Sara Douglass - The Crippled Angel

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.”