For an instant, amusement glinted in Bolingbroke’s eyes, only to be replaced with a look of abstracted and irritated worry. “What lies here? Bills, receipts, reports, petitions, memorandums from at least four working committees of Commons in which, apparently, I am to take an interest, lists of passports issued in the past five months, accounts of lambing and harvest from sundry of my stewards, digests of legal debates from the Inns of Courts, summaries of—”
“Enough!” Neville threw up his hands, then he turned to Bolingbroke and laughed. “What sin have I committed, my friend, that you so burden me with minutiae?”
“Minutiae is the oil which smooths the English bureaucracy, Tom, surely you know that, and the bureaucracy is determined to see to it that every nobleman in England is to be kept out of mischief with an excess of the mundane. A memorandum is as vicious a weapon as has ever been invented. Far better than the axe.”
Neville shook his head, then let the amusement drain from his face. “It is good to be back, Hal.”
Bolingbroke grasped Neville’s hand briefly. “And it is good to have you back. Tom, we need to talk, and it has nothing to do with this mess.”
“Aye, Richard.”
“Richard, indeed.” Bolingbroke moved to a table, swept a portion of it free of papers, and perched on a corner. “He moves fast to consolidate his horrid hold on England.”
“Hal, the archangel Saint Michael appeared to me as we sailed toward London.”
Bolingbroke’s face tightened with shock. “What did he say?”
“That the casket is in London, and that it screams to me. That I am to be surrounded by lies, but that all lies will be as naught once I read the truths that the casket contains.
“It is certain that Richard holds the casket,” Bolingbroke said.
“Have you learned anything?”
“About the casket? No.”
“About Richard, then.”
Bolingbroke grimaced in distaste. “Do you remember, years back, when you were still at court, that the boy Richard scurried about with Oxford’s son?”
“Robert de Vere? Yes … he was a lad some few years older than Richard.” Neville idly scratched at his short beard, remembering some of the gossip that had spread about the two boys. “De Vere was probably the one who first taught Richard how to piss standing up.”
“Undoubtedly ‘dear Robbie’ taught Richard to do a great many things with his manly poker other than to piss with it. Well, now de Vere struts about as the Earl of Oxford … his father died some two years past,” Bolingbroke grinned slightly, “while you were ensconced in your friary. He also managed to wed Philippa, Hotspur’s sister.”
Neville raised his brows—that wedding and bedding marked an important (and potentially dangerous) alliance between the houses of Oxford and Northumberland.
“De Vere has left his wife at home in his drafty castle and is now back at court and in the king’s great favor.” Bolingbroke’s grin faded, replaced with a look of contempt. “Rather, de Vere gifts the king with the benevolence of his patronage. It is said that not only will Richard not make a single decision without consulting de Vere—sweet Jesu, Tom, if de Vere said that black was white then Richard would believe him!—but that the two men share an …
unnatural… relationship.”
Neville stared at Bolingbroke. “You cannot mean that they still practice their boyhood follies!”
“Oh, aye, I do mean that. Their hands are all over each other in those hours that they’re not all over some poor woman they’ve had dragged in from the alleys behind St. Paul’s.”
Neville was so appalled he had to momentarily close his eyes. Saint Michael had been right to say that the English court was corrupted with evil. Soon Richard would have the entire court—nay! the entire country!—dancing to his depraved tune.
“I must find that casket!” Neville said. The casket held Wynkyn de Worde’s book, and that book held the key to sealing the demons back into hell, where they belonged.
“Aye,” Bolingbroke said. “And it must be in Westminster. Where else?”
“And how can I—”
“Patience, my friend. I called you back not merely to witness my forthcoming nuptials and to take care of this mess”—Bolingbroke waved his hand laconically about the tumbled muddle of papers and reports around them—”but because Richard himself will shortly present me—
and thus you—with the excuse to haunt the halls of Westminster.”
Neville, who had turned to stare in frustration out a small window looking over the river wall of the Savoy, now looked back to Bolingbroke. “And that excuse is … ?”
