He Who Plays The King

by MARY HOCKING

  ‘And when the Duke of Gloucester came, not as you had envisaged, with an army of two thousand, but with a modest force of three hundred, this does nothing to assure you of his peaceful intent. You turn again. And now it is the Woodvilles that you favour. There is no pleasing you. Can it be that it is not the arrangements for the coronation which concern you, but the fact that you had hoped your own future to be better advanced?’

  ‘It is rather the advancement of others which concerns me.’ Hastings was eager to teach Buckingham a lesson. ‘For I see only trouble ahead for a man whose power far outstrips both his ability and his practical experience of the affairs of state!’

  He was speaking of Buckingham, but Buckingham was quick to put another interpretation on his words. ‘Matters could not be in more experienced hands than the Lord Protector’s,’ he rebuked smoothly. ‘This “concern” of yours gives us some unease.’

  ‘Your “unease” is without foundation.’ Hastings was as hot as Buckingham was cool. ‘My one desire is to see King Edward’s son crowned. It was for that purpose I sent for the Duke of Gloucester when it seemed to me things moved too fast here.’

  ‘And now?’

  ‘I stand where I always stood on this. I have a duty to the late King.’

  ‘As have we all.’

  ‘None more so than I. I was closer to him than any other man, I knew his mind . . .’

  The Protector stiffened, but did not speak. It was Buckingham who intervened again. ‘You, my lord! You but kept him company in debauchery.’

  ‘I served him well!’ There was no doubting Hastings’ sincerity and a shutter came down over the Protector’s face. ‘I served him not for any honours he bestowed upon me, but for what he was . . .’

  ‘For what he became after he fell to carousing with you.’ The Protector’s voice was level, his face expressionless.

  ‘You must not boast of your loyalty in the presence of my Lord Protector.’ Buckingham was quick to make the comparison. ‘The service he rendered to his brother over the years surpasses all.’

  ‘And his rewards have matched his service.’ Hastings thrust in the opening made for him.

  There was an uneasy stir. Stanley’s eyes flicked sideways to the still figure of the Protector; whatever he saw made him flinch and he bowed his head. Morton’s mouth had gone awry as though something set his teeth on edge. Even Buckingham stayed whatever words were on his lips.

  ‘You . . . presume . . . to judge me?’ The Protector’s lips twitched so that it was difficult to get words past them. ‘You . . . question my loyalty?’

  ‘Loyalty!’ Hastings threw the word back in Richard of Gloucester’s face. ‘I know nothing of loyalty. I loved the man!’

  Many times Hastings had laughed at the young Richard of Gloucester who must always measure himself against other men in order to demonstrate that his was the greater loyalty. He had not realized until this moment that the mockery must be paid for. Now, one glance at the waxen face told him the time for settlement had come. He must rouse support or perish. Whatever else he lacked, it was not courage, so he made his bid.

  ‘I say that yours was a loyalty amply rewarded. E’er you were twenty, the North was yours, such power did Edward invest in you, and afterwards left you free to do as you thought best. And this because he thought you kept the North for him.’

  ‘And did I not keep it for him?’

  ‘You served the North so well, my lord, that the people in those regions thought it was you who ruled the land. And think so still.’

  Howard cried, ‘In God’s name, man! Be silent.’

  But Stanley was wavering, there was care for his Cheshire estates in the glance he directed at the Protector. At the first hint of weakness, Stanley would close in behind Hastings.

  ‘And where does it end?’ Hastings cried. ‘I ask you all, can you not see where this man’s ambition leads him? The North will rise for him.’

  The Archbishop laid a hand, wrinkled as a chicken’s claw, on the table. Stanley’s hand was in the folds of his robe. Morton had his eyes on the door. Richard said, ‘My ambition is to carry out my brother’s bidding. As Protector . . .’

  ‘In three days King Edward the Fifth will be crowned. Is that not the plan, or has yet another cause for delay been discovered?’

  ‘You are saying?’ Richard sounded quite calm now.

  ‘That it is not your intention young Edward should ever take the throne!’

  ‘TREASON!’

