Part 32 (1/2)

She looked around and raised her voice. 'Yet there is one additional piece to this strange puzzle. As Lord Oxford knows very well, this book of prophecies has travelled from abroad wrapped in a cloth, a piece of embroidery fitted to the ma.n.u.script like a glove to a hand.'

Oxford looked delighted to have an unexpected ally. 'Your n.o.ble mother is correct, Your Highness. The book and the cloth have travelled together. The cloth went missing and hasn't been recovered.'

'The cloth has been found,' said Joan of Kent. Murmurs of surprise, and she held it bunched up above her head. Oxford looked at the embroidery like a dog at a cutlet. 'The cloth came to me, Your Highness, by the hand of the Mother Superior of St Leonard's Bromley, Prioress Isabel, who was brought the cloth by one of her former laysisters. It reveals with no room for doubt the ident.i.ty of the agent behind this conspiracy.' She paused for effect. 'May I unfurl the cloth, Your Highness?'

'Please, Countess,' said Richard, almost pathetically grateful to have his moment of decision deferred.

'And with your consent, Lord Oxford?' The earl responded with a courtly nod.

With a flick of her shapely wrist, Joan snapped the cloth open. I craned my neck and smiled at the result of Millicent Fonteyn's handiwork. Where Lancaster's heraldry had once been embroidered into the cloth, there now appeared the arms of Robert de Vere, Earl of Oxford, emblazoned on a mounted knight, his sword thrust in the breast of an unarmed king bearing Richard's colours. A perfect subst.i.tution, and I found myself in a state of awe at the ingenuity of Bromley and pleased that I had suggested the countess rather than Swynford as the agent of its revealing.

After the appropriate exclamations, everyone started speculating wildly. King Richard looked from his mother to the earl. 'What do you say to this, Oxford?' he demanded.

'This-' sputtered Oxford, as word and sight of the cloth spread quickly through the crowd, 'this is absurd, Your Highness! An outrage of the highest order!'

'Who could disagree?' Joan of Kent said. 'This cloth throws the whole of the prophecy into doubt, Your Highness. Many would say your close friends.h.i.+p with the Earl of Oxford renders the man half a king already, so the ”kingmaker” could just as well point to him. And heaven knows that this ”flaunting of fur”, supposedly Lancaster's ermine points, could as easily refer to Robert de Vere, who ladies about wrapped in his fur-lined hood!'

There was scattered laughter as Oxford's hand went to his hood, lined in fox.

The countess was not finished. 'G.o.d Himself knows how deeply I have despised my late husband's brother.' Lancaster said nothing. Joan approached her son and took his hand. 'But he loves you, Richard, as does his son.' A brief glance at Bolingbroke. 'You are the duke's liege lord, and he is your most loyal subject of all.'

Joan dropped the king's hand and looked around, matching Oxford's flourishes and volume with her steadiness and grace. 'The Duke of Lancaster has had many opportunities to take your life since your coronation, Your Highness. How often have you hunted together in Knaresburgh Forest, when a stray arrow might have taken you in the back? Instead he has protected you, Richard: from enemies, from slander, from treason. All of this while others conspire against you.'

'No, Your Highness!' Oxford protested. 'I beg you, sire, don't believe these words from your mother's false mo-' He caught himself before voicing the irrevocable insult, then straightened his back. 'The Countess of Kent has been fooled. This cloth is a false replica, Your Highness.'

'There are many false replicas in your kingdom,' said Joan to her son. 'False loyalties, false friends.' She looked at Oxford. 'And false lords.'

Oxford shook his head. 'The original embroidery is emblazoned with the arms of Lancaster, I swear it.'

'You have seen it, Robert?' the king demanded.

'Yes, Your Highness, though before it went missing.'

'Then why didn't you bring it to me earlier, along with this book, and tell me about this whole plot?' Richard sounded almost petulant; I winced for him.

Oxford hesitated. 'It was thought better to wait, Your Highness to gauge the seriousness of the conspiracy, and allow us to reveal the perpetrators. As I believe we now have.'

'Indeed,' said Joan of Kent, her meaning lost on no one.

The earl's eyes brightened. 'There is one final token mentioned in the prophecy, Your Highness. One final sign of your betrayer.'

'And what is that, Oxford?' said the king, starting to lose patience.

'The Prince of Plums,' he said. 'The prophecy begins ”At Prince of Plums” a phrase everyone here will understand. Right now, Your Highness, we are in the middle of a game called Prince of Plums. Seventy-four of us, on our persons, carry a card from Lady Katherine Swynford's deck, a card to be revealed at some point during the feast.'

A number of the guests started patting themselves. Oxford raised a hand. 'Halt!' he shouted. 'Do not touch your card, under pain of seizure.' The guards spun round, warning the a.s.sembly against disobeying Oxford's orders. It was then that I realized what the earl had done. Somehow he had connived Swynford, Lancaster's mistress, into leading the guests in the card game never revealing that its purpose would be to condemn the father of her children. I could only imagine what Oxford might have promised Gaunt's unknowing concubine in return. The Order of the Garter, perhaps?

'Each of the guests has been given one of the unique cards from Lady Katherine's stack, to carry on his person until the feast is done. According to the prophecy, your would-be killer will be known by the ”Half-ten of Hawks”. Whoever bears the Five of Hawks, then, is the agent behind this murderous plot.'

King Richard raised his chin. 'Hold your cards aloft, my good people,' he called to the crowd. 'We shall test the truth of Oxford's claim.' Numerous hands dug into pockets and folds, and soon dozens of cards were held overhead. Those without cards looked on in visible fear. Anything, it seemed, could happen now.

