kent has been fooled. This cloth is a false replica, Your Highness.”

“There are many false replicas in your kingdom,” said Joan to her son. “False loyalties, false friends.” She looked at Oxford. “And false lords.”

Oxford shook his head. “The original embroidery is emblazoned with the arms of Lancaster, I swear it.”

“You have seen it, Robert?” the king demanded.

“Yes, Your Highness, though before it went missing.”

“Then why didn’t you bring it to me earlier, along with this book, and tell me about this whole plot?” Richard sounded almost petulant; I winced for him.

Oxford hesitated. “It was thought better to wait, Your Highness—to gauge the seriousness of the conspiracy, and allow us to reveal the perpetrators. As I believe we now have.”

“Indeed,” said Joan of Kent, her meaning lost on no one.

The earl’s eyes brightened. “There is one final token mentioned in the prophecy, Your Highness. One final sign of your betrayer.”

“And what is that, Oxford?” said the king, starting to lose patience.

“The Prince of Plums,” he said. “The prophecy begins ‘At Prince of Plums’—a phrase everyone here will understand. Right now, Your Highness, we are in the middle of a game called Prince of Plums. Seventy-four of us, on our persons, carry a card from Lady Katherine Swynford’s deck, a card to be revealed at some point during the feast.”

A number of the guests started patting themselves. Oxford raised a hand. “Halt!” he shouted. “Do not touch your card, under pain of seizure.” The guards spun round, warning the assembly against disobeying Oxford’s orders. It was then that I realized what the earl had done. Somehow he had connived Swynford, Lancaster’s mistress, into leading the guests in the card game—never revealing that its purpose would be to condemn the father of her children. I could only imagine what Oxford might have promised Gaunt’s unknowing concubine in return. The Order of the Garter, perhaps?

“Each of the guests has been given one of the unique cards from Lady Katherine’s stack, to carry on his person until the feast is done. According to the prophecy, your would-be killer will be known by the ‘Half-ten of Hawks.’ Whoever bears the Five of Hawks, then, is the agent behind this murderous plot.”

King Richard raised his chin. “Hold your cards aloft, my good people,” he called to the crowd. “We shall test the truth of Oxford’s claim.” Numerous hands dug into pockets and folds, and soon dozens of cards were held overhead. Those without cards looked on in visible fear. Anything, it seemed, could happen now.

“Who holds the Five of Hawks?” Oxford demanded. He surveyed the elevated cards, walking about the crowd before coming to a position before Gaunt. The duke had not obeyed the king’s orders. Instead he was staring with contempt at his card, which he held at waist height. “Show us your card, Lancaster,” Oxford said to him.

Gaunt slowly turned his card toward the king and the earl. The Five of Hawks.

Oxford whirled toward the king. “Do you see, Your Highness? ‘By Half-ten of Hawks might shender be shown.’ Lancaster’s guilt is now beyond doubt.”

The king stared at the card in his uncle’s hand, then slowly raised his eyes to meet the duke’s.

“Now show us your card, Robert,” Gaunt said into the silence.

Robert de Vere scoffed.

“Yes, my lord Oxford,” said Joan of Kent softly, looking intently at the earl. “Show us your card.”

Vere shrugged and reached within his coat, pulling out a card without looking at it. The king stepped forward and took it from him.

King Richard looked down at the card. He audibly gasped. “The Five of Hawks! Identical to Lancaster’s card!”

As the gathering cooed astonishment I looked for Swynford, who had melted into the crowd behind the altar. Then I found her, standing between Ralph Strode and the Baron de la Pole. She had covered her mouth with a gloved hand, and I realized what she had done. Oxford must have requested the game of Prince of Plums from her well in advance of the feast, presenting it as an entertaining diversion and assuming she would go along with his plan to slip the Five of Hawks to her lover. But Swynford, as I knew from that appointment at La Neyte, possessed two identical decks, and an agility with the cards that would have made it an easy matter to place an extra Five of Hawks into the deck and slip it to Oxford. I was glad to see the familiar twinkle of amusement in her eye, and I wondered who had come up with the ingenious contrivance. Strode, I suspected, or perhaps the chancellor himself, each standing to one side of Lancaster’s mistress as the spectacle unfolded.

