The Fate of Princes (2 page)

‘Have I killed them? Is that what you’re saying, Francis? Will you join the whisperers? The secretive ones who skulk behind the arras of the chamber, the curtain of the hall, or the rood screen of the church? Those who gleefully murmur to this sickened world how I, the so-called crouchback, killed Henry of Lancaster, my own brothers George of Clarence and Edward the King, and, now I am on my throne, swim deeper in the innocent blood of my nephews?’ Richard laughed mirthlessly as if savouring some secret jest. Then he rose, kicked at one of the logs stacked to the side of the great canopied hearth. ‘It’s a lie, Francis. You lie. Your eyes lie. In God’s name, they all lie and you will
be the person who sticks such lies in their throats!’ He raised his head and stared at me, biting his lower lip, all the time playing with a dagger, a small bejewelled affair, stuck in a small gold-encrusted scabbard in his belt, Richard’s favourite gesture when he was angry or nervous. ‘You are to London, Francis. You are to go there and find the truth of this. The whereabouts of my nephews.’ He glared viciously at me as if fighting some private inner demon.

‘You will have your letters and your warrants to search out the truth. If Brackenbury is guilty, I will have his head. His or any others, be it the highest in the land, even if it is Buckingham. He will hang from the stars of heaven!’ I stared coolly back. Buckingham, haughty Buckingham with his dark-red hair and his arrogant hawklike face, always dressed in purple, always hinting how he, too, had royal blood in his veins. Henry Stafford, second Duke of Buckingham, was a man to watch. Richard and I stared at each other. Buckingham had helped Richard to the throne, sworn great oaths and made sweet promises, but Richard watched him, always on guard. The Duke had not followed our progress through the kingdom after Richard’s coronation. Instead, making excuses with kind words and honeyed phrases, he had hurried back to Brecon and his powerful fiefdom in the south-west.

Richard did not trust him. I did not like him. Had not the King given into Buckingham’s hands Bishop John Morton, that arch-plotter, that man of the church who hid a voracious hunger for temporal power? Morton, Henry Tudor’s greatest supporter in England. Richard and I had wanted Morton held fast in the Tower, but Buckingham with his sly ways and devious talk had persuaded the King to release Morton into his care. Worse, only two days previously Richard and I had listened to spies from Buckingham’s household. How the Duke was plotting mischief, conspiring with the
King’s enemies. He was deep in conversation with that sanctimonious bitch, Margaret Beaufort, the Countess of Richmond and mother of Henry Tudor, a woman only allowed her liberty because of her second marriage to the powerful Lord Stanley.

Richard broke the silence, smiling secretively at me.

‘Even if it’s Buckingham,’ he whispered, ‘I will have his head! You are to leave no stone unturned, encounter no obstacle!’ Richard looked at me, touching me gently on the cheek before he stalked out of the hall, shouting for his grooms, huntsmen. He wanted to hunt and forget his cares. I just sat in that cold hall. Anne came down. Warm, sleepy-eyed. She clutched my hand and pressed her body against mine but I ignored her, so, wrapped in her heavy cloak, she went into the buttery at the far end of the hall to organise the servants. I watched her go, envying her absorption with ordinary daily tasks while I wondered if I had fastened my fortunes, and those of Anne, to a falling star? Bright and fiery but falling like Lucifer through the heavens. Richard Plantagenet, fourth son of Richard of York, the brother and uncle of kings, now wearing the crown himself. I tried to be cold, impassive, logical, forgetting the young boy I had grown up with, united by those deep bonds forged in childhood. But, who else could I follow? Two young boys, his brother’s sons, supposedly locked away in the Tower of London? Or the red dragon, Henry Tudor, the Welshman, now skulking in the chill bleak courts of Brittany? No, I was held fast to Richard of York.

But were the stories true? Was Richard a murderous assassin? Did he have the same cunning and lust for killing as the White Boar, his favourite emblem? Was Richard my master, now my King, the boy who had played in the dusty courtyards and reedy marshes of Middleham, a regicide? This prince, who founded chantries, loved music and learning, a bloodstained
sinner in God’s eyes? The man who had knighted me on our campaigns against the Scots; created me a Viscount, Constable of Wallingford Castle, Chief Butler and Chamberlain of his household. Was he really a murderer? Only weeks earlier I had encouraged him to take the marble chair of King’s Bench, the symbol of royal justice in Westminster Hall. I had been there carrying the sword of state when Richard and his frail Queen, Anne, walked the broad ribbon of red cloth up to the high altar of the Abbey to be crowned with all the pomp and glory of church and state as Richard III of England.

