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

by Margaret Campbell Barnes

  His hand on the knife shaft shook. "If only I could do it myself!" he said.

  "You got Arundel impeached and executed," Mowbray reminded him. "Oh, I know it was all legal. You never lifted a finger. Only gave him rope enough to hang himself. And although he was my own father-in-law, I believed every bit of evidence you had brought against him."

  "Yes," agreed Richard, as if the carefully built up evidence had had nothing much to do with it. "He was late for the Queen's funeral."

  They both stopped talking as Gloucester's voice was heard bellowing out in the courtyard about the bestowal of his baggage. Mowbray went to join him and Richard strolled with him as far as the outer door, where he stood laughing and chatting and saying good-bye. It was a crisp moonlight night, with a touch of frost in the air.

  "Don't stand there without a cloak, sir. The evenings grow chilly," Mundina called after him.

  "Oh, I must just see the last of Uncle Thomas," he called back so naturally that it was hard to believe he meant the words quite literally.

  From where he stood he could hear the creak of chain and windlass and an echoing splash of water. And presently two maidservants emerged from the dark archway of the well tower, giggling and slipping on a patch of water spilled on the smooth flagstones, as they bore their slopping buckets towards the busy kitchen. In the deep shadow just outside the archway Gloucester was bending to adjust a buckle. Richard strolled in his direction. The soft kid of his indoor shoes made no sound. An accidental stumble in the darkness, a strong push on the wet patch, perhaps… But poor Dalyngrigge had probably spent much time and labour on his water supply; and it was always better to do things decently and in order…When Gloucester looked up again, Richard was leaning against the wall, whistling between his teeth to keep out the cold. And presently that minx Lizbeth had left her wifely duties and was making eyes at him again. "What is Princess Isabel like?" she was asking, womanlike.

  "Very charming, I thought. An elfin combination of light brown hair and hazel eyes, and a touch of that pale delicacy which so often makes French girls look delicate when they're not." The prospective bridegroom's dispassionate voice carried clearly to all who cared to hear, and he glanced down amusedly at the jealous fury in his companion's eyes. "She is just eight years old," he added.

  Lizbeth let out a little laugh of sheer joy. "Aren't you coming down to the harbour with us, sir?" she coaxed, slipping a persuasive hand through his arm. "It's such a lovely night."

  "I'll come presently," promised Richard. "I must just say goodbye to Mundina Danos."

  "Why do you have to waste so much time on that ugly old woman?" pouted Lizbeth.

  "Is she ugly? I expect I'm too used to her to notice," he answered, with exasperating nonchalance.

  Lizbeth lifted her own enchanting face framed in a becoming white fur hood. "Oh, Richard, you used not to be so blind about a woman's looks!" she whispered.

  Beneath the rising moon courtyard and castle were barred in sable and silver like a shield. Richard could see Edward Dalyngrigge watching them. Clearly the great ruffian, who could have broken his wife's neck with a twist of his fingers, lived only for her contemptuously given favours. "You see, Mundina happens to be the only woman on earth I still love," he said firmly, and turned back up the steps into the great hall.

  The servants had finished clearing the dishes and the trestles had been pushed back against the richly tapestried walls. Mundina still sat where he had left her, as if she knew that he would come.

  "Why didst thou suddenly decide to go with them?" he asked, in the warm patois of Aquitaine.

  "I told thee, mon cher," she answered comfortably. "I have business to see to in Bordeaux. About my late brother's vineyards."

  "Couldn't Jacot have gone?"

  "No. Jacot may be able to make you marvellous clothes, but he couldn't do what I am going to do."

  It was true enough. Like many men of genius, the little tailor had no head for business. Probably Mundina even made up his exorbitant accounts. Richard swung around to her, with one of his old impulsive gestures. "Mundy—I've always wanted to ask you. Your people were big landowners, weren't they? Why did you marry Jacot?"

  The old woman looked up at him, her eyes bright with affection. "So as to be near you," she told him, without subterfuge.

  Richard went and leaned over the back of her chair, with a hand gripping each of her gaunt shoulders. "I think I have always known it," he said. But he realized better now what it must mean to a woman to give herself to a man she didn't love.

  "You didn't mind my asking you to arrange for them to take me, Dickon? I'm getting old, you know…" With rare demonstrativeness she raised a bony hand to cover one of his.

  "I've told Mowbray to look after you. And you'll be sure to rest at Calais?"

  "Yes, my dear. I will rest at Calais."

  "I shall miss you horribly—and our games of chess," he said, helping her to rise.

  "I think you're becoming too good a player," she chuckled. "You always seem to win."

  "Well, anyhow, you must came back soon because I'm soon going to fetch my new little Queen home from France and I shall want you to look after her."

  Mundina did not answer, and they walked the length of the empty hall together. But because she had nursed him through sickness and made puppet shows for him when he was small, she could almost read the inner workings of his mind. "When that poor girl arrives at the age of puberty what do you intend to do, Richard?" she asked anxiously.

