The Crippled Angel. Sara Douglass

Чтение книги онлайн.

       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.