Lord Christ! He had sent Alice to the flames, and he’d sent Margaret to the brink of them.
He had once thought not to care for Margaret.
He now knew that he did.
He had once thought it would be easy to sacrifice her.
Now he knew that it wouldn’t.
He had once been proud enough, blind enough, to think that love didn’t matter.
Now he knew that it did.
Tears suddenly filled his eyes, but Neville did not immediately wipe them away— Christ knew he’d got used enough to them in the past months. His continual agonizing self-reproach had become a suppurating wound that not only would not heal, but had turned him from his once single-minded determination to win the casket. Never again would he sacrifice Margaret, nor
anyone else, in the effort to gain it. St. Michael had told him that the casket would eventually find him, and, as far as Neville was concerned, that was the way it damn well would have to be from now on.
There was a movement. Raby, walking over to where Bolingbroke, Mary, Katherine and Margaret sat, and leaning down to play with Rosalind—a girl he believed was his child—
before looking up and smiling at Margaret.
She smiled back at him with all the warmth she’d denied him—that I’ve denied her, Neville thought—and a raging emotion consumed him.
He’d felt this emotion many times previously when either Raby or Bolingbroke had smiled at Margaret, and yet it was only recently that Neville had recognized it for its true nature—
jealousy.
“Sweet Jesu,” Neville whispered, “what can I do?” A simple curse that he had been self-proud enough to think so simple to avoid had reached out and ensnared him with shocking ease.
If I allow myself to love her, Neville thought, does that mean I must also offer her my soul? I don’t know. . . I don’t know . . .
“Tom?” Lancaster rose from his chair. “What do you there, lurking in the shadows? It is your name-day, and we have yet to drink to your good fortune. Come man, stand forth.”
The other members of the gathering added their voices, and Neville blinked away his tears and walked over to where Lancaster held out a goblet of wine.
He took it, and glanced about the gathering. The faces were friendly without true warmth.
Although most did not know the details, all knew that Neville’s ill-considered actions had resulted in Margaret’s rape. None, save perhaps Bolingbroke, was prepared to totally forgive him until Margaret herself did.
Katherine rose and joined her husband so that they might both raise the toast to Neville’s health. As she did so Neville caught the look of utter love that passed between them, and the desolation of his own loveless marriage enveloped him like a choking flurry of wet, icy snow.
LATER, AS the evening had dragged on, and the women excused themselves to retire to their beds, Bolingbroke approached Neville.
Their friendship had been strained since that dreadful day: not because Neville blamed Bolingbroke for what had happened to Margaret, but because Neville had been so wrapped in his own guilt that he’d not been particularly approachable. Neville had continued with his duties to Bolingbroke in exemplary fashion—overseeing his estates, wards, accounts and correspondence, and keeping at bay the hordes of hopeful petitioners who plagued every great noble—but he had been distant the entire time.
Damn Margaret, Bolingbroke thought as he smiled and began to chat to Neville about some inconsequential matter. She has carried Tom’s punishment Jar enough. We have too little time left, and so much to accomplish in that time, for her to continue to play the aggrieved maiden.
They talked for a little while about the problems caused by a steward’s illness on one of Bolingbroke’s estates, then finally, Bolingbroke broached the subject which had been troubling him so deeply.
“Tom, my friend,” Bolingbroke said, glancing about to ensure that those left in the hall were still gathered about the hearth some distance away. “I am troubled at your un-happiness. Is it just that we failed to achieve the casket… or is it that Margaret was hurt so badly in the failure?”
Neville dropped his eyes, not replying.
“You said to me before we left London,” Bolingbroke continued, his voice soft, “that you would find it easy to sacrifice Margaret, for she knew her role and had accepted it. You said that you would regard her with respect and pity, but you would not love her. Forgive me, Tom, but that is not the man I see standing before me now.”
“I had thought it easy to sacrifice Margaret,” Neville finally replied, still looking down, “but…
but now I am not so sure. Hal,” Neville lifted his eyes back to Bolingbroke’s, “I have come to loathe myself for what I did to Margaret. I knew that Richard would likely ravish her the first chance he got, but I reasoned that assault away with the thought that it would be worth it to get the casket. But it wasn’t the right casket, was it? And Margaret’s rape was not worth it…
oh, Lord Jesu, Hal, I thought myself immune to her suffering until I saw her blood!”
“But, Tom, Margaret must be sacrificed if mankind is to be saved… mustn’t she? Didn’t you tell me that she is the temptation you must resist if mankind is to be saved? Forgive me, perhaps I misunderstood …”
Neville took a deep breath. “No, you understood aright, Hal. She is the temptation, and if I choose her above God’s cause then mankind is lost.”
“Then what are you to do? Ah, my friend, I do not envy you your choice.”
“I know what I am not going to do,” Neville said. “I will no longer actively hunt out that casket—to do so only causes pain and suffering. Saint Michael said it would eventually find its way to me, and with that I must be content. Hal, Richard had twisted me about his little finger, and hurt Margaret in the doing! He manipulated me into thinking that worthless casket was what I sought… and I fell into his trap.”
“But—”
“That does not lessen my commitment to God’s cause or my duty as Saint Michael’s servant, Hal.”
Bolingbroke repressed a smile.
“Saint Michael once told me,” Neville said, “that my way would be strange, and I must believe him.”
The angelic fool has dug his own doom, Bolingbroke thought.
“My task is to remove the stain of demonry from England’s court, Hal. I, as you are, am committed to the removal of Richard. Once he is gone …”
“Then all will be well.”
“Aye, then all will be well, and the casket and the secrets of the angels will be mine.”
“Except that there still awaits the greater battle between God and the demons.”
Neville’s face lost some of its determination. “Aye.”
“Margaret,” Bolingbroke reminded him softly. “You must decide what to do, for you cannot go on as you are. Your misery distracts you.”
Neville took a long minute to reply. “Hal,” he eventually said, “to love her does not mean I must hand her my soul, does it?”
“No, although you must face that choice eventually. To love her will simply make your decision the harder.”
Strangely, Neville only felt relief. He must eventually resist her, but to love her in the meantime would give her comfort against her eventual sacrifice … wouldn’t it?
CHAPTER II
In the Hour before Midnight
on the Feast of St. Thomas the Apostle
In the first year of the reign of Richard II
(Wednesday 2lst December
— II —
NEVILLE STIRRED, and woke from something which had never been quite asleep.
It was quiet, but not quite silent, in the chamber. A faint hissing and crackling came from the coals m the hearth, and there was a rattling at the windows as the winter wind scurried past.
He opened his eyes, but did not move.
He was alone in the bed. He could not see the space where Margaret should be lying sleeping, for he was turned away from her side of the bed and was staring at the blankness of the far wall of the chamber, but he could feel the emptiness.
While this had been a bad day for Neville, he realized now that the night was going to be even worse.
He suppressed a sigh, wishing he could suppress the emptiness within him as easily. Twice before he had felt this emptiness: when his parents had died when he was five, and when Alice had murdered herself. When his lover Alice had killed herself because he refused to acknowledge that the child she carried was his. When he had abandoned Alice to her fate as he had abandoned Margaret.
Now Margaret was gone from him. She might still walk by his side, but in all things that mattered, Margaret was as dead to him as his parents and Alice. His coldness had killed her as surely as it had killed Alice.