John called for pen, ink and parchment, wrote his letter. He handed it silently to de la Pole for reading. The old warrior's eyes misted as he laboriously spelled out the sense of the brief message. The Duke had written that if it were indeed his King's wish that he should remain in dishonoured exile, he would obey, albeit with a heart so heavy that he would care no more for life. Or if the King had need of him, yet had been incontinently brought by wicked counsels to fear his uncle, then would John return alone with no one but a squire to attend him. But that he most piteously prayed his King and lord, no matter the decision, to have mercy on all those in England who were dear to Lancaster.

The baron handed the letter back with an embarrassed approving grunt. Surely even that highly strung and unpredictable young King would recognise here the authentic note of much-tried loyalty, though it was doubtful that Richard would have the wisdom to see how sorely tried that loyalty was, not if his other uncle, Thomas of Buckingham, were pouring poison in his ears. But, thought de la Pole, the Duke had at his hand a measure that would right all the wrongs he had suffered, that would take him in triumph back into his own country and might Very well lead him to the throne itself, if he were so minded.

"Your Grace," said the baron, leaning near the Duke and speaking very low, "the Scots love you; they respected your kingly father but they love you for yourself. You've but to speak the word and the Earls of Carrick and Douglas would back you with an army of their Scots, you've but to lead them south through England to London itself. There's no need to grovel before your capricious nephew."

The Duke pressed his signet ring slowly into the hot wax, and raising his head, stared into his old friend's watchful eyes. "Do you suggest that, because I'm so often called traitor, I should now become one, Michael?" he said at last with a weary smile. "Ay - I see that you were jesting, or testing, and I should be angry that you dare. But I've no belly now for games, or anger either." John sighed and gazed down at his humble letter to the King. " 'Tis true the Scots are my friends - and I shall have to prove their friendship now since I'm not permitted to leave their land. But need I tell you, Michael, that I've never yet broken oath or vow? Twice I've sworn fealty to Richard, once by his father's death-bed, again at the coronation, and I'll do my best to serve him 'til I die."

"Ay - I know," said the baron gruffly. "But I wanted to hear you say it, for the devil has sent you a temptation now that would shatter any common man." His voice shook, and he reached hastily for a mug of wine and drained it. "My lord," he went on in a different tone, "my squire's a canny lad. Once we're in Yorkshire, at Pontefract or Knaresborough, I shall know more of what's really happened, and'll send him back to you with news. He can worm his way somehow through Cumberland border out of Percy's reach."

John nodded while a quiver passed over his haggard face. " 'Twill be bitter waiting," he said. He rose and walked to the tent door to push back the flap and gaze out into the black teeming night. After a moment he beckoned to the baron who came close to him. "I have a foreboding," murmured the Duke, "a heavy foreboding." He twitched his hand on the tent flap.

"Not your children!" cried the baron quickly.

"Nay, not of my children, dear as they are to me, but about someone who - God forgive me - is dearer yet."

The baron was still. He could think of no easy words of comfort, nor doubt whom the Duke meant, though it seemed to him very strange that at such a time, when his whole life might well be ruined, the Duke should waste thought for a woman, and one who was not even his Duchess. This one aspect of the Duke, Michael had never understood.

"I'll not neglect to make immediate inquiry for Lady Swynford when I get south, my lord," he said quietly.

De la Pole was successful on his mission. He found Richard, who shed impulsive tears over his favourite uncle's letter, and cried out, as the baron had suspected, that the closing of the Border had been entirely Percy's doing and without the slightest royal sanction. It was clear that Percy, infuriated that the Duke had been given a commission over him to treat of Scottish matters, had hopefully exaggerated all the rumours and guessed wrong as to the King's intent.

The fleetest royal messengers were accordingly dispatched at once to the north bearing the King's writs, and de la Pole followed after.

The Duke had spent the anxious days of waiting in Edinburgh with his Scottish hosts, who treated him with chivalrous courtesy. And the Scottish earls cheered generously when the royal messenger arrived from Richard and made it plain that all the Duke's embarrassment had been caused by Percy alone, whom they loathed. The Earl of Douglas gleefully offered the Duke eight hundred men-at-arms to aid in the immediate punishment of Percy, and the Duke accepted them as a guard of honour, but only as far as the Border.

