Neville had forgotten Thorseby, and did not know that the Prior General was now nothing but a walking winter.
AS WAS the world outside, so also was the abbey bathed in brilliance. Torches and lamps blazed forth from every available space while sunlight shimmered through the stained glass of the abbey windows. From columns and rafters hung huge flags and banners—
Bolingbroke’s personal standard, the Plantagenet lions, the standards and emblems of the nobles attending—shifting and trembling in the warm updraft caused by the torches.
As Neville strode down the aisle, Raby at his side, Courtenay following some paces farther behind, he saw the faces of the mightiest nobles and greatest clerics of England.
Many a man’s face was relaxed and cheerful as he chatted to his neighbors, but many others were still and watchful, their eyes hooded and unreadable even in this brilliant light.
Neville’s face remained neutral, but inside he wondered: who was friend, and who foe? Who truth and who falsehood?
And what was truth, and what falsehood?
“Tom, if you don’t manage a happier face I swear I will march you straight out the door by the choir stalls,” Raby hissed.
“Hotspur is not here,” Neville said.
“Nay, and neither is Rutland, nor Mortimer. And none of those should be a surprise.”
“Nay… Hal is not so secure as he would like, methinks.” Neville smiled to himself. Nay, not so secure at all. “Ah, here are our places, Uncle. Shall we stand?”
Raby shot Neville another glare as they took their places to the right of the throne and chair on the dais before the altar, then turned his eyes to look back down the nave as the horns sounded, and Bolingbroke began his triumphal entry into the abbey.
THE RITUAL of enthroning a new king was one of great antiquity, but this Michaelmas the ceremony was, of necessity, somewhat different.
This was no smooth transition from father to son, but from disgraced king to pretender, and the rite had been altered accordingly.
Bolingbroke was led, not to the throne, but to a wooden chair next to it. There he sat, bareheaded and close-shaved, dressed simply in linen shirt and red hose, his feet naked.
His face was solemn, his eyes downcast, but even so there was a great strength and beauty within it, and when he raised his piercing gaze at the approach of the Abbot of Westminster there was an overwhelming sense that this was a man who not only had vision, but who also carried within himself the strength with which to make his vision reality.
Neville wondered what would happen if he started forth and shouted exactly what vision Bolingbroke had for England and the world beyond. He suddenly remembered what Bolingbroke had said to him atop a hill so many weeks ago—One day L will lead mankind into the stars—and Neville shuddered, for he realized now that Bolingbroke had meant that quite literally.
He looked away from Bolingbroke and saw that Mary had quietly taken her place on the dais to her husband’s left and slightly behind him. She was seated on a beautifully carved chair, her brow and neck sparkling with jewels. She was wearing an ivory and gold gown, and it suited her soft coloring so much that, for the first time since he’d known her, Neville thought she looked beautiful.
She saw his regard, and inclined her head slightly. One of her eyelids drooped, and Neville thought that had it been anyone else he would have been sure she’d just winked at him.
He inclined his own head to her, and placed his hand on his heart, and bowed very slightly, earning a smile from her and a frown from Raby.
Then a movement caught his eyes, and Neville looked back to the central dais.
There was the Abbot of Westminster, flanked on one side by William Arundel, the new Archbishop of Canterbury, and on the other by Sir Robert Tresilian, Chief Justice of the King’s Bench.
Church, and law, standing side by side to consecrate the new king.
Neville saw the abbot’s eyes darting nervously about the abbey, and then alight momentarily on the Duke of Exeter, a man who had been conspicuously quiet during these past turbulent weeks.
Exeter was Richard’s much older half-brother by Joan of Kent’s first marriage to Sir Thomas Holland, the Earl of Kent (to whom she had borne six children).
Neville tensed, expecting at any moment fully weaponed knights on horseback to violate the abbey… but nothing happened, save that the abbot turned to the assembled lords of England and opened his arms as if in supplication.