“Again—again, Your Highness,” Oxford stammered, “there has been a substitution of some kind, another attempt to deceive you. There is only one of each card in Lady Katherine’s deck. The Duke of Lancaster has drawn the Five of Hawks, as we have all seen. That two Fives of Hawks have appeared in this game is—”

“A mysterious circumstance indeed, Your Highness,” said Lancaster quietly. “Lady Katherine distributed the cards before your arrival. The bishop of Winchester himself took one of them. He is no friend of mine, as you well know. But he will attest that there were no substitutions or trickery of any sort.”

King Richard looked at Wykeham, who said simply, “His Lordship the Duke of Lancaster speaks the truth, Your Highness.”

The king stepped into the circle formed by his uncle, his mother, the earl, and the bishop. He looked small and wan. “So here we are, then,” he said, spreading a sad look around the assemblage. “The prophecy tells me that my uncle the Duke of Lancaster has betrayed me.” The king stared up at Gaunt. Lancaster’s chin lifted; he would not meet his nephew’s gaze. Richard then approached Oxford, who looked at him with a mix of deference and defiance. “And yet this cloth, revealed to me by my own mother, suggests that another faction wishes me dead.” He placed a hand on Oxford’s cheek. “That Robert de Vere—friend, companion, loyal knight, and earl—that it is you, Robert, who plots against me. Can it be true?”

“Of course not, Your Highness,” said Oxford hastily. “The very thought is—”

“And yet if I am to credit these cards”—Richard held up the two fives—“both of you want me gone, and soon.” The young king sighed, his shoulders sagging with the burden of indecision. “So then. Whom should I believe? What is the solution to this awful dilemma?”

No one spoke as Richard weighed the consequences of all we had seen that day. The king’s palm rested on the hilt of his sword, which, I feared, would be drawn at any moment and pointed at the man he decided was the guilty one. The moment stretched: the weightiest choice of King Richard’s reign, an irrevocable decision that would alter the future in unimaginable ways. Whatever the king decided, whichever way he went, there would be heavy conflict, possibly all-out civil war. Richard’s question hung in the air until a familiar voice sounded from the edge of the crowd.

“It is France, Your Highness.” One hundred heads swiveled toward the voice. It belonged to the Baron de la Pole, the lord chancellor.

“What’s that?” The king peered through the throng. “Who has spoken?”

At the far side of the pavilion the guests parted. The chancellor stepped into the tightened circle and took a knee before the king. Richard waved away his guard and bid the baron to stand. “Explain yourself, Lord Chancellor.”

De la Pole came to his full, commanding height, dwarfing the king in stature and maturity. The baron had stood by King Edward’s side for many years, a long history of dispassionate service to the realm evident in his bearing and the respect he was accorded by all. I remembered our last exchange, just outside St. Lawrence Jewry, and wondered what he knew. “Your Highness, we have learned that this book came into the realm through the agency of King Charles, aided by the Scots.”

Murmurs of concern. “You’re quite sure, Lord Chancellor?” asked the king.

“Indeed we are, Your Highness.” He held up a document. “We have intercepted an encrypted dispatch, bought off a messenger in the service of Burgundy. As you know, sire, the truce has recently expired, and the French are eager to renew hostilities. According to this dispatch, which we managed to decipher only yesterday, the admiral of France is to set sail from Sluys with a thousand lances, bound for Dunbar. The book and the cloth are part of a larger plot to destabilize the realm in advance of an invasion, as was the clumsy attack by the butchers of Southwark, cooked up by a Scottish priest in the pay of the French. Our archers were prepared for the attack, of course. Lord Oxford informed me of the prophecy nearly a week ago, and your royal life was never in jeopardy, though we had to let it go forward to test the reliability of our information. Now we know it is solid. This is good news, Your Highness.”

The king gaped. “So you’re saying all of this was the work of Charles? Who brought the book here, and who managed to deceive so many?”

