The Plantagenet Vendetta

by John Paul Davis

  “We have to go, sorry.”

  He moved to one side to let them pass. “I’m looking forward to tomorrow, Jen.”

  She stopped, surprised.

  “I was talking with Dr Lovell. He asked if he could show you the castle and the house. You’re very welcome.”

  She’d forgotten about Lovell.

  “Actually, I’m pretty busy tomorrow; I need to finish preparations for filming.”

  The rebuff didn’t faze him. “No worries. You can always come the day after.”

  She forced a smile. “Thanks.”

  Jen couldn’t get away quickly enough. She grabbed Anthea by the wrist and accelerated through the churchyard, not daring to look back.

  She headed for the nearest bench and took a seat.

  And a deep breath.

  “Oh my God.”

  “Why did you say no? He’s lovely.”

  Jen couldn’t believe what she’d just heard. “Did you not see what I saw?”

  “Yeah…” Anthea looked over her shoulder. From there Wootton Court was no longer visible. “Yeah. It’s just, he’s really nice.”

  Jen ignored her.

  “Jen?”

  Jen’s expression was the most serious yet. “Look! We have no idea what we’re dealing with here; for all we know, he could be part of it – for all we know, he could be the next in line.”

  The suggestion unsettled her. “Are you being serious?”

  Again Jen decided not to respond. She looked over her shoulder to see if Edward Jeffries was still there.

  As far as she could tell, he wasn’t.

  She rubbed her temples and then smoothed her hair.

  “Was it all genuine?” Anthea asked

  Jen laughed out loud and replied, “I really don’t know.”

  The answer was far less reassuring than Anthea had been looking for. “Why would they do it? I mean it was years ago.”

  Jen was thinking the same thing. Long gone were the days when the powers of the monarchy could shake the thrones of other princes.

  Nearby, the sound of sudden laughter startled her. Along the road, two men were walking in the direction of the bridge. She recognised the voice of Hancock talking with another.

  “What time is it?” Jen asked Anthea.

  Anthea checked her watch. “Just after twelve.”

  “Oh crap, they’ll be locking me out.”

  Jen jumped to her feet and began jogging toward the Hog.

  Anthea caught up with her.

  “Who around here is an expert on Wootton’s history?”

  Anthea shrugged. “I don’t know. Dr Lovell.”

  Jen shook her head. “Ever since I’ve been here, the one thing I keep hearing is how their roots can be traced back to goodness knows when. Their family were prominent statesmen in the reign of Richard III. They’ve known about this for hundreds of years.”

  She looked closely at Anthea. “Are you sure you didn’t know anything about this?”

  Anthea looked back blankly. “No. Nothing.”

  Jen believed her. “What are you doing tomorrow?”

  “Working in the afternoon.”

  “Meet me here at 8:30. I’ll need you,” she said, walking toward the entrance of the Hog. “Don’t tell anyone about what we saw tonight.”

  Standing in the shadow of the pathway that led from Ravensfield to the church, the longhaired figure remained unnoticed. She watched as the young researcher and the even younger hairdresser went their separate ways, one heading toward the high street, the other inside the inn.

  She grabbed hold of the gate to support herself. Breathing was difficult; it had been ever since that fateful day a year ago.

  It felt similar – perhaps even worse than the last time.

  History was repeating itself.

  Jen entered the Hog through the main door. The lights were still on, but the locals had left. She heard the sound of chairs being moved, accompanied by glasses clinking together. Tara was busying herself with the usual end-of-day tasks. She smiled at Jen as she passed before heading off into the kitchen with her hands full.

  Jen wandered through the deserted bar area, the dining area, and into the main hallway where Mitchell was hoovering. He nodded at her as she passed, but neither said anything.

  Jen entered the bedroom and went straight to her laptop. She reasoned that if there was any truth in the things she had seen, they would have left a trail.

  Even if just a vague one.

  If Debra Harrison had been murdered – or at least abducted – for finding out more than she needed to know, chances were she wasn’t the first to have suffered such a fate.

  Anthea crossed the high street, heading back home. There was a car parked opposite the butcher’s, a stunning Rolls Royce with a unique number plate.

  Even on the other side of the village, she had never seen anything quite so elaborate.

  She continued up the passageway, less than a hundred metres from her house. There was movement nearby. A figure emerged, walking toward her.

  The wall light revealed the stranger’s face.

  “My God, it’s you.”

  52

  Thomas moved slowly away from the paintings and took a seat on the settee. It was old and antique, and felt more like a park bench than a couch.

  “Don’t feel so bad, Tom,” the earl said. “Successful comprehending of the pieces of our timeline can never be achieved in one segment – no matter how talented the historian.”

  Gardiner sat down alongside him.

  “Have you any idea how long it took me to put together the pieces of this incredible jigsaw? An entire lifetime, such was the challenge and so few the clues. And many that were clues were left by people whose connection to the Crown was so remote it barely seemed relevant.”

  “Yet when you found it, you said nothing.”

