Within the Hollow Crown (30 page)

   "I am sure he will," Anne assured him. "Their love is very real, Richard."

   He released Anne and went back to finger the chessmen, absently trying to get the white king out of check. "I suppose that in his own way Robert
did
love people," he mused, as if speaking of someone who was already dead. "I remember once when we were boys practising for a tournament, I had just made a worse exhibition of myself than usual, and he let himself be unhorsed in the dust to keep me company. He had on a new pink velvet coat, I remember. So he must have cared for me quite a good deal."

   "
Please,
Richard, don't talk like that!" remonstrated Anne. "You must
know
that, whatever his faults, Robert loved you. That he was always completely loyal to you."

   He shrugged and swept the ivory pieces back into their box. "Oh, what does it matter, one way or the other?" he said.

   "It matters to me that Agnes should be happy again."

   Richard was all contrition at once. "Of course, my darling. What a selfish swine I am, puling about my own emotions! And you doing all this for Burley!" He took a thoughtful turn or two about the room, while she waited impatiently to be gone; and presently, having hit upon an idea, he shot a question at her. "Agnes and Lizbeth were friends, weren't they?"

   "Up to a point, I suppose." Anne's surprise gave place to a humorous dig. "You see, they were both desperately in love with other women's husbands."

   At any other time Richard would have smiled at her sophistry, but he was absorbed in a scheme which in his heart he knew to be really for Robert, more than for Agnes. "Then tell her—if her messenger should come—to say she will wait for him at Bodiam."

   "Bodiam? But that's a little inland place, isn't it?"

   "All the ports will be watched, my dear. But Edward Dalyngrigge has ships that steal down the Rother and might be after more French wine any dark night. So nobody is likely to try to stop him at Rye. And Lizbeth is still a bride, isn't she? And a very bewitching one, I should think, when she wants something done—say, in Calais…"

   Anne had almost forgotten the Earl of Arundel. "But would Lizbeth help them? She was always so jealous of Robert."

   "Which only goes to prove how much she would still do for me," grinned Richard, "even though she is furious with me about her wedding."

   Anne came closer, regarding him almost with awe. "Richard, you're a genius!" she breathed gratefully.

   He tilted her adorable chin and kissed her adieu. "I look like one, don't I, cornered in one of my own castles?" he mocked.

   Apparently his plan prospered, for Agnes had received her message and slipped away before the Queen's return. But Anne cried herself to sleep in his arms that night. Arundel had deliberately kept her waiting until some of York's men had protested, and when at last he had given her audience he had found her so delectable that he had been over-familiar. "You had better save your pretty prayers for that redeless husband of yours," he had said. The fate of Burley, Salisbury and Brembre was firmly sealed and out of his hands, he declared; but for the sake of her patient persistence he would spare her Chaucer. Secretly, he and Gloucester had been uneasy about having Chaucer executed in London because he was, in his quiet way, so popular with the people. Besides, a mere rhyming Customs official wasn't important enough to bother about either way, and being rather overawed by the Queen's imperial connections, Arundel decided that it might be as well to make some show of mercy. And when she went down on her knees to him, for very shame he had promised gruffly that Burley should be beheaded as befitted his rank.

   "Simon will bless you for that, Anne," Richard told her, holding her against his heart in the healing darkness. "A man could go very proudly to his death, I think, knowing that his Queen had cared so much."

   "If only I could have saved them all!" sobbed Anne.

   "Life must be very sweet to Geoffrey Chaucer, with his golden gift and his friendly nature," he reminded her. "Salisbury and Burley are both old men, and Brembre will go out with a jest on his lips. But probably some of Chaucer's best poems are yet to be written. And the world will have you, my love, to thank for them."

   It was good for Richard, having her to comfort. It gave him less time to think of his own grief, and made him, for the time being, lay aside his consuming fury against the men who had insulted his wife and killed his friends. But nothing that Gloucester or Arundel had ever done to
him
, or ever could, would call so loudly for revenge.

