by Robyn Young
Up ahead, with the immensity of St Paul’s as a backdrop, the crowds had been cleared to make space for another of the pageants that lined the route from the Tower to Westminster. Hastily made for his nephew’s coronation, they had been even more hastily adapted for his own, the daubs of verdigris and dragon’s blood on the giant wooden and metal structures still gleaming wet in places. This tableau was formed of a great tree, from the painted branches of which were strung white and green curtains. As Richard and his retinue halted before it, their caparisoned horses stamping, bells on bridles ringing, a single drum began to pound, deep and low like a fierce heartbeat.
Twelve girls danced out from between the curtains, dressed in diaphanous gowns. Men in the crowd cheered and many of the lords and knights with Richard grinned appreciatively as the girls leapt and twirled like dervishes, skirts flaring. As the drum beat quicker, matching their rapid steps, Richard felt his horse jostled. Buckingham had manoeuvred his palfrey in closer, edging in between him and Francis Lovell. The lord glanced round at the duke without comment, before turning his attention back to the dancers. Buckingham scowled.
Richard knew his cousin was angry – resentful of the place men like Lovell and Catesby had taken at his side since Hastings’s demise and of the fact he had refused the marriage of Buckingham’s daughter with his son. Despite needing the duke’s force of arms and relying on the influence he had brought to bear on his coronation, he had kept him at arm’s length these past few weeks, increasingly irritated by the younger man’s self-importance. His dealings with Buckingham had made apparent the gap left by William Hastings. It was hard to admit, but he missed the baron’s gruff forthrightness.
Still, out of all the possible challenges he could be facing at this moment, Buckingham’s umbrage was a minor issue and one that could be dealt with easily enough. As well as granting his cousin even greater authority in his base of power in Wales, he had made him Constable of England, one of the highest offices in the realm, which his brother had once conferred upon him. More titles, doled out like treats, would keep him – and others – in check. Everything else was in place, all obstacles to the throne swept aside.
Thomas Vaughan, Anthony Rivers and Richard Grey were under the soil. The fleet in the Channel had disbanded at his order, leaving Edward Woodville in command of just two ships in the seas off France, free, but ultimately powerless. Lady Elizabeth Woodville remained trapped in a prison of her own making and her sons were hidden in the innermost apartments of the Tower. The seditious bishops, Thomas Rotherham and John Morton, were locked in irons, as was Hastings’s lover, Elizabeth. She had sworn Hastings hadn’t spoken of his business with Stillington to her, but who knew what the baron had whispered to his flame-haired whore between the sheets. Richard had also brought into his custody the eight-year-old Earl of Warwick. The boy, son of his dead brother, George, and cousin of the princes, had lost any claim to the throne with his father’s treason, but Richard wasn’t taking any chances. Only Robert Stillington, whose resistance had been crushed by Hastings’s death and who had dutifully played the part Catesby had created for him, remained a free man.
Yes, he still had work to do – support to build and trust to regain. A royal progress, already planned to begin after his coronation, would be the start of this. His reign might have been birthed in blood and disorder, but now he would show his subjects that it wouldn’t continue in such fashion. He would assume the power of his brother and return it to a place of dignity and strength, emancipating royal authority from the gutter of drunken lechery into which Edward had slid during his last years. The white rose of York would flower once more in him, scion of the great House of Plantagenet. And his reign would be splendid, ordered and just.
The drum stopped beating. Silence followed, the crowds hushed with expectation. The curtains parted and out from beneath the tree trundled a monstrous white boar. Smoke billowed from between its silver tusks. The dancing maidens scattered with cries. The watching citizens gasped as a billow of flame erupted from the creature’s steel jaws. The drum began to pound again, hard and fast. Richard felt heat rise in his cheeks as he stared at the creature. The boar didn’t look fierce and proud. It looked evil, its great back hunched and bristling. He wondered for a moment if the guild who had made this pageant had intended the likeness, but he shook the thought aside, reminding himself that the beast had started life as a dragon, based on the plans Hastings had shown him for his nephew’s coronation.
