“Was it worth your wife’s rape?” he said to Neville, his voice very, very quiet.
“My lord,” Neville began, then had to clear his throat and begin again. “My lord, this casket contains what I—and the angels—need to drive evil back into hell—”
“And in order to obtain that casket you have created hell on earth for your wife, Neville.
Having knowingly made use of evil to achieve your ends, you have become evil incarnate yourself.”
Neville’s mouth opened, but he could say no words. Lancaster’s face was so full of accusation that Neville jerked his eyes elsewhere, only to meet Raby’s stare.
As his eyes locked into Neville’s, Raby deliberately turned his face away.
“Uncle, we bad to obtain the casket—”
“And the best plan you could formulate was to have Margaret raped?” Gloucester said, and his voice was as viciously judgmental as Lancaster’s had been. “Neville, who was it once preached to me that a husband’s first care was to protect his wife? To respect his wife?”
Neville dropped his eyes from Gloucester and Lancaster, then abruptly let his grip on the casket go, making Bolingbroke stagger as the falling casket pulled him off balance.
Neville closed his eyes, and tried for a brief moment to pretend that he was alone in this black, black world. But it didn’t work, because he could still feel the combined weight of Lancaster’s, Raby’s and Gloucester’s stares on him.
He looked up again. “We have to open it,” he said. “Once it is open—”
“Even when it is open,” Raby said, “nothing shall remove the stain of shame from your soul for your actions this day.”
CHAPTER V
After Nones, the Vigil of the Feast of St. Francis
In the first year of the reign of Richard II
(afternoon Monday 3rd October 1379)
— IV —
KATHERINE AT FIRST steered Margaret toward the chamber she shared with Neville, but Margaret wailed the instant she understood Katherine’s intentions.
“Perhaps my chamber—” Mary began.
“No!” Margaret said, speaking her first coherent word since the rape. “No. Not where you and Hal sleep.”
“Then you will come to my chamber,” {Catherine said firmly and to that Margaret made no objection.
BETWEEN THEM, Bolingbroke and Neville carried the casket to Lancaster’s private solar.
Behind them rang the heavy footsteps of the three other men.
Once they were all inside the solar, Lancaster closed the door and bolted it.
“Explain,” he said.
Bolingbroke briefly began to tell them what had transpired, but before he was too far into his tale Lancaster interrupted him.
“You exposed Sturry and Arundel? My God, Hal, what possessed you?”
Bolingbroke had no time to explain, for Raby stepped forward, and wrenched Bol-ingbroke about by the shoulder to face him.
“You fool boy!” he said. “Think you to aspire to your father’s greatness? Think you to play the great peer of the realm? Where are your senses? You have not only endangered Sturry and Arundel, good men who will surely pay for their loyalty, but you have also endangered your father. God in heaven, Hal, Richard will send a man to the executioner’s block for stealing a slice of beef from his kitchens, let alone a casket as important as you say this one is!”
Raby took a furious breath. “You have likely destroyed the entire Lancastrian house with this foolish thoughtlessness! And you,” he turned to face Neville, “have in like manner destroyed a precious woman.”
Neville’s guilt found some relief in angry accusation; Raby had been quick enough to push Margaret away when a marriage with Lancaster’s daughter beckoned. “She was not so precious that you could not bear to abandon her, Uncle!”
“Enough!” Lancaster roared. “I have had enough. Neville, open that accursed casket now. Let us see if what it contains is justification enough for destroying both Margaret and this entire house.”
Bolingbroke and Neville had set the casket to one side when they entered the room; now Neville hefted it himself and placed it atop a table. It was locked, and Neville had no key, but he had no pity for this object which had caused so much misery, and so he took the knife from his belt and slid it underneath the lock and jerked upward with all the force of his guilt and anger and frustration.
The lock clattered to the floor, and everyone jumped.
Neville took a deep breath, then flung back the lid.
