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

by Margaret Campbell Barnes

  "Oh, Richard, I didn't know you could sing like that when you are really serious!" whispered Isabel, as they came down the aisle after the blessing.

  "Didn't you?" he whispered back teasingly. "Then I must learn some wild Irish songs to frighten the life out of you with when I come home."

  All the distinguished company streamed after them, and out in the sunshine their brightly caparisoned horses were waiting. At the west door pages served them with comfits and wine.

  "What a funny meal!" laughed Isabel, trying to be gay as she was sure his first wife would have done.

  "A sort of stirrup cup! Or is it a loving cup?" said Richard, dropping a sugared grape into her wine for luck.

  He entrusted her solemnly to his uncle and made his formal farewell. "Au revoir, ma petite reine," he said, embracing her fondly so that many of the women wept. But as he went quickly to mount his horse, a warm, playful breeze caught at his cloak, the scent of lilac assailed his nostrils and the familiar reach sparkled enticingly in the sunshine. It seemed so senseless to be going to war. Half-way down the steps he stopped and turned, and saw the look on Isabel's face. She was scarcely twelve, and because of all the staring people she was trying so bravely not to cry.

  He went back and lifted her in his arms, kissing her again and again. "Good-bye," he said, in plain homesick English, which was the only language to meet the elemental simplicity of his mood. "Good-bye, dear child, until we meet again."

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Richard landed at Waterford on the first day of June and waited almost a week for Aumerle and his detachment to arrive. Fuming, he marched his own men to Kilkenny, only to wait another fortnight before they caught up with him. Time, for Richard, was the prime factor of the enterprise; for though his face was set towards Dublin, half his preoccupation was with England. And all the while Aumerle grumbled about adverse winds and bad roads and lost equipment. How much of Aumerle's mishaps and excuses were due to inexperience and how many were deliberate, it was difficult to assess.

  All through the wilds of Wicklow the English archers were harried by elusive hordes, who would swoop down suddenly from the hills to snipe, or lie in ambush behind boulders in some eerie glen. Their losses were heavy. Could they have stood on firm, familiar ground, the Irish—fine fighters as they were—wouldn't have stood a chance against their discipline and marksmanship. But Art McMurrough, who styled himself King of Leinster, was far too wily to come out into the open. Let the English pigs bog themselves again and again until their patience was exhausted, their fine clothes ruined and their baggage lost!

  Richard wanted to meet him personally. He had done so before, and knew just how to appeal to the man's rough generosity and how to play on his childlike vanity. But, thanks to Aumerle, he had already been three weeks delayed. He was obliged to leave York's son to negotiate with Art and to press on to Dublin. But he gained little by entering the capital. Owing to McMurrough's guile and the young Earl's ineptitude, unconditional peace was all the Irish would discuss, offering no redress for the rising and the slaughter of their Lord Lieutenant. In a fine fury Richard retraced his steps, searching fruitlessly for a chieftain with whom he could parley, and trying to bring the enemy to battle. Many of his best companies were cut off by bogs in the process, and in the end there seemed nothing for it but to get his depleted army back to Waterford.

  And there, awaiting him, was the news he had feared from England.

  "Henry has come from France," wrote York, shakily.

  "The Duke of Lancaster has landed at Ravenspur, in Yorkshire," reported the messenger, who had already been waiting some days.

  "The only Duke of Lancaster I know is dead," snarled Richard; and gave orders to his captains to have their ships ready to sail in two days.

  But the grey sea looked high as the mountains. His fleet stood a good chance of being scattered. York's messenger had been weeks coming. Henry might be anywhere by now.

  "Send Salisbury across first to rouse North Wales, while we wait for all the stragglers and then cross into South Wales," suggested Edward of Aumerle. "Then we can consolidate at Chester."

