The Crippled Angel

Book Three of the Crucible Trilogy

Sara Douglass

The Crippled Angel is dedicated, fittingly, to the bestest bunch of Apostolic Wreakers of Havoc ever: Alana, Corey, Craig, Elizabeth, Justin, Karmela, Mark C, Matt, Matthew, Michelle J, Michelle L, Patrick, Tanya and particularly to Tracey who has so obligingly taken over the reins of Tyranny whenever I felt a tad fragile. Thank you all so much for your help.

With thanks to Rachel Smallman for her vision of heaven, and to Stephanie Smith and all the team at HarperCollinsPublishers Australia for seeing me through to the end of another trilogy.

He married his wife on Sunday

Beat her well on Monday,

Bad was she on Tuesday,

Middling was she on Wednesday,

Worse was she on Thursday,

Dead was she on Friday;

Glad was he on Saturday night,

To bury his wife on Sunday,

And take a new wife on Monday,

To beat her on the Tuesday.

Version one of a traditional English

nursery rhyme

Table of Contents

Cover Page

Title Page

Dedication

Epigraph

Prologue Friday 1st March 1381

PART ONE WINDSOR

I Tuesday 30th April 1381

II Friday 3rd May 1381

III Saturday 4th May 1381—i—

IV Saturday 4th May 1381—ii—

V Saturday 4th May 1381—iii—

VI Saturday 4th May 1381—iv—

VII Friday 17th May 1381

PART TWO The Dog of Pestilence

I Tuesday 21st May 1381—i—

II Tuesday 21st May 1381—ii—

III Tuesday 21st May 1381—iii—

IV Thursday 23rd May 1381

V Friday 24th May 1381—i—

VI Friday 24th May 1381—ii—

VII Friday 24th May 1381—iii—

VIII Sunday 26th May 1381—i—

IX Sunday 26th May 1381—ii—

X Sunday 26th May 1381—iii—

XI Monday 27th May 1381—i—

XII Monday 27th May 1381—ii—

XIII Monday 27th May 1381—iii—

XIV Monday 27th May 1381—iv—

PART THREE Shrewsbury

I Wednesday 29th May 1381

II Thursday 30th May 1381

III Sunday 2nd June 1381

IV Wednesday 5th June 1381—i—

V Wednesday 5th June 1381—ii—

VI Thursday 6th June 1381

VII Sunday 16th June 1381

VIII Monday 17th June 1381

IX Tuesday 18th June 1381

X Wednesday 19th June 1381

XI Thursday 27th June 1381—i—

XII Thursday 27th June 1381—ii—

XIII Saturday 29th June 1381

PART FOUR The Crippled Angel

I Sunday 30th June 1381

II Friday 26th July 1381

III Tuesday 30th July 1381

IV Monday 5th August 1381

V Wednesday 7th August 1381

VI Thursday 8th August 1381

VII Monday 12th August 1381—i—

VIII Monday 12th August 1381—ii—

IX Thursday 15th August 1381—i—

X Thursday 15th August 1381—ii—

XI Thursday 15th August 1381—iii—

PART FIVE Agincourt

I Friday 16th August 1381—i—

II Friday 16th August 1381—ii—

III Monday 19th August 1381 (Night)

IV Tuesday 20th August 1381—i—

V Tuesday 20th August 1381—ii—

VI Tuesday 20th August 1381—iii—

VII Tuesday 20th August 1381—iv—

VIII Tuesday 20th August 1381—v—

IX Tuesday 20th August 1381—vi—

X Wednesday 21st August 1381 (Night)

XII Thursday 22nd August 1381 (Evening)

XII Saturday 31st August 1381

XIII Saturday 31st August 1381 (Night)

XIV Sunday 1st September 1381

PART SIX Mary

I Friday 6th September 1381

II Monday 9th September 1381

III Tuesday 10th September 1381

PART SEVEN Christ among Us

I Tuesday 10th September 1381 continued…

II Monday 16th September 1381

III Thursday 17th October 1381

IV Friday 18th October 1381

V Saturday 31st May 1382 (8 months later)

Glossary

About the Author

By Sara Douglass

Copyright

About the Publisher

Prologue Friday 1st March 1381

The chamber was close and warm, its windows closed, its air thick with the scent of herbs.

There was silence, save for the moans of the woman squatting between two midwives before the roaring fire in the hearth.

The woman giving birth was naked; her skin gleamed with sweat, while her unbound hair had soaked into glistening strings clinging to her shoulders and back. The midwives bent over her, holding bunches of soothing herbs close to her nostrils and open mouth, rubbing the small of her back encouragingly.

They did not murmur instructions to her, for Marie was of their own and knew what was happening both to her own body and to the baby it was trying to expel.

Two other women stood half shadowed on each side of the shuttered windows. To one side stood Catherine of France, daughter of the insane Louis and the adventurous Isabeau de Bavière, her attention as much on her silent companion as on the labouring Marie.

Slightly distanced from her stood Joan of Arc, Maid of France, staring intently at the woman struggling to give birth. Her face, if possible, was even more tortured than that of Marie.

She was terrified of what Marie was about to birth.

Joan had spent these past seven months since Charles’ crowning at Rheims cathedral in a fugue of despair. This despair was not caused by Charles’ stubborn refusal to move from Rheims, or to do anything which might be construed even vaguely warlike, but by the swelling of Marie’s body. Indeed, Joan’s despair had increased in direct proportion to the escalating distention of Marie’s belly. Marie might not know how her child had been conceived, or who had put it in her, but Joan had a very good idea, and she knew that if the child confirmed her suspicions then she would have no choice but to abandon her crusade for the Archangel Michael.

How could she serve an angel who so callously used women’s sleeping bodies? Who was so inherently flawed? So inherently sinful? And so arrogant in that sinfulness?

“See?” said Catherine conversationally, very well aware of Joan’s distress. “The baby is about to be born.”

Joan jerked, an almost inaudible moan escaping her mouth. She wished she could tear her eyes from Marie, or run from the room, but she could do neither. She prayed meaninglessly, futilely—for she was not sure to whom she could pray—that somehow the actuality of Marie’s child would prove the archangel’s innocence.

But in Joan’s innermost being she knew that was impossible.

In her innermost being, Joan knew that the archangel had put that child inside Marie.

And in her very few, most painfully honest moments, Joan knew that the archangel had lied and abused and manipulated her even more grossly than he had Marie.

All Marie had to do was endure the agony necessary to birth his child.

All Joan had to do was die. To die for the cause of a sin-crippled angel.

How could that cause be good, and just?

Marie was struggling even more now, moaning as she bore down on the child. One of the midwives moved in preparation to catch the baby as it slithered from Marie’s body; the other rubbed even more vigorously at Marie’s back.

Catherine moved her eyes from Marie, looking at Joan.

There was no venom, nor even triumph, in her gaze. Once she’d hated and loathed Joan, but now she realised that the struggle taking place within Joan was even worse than that which consumed Marie.

Of all people, a child of the angels herself, Catherine was one who empathised with those the angels used and manipulated. She also knew that, riven by her doubts, Joan was no longer such a terrible threat to the cause of Catherine and her fellows.

She wondered again, as she had so many times over the past few months, why the angels believed they could afford to alienate Joan.

Was Thomas Neville now so much their man?

Catherine frowned slightly. The small amount of news she’d managed to glean about Thomas Neville over the past few months indicated anything but that. He’d abandoned his vows, and married Margaret Rivers, half-sister to the Demon-King himself, Hal Bolingbroke. Surely Neville was more in the Bolingbroke camp than in that of the angels?

A particularly intense moan from Marie—more of effort than pain—made Catherine turn back to the woman. The midwife waiting to catch the child had moved forward now, her hands held ready, her eyes intent. Marie threw back her head, bearing down with every ounce of strength that she had.

She gave a sudden wail, almost of surprise, and Catherine saw the baby slither forth.

“’Tis a girl!” cried the midwife, who laid the baby on the waiting linens and was securing the cord as Marie herself sank down to the floor.

Catherine looked back to Joan.

The girl was staring unblinkingly at the scene before her, her eyes round, almost starting from her head. Beads of sweat glistened on her forehead and cheeks, and Catherine thought them less a product of the chamber’s warmth than the intense emotion within Joan herself.

Catherine saw that the cord binding Marie and the baby had now been cut, and the child was wrapped securely in some linens.

She walked over, and took the child from the midwife. “I will bring her back momentarily,” she said at Marie’s murmured protests, then walked slowly back over to Joan.

“See this child?” she said, half holding the baby out to Joan, even though she knew Joan would not take her.

Joan stared down at it, her form trembling slightly.

She was a beautiful child.

Angelic.

And… something else.

“Can you feel what she is?” Catherine said softly, so that neither Marie nor the two midwives could hear.

Joan’s mouth half opened, and her tongue flickered over her lips. Her lips moved, but no sound came forth.

She was still staring at the child.

“Can you feel what she is?” Catherine said, more forcefully, but still low.

She is a demon, Joan. You can sense that, can’t you?

Joan’s face twisted in agony, and she finally managed to tear her eyes from the child to Catherine’s face.

The lack of malice—worse, the understanding—that Joan saw there appeared to distress her even more.

“Can you now see,” Catherine said, “how ‘demons’ come into this world? How is it that we are hated and vile creatures, Joan, when our only sin has been to be abandoned and loathed by our fathers? Who is the more hateful, Joan? The child… or the father?”

“I don’t… I can’t… ” Joan said, then she shuddered so violently that Catherine took some pity on her.

“Go now,” she said. “I will come to you later, and speak with you honestly.”

Joan stared at her, blinked, looked once more at the child, then fled the chamber.

Joan stumbled as if blinded through the passages and hallways of Charles’ palace in Rheims. She managed to gain her small chamber having fallen only twice, and immediately groped her way across the darkened room to a small altar in the corner.

“Saint Michael?” she whispered. “Blessed saint?”

Even now, even though Joan’s mind knew the corruption of the angels, she refused to accept it. She wanted the archangel to appear and reassure her. She needed him to demonstrate to her how she’d been misled, how she’d misunderstood, and how there was a reasoned explanation for all she’d just witnessed.

After all, surely the ways of the angels were strange to the poor minds of mortal men and women?

“Saint Michael? Blessed saint… please… I need to hear your—”

What? My explanation?

Joan’s head jerked up from where it had been bowed over her clasped hands, but there was no physical sign of the archangel. No light, no glowing form, nothing but a heavy coldness that felt as if it had stepped all the way down from heaven.

I owe you nothing, Joan. I care not what you choose to believe. You have proved yourself fragile and useless. I cannot believe that I ever had faith in you.

“Saint Michael, please—”

Please what? Do you expect me to explain myself to you? I have finished with you. Done.

“The child. Tell me about the child!”

The cold intensified, and Joan gasped with pain as it wrapped itself about her.

You have been as nothing. We had thought once to have need of you, but you have proved yourself a passing foolishness on our part. You no longer please us, and we rescind our favour.

The cold, impossibly, grew more intense, and Joan shrieked as iciness enveloped her lower body.

We return you to your normal womanly self, Joan, and leave in place of our favour all the loathing for your kind that we bear. We have no longer any need for you, Joan, and, not needing you, we choose to despise you.

And with that, the icy grip of the archangel gave one final, agonising clench, and then it, as the archangel’s presence, vanished, leaving Joan collapsed and weeping on the floor.

There she lay for long moments, unable to cope with the weight of the archangel’s loathing and betrayal on top of witnessing the birth of Marie’s child.

She suddenly lurched to her feet, her face twisted and wet with tears, and tore from the wall where they hung the sword and banner of the Archangels Michael and Gabriel.

She took the banner, and tore it first in two, then each of those two pieces into many more, shrieking and panting in her anger and sense of betrayal.

How could she have been so credulous, so naive, as to let herself be used by such corrupted beings as the angels?

The banner shredded easily, almost as if it too recognised the lies with which it had been constructed, and Joan only paused in her maddened destruction when the banner lay in pieces at her feet.

Then she reached for the sword.

She held it for a moment, staring wild-eyed at it, her sense of betrayal growing even stronger with every second that passed. Then she took it and dashed the blade against the heavy stone sill on the window.

The blade shattered into three jagged sections.

Joan screamed, allowing the useless hilt to fall clattering to the floor.

How could she have made herself the instrument of evil? What if her entire life had been a lie? A cruel hoax, and she the only one not to realise it? Had all of France, all of Christendom, been laughing at her?

She should have stayed home, and tended her father’s sheep. That, at least, would have occasioned no laughter.

Perhaps she should go home… tend her father’s sheep…

But what if her father also now despised her? Laughed at her?

In this past hour, and particularly in these past moments, Joan’s entire faith, her entire reason for being, had been stripped away in so cruel a manner that had her sword still been intact Joan would undoubtedly have fallen upon it.

She started to shake, her tremors becoming so violent that she fell to the cold stone floor. She moaned, and cried out, wishing that death would simply come to take her in this moment of despair.

“Joan,” came a voice so deep and comforting that Joan believed it merely a dream. “Joan, you are so greatly loved that my eyes run with tears for you. Joan, see… see how I weep with love for you.”

Joan blinked, still curled in a tight ball on the floor. Was this a phantasm? Or the archangel come back to torment her?

Another voice spoke, a woman’s this time. “Joan, will you see? Will you raise your eyes and see how much your lord loves you?”

It was the woman’s voice, rather than the man’s, which made Joan raise her face from the stone flagging and stare before her.

She gasped, hardly crediting what her eyes told her.

The chamber had disappeared. Instead Joan lay on the top of a low hill. Before her a woman knelt at the foot of a cross.

Not daring to believe, Joan raised her eyes still further.

An almost naked man gazed down at her from the cross. He had been vilely nailed to the wood through his wrists and ankles, and a crown of thorns hung askew on his bleeding brow. His loincloth was darkly soiled with the blood that had crept down his body.

Yet, even so cruelly pinned, the man smiled down on Joan with such infinite love that her despair vanished as if it had been swept away in a great wind.

“Lord Jesu?” she whispered.

“Joan,” he said, and she could see how much each word cost him. His chest and shoulders were contorted in agony, his every breath an agonised nightmare.

“Joan, will you trust me?”

Joan’s gaze slipped to the woman. She was young and pregnant, and very beautiful, with translucent skin, deep blue eyes and dark hair.

She was also sad, weeping, but somehow serene and strong in that sadness.

“Have you been vilely treated by the angels as well?” Joan asked the woman.

“Aye,” she said, “as has my lord. Joan, we would give you a purpose back into your life, and a gift also.”

“A purpose and a gift?”

“Both with all our love,” the woman said, and Joan realised that she spoke for both herself and Christ, who hung in such agony on his cross that he found speech difficult.

“Your purpose shall be France,” said the woman, and as she spoke she raised her right hand and made with it a sweeping gesture.

A dark vista opened up before Joan’s eyes. It was France, but a France devastated and murdered. Fields lay burning, houses and castles lay toppled, clouds of smoke and ash billowed over the countryside.

Out of this horrid cloud rode a man on a dark horse: a man Joan had never seen before, but one she instinctively knew was the Demon-King. A handsome face under silver-gilt hair, pale grey eyes, a warrior’s body and a warrior’s bearing.

He rode his stallion over the broken bodies of French men and women and children, and they screamed and wailed and bled as he progressed.

Not once did he look down and pity them. Instead, his face was swollen with glory and victory.

His stallion strode forth, and more bones cracked, and more children died.

“I know him,” said Joan.

“Aye,” said the woman. Her hands were now to her face, and she wept as if her heart broke.

Turning her eyes back to the woman, Joan wondered if she wept for France, or for the Demon-King.

“If Charles does not rise against him,” the woman continued, gaining some control over her weeping, “then this is France’s destiny.”

“Charles is a lost cause,” said Joan. “I have given him my all. I have begged and pleaded and threatened. I have spoken prophecies and wrought him miracles, but still he sits here in Rheims and weeps and wrings his hands. France needs a king to lead it, and what it has is a pile of useless excrement. I cannot change him.”

“Yes, you can change him,” said Christ, groaning with the effort of speaking. “See.”

The vista changed so that France became a land of sun-drenched meadows and laughing children. In this new France the Demon-King still stood, but his sword hung useless at his side, his shoulders had slumped, his form was thin and tremulous, and his feet had sunk to their ankles in a pool of bubbling black mud. Dread suffused the Demon-King’s face, and his mouth hung slack with dismay. He stared towards a horizon where appeared a great and mighty king on a snowy war stallion. It was Charles, but a Charles Joan did not think existed.

Behind him rode a shining army—an army of a united and strong France.

The Demon-King whimpered, trembled violently, then sank into the bubbling pool of black mud until he had completely vanished.

“How can this be so?” Joan said.

“All you have to do,” said the woman, now leaning forward and taking one of Joan’s hands in hers, “is to tend your sheep.”

Joan frowned. “I do not understand.”

The woman smiled, and kissed Joan very softly on the mouth. She began to speak, and she spoke without interruption for many minutes.

At first Joan’s face twisted with horror, then it relaxed, and assumed a radiance born both of wonder and of hope.

“I can do this?”

“You are the Saviour of France,” said Christ, and he smiled with such tenderness and love through the haze of his own torment that Joan’s heart overflowed with the strength of her love and joy. “The path ahead of you shall be tiresome and often painful. You will doubt. But I—”

“And I,” put in the woman.

“—will always be there. We will not forget you. When you are at your darkest, then we will be there for you.”

Much later Catherine came to Joan’s chamber, thinking to talk more of Marie’s child, and to use its birth to ensure Joan’s total alienation from the angels.

What she found astounded her.

Joan knelt before her window which she had opened to admit the dawn light. About her lay strewn the fragments of what Catherine recognised as Joan’s sword and angelic banner.

“Joan?” Catherine said. “Are you well?”

Joan lowered her hands which she’d had clasped before her. She rose and turned to face Catherine.

