"Richard! They wouldn't dare—"
But Richard was staring past his friend's protestations at the stately outline of Westminster Hall, seeing only an intangible world of intrigue where there was no pity at all. "This calumny is but the first step to what they want to do. I see it now. I'm not unprepossessing enough—I haven't done anything unconstitutional enough—With a popular bride beside me I'm not hated enough…So they thought of this—and cast you for the part of Piers Gaveston…"
De Vere was staggered. Realizing that he could touch only the fringe of that troubled, inner world his most intimate friend must live in, all worldly wisdom was momentarily knocked out of him. "And I've treated you as if—as if I knew so much more than you," he said awkwardly, coming to lay a hand on Richard's shoulder. Anything, he thought, to pull him out of that wrapped, bleak mood.
Richard laughed harshly, but he withdrew his inwardly focused gaze and smiled at him. "I told you long ago that it was a fool's game, giving me your friendship," he reminded him. "Have you forgotten Mundy's queer expression? How she always spoke of me as being 'ill beset?'"
Robert walked soberly to the seat to retrieve his lute. Something in the cheerful look of it, with its streamers of coloured ribbons and its companionable gaiety, drove home to his mind the incredible role Richard had thrust upon him. Banishment, that is what it would be. Glorified banishment, to kill a rumour. Because of some rather far-fetched suspicion that his crown and life might be in danger. Plots and suspicions lurked everywhere with so young a king. But why should his own pleasant way of living be sacrificed, while Richard stayed here with all the delights of love and culture about him? Chivalry demanded that one serve the King. Give one's life for him, if need be. . And this would be only living it for a time in intolerable circumstances. But Robert de Vere wasn't quite big enough. He swung round to clutch at his departing companion's trailing over-sleeve. "I couldn't carry Agnes off to Ireland. It would start a Bohemian war or something. For God's sake, Richard, need this spoil our lives?"
But he had come up against that streak of firmness, or obstinacy. Richard looked at him for a moment in genuine surprise. "Your private life is your own, for men to say of it what you let them," he answered, turning on his heel towards the palace. "But mine is not. It belongs to England. And what men say of me will be remembered."
Chapter Eighteen
Dusk was wrapping itself round the Queen's favourite palace at Sheen. It blurred solid towers to a grey, ethereal outline and began to extinguish the bright hues of stocks and larkspur in the gardens. The withdrawn river, shrunk to a flat sluggish ribbon between the wide mud flats of low tide, flowed silently in its narrow bed. Stiff reeds, fringing the ooze, had ceased their brittle lisping, and along the banks below the terraced garden the dripping fingers of sad willows shrouded the embrace of summer lovers.
All Nature's perpetual whispering seemed to have transferred itself into the palace, where officials held anxious consultations and bewildered servants huddled here and there awaiting orders. Something had happened which was completely beyond the range of their accustomed duty. For a whole day the King had been in residence. Yet no meats had been borne into the great hall and no minstrels made music in the gallery. No one had called for hawks to be unhooded or hounds unleashed. No torches flamed through the state apartments. Only a couple of candles burned in the window of the King's bedroom, palely visible from the barge-walk below.
Yet men-at-arms in the guardroom swore to having seen him ride in with the dawn, a startled groom had taken his horse and the Constable had been summoned frantically from his bed.
The strangest thing of all was that the King had come alone. They were so accustomed to seeing him surrounded by sportive nobles and laughing ladies. But there was not so much as a squire in attendance, nor even the great grey wolfhound that was his devoted shadow.
The King had not even eaten.
He was standing now between the candles, staring out at the depressing mud. He himself was stained with mud. Stale, hard mud that had splashed up from dirty lanes to stick upon cheek and hose and tunic. Just as that uglier, more tenacious mud which had been thrown at him might stick upon his reputation.
He turned a page or two of a psalter on the book desk beside him, trying to take in the soothing sense of words penned in some peaceful monastery. But his mind was too busy piecing together the events of the last twenty-four hours. He glanced round the room in search of some starting point. The great state bed behind him was still tumbled where he had thrown himself across it in the early hours. He must have bolted the servants out, he supposed, and slept. Slept until late afternoon. But then, he had been riding all night. He couldn't remember where except that he must have pounded past the gibbet on Hounslow Heath, lost himself in the darkness of woods and followed the familiar track through the deer park. Anywhere, to get away from Westminster and to find himself eventually in the healing quiet of Sheen. He had had to exhaust himself physically before he could burn out the fires of hatred that possessed him.
He remembered leaving Westminster. He had given de Vere and the rest of them the slip. Someone had brought his horse. His new roan, Barbary, who had carried him so tirelessly in Scotland. People had looked at him queerly as he mounted. And then Ralph Standish had brought his cloak and been importunate about coming with him. And in his irritation he had struck at Ralph. At Ralph, who was one of the best swordsmen in the country, and who couldn't hit back!
