All three men turned and stared at the newcomer.
“My Lord of Oxford,” Lancaster said, with no bow and no respect in his voice, “how pleasing to see you here. But also how passing strange, for I thought that surely you would have been at Richard’s side.”
Robert de Vere, Earl of Oxford, lifted a corner of his mouth in a well-practised sneer. He was a man of some twenty-five or twenty-six years, of the broad chested and shouldered physique that often softened to fat in later years. His face, however, did not suit his body: it was narrow and suspicious, with a sallow complexion and scarred along cheeks and nose by a childhood pox. Yet this was an arresting face, for his dark eyes and full-lipped mouth were of startling beauty, and invariably made any who met him for the first time wonder if perhaps he had stolen both eyes and mouth from some poor beauteous corpse and somehow incorporated them into his otherwise fox-like features.
“And will you lead our fine English knights and archers to so humiliate the French?” Bolingbroke said.
De Vere simpered, the expression challenging rather than coquettish. “Why, dear Hal, I much prefer the comforts of home fires and the sweet meat of our home-bred wenches. Perhaps,” and his face suddenly, violently, darkened into outright threat, “you might like to lead the charge? Unless your father cannot bear the thought of you spitted on some French count’s lance, of course. Well? What say you, oh brave one?”
Neville suddenly realised that the crowd’s cheers for Bolingbroke must surely have been heard by de Vere … as most surely also by Richard, and he wondered if the same thoughts had occurred to them as had to him.
How high did Bolingbroke’s ambition fly?
And how much danger did that place Bolingbroke in?
“Richard must surely be pleased that the treaty is finally to be signed,” Neville said, succeeding in deflecting de Vere’s attention from Bolingbroke to himself.
“Ah … Neville, is it not?” Some of the threat died from de Vere’s face. “I have heard from Richard that you have recently gained yourself a most beautiful and alluring wife. She has brought you no dowry or riches, to be sure, but then,” now nastiness filled de Vere’s face, “sometimes the heat of the bedsport can compensate for almost anything, is it not true?”
“Enough!” Lancaster said. “De Vere, you speak with the utmost vileness on occasion, thinking yourself high above those who outrank you both in birth and in manners. You have favour only because you are Richard’s current pet. Be wary you do not discover a dagger in your back the day that favour dies!”
“And you,” de Vere said, “should watch out for the dagger in your back, for I think it not long in the coming!”
And with that he was gone, shoving his way through the assembled nobles as they found their way to their seats.
“Father!” Bolingbroke said, making as if to go after the Earl of Oxford.
“No!” Lancaster grabbed his son’s arm. “Leave him! He is obnoxious, but of no account.”
“How can you say that?” Bolingbroke said. “How dare he so threaten you!”
Lancaster smiled sadly. “The world has changed,” he said. “My father and brother are dead, and nothing is as once it was. Perhaps we should just accept it.”
Bolingbroke opened his mouth again, but Lancaster waved it shut. “No. Say it not, Hal. Not today, for I am too weary. Come, let us find our seats … Tom, I believe there is a place for you to stand behind us. Come, come, leave de Vere’s unpleasantness behind us.”
Once the nobles were seated, their retainers and men-at-arms ranked behind them, and the crowds who had rumbled out of London to witness the public humiliation of the French restrained as best could be behind wooden barriers and sharp spears and pikes, a clarion of trumpets sounded, and the monarchs of England and France appeared in magnificent procession from behind a row of screens masking the entrance to the palace complex.
Or, rather, Richard, with Isabeau de Bavière on his arm, proceeded in magnificent procession. King John of France sulked and shuffled his way towards the table, his eyes occasionally darting to the sky, almost as if he were waiting for a sympathetic raven to deposit an excuse not to sign the treaty now spread out on the table before them.
The crowd roared and every bird atop the spires of Westminster Hall, Abbey and Palace fled into the sun to finally alight far away on the banks of the Thames.
John descended into a black fugue; his last chance to avoid signing the treaty was fluttering away.
Traitor birds!
If John had slipped further towards his dotage, then Richard had moved from youth to man in the few months since Neville had seen him last.
Kingship sat upon him well. He still affected his cloth of green, almost as if he never wanted (or wanted no one else) to forget that gay May Day of his coronation, but now it had been augmented with enough jewels and chains of gold that he seemed to outrival the sun itself for power and glory. His face was more mature, harder … more knowing and far more cunning, if that were possible.
Every step of his green-clad legs radiated confidence, every slight movement of his crown-topped head bespoke the power that he commanded.
Richard was king, and no one would ever be allowed to forget it.
On his arm Isabeau de Bavière walked straight-backed and proud. She was aging now, but Neville thought he had never seen a more beautiful or desirable woman. She was grey-haired and wrinkled, and her delicate form very slightly stooped, but her eyes were of the clearest sapphire, sparkling in the light, and her face … her face was so exquisitely fragile that Neville thought a man would lust to bed her simply so he could prove to himself (as to his fellows) that he could do so without breaking every bone in her body.
The English crowd, both men and women, instinctively loathed her on sight. Women catcalled, and men roared lusty words, exposing themselves until guards struck them where it was most likely to sting and forced them to cover up again.
Isabeau cared not. She had endured insults all her life and yet none had touched her. Men and women both had scorned her, yet she had lived out her days manipulating kings and popes alike. She was a woman of her own mind, and free to indulge her ambitions with the wealth of a husband she had managed to drive beyond the bounds of sanity (Isabeau had never been slow to recognise the potential of the well-trained-and-aimed lust of a peacock). Isabeau de Bavière was a woman both beyond and out of her time.
She lifted her free hand and elegantly waved to the spitting, roaring crowd.
Lancaster groaned, and cast his eyes heavenward.
Only a few paces away now, Isabeau de Bavière turned her eyes to Lancaster and sent him a swift, conniving look that had Neville wondering if Lancaster himself had ever succumbed to her charms. Why was it that Lancaster had called off the proposed marriage between Catherine of France and Bolingbroke … had Isabeau sent him a carefully worded warning about possible incestuous complications?
Suddenly Neville had to repress a laugh. He had an image of all the highest nobles and princes of Europe furtively counting dates on their fingers and wondering if they were possibly responsible for Charles or Catherine.
Had all Europe shared in the making of King John’s soon-to-be-declared-bastard heir?
The laugh finally escaped, and of all who shot Neville looks, Isabeau de Bavière’s was the only one that included a glint of amusement.
And so, with the sun shining, the wind gusting and the crowd roaring, Isabeau de Bavière leaned over the creamy parchment that contained the words which made the Treaty of Westminster and signed away her son’s self-respect.
Then she leaned back, held out the quill for the frowning, pouting King John, and laughed for sheer joy at the beauty of