Richard began the day by singing in his bath. It was a long time since he had done that. Almost a year. There had been those awful weeks in the Tower when Mowbray and Bolingbroke had deserted him, and when he had had to endure the humiliation of being seen almost beaten to earth and helpless by the woman to whom he would have given the whole world. There had been the black day of his friends' execution. And then a sort of semi-exile in Bristol, with plenty of time for remembering the price they had paid for him and feeling ashamed of being alive.

   Parliament had soon relented, and on the backward swing of the pendulum several members had felt sneaking shame for their outburst of savagery. There had been no French invasion and the stocks of French wine had run out. With their brains cleared from the fumes of Chartreuse and subversive oratory, people regained some sense of balance. And the heads of three good men stuck on London Bridge sobered them still more. Men began to speak of it as the Merciless Parliament.

   Richard and Anne had come back to Sheen. But it had taken a lot of persuasion to make the King promise to re-enter London. When he appealed to the rich City Guilds to lend him a thousand pounds they had refused, and had torn to pieces an Italian merchant who, benefiting from his peace policy in Europe, had been willing to do so. Such senseless cruelty always enraged Richard. So he had promptly pawned his Aquitanian coronet and retaliated by taking

away their charters.

   On the proceeds of the coronet he had kept open house. All winter he had hunted hard, putting Barbary at the highest hedges, not seeming to care whether he broke his own neck or not. And at Christmas time he had plunged into an orgy of revelry, so that guests gorging themselves at his board reported that he cared for nothing but pleasure. But even in the midst of masks and mummeries, waves of bitterness and grief swept over him, and it seemed as if only Anne's comfort kept him sane.

   But now it was summer again. And he was young and resilient and ardently in love. And so he leaned luxuriously against the tall, pulpit-like back of his wooden tub and sang. Although it was scarcely six o'clock of an August morning, sunlight lay in golden shafts across the floor rushes, mingling pleasantly with the steam that enclouded his naked body and drew pungent sweetness from a huge bunch of herbs hung from a rafter above his head. Over by the door the servants were rolling out the empty water tubs, and nearer at hand Jacot himself was laying out his latest creations on a carved hutch at the bottom of the bed.

   Richard stepped from the foamy fragrance onto an Eastern rug a page had set for him, and allowed Standish to rub him down and his barber to shave him. It was fun putting on wellcut clothing when one had the figure. He hoped fervently that he would never grow fat. How devastating to grow a belly like Uncle Edmund's, or fleshy hands that would make an obscenity of the tenderest caress!

   "The striped
ray
is the
dernier cri from Paris, sir. So youthful
, so
légère!
They say King Charles of France had one made for Candlemas," chattered Jacot.

   "They say too that he has at last shaken off the outworn regency of his uncles," murmured Richard, through the trickle of rose water being sprayed on his freshly shaven cheeks. The multi-coloured gaudiness of the
ray was certainly tempting; just the thing for
a river party or a
bal masque
. But today he wanted to look his age, so he chose the fawn
lamé
with the gold-lined over-sleeves.

   "You've certainly surpassed yourself in the cut, Jacot!" he

commended, when they had buttoned him into it. Clasping the narrow gold belt, he pivoted round to survey straight shoulder and slender flank in the burnished Saracen shield which young Tom Holland held for him. Not a crease anywhere. The quiet, expensive material and up-standing collar gave him dignity; and the narrow line of white linen at neck and wrist added that touch of modishness which so became him.

   The little French tailor skipped round him, smoothing here and tweaking there, and giving vent to staccato superlatives.

   "Stop behaving like an ecstatic monkey, and go home and give my love to Mundina!" laughed Richard. "Tell her that Chaucer has written a marvellous allegorical fantasy about the Queen. It is called 'The Legend of Good Women', and he reads it to us all among the roses in the garden. In it he says God made her like a daisy, fair to see. And everybody is so enchanted with it that my wife is badgering me to have the whole scene painted—to remind us of happiness when we are old or sad, she says. So I specially want Mundina to be sitting among her women in the foreground."