“The throne of England sits vacant!” shouted the abbot. “What is your will? What is your will?”
“Bolingbroke!” returned a shout, and Neville realized with a start that it had come from Raby at his side.
“Bolingbroke!” shouted someone else, and then the shout rose from thousands of throats:
“Bolingbroke! Bolingbroke! Bolingbroke!”
Under the shouting came a strange undertone, and Neville, standing almost bemused at the thunderous acclamation echoing about him, realized that it was the roar of the crowds outside the abbey, and they were shouting “Hal! Hal! Hal!”
The abbot turned to Bolingbroke, and raised him from the chair, and blessed him, and then led him to stand before the throne. Monks came forward, as they had done at Richard’s coronation, carrying the robes and sword of state. The abbot, aided by two of the monks, solemnly robed Bolingbroke, and girded the sword about his hips, and then indicated he should take his place on the throne of England.
All this time the shouting continued: Bolingbroke! Bolingbroke! Bolingbroke!
Now the abbot turned about and raised his hands for silence.
The shouting murmured to a close.
“You have called for Henry of Bolingbroke, Duke of Lancaster, to take the throne,” he called in a clear ringing voice. “Does anyone here know of good reason why Bolingbroke should not accede to your will?”
And as a silence fell like a heavy, stifling curtain across the abbey, Bolingbroke turned his face slightly and stared directly at Neville with his clear, gray eyes.
Neville could not look away from Bolingbroke. He understood that at this moment he could stop Bolingbroke if he wanted. All he had to do was to step forth and shout of what he knew, and, by the indecision he’d seen on the abbot’s face, the thinly veiled hostility on Exeter’s, and the hooded eyes he’d seen as he’d entered the abbey, he was well aware that there would be people enough within the abbey to stop the ceremony progressing any further.
Enough people to call for a halt, and a questioning.
Bolingbroke’s eyes bored into Neville as the silence within the abbey continued. I could speak and rum this triumph now, thought Neville, holding Bolingbroke’s eyes easily. What shall I do, Hal? What do you think I will do?
He thought about what would happen if he did step forth and speak his doubts. Harsh words, anger … and the vile sound of swords being drawn from scabbards.
If he spoke now, then this abbey would not witness the commencement of a new reign, but the opening thrusts of a long and bloody war as the barons of England fought out the succession between themselves. Neville’s eyes slipped to Mary.
She was still watching him, and again the corners of her mouth lifted. She looked so happy, so happy …
His eyes slipped back to Bolingbroke who still regarded him. There was something in his face that made Neville remember that glorious moment when Bolingbroke had ridden his stallion into the heart of an army who could have killed them, and laid his life in their hands.
He had given them the choice: Freedom, or his death, and they had chosen freedom…
freedom and Bolingbroke.
Sweet Jesu, how he had laved Hal at that moment.
Neville suddenly realized that all he wanted was to recapture that love—but to capture it with truth this time.
And so, as the world twisted and waited through the silence of the abbey, and as Bolingbroke stared, waiting, Neville made himself a vow: If Bolingbroke, whatever his birth blood, worked tirelessly and truthfully for what he had promised those men that day, then Neville would condemn heaven into hell if it might help him. But if Bolingbroke had lied both to England and to Neville …well then, hell awaited, and Neville would do everything in his power to see Bolingbroke—
—and Margaret?—
—thrust down into it.
He shrugged, very slightly—I will not speak—and Bolingbroke’s shoulders visibly relaxed, and he looked back to the abbot.
The abbot nodded, then spoke, declaring Bolingbroke the true elected king of the English people, and the moment, that one single moment when Neville could have stopped it, was lost forever.
And the abbot turned, and took the heavy jeweled crown, and lowered it upon Henry Bolingbroke’s brow. And time stilled.
THE ARCHANGEL burst through the great arched doorway of the abbey and stood in a pillar of pulsating light, staring up the nave to where the Demon-King sat his throne.