Henry Tudor was more fortunate, was better served by his own instincts. In mid-October his invasion force had been driven back by high winds and raging seas. Attempting a second landing off the Dorset coast, he found the shore lined with soldiers, soldiers who assured his boarding party that they were in the service of the Duke of Buckingham, that Richard was dead. But Tudor was a man who’d long ago learned the high price of survival, learned to inhale suspicion with every breath he drew. Too wary to take the bait, he refused to land, sailed up the coast to Plymouth, where he was told that Buckingham’s rising had ended in ignominious failure, that the Woodvilles were in hiding or flight, and Richard was advancing south unopposed, triumphant. Hoisting sail at once, Tudor fled back to Brittany, and the rebellion was over.
A large crowd had gathered in Salisbury marketplace to watch the Duke of Buckingham die. They were slowly dispersing, most discussing the open fear the condemned man had shown, some of the more pious expressing disapproval that Richard had chosen to execute Buckingham on so holy a day as All Souls’ Day.
Swinging up into the saddle, Francis cantered across the market square, welcoming the cold rush of wind on his face. He’d expected to find a bitter satisfaction in watching Buckingham die. But he had felt nothing beyond a queasy contempt. Moving at a rapid pace down Minster Street, he drew rein in front of the George, the comfortable half-timbered inn that had been his home for the past five days. He would have liked nothing so much as to be able to seclude himself in his chamber, order up as many flagons as it took to find oblivion, but he rode on through the arched gateway that gave entry into the close of the cathedral church of the Blessed Virgin Mary.
Ahead lay the spacious stone manor which the Abbot of Sherbourne had offered up for Richard’s stay in the city. A number of people were milling about on the manor grounds, in that peculiar ordered chaos Francis had come in the past four months to accept as an inevitable aspect of the King’s world. As he dismounted, men recognizing him came forward to take his horse. So did Jack de la Pole, disengaging himself from the others at sight of Francis.
“The execution be over?”
Francis nodded. “I need to see the King. Is he inside?”
“No, he went over to the church nigh on an hour ago. Come, I’ll walk over with you.”
Nothing more was said until they were well away from the others. Francis would have preferred to walk in silence, deliberately did nothing to encourage conversation. But Jack had never been attuned to subtle indicators of mood.
“Christ Jesus, Francis, what happens now? For these three weeks, I’ve thought of nothing else. Jesú, but even my dreams be of Buckingham and the evil he’s brought upon us all. I cannot stop thinking of those little lads, may God assoil them, and my cousin Bess…I couldn’t ever be the one to tell her, God spare me that. But no matter how I put my mind to it, I can see no way out of this trap Buckingham has sprung on Dickon. How can he admit the boys be dead, accuse Buckingham now? Who’d believe him? What proof could he offer? Even a confession from Buckingham, even that wouldn’t be enough. People put little credence in confessions of doomed men, not knowing as they do that even the bravest man could be made to swear black was white after a few sessions on the rack.”
Jack looked to Francis for response, got none and said bleakly, “I tell you, Francis, there be no way out, none. Get away from the cities and how many villagers can even read and write? They get their news by word of mouth; rumor be their meat and drink, no matter now unlikely or farfetched.”
His voice droned on, no matter how Francis tried to shut it out. Every word that Jack was saying was one he’d well nigh memorized, so often had he gone over it all in his own head. Dickon couldn’t accuse Buckingham, didn’t dare risk it. Dickon could only hope that in time the boys would fade from men’s minds, that people would assume they’d been sent to live in the North. Somehow, he would have to learn to live with the suspicions, the unspoken belief of many that he was responsible for the deaths of his brother’s sons. Because it was too late to blame Buckingham. Because the time to reveal the boys’ disapperance was three months past. Because he, Francis Lovell, had argued so persuasively for silence, the silence that would now damn Dickon so in the eyes of his subjects, make his guilt seem so much more likely.
“I don’t want to talk of this, Jack! For the love of God, let it lie!”
