“Margaret?” a voice said, and she thought it was Wat’s voice, and she blinked, and saw his face hovering over Tom’s shoulder.
“Wat?” she whispered, disorientated by his presence.
Then another man spoke to her, and she blinked again, and turned her head, and there was Hal, his face ravaged with pain and anger.
And beyond Hal, several paces away, flat on the cobbles of the courtyard, lay a man all burned and seared down one side of his body, and Margaret blinked again, and thought that this man’s devastated face looked strangely like Lancaster’s.
CHAPTER IX
Nones on the Saturday within
the Octave of Corpus Christi
In the second year of the reign of Richard II
(noon 2nd June 1380)
— III —
MARGARET MURMURED, and Neville let her down to her feet. She stared at the tableau before her, horrified.
There were men grouped about Lancaster’s still-smoking body: Raby, Roger Salisbury, several men-at-arms and a man whom Margaret did not recognize.
As Agnes took Rosalind from her arms, this man now walked to where she stood with Neville and Bolingbroke.
“He is alive,” said the man. “Just.”
“Sweet Jesu, Whittington,” Bolingbroke whispered. A tear had fallen from one eye, leaving a grimy trail down his sooty cheek. “How could they have done this?”
“If they realize that they have not killed him they will be back,” Whittington said.
“Hal,” Raby said from where he knelt by Lancaster, “we have to move. Now.”
“The water,” said Tyler. “It is the only way.”
Bolingbroke nodded, and roused himself from whatever horrified reverie he’d sunk into. “The water,” he said, and looked to Salisbury. “Are there any barges or punts left from this conflagration?”
Salisbury moved to see, but Whittington waved him to a halt.
“I have a barge waiting,” he said. “But you must go. Now.”
“You have done well for us today,” Bolingbroke said to the alderman.
“I wish I could have done more,” Whittington said.
“What happened?” said Neville.
“What happened?” Bolingbroke said, turning to stare at him. “What happened? Men stole into
my father’s house and set it afire. Then they took my father and they threw him into a stable red with flames.”
Raby had been directing several of the men-at-arms to find blankets—anything—with which to carry Lancaster down to the river pier. Now he joined the group.
“Without Whittington and his men’s aid,” he said, “it would have been far worse.”
“My father lies dying in agony,” Bolingbroke shouted, “and you say it could have been worse?’
“It could, and it still might,” Tyler put in. “For Jesu’s sake, Bolingbroke, get everyone moving!”
Bolingbroke whipped about and seized Tyler’s jerkin in a fist. “If it wasn’t for your actions, bastard, my father—”
“Don’t call me a bastard,” Tyler growled, wrenching himself free, “and never, never speak to me of fathers.'”
Neville had been urging Margaret, Agnes and Mary toward the gate leading to the pier, but now Margaret broke away and ran to where Bolingbroke and Tyler faced each other.
“You cannot battle each other,” she said, placing a hand on each man’s arm. “You cannot!
Wat,” she turned to him, “did you free Tom? Yes? Then I do thank you, for you have given me my life back.”
Bolingbroke sighed. “And I thank you as well, Wat. Forgive me …” His voice drifted off and he looked to where four of the men-at-arms were now carefully rolling Lancaster onto a blanket.
“Did Courtenay give you the—?”
Bolingbroke’s eyes flickered first to Margaret and then to Neville, standing a few paces away with a combination of puzzlement and impatience across his face.
“Aye,” Bolingbroke said. “Wat… I like not what this means. Do you—”
“The key is yours now,” Wat hissed. “Use it!”
Suddenly one of the palace walls bordering the courtyard cracked and groaned, and Neville lunged forward, seized Margaret and dragged her toward the river gate.
“Wat!” she cried.
Wat stared at her, a stricken expression on his face as if he wanted above all to say something but could not, not with Neville so close.
“Margaret,” he finally called as she and Neville neared the gate. “Farewell!”
She cried something back, but Wat could not hear it. He took a deep breath, then leaned close to Bolingbroke.