One by one, the maidens crept forward, dancing around the creature and scattering it with white rose petals. Flutes and trumpets joined the drums, the music lifting high and sweet. Another substance burst forth from the creature’s mouth. For a disturbed moment, Richard thought it was blood. Then, as the girls lifted goblets to catch the stream, he realised it was wine. One danced forward. With a curtsey, she held up a goblet to Richard. He bent forward with a stiff smile and took it. Raising it to the watching Londoners, he drank.
‘Drinkhail!’ came a few boisterous cries.
As the trumpeters called the procession on, Richard and his men urged their horses along the road towards Westminster, where, tomorrow, the Archbishop of Canterbury would lead him in through the great doors of Westminster Abbey to receive his crown. Behind them the rough cheers rose louder as the crowds were invited to drink from the boar’s spurting mouth.
Tonight, after the free wine ceased to flow, his subjects would lift their cups in the taverns and alehouses of Cheapside and Cornhill, and drink to their new king – Richard III.
‘Where are they? I know I put them here.’
Jack watched the old man pick through the piles of books and papers heaped on the table. The room was in a state. More books, layered with dust, were stacked up on stools or formed precarious towers on the floor. There were ink stains on the threadbare rug and the sharp tang of urine in the stuffy air. It reminded him of Jacob’s house. He wondered if the Jew had done as he’d pleaded and left before Estevan Carrillo’s father came hunting. He prayed he had. Purgatory was crowded enough with souls. His mind drifted as he wondered when his mother had last been to confession. Had she died in a state of grace?
‘Out of the way, you devil.’
Jack looked up. He realised the old man was addressing the large ginger cat, winding itself around his legs.
‘Ah!’ The lawyer pulled two rolled papers from the mess and handed them to Jack.
Jack took them from the old man’s liver-spotted hands. The paper felt incredibly thin and fragile for something so significant as his father’s last words. His mother’s name was written on one and his on the other, printed in Vaughan’s neat script. He forced down his desire to break the wax seals and rip them open. He wanted to be alone when he read them.
‘A meeting with an old friend, was it?’
Jack realised Arnold was eyeing his knuckles. They were bruised where his fist had connected with Francis Shawe’s face. Beneath his shirt his ribs were decorated with the young man’s retaliatory blows.
The last fight he’d had with Francis had been almost fourteen years ago. He’d won that one too, finding the boy alone, for once unable to outnumber him. All those beatings and taunts had come out through his fists, turning to blood on Francis’s face. The victory had been short, soured by the wrath of Justice Shawe who had used his position to make an example of him. Eleven years old and set for the town stocks, Jack had begged his father to intervene, but Vaughan refused, telling him he must bear his punishment. The humiliation had hurt far more than the eggs and mud the boys had slung at him. Soon after, Vaughan took him into his household and he’d left Lewes to serve as his page. Jack still wasn’t sure whether that had been a reward or a punishment.
‘That family.’ Arnold chuckled humourlessly. ‘There’s poison in that tree, I tell you.’
Jack didn’t answer, but flexed his hand. Violence and death seemed to be following him. Was he cursed? Grace was still tight-lipped three days after his fight with her brother, but that
morning she had mustered enough words to tell him Arnold had sent a message to her house. Two letters had arrived for Sarah Wynter.
Arnold pushed some books off a stool and sat, the cat jumping at once on to his lap. The old man tutted at the animal, but allowed it to remain. ‘Your mother was a delightful woman, Master James. I shall miss her dearly.’
‘Thank you.’ This was perfunctory, a courtesy. What more could he say? The gulf of grief was too wide to be traversed with words.
‘Your father also.’
Jack looked up sharply, the letters momentarily forgotten.
