Sara Douglass - The Wounded Hawk

Bolingbroke was now very, very still, his eyes fixed solely on Neville’s face. What had happened?

“I could bear it no longer. I confronted her the night we first arrived in London. Sweet Jesu, Hal, Saint Michael told me she had to be destroyed!”

“What happened, Tom?”

Neville gave a small humourless laugh, and, focussing his attention on Bolingbroke, suddenly realised how tense the man was.

“I threatened to kill both her and Rosalind,” he said, “if Margaret did not replace all her lies with truths. Lord Saviour, Hal, I think I would have done it, too, I was so beside myself with anger and doubt.”

He shook his head. “I cannot believe that I was so out of my mind that I would threaten Rosalind’s life.”

Bolingbroke was pale. “You threatened to kill a child? Tom, tell me what happened!”

Neville met Bolingbroke’s eyes. “I was angry with Margaret, not only because I thought her a demon, but because I thought she might be your lover.”

Bolingbroke stared incredulously, then erupted in loud and completely unfeigned laughter, surprising Neville, who had expected any of a hundred different responses but not this.

People glanced at them, and Bolingbroke managed to bring his laughter under control, although tears of mirth slipped down his cheeks and his face went stiff with the effort to keep his chortling muted. “I cannot believe you thought … I … and her Nay, nay, Tom, never fear that!”

Although Neville’s doubts regarding Margaret and Bolingbroke were finally and completely laid to rest, he now felt slighted on her behalf that Bolingbroke should prove so immune to her charms.

“Margaret is a very beautiful woman,” he said.

“Oh, aye, aye!” Bolingbroke continued to chortle, wiping away the tears from his face with a hand. “But … I … she …” He stopped, took a deep breath, and finally managed to gain complete control of himself. “Tom, I do beg your indulgence and forgiveness for any slight you felt I delivered to your wife. Margaret is truly an utterly desirable woman, but she is your wife, as she was once Raby’s woman, and I have too much love and respect for you, as I did for Raby, to even consider her a possible companion for bedsport. But tell me, what did she say to your other charge? That she was a demon.”

“She spoke strangely,” Neville said, “but with such a heavenly anger in her eyes that I was forced to believe every word she spoke.”

“And …?”

Again Neville focussed his gaze on Bolingbroke’s face. “She told me she was not a demon, but was also not a mere woman. She said she was of the angels.”

Any merriment still remaining in Bolingbroke’s eyes and face vanished completely. “And what else did she tell you?” he said softly.

Neville told Bolingbroke what had passed between them, and also detailed for Bolingbroke, as he had not done previously, the curse that Neville had heard from both Roman prostitute and demon. “Hal,” he finished, “she had such a look in her eyes that I was forced to believe her.”

“Such a look?”

“A look that I have seen only in one other being’s eyes—Saint Michael’s. She spoke truly when she said she was of the angels.”

Bolingbroke considered a long while before he spoke again. “Then Margaret is a remarkable woman indeed. Tom, even though she has told you she has been sent to provide the temptation to test you, can you truly resist her?”

“I must,” Neville said, “and I will. I shall regard her and treat her with the respect and pity she deserves, but I will not love her. She understands this.”

Bolingbroke reached out a hand and placed it on Neville’s shoulder, forcing Neville to look directly into his eyes.

“And when the pyre is lit, Tom, will you truly be able to throw her on it? Will you? Will you?”

Neville met Bolingbroke’s stare easily. “Margaret’s honesty has proved a blessing, for I can see that she is resigned to her fate and is prepared to sacrifice herself so that mankind will be spared Satan’s rule. Can I sacrifice her? Yes, I can, for both her sacrifice and my strength will surely see her live with the angels for eternity.”

“You couldn’t allow her to die the night she gave birth to Rosalind, though, could you?”

“That was different! She needed to live so that she might fill her proper—” her sacrificial “—role later!” And that was why I prayed so hard for her that night, Neville told himself. It was!

Bolingbroke drew back with shock and sorrow in his eyes. “Then God has a magnificent champion in you, Tom. No wonder the heavens rejoice in your very name.”

Neville nodded, taking Bolingbroke’s words as a compliment. “But the casket … the casket.” He shot a glance to the High Table where Richard was now leaning towards Isabeau de Bavière, engaging her in a conversation that had both their faces lit with amusement and their eyes dusky with lust.

Well, and it was surely no surprise that Isabeau de Bavière would tempt the boy-king into her bed. Or was it Richard who seduced Isabeau?

“We can do nothing until Richard summons us to his presence,” Bolingbroke said, barely restrained frustration and anger evident in his tone. “And at present the Demon-King is amusing himself by withholding that summons.”

Isabeau stretched out her arm and admired both its firmness and the brilliance of the gems in its armbands and finger rings. In the candlelight the gems glittered and sparkled, and their glow lent further sheen to her ivory skin.

Apart from her jewels, Isabeau de Bavière was utterly naked.

Women moved with silken whispers in the shadows about her, folding her clothes, pouring rosewater into a tub so that she might bathe away the sweat of both banquet and Richard. Isabeau’s mouth curled in silent memory: Richard had not even pretended decorous behaviour, escorting her behind the curtain that separated his bed from the High Table on the dais in the Painted Chamber and forcing her to its mattress even as diners were still exiting the hall.

Isabeau lowered her arm and sighed. Perhaps age was finally claiming its own, for she had found her bedsport with Richard a nauseating affair, and had risen and pulled down her skirts as soon as he’d rolled off her.

“I shall present my son with your kindest felicitations,” she had said, and then left him to return to her own chambers in Westminster’s palace.

“Madam?” one of the women said, sinking into a deep curtsey before her.

Isabeau sighed again and peered at the woman—girl, really. Who was she? Richard sent her new ladies every few days so that she might not form a close bond with any of them and perhaps subvert them to her own interests, and Isabeau found it difficult to recall names and faces. Ah yes, now she remembered …

“Mary, is it not?” she said. Her voice was deep and melodious and heavily accented with the dulcet cadences of her native country.

“Mary Bohun,” the girl said, finally looking up at Isabeau. She flushed, as if Isabeau’s nakedness disconcerted her.

“And I would hazard a guess,” Isabeau said, smiling, “that this Mary Bohun is a virgin.”

“But soon to be wed,” said another woman, now stepping from the shadows into the circle of candlelight that surrounded Isabeau.

“Who is this?” Isabeau said, not liking to be so interrupted.

Mary Bohun’s flush darkened, but she maintained her composure. “This is Lady Margaret Neville,” she said of Margaret, who had now sunk into her own curtsey before Isabeau. “She is one of my attendants, sent to serve with me this night, and also one of my closest confidantes.”

Isabeau studiously ignored Margaret, who had a beauty that was, disconcertingly, almost as great as her own.