  “On the contrary. No sooner had your grandmother died than I took the search to the next level. Your father was the first person I told. Your uncle, the King, listened with a vague interest before finally concluding it was all obsolete – ancient history, he called it.” He shook his head. “When I brought the subject before your grandfather,” he spoke of the late King, “he, too, listened with the same polite interest before concluding that I had got too old. He told me to take a holiday – a sabbatical, he called it – a lengthy spell away to recharge the old batteries. A month later, still they refused to take my claim seriously. The reward for fifty years of dedication: a lifetime banishment from the palace, compensated by a fine pension and an extra title to shut the hell up.”

  Thomas was rattled. “You feel you were short-changed?”

  “I never asked for any such titles, earldoms, OBEs…it might well interest you to know that during the Cold War, I was walking home one evening when a rather striking car crossed my path, and travelling within were two rather large Russian fellows and a long-haired brunette who would have made Clark Gable’s heart beat fast. She played her role well, too, I can assure you.”

  Gardiner rose to his feet and began to pace.

  “By the time this rather intimidating episode was over, I had been offered over £1 million to spy on my country and my king by the KGB,” he said, his eyes now on the prince. “Over the next seven years the offer would be extended several times. Did I take it? I am sure that I did not…”

  Thomas exhaled forcibly. “Well, at least no one can accuse you of being motivated by greed.”

  Gardiner’s expression had hardened.

  “You never told me.”

  “Two days ago I tried; yesterday I tried again – you said you were too busy.”

  “I was.”

  “Oh really, Tom. The Sons of York are among the most ghastly of people ever to have walked God’s earth. I tried to tell you of the path you needed to tread; you didn’t even give me a moment.”

  “So you leaked the story to the press.”

  “I did the only thing I could in order to get the attention of the people
who needed to see it.”

  “There’s a word for what you did.”

  “Only one?”

  “In the past it was called treason.”

  Gardiner shook his head. “My boy, you disappoint me. All these years you have claimed to be different. How long have you claimed your wish to right the wrongs of the past, walk the path of righteousness? What was it you once said to me as a boy: he that should dare fight the king of beasts shall never fight inferior?”

  Thomas bit his lip. Remembering words was difficult.

  “When all is said and done, you’re just like all the others. Be it too proud, too arrogant or simply too stupid, you fail to look beyond the length of your own hooter.”

  The prince leapt to his feet. “You forget to whom you speak.”

  “I’m speaking to the spoiled brat of the third child of a king who was too proud to admit his own faults. The heir to a once defunct Duchy of Middle England, the son of a minor noblewoman whose only talent in life was divorce–”

  “How dare you!”

  “And the ninth in line to a throne that, thanks to its inability to listen, could well be due to expire.”

  “My mother was a great woman,” Thomas said, struggling to control his rage. He took a deep breath and raised his shoulders. “What happened to the princes?”

  It was evident from the earl’s expression he had been looking forward to this.

  “The fate of the Princes in the Tower, as they were so dubbed many centuries later, was not recorded by the journalists of the time. Should the chroniclers be believed, it was Buckingham, or perhaps Sir James Tyrell, who performed the deadly deed, always on behalf of the tyrant immortalised by Shakespeare for being a hunchback. It has always been my belief that the majority of the chroniclers were acting with the best of intentions – doing the best they could with the information at their disposal.

  “However, there was one who had no such excuse.”

  The realisation hit Thomas immediately. “Of course, Sir Thomas More–”

  “Was the one person we know for sure who always knew the truth.”

  Thomas was almost speechless. “Wh-what are you suggesting? That he lied?”

  “Yes, of course he did. Henry VIII was on the throne, and the Princes in the Tower were assumed to be dead. It would have been something of an inconvenience, don’t you think, should the king have realised that he had a pretender to his throne.”

  “He didn’t know?”

  “Well, his father certainly did and, in the early years, went to great lengths to eradicate them. Since the reign of Edward IV, the princes were the subject of countless assassination attempts by the red rose of Lancaster. With the princes alive, Henry Tudor could never rule. There was a reason he went to such extremes to eradicate every copy of Titulus Regius. If you should read what I have read,” he spoke of the Ravensfield Chronicle, “it was clear why. The princes were known to be alive.”

  He grinned at Thomas.

  “Yet, there was another problem. With the princes dubbed illegitimate, marrying Elizabeth of York would prove no gain. Why marry a bastard? It wouldn’t make any sense.”

  He laughed to himself.

  “The relegitimization of the offspring of Edward IV and Elizabeth Woodville gave Henry Tudor a boost, but only if people believed the princes were dead. When Henry married Elizabeth, he sought only alliance with the House of York. After all, what kind of husband would seek to murder the brothers of his queen?”

  “They were still alive?”

  “Edward V was a sickly child, who, according to the Ravensfield Chronicle, finally succumbed to typhoid in November 1483. After falling ill while preparations were being made for his coronation, it was the best projection of the royal physicians that the king would not last the year. Fears soon began to mount that his brother had also caught the disease. With that, the entire future of the House of York depended on its ability to survive.”

  “Why have them declared illegitimate?” Thomas asked.

