by Robyn Young
King Richard presided over the assembly seated on his throne beneath a canopy of estate, a jewel-encrusted crown upon his head and the banner of the white boar displayed beside him. This was his opportunity to prove to his subjects that not only was he the rightful king, but that he was a capable and worthy ruler, unlike his brother, whose reign had been mired by vices. And so, while he dealt with the old – passing the Act, Titulus Regius, in which he officially declared his brother’s marriage invalid and, with all the weight and office of the realm, bastardised his children – he also focused on the new, creating a court where the poor would have access to justice and introducing fairer laws. It was his chance to wash away the blood that his reign had been birthed in: the rumours of his nephews’ murders, the brutal executions. A chance to show the fairer man behind the monster some believed him to be.
As well as seeing to the new business of the realm, Richard set about clearing out the rot that had set in during the autumn, the last pockets of rebellion at Exeter and Bodmin having since been crushed by his forces. Many were the Acts of Attainder he passed through parliament, removing men of their lands and their rights, stripping them of offices and titles, issuing fines, prison sentences and other penalties. In their places he established trusted vassals from York and elsewhere in the north, visibly changing the composition of his court and government.
Scores of those attainted fled before his wrath. Most were lesser gentry and officials, although there were many of good stock and name among them: Stonors and Cheynes, Arundels and Courtenays. By Candlemas, Richard was receiving increasing reports of rebels escaping across the Channel to Brittany. There, his spies told him, Henry Tudor had established a court of exiles and had reconfirmed his intention to marry Elizabeth of York, his disastrous invasion clearly not having damaged either his hope to claim the throne or his standing with his new ally, Duke Francis.
Richard worried about the exodus. He didn’t want to be sending Tudor an army of dispossessed young men, but neither did he want these men in England in places of power where they could hurt him. He pacified his concern with the firm belief that if he struck at the heart the body would fail. Showing his teeth to the duke – whose support for Tudor could not go unpunished – he sent English ships to patrol the Channel, with licence to seize and plunder any Breton vessels they intercepted. At the same time, he had agents working their way into the Breton court, opening up veins of communication into which he could pour his poison.
But while he concentrated his efforts on the clear threat presented by Tudor, a more troubling danger remained unresolved and, so, as parliament was drawing to a close and the first spring flowers were peeping through the frosts, the king came to Westminster Abbey to see a fallen queen.
Dismounting with his escort of knights in the gardens of the canons’ lodgings, Richard was greeted by the abbot, who was evidently relieved that the issue of the queen’s lengthy sojourn in his precinct might at last be settled in his favour.
‘This way, my lord,’ said the abbot, leading Richard inside his lodgings, followed closely by the armed escort. ‘She is expecting you.’
Lady Elizabeth stood waiting in the abbot’s hall, surrounded by stacks of chests and furniture, all that was left of a once glittering life. There were rugs on the floor and painted wooden screens and curtains created privacy between sleeping and living areas, but the space was cramped, unsuitable for six women living together for a year. The stale air was fogged with smoke from the hall’s open fire.
‘We will speak in private,’ Richard told the abbot, nodding for his men to wait by the door.
He approached Elizabeth alone, each step of his stiff stride echoing in the silence. The former queen-dowager held her head high as he came. Her face was pale, made more so by the dark silk of the padded headdress that hid her auburn hair. Her gown hung loose on her frame and he could see the frail web of bones beneath the skin of her chest. She was still beautiful, however, and he discerned a spark of that old power that had so captivated his brother in her hazel eyes. Was that hatred he saw there too? Bright embers of it still burning for her son and brother, killed on his orders?
Elizabeth’s gaze remained locked with his until he halted before her and she was forced to bow her head. ‘My lord king.’
‘Lady Grey.’