Arnold gave a small smile. ‘Sir Thomas told me many years ago, when he was sheriff and I had the honour of working for him. You must have been . . .’ The lawyer held his hand low to the ground. ‘I think he wanted someone to keep an eye on you and your mother – someone who would be able to contact him, should anything happen.’
‘I didn’t think he had told anyone,’ murmured Jack. ‘Only Stephen, his squire.’ His fear that Vaughan was ashamed of him had followed him all through the years he served him, cupping that secret around those feasting tables, on those training fields and marches to war – not daring to expose it lest the golden future he’d been promised be extinguished, but feeling it always burning his hands. Now, though, he wondered. Gregory had tried to kill him for the contents of the scroll case. Maybe, in sending him away with it, his father wasn’t showing shame, but trust?
‘Very few knew, I believe,’ said Arnold.
‘Who?’ Jack realised that out of such a small pool of people who knew his relationship to Vaughan he might be able to pluck the truth of who Gregory was and whether or not he had been acting alone.
‘I couldn’t say for sure. Your father was a very private man. Perhaps Sir Anthony Woodville? I know Sir Thomas was close with Earl Rivers.’
‘Do you know where I might find Sir Thomas’s squire?’ If anyone had answers, thought Jack, it would be Stephen Greenwood. Gregory said he had been arrested with Vaughan, but who knew if that were really true.
‘No. I’m sorry.’
‘What about the men of his household? Ned Draper? Hugh Pyke?’
The cat’s purr filled the room as Arnold petted it. ‘The last I heard Ned Draper was with a troupe of players in Shoreditch. The others – I have no idea.’
‘Players?’ Jack shook his head, trying and failing to imagine Ned – the beast of the battlefield – prancing around a stage. His whole world seemed upside down. He sat back. ‘John Browe said he saw strangers in the woods near my mother’s house on the day of the fire. Justice Shawe did nothing when this was reported to him.’ Jack hesitated. He wasn’t sure he wanted to pursue this. Justice Shawe was a man best avoided, not least since Jack was an unwelcome guest in his daughter’s house and had bloodied his son. Besides which he had spoken to Browe himself and, just as Grace said, the elderly cobbler remembered little except that he had seen death in the woods. When Jack had pressed him, Browe had crossed himself and muttered fearfully.
A face as white as bone. Death it was, I tell you.
But, still, if there was justice to be had, he owed it to his mother to find it. ‘Shawe should have raised the hue and cry if foul play was suspected, shouldn’t he? Sir Thomas once told me if a crime is committed and the criminal isn’t found every person in the parish is liable to a fine.’
‘That is so,’ said Arnold slowly. ‘But in this instance there was no real evidence a crime had been committed.’ The old man’s brow puckered. ‘Unless you have reason to think otherwise?’
‘No,’ said Jack quickly. ‘Only what Browe said.’ He had no idea who he could trust with the knowledge of why his father had sent him away.
‘Well, I’d say you would be wise not to make more trouble for yourself with the Shawes. Although I fear that advice may be tardy,’ Arnold added wryly. ‘What will you do now, Master James? Your mother’s house would have passed to you on her death, but of course . . .’ He lifted an apologetic hand from the cat’s back. ‘With the charge of treason I expect Sir Thomas’s estate will be forfeited to the crown, but either way I’m afraid there will be no provision for you as a . . . Well, if there is any inheritance to be had it will pass to his son, Harry. You might go to him? You are kin after all and—’
Jack shook his head before Arnold could finish the sentence. The idea of going to find the half-brother he had never met seemed laughable. They might have come from the same seed, but Harry Vaughan might as well be of another race entirely for all he knew of him. Their father had kept them apart throughout their lives. Jack had no desire to turn that particular stone now the man was dead. He stood, gripping the letters. ‘Thank you, Arnold.’
‘No need for thanks, Master James. Especially from one who has been, I fear, of so little help.’
Jack paused, thinking back to something the lawyer had said. ‘Arnold, you said you think my father told you about me because he wanted you to be able to contact him if anything happened. But how did you do that? My mother and I rarely knew where he was from one month to the next.’