  He did not deny her foresight of his intentions. "I've been wondering…If the Pope knew that the marriage hadn't been consummated, perhaps she and Roger's little son…"

  "It could be, Richard. But if you can't be happy in this world I want you to be happy in the next. That's why—without condemning you—I wish—"

  Half sentences were enough for them. Richard stopped on the threshold to look searchingly at the lined, wise old face that Lizbeth had called ugly. "You know, then?" he asked sharply.

  "I'm not a fool. I've guessed for days. And I've always known that you would have to kill that fiend Gloucester sooner or later."

  "And you're worrying about what Mowbray said—about it coming between me and—her?"

  Mundina sniffed contemptuously. "I'd thought of it long before Thomas Mowbray!"

  "He only said it because he didn't relish being made a tool of. Besides, as Robert de Vere used to tell us, 'Mowbray is very religious'."

  Mundina looked at him shrewdly as they crossed the courtyard. "So are you, Richard Plantagenet—in a different sort of way," she said. "Only you've suffered so much that just now you're in a dangerously callous mood."

  Richard didn't answer. He was thinking of that odd moment of temptation by the well tower. All his days he had been wont to spare life.

  They passed beneath the three iron-toothed portcullises and out under the massive gate-house tower, with the arms of Dalyngrigge and Wardeaux and the martlets of Sussex carved in stone above the impregnable door. Richard slipped an arm through hers to guide her along the narrow, sharply angled causeway across the moat. At the Barbican, Dalyngrigge's guard sprang to the salute. Mundina should have felt like a queen, not like a heart-torn Rachel weeping for her children.

  They could see lanterns bobbing about down by the river, and the riding light of the Laughing Lizbeth like a red star entangled in the trees. Halfway across the short meadow path Mundina paused to look back at the lovely lighted castle. A good deal of her life had been spent in castles. In them there had been birth and death, gaiety and danger—and always, for her, the homecoming of Richard Plantagenet's smile. "As you know, I'm an idolatrous old woman. I have served my idols on this earth, and probably God will punish me." She spoke slowly, and her eyes came back to him, standing bareheaded beside her in the moonlight. "But because I believe in Heaven for people like you—because I've seen it shining about you, as milady Anne did—nothing evil in this world or the next must ever come between you two."

  The last w
ord was said between them—the last intimate thought touched upon. The anchor of the Laughing Lizbeth was being weighed. Her stately, castellated stern and crimson sails seemed to fill the narrow river. Gloucester and Mowbray were leaning on the rail. Dalyngrigge had snatched a last moment ashore to bid farewell to his lady, who was standing on the little quay surrounded by her women.

  When Richard came to the gangplank he felt Mundina trembling. She thrust out a hand from the sombre folds of her cloak and caught fiercely at his own. "Dickon!" she whispered, and for the first time he saw tears in her eyes.

  "Why, Mundy!" he protested. The wind was set fair and it was so short a way to France. He took her in his arms and kissed her tenderly before them all.

  "Take care of her!" he shouted up the ship's side to Mowbray. "She is all I have."

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Richard had had a long day. He yawned as he climbed the short stair to the Dalyngrigges' guest room above the postern gate. He was glad they had put him here and not in the west wing near the priest's room and the chattering of the ladies' bower. Nor in the family apartments where he would probably have felt he must sit up late and be polite to Lizbeth. He had brought only his two most trusted squires, and he dismissed them both. He had plenty to think about and he wanted to be alone.

  After the formality of palaces, the comfortable little room was a pleasant surprise. A good fire burned on the low arched hearth and a modern garderobe recess was built in the wall. The floor rushes had a sweet, countrified smell, and quaint, surprised-looking unicorns were embroidered on the bed hangings. Small cousins, surely, to the unicorn rampant on Dalyngrigge's shield. Anne would have loved them.

  Richard unbuttoned his brocaded houppelarde and threw it over a carved chest. He went to the window overlooking the postern drawbridge. Moonlight had transmuted the russet of the countryside into silver. The half-finished quay was deserted. How quiet everything was after Westminster! How still the absurd little river! Dalyngrigge would be slipping out from Rye into the open sea by now, setting his course for Calais. Richard said a hurried Ave for Mundina, hoping she wouldn't be seasick. But the Channel could be as rough as it liked for Gloucester, who'd made such a hog of himself over that spiced venison. Gloucester who wouldn't need many more suppers…But it didn't do to think about that. One didn't sleep.

  Someone came quietly into the room behind him. Standish, no doubt, with that nightly soporific concoction Mundina insisted upon. "I thought I told you I shouldn't want you any more," he reprimanded sternly. But after all, if one had been sleeping badly, perhaps it would be better to have company for a while. "Well, since you are here, get out the dice, Ralph," he ordered, without turning around. "I'll play you for that new wench of yours until our Epicurean suppers have gone down."

  No one answered, and Richard turned swiftly, warned by some exotic scent.

  Lizbeth stood there, laughing at him.

