Some Touch of Pity

by Rhoda Edwards

  ‘Out of fear for my life,’ he said, simply and bitterly. ‘Others lost their lives, like my unfortunate chaplain. The Queen was aware that I knew of the matter. I was not the only one she hounded. Your Grace’s own brother, the Duke of Clarence…’

  ‘Blood of Christ!’ Richard shouted so loud that I jumped. ‘Did he know of this?’

  ‘He found out. I was sent to the Tower immediately after he — er — died. I was let out because I swore an oath — God forgive me, I’d have denied thirty times three — that I would never speak any words against King Edward. Thus I concealed his sin from the world with my own.’

  ‘You mean my brother George died for that? I never knew why, that last time, he was not forgiven, as he had been before. I know now. The Queen — the pretended Queen — killed him, for fear it might be discovered that she was nothing but a whore. She made one of my brothers kill the other because he’d begotten the heir to the throne of England in adultery, and was terrified of being found out. Oh, Jesu, I cannot bear this… Have you proof?’

  ‘Beyond my word — nothing.’

  ‘You expect me to accept your word?’

  ‘The word of a Bishop, on the Holy Book if necessary.’

  ‘Richard,’ I said, clutching him, ‘don’t detain the Bishop any longer — he’s spoken in good faith. You must wait until tomorrow, before anything is done.’

  ‘Very well. Dr Stillington, leave us now. I may require you to make a sworn deposition to the council. Give me a little time.’

  When the Bishop had left, Richard pulled himself away from me, went back to his chair and sat down. He covered his face with his hands and groaned. ‘Oh, Lord God,’ he said, ‘why have you laid this burden on me?’

  A great fear welled up in me. I had to ask him. ‘Will you be King, Richard?’

  ‘Christ help me…’

  ‘Will you?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ He sounded angry with me — desperate.

  ‘Listen,’ I said. ‘Ever since you first asked me to come to London I’ve been thinking. Consider your position. The King hates you. If he hates you now, what will he do in five years, when he is eighteen, and wants to be his own master? He’ll kill you. If you remain as Protector, you’ll run the risk of attainder on some trumped-up charge of treason at the end of that time, and your son will have nothing to inherit. I shall be sold in marriage to one of their lackeys, or pushed into a nunnery until I die.’

  ‘Stop it!’ he said, anguished. ‘I know, I know. Do you think I want to face the block at thirty-five, with half my life to live? Whatever I do, I will betray someone I love — my dead brother, who trusted me to serve his son, you, my own son. Oh God, what must I do?’

  ‘Take it.’ I was kneeling on the floor at his side, fondling his hands, smothering them with kisses.

  ‘I cannot!’

  ‘Prouder men have gone to the block.’ How could I convince him that if he did not act now, then as sure as the hours follow one another, he’d pay, sooner or later, with his life. ‘Your father held back because of his conscience, and it cost him his life and the realm a bloody conflict. You need not hold back — with you it is lawful and right. You must do it, for the sake of the realm. For yourself, your son.’

  ‘No!’

  ‘I love you. What should I do if you were taken from me — if I had to wed another man?’

  ‘Oh God,’ he groaned again, ‘Lord God, help me!’

  ‘Tell the council,’ I said. ‘They’ll see more clearly what should be done.’

  ‘You’re right. Nothing should be done without the approval of others. Whatever is done, if they wish it, then it is my duty. I cannot stand alone in this — it’s too great a decision for one man to take. It would be easy for men to brand me as a usurper. All my life I’ve witnessed the evil abuse of earthly power. God has raised me up to great power and wealth; already I’ve sinned by abusing His gifts. I have snapped my fingers and sent my brother’s friend Hastings to his death. I have been Protector nine weeks — what might I be willing to do after twenty years? After seventeen as a King, Edward killed his own brother. A king’s soul is in perpetual peril. Why, even you might live to fear and condemn me.’

  I touched his cheek. ‘No,’ I said. He turned his head stiffly away, as if unable to face me while thinking such a thought.

  After a pause, he said, ‘He was bewitched.’

  ‘Edward?’

  ‘That old harridan Bedford and her daughter the Queen plucked my brother like a fruit off a tree — an everlasting, bountiful golden apple. Old Lady Bedford made wax images and cast fortunes — everyone knows that.’

