Within the Hollow Crown: A Valiant King's Struggle to Save His Country, His Dynasty, and His Love

by Margaret Campbell Barnes

  Burley's eyes were warm upon him. He himself had seen the inside of some good fights in his time, and he would have given much to see the end of this one. "I was wondering why you didn't try to make conditions about de la Pole instead of flying out about the servants," he asked. "Was it wise—or necessary?"

  Richard looked up in bland surprise. "Of course it was necessary. Surely you of all men needn't ask me that? It was you who took me to my father the last time he sent for me—that day he lay dying."

  Some measure of understanding came to Burley, with uncertain recollection. But Richard's next words painted the scene with all the vividness of detail that such a sombre occasion was likely to make, unguessed at by his elders, upon an impressionable boy of ten.

  "Don't you remember that darkened room at Westminster—full of people? And those awful embroidered Saracens on the bed hangings? And my father's face, the colour of mouldy parchment, propped up on pillows? And the uncles and all of them having to kiss my hand and promise allegiance? And the solemn way the Prince said 'I recommend my son to you because he is but young and little'? I had to go down on my knees close to him while he gave me his blessing. His hands were like claws and the bedclothes smelled of mortal sickness. And he was saying between horrid gasps, 'Swear by the Book that you will never rid yourself of any of my servants, Richard'. I kept wishing my mother would stop crying and smile at me. But someone put a hand on my shoulder…It must have been your hand, Simon…"

  "Yes, it was my hand," corroborated Burley. He remembered now. And Gloucester and Arundel ought to have remembered too. He had a shrewd idea that when the Black Prince had referred to servants he had meant people a good deal more important than scullions; but Richard's fertile mind had a flair for making his actions sound right. "Why didn't you say that just now, when your uncle and Ely were in the room? Why didn't you remind them of your promise—and of their own?" he asked.

  "Remind Gloucester of promises?" scoffed Richard. "I shouldn't imagine he knows what the word means. Not after the so-called trials to clear up the peasants' revolt!"

  He got up and wrenched at a bell-pull. "Tell Standish to bring me a map of the Western Marches," he said, when Tom appeared. "And I want the Captain of the Guard to have a company of men stand by as escort for a long journey."

  "What are you going to do?" asked Burley, when they were alone again.

  "Ride to Chester and bring back the rest of my archers," said Richard grimly.

  "And leave de la Pole and Brembre and men like Chaucer to the machinations of these scheming murderers in London?"

  Richard stood tapping his teeth in momentary indecision. "No, Simon. You're right. I can't do that."

  "Nothing would please Gloucester better, of course. If this struggle for power ever came to a pitched battle—which God forbid!—whoever won or lost, he would make it his business to see that you were killed." Burley leaned forward earnestly. "Richard, must you resort to force?"

  "Since Gloucester's crowd are already armed—" At sight of one so dear to him in so much peril, Richard came and slid boyishly along the window seat and threw an arm about him. "Ne vois tu, mon brave, que c'est question de ta vie?" he urged, slipping into French as he so often did in moments of tenderness.

  But Burley was not thinking of his own life. "You will be no better than they—plunging England into civil war for the sake of power," he argued.

  "But don't you see the difference? They are clutching at something which isn't theirs, while I should be fighting only to keep what is my own. One decisive battle, perhaps, Simon. I would see that our forces were big enough, as I did in Scotland."

  "This comes oddly from you, Richard."

  "I know. But you don't suppose I want victory just for my own glorification, do you? Why should I? What can I be that is higher than king? It would be truer to say that I want the right to serve. You remember my father's motto, 'Ich Dien', which he took with the plume of feathers from Anne's blind grandfather? It always seemed a stupid motto for a king. But now I want with all my heart to make a civilized country where homes are not always being broken up and where people can go about their business and pleasure without this bogey of invasion. Where the arts can flourish and men can give their best endeavours to making beautiful and useful things instead of making armaments. I want them to reason and arbitrate instead of murdering each other with senseless violence. Oh, I'm not pretending that it's all altruistic, Simon…But it's so much more worth fighting for than silly, sadistic raids on France! And I've got the ability to rule like that, and either by reason or by force I mean to get the power."

  "Doing evil that good may come, as the clergy say?"

  "I suppose so. But I promise you on all I hold most sacred that once I have fought this out with Gloucester I will sacrifice anything—anything—sooner than let such a thing ever happen in England again."

  "Well, it is these fools who are forcing it upon you," sighed Burley. "But you will go and try persuasion at Westminster first?"

  "Yes. Only while I am there I will send Bolingbroke to get me the backing of my archers. It is only common sense, and he is the best strategist I know."

  Burley drew the long skirt of his houppelarde about him and got up slowly from the window seat. "Wouldn't it be best to find out first which side he means to fight on?" he suggested.

  Richard's fair skin flushed as if someone had struck him. "You don't suppose—"

  "No. I don't suppose. I know," said Burley, coming to lay a compassionate hand on his shoulder. "It is he who is mustering Gloucester's men at Waltham."