For an instant, Catherine thought that the girl had tripped entirely into the murky waters of insanity, impelled by the truth she’d been forced to witness last night. But then she realised that Joan’s face was infused not with madness, nor even with her previous obsessive devotion, but with a peace so profound that Catherine’s eyes widened in wonder.

“What has happened?” she said.

Joan smiled secretively, although not in a sly manner. “I have found myself,” she said.

Catherine indicated a small stool. “May I sit?”

“Oh, yes. Forgive me. I should have asked you myself.”

Then Joan, who sat on the edge of her narrow bed, tilted her head and regarded Catherine with a modicum of curiosity. “You have not come to gloat, have you?”

Catherine shook her head, wondering what it was that had caused this great change in the girl over only a few short hours. When Joan had run from Marie’s birthing chamber, Catherine thought her close to breaking.

“I had wondered,” Catherine said carefully, “if you might need someone to talk to.”

“That was kind of you,” said Joan, knowing that was not quite the reason Catherine had come to her.

Catherine hesitated, not sure what to say next. This was not the Joan she had expected to find.

Joan spoke again, filling the uncomfortable silence. “How is Marie, and her daughter?”

“They are well,” Catherine said.

“For the moment,” said Joan, “but how will Marie venture forth into the world, an unmarried woman with a bastard child? I worry for her, and feel guilt, knowing how I deserted her when she needed me most.”

“I have arranged for her a place as housekeeper in a small convent in Amiens. The sisters will be pleased to receive her, and both Marie and her daughter will be nurtured.”

Joan’s mouth twitched. “If only they knew what they nurture,” she said, and then the amusement died from her face. “Tell me of the angels, Catherine, and of the misery they have visited on you, and on mankind.”

And so Catherine took a deep breath and, as Hal Bolingbroke and Margaret had once talked to Thomas Neville, told Joan all she knew.

When she had finished Joan looked sorrowful, but still composed. “We have all been grossly misused and abused,” she said.

Catherine nodded, satisfied. “What will you do now?”

Joan smiled, beatifically, as if at an inner vision, and Catherine wondered if she’d slipped back into her previous blind and obsessive piety.

But the expression passed, and Joan spoke calmly and reasonably. “I had thought to return to my parents’ home,” she said. “I thought to devote myself to the tending of my father’s sheep.”

“That’s a wonderful—”

“But I have changed my mind,” Joan said, grinning slightly at the expression on Catherine’s face. “Oh, do not worry, Catherine. I have no doubt that I shall end my days watching over my father’s sheep in some blessed meadow, but there is still one small task left for me to do here first.”

“And that is?”

“To fit Charles for his rightful place, as King of France.”

“You cannot still mean to accomplish that! Charles is a hopeless imbecile who—”

“He will not always be so,” Joan said. “He merely needs an infusion of strength. I am that strength.”

“Then we are still at odds.”

Joan took Catherine’s hand. “Yes. We are. Indeed, our positions have hardly changed. You fight to replace Charles with… well, with whomever. And I fight to give him France. What has changed is that I now understand you, and in understanding you, I have come to a realisation.”

“And that is… ?”

“I think that one day we will be friends. Even, I dare to venture, that we will fight for the same end.”

Catherine opened her mouth to speak, but Joan continued quickly. “Am I not a prophetess? Then hear me out. In the end, I think we will both do what is right for France, and I think that we will both take the path that love demands of us, not those paths that previous blind allegiances have shown us.”

Catherine chewed her lip, then nodded. “Should we still spat in public, Joan? Should I pull your hair every time you pass?”

“Oh, indeed! Otherwise your mother will think the world has come to an end!”

They both laughed, then Catherine rose, aiding Joan to rise at the same time. She kissed Joan’s cheek.

“Be well, Joan.”

“Aye,” Joan said. “I think I will be, now.”

PART ONE
WINDSOR

In the meane time… certain malicious and

cruel persons enuiyng and malignyng in their

heartes… blased abrode and noised dayly

amongest the vulgare people that kyng

Richard… was yet liuyng and desired aide of

the common people to repossesse his realme

and roiall dignitie. And to the furtheraunce of

this fantastical inuencion partely moued with

indignacion, partely incensed with furious

malencolie, set vpon postes and caste aboute

the stretes railyng rimes, malicious meters and

tauntyng verses against king Henry… He

being netteled with these uncurteous ye

unuertuous prickes & thornes, serched out the

authors…

Edward Hall, Chronicle, 1548

I Tuesday 30th April 1381

Lord Thomas Neville walked slowly through the gardens of Windsor Castle, heading for the entrance to the King’s Cloister. He narrowed his eyes slightly against the mid-morning brightness of the sun, enjoying its welcome warmth even though its glare made his eyes ache.

Windsor Castle had long been favoured by the English kings, but since his coronation seven months ago Bolingbroke had made it his main residence. He’d not wanted to reside in Westminster, which he thought cold and uncomfortable; the Savoy was still in ruins; Lambeth Palace was unavailable now that the new Archbishop of Canterbury had moved in; and the only other truly regal palace in London was the Tower, which needed another few months’ worth of renovations before it could be suitable to use as Bolingbroke’s royal residence. So Bolingbroke had moved his court to Windsor, a solid day’s ride west from London.

Neville raised his face slightly, staring towards the silvery stone walls of the castle, looking for the tall, graceful, second level windows of the Great Chamber. Ah… there they were, so afire with the glare of the sun that no outsider would be able to peer through and intrude upon the privacy of the chamber’s occupants. Neville had no doubt that by this time of the day Bolingbroke would be settled with his advisers and secretaries and counsellors.

And here Neville was in the gardens.

“My Lord Neville! Morning’s greetings to you!”

Neville jumped, silently cursing the sudden thudding of his heart. He squinted against the sun, then relaxed, nodding to the man striding down the garden path towards him.

“My Lord Mayor,” he said, extending a hand. “My congratulations on your recent election.”

Dick Whittington took Neville’s hand in a firm grasp, then indicated a nearby bench. “If you’re in no hurry, my lord?”

Neville sat with Whittington on the bench, wondering what the Lord Mayor could want to say to him.

“I am pleased to have this chance to speak with you, my lord, that I might ask after your lovely wife and children.”

“Margaret? Why, she is well, as are Rosalind and Bohun,” Neville responded, surprised at the enquiry. Whittington hardly knew Margaret…

“I have just come from the Great Chamber,” Whittington said, after a slight hesitation, “and an audience with our king—you know of his edicts regarding education, and clocks?”

Neville nodded. Over the past months Hal had instructed that science and the new humanities were to receive a greater weight in schools at the expense of religion, while clock hours were to replace church hours of prayer in people’s daily lives.

It was all, Neville knew, part of Hal’s not-so-subtle turning of his subjects' hearts and minds away from the religious to the secular.

“Aye, well,” Whittington continued, “I needed to consult with his grace over some of the details of the new school curricula, and the appropriate fees the clockmaker’s guild can charge for the installation of clocks in all London’s gates and major steeples.”

Neville shifted impatiently, wondering why Whittington was subjecting him to this pointless conversation.

“My lord,” Whittington said, his eyes narrowing in what might have been amusement, “I am keeping you from your duties, and for that I apologise, but—”

Ah, Neville thought, now we reach the heart of the matter.

“—I admit to some curiosity, even some concern, over the fact that his grace now conducts his morning’s counsel… and you are not there to advise him. I remember those dark days when the peasant rebels set London afire, and murdered the great Lancaster. Then you and his grace were close confidants, brothers almost.”

Then I did not know who, and what, Hal truly was, Neville thought, keeping the expression on his face a mixture of the vaguely pleasant and the vaguely impatient. Demon-King.

“Hal is now king,” Neville said. “He has great lords and Privy Councillors, and even,” he allowed himself a small smile, “Lord Mayors to advise him. He does not need me so much.”

“And the friendship has died along with Hal’s elevation to the throne? I ask,” Whittington hurried on, noting the surprise in Neville’s face, “because I care deeply for Hal, and I cannot think that he is the better man for the loss of your friendship.”

“He has not lost my friendship,” Neville said, noting Whittington’s easy use of Bolingbroke’s Christian name. “We have merely grown distant with circumstances.” He did not say that what Bolingbroke had lost was Neville’s complete trust once he’d realised the depth of Bolingbroke’s lies and manipulations.

“Hal did what he needed to gain the throne,” Whittington said very quietly. “England is the better land for his actions.”

Now Neville stared outright at Whittington. What did he allude to? Bolingbroke’s rebellion against Richard, or the series of well-planned murders that ensured Bolingbroke was the only Plantagenet left to succeed to the throne?

And if Whittington alluded to the murders… then what did that make the Lord Mayor? Man, or demon?

“Who are you?” Whittington said, his voice still quiet. “Hal’s man, or the angels’?”

Neville’s own question answered, he abruptly stood. “I am my own man, my Lord Mayor,” he said, knowing that would be the answer Bolingbroke most feared, and knowing Whittington would certainly report it back to the king. “And now, I will detain you no longer. I am sure London needs its Lord Mayor more than I do.”

And with that he turned and strode away.

As Neville disappeared into the building, Whittington looked to the windows of the Great Chamber, and shook his head slightly.

Bolingbroke looked down from the window of the Great Chamber, catching the shake of Whittington’s head.

His face hardened, his suspicions confirmed.

Behind him droned on the voices of his advisers, debating the merits of raising the passport application fee yet again, but Bolingbroke heard none of it.

Instead, his thoughts were full of Neville.

Why was Archangel Michael so confident of Neville? How could he be so sure of him?

“What is your secret, Tom?” Bolingbroke murmured. “What is your secret?”

Neville blinked as he walked under the stone arch into the shaded walks of the King’s Cloister. There were a few people about enjoying the early spring air, but it was still relatively quiet.

Neville nodded to two young lords whom he knew, then ducked into the stairwell that led to the royal apartments on the second level.

He emerged in the upper gallery, but turned away from the door leading to the Great Chamber and to Bolingbroke. Neither did Neville so much as glance at the open door of the beautiful chapel that ran along the upper gallery at right angles to the Great Chamber.

Instead, Neville walked purposefully towards the Queen’s apartments and the loveliest chamber in the entire castle complex—the Rose Tower.

He paused at the door, nodding to the two guards standing outside, then walked through without any announcement… apart from Bolingbroke, Neville was the only person in the royal court (in the entire kingdom) permitted so to do by the lady within.

Neville paused just inside the door, hearing it close softly behind him, and looked about.

There were several ladies in the chamber, all grouped about the hearth, spinning and gossiping softly.

Margaret was not among them, and Neville supposed his wife was still in their apartment with their two children.

Mary lay on a couch set by the windows so that the morning light could fall upon her, and so that her gaze could in turn fall upon the awakening springtime outside.

Neville smiled, knowing Mary regarded him from under her downcast eyelashes, and walked towards her. As he did so, he once more admired the beauty of this chamber, as he did every time he entered it.

Bolingbroke’s grandfather, Edward III, had redeveloped and redecorated much of Windsor Castle, and the pride of his refurbishing was the Rose Tower chamber, which Edward had made his inner sanctum. The walls and domed ceiling were painted deep crimson, and covered with scattered stars. At regular intervals across this bloodied, starry night were brilliant green enamelled cartouches, each holding within its gilded border a single delicate rose. Now Edward was dead, as was his successor Richard, and Bolingbroke was king, but it was Bolingbroke’s wife Mary who had taken this most beautiful of chambers as her inner sanctum, and that, Neville thought as he knelt on one knee beside her couch, was only as it should be.

“My lady queen,” he murmured, kissing her hand. “How do you this fine morning?”

“The better for your presence, Lord Neville,” Mary replied, and smiled.

Neville’s eyes sparkled with merriment. “My lady queen,” he said, continuing their playful formality, “may I beg your indulgence to rise from my poor knee, and perchance—”

“Sit at the end of my couch,” Mary said, laughing now, “where, Jesu willing, you might cease your groaning.”

Neville did as she bid, careful not to disturb the silken wrap about her, or to place any pressure near the delicate bones of her ankles and feet. For a minute he did not speak, studying her face.

Mary watched him unquestioningly, for this moment of silent regard was a normal part of their morning greeting ritual.

“You have slept well,” Neville said finally.

“Aye. My physician, Culpeper, has formulated a new liquor which allows me to forget my aches and moans for an hour more each night.”

Neville’s merriment faded at Mary’s mention of her illness. Ever since her marriage to Bolingbroke, Mary had been wasting away from a growth in her womb. Sometimes she had a period of wellness that lasted as long as three or four weeks; more often she lay as she did this day, pale-skinned with dark pouches under eyes shadowed with pain.

And yet never did she complain, or moan about the injustice of life.

Silently, Neville reached out a hand and took hers. If his relationship with Bolingbroke had slid from deep friendship into wary politeness, then his relationship with Mary had taken the opposite path. Neville spent several hours each day with Mary—no doubt occasioning much gossip in court—talking, playing chess or, as now, merely sitting with her as he held her hand.

Her condition had stabilised somewhat over the past five or six months. From what both Mary and Margaret had told him, Neville knew that the mass in her womb had stopped actively growing and had instead shrunk to a small, hard lump; Mary no longer exhibited signs of pregnancy, nor expelled blackened spongy portions of the growth. Nevertheless, it continued to suck at Mary’s vitality, and often to cause her great pain and discomfort.

But not to any mortal extent.

Neville wondered what Bolingbroke thought about this.

Bolingbroke and Mary no longer shared the same bed, both claiming that her illness made it impossible for Bolingbroke to sleep well. Bolingbroke had moved to chambers in a distant corner of the royal apartments, where he made no secret of occasionally sharing his nights with an accommodating lady of the court. Mary shrugged away her husband’s unfaithfulness, and from the few words she’d said to him about it, Neville knew that she was secretly glad to escape the burden of her husband’s sexual demands. She was not bitter, nor angry, and spoke of and to her husband with the greatest respect and good humour.

Neville thought her a saint, but he was unsure about how Bolingbroke regarded Mary’s continuing grip on life. As a man (as a man-demon), Bolingbroke loved and lusted for another woman, Catherine of France. As a king, he lusted for the day he could hold a male heir in his arms.

Mary stood in the way of both lusts, and showed no sign of moving into the waiting pit of her grave any time in the near future.

Mary’s hand tightened very slightly around his, and Neville wondered if she somehow not only could read his thoughts, but thought to offer him comfort instead of asking it for herself.

Then the door to the chamber opened, breaking the spell between them.

A guard entered. “The Lady Margaret Neville,” he said, bowing in Mary’s direction, “with her children.”

Mary let Neville’s hand go, then smiled. “Let her enter,” she said, and the guard bowed once again and opened the door wide.

Margaret walked through the door, her seven-month-old son Bohun nestled in her arms. Directly behind Margaret was her maid, Agnes, with Margaret’s two-year-old daughter Rosalind tugging at one of Agnes’ hands as she looked curiously about her.

Both Margaret and Agnes sank into deep curtsies. Then Margaret took Rosalind and walked to where Mary and Neville sat. Agnes retired to a stool in a corner by the hearth to await her mistress’ pleasure.

Margaret glanced at her husband as she approached, then smiled warmly at Mary. “How do you this day, madam?”

“Well, thank you, Margaret. I think that perhaps you and I can walk a little about the gardens this afternoon. It shall be a beautiful day.”

“Gladly, madam.” She started to say more, but then Rosalind broke free from her grip and scampered over to Mary, clambering up on the couch and cuddling in close to the woman. Margaret half reached out to grab her away, then saw the expression on Mary’s face and dropped her hand.

“Do not let her hurt you, madam,” Margaret said.

Mary’s face had lit up as Rosalind snuggled into her body, and now she lifted her eyes to Margaret, and laughed a little. “What? This child? Hurt me? Nay, how can love hurt?”

Again Margaret felt her eyes sliding towards Neville, who she knew was regarding her steadily.

“You are so blessed in your children,” Mary said in a half whisper. One of her hands slowly stroked Rosalind’s shining dark curls. Then she looked at Margaret again. “And in your husband.”

Now Margaret could not help but look at Neville. He smiled slightly, but she could not entirely read the expression in his eyes, and so she looked away again.

When they left the Rose Tower Margaret handed the two children into Agnes’ care and asked Neville if he would walk a while with her in the cloisters.

He linked an arm with hers, and together, slowly, they strolled about the sunlit flower beds, their bodies moving in unison, their hips occasionally bumping through the thick folds of their clothes.

“Mary seems well,” Margaret eventually said.

“Well enough for a dying woman,” Neville responded, his eyes once more on the glittering windows of the Great Chamber.

“Tom… ”

Neville pulled her to a halt, and turned her so that their eyes could meet. “What is troubling you, Margaret?”

She gave a harsh laugh. “How can you ask that? My fate rests in your hands; the fate of my kind, and of humankind, where you decide to gift your soul. Of course I am troubled, for I do not think I know you any more.”

He studied her a moment. “And?”

“And?” Margaret took a deep breath. “And… you once said you loved me, but now I do not know. You spend so much time with Mary—”

“You think that I love Mary? No, do not answer that, for of course I love Mary.”

Margaret’s eyes suddenly filled with tears.

“I do not covet her flesh as a man is wont to covet a woman’s flesh,” Neville continued, “for I am lost in my covetousness of your flesh.” He ran the fingers of one hand gently down her neck, and his eyes down the sweet curves of her body. “And I do not love her in a courtly fashion, for I could not imagine composing verse to any love but you. I love her as goodness personified—I do not think there can be any person living as good as Mary. And I love her because she is trust personified.”

“Trust personified?”

Neville’s hands were on Margaret’s shoulders, firm and resolute. “I trust Mary as I trust no one else,” he said. “For of all people walking on this earth, I think she is one of the few who cannot be anything but what she appears. Mary has no secrets, and no secret plans.”

Margaret lowered her gaze. “You have not yet forgiven me for what I—”

“And Hal,” Neville put in.

“—did to you… with Richard.”