Her eyes flicked up at his use of her old married name and Richard saw that defiant spark dim. She would have been told of parliament’s erasing of her validity as his brother’s wife and queen. Now he cemented it, showing her she was just the widow of a dead Lancastrian knight; neither queen-dowager, nor mother of the heir to the throne. He had stripped her of almost everything. Her attempts to supplant him on the death of his brother – to set her young son upon the throne and surround him with her kin to the detriment of the old blood of the realm – had failed, as had the rebellion her family had helped foment. Her son, Thomas Grey, who had fled Exeter when the royal host scattered the rebels, remained at large, as did Edward Woodville and Lionel, the Bishop of Salisbury, but Richard had his men hunting Grey and he had no doubt that when he took Tudor he would take Elizabeth’s mutinous brothers too. He took no small amount of pleasure in her defeat. The spider that had stung him, even through the trap of the glass, was crushed.
Elizabeth recovered her poise enough to show him to a cushioned stool by the fire. ‘Please.’
As he sat, sweeping his sable-trimmed mantle back behind him, Richard caught movement behind one of the draped curtains and heard a giggle followed by a fierce shushing sound. ‘Your daughters?’
Elizabeth stepped protectively in front of the curtain.
Richard smiled slightly and gestured to the other seat by the fire. ‘Sit, my lady. I stand by my promise. Neither you nor your daughters will come to harm, if you accept my terms.’
After a moment, she sat opposite him, hands knotted in her lap. The firelight bruised her skin. ‘Your agreement stated that if we left sanctuary and came into your peace we would be under your protection. That we would be safe from all harm and you would provide for my daughters and ensure that they are offered respectable marriages?’
‘I made an oath to this before the men of the realm.’
Elizabeth met his eyes, some of her strength returning. ‘I need to hear it from your lips, my lord.’
‘You have my word. If you leave this place, you and your daughters will be safe and well provisioned for.’
She nodded after a long pause. The tension seemed to drain from her, her shoulders slumping. ‘Then we have an accord.’
Richard held up his hand. ‘There is just one matter, my lady.’ He leaned forward, watching her face. This was the real reason he had come here today, now the agreement for her safety had allowed him to breach sanctuary. ‘It involves your sons, Edward and Richard.’
Life flared in Elizabeth’s eyes again. He heard the breath catch in her throat.
‘I know you were involved in an attempt last summer to have them taken from my custody in the Tower, where they were being kept for their own protection. I believe you were also involved in a second attempt, around the time Buckingham turned against me.’
Her gaze, darting furtively from his, told him he was right in his belief. Richard felt a surge of anticipation. For the first time since Prince Edward had vanished from London, five months ago, he was perhaps closer to an answer as to the boy’s whereabouts. All other paths had led nowhere.
After Hugh Pyke’s confession, Richard had sent a handful of trusted men to Mechelen to question his sister, but Margaret claimed to know nothing of their nephew’s whereabouts and although his men remained in the city, keeping watch on the palace, there had not been one report of the boy in all this time. Richard hadn’t been able to interrogate Pyke further, to see if he had been lying, for the man had died in his cell at Newgate, leaving him only a head to display along with the other traitors on London Bridge.
Sir Robert Brackenbury’s deputy had been killed during a skirmish with the rebels in Kent,
so there had been no chance to ask him why he had chosen that troupe to perform at the Tower that day, and whether he’d been bribed, coerced, or even willing to gain them entry. Glover and his men had hunted for the Shoreditch Players, but the troupe had disbanded and its members had gone to ground. All in all, it was as if Prince Edward had fallen through a hole in the world. But Richard could not rest, not easily, until the boy was plucked back out of it.
He took his time with the revelation, looking for answers in her face. ‘My lady, I am sorry to tell you the attempt ended in tragedy.’
Her eyes narrowed, her lips pressing together.
‘We recently found the wagon the boys were smuggled out in.’ This was true. When the ice on the Thames near Billingsgate had cracked in the thaw, it had released this gift, half-buried in mud. ‘Their bodies were inside.’