  By this time Richard trusted Aumerle no farther than he could see him. But there was enough sense in the advice to draw backing from Salisbury, whose loyalty was above suspicion. Against his own better judgment Richard waited a week for the remainder of his morassed army, and let Salisbury embark. He had done a thing foolish enough to make the Black Prince turn beneath his burnished tomb at Canterbury. He had divided his army.

  Aumerle had cozened him into making a false move at last. For two months Richard had been obliged to take his eyes off the game, and by the time he had brought the small remainder of his archers into Milford Haven the whole face of the checkerboard had been changed. His two knights, Bushey and Green, had been taken. Bolingbroke, by one of his brilliant flanking movements, was at Bristol. And the King in check indeed!

  Rumour was rife even in the little South Wales seaport of Milford. And rumour had it that Salisbury's army had already been dispersed—some said by force, and some by treachery. Richard didn't believe it; but it was being so carefully fostered that even his own Cheshiremen began furtively tearing the white hart from their sleeves and letting each other over the town wall by night.

  More reliable news had been gathered by the page left in charge of Mathe. It was Arundel's brother, recently promoted to the See of Canterbury, who had crossed the Channel the moment the King's back was turned and made it his business to tell Henry Bolingbroke about the seizure of his father's estates. And the Archbishop had gone armed with a long list of signatures of important people who promised to support him if he came back and claimed what was his own. Northumberland and his son, Percy, had been among them. And Bolingbroke had needed no second bidding.

  It had been easy for John of Gaunt's son, marching in a martyr's cause through Lancaster, to augment his little band of followers to the size of an army. But Thomas Arundel had been cleverer than that. Like his late brother, he was a master of propaganda. He had worked on the fears of a people ripe for panic. He announced that the King meant to impose unheard of taxes to pay for the Irish campaign, and that if they resisted he had arranged that his French father-in-law should send him aid. "I, your Archbishop, have just come back from France and it's the talk of Paris," he said. Even the Mayor of London was willing to believe that Richard would take away the City's charters and privileges, as he had done once before. And as Bolingbroke marched westwards, so volunteers poured out to meet him, in such numbers that he couldn't feed them all.

  Obviously it would be necessary to make a stand somewhere until such lying rumours could be disproved. But every plan or movement of Richard's seemed to reach Bolingbroke's ears, so that he was scarcely sorry when Aumerle openly deserted, taking a considerable part of their army with him. Richard sent a messenger to Salisbury altering their rendezvous from Chester to Conway, and set out immediately. In order to outwit the vigilance of enemy spies, he disguised himself as a travelling friar. Clothes, baggage and even his gold altar plate had to be abandoned. Only Mathe he hadn't the heart to leave, and a sort of rope sling was made for him between two horses.

  It was almost impossible to keep an army together over the rough coastal tracks. Hungry, unwashed and weary, Richard and his little band of faithful followers pushed on. Carmarthen, Harlech, Carnarvon, Beaumaris. In each castle the Welsh were loyal enough, but they were pitifully poor. Owen Glendower, their national hero, was a king's man. But they had no rich banquets or state beds to offer. There were nights when Richard was thankful to throw himself down on straw like his groom, and sleep as soundly from sheer exhaustion.

  But they reached Conway at last. Conway with her walled harbour. Conway with her beautiful white towers safely flanked by the sea.

  Instead of bristling with activity, the great castle seemed half asleep. No one came out to meet them. Watchmen called down a careless challenge, mistaking their king for some mendicant friar with a jaded, ragg
ed band of pilgrims. Evidently his messenger had been murdered or waylaid. When Richard entered in under the hastily raised portcullis he noticed that the battlements were sparsely manned, and the stables in the outer bailey half empty. But Salisbury was there, a faithful if perplexed old friend. Watching him shuffle down the keep stairs, Richard realized that the best days of his soldiering were over, and a sharp reprimand died on his lips.

  "What's wrong? Where are all your men?" he asked, as the old man went down on stiffened joints before him.