“Do you remember the terms the Black Prince—may sweet Jesu watch over his soul—set for John’s repatriation back to France?”
A year earlier, the Black Prince had seized the French king during the battle of Poitiers. Ever since then, the English had been trying to exact the greatest ransom they could from the French for the return of their king. “Aye,” Neville said. “Charles was to pay … what? Seven hundred thousand English pounds for his grandfather’s ransom?”
Bolingbroke nodded.
“And, as well, both John and Charles had to be signatories to a treaty of peace that recognized the Black Prince as heir to the French throne… disinheriting Charles completely.”
“Exactly.” A small pile of papers on the table next to Bolingbroke toppled over with a gentle sigh, scattering about his feet, and Bolingbroke kicked them aside impatiently, ignoring Neville’s exasperated look.
“But,” Bolingbroke continued, folding his arms and watching Neville carefully, “circumstances have changed. Edward is dead. The Black Prince is dead. A young and untried man now sits on the throne. We may have trod the French into the mud of Poitiers, but now we have no tried war leader to press home the advantage.”
“Not even you?” Neville said very quietly.
Bolingbroke ignored him. “My father has no taste for spending what time remains to him leading rows of horsed steel against the French, and, in any case, his talents have always been in the field of diplomacy rather than the field of battle. Northumberland is also aging,”
Bolingbroke’s mouth quirked, “although I hear Hotspur is keen enough to take his own place in the vanguard of England’s hopes in France.”
And you? Neville thought, keeping silent this time. Where do your ambitions lie, Hal?
“So Richard must needs rethink the terms of treaty,” Bolingbroke said. “This he has done—
doubtless with de Vere’s advice—and his new terms meet with John’s approval. Or, more to the point, John has grown old and addled enough not to truly care what he signs anymore.”
“What are the terms?”
“The demand for seven hundred thousand pounds has gone. Instead, Richard has settled for secure access to the Flemish wool ports for our wool merchantmen—John will agree to remove whatever naval blockade he still has in place.”
Neville shook his head slightly. The Black Prince would simply have smashed his way through the French blockades—Richard had, in effect, paid the French seven hundred thousand pounds to remove them.
Bolingbroke watched Neville’s reaction carefully. “But Richard has not backed down on his claim to the French throne. In two days’ time King John will sign at Westminster a treaty that recognizes Richard as the true heir to the French throne.”
Neville raised his eyebrows. Maybe the seven hundred thousand pounds had been worth it, after all.
“And,” Bolingbroke continued very softly, “Richard no longer demands that Charles co-sign.
Instead, he has a more powerful French signatory, someone who he hopes will virtually guarantee him an ironclad claim to France.”
“Who?”
“Isabeau de Bavière.”
“What? Charles’ whore mother?”
Bolingbroke laughed. “Aye. Dame Isabeau will formally declare Charles a bastard. Her memory has become clearer, it seems, and she is now certain that it was the Master of Hawks who put Charles in her.”
“And what price did Richard pay for the return of her memory?”
“A castle here, a castle there, a stableful of willing lads … who truly knows? But enough to ensure that Isabeau will swear on the Holy Scriptures, and whatever splinters of the True Cross the Abbot of Westminster scrapes up, that Charles is a bastard, and that leaves Richard, as John’s great grand-nephew, the nearest male relative.”
Neville grimaced. “John must rue the day his father gave his sister to be Edward II’s wife.”
“I swear that he has spent his entire life ruing it. And the inevitable has come to pass. John must sign away the French throne to a distant English relative.”
“What of Catherine?”
“Catherine?”
“Aye, Catherine… Charles’ sister.” Neville wasn’t sure why Hal was looking so surprised—he must surely have considered her claim. “Is Catherine a bastard as well? Or did John’s witless son Louis actually manage to father her on Isabeau? If Catherine is legitimate, then, while she is not allowed to sit on the throne herself according to Salic Law, her bed and womb will become a treasure booty for any French noble who thinks to lay claim to the throne.”