   While Richard was still sipping his morning cup of hot spiced wine, Medford came to read him a list of the day's engagements in London. In spite of the royal dudgeon, they sounded pleasant enough, and Richard had promised himself an unscheduled and chancy adventure to which he looked forward with keen excitement. He gave orders for all the most important members of his household to accompany him. But first he must go and bid the Queen good morning.

   He found her still abed, and shooed the tiring women from her room.

   "Lazy wench!" he remarked pleasantly, looking down at the sleepy weight of curled lashes on her unpainted face.

   "Whose fault?" she countered, turning on her pillow in delicious drowsiness.

   He sat on the edge of the bed and pulled her up against his shoulder, so that her long dark hair made a curtain over his possessive hands. "Nice!" murmured Anne, nuzzling appreciatively at the smooth fawn cloth. "How do you manage to look so vigorous and

smell so nice at this hour in the morning?"

"By taking a herb bath at the crack of dawn," he told her.

   "You're like a child," she complained adoringly. "Waking instantly, clear-eyed, and sparkling irritatingly before anybody else can bear to be funny."

   "Well, we've quite a lot of things to do today."

   "What sort of things, Richard?"

   "Since you insist that I go to London, I am taking the opportunity of meeting the architect about the new roof I want to put into Westminster Hall. The proportions of the place are so perfect that it deserves something really beautiful, and Chaucer seems to think that we can take down those supporting Norman pillars and span the whole roof space with oak. He seems to know quite a lot about architecture as well as poetry, Anne."

   "You will have to make him Clerk of the Works," laughed Anne, who always felt specially responsible for his career now that she had been instrumental in saving his life. "What next?"

   "The College of Heraldry experts will be meeting me there with the designs they've been getting out for livery badges. All sorts of suggestions for people to choose from, and taken mostly from our coats-of-arms."

   Anne settled herself more snugly in his arms. "Why are you so anxious for everybody's followers, as well as ordinary household servants, to be labelled?" she asked.

   "Because it will make a lot of people come out into the open, and we shall know where we stand. And I rather think the Gloucester-Arundel faction are in for some surprises. Specially now that Lancaster is coming home. I want you to be there, Anne. It should be rather amusing. Some of the barons may sneer and say it's one of my fantastic ideas, but they'd hate to be left out."

   "I wonder what heraldic badges your uncle Thomas and Arundel will choose," laughed Anne.

   "Oh, a couple of belching dragons rampant, I should imagine."

   "And after that?"

   Richard got up and smoothed down his new tunic. "After

that," he told her with dignity, "I have some state business to attend to."

   "Oh!"

   The dignity crumbled very quickly. "But first there is this state entry," he complained. "Our stock seems to have gone up with the civic corporation. Probably it shook them, my pawning the Aquitanian regalia. Anyway, they're feeding us lavishly at the Guild Hall. Peacock and roast boar, I understand. And I suppose Richard Whittington or someone will sit in Brembre's place and expect me not to notice. And to have a good appetite."

   "My dear! But I suppose it is their way of trying to win your forgiveness."

   "I can't forgive them. But I can ride through the streets loathing them if it will please you."

   "Not to please me, Richard, but because we can't afford to quarrel with them. I am
sure
Simon would have thought it best." It was difficult giving advice in a strange country. Anne frowned in perplexity, sitting bolt upright braiding her hair into two glossy ropes. "What I can't understand is why the Londoners betrayed you, when you and Robert and Brembre were always planning things for their good."

   "Because, long before you came, Gloucester destroyed their trust in me. And trust doesn't grow a second time," Richard explained sadly. "But they loved me once, Ann. You should have heard the bells ringing after I'd saved their city from Wat Tyler's men!"