He was just about to suggest that they try and find a farm, a barn, anything, to wait out the storm when a shout came from one side.
“My lord! My lord!”
A man, struggling to keep on his feet as he emerged out of the storm.
Raby wiped his eyes free of clinging snow and stared. Ah, Wat Tyler, one of Lancaster’s men who the Duke had left in his brother’s force.
“My lord,” Tyler said, gasping for breath as he gained Raby’s side. “There is something …”
“What, man?”
“There is something in the storm, my lord. Something evil.”
IT WASN’T until the hour before Vespers that Thomas finally managed to speak privately with Hal in the man’s apartments.
“Sweet Jesu!” Hal said as he pulled Thomas in through the door and walked him close to the window. “I have spent half of Christmastide wondering what it is that you must tell me!”
“Forgive me, Hal, but the tilting and entertainments had not seemed appropriate.
There were many ears and eyes present.”
Bolingbroke looked at Thomas searchingly. “You do not trust Hotspur?”
Thomas spread his hands helplessly. “There are few I can trust. I do not distrust Hotspur specifically … it is just that I do not yet know if I can trust him. Besides, there were many people present, not just Hotspur.”
“We talked briefly yesterday of trust.” Hal had now turned to stare out the window to where grooms readied the numbers of horses necessary to convey Lancaster and his party to Westminster.
“You said that sometimes we accept in trust what we should reject, and reject what we should trust.”
Hal turned back to Thomas. “And yet you still trust me!”
“What lies between us goes beyond trust. If I cannot trust you, then there is no reason for me to live. I have few friends, Hal, and those few I have I must treasure.”
Hal’s eyes filled with tears, and he clasped Thomas’ shoulders in his hands.
“Thank you … thank you.”
“Yes, well… um…”
Grinning now, Hal dropped his hands. “So what is your news?”
Thomas hesitated, dropped his eyes to consider his hands, then looked Hal directly in the face. This was something he should have confided to Joan… he would not keep it from Hal.
“Hal, the demons are stronger than you realize. Although their true forms are those we saw in the fields outside Chatellerault, the creatures have the power to shape-shift. Hal, they can assume the forms of Godly men and women!”
“Sweet Jesu! But that would mean that any among us …”
“Yes. Hal, there is worse, far worse. Two mornings ago Saint Michael again appeared to me, bearing devastating tidings. For many years the demons have nurtured within their midst a Crown Prince … and soon they plan to place him—”
“Jesu!”
” —on England’s throne. Hal, soon the English will be led by a Demon-King, and led into such devilry that we can hardly imagine!”
Now Hal was shocked into utter silence.
“Hal, I do not know the ‘who, and I cannot understand the how. I do not accept
that the Black Prince is—”
“No, no, I am with you. My uncle is no demon! But… Tom, I cannot understand this. Was the archangel speaking in metaphors? A new English king is to be the Demon-King? No, no, I cannot believe …”
Hal could not finish. He stood, his hands half raised as if he meant to grasp something, his eyes still locked into Thomas’.
“I cannot understand it either.” Thomas could not tell Hal that he suspected Lancaster as well as Richard. Not yet. Hal must reach that conclusion in his own time.
“But…” Hal could not continue past that one word. He finally lowered his eyes, saw that he had his hands half-raised, and thrust them down as well.
“But I do know of one of the demons within our midst,” Thomas said, watching Hal’s face carefully. “John Wycliffe.”
Hal slowly nodded. “Aye… aye, you do not surprise me. The man has dark ideas to match his dark visage. Does my father know of this?”
“I cannot tell your father,” Thomas said evenly.
It took Hal a moment more to grasp Thomas’ meaning. “No! No! You cannot suspect that my father … no, you go too far!”
Thomas reached out and grasped Hal’s arm with a gentle hand. Hal started to pull away, then accepted Thomas’ touch.
“I hope before God he is not,” Thomas said, “for I respect your father before almost any other man in Christendom. But your father has come under Wycliffe’s sway, and it would be inadvisable to tell him that I—we—suspect Wycliffe to be a demon. But there is someone else besides your father who stands close to the throne—Richard. If anything happened to the Black Prince, well…”
“Aye. Richard.” Hal pulled a face. “Demon or not, he will make a right vile king.”
He sighed, and rubbed at his eyes as if tired. “What can we do?”
“For the moment, little, for Christmastide is a season when life is given over to enjoyment and revelry. But after the festivities are over, after Plow Monday when the world becomes sane again, will you press your father to allow me to go north? Hal, I must find this casket!”
“Yes, for its secrets will illuminate the path to the demons’ destruction.
Meanwhile—”
“Meanwhile we attend the revelry, and we observe.”
Thomas turned to go, but Hal stopped him. “Thomas … is there anyone else you suspect as demon rather than man?”
Thomas did not reply immediately.
“Yes,” he finally said. “There is. A priest I met among the English soldiers in France who goes by the name of John Ball. And Wat Tyler.”
Hal made a sound as if to contradict what Thomas had just said, but Thomas had not yet finished.
“And the Lady Margaret Rivers.”
“Oh, Thomas, no. Why?”
“I cannot say. And I do not truly know if she is or not, or merely a victim of
demonic sorcery … as I have been.”
Hal grunted. “You have never liked her… but I thought that to be because you resented her place in your uncle’s bed. As for the others … this John Ball I do not know… but Wat Tyler?”
Thomas shrugged. “There is no specific reason, but just some of the things Wat has said to me … and he did keep company with John Ball, who is a demon if ever there was one!”
“Many Englishmen speak strange words in these times,” Hal said, “not just Wat.
Traditional bonds between bondsman and master have weakened since the time of the great pestilence—”
“Aye … and we know why that is so, do we not?”
“Hal! Ah, Tom, there you are.” Lancaster strode through the door, and both Hal and Thomas jumped guiltily. How much had he heard?
“The horses are ready,” Lancaster said, “the womenfolk are twinkling in their finest gems and silks, and a great feast awaits us. What do you two here, murmuring as if you plotted to overthrow the throne?”
“Merely planning our Christmastide jest on Hotspur,” Hal said easily, and clapped Thomas on the shoulder. “Come, Father has spoken wisely. Why do we linger here in this chill room?”
WESTMINSTER L AY a good mile’s ride south along the Strand and past Charing Cross. The palace and abbey complex was a town in its own right, with scores of homes, workshops and dormitories accommodating servants, workers, soldiers and men-at-arms, and the monks; orchards and vegetable gardens lay between and behind many of the buildings. The complex’s greatest building, the abbey, was over five hundred years old, and the great hall and palace not much younger. Westminster had been purposely built beyond the walls of London by the last of the Anglo-Saxon kings in order to keep the monarchy safe from interference by the unruly London mobs. No king since then had seen fit to move his principal residence away from the complex.
Nevertheless, the primary palace accommodation was not particularly commodious, being one of three massive but drafty halls of the complex. All of Edward’s sons had built or purchased accommodation elsewhere, leaving their aging father to wallow in his arthritis in the pretty, but chilly, hall called the Painted Chamber.
Tonight the festivities were not to be held in the Painted Chamber which, although roomy, could not possibly hold the thousands invited to the banquet. Instead, the great hall of Westminster had been readied.
It was a spectacular sight. Torches lit the way through the streets leading to the hall, and from every part of England, or so it seemed, came hundreds of riders dressed in a rich variety of velvets, silks and furs to keep at bay the winter chill.
Others approached the hall on foot.
But all the crowds parted for Lancaster’s retinue. There were some cheers, and some hisses, but mostly just silence, and Thomas realized with a jolt just how