Richard was my king, but, on that morning, I had to face the rumours and scandals I had so far ignored. His brother had died: Edward, King of England, golden-haired, standing over six feet, the champion of England, the destroyer of the House of Lancaster. He had seized the throne and held it fast, marrying the woman who caught his heart and satisfied his every lust, Elizabeth Woodville, a widow and, as some men said, a sorceress. On her he had fathered many children, promising the crown to his eldest son, Edward, but then the King died. Suddenly, in the midst of his pleasure, whilst boating on the Thames; and the eagles had gathered. Richard proclaimed himself as Protector, whispering fiercely to me how he would have to defend himself against the Woodvilles. They would have him arrested and secretly done to death as they had Clarence who dared to conspire and whisper against the Queen. Richard never forgot Clarence, nor did he forget the whispers. He remembered them. Oh, yes. One in particular, brought to him by Bishop Stillington of Bath and Wells. A curious story. How Edward IV’s marriage to the Woodville was null and void for Edward had already been betrothed to the Lady Eleanor Butler. If this was so, and I could imagine Buckingham with the silver whispering and golden arguments, Edward IV’s
two sons were bastards. They were illegitimate stock and could never wear the crown of England. Richard had believed this. He proclaimed his brother’s marriage bigamous, seizing the two princes, locking them in the Tower and taking the crown himself.

There was no other way. True or false, what did it matter? If Richard had not become King, sooner or later the Woodvilles, because of their hold over the young princes, would have destroyed him. What man wants to live his life in the shadow of the axe or the nightmare of dreadful death in some secret dungeon? But murder? Infanticide? I knew Richard well. A man of sharp contrasts. On his orders the Bishop of London had forced Mistress Jane Shore, his brother’s paramour, to walk through the streets of London dressed only in her shift, carrying a candle, as public atonement for her fleshly desires. Yet Richard was no stranger to such lusts. He himself had a bastard son, the Lord John, and at least one other illegitimate offspring. He was a master actor, cautious and subtle, able to mask his true feelings behind conceits and stratagems. When Lord Hastings fell, Richard had staged a masque as cunning as anything devised on some town stage. A hot, sweaty summer day in the council chamber in the Tower; Richard, pulling back his jerkin sleeve showing his arm, thinner, more emaciated than the other, a defect from birth. Richard, however, accused Hastings of withering it by witchcraft, saying he would not dine until the traitor had lost his head. In a few violent bloody minutes Richard had Hastings executed and others of his coven, Morton and Rotherham of York, placed in custody.

There had been other guises, other conceits: Buckingham offering him the crown at Baynards Castle and Richard reluctantly accepting it. Oh, I had seen it all. Now, was this Richard play-acting again? The role of the anxious uncle, when he knew full well the true fate of his nephews? I rose and began shouting for servants
to prepare for my departure. Secretly, in my heart, I swore an oath: if Richard had slain his nephews and dragged me into some deadly masque, I would leave him and flee beyond the seas.

Two days it took, two days of frenetic packing of trunks, chests and coffers. After a secret council with the King, I made to leave Minster Lovell, accompanied by six retainers and my faithful steward, Thomas Belknap. Ah, Belknap, a great scurrier and spy. An able clerk, a former priest who had been dismissed by Bishop Morton from his prebend in Ely. A secretive man, Belknap; he burned with a lasting hatred, or so he said, against his former bishop and anything to do with the House of Lancaster. He and I left the courtyard of Minster Lovell on a cool, clear summer morning. Behind me stood Anne, in a sea-blue dress fringed with gold, her black hair unveiled, falling down around her sweet face like some cloying mist. Above her, staring out of the window of the solar, King Richard watched me impassively, his hand half raised. His sombre stare troubled me as we made our way along the rutted tracks, dried hard by the sun, before reaching the old Roman road south to London.

