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

by Margaret Campbell Barnes

  "I suppose England is too quiet for Henry these days," Richard remarked to his eldest uncle. "I hear he has gone abroad again."

  "I rather think he is the loser," smiled Lancaster. His own adventuring days were done, and all the connoisseur in him appreciated Richard's England.

  As they passed along the Strand and up Ludgate Hill he noticed improvements everywhere. A toll had been levied to lay cobblestones along that particularly vile bit of road so that one need not dismount and go by boat on muddy days to avoid splashing one's best hose. The new Clerk of the Works had been ordered to straighten the river bank and repair the sewers. Butchers no longer flung offal in the gutters, but had to do their slaughtering outside the city at villages like Knightsbridge or Stratford-le-Bow; and the public privies that had polluted the moat of the Fleet prison had been pulled down. There were far fewer maimed beggars by the roadside, and—best of all, perhaps—the warning bells of lepers were seldom heard. Richard had had proper lazar houses built for them across the water on Bankside.

  London had never looked more lovely. An early shower of rain had washed the gleaming spire of St. Paul's and made the Temple gardens verdant. And now the sun shimmered on a full, majestic river, making a bright parterre of warm brown sails and boatloads of sightseers in holiday garments. It garnished gay little tavern bushes and barbers' flamboyant poles, and twinkled on wrought-iron signs above the shops.

  "Let us linger a little while and look at it all," begged Anne. "I love it even better than Prague."

  Richard laughed at her indulgently and signed to his cavalcade to stop, and she reined in the white palfrey the Londoners had given her and sat on the top of Ludgate Hill drinking in her fill of their city.

  "No need to devour it as though you'd never see it again," teased Richard.

  She raised puzzled eyes to his adoring ones. "Why is it so specially beautiful today?" she asked.

  "Because it is June," he told her.

  "I wonder what will happen this June," she speculated, as they moved on again.

  "An unexpected visitor, perhaps," suggested Edmund of York comfortably.

  "Whom would you choose, milord?" asked Ralph Standish, who was in attendance.

  York thought it would be nice if the Queen could see her brother, the Emperor; and Lancaster tactfully chose the King of Scotland.

  They all made a game of it, idly, as they passed along Cheapside.

  "And you, Richard?" asked Mowbray.

  "Oh, Jehan Froissart, I think. He was chronicler for my father's wars, and must have known my parents when they were young because I am told he was at my christening. Besides, I've often thought how amusing it would be if he and Geoffrey Chaucer could meet."

  They crossed the bridge to the Southwark end, where a gaily decked stand had been erected for them. The Bridge gate guard sprang to attention and the watchman up on the battlements blew a fanfare on the huge horn which had been issued for calling reinforcements ever since Tyler's men had rushed the drawbridge in thirteen eighty-one. Along the dusty road beyond the closed gate as far as eye could see, all manner of laden country carts were held up, waiting till the tilting was over to pay their farthing toll to come in and feed the insatiable city.

  "Who is the venerable man in red with all the official buttons?" asked Anne.

  "The Bridge doctor," explained Richard. "He's supposed to examine everyone who passes through and turn back all the lepers and plague suspects. It's extraordinary, though, no matter what arrangements we make for them to be fed on the other side, they always try to slip past and come back into London somehow! "

  "I should think he found it difficult with all those crowds pouring in for the tournament yesterday," said Standish.

  Tom Mowbray was busy clearing the roadway and instructing the heralds. And soon Lord Welles and Sir David Lindsay were charging across the strange lists with couched lances, each using his utmost skill to uphold the prowess of his own country. The bridge shook beneath the pounding of their horses' hoofs so that York, whose weight was considerable, feared that the stand might collapse as had once happened in the time of his mother, Queen Philippa. Cheers and shrilling of trumpets filled the air, broken from time to time by Mowbray's crisp orders, or the shriek of some silly women in the packed boats below. The bouts grew more and more fierce, and the sun rose higher in the summer sky.

  Presently Richard felt Anne's head come to rest against his shoulder. "Tired, my love?" he asked, withdrawing his gaze from a particularly exciting thrust to glance down at her. It was so unlike Anne to make demonstrations of affection in public.

  "It is so hot!" she murmured.

  He sent a page for a cooling drink and took one of her hot hands in his, holding it on his knee. And she said no more, fearing to spoil his pleasure. If he knew how awful she really felt he would throw down the gold baton Mowbray had handed him and stop the combat—and it was the final championship combat of the whole week upon which everyone had laid their bets.

  But at last the contest was over. A roar of cheering roused her and Richard sprang to his feet, almost forgetting that she was leaning against him. Lindsay was the victor. Scotland forever! Red-bearded Highlanders and London prentices yelled in unison, Richard presented Sir David with a cup the Goldsmiths' company had made, and men began to take up their bets. Anne sat very still, resting her head against the tall back of her crimson-painted chair and gripping the lions'-head arms. It was not until the shouting died down and the crowds were preparing to depart that Richard noticed how white she looked.