AGNES HAD met Courtenay on her way down to the gardens to let Rosalind play freely in the fresh air, and his face had told her that something was terribly, terribly wrong. “What?” she’d said. “The Lady Margaret,” he’d whispered, and it was enough to send Agnes running.
Now she met the three women at the door to Katherine’s chamber, Rosalind still clutched in her arms.
As had Katherine, Agnes needed only to look upon Margaret’s face to know what distressed her. Again, looks were exchanged between the women supporting Margaret.
“She will need to be bathed,” Katherine said as she opened the door. “Nay, she shall need to be scrubbed clean, body and, then, pray to sweet Jesu, spirit as well. Agnes … it is Agnes, is it not?… good. Agnes, will you see to the water? Rosewater, I think. Come, let us lay Margaret on the bed, so, and put her sweet girl in the corner on the pillow there, and thus we may set about our task.”
Agnes left the room to organize hot water from the kitchens—she requested that the pages leave the urns outside the door—then returned as quickly as she might with a small urn of warmed rosewater that they might use in the meantime.
Mary and Katherine had stripped Margaret—Margaret was moaning and attempting to cover herself with the linens with which they meant to wash her—and Katherine turned as Agnes re-entered with her urn of rosewater.
“Good,” she said, then turned back to the weakly writhing and moaning woman before her.
“Margaret, my sweet, we are women only. Cease your wriggling and we can— sweet Jesu!”
Mary had pulled the last remnants of Margaret’s undershift from her, and Katherine had
caught sight of the extent of Margaret’s bruises and abrasions.
She stared, then looked across to Mary. “What happened?”
Mary took a deep shuddering breath, and spoke in curt, quiet words.
As she did so, Rosalind began to wail.
NEVILLE STARED. The casket was filled with creamy parchments.
At last! At last!
“Well?” said Lancaster and Bolingbroke together. They had stepped up to Neville’s back.
“Wait,” Neville said in a tight voice, reaching trembling hands for the top parchment.
It was so quiet. It shouldn’t be quiet. There should, he the triumphed chorus of angels . . .
There should be . joy in my heart.. . why is there no joy in my heart?
Neville lifted the first roll—Wynkyn de Worde’s book must be under this initial flurry of rolls—
and gently hefted it in his hands.
It was light for the weight of secrets that it carried.
“Open it!” said Bolingbroke, and Neville could almost have turned about and struck him for his impatience.
“Wait,” he said again.
The trembling in his hands had increased to such an extent that Neville almost dropped the parchment roll as he turned it over and started to unroll it. He had to stop, consciously force some calm into his hands (and belly and heart and thoughts), before he could continue.
Finally, he unrolled it a few turns and spread it out so that he, Lancaster and Bolingbroke could see what it contained.
They stared, then …
“What is that?” Lancaster said.
MARGARET SAT up and grabbed the washcloth from Mary’s hands. She pushed Katherine’s hands to one side and began to scrub savagely at the injured and stained flesh of her inner thighs and groin.
“Margaret!” Mary cried, and reached her hands out to snatch the cloth away from Margaret, but Katherine pulled her back.
“No,” she said. “Let her do this. It is something she needs to do.”
“But she will further injure herself!”
“Perhaps,” Katherine said. “But it is something that she needs to do!”
Agnes had picked up Rosalind and was rocking her to and fro, her eyes fixed on Margaret’s frantic cleansing of herself.
Tears ran down Agnes’ cheeks.
Margaret’s scrubbing became even more frenetic, then she suddenly burst into deep, agonized sobs, lifted the now torn and bloody washcloth, and hurled it as far away from her as possible.
Mary dropped onto the bed beside Margaret, hugging her as tightly as she could, and Margaret clung to her, her entire body now racked with the strength of her humiliation and pain.
Like Agnes, Katherine had tears streaming down her cheeks, and she ineffectually wiped them away.
There was the sound of footsteps outside, and a discreet knock at the door.
“The water—” Agnes said, looking for somewhere to put Rosalind down.
“No,” Katherine said. “Keep her in your arms. I can see to the urns.”