Neville came to an arbor overhung with roses, and he looked within, sure to find Margaret there. He remembered how he had come upon her in a similar arbor in the garden of the Dominican friary in Lincoln, and he smiled in anticipation.
His smile died. The arbor was empty of everything save the hanging roses and some multicolored butterflies.
Ah! Never mind. There were many more arbors to be explored, and Neville had no doubt at all that he would find Margaret somewhere within the gardens. Where else could she be on such a beautiful day?
He walked down another path, and looked inside a small, paved courtyard bordered with lavender.
She was not there.
Now the twinge of disappointment was more extreme, and Neville frowned. Where was she?
And then, so soft it was almost inaudible, he heard her laughter. Neville grinned, relieved. He had her now.
Taking care with his footsteps, he crept down a small brick-lined path that ended in a deeply overhung bower of late-flowering vines.
He heard her laugh again, sweet and joyous, and he wondered at what she laughed. Or… at whom?
Something dark clouded Neville’s mind, and now he clung to the side of the path, shadowing his approach to the bower with the bordering shrubbery. He heard her voice—she was speaking to someone.
But whop Mary and Agnes were within the palace, and Rosalind deep asleep in her bed. And then the deeper timber of a man’s voice, and Neville recognized it instantly. His movements became furtive, and he slid silently to the bower, parting the leaves of the vine with one careful hand.
His entire world disintegrated into dark despair at what he saw. Margaret was within, and with her, Bolingbroke. They sat close together, too close, for Bolingbroke’s entire body pressed against hers.
His hand was on her belly, moving to feel the child in a way that Neville thought only he had a right to do.
Bolingbroke said something, his words inaudible, and Margaret smiled. And then Bolingbroke leaned close, and kissed her.
Neville stared, unbelieving. All he could think of was that Margaret’s child had been conceived at Kenilworth—where Bolingbroke had enjoyed as much time to plant it as he’d had!
He remembered the way Bolingbroke’s eyes always traveled to Margaret before Mary, how his mouth always lingered too long on Margaret’s, how his first thought and concern was always for Margaret…
… and the final thread of Neville’s self-control snapped.
He crashed through the greenery of the bower, seeing Bolingbroke and Margaret spring apart, seeing the panic in both their eyes.
He grabbed at the dagger in his belt, and drew it, and realized he was screaming something, although he knew not the words he spoke.
He heard Margaret call his name, desperately, but he paid her no attention. All he wanted to do was to kill the man whom he’d thought his most dear friend, and who had been all the time cuckolding him, and laughing silently at him as he mouthed lie after lie to his face.
Bolingbroke had been so stunned by Neville’s intrusion that he reacted a moment too late.
Neville crashed into him, sending them both to the brick floor of the bower, and raised the dagger for the killing blow.
Margaret was screaming something, but Neville cared not what it was.
He pulled his arm further back to give his knife blow the greatest force, and found his wrist seized by both of Margaret’s hands.
He tried to wrench himself free, but could not.. .Jesu! How could she have such strength in her womanly hand?
“Whore!” he hissed. “Let me go!”
Margaret’s action had given Bolingbroke enough time to act. As Margaret’s hands finally slipped, and Neville twisted his arm free, Bolingbroke hit him a massive blow to the side of his face.
Momentarily stunned, Neville slid to one side, and Bolingbroke rolled away and leaped to his feet.
“You will never call Margaret a whore again,” Bolingbroke hissed, and hit Neville once more.
Neville slumped to the ground, blackness rolling over his vision, and only vaguely realized that Margaret was now kneeling down beside him, her hands patting frantically at his head and shoulders.
He rolled over and groaned, spitting out a clot of blood from his mouth and blinking to try and clear his vision.
“You are as blind as the angels,” Bolingbroke said, now standing over him with Neville’s dagger in his hand. “So blind I could almost believe you one of them.”
“You didn’t have to hit him so violently,” Neville heard Margaret say.
“And what would you have had me do, Meg? Allowed him to murder us both?”
