actions. Did they not allow them entry to the city unopposed?”
“But—” Richard said.
“True, the Tower is garrisoned with some thousand men,” Northumberland said quietly. “Yet are they not drawn from London’s militia? Are they not all London men themselves?”
There was a silence as Richard thought it through.
“They would not dare to allow the rebels entry to the Tower,” Richard said.
“No!” cried Joan of Kent, rising from her chair.
“No?” Bolingbroke whispered, but no one heard him over Joan’s cry.
Northumberland shot an irritated glance at Richard’s mother, then shrugged expressively.
“Who can tell, your grace?”
“If I do as they ask,” Richard said, “and go to East Smithfield, then they will surely murder me.”
“For Christ’s sake, you simpleton!” Bolingbroke shouted. “Think it through. You will die if you don’t go.” He felt Northumberland’s hand on his shoulder again, much heavier this time, and Bolingbroke moderated his voice. “All the rebels want is to present their grievances to you. If you go, and nod and smile and listen, and say you will take it all under due consideration, then you will be safer than … safer than you are in this chamber.”
“No,” said Richard. “No! I will not bend my knee before peasants!”
Bolingbroke stared at Richard. “Be it on your own head,” he said.
CHAPTER XI
Compline on the Saturday within
the Octave of Corpus Christi
In the second year of the reign of Richard II
(night 2nd June 1380)
— V —
BOLINGBROKE HAD more than half-expected to be thrown into one of the Tower’s dungeons, but Richard waved him away before turning back to de Vere.
No doubt one hundred thousand resentful peasants made even the problem of Bol-ingbroke pale into insignificance.
Before he returned to his father, Bolingbroke, accompanied by Neville and Northumberland, made his way to one of the bastions in the northern inner wall. From here, they had a clear view over Tower Hill to the northwest and East Smithfield to the northeast. The two areas, meadowland save for a few tents and some small storage houses, were swarming with tens of thousands of men, many of them congregating in shadowy, murmuring clusters around the Tower’s northern moat and the roadway approaches to the Barbican leading to the land entry of the Lion’s Tower.
Bolingbroke shaded his eyes against the setting sun and stared westward into London. He could just make out the crowds along Fenchurch Street, which led to Aldgate and the smaller gate just north of the Tower.
“Richard should have agreed to meet them,” he said.
“Aye,” said Northumberland. “Richard’s decision was not the wisest he has ever made.”
Bolingbroke turned and studied Northumberland. “I find you a sudden and most unlikely ally,”
he said.
Northumberland gave a small shrug, taking his time in replying. “There are men, Bolingbroke, who are perturbed by Richard’s ‘alliance’ with de Vere.”
“I should have thought you pleased with such an alliance,” Neville put in, “for is not de Vere your son-in-law? Can you not expect great preferments for your family from what Richard’s
‘Robbie’ whispers in his ear?”
Northumberland sent him an irritated look. “De Vere is not proving a good son-inlaw.”
“Ah,” Bolingbroke said. “Now that he has the crown of Ireland within his grasp, if not quite on his head, he thinks he might find a more suitable match among the daughters of Europe’s royal families?”
The sudden anger in Northumberland’s eyes was all the answer Bolingbroke needed.
Sweet Jesu, Bolingbroke thought. Richard is not the only one digging his grave—de Vere is in there aiding him!
He shared a quick glance with Neville, and saw that he, too, understood: Northumberland, and all who stand behind him, will soon be ours… and all because de Vere has preferred other beds to to marriage bed.
But Bolingbroke did not waste time on savoring his potential triumph—of what use was a future possibility when they might all he dead by tomorrow?
He looked over the parapets of the bastion at the gathering horde in the fields beyond. “Did you mean what you said in Richard’s chamber,” he said to Northumberland, “when you said the Tower’s guards might well let the peasants in?”
“What would you do,” said Northumberland, “faced with such overwhelming numbers?”
“Only one in six of the peasants are well-armed,” Neville said.
Northumberland gave a humorless grin. “Well, then, that brings it down to… what… fifteen thousand swords waving at a few score guards who more than likely agree in principle with everything the peasants want.