Jack looked startled. He lapsed into a wounded silence for several strides, then said earnestly, “Blaming yourself serves for naught, Francis. You did what you thought was right, and what more can men do than that? Nor is Dickon a man to be led against his will. If he hadn’t felt you made sense, he’d never have agreed to keep silent.”
Francis churlishly didn’t reply, knowing his rudeness was unjustified, and unable to help himself. It was with relief now that he saw they’d reached the west door of the church.
“Dickon has already been to morning Mass,” Jack said dubiously. “I don’t think he wanted to pray so much as he wanted to be alone for a while. Why don’t we try the cloisters first?”
Shaded by cedar trees, bathed in blinding sunlight, the cloisters of St Mary’s offered a refuge of awesome beauty, an almost unearthly quiet. Richard was seated on a bench in the south walkway; he looked up as they approached, rose to his feet.
By common consent, they all moved up the east walkway, sought the greater privacy of the Chapter House. Richard waited until Francis had closed the door, and then said only, “It’s done?”
Francis nodded, waited for questions that didn’t come. Richard had begun to wander aimlessly about the chamber, gazing up at the soaring ceiling, the lofty tinted windows that splashed vivid violet and ruby shades of sunlight upon the floor, upon the faces of the two men watching him.
“Will Hastings tried to warn me,” he said at last, not looking at either man as he spoke. “He told me I was a fool to trust Buckingham. ‘Ned made more than his share of mistakes,’ he said, ‘but Buckingham wasn’t one of them.’ Buckingham, he said, was mine.”
It was the first time in more than four months that Francis could recall Richard mentioning Will Hastings’s name, a stark silence dating from that June day when he’d summarily ordered Hastings to his death. He drew a quick breath, said, “Christ, Dickon, Hastings was jealous of Buckingham, that’s all! He didn’t have second sight, didn’t suspect any more than the rest of us what Buckingham had in mind. He was right about Buckingham, but for the wrong reasons.”
“If truth be told,” Jack interrupted, “none of us had much liking for the man. But it be one thing to dislike a man for his arrogance, for the way power seemed to have gone to his head, and quite another to think him capable of treason, of child-murder. You cannot blame yourself because you trusted the man. He’d given you reason for trust, after all.”
“Yes,” Richard said tonelessly, “I trusted him. And because I did, my brother’s sons are dead.” He turned to face them both, saw that neither one knew how to answer him.
“Tell me,” he said abruptly. “Tell me how he died, Francis.”
“Badly.” Francis made an involuntary grimace. “Very badly. Right up to the time he was taken out to the block, he kept begging for an audience with you, though what in God’s Name he thought that would accomplish…”
“Dickon was his last hope,” Jack said, shrugging. “When you’re that desperate, you don’t overly concern yourself with logic, you grasp at straws. If you’d agreed, Dickon, I daresay he’d have babbled some frantic story of having done it all for you, and then of having been duped by Morton. We’re dealing here with far more than ambition, after all. Our cousin Warwick was an ambitious man, too, but he’d not have murdered children. Most men wouldn’t. No, there was something erratic, unstable, in Buckingham’s makeup; there had to be. I personally think he was treading perilously close to madness, much like Geo—” He stopped himself, hoping it’d been in time. Comparing Buckingham to George of Clarence would serve no purpose, only cause his uncle needless hurt, and he added h
astily, “I think you were right not to see him, Dickon, in truth I do.”
“I didn’t trust myself, Jack,” Richard said after a pause, knowing that it was only a half-truth, knowing, too, that he’d been afraid of what he might hear, of what Buckingham might tell him about the way his nephews died. “Go on, Francis.”
“I told him that there was no way on God’s earth you’d ever consent to see him, and he…well, he forgot all pride, all dignity.” A shadow of distaste crossed Francis’s face, bordering on revulsion. “I’ve never seen a man show his fear so nakedly,” he said slowly.
“Does that surprise you so much, Francis? After all, the man knew he was facing eternal damnation. Wouldn’t you be fearful to go before the Throne of God with so great a sin on your soul?”