Neville managed to clear his vision enough to see Bolingbroke standing over him with the knife held ready and rage in his face.
“You lied to me,” Neville said. “You lied to me, both of you.'” He wiped his mouth with the back of a hand, and glanced angrily at the smear of blood staining it.
“We have never spoken anything to you but the truth,” Margaret said.
“Adulteress!”
She flinched. “I have been true to you, Tom.”
Neville’s mouth curled. “True to me? Then what was this I have just witnessed?”
Margaret looked up to Bolingbroke. “Dearest,” she said, “it must be now. This day.”
“Dearest?” Neville snarled, and tried to sit up.
Bolingbroke planted his boot in the center of Neville’s chest and pushed him flat again.
“Margaret and I love each other as few mortals can,” Bolingbroke said, “but not as you think.”
Neville gave him a filthy look.
Bolingbroke looked at Margaret, and suddenly smiled. “Yes, you are right. It must be now, this day.”
He sheathed Neville’s dagger in his own belt, then held out his hand to help Neville rise.
Neville took it reluctantly, and scrambled to his feet, Margaret rising cumbersomely beside him.
Neville pulled his hand from Bolingbroke’s grasp as soon as he had gained his feet.
Bolingbroke glanced again at Margaret, then looked back to Neville.
“Margaret is my sister,” he said.
NEVILLE’S EXPRESSION, if anything, grew more hostile. “That cannot be,” he said.
“There is much more than can be on God’s earth than you yet realize,” Bolingbroke said, “and one of them is the fact that Margaret is my sister… well, half-sister.”
“Tom,” Margaret said, her face strained and worried. “Hal and I share the same father.”
“Lancaster was your father?” Neville said, his tone betraying his disbelief.
“Nay,” she said gently.
“But…”
“Lancaster was everything and more that a father should be to me,” Bolingbroke said, watching Neville very carefully lest he again erupt in violence. “But he was not who planted the seed in my mother, Blanche, nor who planted the seed in Margaret’s mother.”
“I cannot believe it,” Neville whispered. “Are you telling me that Lancaster was not your
father?”
Bolingbroke’s tongue momentarily touched his lower lip, the only sign that he was nervous.
“Yes.”
“Then who?” Neville said. His mind was reeling …Hal was a pretender? A bastard?
Again Bolingbroke and Margaret shared a glance.
“Tell him,” she whispered.
Bolingbroke reached over and took her hand in his, then looked back to Neville with level gray eyes.
“Our father is the Archangel Michael.”
CHAPTER II
Horn Monday
In the second year of the reign of Richard II
(10th September 1380)
— II —
“NO,” Neville muttered to himself, backing away until he stood against the rear wall of the bower. He felt as if he were encased in a frightful coldness that grew tighter and more painful with each breath.
Margaret’s mouth lifted in an uncertain, tense smile. “Did I not say to you that I was of the angels, Tom?” she said. “And … and did I not also tell you that the truth within the casket encompassed a vast horror. So horrific that I could not be the one to tell it to you?”
He stared at her, not wanting to answer.
“Tom,” Bolingbroke said very quietly, “it is time that you knew that truth.”
Neville’s mouth worked, and it was a long moment before he realized Bolingbroke’s meaning.
“You have the casket?”
Bolingbroke gave a short nod.
“Why… why put me through everything you have … why put Margaret through everything she went through… when all the time you had the casket?”
“Because you needed to love both of us,” Bolingbroke said, “before you could read what is in that casket.”
Neville, still against the back wall of the bower, started slowly to shake his head back and forth. His eyes widened as the full import of what Bolingbroke and Margaret were saying sunk in.
“Sweet Lord Savior,” he whispered. “Joan knew all along. You are the Demon-King, Hal, not Richard. The blithe young man.. .you, not Richard. Jesu, Jesu, what have I done? What have I done!”
“You have done what has been right,” Margaret said. She sent Bolingbroke a worried look.
“You have betrayed me,” Neville said. “Both of you!” His shock was now so extreme he found it almost impossible to keep on drawing breath.