  "Bolingbroke—dans cette galère!" Richard moved away to the hearth, trying to swallow the blow to his pride. And to his hopes. For Gloucester's forces would certainly be well mustered. For a few moments he played with the idea of abandoning his friends to their fate and leading his army himself. Henry was a far more experienced soldier than he, and physically stronger. But it would be exhilarating to fight against Henry at last. Henry, whom he had begun to hate.

  But Burley had followed him and he saw by the man's face that there was worse to come. "Yes?" he asked peremptorily.

  "Richard—I know this will hurt more than all their treacheries. Tom Mowbray is with him. I couldn't tell you out there—when you were so happy—"

  Richard stared at him. "But—but what have I ever done to him?" he faltered. "Why, even Mathe here shows him affection."

  "Don't forget that he is Arundel's son-in-law now. Besides, he always was jealous of Robert, and probably this Irish title was the last straw."

  "I suppose I was a fool about the title—and to mind so much what people said," admitted Richard, savagely kicking a fallen log back into the fire. "But these are men who practically ate out of my hand. Henry I can almost forgive. He had only my hospitality. But Tom had my friendship. Are they all Judases?" He turned back to Burley, forcing himself to get on with the matter in hand as if nothing had happened. "Then Ireland will have to wait and Robert must bring his levies down with mine," he decided. "After all, he is on the spot, and it will be the same thing as if I led them myself."

  "I'm not so sure," murmured Burley.

  "You're not going to suggest that he—?"

  "Of course not, Richard. Only—"

  Richard had always measured his friends' loyalty by his own, and that was often larger than his judgment. He had gone to spread the map Standish had brought him on the window seat and, standing with the river flowing placidly before him, he suddenly recalled how Robert had once stood by a similar window in the Tower, suggesting that it might be better if he went back to Oxford. Memory reconstructed the scene—the bed, the prie dieu, the frightened pages. Surely from where Robert had stood he must have seen London beginning to burn, before exerting himself to pull the curtain. Inside Richard's mind some shutter seemed to fly open for a split second, admitting a shaft of shameful doubt. It shook him momentarily that this could happen and that he had caught himself dwelling on the fact that Oxford during the Revolt had been safer.
And in order to dispel such hateful cynicism he turned hurriedly to contemplation of his own shortcomings. "I am afraid I must often be a sore disappointment to you, Simon—landing you into such dangers and perplexities," he said, holding the map half unrolled between his hands. "Particularly after the way you admired my father."

  "Admired, yes," said Burley slowly, looking into the redness of the fire. "But just in case you and I should ever be parted, Richard, I'd like you to know that I've come to care for you far more than I ever cared for him."

  Richard went red with pleasure. Here was the commendation he had always craved. And it was like old Simon to reserve it for a moment when one's stock was so low—to offer it as a quid pro quo for the defection of Tom Mowbray. "T-thank you, sir," he stammered, like any schoolboy.

  "I used to think military achievement mattered most," mused Burley, fingering the gold chain the Black Prince had given him after Poitiers. "But most of us learn more from our children and pupils than they can ever hope to learn from us. New ways—new values—a new kind of courage, perhaps…"

  "Courage?"

  "Perhaps, after all, my dear Richard, it takes more courage to stay unromantically at home and take care of the things which the great Cœur de Lion neglected."

  Chapter Twenty-One

  For three weeks Richard had fought for the freedom of his friends. He had been a fool, perhaps, to put his own safety in the noose by coming to London. For what had he—or they—gained by it? Except Michael de la Pole. While the King argued at Westminster, de la Pole had had time to escape to the Continent. At least Richard had the satisfaction of knowing that he had saved his Chancellor. But he himself was more or less a prisoner in the Tower.

  Feeling had run so high after the escape that, for the second time in his life, he had been forced to take refuge there. Back in the same rooms where he had spent those nightmare days of the Peasants' Revolt. The only difference seemed to be that now, instead of Wat Tyler's mob milling round St. Catherine's wharf, there was an armed force of Gloucester's men at Waltham Cross. The wretched peasants had been goaded by a dozen different injustices, but only ambition goaded Gloucester.

  Outside the Tower a dank evening mist was rising from the river, wrapping the precincts into a world apart and muffling all sounds but the dreary, owl-like "Hoo!" of passing watermen. Thick Norman walls and small, deep-set windows gave a sense of security, but they made a room infernally dark. Richard sat alone by a badly smoking fire, sunk dejectedly in his chair with his legs stretched out before him. He felt extraordinarily tired. It seemed to him that he must have been arguing for months. Using his wits to hold a Parliament packed with Gloucester's supporters—issuing writs—playing for time. Whenever he had retired to his own private apartments at Westminster he and Anne and Standish had pored over a map, calculating how far Robert must have come. All the while he was haranguing the appellant lords about their unconstitutional methods, or trying to prove that every public act of Burley's had been done in his service and with his sanction, it had seemed in his mind that the two kinds of effort were converging together—his own mental ingenuity and Robert's marching men. Even as he cajoled the clamorous Commons to spare their colleague, Brembre, it was seldom their vindictive faces he saw, but his own splendid archers winding like a silver snake down through the winding roads of England. Coming nearer and nearer until they took that Waltham force by surprise and routed them, and then marched triumphantly through some City gate and right to the doors of Westminster. For only then, with the weight of a proper army behind him, could a king turn the tables on his enemies and cease to speak them fair. The thought of it had been like a mirage, helping him to hold out until Robert came.