Few knew this was a lie. It was doubtful Elizabeth would find out the truth and even if she did, it mattered little. He just needed to see what she knew. Her reaction came after a few heartbeats of stunned silence in the form of a keening wail that escaped her lips in one long note, rising louder and louder until it broke into a howl of anguish. Hands pressed to her mouth, her head shaking wildly, her body began to convulse.
At her ragged sobs, the curtain behind her switched aside and a young woman ducked out. Elizabeth of York went quickly to her mother’s side, crouching to hold her, cold eyes on her uncle.
Richard continued. ‘The men who took them from my protection left them to drown while they fled to save their own skins. You put your faith in cowards, my lady.’
There was no anger from Elizabeth at this – no sense that it wasn’t true. She had been involved and the guilt etched across her white, tear-streaked face was genuine. But her horror revealed something else too: it showed him she did not know where her sons were – either the one still alive at the top of the Garden Tower, his fever since broken, or the one who had vanished like smoke on the wind.
Richard sat back as Elizabeth’s cries echoed through the hall. He was bitterly frustrated this was yet another dead-end, but as he looked at his niece, comforting her mother, he consoled himself with the knowledge that the day had not been wasted. Elizabeth Woodville was now under his control, as was her daughter – the young woman Henry Tudor had sworn to marry. The woman whose Yorkist blood was essential to any claim the bastard heir of Lancaster might try to make upon the throne.
Lady Margaret Beaufort, Countess of Richmond, sat in the window of her bedchamber at Woking Manor. All was dark beyond the glass, but she had not yet drawn the curtains. A prayer book lay open before her, unread. The fire in the hearth had burned to red cinders and the air was chilled by its dying. Margaret pulled her cloak tighter around her small shoulders. Spring had started to stir things in the ground, roots seeking the surface, buds opening, but the nights still bore winter’s breath. She turned sharply at a soft rap on the door. ‘Come.’
It was her manservant, Walter. The man’s boots and cloak were mud-flecked. ‘Are you alone, my lady?’ he asked, glancing around the shadowy chamber.
‘I am,’ said Margaret, rising from the window seat. ‘Did you find him, Walter?’
In answer, Walter ushered in a figure dressed in a hooded brown robe. As the figure pushed back his cowl, it took Margaret a moment or two to recognise her old friend.
John Morton, the Bishop of Ely, had changed considerably since she had seen him last year. He had grown out his tonsure and a thick reddish beard covered the lower half of his face. His shrewd blue eyes were set deep in dark hollows and his face was haggard, lantern-jawed.
‘Dear God.’ Margaret went to greet Morton, embracing the bishop, then kissing his hand. His shabby robes smelled of damp, cold places; of the road and of the hunted. ‘Did anyone see you bring him in?’ she asked Walter, still holding the bishop’s icy hands in hers. Her husband, Lord Stanley, was still in Westminster at parliament, but he had his own trusted servants in residence at Woking and she could not let him discover that Morton, a man wanted for treason, had come here.
‘No, my lady. We came through the grounds.’
‘Bring food and wine. If anyone asks, say it is for me.’
‘Of course.’
‘And Walter.’
The weary man paused in the door. ‘My lady?’
‘Thank you.’
As the door clicked shut, Margaret gestured Morton to the fire. The bishop sat heavily on a stool, his soiled robes falling limply around him. She settled herself on a seat opposite him, her eyes reading the stories of hunger and desperation written in his face. ‘I thought you might have gone to Brittany. So many others have fled there since parliament opened.’
‘I tried.’ Morton’s voice was hoarse. ‘But after I left Buckingham’s company I was forced into hiding and fell foul of a sickness in my lungs. I spent most of the winter in the infirmary of a monastery.’ His brow puckered. ‘God, but your nephew was a fool, my lady. Waiting for a handful more of scrawny, unwilling wretches for his army, while each day we watched the weather worsen. I tried to convince him to leave before it was too late. But he would not listen. If we had left Brecon but a few days earlier . . .’