'Who holds the Five of Hawks?' Oxford demanded. He surveyed the elevated cards, walking about the crowd before coming to a position before Gaunt. The duke had not obeyed the king's orders. Instead he was staring with contempt at his card, which he held at waist height. 'Show us your card, Lancaster,' Oxford said to him.

Gaunt slowly turned his card toward the king and the earl. The Five of Hawks.

Oxford whirled toward the king. 'Do you see, Your Highness? ”By Half-ten of Hawks might shender be shown.” Lancaster's guilt is now beyond doubt.'

The king stared at the card in his uncle's hand, then slowly raised his eyes to meet the duke's.

'Now show us your card, Robert,' Gaunt said into the silence.

Robert de Vere scoffed.

'Yes, my Lord Oxford,' said Joan of Kent softly, looking intently at the earl. 'Show us your card.'

Vere shrugged and reached within his coat, pulling out a card without looking at it. The king stepped forward and took it from him.

King Richard looked down at the card. He audibly gasped. 'The Five of Hawks! Identical to Lancaster's card!'

As the gathering cooed astonishment I looked for Swynford, who had melted into the crowd behind the altar. Then I found her, standing between Ralph Strode and the Baron de la Pole. She had covered her mouth with a gloved hand, and I realized what she had done. Oxford must have requested the game of Prince of Plums from her well in advance of the feast, presenting it as an entertaining diversion and a.s.suming she would go along with his plan to slip the Five of Hawks to her lover. But Swynford, as I knew from that appointment at La Neyte, possessed two identical decks, and an agility with the cards that would have made it an easy matter to place an extra Five of Hawks into the deck and slip it to Oxford. I was glad to see the familiar twinkle of amus.e.m.e.nt in her eye, and I wondered who had come up with the ingenious contrivance. Strode, I suspected, or perhaps the chancellor himself, each standing to one side of Lancaster's mistress as the spectacle unfolded.

'Again again, Your Highness,' Oxford stammered, 'there has been a subst.i.tution of some kind, another attempt to deceive you. There is only one of each card in Lady Katherine's deck. The Duke of Lancaster has drawn the Five of Hawks, as we have all seen. That two Fives of Hawks have appeared in this game is-'

'A mysterious circ.u.mstance indeed, Your Highness,' said Lancaster quietly. 'Lady Katherine distributed the cards before your arrival. The Bishop of Winchester himself took one of them. He is no friend of mine, as you well know. But he will attest that there were no subst.i.tutions or trickery of any sort.'

King Richard looked at Wykeham, who said simply, 'His Lords.h.i.+p the Duke of Lancaster speaks the truth, Your Highness.'

The king stepped into the circle formed by his uncle, his mother, the earl, and the bishop. He looked small and wan. 'So here we are, then,' he said, spreading a sad look around the a.s.semblage. 'The prophecy tells me that my uncle the Duke of Lancaster has betrayed me.' The king stared up at Gaunt. Lancaster's chin lifted; he would not meet his nephew's gaze. Richard then approached Oxford, who looked at him with a mix of deference and defiance. 'And yet this cloth, revealed to me by my own mother, suggests that another faction wishes me dead.' He placed a hand on Oxford's cheek. 'That Robert de Vere friend, companion, loyal knight and earl that it is you, Robert, who plots against me. Can it be true?'

'Of course not, Your Highness,' said Oxford hastily. 'The very thought is-'

'And yet if I am to credit these cards' Richard held up the two fives 'both of you want me gone, and soon.' The young king sighed, his shoulders sagging with the burden of indecision. 'So then. Whom should I believe? What is the solution to this awful dilemma?'

No one spoke as Richard weighed the consequences of all we had seen that day. The king's palm rested on the hilt of his sword, which, I feared, would be drawn at any moment and pointed at the man he decided was the guilty one. The moment stretched: the weightiest choice of King Richard's reign, an irrevocable decision that would alter the future in unimaginable ways. Whatever the king decided, whichever way he went, there would be heavy conflict, possibly all-out civil war. Richard's question hung in the air until a familiar voice sounded from the edge of the crowd.

'It is France, Your Highness.' One hundred heads swivelled toward the voice. It belonged to the Baron de la Pole, the Lord Chancellor.

'What's that?' The king peered through the throng. 'Who has spoken?'

At the far side of the pavilion the guests parted. The chancellor stepped into the tightened circle and took a knee before the king. Richard waved away his guard and bid the baron to stand. 'Explain yourself, Lord Chancellor.'

De la Pole came to his full, commanding height, dwarfing the king in stature and maturity. The baron had stood by King Edward's side for many years, a long history of dispa.s.sionate service to the realm evident in his bearing and the respect he was accorded by all. I remembered our last exchange, just outside St Lawrence Jewry, and wondered what he knew. 'Your Highness, we have learned that this book came into the realm through the agency of King Charles, aided by the Scots.'

Murmurs of concern. 'You're quite sure, Lord Chancellor?' asked the king.

'Indeed we are, Your Highness.' He held up a doc.u.ment. 'We have intercepted an encrypted dispatch, bought off a messenger in the service of Burgundy. As you know, sire, the truce has recently expired, and the French are eager to renew hostilities. According to this dispatch, which we managed to decipher only yesterday, the admiral of France is to set sail from Sluys with a thousand lances, bound for Dunbar. The book and the cloth are part of a larger plot to destabilize the realm in advance of an invasion, as was the clumsy attack by the butchers of Southwark, cooked up by a Scottish priest in the pay of the French. Our archers were prepared for the attack, of course. Lord Oxford informed me of the prophecy nearly a week ago, and your royal life was never in jeopardy, though we had to let it go forward to test the reliability of our information. Now we know it is solid. This is good news, Your Highness.'