  Salisbury pressed his lips to his master's hand, almost too agitated to speak. "I raised three thousand, but now—" With one mailed hand he made the all too expressive gesture of a man scattering seed to the wind. "We heard that Bolingbroke had dispersed your force in the south and that you—were killed."

  At that moment Richard wished he had been. Averting his eyes from the earl's bared grey head, he looked hopelessly around at the silent precincts of the castle. No boisterous laughter from the guardhouse, no clatter of pans from the kitchens. Only the monotonous scrape of shingle outside the walls, and the sad shriek of curlews, grey against the wet Welsh sky. What a welcome after six drizzling hours in the saddle! "For God's sake, get us some food," he said. "Mathe here is almost exhausted."

  "Bolingbroke is at Chester!" said the Constable with bated breath, as if such proximity were excuse enough for the paralysis that had stricken his domain.

  It was difficult not to smile at the circumvention of Aumerle's proven treachery. But only the narrow county of Flint lay between them now. It was sufficiently staggering. Richard slid stiffly from his steaming horse and saw Edward Dalyngrigge standing in the doorway of the keep.

  Seldom had he been so glad or so surprised to see any man. Weariness forgotten, he grasped the knight's massive hands between his own. "My good Dalyngrigge, what brings you here?"

  "Before landing at Ravenspur, Bolingbroke and the Archbishop put ashore near Rye to rouse the men on the Arundel estates," he explained. "And after that I made it my business to watch their movements."

  Richard could appreciate that Bolingbroke's movements might be very much the business of any man who had been concerned in the disappearance of Gloucester. "Well, what have you gleaned?" he asked, as they mounted the steps together.

  "Nothing good, I fear," said Dalyngrigge. "The Duke of York stood out as long as he could. But all England has risen against you, sir. He had to give in."

  Richard's thoughts went back to that last happy tournament with Anne, when prentices had thrown their caps in the air and young girls had strewn roses. "All England…" he repeated slowly.

  "It's this grievance about the Lancastrian estates, sir. You know the Englishman's passion for fair play."

  Only a man as hardy as Dalyngrigge would have dared to put it quite like that. Or was it that a hunted king counted for less?

  "And the little Queen?" asked Richard, as soon as they had brought him water to wash with.

  "She is still at Leeds, in Kent."

  "Are they treating her kindly?"

  "Even Bolingbroke would scarcely dare to do less, sir, seeing that she is the King of France's daughter."

  Richard looked round at him, the towel still in his hands. "Meaning that it boots her nothing—being the King of England's wife?"

  Dalyngrigge was no courtier, but what he lacked in tact he made up for in practical kindness. It was he who bullied the few flustered cooks into producing an edible meal, and he who served the King and saw that his followers and Mathe were properly attended to. After the lavishness of Bodiam, it irked him to see a castle so badly run.

  But it was scarcely a cheerful meal. Men ate with their weapons beside them as if at any moment Bolingbroke might appear, and Salisbury kept bemoaning the capitulation of the Duke of York.

  Richard turned to Dalyngrigge. "I take it that wasn't all you came these many miles to tell me about?"

  "No," said Dalyngrigge.

  While the others were still eating, the King led the way up onto the battlements and invited him to follow. The drizzle had ceased and a watery sun was gilding the sands left by an ebbing tide. It was chilly for August and Richard still wore his monkish habit, partly for warmth and partly because Standish and Tom were lovingly trying to cleanse and press his only remaining garments. He leaned his back against the machicolated wall, thrusting both hands through the heavy cord that girt his waist. "Well?" he asked, bracing himself to hear the worst.

  Dalyngrigge met his glance squarely. "They are drawing up an indictment to be presented to Parliament."

  Richard's chin shot out. Shaven of his beard, he looked singularly like the arrogant young man who used to defy Gloucester and the Council. "There isn't any Parliament. And without me they can't call one."

