But he had slept badly and lay still in his bed for a while, thinking over all the disturbing events of the previous day. After dinner they had gone down the river in the state barge as Henry had suggested. The meadows at Rotherhithe, usually so lush and green, had been black with insurgents, and the royal party had stayed off shore for a little while talking with their leaders. A very little while it seemed, looking back upon those confused and nervous moments. And then they had taken advantage of the turning tide, just as he himself had shocked John Holland by suggesting, to row back a great deal quicker than they had come. Because they were afraid. They—the supposed cream of English nobility—afraid of that ill-fed, ill-armed rabble on the bank. Richard Plantagenet groaned with shame at the thought of it, turning closer into the blessed privacy of his tapestry bed hangings. Even now he could scarcely believe that they had behaved so cravenly, and was prey to a tantalizing conviction that if only they might go again they would do better.