  I shivered. ‘Don’t. He was young.’

  ‘Old enough to know the smell of brimstone, and never, ever, a fool. I poured out all my callow youth’s love on my brother, and most of it did not touch him, because of her.’

  We sat in silence after that, for a long time, until the room was dark. Servants came to light the candles and to find out if we wished to be made ready for bed; Richard sent them away. I watched the night-time world through the open window, my thoughts racing and turning over and over. In spite of the lateness of the hour, boats and barges were moving like glow-worms on the river, lit by torches or lanterns, going home before the tide turned and began to ebb. It was lapping against the castle walls now, creeping upward, making craft tied up at the jetty bump gently at their moorings. On the southern bank, the shore was marked out by a beading of lights. Trade at the inns and stews of Southwark’s bankside is at its height when more sober people are going home to bed. Those lights would not dim until dawn. Downstream, lights still showed on London Bridge, strung like a necklace from shore to shore. If I had been at home, looking out at a June night, I’d have seen nothing but the black humpbacks of the hills, and the pale, half-dusk, half-dawn glimmer in the sky that haunts the midsummer nights in the north. I am not used to a world so crammed with people. The air smelt stale too, of river water tainted with bilge, green-slimed timber, and nameless stinks that came and went, cramping my stomach with nausea. I can’t smell London without feeling sick; it brings back too many memories. After twelve years, I had not forgotten those four nightmarish months when I hid myself from my enemies in the kitchens of a cookshop. There is a little white scar across the knuckle of my left thumb — I had not been able at first to slice onions thinly and evenly. There were other scars too.

  When I was fourteen, my father had sold me in marriage to Queen Margaret’s son, whom none of us ever believed poor Henry VI had fathered. My marriage had lasted four months, until the Prince was killed at Tewkesbury, and it changed me from a child to a woman. Civil strife made my father grovel to a woman he hated, abuse two daughters he loved, and brought him to his death. It killed a young man about whom I did not care; he was seventeen. He died, and it might have been Richard, not he. I can scarcely remember his face. I have always dreaded memories of that time. Because it was Richard who healed my scars, one by one, over our years together, I live for him, by him and through him, and the child he gave me. This made me speak as I had. I did not know yet if Richard would heed my words.

  On Monday the Queen was at last induced to give up her younger son, the Duke of York, from Sanctuary. Now that her plot with Hastings against Richard had failed, she had no choice, neither could she rail against Cardinal Bourchier, the Archbishop of Canterbury, and Lord Howard, King Edward’s most highly respected councillor, who went into Sanctuary to collect the child. It was impossible to reveal the story Dr Stillington had told us until both little York and his brother were together in the Tower, from where no one could abduct them to use in the making of rebellion against the Lord Protector. If the young King was to lose his crown, there must be no chance of setting up his brother in his place.

  I went to see the boys on the following day, because I felt guilty, knowing of Dr Stillington’s story, and distressed at the thought of children taken to such a grim, foreboding place. Their lodgings were pleasant enough, however, with a garden wher
e they could shoot at the butts or play at ninepins or closh. There was even a battered old quintain there, painted with marvellous ingenuity in the likeness of the King of France, crowned by a filthy old hat stuck with a cockle-shell pilgrim’s badge. I shuddered at the memory of King Louis, his interminably long nose with a drip on the end, his greasy hat, and having to kiss his grimy hand; I’d have preferred to kiss his dogs.

  As I kissed the hand of our sovereign lord, King Edward V, I felt guilty again. He did not kiss my cheek. I had seen him only twice since he was taken out of swaddling bands. He was a thin boy, as tall as myself, though he would not be thirteen until November, and very fair, like his mother. His face was pale, like a prisoner’s who has been kept in the dark, with bluish rings round his eyes. In the last weeks, he’d been unwell, in bed with a fever. Dr Argentine, one of the learned physicians who had attended King Edward’s death bed, visited him daily, but could report no signs of any special disease, only the malaise, which did not respond to physic. Besides that, he was very unhappy. I looked about at his surroundings. There was nothing to suggest that he was a prisoner, except for the unnaturalness of his being alone with his brother among servants who were strangers to them both.