“Besides,” he added, “perhaps only one in six are ‘well-armed,’ but the other five are armed with anything they can lay their hands on, and are driven by a murderous temper. I hear that some several hundred foreigners and rich merchants have been murdered on the streets this day. Maybe the guards will hold… maybe not.”
Lights flickered through the growing peasant army outside the Tower walls as dusk settled over the city.
“Tell me what you think will happen,” Bolingbroke asked Northumberland, and Neville was struck by the manner in which he addressed the earl—as a king asking advice from one of his senior counselors.
“They will not wait for Richard to change his mind,” Northumberland said quietly, staring at the peasant army rather than at Bolingbroke. “They must know that Richard has sent for reinforcements from militias close to the city, and that those forces are unlikely to be more than two days away. They also know that the city does not have enough to feed them. If they are to succeed, they must press their case within the day—”
“And more probably within the night,” Bolingbroke completed for him, “for they know that if Richard will grant their wishes—and save their lives—he must do so before reinforcements arrive.”
“You know this Wat Tyler,” Northumberland said to Bolingbroke. “Tell me, can he control this rabble?”
“I doubt anyone could,” Bolingbroke said softly.
“Jesu!” said Neville. “Hal, our wives are here. What can we do to—?” We can stay calm,” said Northumberland, “and we will do all we can to placate the rebels if they manage to gain entry to the Tower. There is little else we can do.”
LANCASTER WAS lying comfortably and dozing when Bolingbroke and Neville got back to the royal apartments, but when he heard Bolingbroke enter the chamber his eyes opened, and he smiled.
Margaret, who had been sitting by Lancaster’s bed, withdrew as Bolingbroke approached, their eyes meeting briefly, lovingly.
Neville had waited in the outer chamber.
Lancaster lifted one of his hands, blackened but not so crisp now that Margaret had rubbed salve over it.
Bolingbroke took it without hesitation, sitting carefully on the bed beside his father.
“I am dying,” Lancaster said in a hoarse voice.
“You have been most grievously injured,” Bolingbroke said. There was no point in denying it.
“Has Margaret tended your pain?”
“Aye.” Lancaster paused. “She is a most remarkable lady.”
Bolingbroke smiled, looking briefly to where Margaret sat in a corner. “Oh, aye, that she is.”
“She tells me I will live with Christ for eternity. I…” Lancaster’s voice broke. “I do not deserve it!”
“No one deserves that more than you,” Bolingbroke said, leaning closer to Lancaster and
repressing the urge to grasp his hand the more firmly for emphasis. “You have been the greatest of fathers, the most loving of men. I am honored that I am of your house.”
Lancaster’s eyes filled with tears, and his hand tightened about Bolingbroke’s. “Look after Katherine,” he said. “I am sorry to leave her, but glad she will not have seen me like this.”
Bolingbroke nodded, unable for the moment to speak.
“Richard will move against you once I am gone,” Lancaster said.
“If he tries to grind me into the mud I will spring up ten times as strong again.”
Lancaster nodded, his face grimacing in what was probably a smile. “Let him think he has defeated you, for then he cannot defeat you.”
“Aye. I shall bite my lip and skulk away into the shadows of whatever punishment he thinks fit for me … and from there …”
“And from there … the throne.” Again Lancaster hesitated. “Sweet Jesu, Hal, I never thought I would live to hear that from my lips. How can it be that Richard is so little a man when his father and grandfather were so great?”
“It is often the way,” Margaret put in from her stool.
“Then how sad,” Lancaster whispered. “How sad.”
There was a lengthy pause, and then Lancaster spoke again. “Tell me of what happens in the outside world. Is the Savoy gone?”
“Probably,” said Bolingbroke. “When we carried you away the roof of the great hall was collapsing.”
“Why do men seek so hard to destroy?” said Lancaster. “Why do they seek to destroy beauty?”
“It is always the way,” Bolingbroke said, with an apologetic look at Margaret for stealing her words.
“And the mob?” said Lancaster. “And Richard?”