  Richard’s fist crashed on the table. He crouched above it, so still he scarcely breathed. To each man around the table it seemed the Protector’s eyes looked directly into his. They sat, not daring to move a muscle; it was as though they were afraid that by some magic those eyes would winkle out any treacherous thought and impale it for all to see. Richard had struck at the moment when the waverers most needed time. Now, when even thought was petrified, he said, ‘Choose, now!’

  ‘We are with you, my lord,’ Howard spoke and meant it with all his heart.

  Stanley passed his tongue across his lips; moisture gathered in the Archbishop’s weak eyes and trickled unheeded down his cheeks; Morton counted the beats of his heart: they did not look at Hastings nor did they ever look upon him again. The door to the chamber was thrust open and armed men rushed in. The Protector said, ‘Take him away; he is guilty of treason.’ When they had hustled Hastings out, he straightened up and put one hand to his side. He stood for a moment or so thus, his upper lip caught in his teeth, breathing fast. Then he said, as though it was of little account, that Stanley, the Archbishop, and Morton were to be detained.

  In under half-an-hour, Hastings, scarce cooled from the heat of his anger, stretched his neck to receive the axe. Even at the last this agreeable man could hardly believe what was happening to him. When he saw the improvised block, he laughed and asked if they meant to scare him with this rough piece of carpentry.

  A messenger went to the Protector and told him it was over. He received no answer.

  Later, Buckingham went to the Protector. ‘It was magnificently done!’ He regarded himself as a good judge of a performance and was a little surprised to see how ill this one was now sustained. Richard looked sick as though some pain had come upon him; there was a film of sweat on his brow and the lines around eyes and mouth were sharply etched. The power which so short a time ago had dominated his companions, had gone from him. The clouded eyes looked puzzled, even a little hurt. He said in that dry, toneless voice which seemed intended deliberately to confuse his hearers so that one hardly knew whether he spoke seriously or in jest, ‘It was not only Hastings who lost his head.’

  Buckingham said uneasily, ‘Come, Dickon, you are tired. Things will seem different in the morning.’

  Richard raised his eyebrows. ‘For Hastings?’

  Buckingham stared at him; for a moment the unpleasant idea occurred to him that he might have cast his lot with the wrong man. He said, ‘You must not let anyone see this weakness. If Gloucester doubts himself, what hope that anyone else will believe?’

  ‘Actions count for nothing.’ Richard looked down, moving the ring on his little finger back and forth, back and forth. The jewel caught the last light of the sun and flashed. He closed his eyes as though the little spark hurt them. ‘If I was judged by my actions, I would have no reason to fear. But here, men judge by whispers, at each change in the direction of the wind they change their allegiance . . .’

  ‘It has ever been so.’

  ‘He talked of my rewards! When Edward quarrelled with Warwick, I left Middleham, where I was happy. What reward had I then? I hated his court, but I bore with it for his sake. When he was taken at Nottingham, did I not raise men to his side? When he fled to Honfleur was I not with him? What danger was there that I did not share with him? And in later years, I heard it said that he left too much to me, stayed at court while I fought his wars . . .’

  He went on talking, fanning the spark of an anger that refused to be rekindled.

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bsp; 2

  ‘He was my father’s friend,’ the young King said to Ormond.

  ‘But your uncle’s enemy,’ Ormond replied, though he doubted that Hastings had ever found time to be any man’s enemy. For a man who was so amiable, Hastings had met a strange end.

  It did not surprise Edward that Hastings should be disliked. He had constantly made jokes which Edward did not understand, and had made him feel foolish; whereas his Uncle Richard, in his rather awesome way, had treated him as a person to be taken seriously. But it was one thing to dislike a person, another to cut off his head. Hastings’ end seemed undeserved, and the manner of it did not accord with Edward’s understanding of his Uncle Richard; for whatever others might say of his uncle, he had always seemed to Edward to be sober and less given to excess than the other men who surrounded his father. In fact, if anyone was to lose his head, Edward would have thought it more likely that the volatile Hastings would have had his uncle’s head. Edward liked time to form his opinions of people, and was now panicked by the need to make a rapid revision.

