And she turned and walked to the door. Margaret would be the better for a soak in a tub of warm rosewater.
At least her flesh would, and perchance it might even help her spirit.
NEVILLE STARED, his eyes and mind trying to make sense of what he saw. The parchment was filled with strange lines and symbols … He stared, shaking his head slightly, wondering if this was some arcane angelic language that he must master in order to—
Lancaster roared, and snatched the parchment from Neville’s hands. He ripped it into shreds, tossing them away, then pushed Neville to one side and reached deep into the casket, pulling
out scores more rolls and scattering them across the floor.
There was no book.
Bolingbroke had stepped back, and he now looked at Lancaster and Neville, his eyes veiled, his face expressionless.
Neville, confused and dazed, picked up one of the rolls Lancaster had scattered and opened it.
The same perplexing lines …
“Damn you to Ml” Lancaster roared, and threw one of the rolls into Bolingbroke’s face. “Look what you have stolen!”
Bolingbroke grabbed at the parchment, and unrolled it a little.
His face twitched, then assumed an expression of deep puzzlement. “But… but this is…”
“The entire accursed casket is filled with the plans for the re-roofing of Westminster Hall,”
Lancaster said. “No angelic incantations. No heavenly secrets. No justification for you claiming Richard is a demon from hell! What have you and Neville done?’
Neville blinked, and his vision miraculously seemed to clear. The roll he held was covered in intricate drawings of hammerbeams and trusses, spires and—
He screamed, and that scream stilled the entire room.
Lancaster turned back to Neville, reaching out a hand, but in one sudden, violent movement, Neville sprang to his feet, grabbed the now-empty casket, and hurled it through the leaded windows of the solar with an almighty swing of his shoulders.
Glass exploded, and everyone save Neville spun around and covered their faces.
“What have I done?” Neville whispered, blood running down his face from where a splinter of glass had lodged in his hairline. “What have I done?”
A cold wind swept through the shattered windows, and the blood and glass-spattered parchment rolls at Neville’s feet shifted and whispered, and Neville began to laugh—a harsh, grating, despairing noise that sounded to Bolingbroke like the rustling of angels’ wings across the ice-field of heaven.
CHAPTER VI
Vespers, the Vigil of the Feast of St. Francis
In the first year of the reign of Richard II
(early evening Monday 3rd October 1379)
— V —
HE WENT TO HER, but she turned her head, and would not speak.
She lay on her side, curled about Rosalind as if the little girl was the only thing which could save her from the wickedness of this day.
“Margaret—”
Still she would not answer.
“Tom…”
He turned around from where he sat by the bed. Mary stood behind him, and Agnes sat yet further away by a brazier.
“Get out!” Neville said.
Mary’s normally sweet and docile face contorted with anger. “Get out? Get out? Dare you speak that to me? What are you that you think it better you be here and I not? What right have you to stay by Margaret’s side and I not?”
“Mary—”
“My lady to you, Neville! I may not be important or dear enough for my husband to confide his darker thoughts to, but anyone could see the care and consideration you and he lavished on that casket you carried from Westminster. Even I can now understand that the mission you sent myself and Margaret on was a mere ruse so that you might the more secretively work your mischief while your wife was being raped.”
She paused to take a deep breath, and Neville flinched at the expression on her face.
“It was not Richard and de Vere who raped Margaret,” Mary said, now very quiet, “but you …
you, and my husband.”
Neville wrenched his eyes away, for he could not bear the accusation and revulsion in Mary’s.
“Ah! I will leave you,” she said, “for I cannot bear to remain in the same space as that which you inhabit. Agnes will stay here to watch over Margaret, and you will not ask her to leave.”
Neville glanced at Agnes and saw on her face an expression very much like that which now darkened Mary’s face.
He jerked his head in agreement, and Mary stared a moment longer before she turned and left.
HE REACHED out to touch her face, but halted at the sound of her voice.
“Do not lay a hand to me.”
“Margaret… Meg—”
“Was the casket worth it, Tom? Are you now filled with the secrets of angels? Is my suffering to be put to one side as a painful but necessary subterfuge to gain your precious casket?”
Neville found it very hard to speak. He looked at Rosalind, the girl so peaceful and yet surrounded by so much anger and pain.
He raised his eyes, and met Margaret’s stare, and suddenly, horrifically, understood that she knew.
“It was not the right casket,” he whispered.
Margaret began to laugh, a sound as twisted and bitter as Neville’s had been in Lancaster’s solar.
“Not the right casket? Ah well, then, my beloved husband, perhaps I should offer myself to be raped once again—or two or three times if that is what it takes—so that you and Hal can scurry about Richard’s apartments looking in dusty corners for the right cursed casket!”
“I will not ask this of you again!”
“That you asked it of me once is damning enough, Tom.”
He dropped his head and began to weep. “Margaret, I am sorry—”
“No, you are not, for isn’t this what the angels chose you for? The great pious priest, cold enough to cast even the most innocent into the flames for God’s great cause.”
Now he raised his head again. “Margaret, I am more penitent that you can know.'” She looked at the tears streaking his cheeks, and wondered, and then realized that she did not care. Not tonight. Tonight all she wanted to do was to lie back and grieve for what might have been and to wallow in hate for him. “What now?” she asked softly.
He reached out a tentative hand and placed it over hers where it cradled Rosalind’s head.
She did not pull her hand away, although Neville felt her flesh stiffen under his.
“Tomorrow we embark for Kenilworth,” he said. “Margaret, it is a beautiful place, and you will be surrounded by those who love you.”
“Will Mary and Katherine be there? Rosalind? May I bring Agnes?”
“Aye, of course.”
“Then I will be among those who love me.”
Again Neville flinched.
“I wish this was a world of women,” Margaret said in a toneless voice, “for then there would be no hurt, and there would be no pain.”
And to that, Neville had nothing to say.
BOLINGBROKE CAME to her very late that night. She opened her eyes to find him standing by the bed.
She twisted her head a little. Katherine, who had come to sit with her through the night, was slumped sound asleep in a chair a few paces away.
It was a very sound, magical sleep, and Margaret understood that no matter what happened Katherine would not wake. She also knew that the woman’s enchantment would have cost Bolingbroke considerable effort.
She looked to what she could see of his face in the shadows: there were lines of weariness stretching from nose to mouth and circling his eyes.
There was also deep sorrow in his eyes.
“And has the day gone well for you, my lord?” she said.
His mouth thinned. “It has gone well for both of us,” he said. “Our purpose has been achieved.”
“I don’t think I want his love,” she said. “Not now.”
“We cannot stop what we have begun, Margaret. You know this. Besides, you agreed to the plan. You wanted Neville to love you.”
Her face tightened. “I ‘agreed’? More like I was forced by your ambitions, Hal. I called it abominable trickery then, and I still call it thus now.”
He did not respond with words, but merely held her eyes with his own steady gaze.
She sighed, then looked down to Rosalind still curled asleep in her arms. Very carefully she shifted the girl to one side, then lifted the bedcovers and slid painfully out of bed.
She was naked.
Bolingbroke drew in a sharp breath, but Margaret ignored him. There was a small oil lamp burning on a table close by and Margaret picked it up, holding it so that its light shone down the length of her body.
“Can you see what they did to me, Hal?”
She walked closer to him, and with her free hand she lifted one of his and placed it first on one of her torn breasts, then ran it down over the swollen abrasions littering her belly to the scabs only barely forming over the wounds further below.