‘A house in London. I would send messages and other papers to Sir Thomas there.’
‘In Westminster, you mean?’ asked Jack, thinking of the mansion his father had built several years ago. He had heard Vaughan speak of his house on the Strand, which sounded magnificent, but had never seen it for himself, despite his father’s promises to take him there. No doubt the mansion would now be seized by the crown.
‘Not his house.’ Arnold pushed the cat from his lap and crossed to his desk. He rummaged through the mess, picked up a piece of paper and bent to write something on it, with a quill stabbed into several inkpots before he found one full enough. ‘Here. There may be someone there who knew your father a little better than me.’
Jack took it and scanned the address. He glanced up. ‘You say Ned Draper is in Shoreditch?’
Jack dug his fingers into the soil, burrowing a hole in the earth. Into it he dropped the silver band his father had exchanged with his mother, then sat back, eyeing the plain wooden cross at the head of the grave. How could she be gone? It seemed impossible that he would never see her again; never hear her laughter fill a room or watch her smile to see something new grow up in her garden. The soil of her grave was freshly turned. Black like the charred ground of his home. Black like the scars of the bone-fires in the fields.
He thought of another feast of St John, many years ago, his father home from the Continent where he’d helped negotiate a marriage between King Edward’s sister, Margaret, and Charles the Bold, Duke of Burgundy. In rare good humour Thomas had insisted on accompanying Sarah to the celebrations, his hood up and a mask to cover his face. Jack had gone with them. He remembered giants walking the streets, their grotesque faces ruddy in the torchlight, girls draped in garlands of flowers and young men spilling from the taverns wearing horned masks and crowns of leaves.
They had moved from fire to fire, the three of them, disguised from the revelling crowds, ale sweet on their lips, the night warm with fire and laughter. Jack remembered standing before the flames, Vaughan’s hand on his shoulder; remembered how he felt the weight of every finger and how he had stayed stock-still, not wanting to move, even when the reeking smoke from the burning bones seared his throat and stung his eyes.
He splayed out his hand and stared at the gold ring on his finger. It fitted him now, but he still felt uncomfortable wearing it – guilty like a thief, or a man who has wandered into a place he shouldn’t have. The silver markings on the serpents glittered in the pale sunlight seeping through the morning mist. Other than his father’s sword and the scroll case, a few clothes and the prayer book from his mother in the bag beside him, it was all he owned. All he had to show for twenty-five years of a life. He had another name now, a lonelier name than bastard. Orphan.
A breeze lifted the piece of paper on the grass by the grave, drawing his eyes back to the words.
Dear James,
I pray you have found the answ
ers I could not give you. That the Needle has pointed the way.
Beneath the words his father had drawn a crude symbol of a winged staff, entwined by two serpents. Jack had read it over and over, trying to divine some sense from it. Nothing. His father’s last words meant nothing. He had also read the letter addressed to his mother hoping for something more, but all it contained was a brief, heartrending message of love.
After a moment, Jack folded up his mother’s letter as small as he could, then pushed it into the hole with the ring and swept the dirt in to cover them. A crow flew up from one of the yew trees that bordered the churchyard, cawing loudly. Jack glanced in its direction. He stiffened. Standing beneath the trees, watching him, was a cloaked and hooded figure. By the size he guessed a man. As the figure took a step towards him, Jack reached for the sword, lying by his bag.
‘James!’
At the call, he saw Grace hurrying towards him between the graves. Jack stood. Looking again at the yew tree he saw the figure had vanished. Had he imagined it? Was he losing his mind?
Grace halted before him, her cheeks flushed. She was carrying a bundle of cloth. ‘You didn’t come back yesterday.’
‘I’m sorry.’
‘Where did you sleep?’
‘It doesn’t matter. Nowhere.’ Jack didn’t tell her he’d spent the night by the ruins of his home, staring at the charred timbers until the light went and the destruction faded into shadows.