Richard hated himself very thoroughly. His sweaty, unwashed body and his rage-dishevelled soul. A wave of affection for his squire swept over him, engulfing him until it grew big enough to include all his household. At least his clerks and servants loved him. Only last week, passing through the kitchen courtyard, he had seen a scullion stoop furtively to kiss his shadow as it fell across the flagstones. Probably it was the aftermath of some forgotten kindness. But the boy had looked such a clod in contrast to the unconscious beauty of the gesture that all the facile sympathy in Richard had stung momentary tears to his eyes. And now the devotion of even the meanest scullion looked precious against the treasonable cruelty of greater men. All that was quick and generous in Richard wanted to champion them, to reward them with something better than blows. And, as if in judgment on him, before the night was out he had needed that proffered cloak. It had come on to rain, he remembered, passing exploring hands over the creases in his sodden summer tunic.
Sudden anxiety seized him for Barbary. He had pushed the poor brute hard. He recalled the feel of her steaming flanks as he had slid stiffly from the saddle. He crossed the room to pull back the bolt, and a couple of wide-eyed servants almost tumbled into the room. They expected the King to call for comforts for himself. But all his concern was for the roan. Had she been properly rubbed down? Where was she bedded? Had the head groom remembered to give her a hot mash?
Quick on their heels came the perplexed Constable. He was horrified at the mudstains. It was unthinkable that there should be no gentlemen-of-the-bedchamber. He would have a bath prepared with scented herbs. The cooks were preparing a meal and the tables laid in the hall. The King's grace must be famished. He had had nothing—nothing at all when he arrived—except some wine to quench his thirst.
That had been just the trouble, thought Richard, suddenly remembering a good deal more about his thirst and his arrival. Too much Bordeaux on an empty stomach. Robert's wager and Gloucester's taunts all mixed up in his mind, and an overpowering desire to forget everything. "I gave you a message last night—or was it this morning—for my ward the Lady Lizbeth de Wardeaux," he recalled tentatively.
The man bowed in confirmation.
"Telling her''—Richard passed a hand through his matted hair, trying to remember exactly what he had told her—"telling her that I lie at Sheen and wish to arrange about her marriage."
"Yes, sir."
Well, that should certainly be good enough for anyone as amorous and as enterprising as Lizbeth. Richard made no doubt she would come before nigh
tfall. He even smiled a little, picturing her eagerness. "I hope you entrusted the message to someone— circumspect?" he said.
"I sent my own son, sir, thinking perhaps—"
Not being a practised philanderer Richard looked up sharply to see what the Constable was thinking. But the old man had been in the Plantagenets' service for a long time and took it for granted that Kings could send for any ladies they fancied. All that appeared to worry him was lack of sleep.
Richard's preoccupation broke into an indulgent smile, remembering that the man had been badly wounded at Crécy. "Go to bed, Gervase," he ordered, with his own happy blend of authority and badinage. "I shan't want you any more to-night. How should I, when I'm expecting a lady? And tell the cooks they can go to bed too and I'll taste their patisserie tomorrow. I'll have a chicken or something sent up here—and a flagon of that twelve sixty-eight vintage you've got hidden away in the cellars. I don't want any fuss. Only for God's sake have them bring me a bath and a clean suit of your son's."
But Richard got neither suit nor bath. Before the servants could bring either there was a stir outside the door. It appeared that the lady had already come. The departing Constable spent a long time bowing and scraping to her in the doorway, but, rather surprisingly, made no attempt to detain her. Richard had certainly intimated that she might be admitted without any fuss, but to walk into his bedroom unannounced…Even for Lizbeth this was a piece of unwarrantable impudence. Antagonism rose in him. Doorway and arras were in shadow so that all he could make out was a girl's slim hooded figure. She had him at a disadvantage with his unbuttoned tunic and dishevelled appearance illuminated by the two tall candles. And showing unusual diffidence, she must needs linger just inside the room.
"Come in, if you're coming!" he called, standing very still and erect as he always did when he felt his dignity was being infringed.
The girl obeyed him immediately and he let out a startled, hastily stifled oath.
It was not Lizbeth, but Anne.
And even in his amazement and through swift dissembling thoughts he was conscious of a great sense of relief. He knew that he had only wanted Lizbeth as a kind of antidote.
For a crazy moment he supposed that Anne might somehow have heard about his message and come to upbraid him. But her look of strained anxiety changed to relief at sight of him. "We have all been so worried about you," she explained. "When you didn't come to supper—and then when night fell. I had the gardens searched because that de Wardeaux girl said she had last seen you there. I even began to think perhaps there really was some plot of Lancaster's—or that John Holland had come back for revenge—"
Richard hadn't thought of that—nor realized what a constant burden of anxiety a royal husband could be to a girl. He hurried to take her cloak and make her welcome. "I'm so sorry. I ought to have let you know," he said. But in the light of all that had happened his words sounded formal and inadequate. Almost as if he were apologizing to his Aunt Constanza or the Duchess of Oxford for being late for some trivial party.
