Within the Hollow Crown (32 page)

   "Just so," agreed Richard. "And therefore, like the meanest of my subjects, I am old enough to claim my inheritance and to take up the reins of government."

   The scarlet mass of Lords Appellants was taken aback. Men who had traded on his youth ever since the late king died, stirred angrily in their seats. Many of them began to protest. But they found they hadn't the backing they expected. Looking around them they perceived that the place was packed with Richard's followers, just as the Merciless Parliament had been packed with Gloucester's. And that many a waverer had come out into the open and was wearing a hastily improvised white hart on his sleeve. They perceived, too, that they had been cleverly rushed into this unexpected moment, ill prepared, at the end of a day's junketing, and that the King's dramatic sense had worsted them. Never had they intended to give him a chance to press his rights in full Council like this. And the very fact that he looked so coolly responsible with nothing frivolous about him, added to their discomfiture.

   "You know well that for the twelve years of my reign I and my realm have been ruled by others, and my people oppressed year by year with grievous taxes," he went on, flicking his enemies with a glance. "Henceforth, with God's help, I shall labour assiduously to bring my realm to greater peace and prosperity." No one could doubt his sincerity, and a deep rumble of applause began to gather beneath his words, lending them strength.

   He was succeeding. And the power of success swept him along. In freeing himself from all blame for the past, he laid it where it belonged. "Up to now I have been allowed to do nothing without my—protectors." For the first time he allowed himself that free joy of contemplating the starting eyes and dropped jaws of men who had murdered his friends and tormented his soul. "Now I will remove all of these men from my Council, summon to advise me whomsoever I will, and transact all my business myself," he said, with the drawn-out pleasure of uttering words he had been aching to say for years. "And as a first step I will trouble you, Richard Arundel, for the Chancellor's seal."

   He swung round with outstretched hand, and Arundel handed it over without a word. Having won, Richard was far too clever to prolong the proceedings, and turned on his heel. In actual fact, all that was boy and lover in him had suddenly taken impatient control, so that he could scarcely wait to show the symbolic thing to Anne.

   One or two of the older Councillors made muttered protests, and Edmund of York flurried after him. He was delighted that Gloucester had been put in his place, of course, and that Richard had had the spirit to bring off his coup d'etat without waiting for Lancaster to come home. But to his conventional mind, things should be done decently and in order. "Milord Arundel's successor—" he quavered anxiously.

   "I will let you know by noon tomorrow," promised Richard.

   "But consider, sir. For twenty-four hours there will be no Chancellor of England—"

   Richard turned and treated him to a radiant smile. "No, my dear uncle," he agreed, "but there will be a king!"

It's such fun, being married to Richard," confided Anne, with a low happy laugh.

John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster, looked down at her appraisingly. At the piquant, wimple-framed features, the sparkling eyes and the whole immaculate daintiness of her. Eight years ago, before he left for Spain, she had been a captivating little bride; but he had never supposed that she would mature into anything so poised and charming at thirty. When a woman was made glamorous by being so passionately loved it didn't really matter whether she were actually beautiful or not, he decided; and Lancaster was a judge of women. "It can't always have been much fun at first," he remarked, in that unhurried, cultured voice of his that was so like Richard's.

   "No," admitted Anne, seriousness passing like a summer cloud across her laughter. "But all that seems so long ago now, so that one can almost forget it."

   "I doubt if Richard can," said Lancaster.

   They were standing just inside the doors of Westminster Hall waiting for him to ride with them to watch two champions tilt. Because they were entertaining some distinguished visitors from Scotland, there had been lavish distractions all the week, culminating in a huge tournament at Smithfield; and Anne, who was a little exhausted, was not sorry for a few minutes' breathing space. It was quiet and cool in the spacious hall, and the crowning glory of Richard's hammerbeam roof was a dream come true, so that she knew what he meant when he spoke of the sense of light and space being so breathtaking that it always made him feel he was stepping into Heaven.

