Lizbeth threw back the heavy strands of her hair. Her eyes were angry as a tiger's. She went back to the hearth and beat with clenched fists upon the stone canopy. "And when I got to Sheen—they told me you were with the Queen!" she cried, in a strangled sort of voice. She stood for a while resting her forehead against the stone. By some sort of just reckoning it seemed that she, who nightly tormented Edward Dalyngrigge, must be driven suppliant to Richard Plantagenet. She turned to him with a sort of wistful, impassioned earnestness. "Oh, I don't deceive myself. I know that no other woman ever existed for you afterwards. But I'm not asking for that stained-glass sort of love. I shouldn't know what to do with it." She came and sat on the edge of the hutch where his houppelarde lay, beseeching him. "I only want your kisses, Richard, and to feel that coldness in you run to flame. Not because you're a king…"
"I know that."
"Richard, I've waited ten years for you to come—"
Between pity and his driven senses, he turned to her almost savagely. "Why must you make me hate myself? I don't forget that you saved my mother's life. Nor the fun we all had before—Radcot Bridge. But a man doesn't want cheap tavern stuff once he has drunk good wine—"
A new look of amazement came into her beautifully chiselled face. It was as if she were really thinking about him for the first time. "But now that your life is dust and ashes, Richard? You must long sometimes to forget."
He leaned wearily against one of the carved bedposts. "There is nothing I want to forget. I treasure every moment," he said.
"And you seriously mean that all these months—with all the girls who must be enamoured of you—there's never been another woman?"
"Since you are impertinent enough to ask—no, there hasn't."
It seemed incredible to Lizbeth. "And you mean to go on trying to live like that for the rest of your life?"
She approached him gradually, almost gaping at him as she came. "You make me wonder—is it true what people say about you—that you were sired by one of the priests in the Bordeaux abbey where you were born? Are you a saint or something?"
Richard laughed harshly. "On the contrary, I'm a very thoroughgoing sinner. My conscience is black as hell. So black that I can't sleep o' nights. If you could see into my mind, my dear Lizbeth, strumpet as you are—you'd shrink from me!"
She was too accustomed to living with men of violence to shrink from evil consciences, and his very indifference excited her. She slipped bare arms about his neck. "Then what further harm can it do to sin or sleep if I stay with you tonight?" she pleaded.
He still stood unresponsive. "You pretty fool! It has nothing to do with goodness. Can't you understand that when Anne died all that part of me died too? For ever."
She drew away then, half incredulous, half fearful. Almost as if he were something inhuman. And as if to prove the thing he said, both to her and to himself, he suddenly reached out and pulled her half-naked body close against his own, kissing her roughly till he bruised her. Those moist, seductive lips that so many other men had thirsted for. Lizbeth closed her eyes in ecstasy. But after a moment or two he released her, and struck her open, avid mouth lightly with the back of his hand. And somehow he managed to make the blow less offensive than the kiss.
She recoiled from him as though he had stripped the lure of her warm flesh to the repulsive bone. "I would sooner you had beaten me," she breathed.
But he only laughed, a little insanely, glad for the proved triumph of his constancy. People shouldn't tempt him to half the sins in the decalogue all in one day like this.
"It's not being a strumpet, to desire one man all one's life—so that even until one grows old and passion passes one can find joy with none other," she protested presently. All the proud, laughing fire had gone out of her voice, and she was half crouching against the bed hangings.
He turned and looked at her with understanding compassion. "My poor Lizbeth," he said.
When she gathered herself up, her movements were no longer lithe and young. She had learned so much in so short a time. "Just occasionally, I suppose, only one insatiable love is given to a woman—" she whimpered.
Richard picked up her cloak and put it across her shoulder. "And—more occasionally still—to a man," he agreed.
He wandered to the window and stood there with his back to her, trying not to hear her sobs of self-pity. After a while he heard her whimper her way towards the door and down the winding stair. Although he did not see the actual moment of her going, at some point he knew himself to be alone, and eased his strained emotions with a deep sigh. In a few moments, as far as he was concerned, it was as if she had never been.
The moon had risen high above his vision, shedding a gentle silver radiance on the smooth turf of the tilt yard and on the lush river meadows beyond. Somewhere in the beech trees an owl hooted. The water of the moat looked black and fathomless in the shadow of the castle wall, and on its surface, cupped by a darker bed of floating pads, glimmered a single water lily left over from summer. To Richard's longing eyes it looked like the little white soul of Anne.
As always, the perfection of the night's beauty was like a sword, stabbing at his loneliness.
"Anne! Anne!" he whispered softly. And instantly the reassurance of her abiding love came back to him.