  Her eyes were closed, but she felt him bending over her and smelled the pleasant perfume of his clothes. "Anne, my poor sweet, you really are tired. We'll go back to Westminster at once," he was saying; but somehow his voice sounded as if it came from a long way off. And when she opened her eyes the shimmering light on the water made her feel giddy.

  "Not to Westminster. Home to Sheen," she managed to say, through lips that felt stiff and swollen.

  "But, my darling, our guests…"

  She caught at his hands, and her own were burning. "Please, Richard…" She was aware of the two elder uncles looking at her anxiously—of her women loosening her dress. She hated making a fuss. But just as an hour or so ago she had wanted to drink in the happy look of London, so now her whole being yearned to be at Sheen.

  She felt too ill to notice how they got her there, except that she lay on cushions in a closed litter. And that Richard walked the whole way beside her, easing the stretcher with his own hands and cursing softly every time the grooms encountered a rough bit of road. And then at last she was being carried upstairs into her own dear, familiar room, and Richard himself was laying her on her bed. Her women were putting hot bricks to her feet and two of the King's physicians seemed to have appeared as if by magic out of the blackness that kept threatening to submerge her.

  The Queen was ill. Agitated servants ran up and down stairs with hot water, or huddled in whispering groups. The uncles stood respectfully in the ante-room, and her husband paced up and down outside her door. He had never seen her look like that. Suppose she were going to be ill all the summer? Illness had never touched them. He had never even been called upon to wait while she bore the agony of childbirth. But that would have been sharp and over in a few hours—and then such joy for both of them!

  Surely the doctors must have finished their examination. Why couldn't old Waldby come out and tell him if it were really serious? He went to the door and listened. The stillness in the room got on his nerves so that he bit his lip and was surprised to find it bleeding. Ah, at last someone was moving. He heard the murmur of professional voices. They would come out in a moment and tell him that Anne had caught a sunstroke or a chill. And then suddenly a woman screamed. Not in pain, but terror. The door was wrenched open from within and a very young, distraught lady-inwaiting appeared, banging it behind her as if she had escaped from something unspeakable.

  "It's the plague!" she croaked, staring straight into Richard's face with fri
ghtened, bulging eyes.

  Richard seized her by a wrist. "Keep quiet, you fool!" he whispered, flinging her aside. And then the door opened again, more decorously, and Robert Waldby, the senior physician, stood there, both arms queerly outstretched. "It is true, sir," he said.

  Richard stared at him stupidly. He was vaguely aware of shocked exclamations from the uncles behind him. "You lying old goat!" he said, with a crazy sort of laugh which cracked in the middle because he could see now by the man's face that he wasn't lying.

  He threw himself upon the physician and forced his way back into the room. He could see his wife lying motionless where he had left her, her long, unbounded hair and one open palm trailing pitifully over the side of the bed, and her face turned from him. "Anne!" he cried desperately. But she did not answer. And then a dozen hands seemed to seize him, and a barrier of bodies was pushing him from his beloved. "You can't, sir…Consider England…My dear Richard, it isn't as if you had a son." Bits of their agitated arguments penetrated his stunned brain. He knew that they were right. But it made no difference until, in his struggles, he found himself wedged against Gloucester. Gloucester, who raised no hand to stop him—whose mocking eyes said as plainly as words, "Go on in and be damned to you!" And because he knew that Gloucester hoped he'd catch the plague and die, perversely he stopped struggling and let them lead him away.

  Clearly, Anne's own women were useless. Richard sent Ralph Standish for Mundina. He knew that Mundina, in the strange way of women, did not love Anne, although her dearest hope had been to nurse Anne's child. But he knew beyond all doubt that anything that was dear to him Mundina Danos would fight for with all the strange strength that was in her.

  All afternoon he paced his room or flung himself down in prayer, bargaining desperately with the Almighty. He neither spoke nor ate, and suffered no one but Mathe to be with him. Only the dog's dumb sympathy was tolerable. But when the unending day dragged towards dusk Richard went out into the gallery and called for Tom Holland, telling him to have the cooks prepare some of the Queen's favourite frumenty, and to come back for a message before carrying it to her room. He and his squire were both of a height now, and still very much alike. Richard gave the order loudly so that several people should hear him, and purposely forebore to rate the servants because they had forgotten to light the torches.

  When Tom came with the stuff Richard changed clothes with him, putting on the plain green livery with the white hart badge. He told the young man to lie on the bed in the shadow of the hangings so that anyone entering would say, "The King sleeps. In the name of charity don't disturb him!" And then he took the bowl of steaming frumenty and went hurrying with it through the darkening passages to his wife's room.

  Mundina herself unbarred the door, as if she had been expecting him. His eyes searched hers and found no trace of hope; only a fathomless pity. "The Queen has been calling for you," she told him. She took the bowl from him and set it aside. They both knew that Anne would never taste frumenty again.

