uncle Ralph Neville’s tent. Ah, there, the standard of Westmorland. He nodded to the guards outside the tent’s entrance, then ducked inside.
His uncle was standing in the centre of the space, almost fully armoured, his face a mask of impatience as two of his squires tugged at buckle straps, and twisted plates into place. The earl grimaced at Neville’s entrance, and Neville was not sure if that was because one of the squires had tugged too tightly, or because his uncle was not happy to see him.
“You’re not going to fight?” Raby asked. “You have decided to play the part of the spectator?”
Ah, no wonder his uncle had grimaced at him. Raby had never been the one to pass a fight without adding his sword to it.
“There will be battle enough in the coming months,” Neville said. “Today I will wander the encampment, the better to understand the strength of various houses.”
“Humph,” Raby grunted. “First a warrior, then a priest, now a courtier. Will there never be an end to your incarnations, Tom?”
“I am just Tom,” Neville said, “choosing to reveal myself in different ways.” He walked closer to his uncle, and the squires, their task done, melted away. “Will you have some wine before you enter the lists, uncle?”
“Aye. It will steady my hand.”
Neville walked to a small table, poured out two goblets of wine from a ewer, and handed one of them to his uncle. “And who is your opponent?”
Raby hesitated. Then… “Exeter.”
Neville halted with his goblet halfway to his mouth, stunned. “Exeter? John Holland?” Richard’s half-brother against his uncle, the man responsible for garnering support for Bolingbroke, who then supplanted and then murdered Exeter’s brother?
“The very same.”
“And who arranged this?”
“Exeter himself, I believe,” Raby said, and drained his goblet. “I heard he specifically asked to be set against me.”
Neville took the empty goblet from his uncle’s hand and set it, together with his untouched one, to one side.
“Uncle… be careful. Exeter is dangerous.”
“And I’m not?”
“I didn’t mean dangerous as in skilled with a weapon, uncle. I meant dangerous in the use of treachery. Do you think he will allow his brother’s death to go unchallenged? Unrevenged?”
“If he knows what is best for him… yes.”
Neville turned away, fingering Raby’s mail gloves which lay on the table. “The Hollands are a powerful family,” he said.
Raby walked up beside Neville and took the mail gloves, pulling them on. “They wouldn’t dare. They are not that powerful. No doubt Exeter grumbles in private, as do most of the Holland family. But to take on Hal? No. They wouldn’t dare. Tom, they wouldn’t.”
That’s what Richard and de Vere believed about Bolingbroke, Neville thought, and that mistake killed them.
He forced a smile to his face. “Then I wish you good luck in your joust, uncle. I hope your lance bounces off his balls and bruises them so badly he shall not sire any more sons.”
Raby guffawed loudly. “I shall aim with intent,” he said. “England could do with a few less Hollands. Now, where are those damn squires? I need my helmet!”
When he’d left his uncle, Neville wandered as close as he could to Exeter’s tents without attracting unwanted attention. Sundry knights and nobles scurried about, most in full battle armour, all with tense expressions and narrowed eyes that darted this way and that.
Neville stood behind the tent of a minor noble and chewed at his lip in thought. How many men did Exeter and his fellow Hollands have with them? Two or three hundred, no more. They wouldn’t have been able to bring any more without attracting undue attention.
So, Exeter’s allies, then. Who were they likely to be? Northumberland? Northumberland had ever had his disagreements with Bolingbroke and his father, the Duke of Lancaster, and particularly with Neville’s own family. But Northumberland had too much to lose by turning against Bolingbroke, and far more to gain by standing at his side.
So Northumberland was unlikely to ally himself with Exeter, and Hotspur, Northumberland’s son, who may very well have supported an Exeter bid to topple Bolingbroke, was still far in the north.
There were, of course, a slew of lesser nobles who might support Exeter—Neville well knew that the wounds caused by Bolingbroke’s extraordinary rise to power had not yet healed—but Neville simply couldn’t see how they could hope to form a force strong enough to defeat Bolingbroke’s allies who were here in force; Raby and Northumberland, in particular, had huge escorts of men at the tournament.
A movement to his left caught Neville’s eye and he turned, then frowned slightly at what he saw.
None other than the Abbot of Westminster, striding out of Exeter’s tent and looking guilty enough to confess to Christ’s murder if someone should put a knife to his throat and ask him to say the words.
The abbot disappeared down a narrow alley between rows of tents, and Neville hurried after him.
After five minutes the abbot paused, looked about—causing Neville to duck behind a saddled destrier—then entered a small tent. In an instant he was out again, and a few heartbeats after his exit five Dominican friars hurried out, split up, and merged into the crowds.
What was the abbot doing, consorting first with Exeter, then with Dominicans, of all people?
Neville hesitated, then followed one of the Dominicans. The man’s hooded black figure made him easy to track at a safe distance in the otherwise gaudy multitude.
The friar led Neville back towards the hordes of common folk who had come to watch the tournament. Now and then he would stop, catch the attention of a small group of men and women, whisper something, then move on.
Neville’s disquiet grew, especially since the people the friar talked to remained agitated after the friar had moved on, and turned to talk to others within the crowd. He watched the Dominican work his way through the throng, thought about continuing his pursuit of him, then decided to ask some of the people what they’d been told by the friar.
“My good man,” Neville said quietly to one man standing in a group of five or six others, “what did the friar tell you?”
The man glanced at his fellows, licking his lips nervously, then looked back at this lord who had addressed him.
“He said… ” the man hesitated, “… he said that Richard our king is not dead, and that he will be riding to London within the week to reclaim his throne.”
“What?”
“It’s what he said.”
“It’s not true, dammit! Man, believe me, Richard is dead!”
But the