   While she and Lancaster waited they watched him talking to a group of gesticulating bishops on the dais at the other end of the hall. They could not hear what he was saying but there was a quiet air of authority about him; and if he had lost some of his boyishness he had certainly kept his figure. "In fact," thought Anne, "he looks taller and more slender now that he has taken to wearing those long, belted houppelardes so fashionable among the older men." Though whether or not she liked the small, pointed gold beard and moustache he had grown, she never could decide. It certainly suited him and made his kisses all the more exciting, but then she had fallen in love with a clean-shaven Richard and no later edition could remove that image from her heart. "He always seems so content these days," she said doubtfully, hoping he didn't often think of all those tragic griefs and frustrations that had darkened the beginning of their married life.

   "All the same, Richard has a long memory," argued his eldest uncle. "And I often feel he is like two separate people. The gay, charming one he shows to us, and some more sombre personality he keeps chained somewhere deep down below the surface."

   Lancaster was too much a man of the world ever to have believed in Richard's fundamental naïveté or to understand, as Burley had, what Gloucester's cruelties could do to it; but at least he had known her husband since he was a child. "You're not suggesting that he isn't normal, I hope?" Anne asked anxiously, her gaze still brooding over the man who was all the world to her.

   Lancaster moved a little nearer the door so that he could see their horses being walked up and down in the sunshine. "Delightfully normal, I should think—as long as life will let him be," he answered, a little absently. It was the first time he had brought Katherine Swinford with him to a public function, and now that he was a widower again he was hoping to legitimatize her children; so naturally his mind strayed occasionally to the gaily dressed group of courtiers waiting outside. But he was quick to smile down at Anne in apology. "That is why you are so good for him, my dear."

   Because Richard was gradually tightening the reins of government, there always seemed business to attend to before pleasure these days. But the moment he had dismissed his secretary and got rid of the importunate clerics, he came hurrying towards them, taking the shallow steps from the dais at a run and crossing the hall with those quick, light strides of his which made the dignified purple velvet houppelarde almost an anomaly. "My dear, I'm so sorry to keep you waiting! And you, Uncle," he apologized charmingly. "Those bishops will be the death of me!"

   Anne forgot that she had been feeling tired and laughed at the way he flicked a gaudy square of silk from the tightness of his buttoned sleeve and dabbed it melodramatically across his forehead. "What's the matter with them this time?" she asked, playing up to his infectious gaiety.

   "Oh, they seem to suspect us of being Lollards because I won't have Wycliffe's followers burned as heretics. Surely one can be an orthodox Christian without wanting to burn people alive! Just as one can want the peasants' children to have some sort of education without favouring another revolt. I'm sure some of the peasants are as intelligent as most of the bishops!"

   "And what were those laymen wanting?" asked Lancaster.

   "Oh, the usual thing. Permits to build new castles," said Richard wearily. "As if England weren't far too full of castles with dungeons where people can be quietly done away with! You know, Uncle, now Tom Mowbray's Governor of Calais, he tells me that that old pirate Dalyngrigge is snooping off the French coast again. It appears that instead of repairing the Wardeaux's castle at Bodiam, he's built himself a brand new one with Lizbeth's money. Further down the Rother. I shall have to get Chaucer to send someone down there from the Office of Works tomorrow."

   A horse whinnied outside and they could hear Mathe barking excitedly. "Ah, well, now we can go out and enjoy ourselves," said Richard, shaking off his cares of state. As usual, after they had been parted, he turned to Anne as if seeing her for the first time. Taking in every detail of her toilette and making quite an occasion of their reunion. "I love you best in that dull pink, but you look pale this morning, my sweet," he observed, brushing a minute blob of mascara from beneath her lashes with as much concern as if he were signing a death warrant.

   "Ill painted, you mean," grimaced Anne.

   Having settled her appearance to his satisfaction, he kissed the tip of her adorable nose and turned eagerly towards the open door. "They should be quite well matched, Lord Welles and this Scottish knight," he said to Lancaster.

