“Tom!” Margaret screamed, still struggling with Mary.
“You are to be taken to Blackfriars,” the sergeant said, somewhat relieved now that the mood of the crowd had been deflected away from himself and his men. “There to face an inquisitory panel led by—”
“Thorseby,” Neville snarled, and met Bolingbroke’s eyes across the forest of pikes that surrounded him. Thorseby, but partnered by Richard’s ill-will “Aye,” said the sergeant.
“Are we to have a burning?” asked a hopeful voice from somewhere several faces back in the crowd.
“No!” Margaret screamed.
Neville still held Bolingbroke’s eyes. “Take care of her,” he said, “for me.”
And then the pikemen wrenched him away, half dragging him down the steps of St. Paul’s.
Margaret finally managed to jerk herself free of Mary and grabbed at Bolingbroke.
He did not look at her, his eyes still on Neville being hauled further and further away.
“Do something!” Margaret said to him.
“What?” Bolingbroke snapped, finally looking at her. “Send Robert and Roger to their deaths at the end of forty pikes?”
“Hal, save him!” Margaret whispered.
“For Christ’s sake, woman!” Bolingbroke snarled back at her. “Be grateful that he is going to Blackfriars where Thorseby will, at the least, observe the formality of an inquisitory panel and then, perhaps, a trial, rather than the dungeons of the Tower, or Ludgate, where he would be dead before nightfall at the swords of Richard’s lackies!”
He looked at Courtenay, standing helpless several paces away, his sword dangling impotently, and still staring to where Neville had disappeared.
“Robert?” Bolingbroke said. “Come, aid your mistress here. We must return to the Savoy as soon as we may.
“Margaret,” he spoke quietly in her ear as Courtenay approached. “Be sure that I will do all that I can to free your husband.”
Margaret made a helpless gesture, and began to weep.
Bolingbroke turned away from her and stared at the dark smudge of Blackfriars.
Damn Richard to all the fires of hell!
“YOU CAN do nothing,” Lancaster said.
“I cannot leave him there!”
“Hal,” Lancaster said as gently, yet as firmly, as he could. “You have no choice.”
Bolingbroke looked at his father, then walked away a few paces, staring sightlessly at a book of hours that his father had open on a lectern.
“Richard wants nothing more than that you should make some grand gesture to free Neville,”
Lancaster continued.
“I cannot leave him—”
“He will be in relatively little danger, Hal—”
“Unless Thorseby suddenly finds him guilty of a flammable heresy.”
Lancaster looked at his son carefully. “Should he find him so guilty, Hal?”
Bolingbroke turned about. “No … no. Of course not.”
“Thorseby will eventually allow him free. I will have the matter raised in Parliament.”
Bolingbroke flashed his father a cynical look, and Lancaster’s temper frayed.
“I will raise the matter in Parliament, Hal, and I will speak to the sergeant of the clerks of the King’s Bench. I will appeal wherever I can … but right now, appeal is all we can do. You must resign yourself to the fact that for the moment Tom is under the stewardship of the Dominican Prior General with the backing of the king. There is nothing you can do against such power, Hal. Nothing.”
He paused. “Not without giving Richard good reason to throw you in the Tower for flouting the law. Hal, do you understand me? Do you?”
Bolingbroke stared at his father, then jerked his head in assent.
CHAPTER XV
Maundy Thursday
In the first year of the reign of Richard II
(22nd March 1380)
— II —
JOAN STOOD before Charles, and he slid his eyes this way and that, not wanting to hear again what she had been telling him these past ten days.
Raise an English siege of Orleans?
“We are not strong enough,” he said, for what seemed to Joan like the hundred and fiftieth time.
“We will have God and His archangels to fight for us,” Joan said, as she always said when he claimed they would not be strong enough.