  Mundina had long since sent the frightened women away and eased Anne's pain with her own herbal remedies. And somehow, with her tall gaunt frame and glittering dark eyes, she had managed to intimidate the doctors so that they let Richard stay.

  "How long?" he asked them tersely.

  "A few hours, perhaps," they told him, and moved away.

  In the midst of her delirium Anne sensed his presence. "Richard!" she cried joyfully, holding out shaking arms to him as if he were an angel from Heaven.

  He sat on the bed and gathered her into his arms. It seemed incredible that only that morning she had set forth with him, laughing and radiant. All the strength and youth seemed to have been burned out of her. "My heart's resting place!" she murmured, great tears welling up into her lovely eyes.

  All night long he held her. They had so little time left. The plague was like that. It had carried off his grandmother, the beloved Queen Philippa, before he was born.

  At first Anne talked a little in happy, broken sentences. Why had all her women gone away? All except Mundina, who knew just where the pain was and put hot poultices. Not that she minded their going, really—except that she had wanted Agnes. "I prayed to the sweet Mother of Christ that you would come. And now that I am in your arms again nothing else matters… It's been such fun, Richard, being married to you!" An echo of all the laughter they had shared throbbed weakly through her lovely voice. "Do you remember the favourite little chanson you used to sing?

  "Light all the candles for my friends,

  Warm, love, my heart with laughter.

  Spill gaiety, e'er youth's grace ends—

  Hold courage for hereafter."

  Anne was growing light-headed again. "You and Robert could make a party out of a bottle of Bordeaux and a couple of candles, couldn't you?" The foolish question broke on a small sob, as if for the first time she realized that the fun was nearly over and the candles burning out. "Do you suppose that Robert and Agnes have been as happy as you and I?"

  Regardless of the dread disease, Richard crushed passionate lips to hers. "Nobody could have been…" he said brokenly, knowing that never again would her senses respond deliciously to his kisses.

  "It seems odd—how I used to envy them. Before you really cared…"

  "Don't Anne! God knows I did too! And now—to think of all the precious, wasted weeks…"

  Anne's flicker of strength was spent. Her lashes fluttered down again. "Nothing—is ever—wasted, Richard…" Her tired voice trailed away, leaving nothing but his need to hold courage for hereafter.

  There were ugly blotches on her bare arms and several times she retched horribly. As the night wore on, he was aware of Mundina and the doctors doing things for her. The ugly, necessary things of sickness. Once he laid her down while a priest came and gave her Extreme Unction. And soon afterwards she brought up blood.

  After that they left him alone with her. He could not see beyond the haze of tapers at the foot of the bed, and no one moved any more in the shadowed room. Anne was jasmine white and could no longer speak. He knew now that their unexpected June visitor had come. That he was neither Jehan Froissart nor any of the pleasant people they had discussed so gaily a million hours ago, but uninvited Death. And that he had come only to see the Queen. With all his will Richard wrestled with him. He was learning the extremity of love. The love that lasts, with the sweets of passion shorn away. Beginning to understand that this kind of love was the only weapon with which he could in the end cheat Death. "Give her to me, God! With nothing for myself, if only I may keep and see and serve her," he implored, the sweat running down his face. But as the sands ran inexorably through the hour glass, so the dark, hooded figure approached nearer and nearer until his stagnant breath extinguished all their lovely youth and happiness.

  The long night wore away at last. The tapers burned themselves out at dawn. Mundina moved quietly to open a casement. Out in the garden the birds were beginning their drowsy twittering. A faint pink flush in the east painted the beginning of a new June day. An earthly pageant that must inevitably flame to decay. But as yet the first quiet peace of early morning held some spectrum of a timeless world, and the dew-drenched virgin grass seemed to wait, expectant, for the touch of Heavenly feet.

  Richard felt the faintest sign flutter from the cold lips against his cheek. In his arms he still held the beloved body that had wept and danced with him through the transient years; but the soul of Anne had escaped him.

  Nothing that happened in June could ever matter any more.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Sub petra lata mana Anna jacet tumulata—"

  The king's quill moved slowly over the parchment, and every now and then the words ran into each other, smudged by his tears. He was writing his wife's epitaph, and part of him seemed to be standing outside himself watching in unbelieving amazement.

  Chaucer had humbly offered to do it. Chaucer, who could have done it so much better. For Richard was no poet. He could only feel poetry, as
he had once explained to Robert de Vere. But he must do this for Anne, because there was so little left that he could do for her. And he felt tough enough to live for years. Each night either Mundina or Standish had insisted upon his drinking a hot posset and he had fallen into a sound sleep. Some of the fond woman's witchery, no doubt; but he had been more grateful for those hours of oblivion than for any spoken sympathy.

  Laboriously, he construed each spontaneous English thought into metrical Latin.

  "Under this stone lies Anna, here entombed,

  Wedded in this life to the second Richard…

  Christ's poor she freely fed from her treasures; Strife she assuaged, and swelling feuds appeased…"