  Ormond did not know what went on in the boy’s mind; but he was aware of the panic. He felt very unhappy as he looked at Edward. Ormond prided himself on being a man of reason; but God, who has his own reasons, never spoke to Ormond’s mind but attacked him in the pit of his stomach. The boy is too much in the company of adults and strangers, he thought, he badly needs the companionship of another child: if his brother were here, he might be better. Ormond spoke of this to the chamberlain in the hope that the suggestion might eventually be passed to the Protector.

  Others, more powerful than Ormond, advocated this course and for different reasons, and soon afterwards Elizabeth Woodville was persuaded to let her nine-year-old son leave the sanctuary of the Abbey and join his brother in the Tower. The death of Hastings and the arrest of Morton and Lord Stanley had convinced her that there were few to further her cause. She was also mindful that no decision had yet been reached about the fate of her brother. Earl Rivers, and hoped that by compliance she might win a reprieve for him. ‘Though I fear it is too late for that,’ she said to her daughter, Elizabeth. ‘This “conspiracy” of which they make so much presents them with a chance to rid themselves of him while feeling runs high.’ She understood very well the way in which men’s minds work when they seek power for themselves.

  Her daughter, less resigned to this, asked, ‘Are all men so cruel?’ Elizabeth, at seventeen, was a soft, dimpled creature whose cheerful countenance gave little hint as to how much, if any, of her mother’s strength of character she might have inherited.

  ‘A kingdom crumbles beneath the hand of a kindly man,’ her mother retorted. ‘Look what happened to us when that holy fool, Henry the Sixth, reigned.’

  ‘But can a man not be strong and merciful? I would like to think it might be so.’ Elizabeth spoke gently; yet there was that in her tone which suggested that, wanting it, she would have it so.

  Soon after this conversation took place Earl Rivers was executed. He had already reconciled himself to this fate and seemed not sad to leave a life in which he had never found his way with any great certainty.

  Lord Stanley was more fortunate; he was released and reinstated as a member of the Protector’s Council: Richard needed his weathercock. John Morton, Bishop of Ely, was dealt with leniently; at Buckingham’s request he was held in the Duke’s castle at Brecknock where he was treated with consideration. Morton had been more tolerant than some of Buckingham’s rise to power and Buckingham was not ill-disposed to him.

  The men who had opposed Richard had been silenced. Now strange rumours began to circulate and Dr Ormond felt no lightening of his spirits when he saw the two Princes playing together on the dappled grass outside the Tower. God gnawed at his stomach. He contrived to send a message to Morton at Brecknock. ‘I fear for the Princes.’ Morton, however, had too much need to fear for himself to spare a thought for the young Princes whose youth would protect them from the worst evils. Morton had the shrewdest head in the kingdom and was determined to keep it on his shoulders.

  3

  Richard prayed.

  He was always more than conscientious in his devotions and would not have embarked on any enterprise without first seeking God’s blessing. The blessing had never so far been withheld. His cause was just; he was, after all, a Plantagenet and a scion of the House of York: it was enough.

  Until now. Now, he found he had to elaborate, to remind God that from birth his path had been clearly marked out for him, to draw attention to the unswerving devotion with which he had followed that path to this point. Surely he could not turn aside now. To let the throne go to a boy who would lose all they had gained would be to make worthless the sacrifice of his father and all the nameless people who had fought and died for the House of York because they believed its cause to be right. There had been too many deaths to turn aside now.

  This weakness over Hastings was the Devil’s work. He wrestled with the Devil who cunningly explored some cleft in Richard’s nature which the present crisis had exposed and through which seeped terrible doubts. To doubt at such a time was madness. For him, it was the throne or extinction. He equated his own survival with the good of the realm. England needed a strong king. For England’s sake, he fought the devil of doubt with all his strength.

  Gradually, as the days of June passed, his prayers were answered, the doubts were dispelled. One day, when he had talked with his mother in her home at Baynard’s Castle, he walked afterwards in the garden by the river. His mother was angry about rumours which had come to her and she accused Richard of lacking all consideration for her. But when he asked what rumours she had heard, she only answered, ‘Terrible things!’ When he asked if the rumours had any truth in them, she cried out, ‘Would that your father were here! He would never have let such things come to pass.’

