No one touched him, no one reached out for him.
He rode to where the causeway joined the road through the fields, to where the majority of Richard’s twenty-five thousand could see him.
“Men of England!” Bolingbroke cried in his heaven-sent clear voice, standing in his stirrups so that all might see him.
“I stand here before you in England’s name only. If I raise my sword in anger then it is for England’s sake only. Men of my country, will you murder me, who loves you and who wishes you well with all my heart? Do you wish me ill, when it was he”—Bolingbroke’s sword stabbed back toward Richard—”who thought to lead you into a fruitless bog-dance with the Irish?
When it was he who thought to tax you until you could no longer feed your wives and children? When it was he who soaked East Smithfield with your brothers’ blood?
“Men of England! If I raise my sword against the throne, then it is only because the man who sits upon it has turned against you. Will you now turn your swords against me?”
Bolingbroke wheeled his stallion about in a tight circle, lifting his sword on high so that it caught the last rays of the sun.
“Will you turn your backs on freedom?”
Then, suddenly, stunningly, he drove the sword down into the soil, leaving only the hilt quivering above the surface.
“Men of England,” Bolingbroke screamed, “the choice is yours!”
He relaxed in the saddle, calm now, his stallion still turning around slowly so that Bolingbroke could see the entire assembled mass of men.
There was a long silence, and then a great sigh, as if all twenty-five thousand had let out their breath at once.
“Hal!” someone screamed far distant in the crowd. “Fair Prince Hal!”
“Hal!” another cried. “Hal!”
And then it seemed as if the entire multitude was screaming: Hal, Hal, fair Prince Hal!
Neville, watching Bolingbroke with tears in his eyes, saw him sway in the saddle, and for a
moment thought he was about to collapse with exhaustion. But then he caught a glimpse of Bolingbroke’s face, and he realized that he was consumed with emotion.
The crowd swelled close about Bolingbroke, so close that the prince and his white stallion became an island amid a sea of cheering, screaming men.
The horse was still pirouetting, albeit slowly, and as Bolingbroke came about once more he caught Neville’s eyes upon him.
Smiling, tears streaming down his cheeks, Bolingbroke held out a hand, as if including Neville in his triumph.
“This is my England,” Bolingbroke whispered, and Neville wondered that he could hear that whisper through the roar of the crowd.
“Take wing,” Neville whispered back, knowing that somehow Bolingbroke could hear him as well, “and soar!”
Then a movement caught Neville’s eyes, distracting him from Bolingbroke.
Richard, his hand groping and grasping about the hilt of his sword.
“What is happening?” he cried. “Why do they turn against me so?”
Neville kicked his horse next to Richard’s and levelled his bloody sword at the king’s throat.
Richard, his eyes wide and terrified, dropped his sword with a clatter.
“What is happening?” Neville hissed. “What is happening? Why, only that your kingdom now does to you what you once did to my wife.”
QUIET WAS restored, but only after some time. Eventually Bolingbroke, Northumberland now by his side, managed to ride back to where Neville still held Richard at sword point.
Bolingbroke nodded at Neville, who lowered his sword.
Richard stared at Bolingbroke, but said nothing.
Bolingbroke sighed wearily. “I arrest you in the name of the people of England,” he said, and Richard merely blinked, as if he thought himself trapped in a bad dream that he would soon wake from.
“Northumberland,” Bolingbroke said, “take him into custody, and remove him to Chester, and thence to the Tower as soon as can be. What happens to him is now in the hands of Parliament.”
Then, as Northumberland relieved Neville, and took Richard’s horse by the bridle, Bolingbroke looked back to his friend.
“Sweet Jesu,” he whispered, “but I am wearied!”
His face suddenly went gray, and he wavered in the saddle, and Neville only just managed to catch him as he fainted away.
CHAPTER VI
Vigil of the Feast of the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary
In the second year of the reign of Richard II
(Friday 7th September 1380)
LONDON
THOMAS WHISTLED a catchy tune softly through his teeth as he ran lightly down the steps of Lambeth Palace. The day was soft and beautiful, as only the late autumn could produce, and as Thomas walked through the gate of the palace and onto the path that wound through the gardens toward the pier on the river he began to hum, unable to contain his happiness.
Late the previous week he’d returned with Bolingbroke to a rapturous welcome from the Londoners. Tens of thousands had lined the streets as Bolingbroke, recovered completely from his exhaustion, had ridden his prancing stallion through the city. Although Richard’s ascension to the throne had been greeted with cheers and hope, that hope had soon dissipated amid the imposition of new taxes, defeat abroad, the dark, terrible days of the peasant uprising and the exile of Bolingbroke. Now fair Prince Hal was home, and Richard was imprisoned in the Tower, and hope for the future burned bright in everyone’s breasts.
Thomas had not seen Bolingbroke so happy for a very long time.
The Savoy was still a gutted ruin, and Westminster held too many dark memories, so Bolingbroke had set up residence with his household in the great and airy palace of Lambeth, directly across the Thames from Westminster. The palace was normally the London residence of the Archbishop of Canterbury, but since Sudbury had been murdered during the peasant uprising, and none of the current two (or was it three?) popes could decide who should succeed him, the palace lay empty.
“Just waiting for laughter,” Bolingbroke had said.
Like Bolingbroke, Thomas could not remember when he had ever been so happy. Today Parliament met to decide Richard’s fate, and Thomas had every expectation that the judgment would not be a pleasant one. Both the House of Commons and Lords had agreed to a lengthy indictment, the charges including not only the murders of Gloucester and Arundel, and the imposition of harsh and unfair taxes (Parliament had conveniently forgotten that it was they who had voted in the taxes), but also the subversion of justice in matters ranging from the unfair confiscation of lands and titles from Bolingbroke to the unnecessary preferments given to de Vere, as other of Richard’s favorites.
The list of indictments numbered more than thirty: Parliament had proved happily inventive when it came to putting away a king they thought would eventually have whittled away at their own privileges and freedoms.
Thomas cared not if some of those indictments were more invention than fact. Richard was finished, and the Demon-King’s influence was restricted to the length and breadth of his prison chamber. Thomas could almost feel the tide of evil that had swept over Christendom ebbing further and further away with every new sunrise.
No wonder the day was so glorious!
The cause of justice and good had been so strong in the end that there had been no real battle at all. Richard had given up with nothing more than a whimper, and his easy capitulation had evaporated any immediate hostility toward Bolingbroke.
A sense of peace overwhelmed Thomas. It was a foregone conclusion that Bolingbroke would take the throne, that God’s cause would win, and that he would spend his life raising his children and loving Margaret.
He thought of the time when he’d struggled against his love for Margaret, and pitied his blindness. He thought of those uncertain days after he’d declared his love for her, and remembered how Christ had appeared to him, and allowed him to realize he’d done the right thing. He thought, momentarily, of all that St. Michael had once said to him, and meant to him, but that thought Neville put aside. Christ’s vision, and His message to Neville, had virtually obliterated Neville’s previous dedication to the archangel.
Thomas allowed himself just the tiniest smile of self-satisfaction as he walked onto the pier, wondering, now that the battle against evil had been won, if Joan would have to put aside her armor and go back to her village, there to draw water and breed sons as any other peasant wife did.
For a moment Thomas stared across the river toward Westminster. Bolingbroke had promised that next week they would turn it upside down to look for Wynkyn de Worde’s casket, although it would be of little use now that evil had been defeated. Thomas wondered if he would even bother to look inside—every time he thought of that casket he remembered how he’d allowed Margaret to be raped in order to obtain it, and he did not think he could even bear to touch the cursed thing now.