  And now, at last, he knew that Robert wouldn't be coming. Now, quite suddenly, there was nothing to work or wait or hope for anymore. Not since Radcot Bridge.

  But in the Tower, unfortunately, there was plenty of time to think. Richard slumped yet further into his chair, trying to evolve some fresh plan—to think about Burley and Salisbury and Brembre, and poor Chaucer, condemned to death for his sake—to consider his own impecunious state with even the wool tax appropriated by Parliament, and the humiliation of being under the thumb of this parsimonious commission. But his thoughts always came back to Radcot Bridge.

  Although he had never in his life seen the place, it seemed that part of him had died there. All that was young and gay and proud. All that had reason to be proud. For Radcot Bridge had been Robert's undoing. It had stripped him of all his debonair splendour, his wit and cynical immunity, and exposed the meagreness they had hidden. Like the shocking nakedness of a cat without its fur.

  Again and again Richard went over each account of this travesty

  of battle. But nowhere could he find any loophole for his friend's honour. However garbled, all accounts had agreed about the few bald facts which made each messenger afraid to tell him the truth. Forty thousand men, Robert had had. Richard himself knew that much without any telling. The King's own Cheshiremen, some Welsh troops and some of his own Oxfordshire levies. A brave sight they must have been. How their bows and pikes must have glistened in the sunlight! Robert was bringing them down from the Severn valley to cross the upper reaches of the Thames. Coming through Oxfordshire where he should have known every inch of the terrain, every river bend and wooded hillock suitable for an ambush. Where he had every advantage. That was the last hasty message Richard had received from him. That was how he had pictured their army. And at Radcot Bridge Robert had let himself be ambushed.

  Henry Bolingbroke must have sent out scouts and got wind of his approach. With superb generalship he must have withdrawn his own men secretly from Waltham and gone by forced night marches to meet him. Henry, who never waited for his enemies to move first, must have set a trap for him.

  And Robert de Vere had walked into it. Gaily singing one of his latest songs, no doubt, thought Richard savagely. And, finding himself surrounded, he had surrendered without so much as a shaft loosed from those bows or a thrust from one of those shining pikes. And—as if that were not enough—he had deserted his bewildered followers and saved his own skin by running away. Like John Holland on Hackney marshes.

  Richard's whole body writhed at the thought of it. He got up and prowled about the darkening room because there are some mind pictures that the body cannot endure in stillness. "With forty thousand men!" was the constant burden of his thoughts.

  Last night, after the news had come, he had lain tossing and turning on his bed, trying to find some possible explanation. Henry's men must have had some new weapon—one of Gloucester's new cannon perhaps, with a range which had rendered bows useless. Or a mist might have come up over the low-lying river country blotting out everything, just as here it was shrouding even moat

  and walls.

  But, try as he would, there was nothing to be found but ridicule and shame. The comedy of an unfought battle which chroniclers like Froissart, writing of his reign, would record for all time. Apart from the ghastly consequences of defeat, he—Richard—and his cause had been hopelessly let down. "Gloucester was right. These are the kind of young men who pule for peace with France!" people would be sure to say, pointing the finger of scorn. Couldn't Robert have seen, curse him, that the more one advocated peace the less one could afford to be a coward?

  In those first hours of bitter disappointment it seemed to matter so much more about Robert than about the battle. If the worst came to the worst and Burley and Brembre were executed, they would still have been real people, a living memory at which to warm one's heart. But although Robert might elude his enemies and live on, the friend Richard had loved best had never really lived at all, save in his own imagination. Only the familiar, attractive husk of him which was still so painfully dear.

  With a life so set apart from other men's, it was largely through the strength of his affections that Richard had touched reality. And because all that inner gallantry that he had taken for granted had been proved an illusion, a sense o
f futile unreality gripped him too. Even the everyday furnishings about him seemed momentarily unreal, so that he found a voice in his consciousness affirming desperately, "It is I who am here, touching this table, enduring this hell. I really am I—here, now—and nothing can stop it." The very realization of his own present existence in the midst of all that seemed unreal beat upon his brain until his heart quickened suffocatingly in fear of he knew not what. And then the low arched door opened and Anne came into the room, and everything became real and normal again.

  "Why, Richard, sitting alone in the dark!" she reproached, and the very homeliness of her words was a comfort.

  She went straight to him and he caught at her hand. "In outer darkness, ever since you left me," he admitted. "You've been gone a long time, Anne. What have you been doing?"

  "Trying to comfort Agnes," she told him quietly.