  ‘Would my father be happy to see another child on the throne?’

  ‘No, of course not. But then it would never have come to pass had he been here.’ She looked at Richard contemptuously, as though his father would have resolved such a situation without inconvenience to anyone. It was plain he would get no sense out of her. It was not that her mind was wandering, but that she believed there are times when sense is best avoided.

  ‘Do not come to me with your questions,’ she said when he left her. ‘I am old and have fought my battles. This is a matter for you.’

  He looked at the river winding past the clutter of buildings away towards the green fields of West Minster. The very quietness of the scene made him feel dizzy. Life had moved like a runaway horse since Edward died, and he had gone with it; it is often wise to let a runaway use up its energy, but the rider must have a cool head. His head was in a turmoil. Now, looking at the river which seemed to shake and shudder as though he was flashing past it, he cried out, ‘THIS MUST STOP!’

  It did stop. For a moment, it was as though everything stopped— the busy commerce of the city, the creaking of a boat at its moorings, the chatter of birds in the trees, even his own heart-beat—all stopped. A ray of sunlight glanced off the river and sparked into his eyes so that the visual world dissolved in brilliant white light. Then, as he stood breathless and blinded, there came a great surging as if the sea swept inland; he felt its force strike his chest, heard its roar in his ears, felt himself lifted and borne aloft by its mighty impetus, so that he seemed to be stretched out above the city and the distant fields; he soared up and up and they grew smaller, closing in together, so that he could hold them in his arms. He knew this was a vision and that it meant God had entrusted the care of the realm to him. When all was calm again, every cranny and crevice of his being had been washed free of doubt. From that moment all things affirmed his purpose in the most miraculous fashion; as he rode about the streets, in every face that turned to him he read the will of the people.

  But he knew that the common people are contrary. If they are given what they want too suddenly they will stampede and turn from the giver in mindless
panic; if they have to wait too long, they will lose interest, for they are as easily distracted as children. While he pondered his next move, Buckingham brought to him the Bishop of Bath and Wells, a man with a strange tale to tell. Bishop Stillington made a long business of the telling; but, in brief, what he had to say was that King Edward, when he was twenty-one, had entered into a marriage contract with Lady Eleanor Butler, the daughter of the Earl of Shrewsbury. His subsequent marriage to Elizabeth Woodville was, therefore, bigamous.

  ‘And the witnesses?’ Richard asked.

  There were, it seemed, no witnesses other than Bishop Stillington, death having inconsiderately carried off the people concerned including Lady Eleanor herself.

  ‘And you yourself have kept quiet as the dead,’ Richard said, watching Stillington’s face.

  ‘With good reason, my lord. I told the story to the Duke of Clarence and the Duke was dead soon afterwards; I was myself put in prison for no very specific reason.’

  There were other explanations for Edward’s final loss of patience with Clarence, but Richard was satisfied with the one now offered. It suited his purpose to accept it, but there was nothing cynical in his attitude. A man does not commit his cause to God and then quarrel with the means of furthering it which God puts at his disposal.

  The next day, Richard and Buckingham, with their supporters, went to Paul’s Cross to hear Friar Ralph Shaa preach.

  So, too, went Robin Prithie, who afterwards wrote to his master describing what there took place.

  ‘All the rumours which have been whispered abroad lately were stated roundly to be facts this morning by Friar Shaa, who started by praising the Duke of Gloucester so that one might think no other man in the whole realm to be of legitimate birth.’ On re-reading this, it occurred to Robin that jests of this nature might not be welcome to his master, so he deleted the last part of the sentence and wrote instead, ‘who extolled the Duke of Gloucester’s virtues.’ As bastardy was the nub of the matter, the report began to present difficulties. He wondered how Henry would respond to Shaa’s text, ‘Bastard slips shall not inherit.’ He decided to leave this out, and after much writing and rewriting confined himself to the simple statement that as it had been discovered that King Edward had been contracted to another when he wed Elizabeth Woodville the children of their marriage were illegitimate and Richard of Gloucester was therefore the rightful heir to the throne.