He leaned against the stone embrasure with closed eyes, letting her tenderness enfold him. For a few blessed moments all the frets and plottings of the day were blotted out. But tonight he could not keep his mind blank enough. Other thoughts kept crowding in. Suppose Mowbray's warning were true? Already this thing he planned to do in Calais was intruding upon Anne's influence. Coming between them. What was the good of pretending to Mundina that it wasn't so? Of brazening it out? Deep in his soul he knew that if Anne had lived she would never have let him become a murderer. That he was sacrificing some part of his love for her to his hatred of Gloucester. That if he did this thing, the unappeased Christ must always come between her white soul and his guilt.
"Everything that I have or am that man has spoiled, dear God!" he moaned. "All my life he has been goading me to this hour, and if it be accounted mortal sin to kill such vermin why, why should the punishment be mine?"
He turned, shivering, to his cold bed. The fire had burned low and the servants were long since asleep. He kicked the door shut and closed the casement. The following wind had freshened. Running before it, Dalyngrigge's ship must be halfway to France by now.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Westminster palace was in a turmoil of preparation for the state visit to France. The regalia was brought from the Jewel Tower, and courtiers were getting out their best furs. Servants must have new liveries and horses new trappings. And even Mathe, a new collar. The ladies who were invited were either vying with each other over the height of their headdresses, or deep in dudgeon because "that governess of the Lancasters" was now a duchess and—until the new Queen came—the first lady in the land.
In his private apartments the King was trying on his resplendent new clothes. Bed and chairs were strewn with them. Pages bumped into each other, running back and forth with coloured leather shoes and scented gloves and other modish accessories. Squires and gallants who prided themselves on being dressed in the dernier cri were struck dumb with admiration for such sartorial genius.
This was Jacot's hour.
He was fitting the cloth of gold houppelarde his master was to wear to his meeting with the King of France. And Richard Plantagenet, that super-critic of beautiful fashions, was regarding his reflection with satisfaction in the long metal mirror. Jacot's dark hair was winged with grey, but he bobbed round his royal client with the same ecstatic, simian movements as of yore.
"Well, Jacot, any news of Mundina?" asked Richard leisurely, when the more breathless moments of suspense were over.
"News, sir?" repeated Jacot absently, marking an alteration of
the fraction of an inch in a seam.
"From France."
The little tailor looked up
, more like a puzzled monkey than ever. "I don't understand, sir, I thought she was here with you. I was going to see her presently—"
"But surely, Jacot, you knew she asked me to arrange for her to cross to Calais with the Duke of Norfolk? On her way overland to Bordeaux?"
Jacot laid down his chalk and blinked. "To Bordeaux, sir?"
"To settle up her brother's estate or something."
Richard was holding up to the light a selection of rings a page had handed him, and he had put them all back on their black velvet cushion before he noticed her husband's curious reactions.
"Mundina never had a brother," Jacot said.
Their eyes met in the reflecting mirror. They had both forgotten about the houppelarde. "I thought it strange at the time that she had never mentioned him. But Mundina is like that," said Richard slowly.
When a couple of his gentlemen had eased the gorgeous garment from his shoulders, he walked over to a window recess and beckoned Jacot to follow him. "You had better come with me to Calais," he said. "I told her to rest when she got there. And the Governor sent a message by Sir Edward Dalyngrigge to say that she seemed none the worse for the journey and left the Citadelle a week later with two of his own servants."
"Since milord of Norfolk says she is on her way to Bordeaux—"
But all Richard's sense of security as a child had been staked on Mundina. Never once had she deceived him. Why should she lie to him now? "All the same, you had better question the servants. And make inquiries in the streets. You're a Frenchman. They'll tell you things." Come to think of it, there were quite a number of things one would like to know. "And while you go about it, unpick my badge from your cloak," Richard added.
The word "Calais" was on everybody's lips that winter—and on their minds. The King was going to France to fetch his new bride. How strange to have a child for a queen! Though better by far than having a bad queen out of France like the second Edward. And if King Richard had chosen anyone grown up she'd need to be an angel, God help her, after their beloved Bohemian one!
People lingered about the palace, watching all the going and coming by day, and then looking up at the lighted windows. For what was going on in there concerned them intimately. The King was not only going to get married. He was going to sign a peace treaty. Something to last for years, this time. Well, perhaps it really would last now that Gloucester was out of the way. Men lowered their voices when they said "out of the way." The words had a sinister sound and they weren't clear what had really happened to him. He had gone to stay in Calais because of his health, and news had leaked through that he was dead. Nobody knew quite how or when. Some said he had died of fever, others that he had been murdered. Probably by the King's orders. Anyway, it had come at a mighty convenient time.
Thomas of Gloucester, with his everlasting warmongering, wasn't such a popular figure that he'd be greatly missed. And relaxation from this ever-recurring fear of invasion would be a relief. Young married men would be able to till their fields or go about their business without the nagging feeling that any year they might be called away to war. But it was to be hoped the King in his zeal for peace wouldn't sign away Calais! England without Calais would be like a house without a front door. The very word Calais touched an Englishman's pride.