We entered the city by the north gate, skirting Smithfield and the stinking messes around Newgate. They say London is a wondrous city but I could see why Richard hated the place; it made me homesick for the green softness of Minster Lovell. The narrow streets were piled high with refuse which hordes of kites and ravens plundered alongside wandering dogs and naked, filthy children. All was dark, the light being blocked out
by the leaning gables and gilt-edged storeys of the narrow houses huddled together as if conspiring to keep out God’s sun. Slowly we made our way through the noisy throng of Cheapside and its concourse of merchants, men whom Richard distrusted. They served their coffers and their purses, eager to obey a crowned ape if he guaranteed their profits. Such men failed us. They were only interested in their robes of velvet and brocade, their blue satin hats turned up at the brim, or their doublets of blue and green. More eager that their shoulders should be padded or the sleeves slashed with silk than for the politics of the realm. Ah, well! I shall not see them again! Time-servers all!

Eventually we reached Bishopsgate, entering the main courtyard of Crosby Hall, whose roofs towered higher than any other London dwelling. Richard had hired it as his London home.

Before I left Minster Lovell, he had given me warrants and letters allowing me the use of the chambers and stables, and purveyance. The courtyard was full of masons, carpenters and other workmen. Richard wanted the building extended even further, commissioning no less a person than John Howard, newly created Duke of Norfolk, as surveyor of the works. I was to meet Howard there and take secret council with him over what Richard had told me. However, the Duke was absent and I had to rest content with the jumbled messages of a pompous steward about how and when the Duke would return.

Leaving Belknap to look after the horses and see to our trunks and caskets, I made my way up to a chamber. I would have liked to have slept but the King had emphasised the urgency of the task entrusted to me, so I refreshed myself with watered ale and sweetmeats, washing the dust from my face with sweet petal-water as I considered what I should do next. I decided on secrecy and left Crosby Hall only with Belknap,
instructing him not to display my emblem or livery. As Richard’s chamberlain, I was well-known in the city and people would whisper about my secret return. Moreover, the King had his enemies, agents of Henry Tudor and other silent malignants, only too pleased to strike at Richard’s trusted friend and counsellor, or so I thought myself.

I made my way down to the river, planning to travel to Westminster along the dark sweeping curve of the Thames. Belknap hired a boat and soon we were mid-stream. We rowed through the fast currents which roared past the white pillars of London Bridge, still blackened by the attack of the Bastard of Fauconberg, in those heady days when the House of York still struggled to survive. Around us other wherry boats scurried across the water like flies over a village pond. Belknap told the boatman to keep away from the gorgeous bannered barges of the merchants and other nobles, men who might well recognise me.

At last we came in sight of Westminster Palace, sheltering under the lee of the great abbey. A welcoming sight. The gables, towers, battlements, steep roofs and arched windows of its buildings swept down towards the waterside. The boatman pulled in towards the shore, close to the palace wall which was protected by dense thickets and bushes. We rowed past the King’s stairs near the main wharf, landing at the Abbot’s Steps and making our way stealthily up to the palace. We ignored the clerks, officials, receivers and sheriffs’ men, using the tumult and shouts of the pastrycooks who always throng there to slip quietly into the great hall. I left Belknap staring up at its beautiful wooden roof supported by sprung beams borne on the backs of angels, so exquisitely carved they seemed in flight. My head down, concealed by a hood, I pushed my way through courtiers, servants, red-capped judges and lawyers who, despite the heat, still wore their skullcaps
and gold-fringed robes. I was the King’s Chamberlain; many who worked there, whether they be servants, stable-boys or singing children from the royal chapel of St. Stephen, were really under my jurisdiction. I approached a steward and, swearing him to secrecy, made him take me through winding passages and up flights of stairs to the office of the Star Chamber where John Russell, Richard’s Chancellor and Bishop of Lincoln, kept state.

I was ushered in through a side door and walked across, my boots rapping noisily on the lozenge-shaped black and white tiles, so smooth and polished you felt you were walking across a mirror. Around me the deep, blue-coated walls were covered with small gold stars which gave the room its name. Russell, a diminutive figure, sat enthroned in a high-backed chair, swathed in costly purple and gold robes. All around him, their table-tops littered with parchment, wax, pens and inkpots, sat perspiring clerks, each working on some letter or document the Chancellor wished despatched. The Bishop looked up as I entered but continued dictating quietly to a clerk until finished. He clapped his hands softly and murmured something; the clerks immediately smiled, rose and hurriedly left. Once the room was empty, Russell waved me to a chair beside him.