Free Within the Hollow Crown by Margaret Campbell Barnes

wearily taking up the implied challenge. "Isn't it the inevitable result of dragging on the war and draining our manpower? Perhaps if we can keep at peace for a few years, now that Uncle John has concluded this treaty with Scotland—"
       And that, of course, had set Uncle Thomas off like one of his own incalculable cannon. "What's anybody got to gain from a patched-up peace?" he had snapped, in the grating voice which sounded as if he might explode at any moment. "Why, the peasants in this country are simply stuffed with loot from your father's conquests. That's just what's the matter with them. They've never been so well off and it's gone to their heads. Besides, if it comes to manpower," he had added, reaching rudely for the salt, "the Black Death killed far more of them than the wars."
       After that Richard had let the conversation flow over him unheeded. Useless to suggest to a pig-headed militarist that returning armies might have carried the contagion. Useless, come to that, to argue at all about the plague—a calamity so devastating that it swept through a country mowing down nearly half the population and creating an unheard of situation where there were not enough labourers and servants to go round. No doubt, as Warwick and Percy kept contending ad nauseum, it was iniquitous of the survivors to seiz e upon the aftermath of a common misfortune as an opportunity to rise up against their masters. But just conceivably, mightn't some of the iniquity be on the masters' side? Impossible to doubt, for instance, the sincerity of that wild-eyed priest who claimed that in the eyes of God all men were equal, or the provocation of the blacksmith. And there had been the girl, Rose, as clean and sweet as any fine heiress about the court, subjected to hunger and insult—and yet all the fine laws of chivalry in which he and his kind were so carefully brought up did absolutely nothing about distressed damsels of that sort.
       For the first time in his life Richard found himself looking tentatively over the top of the code that shielded him. And he found there was something there—something alive and logical. Food for thought at any rate. This absurd rising would have to be put down, of course. It was becoming a menace to all the decent comforts of life. But he couldn't feel that the poor ignorant wretches were his enemies. He was touched that they should have appealed to him for help; rather set up, too, to find that they believed he had that much power. And he wished he could think out something to do about it.
       That was why he had given the others the slip after supper and come up here, telling Standish to say that he was tired after his journey. Often of late when he wanted to sort out his mind he had used this subterfuge, without realizing what a handle it gave the Lancastrian clique to stress his supposed delicacy. Indeed, he scarcely believed that such a clique existed. There might be people who thought it would be better for the country—or for their own private ends—that his powerful, experienced Uncle John should reign. Yet the man who always seemed to be clutching at the power was his youngest uncle, Thomas of Gloucester.
       But up on the battlements in the limpid evening light, with the sky turning to a pageant of crimson and gold behind the towers of Westminster, all these problems seemed rather a nuisance. And very remote. Why, only yesterday he and Robert and the rest of them had been tilting at the quintain, and tournaments and river parties and all the pleasant things of summer had still seemed quite important. Richard wished it could always be summer. Instinct in him was the desire for warmth and colour. These long June days were the nearest semblance now to the fading memory of his beloved Bordeaux and could wrap him in the old contented indolence against which Burley was always urging him to struggle.
       A clatter of horses hurrying along Thames Street roused him from his southern