Francis was shaking his head. “No, Jack,” he said thoughtfully, “I don’t think it was that sort of fear. It seemed to be purely physical, a fear of the axe, of death itself. When he saw there was no hope, he began to plead for time, for a day’s grace. He reminded the priests that it was All Souls’ Day, entreated them to intercede with you, Dickon, to persuade you to postpone the execution until the morrow.”
“Did he, by God?” Richard was staring at Francis. “And that’s all today did mean to him…that it be All Souls’ Day?”
Francis was at a loss. “Dickon?”
Richard turned away. He could feel it starting to slip, the rigid self-control he’d been clinging to these past three weeks, and he bit down now on his lower lip until he tasted blood.
“Today,” he said unevenly, “would have been Edward’s thirteenth birthday.”
17
Westminster
December 1483
As exhausted as Anne was, sleep continued to elude her. She dreaded the nights now, shrank from the coming of dark. The daylight hours could be filled with activity, could be structured to leave her with little time for thought. But at night she had no such defenses, was at the mercy of her memories. At night she found herself reliving that moment in Middleham’s inner bailey, standing in the sun with Richard’s letter in her hand.
The words had blurred upon the page as she read, and she’d sat down abruptly, there on the steps leading up into the keep, trembling so violently that she had to spread the letter flat upon her knee before she could continue reading. The slanting Italic script was in Richard’s own hand, but so uneven, so scrawled it looked to be the writing of a stranger; he’d blotted ink on the B in Buckingham and entire sentences were scratched out in his search to find words that could safely be put to paper. “My love,” he’d written, “you understand what this means?” And she had. In a sudden panic, she’d jumped to her feet, sent mystified servants in search of her son, and when Ned had been found, she gathered him to her in an emotional embrace, hugging him tightly until he began to squirm, protesting breathlessly that he was too old for this, Mama, and people were looking!
She would never know how she got through the days that followed. Again and again she found herself rereading the last sentences of Richard’s letter. “I do not expect to lose, Anne. But whatever happens, you are my dearest love.”
“My dearest love,” Anne echoed now, in a whispered caress she alone could hear. Turning on her side, she gazed for a time into Richard’s face, watched the rise and fall of his chest. How careworn he looks, even in sleep. Beloved, so little I can do to help, so little….
No, don’t think that. Think about something else. Think about Ned. How he loved this time of year. Loved the yule log and the mummeries, the traveling troupes of players come to depict the birth of the Christ Child, the exchange of gifts, and then their long-awaited visit to York. How would it be for him this year, his first Christmas alone? No, she mustn’t think that. It wasn’t true. Her mother was there, and Johnny, Kathryn, Mistresses Idley and Burgh, people who loved Ned dearly. He was safe at Middleham, in a world he knew and loved, and in the spring…In the spring, she and Richard would go North again. They’d go home, and this time they’d bring Ned back with them.
She was drifting in that languid twilight of the senses that foreshadows sleep when Richard stirred, cried out so sharply that Anne jerked upright in the bed.
“Richard?”
He mumbled incoherently, turned his face into the pillow. Anne hesitated; all knew it was dangerous to awaken too abruptly a troubled sleeper. But as she watched, Richard moaned again, twisted from side to side like one seeking escape. She bent over him, shook his shoulder gently.
His eyes flew open, looked up at her without recognition, clouded with sleep and nightmare fears that had yet to yield to reality.
“You were having a bad dream, love.” She stroked his hair, found it damp to the touch, saw now that he was drenched in sweat. “It must have been dreadful, your heart be pounding so. Do you remember what it was?”
Richard’s breathing was slowing. He lay back on the pillows, said in a shaken voice, “It was so real, Anne. Not like a dream at all. It never is….”
“You’ve had it before?”
He nodded reluctantly, and she leaned over, kissed his forehead. “Sometimes it helps to talk about a bad dream, Richard, keeps it from coming back. Is it always the same?”