Neville’s expression tightened at the memory of how Hal and Margaret had stage-managed her rape by Richard, then coldly manipulated Neville’s guilt to force him to admit his love of her. “I have forgiven you, Margaret,” he said, and his hands loosened their grip on her shoulders. “And I still swear my love for you, and for our children. But I walk with open eyes now, and, yes, that makes a difference to how I see you… and all yours.”

He does not trust me, Margaret thought, wishing not for the first time that she hadn’t agreed to Hal’s plan. “I am your wife, Tom,” she said, reminding him of the promise she’d made to him the day Bohun had been born. “Not Hal’s sister.”

Neville smiled gently, and touched a thumb to her cheek, wiping away the tear that had spilled there.

“Of course,” he said.

II Friday 3rd May 1381

The great hall at Windsor was not so grand nor so large as the great hall at Westminster, but it was imposing enough and, when it was lit with thousands of candles and torches as it was this night, it shimmered with a delightful fairy light all its own. May had arrived with all its attendant ritual and games and seasonal joy, and Bolingbroke had organised tonight’s feast to mark the commencement of his spring court. Thick sprigs of early spring flowers hung about pillars and beams, the scent of the flowers combining with that of the freshly laid rush floor to delight the senses of the guests. Servants had erected trestle tables in a long rectangle down the centre of the hall, and now they groaned under the weight of their linens, their gold, silver and pewter ware, and the initial dishes of the feast. The entwined harmony of lively chatter and music from the musicians walking up and down the aisles wound its way to the roof beams and then back down again, echoing about the hall.

The feast was proving an auspicious start to the weekend of tourneying that lay ahead.

Neville and Margaret sat with his uncle Ralph Neville’s wife, Joan, and her mother, Katherine, the Dowager Duchess of Lancaster, on the first table to the right of the High Table. Their placement was an indication of the king’s high esteem. As Baron Raby and Earl of Westmorland, Ralph Neville himself sat with the king and queen at the High Table on the dais. Sharing the High Table with Bolingbroke, Mary, and Raby sat the Abbot of Westminster, Henry Percy Earl of Northumberland, and John Holland Duke of Exeter and Earl of Huntingdon.

The Abbot’s presence at High Table was no surprise. Not only was he the senior ranked churchman present, but the Abbot of Westminster was the man who’d crowned Bolingbroke as King Henry of England. To not seat him at High Table would have been a grave insult to both man and Church.

As the Abbot’s presence was no surprise, neither was that of Ralph Neville, the Earl of Westmorland, and Henry Percy, the Earl of Northumberland. The combination of the power and influence of both these northern nobles had been pivotal in allowing Bolingbroke to raise the army needed to wrest the throne from Richard. But while Raby was an old family friend, taking as his second wife Bolingbroke’s half-sister Joan, the Percy family’s loyalty had once been with Richard. Northumberland’s allegiance to Bolingbroke was still relatively new, and thus relatively fragile—and made the more fragile because Northumberland’s son, Hotspur, had yet to swear allegiance to Bolingbroke. Bolingbroke had gone out of his way these past months to keep Northumberland happy, and to heap upon him (as Raby) those preferments both men deserved for their part in bringing Bolingbroke to the throne.

Bolingbroke had not ascended the throne via the smooth transition of father to son. Instead, Bolingbroke had wrested the throne from his cousin, Richard, taking England to the very brink of civil war in so doing. For long months England’s nobles had been divided between those who’d supported Richard’s right to hold the throne, and those who’d supported Bolingbroke’s right to take it from Richard. In the end, Bolingbroke’s faction had prevailed, but the wounds were still open, particularly since the December reports of Richard’s untimely death due to a sudden fever while incarcerated at Pontefract Castle.

Thus the inclusion of John Holland Duke of Exeter and Earl of Huntingdon at High Table. Exeter had not only been one of Richard’s closest supporters, he was also Richard’s older half-brother: Richard and Exeter shared a mother, the beautiful (and sexually adventurous) Joan of Kent, who had been married to Sir Thomas Holland before the Black Prince seized her (she’d also had a bigamous marriage to William Montague, but fortunately there’d been no children from that union). Over the past six months Bolingbroke had worked assiduously to gain the acceptance and eventual support of those nobles who’d originally supported Richard. Bolingbroke had ostracised none of them, and had presented many of them with good preferments, appointments, and, on occasion, an advantageous marriage.

Yet Bolingbroke still sat the throne uneasily. Only rarely could allegiances be changed overnight, and Bolingbroke never truly knew what the smile on a courtier’s face truly meant: allegiance, or hidden treachery.

Tonight, however, any concern about allegiances was well hidden behind smiles and courtly conversations. Mary was looking better than she had for several weeks. Her face was still pallid, but her eyes shone brightly, and her thin hands were steady as she accepted delicacies from the plates of her husband, on her left, and Raby, to her right. Bolingbroke engaged her from time to time in courtly conversation, but most of his attention was given to Northumberland, Exeter and the Abbot, who were all seated to his left.

Those whose allegiance he was most unsure of received his most gracious smiles.

Thomas Neville, watching the interplay from his spot close to the High Table, smiled himself at Bolingbroke’s efforts. Doubtless he thinks to ensure the country behind him before he embarks on his campaign of world conquest, he thought, and his smile faded a little.

It was a pity for Bolingbroke that Richard had died under such shadowy circumstances—and Neville had no doubt that Richard’s death had been an expeditious murder rather than an unfortunate fever—and not nobly in the course of battle. Neville remembered how Bolingbroke had won the support of Richard’s army outside Flint Castle with golden words rather than with bloodshed, and now he wondered if perhaps Bolingbroke hadn’t miscalculated. Perhaps he should not have called a halt to what brief battle there had been before Richard had taken a blade in the throat. Perhaps…

“Your thoughts must be all-consuming,” said a voice to Neville’s right, “for they have surely taken your attention from the feast spread before us. And such a feast!”

“Forgive me,” Neville said, smiling as he turned to face his dining companion, John Montagu Earl of Salisbury (and relative of the William who had bigamously bedded Richard’s mother, Joan). Montagu was another noble who had backed Richard—the damn hall was packed with them!—and doubtless Bolingbroke was hoping that Neville could charm Montagu as the king was doubtless charming Holland. “I was merely wondering what had so caught the abbot’s attention.”

Montagu glanced at the High Table: the Abbot of Westminster, Bolingbroke, and Holland and Northumberland had engaged in a lively conversation that had the Abbot’s cheeks a bright red with excitement.

“Our king’s plans for Westminster, perhaps,” Montagu said.

“Aye. Rumour has it that the abbot is excited at the thought of Parliament finally moving out of Westminster Abbey’s chapter house!”

Montagu laughed easily, although the fingers of his right hand toyed nervously with his knife. “Your Hal has wasted no time making his mark upon the land,” he said.

Neville’s smile did not slip at Montagu’s usage of “your Hal”. “Parliament needed somewhere new to sit,” he said. “The Chapter House was too crowded, and the abbot had spent the past fifteen years complaining of the rowdiness of both Lords and Commons.” He broadened his smile with a little effort. “He claims his meal times to have been quite ruined.”

“But to give Parliament the use of Westminster Palace… ” Montagu said. His knife was now making irritating rattling sounds as it jiggled against the side of his pewter plate.

Neville shrugged. “The palace was cold and draughty, and of little use for the family that Bolingbroke hopes to have surround him.”

“And faint hopes of that,” Montagu said in an undertone, shooting a glance towards Mary.

“It is understandable, perhaps,” Neville continued, “that he should want to refurbish the Tower instead, and make of it not only a palace fit for a king, but a warm home as well.”

“But to give Saint Stephen’s to Commons!” Montagu said, and his hand finally stopped playing with his knife as he fixed his dark eyes on Neville.

Ah, Neville thought, the crux of the matter. Parliament would now sit in Westminster Palace and, for the first time, the Houses of Lords and Commons would be permanently divided. The new home of the House of Commons was to be the supremely beautiful St Stephen’s Chapel, where Lancaster had married his Katherine, but Lords… Lords… Neville’s smile finally lost its forced thinness and blossomed into a mischievous grin.

“Commons is the much larger house,” he said, “and Saint Stephen’s can accommodate them easily.”

Montagu remained silent, now staring at his knife.

Neville fought to stop himself from laughing. “But of course, I can understand that many among the lords might be, ah, disgruntled, that they shall from henceforth sit in… the kitchens.”

It was the merriment of the nation. Although Westminster Palace had several large halls, most were currently entirely unsuitable for permanent habitation by the House of Lords. The Painted Chamber’s floor was almost rotted through, and needed replacing, while its foundations were dank with rising damp. Repairs were desperately needed. White Hall had, for over fifty years, been divided up into sundry chambers for clerks and officials of the Chancery, and it would take a generation not only for all the brick partitions to be pulled down, but for suitable storage space to be found for all the rolls and deeds of government bureaucracy, not to mention all the grumpy Chancery officials. The Great Hall of Westminster was reserved for ceremonial occasions and the daily activities of the King’s Bench, as various other legal courts.

That left the kitchens which were, in actual fact, a good choice. The great hall of the kitchen was of a similar size to the Painted Chamber, was solidly built, well lit, and, by virtue of being a kitchen, was well heated with five great hearths; and now that the palace was no longer to be used as a residence, the huge kitchen complex would no longer be needed. Once the cooks, dairy maids and butchers were moved out and the hall scrubbed, it would actually make a very good home for the House of Lords.

It was just that it was a former kitchen! While many lords accepted it in good humour—their new home would be far more commodious and comfortable than the cramped Chapter House—many grumbled about it, feeling the location a slur. The beautiful St Stephen’s went to Commons, while the lords got the kitchens…

At least the people on the streets of London and, presumably, the fields of England, have something to smile about, Neville thought.

Then, before he could speak again, the Abbot of Westminster rose to his feet, his cheeks now a deep-hued crimson (although whether with excitement or drink, Neville could not tell), and called a toast to their handsome young king, and all in the hall rose, and raised goblets towards Bolingbroke.

Much later, Bolingbroke rose, extending his arm to Mary. She rose herself, but her action was decidedly unsteady, and Bolingbroke’s eyes flew to Margaret at Neville’s side.

Margaret murmured in concern, and moved about the tables towards Mary in order to help her.

Bolingbroke’s eyes locked with Neville’s, and he tilted his head slightly.

Neville nodded, understanding. Making his apologies to both Montagu and to Katherine, Lancaster’s widow, he moved quickly and silently into the pillared aisles behind the tables.

“More wine, Tom? Surely you cannot have yet drunk yourself into stupidity.”

“Thank you, sire,” Neville said, taking the goblet that Bolingbroke extended.

“Hal,” the king said. “Call me Hal, Tom, when we are in private like this.”

Neville had left the hall and walked quickly to Bolingbroke’s private apartments as Bolingbroke said his goodnights to both his guests and to Mary. He’d waited almost half an hour in the antechamber to Bolingbroke’s suite before the king had entered, dismissed all his attendants with an impatient wave of his hand, and nodded Neville through into the inner bedchamber.

Now Bolingbroke sat in a chair before the fire, stretching out his legs and sighing. “Come, sit down, Tom. It is rare enough that we have this chance to so enjoy privacy, and there is no need for you to stand on ceremonial deference.”

Neville’s mouth twitched as he sat in a chair opposite Bolingbroke’s. Bolingbroke could pretend all he liked that it was ceremony and the business of the nation that had kept them from their former close friendship, but Neville would have none of it. He would no longer tolerate the lies that had once characterised their friendship.

“We are not the friends we once were, Hal.” Neville raised his goblet in a silent toast to Bolingbroke, but smiled, taking any potential sting from his words.

“Aye,” Bolingbroke said, looking down to his own goblet. “Well… that we are not.”

Then he looked directly back to Neville, the firelight glinting in his silver-gilt hair and lighting his pale grey eyes. “I no longer know you, Tom. And that terrifies me.”

“Why? Because you think to have lost a friend, or because you think to have lost control of me?”

Or because you fear that I will not hand my soul to Margaret when the time for my decision comes? Neville once again thanked Christ that he’d had the strength to refuse to watch Margaret transform herself into her true being while birthing Bohun. In that single refusal, Neville had, he hoped, given himself more room to manoeuvre.

Bolingbroke’s mouth twisted. “You were ever blunt with your words, Tom.” He paused, his eyes not faltering as they gazed at Neville. “I am terrified for both those reasons.”

“I thank you for your honesty,” Neville said. “If you had said anything else… ”

Bolingbroke managed a slight laugh. “What? You would have raised a rebellion?”

Neville took a sip of wine, and decided to be bold. “I can do far worse to you, Hal, should I have a mind to.”

All amusement left Bolingbroke’s face, and he leaned forward. “Do not threaten me!”

Neville leaned forward himself, taking Bolingbroke’s fury full on. “Then promise never to lie to me again!”

Bolingbroke stared a moment or two longer at Neville, then gradually the fury faded from his face and he leaned back in his chair. “I cannot afford to, can I?”

Neville also sat back, one part of his mind thinking that he and Bolingbroke were engaged in some bizarre seated dance. “Nay. Not after all the lies you have told me in the past.”

They were both silent for long minutes, thinking of the web of deception Bolingbroke, and Margaret, had spun about Neville.

It was Neville who finally broke the silence, his mouth lifting in a wry grin. “Who would have thought, Hal, that such a once intensely-devout friar would sit so comfortably with the king of demons?”

“Such are the strange twists that life takes, Tom.”

Again there was a silence, and again it was Neville who broke it.

“You have been honest with me,” he said, “and so I shall be honest with you. Do you remember that moment during your coronation when the abbot asked if there were any reason you should not take the throne? If there were any man who disputed it?”

“How can I forget it.”

“You looked at me, knowing that if I spoke, I could yet ruin your triumph.”

Bolingbroke did not speak, waiting for Neville to continue.

“That moment stretched on and on,” Neville said very softly, “as I thought.”

“And of what did you think?”

“I thought of you that day you rode your white stallion into the centre of Richard’s army outside Flint castle. I thought of what you promised them: freedom.”

“A better life,” Bolingbroke murmured, “for themselves and their families.”

“I made myself a vow in that moment,” Neville said. “I vowed that whatever your birth blood, your demonry, if you worked tirelessly and truthfully to ensure the freedom of the commons of England, those men and women who have ever loved you, then I would condemn heaven into hell if it might help you.”

Bolingbroke’s eyes widened, and he sat up slightly.

“But if,” Neville continued, “I thought that you had lied to those men and women and to England, then I would do everything I could to ensure that you were thrust down into hell.”

Bolingbroke stared, then spoke. “I did not lie, Tom. I would die if I thought it in the best interests of England’s common men and women.”

Neville shrugged, and drained his goblet. He stood up, moving to the nearby table to refill it, turning to refill Bolingbroke’s as well.

“Our friendship will never be what it once was, Hal. Not now.”

“But we can still work together? For England?”

“Aye,” Neville said, and raised his goblet. “For England.”

There was an uncomfortable silence as both men drank, then Neville spoke again. “Talking of England, I am assuming that it was for unity’s sake that you turned so much of your fabled charm on Exeter this evening?”

“I did my best, Tom. I did my best. At the least he laughed cheerily at my poor jests.”

Ah, thought Neville. Then Exeter is a dangerous man and undoubtedly thinking to raise a rebellion.

“And what words passed between you and Montagu?” Bolingbroke enquired.

“General charm, but some sourness over the new home for the House of Lords. Hal, be careful. There is yet unrest.”

“A kitchen has never caused a revolution yet, my friend. I shall have that kitchen decked out in fine emeralds and scarlets, and much gold gilding, and once the lords remember that the wine cellars lie directly beneath the former kitchen, well… ”

“I have also heard whispers—no, not from Montagu, but in the streets and stables—about Richard. Hal, some say he is not dead.”

Bolingbroke’s mouth thinned. “Trust me, he is dead.”

“Oh, I trust that you would not have him left alive to niggle at your legitimacy. But Richard’s name is powerful whether he is dead or not. A single rumour that he escaped Pontefract Castle and waits in the marches for all true Englishmen to gather at his side would be enough to destabilise your seat on that throne.”

“Richard is dead!”

“But he may still haunt you,” Neville said. “Be careful. You may be beloved of the commons, but there are many who would not weep to see you dead on the cobbles with a knife between your ribs. Richard’s name is the one they will use to thrust that knife home.”

Bolingbroke waved a hand. “I will prevail.”

“And I hope that you do,” Neville said, “for of all things I do not want another Richard to take your place.”

Bolingbroke smiled, and the atmosphere between them eased a little further. “You have taken good care of Mary,” he said. “You and Margaret. For that I thank you.”

“She is a treasure, Hal. The people on the street adore her almost as much as they do you.”

“I have been lucky in my wife,” Bolingbroke said.

“But not as lucky as you had hoped?” Neville said.

Bolingbroke sent him a sharp look. “What do you mean by that?”

“Mary will never bear you an heir. Have you thought about setting her aside?”

“That is a brutal remark, coming from one who claims that my wife is a treasure.”

“Then I ask you as a king, not as a man. As a king, you need an heir. How does the king answer my question?”

“I can never set Mary aside,” Bolingbroke said. “And that is the answer of the king.”

Neville nodded, turning to stare into the flames as he thought. No, the king could not set Mary aside, and certainly not for the woman Bolingbroke truly wanted, Catherine of France. The commons adored Mary, and would loathe Catherine. It might be the end of Bolingbroke’s kingship if he set Mary aside.

So Bolingbroke the king was going to wait for Mary the queen to die.

Neville wondered very much what Bolingbroke might do if Mary did not die. A crippled, barren wife was second only to a successful rebellion as the worst lot in life that fate could deal a king.

“And France?” Neville said.

Bolingbroke hesitated. “France? You know I will turn my attention to France sooner or later, Tom.”

“Aye.” For there lies Catherine… and untold wealth and land. “Take care you do not become another King Arthur, Hal. So caught by his glorious dreams of conquering the entire civilised world he neglected his own family where waited his doom. Remember what happened to Arthur’s dream of Camelot.”