“French spies, Your Highness, perhaps a whole nest of them.” I heard quite a few gasps as the assembly absorbed the news. The chancellor let them die down. “Circulating copies of these foul prophecies, passing around cloths, trying to turn our highest noblemen against one another.” Here he paused again to bow to the duke and the earl, then did the same to the countess. “If your lordships and your ladyship will pardon the expression, you have been played by the French. We all have, Your Highness. And they nearly succeeded in their aim.” The baron stared down Oxford, who looked about to protest but thought better of it.

When the noise had subsided, the king addressed his subjects in a voice cracking giddily with relief. “Thanks be to God we have learned the source of this plot, and that through your good offices, Lord Chancellor, we have aborted it. A prophecy of my death, written as a poem and seeming to point a finger at no less than John of Gaunt, the Duke of Lancaster.” He laid a hand on his uncle’s arm. “A beautiful cloth, embroidered with the heraldry of one of the realm’s greatest lords, Robert de Vere, the Earl of Oxford, tilting at his sovereign.” Another hand on Oxford’s shoulder. “And a game of cards incriminating both of you at once.” He hesitated for a moment, perhaps seeing a weakness in the chancellor’s story, then deciding, like the rest of the assembly, to gloss over it in the interests of peace. “Now it appears that we have been deceived, and by our common foe. Let us put it all behind us, and move forward in harmony, if we can.”

A wave of relief swept through the crowd.

“One last word, Your Highness,” said the chancellor, his voice stern but guarded.

“By all means, Baron,” said King Richard.

“I would appeal to the loyalty of this assembly in asking for discretion. It is imperative that no one speak of what has been heard and seen here today. Should word of this intercepted dispatch get to the French, they would know of our penetration of their networks, and our position would be greatly compromised.”

“Well spoken, Lord Chancellor,” said the king, nodding boyishly. “By my command no one present may record or speak of what has happened here today. Your silence will be the test of your loyalty, to me and to this realm.”

Watching the effect of all this I marveled at the chancellor’s disingenuous appeal for circumspection. The servants were already whispering, and soon every detail of the exchange would cover London as rumors of Dido swyving Aeneas blanketed Carthage. It was the
performance
of discretion that counted, the useful fiction that we were all somehow privy to the clandestine workings of the military. The aristocracy has always loved such insider talk of espionage and coming war, and Michael de la Pole played to this fancy like a master.

“Uncle,” said Richard to Gaunt, “take the arm of the Earl of Oxford.” With a reluctance lost on no one, though also with a visible relief, John of Gaunt and Robert de Vere joined arms and faced Richard. “And now,” the king continued, “if the lord bishop of Winchester will permit it, our mass shall continue.”

The disordered crowd became an orderly congregation, the women finding their places to the rear of the assemblage. When the mass was concluded I spent a while looking around the grounds for Chaucer, wanting to ask him the dozen questions rattling through my mind, though he was nowhere to be found. In the hall Wykeham sat alone on the dais, his guests of honor absent, a scowl and a napkined lip accompanying his every sip of wine. Though the feast was only beginning, it seemed that nearly everyone of importance had left the palace grounds: Lancaster, Swynford, Joan of Kent—

Though not Oxford. He had remained in the central courtyard and was leaning against one of the large posts holding up the pavilion, staring off into the distance with the copy of the
De Mortibus
still clutched in his hands. I approached him and waited until he turned to me.

“Give me the book, your lordship,” I murmured.

His lip curled. “Why would I possibly do such a thing, Gower?”

“I know everything there is to know,” I lied, though fairly confident in my speculations. “Hawkwood, Sir Stephen, the origin of the prophecies.”

He flinched. “Who would believe
you,
of all people?”

“Belief is beside the point, my lord,” I said tiredly. “Written proof? That is another matter.”

His eyes widened for a moment, then settled back into their familiar disdain. “Your tricks don’t intimidate me, Gower. You have nothing.”

I waited before I spoke, giving him a long moment to squirm. “Are you quite sure, my lord? Simon is a thorough young man. You don’t think he tracked Weldon’s comings and goings, or thought to leave behind a record of some kind, perhaps a document or two in Sir Stephen’s hand—or yours? I can show them to you, if you’d like.”