  "By all the Saints—" he began, staring at her.

  "I didn't come here to dice," she told him. She was more bewitching than ever by candlelight, with the soft fur cloak she had worn on the quay held sketchily around some flimsy kind of bedwrap, and her raven hair all unbound about her shoulders. "Ralph Standish has gone to bed. And so have all our own servants," she added coolly, setting down the lantern that had lighted her way from the south-east tower.

  "I see."

  "I came to see if they had made you comfortable," she lied, losing face a little before his unresponsiveness and perfunctorily looking over the appointments of his room.

  "Haven't you a steward or any chamber grooms?" he inquired sarcastically.

  "Oh, don't be cross, Richard! It's so long since I saw you," She prowled about him, touching his jewelled belt and the silk of his shirt sleeve, with all the sensuous pleasure of a homecoming cat. "You haven't changed much either, you know. Except for the little beard. And I like it. It's exciting, somehow. Perhaps because it makes you look as if you could be dangerous. You kept them all deliciously afraid of you at supper time, didn't you?" She went to the fire to warm her toes, shrugging the cloak from her shoulders and looking back at him with an enticing smile. "It was lovely of you to come at last, Richard! And so clever to choose that child for a bride. And now that you will be going back and forth to France you can often come this way."

  He scarcely appeared to be listening, but his grimness had given place to a wide grin. "He didn't lock you into your stays, then?" he remarked, looking at the alluring outline of her body silhouetted through rosy damascene against the flames.

  "What do you mean?" Lizbeth hated being made fun of. She turned, affronted. And Richard remembered his manners. However wanton his hostess, he didn't have to stand there insulting her. "Oh, nothing," he said, turning away negligently. "Just something somebody once said."

  This was scarcely the reception Lizbeth had expected. Doubt assailed her complacency. She raised widely flared nostrils, like some startled animal. "You wanted me, didn't you? That's why you came, isn't it? And sent Edward away."

  The sharp contempt in Richard's voice whipped across the intimacy of the firelit room. "God, Lizbeth, you don't seriously suppose I'd deliberately send my host away and seduce his wife, do you?"

  "Then why did you come?"

  He perceived that he had given her wantonness some cause. Dalyngrigge was not the man to have betrayed the nature of their business. And to a woman whose beauty was notorious, and whose vanity was fed by a husband's undiminished and unrequited passion, the almost furtive nature of his visit might well have looked like that.

  He offered her a chair, but she preferred the foot of the bed. Kicking off her ermine slippers, she sat there provocatively framed by her husband's prancing unicorns—giving them, as some ribald imp in Richard's mind observed, something to look surprised about.

  "You won't be seducing me," she said softly, her eyes a smouldering invitation beneath up-curled lashes. "I've always been yours—in desire. And you know it. The violation was when you made me marry him. A great clumsy devil who cages me in this God-forsaken place and comes to bed with his bloodstained boots on! Who'd strangle me if I smiled out of sheer boredom at that shaven priest down there, and yet can't keep faith with me if he goes on a three days' foray!"

  "Oh, come, Lizbeth! He isn't as bad as that," protested Richard, with compunction. "Look how he trusts you—tonight, for instance."

  "It's you he trusts—not me!" she spat at him, and could have bitten her tongue out as soon as the words were spoken. For she, of all people, ought to have known Richard long enough to take into account his loyalty.

  "Oh, what does it matter anyway?" she hurried on, trying to cover her mistake. "I know why you made me marry him, and because of that I've tried to forgive you."

  "Forgive me?" As a king, Richard had to laugh at her brazen impudence. "I'd be interested to know what reason you ascribe to me, other than the normal one of having a marriageable ward and wanting his money?"

  Life had made Lizbeth too sure that with all men the delight of her body excused the sharpness of her tongue. "It's obvious isn't it?" she shrugged. "Because you yourself had to marry. A girl you'd never seen. To beget an heir. You weren't in love with her and—"

  Richard dragged her off his bed and shook her until the damascene slipped from her pointed breasts. She had roused him from his nonchalance at last. "Be quiet, will you, you jade?" he shouted at her, his face white with anger.

  But no Wardeaux had ever wanted courage. "You weren't! You know you weren't!" she snarled back. "And yet you were too fastidious to offend your wife with an affair like any other man. But when Robert de Vere was making love to Agnes, you were so nearly in love with me—you thought you'd better find me a husband!"

  "You were always singularly intelligent, Lady Dalyngrigge," he mocked, trying to keep a hold on himself.

  Nothing had been denied to Lizbeth de Wardeaux as a child, and now, at thirty, she was grasping for the only thing she had ever really wanted. Something that money cou
ldn't buy. "That day you kissed me by the pool at Westminster—"

  "Don't tell me I loved you! I never in my life came within miles of loving you!" broke in Richard. "For an hour or two I may have lusted after you. I suppose most young men about the Court did at that time."

  "Yet you sent me a message that you were at Sheen—"

  "As far as I remember, Robert and I had a bet about it."