“But you—we—have one bad enemy within the Dominicans. Prior General Richard Thorseby,” Bolingbroke said, spitting out a seed and tossing it into the grate.
“Aye. No one has seen or heard from him since June last year when the rebels torched Blackfriars. I do not like that.”
“Well,” Bolingbroke said, “no doubt he will turn up sooner or later, and no doubt with a renewed plan to see you incarcerated, Tom. But for the moment, I do not think the Dominican whispers are the worst—”
“But these whispers that Richard is still alive?” Raby said.
“I will return to those in a moment,” Bolingbroke said. “There is one worse potential traitor in England that I think we all need to discuss. Here. Now.”
Northumberland slowly rose to his feet. His face was grave, his eyes hard. “You refer to my son, sire. Why do you not say it aloud?”
Bolingbroke faced the earl, his own eyes as flinty as Northumberland’s. “He has refused to swear allegiance to me. He sits in the north with an army of twenty thousand behind him—and the ability to raise another twenty thousand—that he claims to need against the Scots. He looks south, and hungers. Combine all those facts, my lord, and I see a very real threat.”
“He has done nothing wrong!” Northumberland said.
“Save refuse to swear me allegiance and collect swords about his person in numbers the Scots do not warrant!” Bolingbroke shouted.
“Sire,” Raby said softly, rising to place a cautionary hand on Bolingbroke’s arm.
Bolingbroke shot Raby a furious look, then turned his gaze back to Northumberland. “Will you swear me Hotspur’s allegiance, my lord? Will you swear to me that your son will remain a good and faithful subject?”
“Hal!” Raby barked. “That is enough. Northumberland saw you to your throne. Do not ask this of him now when—”
“I am not a stable boy for you to so rebuke me,” Bolingbroke said, swinging back to Raby. “Remember who it is you address.”
Then he spoke to Northumberland again. “Your aid has proved invaluable to me, Northumberland,” he said, “but do you have any idea how quickly my love and support of your house will fade if your son leads an army south?”
“Why did I support you against Richard if I thought to then throw my son against you?”
“Perhaps,” Bolingbroke said, his voice very low, his eyes furious, “you supported me against Richard so that eventually your son might have an easier path to the throne.”
“Sire—” Northumberland growled, taking a step forwards.
“This has gone far enough,” Neville said, and nodded to John Scarle, the Chancellor, who laid a hand on Northumberland’s arm, and whispered something in his ear.
“Northumberland cannot swear Hotspur’s allegiance,” Neville said to Bolingbroke. “He cannot! Hotspur is a man grown, and must do it himself. Do not visit the son’s sin of omission on the father who has proved such a valuable ally to you.”
Bolingbroke stared at Neville, then nodded, the muscles about his face and neck visibly relaxing. He looked to Northumberland, still standing, still staring furiously.
“My lord, forgive me. This afternoon’s treachery has proved a great trial, and has made me snap at those I should trust before all others.”
Northumberland waited a few heartbeats, then inclined his head, accepting the apology. Scarle tugged a little at his arm, and Northumberland sighed, and sat down.
Gradually, the other men resumed their seats, and Bolingbroke took a sumptuously carved chair close by the unlit grate.
“I must bring Richard’s body back to London,” he said. “Mary was right. The people must view it.”
“Is it,” Raby said carefully, “in a state fit to be viewed?”
Bolingbroke raised his eyebrows, assuming an innocent expression. “In a state fit to be viewed, Raby? Whatever do you mean? Richard died of a fever, not a vicious clubbing or a tearing to bits by dogs. Of course it is fit to be viewed. As fit as any six-month-dead corpse can be, of course.”
He sighed. “No doubt the royal purse shall have to bear the cost of the candles placed about the coffer, and the mourning robes for the official wailers and weepers. Richard has ever been an expensive burden to England.”
She dreamed, and yet it felt unlike any dream she’d been lost in before, for in this dream she was both witness and participant.
She dreamed of a woman, a woman on her knees atop a dusty, stony hill swept by a warm, fragrant wind. Above pressed a heavy, depressing sky; the atmosphere was hot and humid, and full of noiseless lament. In the distance was a walled city dressed in pale stone, and a roadway lined with people leading from the city gates to the hill where she knelt.
The woman’s world had turned to grief. Her tears ran down her cheeks and dripped into the neckline of her white linen robe. Dark hair lay unbound down her back and clung in dampened wisps about her face. A cloak of sky blue lay to one side.
Several yards away lay her husband, still and dead, his corpse battered and bloodied. He had been sprawled across a rock for the vultures to feast on.
She reached out a hand towards him, wordlessly, now too exhausted and emotionally devastated to weep any more than she already had.
How could it have ended like this? Why had people hated him so much?
“Take her!” came a shout, and she jerked her head up at the same moment her hands slipped about her swollen belly.
People—soldiers, several priests and a crowd of ordinary men and women—surged towards her, and she started to rise. But her foot caught on the hemline of her robe, and she tripped and sprawled on the dusty earth.
She tried to rise again, desperate, knowing they meant her death, but she was too late.
Hands seized her by the shoulder of her robe and by her hair, and dragged her to her feet.
“Whore!” someone cried, and the entire crowd took up the accusation. “Whore! Whore! Whore!”
“I am not,” she said, but her words were lost in the roar of the crowd. “I am not!”
I am not a whore, but a queen, she wanted to say, not understanding why it was she thought that.
But delusions were not going to help her or her unborn baby now.
They dragged her forth, ignoring her pitiful cries for mercy, to where a long-dry well had been covered over. Men tore away the wooden beams that closed the well, exposing a thirty-foot drop.
Then, still roaring their hatred, they threw her down.
They stopped roaring soon enough to hear her body hit the rocks at the bottom of the well.
A minute passed, then one of the priests grunted as he saw her limbs move slightly in their agony.
“She lives still,” he said, bending and picking up a rock.
All about him, those closest to the rim of the well bent down, and picked up their own rocks.
Then they began, one by one, to pitch them down towards the woman.
It took them most of the remaining hours of the afternoon to kill her completely, and before they were done they’d broken every bone in her body.
Margaret