Bolingbroke shot Neville an unreadable look, then took a deep breath. “I must to France, but not merely for the ‘glory’. France waits for me, and for you.”

“Waits for me?”

“Aye. It will be in France that the angels, no doubt using their mouthpiece Joan of Arc, will ask you for your decision, Tom. My road, as yours, will lead to France.”

Neville thought a moment, then nodded. Of course. Doubtless, Joan would present the choice on behalf of the angels. “Arthur’s dreams ended in France,” he said.

Bolingbroke stared at Neville. “Then I pray to our sweet Lord Jesus that France shall not prove the end of mine.”

III Saturday 4th May 1381 —i—

It was still dark, but Mary could hear the world stir outside her chamber windows. There was a faint, distant clattering interspersed with the low growl of men’s voices: grooms readying the horses for the day’s entertainment. There was another clatter, closer, and this noise was interspersed with more feminine voices: women in the kitchen courtyard, darting to and fro between kitchen and great hall, carting pails and dishes, readying the morning’s breakfast. And faintly, so very faintly, came the morning song of the birds: the pigeons and doves of the stables, and the wilder, lovelier melodies of the meadow birds.

Mary kept her eyes closed, her hands clenching at her sides under the light coverlets, and bent her entire will to concentrate on the sound of the birds. But it was no use. The world of stables and of kitchens kept intruding, destroying the peace of the birdsong, and soon Mary knew the world of the court and of her responsibilities as queen would also intrude in the guise of the careful voices and hands of her waiting women.

Reluctantly, she opened her eyes. Just a slit, a glance under her lashes, for Mary did not want anyone who might be watching to know she was awake. Still dark, it appeared that there was, as yet, no one up and moving about the chamber, but now Mary could hear the altered breathing of the two women who slept on pallets at the foot of her bed. Mary realised they were awake, steeling themselves to rise in the cold air of the chamber. Once they had gathered their bravery, and risen to pull on some clothes, they would stoke the fire in the hearth, air Mary’s clothes before it, and fetch warm water and a dish of soft white bread soaked in warm, watered wine from the kitchens. When all this was done, they would turn their attention to Mary, and ask her gently if she felt well enough to rise against the day; if she felt well enough to take some bread and wine.

Did she?

Mary closed her eyes again and concentrated on her body’s aches and pains. The great hard lump in her lower belly sat as rocklike and as unforgiving as it did every day. If she tried to move slightly in her bed, then Mary knew her flesh would drag and catch about the unmoving mass as if it were seaweed caught at a shoreline by a great rock. But at least today the lump did not send lancing fingers of pain throughout her flesh, and for that Mary was grateful.

On the days that the lump woke, and raged, she could hardly bear to live.

But if the lump lay quiescent, then the great bones of her legs, and those of her lower back, ached abominably. This was a new discomfort, and Mary wondered at it. She had not ventured far beyond her chamber in the past weeks: on most evenings to the great hall for evening supper, and sometimes to the courtyard if it were sunny and warm enough, and even then Thomas Neville generally carried her, so Mary knew there was no reason her bones should be complaining. Had they grown tired of their enforced resting?

Or was this some new manifestation of her illness? Tears formed behind Mary’s closed eyelids, and she fought to keep her breathing steady and slow, lest she alert her waiting women to her distress.

No, sweet Jesu, let not this affliction have struck my bones as well.

Had she not prayed enough? Confessed her every evil thought? Had sweet Jesu found her wanting in some way that now she was to be further punished?

Mary had spent the past year trying her best not to complain and not to fear, knowing that her illness was a test sent by God. She would not fail.

But, oh sweet Jesu! It was so hard! So hard.

It was not the pain that distressed Mary, but her ever increasing sense of complete failure. She’d failed as a woman, as a wife, and as a queen. As a woman she had shrunk from her husband’s attentions, as a wife she had not been able to bear her husband a living child, and as a queen, she had not only failed in her duty to provide the realm with an heir, but she had not been able to perform those duties that a queen should—as a helpmeet to her husband the king, so that he could the better shoulder the onerous duties of office.

Every time that Bolingbroke held her hand most gently, and told her with an even greater gentleness that she was not to fret about it, Mary felt even worse, and even more the failure.

And on those days when she saw the calculation lurking behind the superficial kindness in his eyes…

Mary’s breath almost caught audibly in her throat, and she froze, wondering if her women had heard her. But, no, they still continued to lie, dozing perhaps, and not listening too closely for a sign that their mistress was awake.

For the moment, Mary did not want to give them that sign. Not just yet. A few minutes more, and then she would be prepared mentally to start her day.

Bolingbroke. Mary’s feelings for her husband ranged between the fearful and the thankful, neither of which gave her much peace. Fearful, because she well knew her husband’s lust and desire for Catherine of France, and also knew her husband enough to know he was both impatient and angry at her ill health. Her increasing, but not yet fatal, illness made Bolingbroke chafe all the more for the moment when he could publicly pursue Catherine.

Thankful, because Bolingbroke continued to be so gentle and tolerant of her in public when he might well have been dismissive, if not angry. Thankful, because Bolingbroke kept her at his side—a living part of his court—when he might have discarded her into some dank, out-of-the-way castle or manor house while he enjoyed (more openly) the comforts and company of women more suited to his needs.

Once, and not so long ago, Mary had thought to have some power over him. The English adored her when she knew they would loathe Catherine, and Mary had thought this might have stayed Bolingbroke’s hand against her.

But after what had happened to Richard… if Bolingbroke could so easily dispose of a king, then what would he do with an unwanted wife? How much longer would he tolerate her? How long did she have before—?

“What? Still abed? Women, to your feet. Pleasure awaits!”

Mary heard the two women at the foot of her bed spring to their feet, stumbling over the blankets as they did so. But she did not start, or even, for the moment, open her eyes.

Instead, her mouth curved in a small smile of joy. Had he known that she would be lying here in the pre-dawn dark, a prisoner of both her failing flesh and her terrified thoughts?

She heard him move to the side of her bed, smelt his manly fragrance, and finally she opened her eyes, and allowed her mouth to stretch into a full smile.

“Tom, what do you here in my chamber so early?”

There was a faint light from the windows now, enough to catch the flash of Neville’s smile within the blackness of his well-clipped beard.

“Come to rouse you for the tournament, lady. Myself and,” he glanced over his shoulder, “my lovely wife.”

Now Margaret’s form rose behind that of her husband, and Mary’s smile stretched even wider. She looked back to Neville, still grinning at her.

“You shall cause great gossip, my lord, coming so unannounced into my chamber.”

Margaret laughed, and walked around Neville to sit on the side of Mary’s bed, gently, so as not to jolt her. “He has me as a chaperone, madam. His jealous wife shall make sure he gets up to no mischief.”

Mary’s eyes filled with tears again, but tears of gratefulness rather than despondency or pain. Their jesting did for her what no amount of solicitous words and gestures could do—make her feel worthwhile, as both a woman and a friend.

“I come merely because my wife thought that she might need a loud voice with which to rouse you,” Neville said. He’d taken a step closer to the bed, and now stood behind Margaret, one hand resting on her shoulder. “I shall not stay, for I know these first hours of a queen’s day are dominated by her women, and do not allow the presence of a man. But,” he found his voice had lost its jesting tone, “how do you feel, my lady queen? Does the thought of a day at the tournament cheer you, or cause you distress?”

Mary smiled at Neville, and then at Margaret. “It cheers me,” she said, “for I think I shall enjoy watching full grown men beating each other about the ears with lances and clubs.”

Neville nodded. “Then I shall leave you to the attention of your ladies, madam,” he said, “and will instead go to ensure that your litter, comfortably cushioned and screened, is waiting for you after your breakfast.”

He bent, kissed Mary’s forehead familiarly, then kissed Margaret’s mouth, and with a bow and a flourish, left the chamber, flashing a grin at the two women standing by the hearth as they watched with curious eyes the group about their queen’s bed.

By mid-morning it had become apparent to all concerned that the great tournament at Windsor would be held under fine and warm skies. A great omen, whispered some among the ten thousand strong crowd that had gathered, for the bright dawning of the new reign. Many had made the journey from London to the tourneying fields a mile beyond Windsor over the previous days, others from the countryside nearer the castle that very morning. Some were there only to watch the jousting of the nobles, some to partake in the wrestling matches and other games scheduled to entertain the throng, others to set up stalls to cater to the thirst and hunger of the spectators and participants alike. Still others were there to feed off the crowd itself: cutpurses and thieves, and grim-faced friars determined to convince as many as possible that the Devil Himself lurked among the fun and frivolities scheduled for the day.

Trenches, recently erected wooden picket fences, and lines of determined pikemen kept the commoners at a respectful distance from the tents and horse lines of the nobles and knights—numbering some seven thousand if all their retainers were counted. The tents, with their gaily flapping pennants, flags and ribbons, stretched over almost fifteen acres of meadowland. Horse lines divided the grouped tents of households and loyalties—double lines of snorting, stamping, rolling-eyed destriers, kicking at their grooms as one means of tempering their impatience for the battles ahead.

Almost precisely between the tent city of the nobles and their retainers and the thronging horde of onlookers and merchants lay the tourneying field. It covered almost four acres: the green-grassed tourney field itself, flanked on two sides by the three-storey timber stands for the wives and families of nobles; and spaces for the common crowd at either end and in a narrow, fenced area directly before the stands. Pennants and ribbons fluttered here as they did among the tents, while jugglers, sword dancers and musicians with lutes, harps and bagpipes wandered up and down the jousting lanes of the tourney field, entertaining the gathering crowds until the fun and bloodshed should get under way in earnest.

By midday the spectators had gathered tight about the timber stands which were packed with the families of the combatants. Jingling and clanking from the tents and horse lines suggested that both men and beasts were readying themselves for the fray, and a murmuring rose from the crowds.

Just as the restlessness edged towards the potentially uncontrollable, a shout went up, and the crowds roared as one (even if most had no idea what was going on). Two columns of richly attired and liveried horsemen rode onto the field, an escort for a horse litter of unparalleled magnificence.

“The queen!” the shout went up. “The queen! Hurrah for Mary, sweet Mary!”

Neville, riding his skittering stallion close to Mary’s litter, leaned down and grabbed a handful of the rich silky stuff that made up the hangings.

“With your permission, madam,” he said.

“Of course, my lord,” Mary’s voice said. “I would show them my gratefulness.”

Neville grasped the hanging more tightly, then lifted it and threw the material across the top of the litter, nodding to his squire, Robert Courtenay, who rode as escort on the other side, to do the same. Within moments both men had exposed Mary and her waiting women inside the litter to the full view of the crowds, and the roar rose to a thunder as Mary leaned forward and waved to the gathered people, smiling sweetly. She looked thin and pale, but her thinness and pallor was counterbalanced by her patent merriness and joy at the reception of the commons.

The thunder, if possible, grew louder, and people waved hats and scarves above their heads, acknowledging their queen.

But within the litter, Margaret saw how Mary’s hand trembled, and how her lips pressed too tightly together.

“Madam,” she murmured, leaning close, “do not tire yourself.”

Mary continued waving. “I cannot disappoint them,” she said. “A little ache here and there is a small enough price.”

Margaret’s eyes narrowed. Mary was suffering more than a ‘little ache here and there’. When Margaret had aided Mary in her morning ablutions, and helped her to dress, she’d noted with concern how the queen had winced and, on several occasions, bit her lip to keep from crying out. And when she’d brought Mary her bowl of bread sops, Mary had hardly been able to swallow more than five mouthfuls.

If nothing else, Mary was likely to faint from hunger, if not her pain, within ten minutes.

Carefully, and as surreptitiously as she could, Margaret moved close enough to Mary to pack in some more supporting cushions about her back and hips.

“I do thank you,” Mary whispered as she continued to smile and wave, and the sheer gratefulness in her tone brought tears to Margaret’s eyes.

“When we are settled in the stand,” Margaret said quietly, “I shall give you a few drops of Doctor Culpeper’s liquor which I have in my waist pouch. It will deaden some of the pain.”

Margaret saw that Mary was about to object, and hastened on: “You shall be of no use to anyone if you cry out and faint from pain and weakness, my lady. A few drops will ease the pain, but allow you to remain alert.”

To Margaret’s relief, Mary nodded slightly, and Margaret looked to see Thomas watching, and she inclined her head and watched the relief spread over his face as well.

The acclaim of the crowds only grew louder when the litter drew to a halt before the grandstand at the head of the field. Thomas Neville jumped down from his horse, and bowed before Mary in the litter. She nodded, and he leaned forward and gathered her into his arms, gently adjusting her weight so that he did not jolt her.

“There are ten thousand men here today who would give their lives for you,” he whispered.

“I do not deserve their—”

“You deserve the reverence of the sun and that of the moon as well, my lady,” he said. “That of ten thousand men is the very least of what you are owed.”

And with that he strode to the stand, climbing the stairs to the royal box and resting his queen gently onto the pile of cushions waiting there for her.

Margaret and the three other accompanying ladies moved to their places behind and about Mary as Neville bowed deeply one more time and took his leave with a smile.

At the bottom of the stand he spoke softly and urgently to Courtenay, his eyes jerking over the crowd as he spoke. “Robert, I do not like the feel of this day. Bolingbroke was a damned fool to organise this tournament in the first instance, let alone when rumours of Richard are feeding more fires than all the chopped wood in England.”

Courtenay nodded, his own gaze wandering over the crowd. The majority of kings in the past hundred years had banned tournaments, not only because the violence of the tourney field tended to get out of control and spill into the crowds, but because very few kings liked being surrounded with the private armies of the nobles.

Times like these, ambitious nobles tended to get ideas.

“At the least,” Courtenay replied, “Hotspur is not here.”

Neville grunted. Hotspur, once the close friend of both Neville and Bolingbroke, was still lurking in the north, “attending”, as he communicated to Bolingbroke in the occasional letter, to the Scots.

He had yet to offer his allegiance to Bolingbroke, and Neville did not think he ever would; not with Hotspur’s ambitions, and not with the army he could raise in the north whenever he needed. If Bolingbroke ever wanted to leave England to fight for France, he was going to have to “attend” to Hotspur first.

“If Hotspur and his army had been here, Bolingbroke would most certainly never have consented to the tournament,” Neville said, then managed a tight grin. “Damn Hotspur. Why is he never here when we need him?”

A movement to the side caught both men’s eyes. Men with horns had moved into ranks either side of the field.

“Bolingbroke is about to arrive,” Neville said. “Robert, I would be better to spend my time moving among the combatants than here. At least for the time being. Will you—”

“No need to voice the command, my lord. I will guard Mary, the lady Margaret and the other ladies with my life.”

“Good. I will send a company of men to assist you. Robert—”

“With my life, my lord!”

Neville nodded, clapped a hand briefly on Courtenay’s shoulder, then melted into the crowds behind them.

Bolingbroke arrived in much greater splendour than his wife, but to no less acclaim. He cantered onto the field atop a great, white dancing stallion caparisoned in crimson and emerald green silks and tassels. Atop Bolingbroke’s brow rested a glinting golden crown, resplendent with gems, and about his shoulders hung a purple velvet cloak, trimmed with ermine. His tunic and leggings were all of cloth of gold, richly embroidered and thickly crusted with pearls and silver threads. His face was confident and joyous, and he stood in the stirrups, waving to the crowd, and shouting to them his well-wishes and his love for them.

It was fine theatre.

At the head of the field Bolingbroke reined in his stallion, sinking back into the saddle. He raised his glorious face, staring directly at Mary. As she nodded, he smiled, and bowed in the saddle to her, making humble obeisance to his wife.

The crowd adored it.

“He should have been an actor on the stage,” Mary whispered to Margaret.

“He would not dare not to love you,” Margaret replied. “Not here. Not now.”

Mary gave a very small nod, then smiled the greater at her husband, now rising from his bow, and waved at him with her hand to join her in the royal box.

“We are all actors in this great drama,” she said, and then she turned her head to Margaret and looked her full in the eye. “But sometimes I think there is more to this plot than my ladies will tell me.”

Before a startled Margaret could think of a response, Mary had turned back to Bolingbroke, now dismounting from his stallion, composing her face into a smile of proper wifely love and respect.

“Best give me your vial of Culpeper’s liquor now, Margaret,” Mary murmured, “so that I may the better play my part.”

IV Saturday 4th May 1381 —ii—

The tournament began immediately Bolingbroke had taken his place beside Mary and nodded his readiness to the officials.

Within ten minutes the grinding, bloody, sweaty, bone-breaking, heart-stopping action had begun. Having agreed to the tournament itself, Bolingbroke had nevertheless drawn the line at allowing the traditional melee of several hundred knights drawn up into two opposing forces that charged down the field to engage in several hours of hacking, clouting and cursing until only a few men (and horses) were left standing. Instead, the action began with something only a little less spectacular.

The tourney field had been divided into twenty-five jousting lanes, and at the drop of the official’s flag, fifty knights lowered their lances and kicked their stallions into action. The thunder of the great horses’ hooves as they crashed down the lanes was outdone only by the screams of the crowd and the eventual grinding and screeching as lances struck or glanced off the breastplates and shields of opponents. Some knights managed to hold their seats, others were unhorsed on their first pass and left to flounder on the turf hoping the momentum of their fall and the weight of their armour wouldn’t roll them into the path of an oncoming destrier.

Destriers were bred for their density and thickness of muscle, their strength and their weight: they were not renowned for their ability to jump anything larger than a mouse or dodge anything in less than a gentle quarter-mile curve.

One man died and two were crippled when the huge, sharpened hooves of galloping destriers cut right through their armour and the bones and flesh beneath.

The horses trampled on, almost unaware of the men they had cut to ribbons beneath their hooves.

The unhorsed knights who managed to roll to their feet rather than under the oncoming death of destriers, steadied themselves and drew their swords. Those knights who made it to the other end of the jousting lanes still on their horses now dismounted and drew their own swords, striding as best they could in their enveloping armour back down the jousting lanes to meet their opponents in true chivalric fashion, one on one, sword to sword. Blades clattered against heads and necks, trying to find that sweet opening between helmet and shoulder and breast armour.