   Anne slipped a hand through his arm. "Didn't they have enough tilting in all that heat at Smithfield yesterday?" she asked, a little pettishly.

   He stopped short immediately, not caring that he almost cannoned into his uncle, who was close behind. "You
are tired
! We'll have it put off until tomorrow," he declared.

   In spite of the crowds and the preparations, Anne knew that he was perfectly capable of doing so for her sake. "Oh, please, Richard! I'm perfectly all right. It's only that we
have had rather a hecti
c week, though I've loved every minute of it. But tell me, why do they have to tilt on London Bridge?"

   "Oh, for the novelty of the thing, I suppose." She had coaxed him through the doorway and, finding some of their Scottish guests within earshot, neither he nor Lancaster mentioned that the fantastic idea had originated because one or two cases of plague had been reported at Smithfield.

   "But surely it's too narrow?" said Anne.

   "The Queen has never forgotten the day when her ladies' equipage overturned on the Bridge," he explained gravely to some Scots who had been whiling away the time watching Tom Mowbray put Mathe through his tricks. Before mounting, Richard and Anne and Lancaster paused to watch too. "Like the rest of us, Mathe is glad to have you at court more often, Tom," said Richard. But after a moment or two he snapped his fingers and Mathe bounded across the courtyard to stand on his hind legs with a forepaw on either of his master's shoulders—a greeting he had learned in puppyhood when neither of them was full-grown, and which he vouchsafed to no one else.

   Mowbray had become an important personage. Besides being Governor of Calais, he had inherited the dukedom of Norfolk and all the rich Bigod estates; and he sought assiduously to regain the King's favour. Richard was invariably pleasant to him. Indeed, there were moments when their mutual love of animals made it difficult not to forgive him. But before Radcot Bridge Richard wouldn't have called off the hound like that, leaving Mowbray looking rather a fool in front of so many people.

   Everyone seemed in holiday mood and crowded round the King and Queen as they mounted. Richard was charming to Sir David Lindsay and Lord Welles, the protagonists, whose international challenge was to provide the culminating feature of the week, and he made a special point of speaking to Lancaster's mistress. He had disliked his Castilian aunt and was glad that Katherine Swinford .had some chance of becoming a duchess at last. "How's that famous brother-in-law of yours, Kate?" he asked genially.

   Lancaster appreciated the gesture. "Chaucer was set upon by footpads last night, you know," he explained to Anne. "Now that Richard has made him Clerk of the Works he takes the wages every week to the men working on the repairs at Windsor."

   "Oh, I hope he wasn't hurt?" The Queen was all concern at once.

   "More shaken in conscience than in body, I should imagine," answered Richard, as they started out along the Charing road. "He was in a grievous pother because he had lost all that money."

   "And I expect you made it up out of your privy purse," laughed Anne. She loved Richard for his reckless generosity, but she was well aware that an exasperated Parliament called it extravagance. A gaudy week like this, for instance, was sure to upset them, and they couldn't see how much cheaper it was than another Scottish war. She wondered if they knew that every time Richard fed three hundred guests at his table he fed three hundred beggars at his back door. And that he had never sent them away empty, even that bitter winter after the crops had been so bad. The people themselves must know it, she supposed, for they set up a tremendous cheer as soon as he appeared in Charing village. "I told you they would love you again," she couldn't help whispering, guiding her palfrey close against the stately Barbary.

   "It's probably you they're cheering. Or Lindsay, after the splendid tilting showed them at Smithfield yesterday," smiled Richard.

   But Anne could see that he was happy. "I'm quite sure all the women's cheers are blessings on you for saving their sons and husbands from war," she persisted, purposely raising her voice a little because Gloucester happened to be riding near her.

   Even Gloucester was in good mood this lovely blue and gold day. "Don't flatter him!" he expostulated, with a cumbersome attempt at facetiousness. "He always
did
know better than his uncles!"