  ‘If there is anything your Grace would like to have here… You may tell me, and I’ll see that it is brought,’ I said, feeling shy of him, as I had of his father, though for quite different reasons. ‘Anything that might pass the time, though you won’t be here much longer…’ I decided not to say that his coronation had been postponed until the ninth day of November. Richard had insisted on offering this alternative date, which had been announced by the Mayor, because he had not yet decided what to do.

  ‘No,’ he said, looking at the floor. I felt nearly as awkward as he, snubbed by his manner, yet sad, because he was no more than a child, miserable and frightened.

  His brother York, who’d been eyeing me up and down, took his chance and said, ‘Madam, Aunt Anne, may I have my dog? He got left behind at Westminster, in the palace. I hope he’s not lost.’ He looked up at me, the beginning of a hopeful grin on his freckled face.

  ‘Tell me what he looks like, and what name he answers to,’ I said, ‘and we’ll find him.’

  ‘He’s called Merryman. My father the King called him that, because he was for me and I was a merry man too. He’s got a lot of hair over his face, and a white tail and wears a red collar. The servants know who he is.’ He managed the grin. He was a sturdier, more handsome boy than his brother, more golden in colouring, and looked as if he would be taller. He was the one most like his father. The King looked at him in a resentful way, as if this brightness intruded on his own moodiness. The two boys had met no more than half a dozen times in their lives.

  ‘It’s better here than in Westminster Sanctuary,’ he volunteered. ‘There wasn’t a garden there.’

  ‘It must have been crowded, in a little house, with all your sisters,’ I said.

  He pulled a face like a small gargoyle, to show what he thought of his five sisters. ‘Bess is nice,’ he said, ‘but she’s old — nearly as old as you, Aunt Anne.’ I doubt if this would have pleased his eldest sister Elizabeth, who is seventeen.

  ‘I won’t have to get married again, will I?’ he asked, anxiously.

  ‘Didn’t you like your wife?’ He’d been married when he was four to Lady Anne, the six-year-old daughter of poor John Mowbray, Duke of Norfolk who’d died quite young, leaving her heiress to vast estates. Thus King Edward had acquired a wealthy dukedom for his younger son. Little Anne had been a pretty child, delicately made, with soft auburn hair. At her wedding, she had been considerably more solemn than her husband. She died, God rest her little soul, almost two years ago.

  He said, ‘It was like having another sister. I didn’t see her much. Will I see Bess again soon?’

  ‘Of course you will, and your mother.’

  ‘Her Grace my mother cries a lot,’ he said. I could believe that. She’d very likely reached the difficult time of life — she had her last baby three years ago and was approaching forty-seven. I felt embarrassed, rather than triumphant, thinking of her sitting in that poky house at Westminster, weeping hysterically, swollen eyes and patchy red flushes spoiling her looks. I envied her once, because she had borne a dozen children and stayed beautiful. Now I felt nothing for her, neither pity, fear nor hate.

  In order to avoid the subject of his mother, I told the King that his stay in the Tower would soon be over. He gave me a strange look, then cast down his eyes and did not say a word. To my dismay, I felt myself blush hotly, though I’m a grown woman and should have learnt to suffer discomfiture without this reaction. I am cursed with a thin, pale skin that betrays even the faintest colouring. I hoped that the King had not heard the tales spread already by mischief makers through London, that Richard aimed to have the crown out of envy and ambition. I believed now that this would come about, that he would be King, but for many serious, unhappy reasons, which included neither envy nor ambition.

  I was immensely relieved that the King had not asked after his uncle Rivers and his half-brother Grey. I knew that word had been sent to the Earl of Northumberland at Pontefract, ordering their trial for treason, and their immediate beheading. I was glad that Grey, who’d been kept under guard at Middleham, would not be executed there — I didn’t like to think of my son watching headings yet.