Opponents rested after each swing, gathering their strength to once again raise the massive blades with arms made heavy by their encasing armour and strike again.

Blood seeped out from joints in armour, and trailed in apologetic rivulets down breast and thigh plates. Breathing became harsh, and was intermixed with curses and shouted entreaties for aid to sundry saints. Some men pissed or shat themselves, either with fear or exertion, and the stink of urine and faeces added itself to the other manly odours of battle.

The crowd went wild. Men surged against barriers, each individual shouting encouragement to the knights of his choice, and curses against their opponents. Some spectators threw rocks and other missiles into the arena. Some turned against their neighbours and sent fists crashing into cheekbones and chins in the excitement of the moment.

The behaviour of the noble families and wives in the stands was scarcely better. Women leaped to their feet, waving streamers of their household colours, urging their menfolk on to greater efforts with voices shrill with battle lust. Young pages and valets, beside themselves with sorrow that they should not be on the field themselves, punched fists into the air, and shouted wagers into the din, sure that their lord would be the one to prevail.

And amid all this, the valets and pages of the fallen darted among the warriors on the field, litters dragging and bumping behind them, searching out their masters that they might attempt to roll them onto the litters and get them to the dubious safety of the surgeons’ tents.

Bolingbroke leaned forward eagerly, one fist clenched, his eyes straining to take in all the action.

“Surely this death and maiming is not so exciting?” Mary murmured, sickened at the sight before her.

“I need to know on whom I can rely on the battlefield,” Bolingbroke replied, not lifting his eyes from the action. Then he relaxed a little, and leaned back. “There? See? It is all but done. Some knights have conceded, while others have won outright.”

He stood and clapped his approval of the actions of the men below, and the crowds roared with him. The fighting was done now, and some knights strutted off the field, having triumphed against their opponents; later they would receive tokens from the king to mark their victory. Others slumped wearily, shamed. And others twisted, moaning, or, worse, lay still on the grass waiting for the final scurrying pages to come by with their litters.

And when all was finally cleared, men darted out with baskets of sawdust to dry out the patches of clotting red so that the next two lines of jousters would not slip and fall on the blood of their predecessors.

The day proceeded.

Neville wandered through the barely-controlled chaos amid the tents and horse lines of the nobles. Several rounds of jousting had now taken place, and soon the tournament would move into its most exciting stage: the great nobles, men who had fought and lived through a score of battles, would joust one on one.

No doubt there shall be a few scores settled this day, thought Neville as he pushed his way through the crowds, seeking his uncle Ralph Neville’s tent. Ah, there, the standard of Westmorland. He nodded to the guards outside the tent’s entrance, then ducked inside.

His uncle was standing in the centre of the space, almost fully armoured, his face a mask of impatience as two of his squires tugged at buckle straps, and twisted plates into place. The earl grimaced at Neville’s entrance, and Neville was not sure if that was because one of the squires had tugged too tightly, or because his uncle was not happy to see him.

“You’re not going to fight?” Raby asked. “You have decided to play the part of the spectator?”

Ah, no wonder his uncle had grimaced at him. Raby had never been the one to pass a fight without adding his sword to it.

“There will be battle enough in the coming months,” Neville said. “Today I will wander the encampment, the better to understand the strength of various houses.”

“Humph,” Raby grunted. “First a warrior, then a priest, now a courtier. Will there never be an end to your incarnations, Tom?”

“I am just Tom,” Neville said, “choosing to reveal myself in different ways.” He walked closer to his uncle, and the squires, their task done, melted away. “Will you have some wine before you enter the lists, uncle?”

“Aye. It will steady my hand.”

Neville walked to a small table, poured out two goblets of wine from a ewer, and handed one of them to his uncle. “And who is your opponent?”

Raby hesitated. Then… “Exeter.”

Neville halted with his goblet halfway to his mouth, stunned. “Exeter? John Holland?” Richard’s half-brother against his uncle, the man responsible for garnering support for Bolingbroke, who then supplanted and then murdered Exeter’s brother?

“The very same.”

“And who arranged this?”

“Exeter himself, I believe,” Raby said, and drained his goblet. “I heard he specifically asked to be set against me.”

Neville took the empty goblet from his uncle’s hand and set it, together with his untouched one, to one side.

“Uncle… be careful. Exeter is dangerous.”

“And I’m not?”

“I didn’t mean dangerous as in skilled with a weapon, uncle. I meant dangerous in the use of treachery. Do you think he will allow his brother’s death to go unchallenged? Unrevenged?”

“If he knows what is best for him… yes.”

Neville turned away, fingering Raby’s mail gloves which lay on the table. “The Hollands are a powerful family,” he said.

Raby walked up beside Neville and took the mail gloves, pulling them on. “They wouldn’t dare. They are not that powerful. No doubt Exeter grumbles in private, as do most of the Holland family. But to take on Hal? No. They wouldn’t dare. Tom, they wouldn’t.”

That’s what Richard and de Vere believed about Bolingbroke, Neville thought, and that mistake killed them.

He forced a smile to his face. “Then I wish you good luck in your joust, uncle. I hope your lance bounces off his balls and bruises them so badly he shall not sire any more sons.”

Raby guffawed loudly. “I shall aim with intent,” he said. “England could do with a few less Hollands. Now, where are those damn squires? I need my helmet!”

When he’d left his uncle, Neville wandered as close as he could to Exeter’s tents without attracting unwanted attention. Sundry knights and nobles scurried about, most in full battle armour, all with tense expressions and narrowed eyes that darted this way and that.

Neville stood behind the tent of a minor noble and chewed at his lip in thought. How many men did Exeter and his fellow Hollands have with them? Two or three hundred, no more. They wouldn’t have been able to bring any more without attracting undue attention.

So, Exeter’s allies, then. Who were they likely to be? Northumberland? Northumberland had ever had his disagreements with Bolingbroke and his father, the Duke of Lancaster, and particularly with Neville’s own family. But Northumberland had too much to lose by turning against Bolingbroke, and far more to gain by standing at his side.

So Northumberland was unlikely to ally himself with Exeter, and Hotspur, Northumberland’s son, who may very well have supported an Exeter bid to topple Bolingbroke, was still far in the north.

There were, of course, a slew of lesser nobles who might support Exeter—Neville well knew that the wounds caused by Bolingbroke’s extraordinary rise to power had not yet healed—but Neville simply couldn’t see how they could hope to form a force strong enough to defeat Bolingbroke’s allies who were here in force; Raby and Northumberland, in particular, had huge escorts of men at the tournament.

A movement to his left caught Neville’s eye and he turned, then frowned slightly at what he saw.

None other than the Abbot of Westminster, striding out of Exeter’s tent and looking guilty enough to confess to Christ’s murder if someone should put a knife to his throat and ask him to say the words.

The abbot disappeared down a narrow alley between rows of tents, and Neville hurried after him.

After five minutes the abbot paused, looked about—causing Neville to duck behind a saddled destrier—then entered a small tent. In an instant he was out again, and a few heartbeats after his exit five Dominican friars hurried out, split up, and merged into the crowds.

What was the abbot doing, consorting first with Exeter, then with Dominicans, of all people?

Neville hesitated, then followed one of the Dominicans. The man’s hooded black figure made him easy to track at a safe distance in the otherwise gaudy multitude.

The friar led Neville back towards the hordes of common folk who had come to watch the tournament. Now and then he would stop, catch the attention of a small group of men and women, whisper something, then move on.

Neville’s disquiet grew, especially since the people the friar talked to remained agitated after the friar had moved on, and turned to talk to others within the crowd. He watched the Dominican work his way through the throng, thought about continuing his pursuit of him, then decided to ask some of the people what they’d been told by the friar.

“My good man,” Neville said quietly to one man standing in a group of five or six others, “what did the friar tell you?”

The man glanced at his fellows, licking his lips nervously, then looked back at this lord who had addressed him.

“He said… ” the man hesitated, “… he said that Richard our king is not dead, and that he will be riding to London within the week to reclaim his throne.”

“What?”

“It’s what he said.”

“It’s not true, dammit! Man, believe me, Richard is dead!”

But the group stared at Neville, shaking their heads, and looked about uncertainly.

“Perhaps he still is alive,” one man said. “Why shouldn’t he be? Perhaps these stories of his death were false.”

Neville opened his mouth to refute the lie one more time, then shut it as he suddenly realised what Exeter was going to do.

“My God,” Neville whispered, and hurried off.

Mary shifted a little on her cushions, trying to ease the agony coursing up and down her spine. Her face twisted, and she gasped.

“Madam?” Margaret whispered, shocked by the whiteness of Mary’s face. She grabbed at Mary’s hand, then looked to Bolingbroke.

He was already staring at Mary, and had taken her other hand. “Mary,” he said, “how bad is it?”

“Bad enough,” Mary whispered.

Margaret locked eyes with Bolingbroke. The fact that Mary had admitted her pain told her a great deal: Mary was in absolute agony. Nothing else would drive her to actually admitting discomfort.

“Do something,” Bolingbroke hissed to Margaret, then turned to smile and wave at the people whose heads had turned to watch what was happening in the royal box. She is tired, no more.

Margaret hesitated. “I have no more of the liquor,” she said.

Mary tried to smile, and failed dismally. “I have been too greedy,” she said. “It is my fault.”

Again Margaret locked eyes with Bolingbroke. I can do for her what I did for Lancaster in his final hours. Ease her pain.

No! She will know that you are other than what you present yourself!

And would that be so bad?

Meg, do not go against my will. We will be finished here soon enough.

Margaret dropped her eyes. I hope it is not your fate to die a lingering, painful death, Hal.

“I will be well enough once we leave this place,” Mary said. “Do not fear for me, Margaret.”

“It is difficult to avoid fearing for those whom you love dearly,” Margaret said, and her eyes filmed with tears.

“I am suffering no more than those poor men below who have been trampled beneath horses’ hooves,” Mary said, patting at Margaret’s hand. Then she lowered her voice to a whisper. “Thank you for caring, Margaret.”

Margaret took one of Mary’s hands in both of hers, and very, very gently rubbed its back with her thumbs. With Mary, as she had done with Lancaster, she should dig her thumbs in deeply to give the relief required for such pain, but if she did that, and eased Mary’s pain to a remarkable degree, then Mary would indeed suspect something.

So Margaret gently rubbed, and the continual movement, with the slight power she put into it, managed to take the edge off Mary’s pain. It happened so gradually that Mary herself did not connect the very slight easing of her pain with Margaret’s rubbing.

She merely thought the ease was due to Margaret’s love… which, in a sense, it was.

After a few minutes Mary straightened her back a little, and lifted her head, suddenly becoming aware of the concerned looks being sent her way.

Mary smiled, then waved her hand a little. “A bad moment, my good people,” she said. “Nothing else. See, I am quite well now.”

And gradually those staring smiled, nodded, and returned their eyes to the tourney field before them.

Once their attention was back on the field, Mary turned to Margaret, and kissed her cheek. “Thank you for your love,” she said. “It means so much.”

Margaret blinked back her tears, and smiled, and would have spoken save that Bolingbroke leaned over and hushed them.

“Quiet! The joust of the tournament begins.”

Mary turned her head back to the field—its grass now all but torn up where it wasn’t littered with congealing pink mounds of sawdust. All but one jousting lane had been cleared away, and at either end of this single remaining lane sat two great warriors on their destriers: Exeter and Raby.

Both men and their mounts were fully armoured: Raby in black armour emblazoned with the Neville device across breastplate and helm; Exeter in gleaming white armour, similarly emblazoned with his own heraldic devices.

An official shouted an instruction, and both men slowly lowered their lances.

Their destriers bunched beneath them, knowing that at any instant they would be sent thundering towards their opponent.

A flag dropped, the crowd roared, and the destriers lumbered into movement.

Bolingbroke leaned forward in his chair, his face tense, one fist clenched. “Do me proud, Ralph,” he muttered. “Do me proud.”

Raby and Exeter pounded towards each other, their bodies hunched over lance and shield, their heads swaying with the violent movement of their horses.

They met in a grinding of metal in the centre of the field: sparks flew, horses grunted, but both lances slid off their opponent’s shield harmlessly as each passed the other, trying to pull up their destriers with hands laden with shield and weapon.

Squires leapt to their masters’ aid, catching the destriers and turning them about.

The crowd’s roar grew louder.

Bolingbroke turned to say something to Mary, then stopped, his eyes fixed on Thomas Neville who had climbed the stairs into the stand and was now fast approaching the royal box.

“Tom?” Bolingbroke said.

Neville reached him, glancing at Margaret and Mary, and then to where Robert Courtenay stood with a group of armed men in the back of the stand, before bending down to Bolingbroke.

“Treachery, sire,” he whispered. “I think Exeter means to—”

He got no further, for just then Exeter and Raby met again in a clash of metal and horseflesh in the centre of the field. The grinding and screeching of lance against shield grew to almost unbearable levels, and then Raby’s shield toppled to one side, dragging its owner over with it.

Exeter managed to drop his lance, grabbing a club that hung at his side. In a heartbeat he’d raised it on high, then smashed it into Raby’s helm.

Neville’s uncle slid unceremoniously to the ground in a clatter of armour and a flailing of legs and arms. His horse skittered off, rolling its eyes.

“Ralph!” Margaret whispered, half-rising. She had been Raby’s lover once, and had never ceased caring for him.

“Hal!” Neville said, equally as urgently. “You are in danger—”

Exeter ignored Raby struggling ignobly in his heavy armour on the ground, dropping the club and grabbing at his sword to wave it about his head. He turned to the gates that marked the entry and exit point of the tourney field, the vigour of his sword-waving doubling.

Horsed and heavily armed men flooded into the tourney field—a thousand at the least—some liveried in the devices of Exeter, others in the devices of various other members of the extended Holland clan, and more yet in the liveries of the Earl of Rutland and the Earl of Salisbury.

“Sweet Jesu!” Bolingbroke said, lurching to his feet as the seriousness of the moment suddenly hit him. Already other men—those of Bolingbroke’s personal guard, nobles and retainers of Northumberland and Raby and other noble houses allied with them—were rushing towards the tourney field. Sporadic fighting started where the two groups met, but the crowds of commoners, now lurching this way and that in terror, were so thick that it was hard for the king’s defenders to get close to the rebels.

“Hear me!” Exeter screamed, turning his destrier about in tight circles as he addressed the crowd, and still waving his sword about his head. “Hear me! I come on behalf of Richard the King. Yes! Richard! He still lives. Richard lives and will be in London within the week to remove this monster from the throne!”

The crowd’s noise swelled. Richard lived? Then several people shouted out: “Yes! Richard lives! We have heard it from men of God. Richard lives.”

And then another shout, coming so fast upon those of Exeter and the crowd that Bolingbroke had not had a chance of speaking himself.

The Abbot of Westminster, standing up from his place in one of the side stands: “Richard lives and shall come home to London to claim his rightful seat on the throne within the week. Believe me. The Church stands behind Richard!”

The crowd pushed forward, shouting and screaming, the hours of high excitement now turned into a rebellious surge.

“Give us Richard!” several people yelled, and soon the refrain was taken up by all around. “Give us Richard!”

“Stupid yokels,” Bolingbroke said under his breath, his face bright red with fury. “Give them a refrain to yell, anything, and they’ll shout it from the rooftops until they are silenced only by the sword!”

“Hal—” Mary said, trying to grasp his arm, but he twisted it away from her.

“You must get out of here,” Neville said, checking to make sure that Courtenay and the score of armed men with him were now making their way towards the royal box. If they moved quickly, Bolingbroke and Mary still had a chance to move—

“Seize him!” Exeter shouted, now waving his sword towards Bolingbroke.

“Richard is dead!” Bolingbroke shouted. “Dead! How can you shout for him now when only months before you shouted my name in Westminster Abbey?”

“He has misled you,” shouted the abbot and Exeter together. “Richard lives, and will shortly return to reclaim his—”

“My good people,” said a soft voice, and, miraculously, all heard it.

Mary, rising unbalanced and shaking from her chair. Both Margaret and Neville reached out hands to steady her, exchanging a shocked glance as they did so.

“My good people,” Mary said again, extending her hands outwards, palms up as if in supplication. “Will you listen to me?”

The crowd quieted, although murmuring still swelled up and down its length. Faces turned to Mary.

“I am so distressed that you should be told such lies by those who have no respect for you,” Mary said, and tears ran down her cheeks.

Now even the murmuring quieted, and the entire tourney field and its surrounds, packed with over fifteen thousand people, stared at their queen.

“Richard is dead,” she whispered, and amazingly that whisper reached every corner. “Did I not weep over his still white corpse? Did I not swaddle him in his shroud as his mother once swaddled him as a babe?”

Bolingbroke stared at her, incredulous. Mary had never seen Richard’s corpse, let alone spent hours weeping over it or swaddling it.

But the crowd was staring at her enthralled—even Exeter and his band—and so Bolingbroke held both his tongue and his incredulity in check.

“I think perhaps my Lords of Exeter and Westminster have been mistaken,” she said, gracing both men with a sweet smile. “Perhaps what they meant to say was that my beloved husband,” and now she smiled almost beatifically at a still incredulous Bolingbroke, “has arranged for Richard’s poor corpse to make its way in solemn procession back to London, to lie in state in Saint Paul’s, so that all Englanders may have a chance to say their farewells to their beloved boy-king.”

She turned back to Exeter, staring at her from under the raised visor of his helm, then to the Abbot of Westminster, who was licking his lips and, patently, thinking furiously. “Is that not so, my lords?” Mary said. She folded her hands before her.

The abbot glanced at Exeter. “Um, well,” he stumbled. “Perhaps we might have been mistaken—”

“She lies!” Exeter screamed, now standing in his stirrups and brandishing his sword towards Mary. “She mouths nothing but foul lies! Richard lives, and he—”

“Will you listen to this man befoul your beloved queen?” shouted Raby. He’d struggled to his feet when all attention had been turned towards Mary, and now he stood at Exeter’s stirrup. “How can any deny the beauty and truth of what our adored queen says?”