Margaret shook her head. ‘From what I know at least half my son’s ships were blown back to Brittany by the storm. My nephew’s army, had it forded the Severn, would still not have been able to stand against the royal host without the full support of Henry and the Bretons. It was doomed from the start.’ She closed her eyes. ‘John, was Our Lord against us? Were we wrong in our endeavour? My heart tells me we were right, but my head still questions.’
‘No, my lady.’ Morton leaned forward, a glint in his eyes; something of the man she knew of old. ‘Our Lord was not against us.’ He took hold of her hands, forcing her to meet his gaze. ‘Only the weather.’ He waited until she nodded, settled by his conviction. ‘I heard rumour that you, too, have suffered the king’s wrath?’
‘I have.’ Margaret’s voice was low, but there was strength of feeling behind it.
King Richard had spared her life, but he had stripped that life back to the bones. Where once she had been the richest heiress in England, control of her lands and properties, which would have passed to her husband only if he had fathered a child by her, had now all been granted to Lord Thomas Stanley.
Worse still, her husband didn’t just have control of her estates, but of her freedom too. She had been placed in his custody with strict instructions she was to be watched and was to attempt no contact whatsoever with her son in Brittany. She, daughter of the Duke of Somerset, her veins blue with royal blood, had become a prisoner in her own home, her conversations and interactions vetted by the lord, who meanwhile had been drawn even tighter into the king’s circle. After acquitting Stanley of any part in her treachery, Richard – whether because he needed the powerful lord more than ever with Buckingham gone or whether he wanted to keep him close – had made him Constable of England, and Stanley’s son, George, Lord Strange, had since joined his father on the Privy Council.
Margaret had been helpless in the face of these men’s decisions about her life and property. It had made her feel as though she were twelve years old again, back in Edmund Tudor’s bed, his huge body crushing hers, hands pinning her thin wrists to the mattress until the blood stopped; that awful pushing sensation between her legs, him forcing his way in, her with eyes squeezed shut, biting her lip until it bled. She had vowed, long ago, after Edmund died and her beautiful son was born, never to let a man take control of her again. This wasn’t the same: Thomas had been angry with her, yes, and he had been cold, but he hadn’t been brutal. Still, though, there was a painful, shameful echo in her impotence.
The bishop, she realised, was speaking again, asking her about Henry.
‘Have you been able to get word to him? Do you know of his standing in Brittany?’
‘I cannot contact Henry now. It is too dangerous. But Walter keeps his ear to the ground and tells me what he can about reports he hears. I kno
w there are many men now trying to reach him at Vannes. They cross the Channel where they can, avoiding the king’s patrols. I believe, when the time is right, he will try again. When he does I will do what I can to aid him. But my power is sorely limited.’
‘If I can make it across I can take any message you wish.’
Margaret gave him a small smile of gratitude. ‘Indeed, I would be grateful to know you were with him, your grace. There are few I would trust more to be his counsel. But there is another task I would ask of you first, if you are willing.’
As the bishop listened, the faint warmth from the fire colouring his pale cheeks, Margaret told him of the plan to take the two princes from the Tower that she had been involved in with Stillington and Elizabeth Woodville.
‘How did you get men inside?’ Morton asked, surprise clear in his tone.
‘Using my husband’s seal, I contacted an acquaintance of his in the Tower, asking that the players be invited to perform. He wrote back with an agreement. Lady Elizabeth’s men were supposed to bring the boys to a vessel I had waiting. My men would have then taken the boys into my custody. But they never came.’
‘What then, my lady? What was your plan for the princes?’
Margaret paused. She started slightly as the door was knocked. Walter entered, carrying a tray of food and wine that he set down beside them. Margaret poured out two goblets of wine, while Walter banked up the fire with fresh logs that crackled and spat as the flames caught hold. The manservant left, closing the door behind him.
‘There are many saying the princes were killed at their uncle’s hand,’ said Morton, taking the goblet she handed to him. ‘This is still widely believed.’