  *

  Richard put Bishop Stillington’s deposition first to his inner circle of advisers, then to the entire council. The news leaked out. By Friday, there wasn’t a tavern in London where bets were not made on the Protector becoming King within the week. The words written in the Wisdom of Solomon were often quoted: ‘Woe to thee, O realm, that thy King is a child and thy nobles feast in the morning. Blessed art thou, O realm, when thy King is a son of champions.’ I believed that I might count on the fingers of my hands the lords in England who did not now agree with Solomon. Many of them heard Dr Stillington’s story of the pre-contract eagerly; most were willing to accept it, whether they believed it or not. There seemed no reason to disbelieve it. As for Richard, I’d never set eyes on a more reluctant son of champions. Though the outcome of events now seemed so certain, he still held back from making formal claim to the throne. He felt unable to bear the responsibility for such an act alone. But indecision was unendurable, and enormous pressure was put on him by other men, who were perhaps more certain because the burden of kingship would not fall upon themselves. Richard’s usual reaction to pressure being put on him is to dig in his heels and keep his own counsel. This time, he could not. At night he did not sleep, and because he was so restless, I did not either, so we suffered the strain together. I had no wish to be Queen, and felt frightened, and inadequate to the burden of it; all I wanted was to return to my quiet, happy life in the north. But this was impossible, those days were gone for ever.

  On Sunday, the twenty-second day of June, Bishop Stillington’s tale was made public. A sermon was preached from Paul’s Cross by Dr Ralph Shaa, the Mayor’s brother and prebend of St Paul’s, on the text: ‘Bastard slips shall take no root’. A large crowd turned out to hear him. They were strangely quiet for a London gathering. I felt that they did not much like talk of King Edward’s sins, his pre-contract and adulterous marriage. He’d been very popular in London. When Dr Shaa had finished, they went away to their homes, muttering. Richard looked uncomfortable, as if the sermon had been preached against himself, but the others were pleased to note that the crowd had not been actively hostile, and that Dr Shaa had not been bombarded with rotten eggs and cabbages.

  The Londoners liked even less the sight of Shore’s wife doing penance as a whore. When she had been discovered in the plot with Lord Hastings, Richard had been sufficiently angry and bitter against her to sentence her to imprisonment for abetting in treason, and to hand her over to the Bishop of London’s court, to answer for her carnal misdeeds. The Bishop’s court had given her the usual sentence accorded common whores: to walk through the streets in
her shift, wearing a striped hood and carrying a white wand. Her shame was greatly lessened because of the sympathy of the crowd, for she was, like them, a Londoner — her father John Lambert was one of the most important members of the Mercers’ Company. They thought she’d acted only from care for her dead lover the King’s children, and to protect the handsome lord Marquess. Maybe she had. I saw no reason to pity her; she’d lived like a Queen for ten years as King Edward’s mistress, and she had plotted against my husband’s life. It was unusual for Richard to be so harsh with a woman. Because he would not put the blame of leading a dissolute life on his brother, he unloaded it squarely on the associates in that life. I thought King Edward equally to blame, but refrained from saying so, knowing that Richard would be angry, even with me.

  I’d seen him in anger too often in the last days. Someone put about the old, often repeated story that King Edward himself was offspring of the Duchess of York’s adultery with a captain of archers called Blayborne. This story had been used often as an insult to King Edward, but I’d never met anyone who really believed it. I could not imagine my mother-in-law stooping to consort with archers, or being a woman to cuckold her husband. I suspected Harry Buckingham of having mentioned it, in his zeal for pleading Richard’s cause, for he had been heard to say meaningfully that Richard was the only one of the Duke of York’s sons to be born in England, and indeed the only one remotely to resemble his father in appearance. Richard was furious that the smear had been made on his mother, at a time when he was living in her own house — Baynard’s Castle — with her approval, and exchanging letters with her often.

  Whether the Londoners favoured Richard or not, it was a timely week in which to create a public stir. London celebrated its two greatest feast days, the Nativity of St John the Baptist or Midsummer, which fell on Tuesday, and St Peter and Paul, the dedication day of its cathedral, on the following Sunday. All the most important citizens were in town. On the eve of St John the Baptist, the torch-lit procession of the City Watch marched through the streets, three thousand of them, the Mayor riding in state in their midst. The midsummer bonfires were lit, and banquets held out of doors in fine weather. People hung garlands over their doors, as they do in York at Corpus Christi, made of green birch, fennel, St John’s wort and white lilies.