  “Because only a strong figure could resist the threat posed by the House of Lancaster, and only one such man existed – Richard, Duke of Gloucester. The fledgling rule of the House of York was far too feeble to withstand the threat of insurrection, so it was decided that the Crown must pass to Richard. The Stillington conspiracy, as it was then dubbed, was the brainchild of three prominent statesmen – William Catesby, Richard Ratcliffe, and Francis Lovell. Catesby, a successful lawyer, was almost certainly the composer of Titulus Regius. But when Richard died without a surviving heir, there was only one person left to replace him. The younger brother of the former king.”

  “What happened to him?”

  “The prince was taken from the Tower on 3 September 1483, along with his dying brother and cousin – the Earl of Warwick, son of George, Duke of Clarence. At first, we believe they sought refuge with a distant relative, one of the Woodvilles, before making their new home in North Yorkshire – in the household of one of Richard III’s bastards. As the rightful king regained his strength, the family began to make moves to bring the House of York back to prominence. After the failure of the trial run by the pretenders Lambert Simnel and Perkin Warbeck – themselves both sons of Richard III – it was decided that the rightful heir would never have the military strength to retake the throne during his own lifetime. Instead, he returned to the limelight as Edward Jeffries, taking the Christian name of his deceased brother and the surname of the founder of his house, Geoffrey Plantagenet. Only this man would not be a king, but a surgeon.”

  “Surgeon?”

  “In time the man would marry, and no fewer than six heirs were born. The eldest was John, the man in the painting. In time he would become president of the Royal College of Physicians. A subtle alternative to being king, but a fine way to infiltrate the circles of the time.”

  “Then More knew?”

  “Of course. If you want my opinion, much of what happened next was his idea. As a Plantagenet, Jeffries had the luxury of a fine education. That in turn was passed on to More, who brought John Jeffries, known in wider circles as John Clement, into his house under the guise of a tutor. A strong marriage was needed for the prince and who better than a daughter of the Chancellor of England. And at what better time?”

  Thomas was now completely lost. “What do you mean, better time?”

  “In the eyes of More, the antics of Henry VIII could not continue. The feud with the papacy was large. More knew it was only a matter of time before disaster struck. This led to his own plot against the king – an action that would cost him his life.”

  Thomas was dumbstruck. “More was a traitor?”

  “The definition of traitor is dependent on what side one happens to be on at the time. The actions of the king were about to tarnish the future of the country, and also threatened to change the landscape of Europe. More’s mission was slightly different to Jeffries’, but the effects of re-establishing the House of York would prove the only way forward.”

  “Which was?”

  “To place a Catholic back on the throne of England.”

  The DG of MI5 had never been so confused. Despite every attempt at carrying out research, the gun just failed to come up on any of the investigations.

  It had simply not been charted.

  The telephone on his desk began to ring. “Bridges.”

  “The Home Secretary is on the line, sir.”

  “Put him through.”

  The next voice he heard was Heston’s.

  “Yes, Minister.”

  “I’m afraid we’ve had something of a development. The bastard from Clapham has escaped.”

  53

  Thomas exhaled violently. He sat forward with his hands clenching his knees and his eyes fixed firmly on Gardiner.

  “The Wars of the Roses were among the bloodiest times in the entire history of our beloved nation. Seldom in the centuries since, or the centuries past, has more quarter been given or asked for the cause of the ‘rightful’ king.”
>
  Thomas remained silent for several seconds. “Surely there have been worse wars?”

  “Actually no. Over twenty thousand lost their lives that day at Towton, a number far greater than in any other battle on English soil.” The earl eyed him keenly. “It is not by the death count alone that one defines a battle. Many of the Lancastrians, including the heir to the throne, lost their lives at Tewkesbury when Edward IV regained the throne. The Lancastrians that were captured were swiftly executed.” He gestured with his hands to his throat. “In a way, you might say, it was the battle that returned stability to England.”

  He walked away from the prince to the other side of the room. There was a fine oil painting on the wall, portraying a battle scene.

  “Magnificent, isn’t it?” Gardiner said, admiring the picture. “Though right you may be when comparing the amount of bloodshed at Tewkesbury to that of Crécy or Marston Moor, there is no doubt that the effects of that day in May 1471 would go a long way toward shaping England’s history for years to come. When Henry Tudor, victorious at Bosworth in 1485, claimed the throne for what remained of the Lancastrians, he did what many thought unthinkable: a man of relatively obscure beginnings became king through nothing but tenacity and self-belief. Who would’ve thought it then, that the most pragmatic king England had seen since the conquest would be succeeded by the oaf who married six times.”

  “I see your love for the Tudors has not diminished.”

  The man laughed. “For all the good that happened during that time, for every positive there was an aftershock that threatened to tear Europe to the core. The Dissolution of the religious houses that followed remains to this day the most heartless and unethical event ever carried out by an English government. Today, of course, it would be illegal, right of ownership, human rights, we’ve heard it all before.” He shook his head. “But for every corrupt abbot or prior there were thirty good men who were treated like the scum of the earth. It was in the reign of his son, most historians will tell you, that the true Reformation began, but it was during Henry VIII’s time the drumbeat was set.