As quickly as it had been engaged and manipulated by Westminster and Essex, the mood of the crowd now swung again.

“Mary!” they screamed. “Mary!”

“Fool,” Raby said under the screams of the crowd and, so quickly that none of Exeter’s close companions could stop him, slid the unscabbarded blade of his sword up into the gap between Exeter’s abdominal and hip plates.

Exeter twisted, but it was too late. Raby leaned all his strength behind his thrust, and the sword tore through the stiffened leather beneath the plate armour and deep into Exeter’s lower belly.

The duke grunted, dropped his sword, then slid off his horse—and further onto Raby’s sword.

Instantly, his supporters started to back away.

Mary, who had not failed to notice Raby’s actions, clapped her hands, keeping the crowd’s attention on her. “My husband assures me Richard’s corpse will be back in London within the fortnight,” she said, “where you may all have the chance to view it and say your farewells. May sweet Jesu bless you all.”

And yet again the crowd roared in acclaim, and did not notice Northumberland’s and Raby’s men moving through the rebels, seizing the nobles who had thought to topple Bolingbroke.

Mary stood, waving and smiling, until order had been achieved. Then she said, “Beloved people, will you excuse me if I sit? I am so tired—”

She got no further, for suddenly she sank down, her entire frame shaking with pain, and Margaret wrapped her arms about Mary’s shoulders, concerned.

“Hal—” Neville said urgently.

Bolingbroke turned to address the crowd. “I must take my wife home,” he said, “for she has been greatly distressed by the treachery Exeter forced her to witness. Will you perchance excuse your king and queen?”

There were shouts of goodwill, then the crowd began to disperse.

Neville finally relaxed. “Hal, you would be dead now if it were not for Mary.”

Bolingbroke held Neville’s eyes, sharing both his shock and relief at the turn of events. Then, as one, both men looked down at Mary.

She had fainted dead away, and Margaret and one of her other women were rubbing her hands and wiping her forehead with a soft cloth.

“Sire,” Margaret said, “she must be returned to Windsor. Now!”

Bolingbroke nodded, but it was Neville who spoke.

“I will take care of it,” he said, then looked at Bolingbroke. “I think that you, sire, ought to make plans forthwith to bring Richard’s ‘poor corpse’ back from whatever pit you had it thrown in.”

Bolingbroke’s mouth twisted. “Not before I have had a chance to deal with Exeter—if he still lives—and our trusty friend the abbot,” he said. “I hope you took good note of who else had taken Exeter’s part, Tom.”

“Aye,” Neville said. “And they were many more than I know you would like to think, Hal.”

Then he bent down, and, with Margaret and the other ladies fussing about, gathered Mary into his arms.

V Saturday 4th May 1381 —iii—

“Well?” said Bolingbroke, turning to face his chief advisers.

They stood in the cool evening light in Bolingbroke’s private chamber: the king had allowed no servants in to light either the fire or the lamps.

“Exeter will be dead by dawn,” Raby said. He was slumped wearily in a chair, still in the sweat-stained garments he’d worn under his armour. His face was drawn, sallow now rather than swarthy, and a dark bruise ran up one cheek. “His wound is bad.”

Bolingbroke grunted. “And for that you have my thanks indeed. Westminster?”

“Huddled praying in the chapel,” Neville said. “Surrounded by fifteen men-at-arms and enclosed by locked doors.”

“You cannot have him killed,” the Earl of Northumberland said. “He is a churchman.”

Bolingbroke’s face left them in no doubt what he thought of all “churchmen”. He turned abruptly, and strode away a few paces. “Then he shall rue the day he ever thought to raise his shrill little voice against me,” he said. “He’s finished.”

Behind him, Neville, Northumberland, Raby and the other three men present—Bolingbroke’s Chancellor, John Scarle, and Sir John Norbury and Lord Owen Tudor, members of Bolingbroke’s household—exchanged glances. Bolingbroke’s mood had been vicious ever since they returned from the aborted tournament. Armed guards now surrounded and infiltrated every part of Windsor, and more were stationed in the fields beyond. Bolingbroke was taking no chances.

And no one blamed him for that. Exeter’s plan, born of desperation, would have stood a very good chance of succeeding, had it not been for Mary’s quiet words… and the respect the crowd had for her. The cry that Richard still lived, appealing as it did to the English crowd’s sense of drama and intrigue, could have rallied the entire ten thousand behind him. Once the crowd was behind him, shouting his cause, then seeds of doubt would have grown in everyone else present. Was Richard still alive? Was he planning a return to London?

Exeter had used the very same tactics against Bolingbroke that Bolingbroke had employed against Richard: the manipulation of dramatic words to turn loyalties. His voice wasn’t as sweet, nor his words as seductive, as Bolingbroke’s had been to Richard’s army outside Flint Castle, but still…

No matter that the-very-dead-Richard would never stage a return to London—at least not alive. All Exeter would have needed to do was manage to place Bolingbroke under armed guard, and very soon Bolingbroke would have been as dead as Richard, and Exeter’s faction in control of England.

“Rutland?” Bolingbroke said, still with his back to the group watching him. “Salisbury? And every other of the damned Hollands that thought to join with their cousin Exeter?”

“In prison,” Raby said. “Under guard.”

Bolingbroke spun about to face them. “They will hang in the morning.”

“Sire—” Neville said.

“Nay, do not try and dissuade me, Tom,” Bolingbroke said. “I cannot let them live. You know that. I need to send a message to anyone else—” he paused “—out there who might harbour the same plans and ambitions as Exeter.” No one said a word. All knew to whom he was referring. Hotspur. “As for Exeter’s retainers,” Bolingbroke continued, “and those of the other rebel lords, well… they shall receive pardons as evidence of my true mercy. I will not murder all of England in spite.”

Neville shot Bolingbroke an unreadable look, but Bolingbroke chose to ignore it.

“My friends,” Bolingbroke continued, “your advice, if I may. Who else do I need to fear? Who else should I guard my throne and England’s stability against?”

Everyone studiously avoided looking at Northumberland.

“The Dominicans,” Neville said. “There were several within the crowd this afternoon spreading word that Richard still lives. They were Exeter’s allies.”

“So,” Bolingbroke said, looking at Neville with some speculation. “The Dominicans do not like me, and would like to unseat me. Can you tell me why, Tom?”

Because you are a demon, Hal, and because they suspect it.

“Many within the Church distrust you,” Neville replied, “especially since you directed that religious studies receive less emphasis in schools and universities in favour of the new secular humanism. And your reforms of the calendar… many priests view that as a turning away from God.”

Bolingbroke shrugged. He picked up a piece of fruit from a bowl, and bit into it, keeping his eyes on Neville.

“But you—we—have one bad enemy within the Dominicans. Prior General Richard Thorseby,” Bolingbroke said, spitting out a seed and tossing it into the grate.

“Aye. No one has seen or heard from him since June last year when the rebels torched Blackfriars. I do not like that.”

“Well,” Bolingbroke said, “no doubt he will turn up sooner or later, and no doubt with a renewed plan to see you incarcerated, Tom. But for the moment, I do not think the Dominican whispers are the worst—”

“But these whispers that Richard is still alive?” Raby said.

“I will return to those in a moment,” Bolingbroke said. “There is one worse potential traitor in England that I think we all need to discuss. Here. Now.”

Northumberland slowly rose to his feet. His face was grave, his eyes hard. “You refer to my son, sire. Why do you not say it aloud?”

Bolingbroke faced the earl, his own eyes as flinty as Northumberland’s. “He has refused to swear allegiance to me. He sits in the north with an army of twenty thousand behind him—and the ability to raise another twenty thousand—that he claims to need against the Scots. He looks south, and hungers. Combine all those facts, my lord, and I see a very real threat.”

“He has done nothing wrong!” Northumberland said.

“Save refuse to swear me allegiance and collect swords about his person in numbers the Scots do not warrant!” Bolingbroke shouted.

“Sire,” Raby said softly, rising to place a cautionary hand on Bolingbroke’s arm.

Bolingbroke shot Raby a furious look, then turned his gaze back to Northumberland. “Will you swear me Hotspur’s allegiance, my lord? Will you swear to me that your son will remain a good and faithful subject?”

“Hal!” Raby barked. “That is enough. Northumberland saw you to your throne. Do not ask this of him now when—”

“I am not a stable boy for you to so rebuke me,” Bolingbroke said, swinging back to Raby. “Remember who it is you address.”

Then he spoke to Northumberland again. “Your aid has proved invaluable to me, Northumberland,” he said, “but do you have any idea how quickly my love and support of your house will fade if your son leads an army south?”

“Why did I support you against Richard if I thought to then throw my son against you?”

“Perhaps,” Bolingbroke said, his voice very low, his eyes furious, “you supported me against Richard so that eventually your son might have an easier path to the throne.”

“Sire—” Northumberland growled, taking a step forwards.

“This has gone far enough,” Neville said, and nodded to John Scarle, the Chancellor, who laid a hand on Northumberland’s arm, and whispered something in his ear.

“Northumberland cannot swear Hotspur’s allegiance,” Neville said to Bolingbroke. “He cannot! Hotspur is a man grown, and must do it himself. Do not visit the son’s sin of omission on the father who has proved such a valuable ally to you.”

Bolingbroke stared at Neville, then nodded, the muscles about his face and neck visibly relaxing. He looked to Northumberland, still standing, still staring furiously.

“My lord, forgive me. This afternoon’s treachery has proved a great trial, and has made me snap at those I should trust before all others.”

Northumberland waited a few heartbeats, then inclined his head, accepting the apology. Scarle tugged a little at his arm, and Northumberland sighed, and sat down.

Gradually, the other men resumed their seats, and Bolingbroke took a sumptuously carved chair close by the unlit grate.

“I must bring Richard’s body back to London,” he said. “Mary was right. The people must view it.”

“Is it,” Raby said carefully, “in a state fit to be viewed?”

Bolingbroke raised his eyebrows, assuming an innocent expression. “In a state fit to be viewed, Raby? Whatever do you mean? Richard died of a fever, not a vicious clubbing or a tearing to bits by dogs. Of course it is fit to be viewed. As fit as any six-month-dead corpse can be, of course.”

He sighed. “No doubt the royal purse shall have to bear the cost of the candles placed about the coffer, and the mourning robes for the official wailers and weepers. Richard has ever been an expensive burden to England.”

VI Saturday 4th May 1381 —iv—

She dreamed, and yet it felt unlike any dream she’d been lost in before, for in this dream she was both witness and participant.

She dreamed of a woman, a woman on her knees atop a dusty, stony hill swept by a warm, fragrant wind. Above pressed a heavy, depressing sky; the atmosphere was hot and humid, and full of noiseless lament. In the distance was a walled city dressed in pale stone, and a roadway lined with people leading from the city gates to the hill where she knelt.

The woman’s world had turned to grief. Her tears ran down her cheeks and dripped into the neckline of her white linen robe. Dark hair lay unbound down her back and clung in dampened wisps about her face. A cloak of sky blue lay to one side.

Several yards away lay her husband, still and dead, his corpse battered and bloodied. He had been sprawled across a rock for the vultures to feast on.

She reached out a hand towards him, wordlessly, now too exhausted and emotionally devastated to weep any more than she already had.

How could it have ended like this? Why had people hated him so much?

“Take her!” came a shout, and she jerked her head up at the same moment her hands slipped about her swollen belly.

People—soldiers, several priests and a crowd of ordinary men and women—surged towards her, and she started to rise. But her foot caught on the hemline of her robe, and she tripped and sprawled on the dusty earth.

She tried to rise again, desperate, knowing they meant her death, but she was too late.

Hands seized her by the shoulder of her robe and by her hair, and dragged her to her feet.

“Whore!” someone cried, and the entire crowd took up the accusation. “Whore! Whore! Whore!”

“I am not,” she said, but her words were lost in the roar of the crowd. “I am not!”

I am not a whore, but a queen, she wanted to say, not understanding why it was she thought that.

But delusions were not going to help her or her unborn baby now.

They dragged her forth, ignoring her pitiful cries for mercy, to where a long-dry well had been covered over. Men tore away the wooden beams that closed the well, exposing a thirty-foot drop.

Then, still roaring their hatred, they threw her down.

They stopped roaring soon enough to hear her body hit the rocks at the bottom of the well.

A minute passed, then one of the priests grunted as he saw her limbs move slightly in their agony.

“She lives still,” he said, bending and picking up a rock.

All about him, those closest to the rim of the well bent down, and picked up their own rocks.

Then they began, one by one, to pitch them down towards the woman.

It took them most of the remaining hours of the afternoon to kill her completely, and before they were done they’d broken every bone in her body.

Margaret sat by Mary’s bed, watching the woman’s chest rise and fall in shallow, slow breaths. Mary had been moaning in agony by the time Neville had carried her back to her chamber, and Culpeper, the castle physician, alerted to her need by runners who had come ahead, had been ready at hand. He’d given Mary a powerful infusion of monkshood, wild mushroom and opium poppy, which had eased Mary’s pain within minutes.

It had also caused her mind to drift, and for almost an hour Margaret had sat holding Mary’s hand as the queen talked of things she could never have seen, and people she could never have met.

Now, Margaret hoped, Mary had finally settled into a deep sleep.

But just as Margaret was about to rise and go to her own bed, Mary’s eyes flew open.

“Meg?” she whispered in a cracked voice. “Meg? Are you here?”

“I’m right beside you, my sweet lady. I have never left.”

“Where am I, Meg?”

“Why, you are in your chamber in the Rose Tower, my lady.”

Mary’s head slowly rolled back and forth and her eyes searched. “No, no. I cannot be. What is that wind? And that scent of sweet spice upon it?”

“Madam—”

“And why do I weep? Why do I feel such loss?”

Margaret leaned closer and saw that, indeed, Mary did weep. Great tears rolled down her cheeks.

Mary stared ahead, as if looking at someone. “Is he dead? Is he?”

“Madam!” Margaret grabbed Mary’s hand between both of hers, and squeezed as tightly as she dared.

Mary continued to stare ahead, then she gasped, and cried out softly. “No! No!”

“Mary!” Margaret was beside herself, wondering what to do. Had the potion been too strong? Was it murdering Mary instead of aiding her? She half turned, meaning to wake the women who slept at the foot of Mary’s bed, but just then Mary whipped her head about on the pillow and stared at Margaret.

“You are not all you would have me believe, are you, Margaret?”

Margaret opened her mouth, not knowing what to say.

Mary’s mouth grimaced in a frightful rictus, her breath odorous due to the potion she’d imbibed and the dryness of her tongue.

“Margaret,” she whispered, “why do so many people lie to me?”

And then, suddenly, she was asleep, and breathing easy.

Her hand relaxed away from Margaret’s.

VII Friday 17th May 1381

“What clearer sign could you hope to have, my lord, than that of Exeter’s revolt?”

The son of the Earl of Northumberland, Sir Henry Percy, commonly called Hotspur, slouched in the chair, staring at Prior General Richard Thorseby with dark, unreadable eyes. The Prior General had joined his household six months ago, just after Bolingbroke had himself crowned. And for six months the Prior General had been whispering and arguing and pleading: King Henry was an evil man who had murdered Richard and who would drive England into the mud of ignominy should he be allowed to keep the throne.

And who else was to act if not Hotspur?

“Exeter’s revolt lasted an afternoon, Prior General,” Hotspur said, “and ended in his death and those of his allies. I do not call that a ‘clear sign’.”

“People resent Bolingbroke! The country will rise up against him if you lead!”

Hotspur sprang out of his chair, snatching a pike from a surprised man-at-arms guarding the doorway of the chamber, and threw it down at Thorseby’s feet. “If you think the country so ready to rise, then lead it yourself!”

Thorseby took a deep breath and composed his face. He folded his hands inside the voluminous sleeves of his habit and affected a righteous air, not realising that it only antagonised Hotspur further.

“Bolingbroke must be overthrown. He is the devil’s spawn.”

Trying to keep his temper, Hotspur strode to a shuttered window, unlatched one of the shutters, and drew it open. Outside there was nothing but cold, grey fog, with here and there the bare black branches of wind-blasted trees reaching into the low sky like the skeletal fingers of a corpse.

Lord God, Hotspur thought, I do not know which I hate more—the damp climes of these northern lands, or the ever-whining voice of the Prior General.

He stood a few minutes, allowing the still grey landscape outside to calm him, then he closed the shutter and turned back to Thorseby.

“I can understand your dislike of Thomas Neville,” Hotspur said, “but why your sudden hatred of Bolingbroke? Do you profess to hate him, and thus beg me to dislodge him from the throne, only so you can once more claim Neville?”

Thorseby took his time in answering. In truth, he did loathe Bolingbroke because of his protection of Neville… but that was not all. Sometimes, over these past few months, he’d had strange visitations from shadowy, cloaked figures who had whispered that they were the messengers of the angels, and it was heaven’s wish that Bolingbroke be torn down and destroyed. In his more lucid moments, Thorseby feared these shadowy, whispering visitors were but figments of his imagination. But these moments were few and far between, and generally Thorseby knew he had God, the angels and all of heaven behind him on this issue.

Bolingbroke must go. Neville must be brought to justice. And Hotspur was the most logical instrument of God’s will.

“Bolingbroke is an ungodly man,” Thorseby said, ensuring his face and voice remained calm and reasonable. “He murdered Richard and unjustly usurped his throne. He must be brought to justice. If my words do not persuade you, then be prepared. Soon God shall make His will clear with an unmistakable sign. You might not believe me, my lord, but you shall surely believe God.”

“Oh, and what shall God do?” said Hotspur. “Send a plague of frogs? Turn the Thames red with blood? Strike dead the first-born son in every family?”

“I should hope not the latter, my lord, if only for your sake.”

Hotspur grunted.