"Once in England, my good friend,' he said to the Scottish earl, "I'll need no help in dealing with the scurvy Lord of Northumberland, now that I know my King's true intentions." The Duke's voice was at its harshest, his eyes their coldest, and the admiring Earl of Douglas applauded this knightly conduct, even while he regretted giving up so good an excuse for fighting.

The city gates of Berwick were not closed when the Duke arrived there this time, in fact he was met at them by his own retainer, the old Lord Neville of Raby with his entire Westmorland force of men, and by the trembling warden, Sir Matthew Redmayne, who had refused to admit him earlier.

The moment after the Duke had ridden through the gates into English territory, he lifted the visor on his brass battle helm and looked down at Percy's tool, the cringing, bowing warden. "Where is your master?" he cried, cutting across Sir Matthew's flow of apology.

"At B-Bamborough Castle, Your Grace," stammered the warden. "He waits to make you welcome, he prepares great feastings for you."

"How gracious of him!" said the Duke. "You, Redmayne, hasten now to Northumberland, and tell him to come here to me at once. Tell him I'll meet him across the river in the Tweed bank field. I would - speak with him."

Sir Matthew gulped and changed colour. "But - Your Grace - -"

The Duke's full mouth curled into a faint smile, while his eyes sharpened until the warden felt them like two piercing daggers. "In case," said the Duke through his smiling lips, "that message is not sufficiently clear, take him this too!" He drew his heavy leather gauntlet from his right hand and flung it on the muddy street at Sir Matthew's feet. It fell with the Duke's embroidered arms upward, the royal arms of England and of Castile.

The unhappy warden, who knew very well that he himself would be made-to suffer for bearing so unwelcome a message, stammered something and picked the gauntlet up between two fingers; gloomily mounting his horse, he rode away down the street towards the road to Bamborough.

Neville of Raby slapped his thigh and burst into an excited guffaw. "Oh, well done, my lord! Well done!" he wheezed. "God's wounds, but this'll be a rich sight. Percy has as much skill at knightly combat as a goaded bull. Twill be rare sport to see him slashing and stomping against the best jouster in the land!"

The Duke did not answer; he spurred Morel, his powerful new black stallion, and galloped through the town, across the bridge to Tweed bank field while his retinue streamed after him. Once arrived there, his squires set about erecting his tent and bringing him food while he settled down to wait for Percy to come from Bamborough near twenty miles away.

It was here that Michael de la Pole found his duke that afternoon, when there had been as yet no sign of Percy.

The baron had delayed his return trip north. Knowing that the royal messenger bore documents that would relieve the Duke's immediate crisis, de la Pole had taken time to find out the exact state of Lancaster's personal affairs.

When he saw the Lancaster banner flying over a striped red-and-blue tent near the Tweed bridge, he had ridden into camp and heard at once from the excited retainers of the Duke's challenge. The baron walked to the painted tent and announced his presence to a hovering young squire, whereupon the Duke called out in a glad voice, "Welcome, de la Pole! Come in!"

The Duke had been reading in a favourite volume of Ovid's Metamorphoses when the baron walked into his tent. He flung the book on the table crying, "By the Virgin - but I'm glad to see you, Michael, and deeply grateful too at the way you accomplished your mission!" He shook his friend's hand warmly, smiling. "The only person I would rather see is Percy, whom I await right eagerly."

"Ay - so I hear," said the baron with some dryness, sitting down on a camp stool and gazing ruefully at his duke. "You seem in uncommon good spirits for a man who has challenged another to mortal combat."

"Why not? I'm sick of restraint and battling with shadows! I long to come to grips with a worthy foe. God's blood, you know what I've endured from slander, from whispering lies - 'twould not have been so in my father's heyday. Ah, but times are sadly changed."

" 'Tis so," said the baron thoughtfully. "Times are changed. I've been seeing the evidence with my own eyes. That the commons should have dared to commit the outrages that they did - -" He shook his head.

The eager light died from John's eyes. He sighed. "Ay, tell me, Michael. Your squire when he came to me in Edinburgh much relieved my mind when he said Katherine and her children were safe at Kenilworth."