“Sweet Lord!” Neville muttered. “I had not known they hurt you so badly.”
“It is past now, beloved,” she said, and drew his hand down. “It is past now.”
He kissed her, but then pulled back. “I don’t want to hurt you,” he whispered, wanting her so badly, yet terrified that she would only remember Richard and de Vere’s rape with every touch of his body.
“Then do only one thing for me,” she said, her hand now gently caressing the side of his face.
“What?”
“Be my lover,” she said.
He smiled through his tears. “Ah, beloved, that is so easy, for art thou not more beautiful than the newly forged plowshare? More wondrous than the warmth of the sun on the turned earthen clods of the field?”
She burst into laughter, and all was well between them.
ARCHANGEL MICHAEL ascended slowly into the Field of Angels, highly pleased. True, Thomas had capitulated to love this night, but it was a capitulation won by manipulation and lies. When Thomas discovered the extent of his betrayal…
Joy suffused the archangel’s being. Tonight, Bolingbroke and Margaret had dug their own doom! Michael began to laugh, and, as he joined with his brothers in the Field of Angels, the entire angelic assembly began to screech in triumph.
CHAPTER III
Before Matins, on the Thursday before the
Nativity of Our Lord Jesus Christ
In the first year of the reign of Richard II
(2 a.m. Thursday 22nd December 1379)
BOLINGBROKE STOOD, the sword still hanging unsheathed from his hand, his eyes filled with tears.
His supernatural perception had allowed him to be privy to most of what had passed between Neville and Margaret—their emotions at least, if not their precise words.
Slowly, still staring at the door, Bolingbroke lifted the sword and slid it back into its scabbard, and then he lifted his hand and wiped away his tears.
This night had repaid in full the faith he’d held in Neville for all these years. Damn it, he thought. I always knew there was a reason to like the man. And then he walked away.
WHEN HE opened the door to his own chamber, Bolingbroke was surprised to see the lamps blazing and Mary whipping about from where shed been pacing back and forth before a brazier.
“Mary? What do you up this late?”
Bolingbroke closed the door behind him, realizing with a further start that Mary’s face was pale with fright.
She put a hand to her throat, her hazel eyes wide and staring. “I woke … and you were gone.
I wondered…”
Her eyes dropped, staring at the sword that Bolingbroke wore. “I’m sorry, my lord. I didn’t mean to question you.”
Bolingbroke took several paces into the chamber, then stopped as Mary’s eyes flared yet wider. “Mary…”
She took several steps away, moving to her side of their commodious bed. “I will trouble you no further, my lord.”
She pulled back the coverlets, and climbed in, forgetting in either her haste or her fright to remove her outer robe.
Bolingbroke stared at her, then turned away, thinking as he unbuckled his sword-belt and laying the weapon on a chest against a wall.
Why was she so frightened?
And then Bolingbroke suddenly realized that Mary’s behavior tonight was nothing unusual.
She was always tense and apprehensive with him, and it was just that, coming back to their chamber still wrapped in the warmth of what he’d felt between Tom and Margaret, he had just
noticed it for the first time.
And no wonder, considering the hatred and force he used to take her on their wedding night.
No wonder, considering that he’d sent her into Richard’s chamber as coldly as Neville had sent Margaret.
For one horrible instant, Bolingbroke was tempted to reflect on the freedoms of bachelorhood, but he managed to overcome the temptation, and to chide himself for not having seen earlier Mary’s discomfort in his presence.
Mary deserved better, not only because her dowry of lands and titles had added greatly to his own power, but because she had that right as his wife, and as an honorable and virtuous woman.
And one who was increasingly ill.
Bolingbroke had wept with Mary when she’d lost that… thing … that she’d hoped would be a son for him, but he had not been truly distressed. He’d known she would not carry to term any child she conceived of him, had known she would lose the child almost as soon as she conceived it.
Had he not seen the gathering darkness deep in her womb long before they’d married?
He did not love her, nor ever would, but Mary deserved his pity, and she did not deserve to live in fear of him.
Bolingbroke, still turned away from Mary, briefly closed his eyes in self-reproach. How different was he from Richard, or from all those he loathed and wished to destroy? There were those who needed to fear him, and those who deserved his implacable ill-will … but Mary was not one of them.
She had lost a child, and of all people Bolingbroke could understand her grief at that.
The silence between them had grown too long, and so Bolingbroke stripped off his tunic and boots, and wandered over to Mary’s side of the bed, unlacing his shirt as he did so.
Lord Jesus, see that terror in her eyes as she sees my body.
“Mary,” he said, sitting down on the edge of the bed and taking her stiff hand in one of his.
“What is wrong?”
“Nothing, my lord!”
He stroked the back of her hand with his thumb, saying to her with a smile what he had once said to Neville. “I am only ‘my lord’ in public, Mary. In our own private rooms we are Hal and Mary. Now, what is wrong?”
“Nothing—”
He smiled again, taking care that it be light and easy. “No, something is wrong. If you insist,”
he said, making his words as non-threatening as his expression, “I shall command that you tell me, as any good and loyal wife should confide in her husband.”
There was a long silence as Mary stared at the coverlet of their bed. When she did speak, it was in the most hesitant and apprehensive manner. “I had wondered,” she said, blushing slightly as her eyes now drifted everywhere but Bolingbroke’s face, “why you should be out so late, and I thought… I thought… perhaps you preferred…” Her voice dropped to a whisper.
“That perhaps you’d found another that you …”
“You thought I had gone to a mistress?” Bolingbroke laughed, truly amused, and the genuineness of his merriment relaxed Mary as nothing else could have done. “Nay, sweetheart, I have no mistress. I would not so dishonor you.” And Lord Christ Savior, I do not need the distraction.
She had relaxed, but still avoided his eyes, and so Bolingbroke continued. “Mary, our marriage has not made a good start, and that is through no fault of your own. I have been a distracted husband, and a poor one because of that.”
His hand tightened about her own, and his voice became grave. “Worse, I have been a careless husband, involving you in my miserable conspiracies. In doing so, I have injured you sorely. For that I beg your forgiveness—would that I had the consideration to do so earlier.”
“That was a bad day, Hal. Many poor decisions were made.”
“Aye,” Bolingbroke said, and allowed contrition to spread over his face. And yet it worked its purpose, he thought, if even now Margaret and Neville he entangled in love.
“Mary,” Bolingbroke hesitated, wondering how he could best broach this subject.
“Mary, tonight I am aware that Tom has made his peace with Margaret, and it shames me that while he has acted, I have not yet done so.”
Now her eyes flew to his. “When I thought that you had gone to your mistress … I had thought her Margaret.”
Bolingbroke flushed, truly shocked and shamed by what she’d revealed. Mary thought Margaret to be his mistress, and yet Mary had been nothing if not gentle and kind to Margaret in the past months.
He lifted her hand, and kissed it softly. “Your nobleness further shames me, Mary. I do not deserve you.”
“Sometimes you frighten me. You are so gallant and so blithe, but sometimes I think I can see a darkness lurking about you that intimidates me. An anger barely quiescent. I fear—”
“Never fear me, Mary!” Bolingbroke said. “Never! Yes, I have cruel thoughts, and angry ones, but they are not directed at you. I am sorry beyond measure that you should have thought so.”
She smiled, contented, and looked him full in the face for the first time. “I thought you did not care for me, Hal. Nor need me.”
He looked deep into her eyes, and then leaned forward and kissed her slowly, and as tenderly as he could.
The sickness was still there; he could see it in the depths of her eyes, and taste it in the faint taint of her mouth. She had a year, perhaps less, and that suited Bolingbroke’s purposes well.