“I counsel you, my lord, to prepare your way now. Speak closely and secretly with those who will support you. Exeter was rash, stupid. He deserved to fail. But if you—”

“Do not tell me how to wage a war, Thorseby.”

Thorseby closed his mouth, raising his eyebrows slightly as if a schoolmaster rebuking his wayward pupil.

Hotspur picked up a letter that he’d been reading before Thorseby had come in. It was from his father, Northumberland, now back in his northern stronghold, and it contained many interesting statements and yet more interesting suggestions and promises. Hotspur’s father had grown somewhat tired of Bolingbroke, it seemed, especially since Bolingbroke had proved himself so willing to doubt Northumberland after Exeter’s attempted rebellion. A word here, a frown there, and so easily did allegiance shift. Hotspur pretended to peruse the letter for a few minutes, then he folded it carefully, and put it down again.

“If any man wishes to challenge Bolingbroke,” he said, “he will need more than swords behind him.”

Thorseby smiled, small and cold. “I am a powerful man in my own right,” he said. “The Dominican family will stand behind you. Already my friars have been whispering, preparing the way for God’s will as expressed through you.”

Thorseby’s Dominican “family” ? More like a murderous flock of black crows, thought Hotspur, and shivered slightly at the thought of the great winged beasts swooping down on him through the cold, grey mists.

“If God sends me a sign,” Hotspur said, “then I will move. Until then, I merely watch.”

“And plan.”

Hotspur hesitated, but only slightly. “And plan. Begone, Thorseby, for I think to warm this chamber with your absence.”

PART TWO
The Dog of Pestilence

Lady Mary stood all skin and bone,

Sure such a lady was never known:

This lady went to church one day,

She went to church for all to pray.

And when she came to the church stile,

She sat to rest a little while.

When she came to the church-yard,

There the bells so loud she heard.

When she came to the church door,

She stopt to rest a little more;

When she came the church within,

The parson pray’d ’gainst pride and sin.

On looking up, on looking down,

She saw a dead man on the ground;

And from his nose unto his chin,

The worms crawl’d out, the worms crawl’d in.

Then she unto the parson said,

Shall I be so when I am dead?

Oh yes! oh yes! the parson said,

You will be so when you are dead.

Traditional English nursery rhyme

I Tuesday 21st May 1381 —i—

The nave of St Paul’s in London was crowded with people but, strangely, nevertheless completely hushed. Many had queued patiently in the courtyard since many hours before dawn, hoping to be among the first admitted inside.

To see.

Two days ago King Richard’s corpse had arrived in London from Pontefract Castle in West Yorkshire. One hundred men-at-arms had accompanied the coffin on its black-draped bier, protecting it from the curious, subdued, close-pressed crowds. Behind the men-at-arms came nineteen hessian-wrapped and ash-painted professional mourners, one for each year of Richard’s life. They had accompanied the corpse to St Paul’s where six of the men-at-arms had carried it inside, the cathedral’s doors closing promptly behind them.

The dean and his monks had spent two days preparing both display and corpse. That amount of time had set tongues a-wagging all the faster. Why did they need so long? Was it proving hard to stitch up the dagger holes? Or to smooth his poison-ravaged face with flesh-coloured wax?

But now St Paul’s and Richard’s remains were thrown open to the inspection of the curious, and the Londoners had flocked to the occasion in their thousands.

Richard lay in an open, solid oaken coffin, its joints well sealed with wax and other substances, set on its bier before the altar. Candles and incense surrounded the bier save for a space directly before the coffin where a single person could step close for a quick viewing.

To one side stood an ever-changing guard of several priests and friars, there to ensure that the individual’s viewing was only quick, and that he or she did not attempt to snatch a lock of the dead king’s hair, or a scraping from under his fingernails to sell at a local relic market.

Dick Whittington stood in line with everyone else, and was as curious as everyone else. Whittington was no fool, and had understood very well that Bolingbroke could not have allowed the former king to survive as a lodestone for every disaffected person in the kingdom. Nevertheless, he thought, it was a shame that Bolingbroke couldn’t have arranged for Richard to fall off a horse in front of a score of impartial witnesses, or arrange his drowning in a swollen river as Richard and his party were attempting to cross. The rumours sweeping London ever since news of Richard’s death had ranged from the bizarre to the almost certainly correct: Lancaster’s ghost had so terrified Richard one dark night he had fallen down dead (or Lancaster’s ghost had set fire to Richard, or flayed him, or torn off his genitals and eaten them, leaving Richard to bleed to death); a band of Scottish soldiers had infiltrated Pontefract Castle in an attempt to kidnap Richard and make him their king, but had mistaken Richard for a guard, killed him, and then kidnapped the guard and installed him on the Scottish throne; Richard had choked to death on a frog which had taken up residence in the damp castle; Richard had pined to death over his lover, Robert de Vere; Bolingbroke had sent a band of assassins to Pontefract to murder Richard by means most foul.

Worse were the rumours that Richard was not dead at all, and that news of his death was only an official attempt to disguise the truth—that Richard had escaped Pontefract and was even now riding on London with an avenging army of tens of thousands behind him.

God had anointed Richard, therefore would God allow Richard to be so destroyed? And if Richard were truly murdered, would God allow his murder to go unpunished?

The truth, Whittington thought, as he slowly shuffled forward a few places in the queue, was that the Londoners, as many other among the English, were starting to feel a trifle guilty about their role in Richard’s downfall. They had abandoned Richard with an indecent haste, supporting “fair Prince Hal’s” counterclaim to the throne. While Richard had been festering in Pontefract, awaiting his murder, they’d been crowding about Westminster Abbey, shouting Bolingbroke’s name as if it were a charm against evil.

Now they were here in their droves, impelled not only by curiosity but by guilt.

Starting to get impatient, and finding that his joints ached greatly in the chill damp of the cathedral’s nave, Whittington craned his head, trying to see how much longer he might have to wait. The queue appeared to stretch for some thirty or forty persons before him, but the priests standing about the coffin were making sure that people were moving briskly, and not loitering too long over Richard’s open casket.

No one showed any signs of wanting to loiter, however. Perhaps, Whittington surmised, the stench was putting off even the most guilty or ardent of viewers.

Loiter they might not, but Whittington noticed that every man and woman who turned aside from the coffin had pale faces as they crossed themselves, halting briefly for the blessings of the priest. And they were quiet as they walked away, not pausing to whisper or gossip.

Some drew their wraps tighter about themselves, and looked nervously over their shoulders with darting eyes.

All left the cathedral as quickly as they could.

Whittington’s curiosity grew, and he fidgeted impatiently.

The queue ahead of him was moving very quickly now. Perhaps only some four or five stood between Whittington and his turn at a viewing, and Whittington’s head craned all the more. He could see a little into the open coffin over the shoulders before him—there was a heavy drape of a richly embroidered material over most of Richard’s body. Whittington could see a pale blur of a face, and it appeared that Richard’s skeletal arms and hands were crossed over his chest, clutching a gold crucifix.

He shivered suddenly, feeling as if a winter frost had dug deep into his bones.

The people ahead of him visibly shivered, too, and hurried the faster, bending only briefly over the coffin.

Then, finally, it was Dick Whittington’s turn, and he stepped forward. A priest murmured in his ear, “Hurry! Hurry!”, and the stench of hot incense and cold decaying flesh assaulted his nostrils, making his stomach roil.

He stepped up to the coffin, and peered in.

Richard’s remains were horrible to behold. His flesh had shrunk close to his bones, his skull was sparsely dotted with a few clumps of dry hair, his eyelids had gummed closed over sunken eyeballs. His nose was a thin ridge only barely covered with the remnants of flesh—in one spot cartilage had poked its way free.

His desiccated lips were frozen into a horrible rictus, showing yellowed, slimy teeth. Behind them loomed something huge and horrid—his swollen, blackened tongue.

Whittington tore his eyes away from Richard’s face and looked to where his skeletal hands clutched a crucifix. The fingers were clasped so tightly about the cross that in places the flesh of Richard’s hands had rotted into the chain, and then reformed about it; the crucifix had become part of Richard’s flesh.

“Move on!” came the whisper from a close attendant priest, and Whittington looked one last time at Richard’s face…

… and screeched in terror. Richard’s eyes had opened, revealing black, glistening orbs. They rolled in Whittington’s direction, and, as the Lord Mayor stared, horrified, the dead king’s lips moved: Murderer! Murderer!

Whittington tried to move, but couldn’t. Richard’s eyes held him locked in place.

Murderer! Murderer!

There was a clink, and Whittington realised that Richard’s finger bones had clicked as his hands moved about the crucifix.

Whittington, Whittington, what do you think? Shall I rise from my grave to my throne again?

Whittington’s face contorted, and he physically wrenched himself away from Richard’s rolling eyes. He stumbled back, almost falling, then turned about, his breath coming in great, gasping gulps.

He realised no one was looking at him—Why? Why? Had no one seen what he had? Had no one wondered at his strange reaction?—then realised that everyone was staring at a richly cloaked and garbed man walking slowly up the clear space of the centre of the nave.

Gold glinted about his brow.

Bolingbroke.

Whittington stumbled further away from the coffin, staring at Bolingbroke.

Bolingbroke had no eyes for anything but the coffin. He strode forth slowly but purposefully, his eyes fixed on the bier and what lay on it.

Don’t go near it! Whittington’s mind screamed. Don’t go near—

“Sire!” he gasped as Bolingbroke approached. “Sire!”

Bolingbroke ignored him. His steps quickened, the heels of his boots ringing across the flagstones, the hem of his cloak fluttering out behind him.

Every eye in the cathedral followed Bolingbroke up to the coffin, to this meeting of kings.

Bolingbroke stepped up to the bier, put his hands firmly on the edge of the coffin, and peered inside.

The only indication of what he saw within was a very faint tightening of the muscles along his jaw line.

Whittington could feel the corpse roiling about within, feel the hate and injustice and vengeance reaching up to seize Bolingbroke by the throat. He wanted to rush to Bolingbroke’s side and tear him away, but he couldn’t move, couldn’t so much as twitch a muscle.

This was between Bolingbroke and Richard alone.

Something spattered on the stones beneath the bier, and Whittington’s eyes looked down, as did everyone else’s in the cathedral save Bolingbroke’s, who kept his eyes firmly on whatever was happening within the coffin.

Fat drops of thick, black blood oozed from the joints of the coffin, soaked into the material covering the bier, then dripped onto the flagstones where it pooled in a mess of foulness.

The entire cathedral took a great breath of mixed fear and awe.

The corpse bled in the presence of its murderer.

Bolingbroke’s face twisted, and he lifted his hands and stepped away from the coffin.

He looked to the priests standing frozen to one side. “Take this coffin and its contents and burn it,” he said. “Richard was ever adept at fouling up the realm.”

He started to say something else, to address the crowds present, but as he opened his mouth, a low, vicious growl interrupted him.

Everyone’s eyes, now including Bolingbroke’s, swept to the open doors of the cathedral, from where the sound emanated.

There stood a hound of such vast size that most instantly assumed it was of a supernatural origin.

Richard’s soul, perhaps, come to exact its vengeance.

The hound stalked forward, its legs stiff with fury, its hair raised along its shoulders and spine. It was entirely black, its body covered with weeping sores. Its head it kept low, its yellow, unblinking eyes fixed on Bolingbroke, fetid strings of foam dripping to the floor from its snarling snout.

Bolingbroke moved his cloak slightly away from the sword he wore at his hip, but made no other movement.

The hound’s snarling increased both in volume and in viciousness. As it progressed up the centre of the nave, the very path Bolingbroke had just walked, the hound lowered its body until its belly almost scraped the flagstones, creeping now, rather than stalking.

Its eyes shifted slightly from Bolingbroke to the coffin behind him.

Bolingbroke stepped to one side.

All down the nave, as the hound crept past, people shrank back, making both the sign of the cross and the sign against evil. Many clutched charms, some whispered hasty prayers, all wished they had chosen some other time to view Richard’s corpse.

The hound was now close to Bolingbroke.

The king took another step away. The hound ignored his movement. Its attention was all on the coffin, and on the spreading pool of black, clotting blood beneath it.

Slowly, slowly it crept closer, growling all the while, until its head was under the bier.

Then, suddenly, it lowered itself completely to the floor, gave a small yelp, and lapped at the blood.

As it did so, the sores that covered its body swelled and then burst, scattering great gouts of pus over the floor.

Someone in the crowd screamed: “It is the black Dog of Pestilence!” There was a shocked silence, then someone else screamed, formlessly, terrified, and suddenly there was panic as people stampeded for the doors.

The Dog continued to lick at the pool of blood, and its sores continued to swell and burst.

Whittington forced himself forward, and grasped Bolingbroke’s arm.

“Sire. We must away. Get away from the Dog!”

“It is already too late,” Bolingbroke said softly, and Whittington was not surprised to see tears rolling down his cheeks. “Too late.”

He turned and looked Whittington directly in the face. “The pestilence has returned. Sweet Jesus Christ help us all.”

Then he pulled away from Whittington’s grip and walked down the nave and out the doors.

The Dog of Pestilence continued to lap.

II Tuesday 21st May 1381 —ii—

Margery Harwood lived with her husband William and their three children in a comfortable house on Ironmonger Lane off Bishopsgate Street. Margery was proud of her house—she spent an inordinate amount of time polishing, sweeping, washing and straightening—but her pride in her house formed only one part of her general satisfaction with life. She and William had emigrated to London when they were just married, and Margery pregnant with her first child. They’d come from a small village just east of Gravesend, where there was little prospect for an ironworker of William’s calibre. So to London they had come, and if the first years establishing William’s business were hard, then all the effort had been worthwhile. Now Margery was in charge of a house of ten rooms, a pantry, cellar and wine store that was stocked with far more goods than those of her neighbours, and three servants and a cook. William not only had a thriving business, but he also had five apprentices, as well as two guildsmen, working under him. Margery and William’s children—three sons, praise be to God!—were healthy, and well ahead of their classmates at the guild school in learning their sums and letters. Their future was assured. Life was good.

Margery was in the kitchen at five of the clock that afternoon when everything fell apart. She’d been busy all day, supervising her servants as they cleaned out the cellar in preparation for the crates of spring-fresh vegetables that would soon fill it, consulting with the cook about that evening’s fare, and then helping her to strip the eels and baste the vegetables for William’s favourite pie, and thus Margery had enjoyed no free time at all in which to stand in her doorway and gossip with the neighbours.

She had no idea of what had happened at St Paul’s that day, and, by virtue of the fact that her home was tucked right at the end of Ironmonger Lane, a reasonable distance from Bishopsgate Street which was itself on the far side of London from St Paul’s, she’d heard none of the fuss that had carried up and down most of the city’s main thoroughfares. Both William and her sons had yet to come home, and in any case, Margery wasn’t expecting them for another hour or so.

So when the scraping at the kitchen door came, Margery merely muttered her displeasure at the interruption, told the cook and the kitchen girl that she’d see what was about outside, wiped her hands on her apron, and walked to the door that opened into the kitchen courtyard.

Ironmonger Lane was a quiet part of London, rarely visited by the beggars and criminals seen in so many other streets, and so Margery had no hesitation in throwing open the door.

A massive black dog stood not three feet away, staring at Margery with yellow eyes, snarling so viciously that ropes of saliva spattered across Margery’s apron.

Margery gave a small shriek, and slammed the door closed.

“Mistress?” asked the cook, staring up from the table where she’d been rolling out pastry.

Margery took a deep breath. “A dog. A stray,” she said. “Nothing to be concerned about.” And she walked back to the table to her duties, resolving to ask William to speak to the local alderman about the problem of stray dogs.

At that moment she heard their front door open, then, after the shortest of intervals, slam closed. Footsteps thudded down the corridor towards the kitchen.

William, their three sons, and two of his apprentices. William’s face was shiny with sweat, his pale blue eyes wide and panicked.

“Lock the doors,” he said, his voice hoarse and breathless. “Shutter the windows!”

“William—”

He ignored her, brushing past the cook and the kitchen girl to bolt closed the shutter over the kitchen windows. “Harry!” he said, looking at his eldest son. “Upstairs—the windows!”

Harry nodded, and darted away towards the stairs.

“William, what is going on?”

“Pestilence,” William said, staring about wildly as if looking for something else to shutter closed.

Margery drew in a deep breath. “But we haven’t suffered from the pestilence in—”

“How long it has been doesn’t matter,” William said, and directed his middle son into the front rooms of the house to shutter the windows. “What matters is that the pestilence is back now. Have you opened the door to anyone this day? Any beggars, anyone who has touched you?”

Margery stared at him, then very slowly looked down at her apron. Wordlessly she tore it off, then bundled it into the coals in the hearth.

It was too late. By evening one of the apprentices, the cook, two of Margery’s sons, and William himself were fighting raging fevers. Huge swellings appeared in their armpits, at the bases of their necks, and in their groins.

They were tight and agonising, filled almost to bursting point with black blood and pus.

Margery did what she could—and she was left on her own to do it, because the two still-healthy servants had fled the house at the first signs of sickness—but that was little enough. She moved from bed to bed, wiping faces and hands with cloths wrung out in cool, herbed water. When her youngest son and one of the apprentices began to soil themselves with great clotting black messes, she changed their linens, her heart almost failing at their screams of agony as she rolled them over.

In the dark of early morning, as she was trying to change the linens under the apprentice, three of his buboes burst, and he bled to death, screaming, in under ten minutes.

And the nightmare had only just begun.

By dawn, William was dead, drowned in the mass of blood and pus that had collected in his lungs. The child and the apprentice who had so far escaped were tossing with fever, and Margery, in emptying out a bucket of blood and pus-stained rags into the courtyard refuse heap, suddenly realised that her arms were aching, and difficult to move.

There were hard lumps in both of her armpits.

Margery stood there for long minutes, the bucket at her feet, staring sightlessly at the refuse heap before her.

She moved her arms, very slightly, and again felt the painful swellings in her armpits.