He nodded again. “More or less. In the dream I’m standing before a stairwell. It’s dark below and I don’t want to go down, but I do. The stairwell is pitch-black and very narrow; I have to grope my way down, one step at a time.”
“Where are these steps, Richard? Do you know?”
“No, nothing ever looks familiar. The stairwell leads into an unlit deserted corridor. I call out but no one answers. I want to go back up the stairs but I know I can’t, so I start down the corridor. And the further I go, Anne, the more uneasy I become. I have this…this foreboding, and it gets stronger and stronger….”
There was something deeply disquieting about this dream of Richard’s; Anne suddenly knew she didn’t want to hear any more, but forced herself to ask, “What happens then?”
“I keep going down the corridor, fighting this feeling, this fear…. And then the corridor turns and I’m standing before a little chapel. There are priests inside and people garbed in mourning, but when I enter they all ignore me, as if…as if I have no right to be there.”
“Oh, Richard….”
“As I come forward, the people move away from me and I see before the altar…two small coffins. Children’s coffins. And I know then that this is what I feared to find. I take a step forward and then another, knowing what I’ll see…my brother’s sons. And they’re lying there, in these pitifully barren little coffins, and suddenly I understand. The little boys in the coffins…they aren’t Ned’s sons, Anne; they’re mine.”
Richard pushed his chair back from the table, looked at the men gathered about him. Thomas Barowe, his Master of the Rolls. John Kendall, his secretary, a man who’d served him loyally for nigh on ten years. The eloquent Welshman, Morgan Kidwelly, his Attorney General. His eyes lingered longest on Will Catesby. He owed Catesby much, and one of his first official acts had been to appoint him Chancellor of the Exchequer. Richard was well pleased with his performance so far; a skilled lawyer, Catesby was proving himself to be an able administrator as well. He stood an excellent chance of being chosen as Speaker of the Commons when it met next month, and Richard expected him to be a great help in pushing his legislative program through parliament.
The last man in attendance upon him this Tuesday night in late December was his Solicitor, Thomas Lynom. Lynom had dutifully delayed his marriage until Richard’s arrival back in London in late November, but as soon thereafter as the banns could be posted, he’d made Jane Shore his wife. Richard still thought Lynom had made a fool’s choice, but he had to admit the man fairly glowed with contentment these days. He was even managing to endure with equanimity those ribald jests that are the bane of any newlywed’s existence, and Lynom had never been noted for his sense of humor.
Lynom was speaking now with considerable enthusiasm of the statutes
they were drafting for presentation to parliament. Richard listened with a smile, for he shared Lynom’s enthusiasm, was looking forward to his first parliament. It would, he thought, be a blueprint for his reign, an indicator of the spirit in which he meant to rule. He and his councilors had been working for days now on a series of statutes meant to curb abuses of property law, and he planned to sponsor others that would prevent an accused man’s property from being forfeited prior to conviction and would make bail more widely available for indictable offenses. Meanwhile, an act to be known as Titulus Regius was being drawn up to confirm his title to the crown, to formally recognize Ned as the Heir-Apparent, and Bills of Attainder were to be brought against the men who’d taken part in Buckingham’s rebellion.
Of all the statutes he meant to put before parliament, Richard was proudest of the one that stated “The subjects of this realm shall not be charged with benevolences nor any like charge.” It was the one that had stirred the most controversy among his own advisers. Although Buckingham’s rebellion had collapsed, Richard had still been forced to put an army in the field, and the cost had been considerable, placed a heavy strain upon a treasury already depleted by Thomas Grey’s plundering. Richard had to pledge silver plate as security for loans; some he’d sold outright to London’s goldsmiths, and his proposed ban on benevolences met with predictable opposition.
Catesby in particular was unwilling to see Richard foreclose one of his financial options. He didn’t quarrel with Richard’s contention that benevolences were a form of extortion, merely pointed out gloomily that the day might well come when Richard would have to resort to those forced “gifts” just as his brother had done.
The Sunne in Splendour Page 105