“Brother,” he said, “the ‘you and I’ have no more time, methinks. Soon, it will be only you.”
“Wat—”
“Tell Richard to meet me this evening at East Smithfield,” Wat hissed. “Tell him!”
“Richard will not—”
“Richard must, if he wants to regain any semblance of control. Make sure he understands that.”
“Wat. Jesus Christ. You cannot hope to succeed.”
“I will speak the words, Hal, and then it must be up to you to take the words into the world.
Why else should I pass the key into your safekeeping?”
The Savoy was now disintegrating about them, stones crashing from walls, flames roaring through the harnmerbeam roof of the great hall, the few remaining intact windows exploding in deadly splinters of glass.
“You must get out of here!” Wat shouted about the roar of destruction. “Get to safety in the Tower! The mob will have sated its murderous rage soon enough, and I will lead them to East Smithfield. This evening, Hal. Make sure Richard attends?’
“Christ, Wat. You will die!”
Wat smiled, deep and loving. He embraced Bolingbroke. “Christ will watch over me, in this life and the next,” he said. “Now you go with Christ, Hal. Go!”
He gave Bolingbroke a shove and Bolingbroke, at first reluctantly and then with greater speed, ran toward the river gate where everyone else had vanished. As he passed through he turned and held up his hand to Wat in a final salute.
Then he was gone.
Wat stared, then dashed for the gates leading to the Strand. There would be much work to do this day.
THE BARGE was dangerously overcrowded, and the two men-at-arms who worked the poles did so with the utmost care.
Margaret sat beside Lancaster lying wrapped in damp blankets on the flat bottom of the
barge. She had torn up the cloak of one of the men-at-arms, and wetted the pieces in the river. Now she carefully sponged at the burns on Lancaster’s face.
He moaned each time she touched him, and Margaret’s heart almost broke. Why couldn’t he lie senseless and unknowing of the pain?
Neville sat close to her, one arm about her waist, the other holding Rosalind to him. The child was sniffing and hiccupping, but her cries had ceased, and she clung to her father with all her tiny might. Neville was soothing her with soft sounds and nonsense words, and Margaret thought that he was using these words to soothe Lancaster as much as Rosalind.
Mary and Agnes sat on the other side of Lancaster. Mary was shivering, even though she was tightly wrapped in a cloak over her nightgown. Margaret glanced at her with concern—
was her face so gray merely from the lingering shock of being trapped in the burning palace, and then seeing the burned body of her father-in-law?
Both of those would have been enough to whiten the complexion of any woman, but Margaret’s concern for Mary was fed by a far greater apprehension. Until recently, Mary had enjoyed a smooth pregnancy—too smooth. She had not sickened as most women did in their early months, and neither had she quickened.
Margaret was beginning to believe that what Mary nurtured within her womb was not a child at all, but something far darker and loathsome. Far more impish.
In the past ten days or so Mary had become very listless and quiet. At first Margaret had believed it to be her natural concern at the approach of the rebels … but now?
Margaret looked to Agnes, and the two women shared their anxiety silently. But whatever was wrong with Mary would have to wait for the moment. Lancaster was Margaret’s first concern, and secondly, the safety of all the people in the barge: as they wended their way downriver they could all see the smoke and flames leaping above London. Most of the riverside warehouses were alight, and many of the buildings within the city walls as well.
The morning had been lost to a twilight of smoke and haze and fear.
Neville leaned closer to Margaret and murmured something in her hair. She didn’t hear the sense of it, but she understood the love in his tone, and she looked up and smiled gratefully.
His hand slid a little further about her waist and pressed against the hard roundness of her belly.
“He is safe,” Margaret whispered, and she felt Neville relax in relief against her at the same time as Mary sent her a look of pure unhappiness.
Her baby was safe… but was Mary safe from what lingered within her?
Margaret’s sense of unease increased.
Neville kissed Margaret’s hair, then looked to where Bolingbroke, Raby, Salisbury and Courtenay huddled with Whittington and some fifteen or sixteen men-at-arms who’d escaped from the Savoy.