Richard himself was mindful of it when it came to leaving Calais for St. Omer. "God knows I'll have finessed and fought for this peace as hard as ever my father fought in battle," he said, while Standish and Tom Holland were putting the finishing touches to his grandeur before meeting King Charles.
Young Holland was Duke of Kent now and went with him everywhere. "Do you remember, sir, how implacable Gloucester was when we came before? Even when the French lords loaded him with gifts?" he asked, kneeling to fasten the Garter above his uncle's knee. "And how you had to bribe him to take himself and his ill manners home again before he started another war?"
"It cost me as much as a dozen of the dinners he was always grumbling about," laughed Richard reminiscently. He could afford to laugh now.
"Well, thank God, he won't be here to spike everything this time!" said Standish, arranging the ermine cloak.
Richard said nothing. A fortnight after Mowbray had sailed from Bodiam, Dalyngrigge had brought back news that Gloucester was dead. The two other uncles had gone into mourning, and he fancied that they had looked askance at him. And if, during the long conscience-ridden nights, he often wished the deed undone, he had persuaded himself that it was part of the price he must pay for peace.
On the whole he was in better spirits. His life's policy was about to be crowned with success. Simon Burley and Michael de la Pole seemed very close to him as he rode forth to St. Omer. The whole journey seemed propitious. He got on well with Frenchmen, speaking their language and often thinking their thoughts; and he always had had much in common with his future father-in-law, who wasn't much older than himself. Each of them had managed to throw off the yoke of avuncular control. Each of them had made his Court a cultural centre. They had books and architecture and the chase to talk about, and neither of them had really wanted war. True, the French Queen hinted that poor Charles was as mad as a maypole at times. "And perhaps we even have that in common, too!" thought Richard, remembering the grief-crazed hours in which he envisaged an eternity spent apart from Anne.
There was all the usual ceremonial feasting and display, but within the golden tent prepared for them, he and Charles and Lancaster, with the powerful Dukes of Burgundy and Orleans, managed to talk some sound sense as well. With the same good will on both sides which Richard seemed able to inspire whenever he set foot in Ireland, they came to an agreement whereby the English retained Calais and he promised to renounce all claim through his wife to the French throne. A light enough promise, in reality, seeing that Charles had three sons, but one which he felt sure his ambitious cousin Bolingbroke would bring up against him.
As soon as all these solemn conclaves were ended and the documents signed, the two kings and their retinues had dined in a still larger tent, strewn with priceless rugs and warmed by glowing braziers. And towards the conclusion of the feast, Richard's little bride had been brought in—rather as if she were a sort of postscript to the wines and spices.
And a very charming postscript she was, with her mother's beauty shorn of malevolence, and her father's friendliness tempered by shyness. The English ladies were delighted with her, and the French ladies responsible for her deportment need have known no qualms.
Richard had a happy way with children. "How will you like being Queen of England?" he asked, when Charles had formally given her to him.
"If it please my lord and father, I shall like it very much," she had answered with quaint solemnity. "For, being your queen, I shall be a very great lady."
Everyone had smiled indulgently, but interest in her had soon given place to their still more burning interest in her dowry. After the napery was drawn and the servants had retired, Medford and the French clerks brought out long, legal-looking parchments, and tongues blurred a little by good wine grew sharp as swords on the question of finance. Medford was an important person these days, as Richard had rewarded his able loyalty by making him Bishop of Salisbury. As the dull discussion dragged on, Richard was aware of a small hand creeping into his. The same hand that he had kissed so formally a while ago. Only now it felt a little limp and moist. He squeezed it encouragingly and, although he had to watch his own interests with these shrewd French lawyers, he found time to look down at the stiffly dressed small figure at his side and caught her stifling a yawn. Poor little Isabel! He remembered so well how it felt to sit through tedious ceremonies when one was small. And this was Isabel of Valois' first sally from the schoolroom!
Somehow the feel of that little hand in his had been a warmth at his heart for hours afterwards. Something helpless to be cared for—an appeal to his essential kindness. Something to crack the ice forming so hopelessly about his whole nature.
And later in the day, when state affairs
had given place to pleasure, another small incident seemed of good omen. Richard was listening appreciatively to the King's minstrels when he noticed a look of anxiety on Charles's face. Following the direction of his gaze, he saw his little princess and the Duke of Orleans' small son playing quietly with Mathe. Tired of her official role, Isabel had been decking the hound with a rose garland from the table. She had climbed on to a stool and the small boy, who was evidently her adoring slave, was holding Mathe's collar and pretending to be her groom. While the ladies in charge of her were momentarily distracted by the music, she had gathered the ends of the garland as reins and was trying to mount the tall hound as though he were a horse.
It was an ordinary child's game but Mathe was getting old. His temper was uncertain these days and he wasn't used to children. Charles of Valois half rose, and called something to his squires. Isabel was the apple of his eye. But Richard Plantagenet was quicker than any of them. Like a whirlwind of crimson and gold he had crossed the richly covered floor, swept past the astonished ladies and picked up his promised bride.
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