Margery began to weep, great sobbing gulps, full of exhaustion and terror. She remembered how only a day ago her life had been so good, how the future shone so bright, how she and William had done so well for themselves from such humble beginnings.

Now?

Now it was all gone. Gone in less than a day.

Margery slowly sank to the cold cobbles, lay down, and waited to die, staring up at the grey sky with her weeping eyes.

Much later, dogs began to feed on her almost dead body.

III Tuesday 21st May 1381 —iii—

Bolingbroke stretched tired neck and shoulder muscles, and looked one more time at the plans and documents that Dick Whittington had spread on the table. He lifted a candle—even though dawn light now shone through the windows, it was still not strong—and peered more closely at the plan of London spread before him.

He and the Lord Mayor, as also Bolingbroke’s Chancellor, the Bishop of London, and several other clerks and secretaries, stood in one of the upper chambers of the Tower of London Keep. Most of the palace was still undergoing renovation, but at least this chamber was finished, and warmed by a fire roaring in the grate.

Someone—Bolingbroke had forgotten who—had thrown rosemary and rue on the fire, and now the sweet scent of the herbs infused the chamber.

Bolingbroke didn’t think the herbs would have much effect in keeping the pestilence at bay.

The door to the chamber opened, and a man dressed in the livery of the Grocers’ Company hurried in. He bowed perfunctorily to Bolingbroke, then whispered in Whittington’s ear before hurriedly quitting the chamber.

“Well?” Bolingbroke said.

“Over a hundred and twenty more deaths,” Whittington said, his shoulders slumping. “Sire, the pestilence has now touched most parts of London.”

Bolingbroke nodded. “That black Dog has done its work well.”

Several of the men in the room exchanged glances, their eyes filled with superstitious fear. Reports of the Dog of Pestilence had come in all night, appearing first here, then there, then somewhere else. No one could catch it, for whenever a band of men closed about it, the Dog merely seemed to vanish into the night air.

“A hound from hell,” the Bishop of London whispered, and crossed himself.

“Not from hell,” Bolingbroke said, sending the bishop a sharp glance, “but from heaven. This is God’s retributive work.”

“God’s work it may be,” Whittington said, forcing a brisk, businesslike tone into his voice, “but it will be man’s work to deal with it. Unless,” he gave the bishop an enquiring look, “the bishop knows some prayers that will drive the pestilence from among us?”

There was a silence. Then the bishop folded his hands before his corpulent belly, looked down, and muttered: “Prayers will be said in churches, of course, but if this is God’s work, then it is His way of punishing sinners and there is little that we—”

“Don’t tell me that this pestilence is God’s means of carrying off sinners,” Bolingbroke snapped. “The innocent are dying as readily as anyone else. Besides, if this pestilence was meant to carry away only the sinners amongst us… then why are most of London’s damned priests and friars still alive?”

There was a twitter of laughter, quickly subdued, and the bishop flushed.

Bolingbroke stared at the bishop a moment longer, then turned back to Whittington. “Well? What can we do?”

“We can do some things to make life safer for those still well,” Whittington said. “Already I have sent orders to set up pest houses here,” his finger stabbed at the map, “and here, and here.”

“Good,” Bolingbroke said. “They are well beyond the city walls. But should people be moving their infected through the streets?”

Whittington shook his head. “The pest houses will be used for people travelling into London, or those trying to leave, to isolate them until we are sure they are not infected. For those families already suffering within the city walls… well, men are even now moving through the streets, hanging bundles of straw from the windows of infected houses, and daubing their front doors with red paint.”

Bolingbroke flinched. “Cursed by a daub of red paint and a bundle of straw.”

“No one is allowed to leave or enter those houses,” Whittington continued. “Not even to deliver food.”

“Then pray this pestilence passes quickly,” one of the clerks muttered, “or else people will starve within their homes.”

“What else?” said Bolingbroke. He waved towards the fire. “Should we… ?”

“Already done,” Whittington said. “Great bonfires salted with brimstone and saltpetre have been set up in all major intersections. With sweet Jesu’s aid they will burn the pestilence from the air. Anyone who has to walk the streets, and they are precious few—the watch, those carting away the dead, and physicians and their apprentices—have been given nosegays of herbs and waxed cloaks to help the pestilence slide away from their persons.”

None of which will protect them against God’s black hound, thought Bolingbroke, but he did not speak his thoughts, for it was better to give people hope that something useful was being done, than to dash such hope away.

“All stray dogs are being killed,” Whittington said. “Cats as well. Perhaps they contribute to the spread of the pestilence.”

“Perhaps,” Bolingbroke said. “Is there nothing else we can do?”

Whittington looked to one of the clerks. “Well… someone has suggested that we fill a barge with peeled onions and float it down the Thames when the winds are southerly. Then the tart scent of the onions will blow over London and—”

“Then set whoever thought that one up to the peeling of the several tons of onions needed to fill a barge,” Bolingbroke said. “When he is done, and finished his weeping, I shall be willing to consider the proposition in more detail.” He paused. “Dick, this is something I would rather not speak of, but I think we must… what of the dead?”

“They are being collected in grave carts,” Whittington said, now looking out the window with unfocused eyes, “and being trundled to plague pits even now being dug in the fields beyond London.”

“Sweet Jesu help us all,” Bolingbroke whispered.

Mary read the short, terse letter the courier had given her wordlessly, then handed it out with a shaking hand to Neville.

Neville exchanged a glance with Margaret, took the letter, read it, then cursed under his breath.

“Pestilence,” he said, and handed the letter on to Margaret, who read it aloud for the benefit of the other of Mary’s ladies who crowded about with huge, frightened eyes. Rumours from London had reached them early in the morning, but to now have confirmation of the worst…

“Beloved Queen,” Margaret read in a low voice, “I greet you well. Know that pestilence has gripped London since yesterday afternoon. Many have died, more are infected, and the city tosses in the throes of torment. I beg you to remain in Windsor, where I might be more assured of your safety. Know that I am well, and in the Tower, whose walls have thus far kept the pestilence at bay. Pray to Lord Jesus for our deliverance. Your loving husband and king, Bolingbroke.”

Margaret lowered the letter, staring at Neville. “Sweet Jesu,” she breathed as several of the ladies about her exchanged shocked looks.

Mary, lying as usual on her couch by the window, now struggled to sit up straight. “I must go to London,” she said.

“Mary!” Neville and Margaret said together.

“No,” Neville continued, risking a hand on Mary’s shoulder. “You are too ill—”

“No, I am not,” Mary said.

“—and you can do little to help,” Neville finished. “Sweet Jesu, madam, what do you think you can do?”

Mary regarded Neville steadily. “I can give comfort, Tom. I can be with my people.”

“Mary,” Neville said, abandoning all attempts at formality, “You can barely walk now. You are in too much pain. You—”

“I am going, Tom. I cannot sit here and twiddle my thumbs while London dies.”

“Then I’m going with you,” Neville said.

Mary hesitated, then smiled. “Thank you, Tom. Your adeptness with the last rites will no doubt be more than useful.”

“And I,” Margaret said.

“No!” Neville stared at her. “You cannot. The children—”

“The children shall stay here safe with Agnes. Mary will need me as much as you.” Margaret looked Neville directly in the eye. “You know both of us will be safe.”

The archangel needs both of us alive to play out the final drama, Neville thought, and he nodded. They would both live.

He did not see Mary’s thoughtful gaze move between him and Margaret.

IV Thursday 23rd May 1381

Emma Hawkins hurried down Carter Lane by St Paul’s, then ducked into a small alley. The streets were deserted save for a few scurrying people, and those wretched souls manning the plague carts on which were piled the dead. Fires coughed and spluttered on their diet of wood, brimstone and saltpetre at intersections and in marketplaces: their noxious fumes twisted and writhed into the air, tangling about eaves and overhangs before rising into a sky made scarlet with the sunset and the smoke of the fires.

There was the faint sound of wailing and sobbing in the air, anguish seeping out from behind closed doors and shuttered windows where men and women and children lay dying in unspeakable agony. Occasionally the muted, sombre tones of shroud-wrapped bells tolled indifferently from one of the city’s parish churches.

Death lurked everywhere: in the stench of uncollected corpses upon the air, in the miasma of the fires, in the sewage choking the gutters, in the soft lament from tight-closed houses. Emma gathered her shawl more tightly about her face, gagging as she coughed, and regretted her decision to walk the streets in search of custom.

But she and her daughter needed to be fed, whatever crisis gripped the city, and Emma knew she would get God-all custom huddling at home behind closed doors. She stopped briefly, leaning against a closed door, and tried to catch her breath. Well, it was time she admitted she was going to get God-all custom out here as well. No point in even hoping. She should get home. Her daughter Jocelyn would be worried about her—she’d spent an hour this morning begging her mother not to go out into the streets—and the longer Emma stayed outside the more likely the pestilence would snatch at her.

Ah, that she could not think about! Pestilence crawled over the entire city, dealing death to scores every hour, and Emma simply refused to contemplate the idea that she—or Jocelyn—might be struck as well. Fate had already been unkind enough to her. It wouldn’t deal her this death blow… would it?

If only Jocelyn was older. Emma couldn’t afford to die yet. Jocelyn was only eight. Too young to work, too young to marry, and too young (by a year or two) to follow her mother out into the streets. Not that Emma would wish that on Jocelyn. It was too great a burden of sin for her frail shoulders.

“Only one of us need spend eternity in hell,” Emma whispered. “And I will not have it be my daughter.”

She struggled a little further down the alley. The air was thick with the noxious stink of brimstone and ash—was she in hell already? Had she died without knowing?—and night was closing in about her fast. Too fast. Emma coughed again, and then almost panicked as she tasted blood in her mouth.

No! No! She’d bitten her tongue… that’s all. Please sweet Jesu, let that be all!

Emma groped along one wall with one hand until she found a gate. She opened it, stumbling through into a courtyard, then hurried as best she could to the small door set to one side of the yard. Here she and Jocelyn lived in their two tiny rooms. Small, dismal, cold, but home.

She heard Jocelyn’s small voice pipe a welcome, then, horribly, the deeper voice of her landlord, Richard Harrison.

“Come to collect the rent, my dear,” he said.

“Now?” Emma whispered, closing the door behind her and drawing the shawl back from her head. Her face was thin, her hair more grey than fair, her eyes enormous and black.

A faint flush glowed on her forehead and cheeks.

“Now?” she repeated, incredulous. The city was dying, gripped in pestilence sent from hell, and Harrison had come to collect the rent?

Then her mouth twisted bitterly. Why not? Why not, when he might be too dead to enjoy it tomorrow?

Emma folded her shawl and nodded towards the other room. “Quickly, then. I have Jocelyn’s supper to prepare.”

Harrison grinned. “You’re in no position to tell me quick or no,” he said. “Rent’s rent, and it must be paid as owed.”

Emma shot him a black look, then smiled at Jocelyn. “We won’t be long,” she said, then walked into the tiny, inner room.

All it held was a narrow bed and a stool.

Emma looked at the bed, unbuttoning her dress, and sighed as the door closed behind her and she felt the great bulk of Harrison fill the room.

He was big and heavy and cumbersome and painful, but all of this Emma blocked out through years of experience. She arched her back as best she could with Harrison’s weight atop her, and moaned with as much feigned pleasure as she could manage, and closed her eyes against Harrison’s sweaty, straining face above hers, and her mind against the ponderous thrusting of his body.

Sweet Jesu, why was he taking so long? Reluctantly, Emma opened her eyes.

Harrison’s round, pasty-skinned face wobbled above her. His eyes were closed, and his expression was one of the greatest concentration. His hips continued to thrust himself deep into her, his massive belly crushing her against the bed, the rest of his weight supported on arms locked rigid and splayed to either side of her body.

Thankful his eyes were closed, Emma allowed herself a grimace of distaste. Everything about him wobbled—his face, his fleshy shoulders, the rolls of fat down his back, his buttocks.

And it all sweated, great glistening globules of—

Emma went rigid, her eyes starting, then she screamed and tried to writhe away.

Under his left armpit was a massive, black swelling!

“Am I driving you wild?” he whispered, his eyes still closed. “Am I? Am I?”

Emma screamed again, trying with all her strength to topple the man off her. But he was too heavy, too strong, too determined in the sating of his lust.

His efforts increased, and as he did so the bubo in his armpit swelled until the skin enclosing it stretched thin and tight.

Sweet Jesu, this was Death riding her. God’s judgement on her sinful life.

The door to the room flew open. Jocelyn, her face crinkled in worry at her mother’s screaming.

Emma saw her over Harrison’s heaving shoulders, and she screamed yet again, not only with fear this time, but with horror that Jocelyn should finally see what she had spent eight years keeping from her.

Harrison climaxed, and as he did so, the bubo in his armpit burst.

He was long gone now, his face lax, his eyes glazed, and apparently still unaware of what his body harboured. He’d left the instant he’d pulled himself free from her body, and shucked on his clothes. Then he pushed past Jocelyn, still standing, staring at her mother on the bed. When the outer door had slammed behind him, Emma pulled the soiled sheets about her, trying to not only hide her nakedness, but also to clean off the filth from the burst bubo.

Jocelyn had stood, staring, frightened, until Emma quietly asked her to fetch a pail of water from the other room so that she might wash herself.

Now, sitting shivering before the small fire in the inadequate grate, Emma knew that she, and probably her beloved daughter, were doomed.

Death had been a-visiting.

Outside a dog howled once, then was silent.

Emma shivered some more.

Jocelyn sat down at Emma’s feet, and silently held out to her mother a piece of bread. Emma took it, even though she felt ill, and forced down a few bites.

Satisfied, Jocelyn lowered her head to watch the flames, and once her gaze had turned away, Emma hid the bread in a pocket in her skirt. She reached out a trembling hand, and touched Jocelyn’s shining fair hair.

What would happen to her when I am dead? Emma wondered, then began to weep, silently, despairingly.

Then, on cue, the fever struck, and Emma shuddered.

“Mama?” Jocelyn twisted about. “Mama?”

“Jocelyn… ”

“I will fetch the physician.”

Emma smiled tiredly. “I have no coin with which to pay the physician,” she whispered.

“Then I will fetch the monks to take you to Saint Bartholomew’s.”

Emma began to laugh, a grating, grinding sound that was more sob than laugh. “I have no virtues with which to pay the monks,” she said. “I am unvirtuous, and they will not save me. Their hospital is as unobtainable to me as is heaven.”

“Then I will save you,” the young girl said with such a determined air that Emma almost believed her.

With the utmost effort, Emma raised a shaking hand and touched her child’s cheek. “You are so beautiful,” she said.

V Friday 24th May 1381 —i—

Mary leaned forward very slightly, just enough to touch Neville’s arm to stop him, then stared about in horror.

They’d entered London across the bridge a few minutes ago after a careful two-day journey from Windsor. The journey had not tired Mary as she’d feared it would. Men rather than horses had carried her litter, and they were as gentle as might be. Her physician, Nicholas Culpeper, travelled with her entourage, and made sure that she took regular doses of monkshood and opium poppy. The strength of the mixture should have fogged her mind, but Mary was so overwrought with the horror she knew had descended on London that she managed to remain both relatively pain-free and clear-headed, something for which she thanked sweet Jesu many times daily.

They’d set out from Windsor at daybreak on Wednesday. Thomas Neville led the entourage, which consisted of Mary herself, Margaret Neville, one other noblewoman, Lady Alicia Lynley (Mary’s other ladies were so terrified at the thought of returning to a pestilence-ridden London that Mary had bid them from her service), Neville’s squire Sir Robert Courtenay, Nicholas Culpeper, two of his apprentices, and an escort of fifty armed men-at-arms.

They had approached London from Southwark. Here Mary had excused from her company the greater number of her men-at-arms, Lady Alicia Lynley, and Culpeper’s two apprentices. They would journey on to the Tower by boat to apprise the king of her arrival in London.

Here also Mary had alighted from her litter, saying only that she felt well enough to ride something small and manageable, and the litter would be too cumbersome to negotiate the twisted, narrow streets of London with ease.

At this Neville had argued vehemently with Mary, saying she could do little within the ravaged city, that it was suicide to even think of entering, and that she would be vastly better off going straight to the Tower and to Bolingbroke, both of which were, at the least, pestilence-free.

Mary had listened to him with the utmost courtesy, saying once he had paused to draw an indignant breath that if he and Margaret did not fear for their lives then neither should she. Besides, she would do more good for the Londoners in London than walled within the safety of the Tower, would she not?

Neville, as Margaret, tried for another hour to persuade Mary not to enter London. In the end, Mary had been forced to command them to allow her. She was queen, and as queen she was going to enter London to do what she might.

And so they went, everyone walking save Mary who sat atop a sweet-tempered pale cream donkey that Neville had found for her in the stables of one of the Southwark inns.

Its owner was long dead, and the donkey seemed pleased at being pressed once more into service. It appeared also instinctively to know Mary’s frailty, for it stepped slow and sweetly, gently easing down each hoof so that Mary might not be jolted.

And thus, Neville leading Mary’s donkey, Courtenay and Margaret walking on the other side, and Culpeper bringing up the rear with the remaining ten men-at-arms, they crossed London Bridge.

Armed men had stopped them halfway across at the drawbridge, but had let them through the instant they recognised Mary. When the party gained the intersection of New Fish Street and Thames Street on the city end of the bridge, they all stood still, slowly coming to terms with the horror that had enveloped London.

Evening had fallen, but it did little to hide the hellish streetscape. Red, noxious smoke billowed everywhere. Fires sparked and roared in the intersections ahead. People, little more than huddled humps, scuttled from doorway to doorway. A cart, overloaded with corpses and drawn by an emaciated limping horse, emerged momentarily from the roiling smoke, rattling slowly down the cobbled surface of New Fish Street. A grotesquely cloaked and masked shadowed figure tugged at the horse by its bridle, and, even after the cart had vanished back within the smoke, Mary and her escort could hear the man cursing at the poor beast, trying to make it hobble faster.

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