  Dalyngrigge shrugged the technicality aside. He knew more about ships than politics. "One of the accusations against you will be the murder of Gloucester," he said, as if the King hadn't spoken. "It is known that I was in Calais at the time and they would like to get me as a witness. I want you to know that I am prepared to swear on my mother's soul that he did not die by your orders."

  "When you can slip safely away any dark night from Rye?" Because he had met with so much defection, Richard's smile was almost tender. "What moves you to do this for me, Edward Dalyngrigge?"

  For the first time the forthright pirate showed embarrassment. He began to kick at a hardy leek that had somehow grown between the flagstones. "You let me have Lizbeth, and though her body has always been yours, you didn't betray my hospitality." He raised halfshamed eyes to the King's surprised ones. "Oh, I had her watched! I know she's wanton. But all my life I've collected beautiful things— and I'm still hungry for her…"

  Richard was too moved for words. He took a turn for two along the rampart. With his sandals and his tonsured, auburn head, he might have been a youngish monk pacing his cell. Presently he seated himself in a loophole of the battlements. "Tell me what really happened at Calais," he said.

  "I swore to Mowbray that I wouldn't. He wanted your favour—"

  "Mowbray's on a crusade. If I know anything about him, he'll fight in the forefront until he gets killed. It wasn't a light thing for him to be exiled from England." Richard was making conversation while the officer of the watch, going his rounds, saluted and passed by.

  "What did Mowbray himself tell you, sir?" asked Dalyngrigge cautiously.

  Richard watched the young Welshman turn an angle of the wall. "He told me—he had had him smothered."

  "He lied," said Dalyngrigge. "He only meant to."

  Richard leaned forward, his face tense. "You mean—Gloucester is still alive?"

  "No. He died in his sleep."

  A cloud seemed to roll from Richard's brain. He sprang up.

  It was too big a thing to believe. "And all these y-years—" he began incoherently. "Are you certain?"

  Dalyngrigge came closer and began talking in rapid undertones. "Mowbray's men would have no hand in it. Mine, as you know, would skin their own fathers for a florin. That's why it had to be done sooner than he meant, before I weighed anchor."

  Richard clutched at his arm, as if to shake the story out of him.

  "I had promised nothing, as you know—except to take them across," went on Dalyngrigge, "but I'm human—and curious. I followed them up the stairs and stood just inside the room, behind Mowbray. There was a rush light burning beside the curtains of the great bed. As we opened the door it flickered in the draught, throwing light for a moment on the greyness of Gloucester's face."

  Sun and wind and present danger were blotted out. Richard's eyes never left his face. "Go on!" he said. He was there—seeing it all happen—in Calais…

  "He lay on his back with his mouth open and I could have sworn his eyes were open too, staring at us. Yet he made no sound, no movement of fear. I saw my men bend over and feel with clumsy fingers for the other pillow. Dan Burridge, the godless jailbird, stood stock still with it all ready in his hands. But suddenly he let i
t slide to the floor. 'He's already dead!' he cried, and crossed himself. Deschamps, his mate, let out a foul oath. 'What made you bring us here to smother a corpse?' he hissed at Mowbray."

  "And then?"

  "And then I saw Mowbray bend over the bed with the rushlight and pass it across Gloucester's parted lips. And there was no draught this time. Not a flicker."

  Richard leaned upon the wall, his face hidden in his hands. He might have been praying, or recovering from some shock which had shaken him to the core of his being. Dalyngrigge shifted his stance impatiently. This was no time for the King to be behaving as if he really were a monk—with all England rising and Bolingbroke only one narrow county away. But Richard wasn't even aware of his impatience. It wasn't Henry Bolingbroke before whom he had to justify himself, but God. So that he might go to Anne. And God had been extraordinarily good to him. He had been a murderer in intention, but not in fact. And for the venial intent, his confessor promised, there could be reparation. Gratitude filled his soul. "So bring us through things temporal that we lose not the things eternal…" His lips moved in self-dedication, remembering those uplifted moments at Windsor.