The Crippled Angel. Sara Douglass

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СКАЧАТЬ 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 СКАЧАТЬ