Charles pouted, trying to hide his fear. He did not want to fight, he did not want to be king (it was just like his grandfather to go and die while enjoying the English king’s hospitality), he simply wanted to be left in peace so that he might enjoy those things in life he most appreciated. For one thing, music; the soothing ballads of the ancient troubadours and the stirring phrases of more modern historians.
He most certainly did not want to be God’s chosen. Not anymore. It had been exciting when Joan had first appeared… but now … now it all seemed so dangerous.
Charles envied Philip of Navarre. Philip was a man born to be a king—gallant, handsome, courageous. He was amusing, spending hours allowing Charles to win at chess, and regaling him with the stories of his womanly conquests. And Philip was compliant. When Philip had united with Charles to retake Paris two years previously he had readily agreed to Charles’
suggestion that Philip be the one to lead their forces through the gates and into the thick of the fight while Charles guarded the rear from his tent.
Charles liked Philip.
But Charles had a horrible suspicion that Joan was going to want Charles to participate in the French action against whoever awaited at Orleans, an action that was going to involve a battle with hardened English warriors rather than disorganized urban craftsmen.
Joan’s eyes narrowed as she watched the emotions play over Charles’ face. By now she knew well enough what he was thinking: he did not want to fight.
Joan thought that contemptible. Charles needed to be strong. France needed a powerful sovereign, not some weak-kneed fellow who wept when he nicked his chin on the edge of his morning razor.
“You lead the army,” Charles said. “You’re the saint, not I.”
Joan almost lost her temper. “I will carry the archangels’ standard at the head of the army, yes, but France also needs to know that you are there. They need to know that they have a king who will lead them from this cursed English occupation.”
Charles dropped his eyes. “I cannot.”
“But—”
“I will not.” His voice raised to an almost-shout. “After all, I am king, am I not? I can do whatever I like, can I not? I can say and—”
“If you are not there then Philip of Navarre will walk out of Orleans as king—not you!” Joan yelled. “God has chosen you, and you may not deny God!”
Charles lapsed into a sulky silence.
Joan took a deep breath, hating to make the concession, but knowing she had to.
“Ride with us,” she said in a tone rich with cynicism, “but perhaps it might be best—to protect your gallant self, of course—if, for the battle, you remained in some nearby secure stronghold. Then, once all is won, you may ride forth to receive the cheers of the good folk of Orleans.”
Charles brightened, suddenly having a vision of himself riding into Orleans in the guise of savior.
“Are you sure I won’t have to fight?” he said.
Joan sighed. “I am sure no one could ever make you fight,” she said.
Charles’ bowels suddenly clenched. “When do we have to leave?” This time Joan’s sigh was even deeper. “Not yet,” she said. “The archangels will tell me when it is best.”
And she knew why the archangels waited: it would be best when the English were at their most dispirited.
It was not only the French Joan hoped to impress with her victory at Orleans. She would also be sending a powerful message to the English and their dog-cursed Demon-King.
CHAPTER XVI
Easter Tuesday
In the first year of the reign of Richard II
(27th March 1360)
THREE DAYS AFTER Joan had managed to persuade Charles to at least ride with the French force to a point somewhere vaguely close to Orleans, Hotspur was moving his own force into position around the city.
Like Charles, Hotspur was riven with doubts, but ones that Charles would be barely able to comprehend. Hotspur wanted to fight, he wanted to feel the sweat of battle about him and to hear the cries of his enemies at the point of his sword… but his master, Richard, appeared intent on making it impossible for him to succeed.
This wasn’t how it was supposed to be.
Hotspur had grabbed at Richard’s offer that he lead an English expedition to aid Count Pedro of Catalonia. It had the potential to not only expand England’s influence in the area (where both Richard and the Percys believed that Lancaster held too much influence via his influence in Castile) but to expand Hotspur’s reputation twenty-fold. Hitherto, Hotspur’s renown had been built entirely on his efforts against the cursed Scots, and while that was good, he would prefer to win wider renown with a continental victory or two.
He’d set off for Bordeaux in high spirits, but continual delays, caused by Richard’s