But he couldn't say more. And anyhow, the servants were back in the room, bringing more lights and laying a meal. "Haven't you eaten yet?" Anne asked. She stood sipping some wine from the glass he had handed her, her eyes ranging over the informal assortment of food. Even before she noticed, Richard saw himself betrayed by the stolid laying of two covers. Such a contretemps would never happen to Robert, he supposed, suppressing a grin. But one could scarcely expect a couple of bewildered chamber grooms, acting on hurried instructions, to have the wit to cope with so unexpected a situation. Anne set down his priceless Venetian goblet hurriedly, realizing that it had not originally been intended for her. "Oh, I see," she said bleakly.
Clearly, Anne was seeing several things. Her gaze turned from the table to her husband. Divorced from all elegance and ceremony, there was a sort of amused virility about him. She saw that for all his gentle courtesy, he was quite as capable of having love affairs as Robert, or any other personable young man—that for all she knew he might have had several. And that because he was a King he could do what he liked, and neither she nor anybody else would dare to reproach him. She saw, in fact, that if she wanted to keep him she must fight for him. All these months they two had lived together on the shining surface of things—so charmingly, so conventionally—that it was a nasty jolt. "You must be badly disappointed," she stammered. "But I will go soon."
Richard didn't answer. If Edward the Confessor were his patron saint, as people said, he must have leaned from Heaven to lay a finger on his lips, knowing in his wisdom what a taste of honest jealousy can do. This was a new Anne—less controlled, more comfortably human. He liked that spark of anger in her, brittle and dangerous as burning sticks. It flattered him, when most he stood in need of something to restore his self-respect. And beckoned to all those primitive urges which had been crying out for satisfaction.
To ease the constrained moment Anne looked round the illprepared room, taking charge like any housewife. It was her right and unconsciously she used it as a challenge. Before the servants withdrew she asked them sharply why they hadn't lit a fire.
"It is June and I hadn't told them to," Richard said in thendefence, as one of them came and set a torch to the brushwood stacked against October on the hearth. Watching the man's unresentful back, he wondered irrelevantly how it must feel to be a servant and not be able to retort that the King had been in a vile temper and had barred them out.
Anne sat down and began peeling a peach, scraping at it with little vicious dabs, waiting for the man to go. "Yes, it is June," she said.
Richard caught the allusion. Standing with a chicken bone
poised between his fingers, he set his teeth to it hungrily. Yes, all the important things had happened to him in June. Good things and bad. And now—but perhaps after all, this thing that Robert had let slip wasn't really important enough to count. The fire was blazing up, the good old vintage warmed him. Turning his head to look towards the darkening river he found that the dreary vista was already blotted out. Tomorrow the Thames would be full and sparkling again. What, he wondered, would happen to him this June?
"How did you know that a fire would make everything so much better?" he asked boyishly, as soon as they were alone.
Anne wiped her fingers on a fringed napkin. Throwing a cushion to the hearth, she knelt on it, warming her hands at that extravagant blaze. One oughtn't to be cold in June—unless one were dying, or driven away from the warm intimacy of a man's love…"Because you're the sort of person who needs a fire for spiritual comfort as much as for bodily warmth," she told him, trying to forget her own stab of misery. "Were you so frightfully wretched, Richard, that you had to ride about all night until you were wet through?"
"Of course not. It was just that sitting around a Council table a man needs exercise. I suppose that is one of the few arguments in favour of war—"
"Must you lie to me?"
He stopped exploring for favourite morsels among the dishes, a silver cover still upraised in his hand. "Oh, my dear! After you were sweet enough to come to me—" He covered the steaming frumenty carefully, trying with compunction to answer her first question. He wasn't particularly hungry any more. "It was just that yesterday afternoon I found out something that makes me want to be sick," he said.
Anne jerked up her proud little chin. The riding hood had ruffled her hair, making her look less soignée and remote. "That happens to most of us—sometime or other," she reminded him, spreading her fingers to the blaze.
"And every time I look at Gloucester and Arundel I could commit murder," he went on, unheeding the implication of her remark.
Anne slewed her exquisite little body round on the great, tasselled cushion. "And don't you suppose I feel sick every time Lizbeth throws herself at you? Don't you suppose I could murder her now—when she's managed to take you from me?" she demanded.
Richard, who had been ranging back and forth dramatically, stopped in his tracks. "Anne!" he exclaimed, gazing d
own at her. A great excitement began to rise in him, crushing out all smaller emotions. "I didn't know—how could I—that you felt like that."
She sprang up then and faced him. All her poise and elegance were gone. She might have been a gypsy's daughter, not an emperor's. "Well, it's natural, isn't it? I'm your wife. And I've always known you're not in love with me. And I imagine it's Lizbeth you were expecting here tonight?"
"She didn't throw herself at me this time," said Richard.
Anne began to laugh, rather piteously. "Oh, I've landed myself in a queer situation, haven't I?" she said. "And you're being very patient with me." For the first time she understood that—although he had never said so—he wanted everything. Everything that a woman could give. And that a woman couldn't give everything until she had thrown away her dainty pride— even her pride in not letting a man see that she gave more than he did. But now, probably, it was too late…"Please believe me," she added, still gathering the remnants of that pride about her, "that I wouldn't have followed you here if I hadn't supposed you needed comfort—"
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