by Robyn Young
The door opened behind him, letting in a wash of music. Henry saw his mother enter. Her black gown was pulled in above her thin waist by a girdle fashioned from tiny portcullises and her grey hair was hidden beneath a black veil trimmed with gold braid.
As the doors were closed behind her, Lady Margaret came to him, her thin mouth parting in a knowing smile. ‘It will become easier in time, my lord. New clothes are often a discomfort, but the more you wear them the better they fit. The heavy cloak of kingship will come to feel lighter.’
Henry offered his mother a seat on the cushions in the window bay, then sat beside her, his purple robe falling about him, the clouds of ermine at the collar tickling his neck. Although they had spent the past fortnight together at her manor in Woking – her amazed to see the youth she had ordered into exile now a man, fresh from battle – it was still strange to sit by the woman who had given birth to him, for she felt like a stranger. ‘I did not think this day would come.’
Margaret took his hand in hers. Her skin was ice cold. ‘I prayed for many years it would.’ She smiled. ‘I saw you talking to Lady Elizabeth at the feast. She will make a fine wife, I believe. Beautiful, but not vain. Strong, but not wilful.’
‘She is beautiful,’ agreed Henry. ‘Although neither she nor her mother must be allowed to climb to the same heights as before. I must have sovereignty.’
‘You need not fear interference from Elizabeth Woodville,’ Margaret assured him. ‘She will be content to let her daughter step into the light. I spoke to her before the ceremony. She is not the woman I knew of old. She is broken. As to your bride, she will reside with me until your wedding day. I will help mould her into the woman you need her to be.’
Along with the titles that had been returned to her, Henry had granted his mother the mansion of Coldharbour on the banks of the Thames. It was now being restored and prepared for her and his betrothed. He patted her hand and smiled. ‘With you to guide her, my lady, I shall be a fortunate husband indeed.’
‘While we speak of such things, there is one matter we must turn ourselves to.’ Margaret looked towards the doors, through which came the muffled sounds of stamping feet and clapping. The dancing had begun. ‘You have placed the young Earl of Warwick in my care, but what of his cousins?’ She didn’t wait for him to answer. ‘We cannot keep them in the Tower. It is not safe. Most think the princes dead at Richard’s hands. Elizabeth Woodville was told that her sons were killed during the rescue. She still believes this. Of the handful of people who know the truth some are no longer living and, of those who are, most we can trust.’ She paused as loud laughter sounded through the doors, then faded away. ‘We need to send them away, Henry. Somewhere abroad as I always intended. Let them grow up in anonymity, under guard.’
Henry removed his hands from her. He rose. ‘It is dealt with.’
Margaret’s pale brow furrowed. She stood, facing him. ‘What do you mean?’
‘I mean you do not need to worry. They will not be seen. I assure you.’
Margaret stared at her son, realisation dawning in her grey eyes. All at once she raised her hand and slapped his face. Hard and fast. ‘You knew my intentions! My plan for those boys!’
Henry clutched his cheek, left stinging by the blow. For such a small woman she had real power in her arm. His shock was swiftly supplanted by anger. ‘Anonymity, under guard, is not a life worth living, my lady. I know this more than most.’
When she spoke again, Margaret’s voice was low. ‘You will not go against me like that again. Do you understand me? You will seek my counsel in future. Swear it to me, son.’
After a long pause, Henry inclined his head.
They stared at one another in silence, before Margaret reached up and touched his cheek. ‘Forgive me, my lord king,’ she murmured.
Taking her hand in his, he kissed it. ‘Return to our guests, my lady. I will join you shortly.’
When his mother had gone, Henry sat on the window seat, collecting his thoughts.
After a time, he reached into the folds of his robe and drew a slender silver key from the chain on his belt. With it, he opened one of the chests his porters had stacked against the wall. Taking the leather case from inside, he opened it and drew out the roll of yellowed vellum. Sitting there alone, the gold crown encircling his head, Henry unfurled the map, his eyes drifting over the inked lines of a coast he had never seen before.
The mason laid the last bricks in the wall, using his plumb-line to make sure the final layers were straight, scraping over mortar, made of lime and sand, to fix them in place. In the stillness, the only sounds were his breaths and the scrape of his tools. When he was finished, he packed up his gear, brushed his hands on his apron, then headed up the tight spiral of steps. He would return when the mortar had set to whitewash the new wall, as ordered.
Stepping out into the windswept dawn, the mason shivered. It would be a cold day for the new king’s coronation. As he looked up into the lightening sky, a flock of crows flew above him cawing harshly, before disappearing beyond the battlements of the White Tower, the walls of which rose sheer above him. The mason spat to ward off the ill omen, then headed away across the lawn.
Jack stood beside his mother’s grave, where the grass had grown tall over the soil. He had placed a wreath of holly and woodruff around the wooden cross, the berries of which shone blood bright in the morning sun. Leaves whispered across the ground.
‘I will keep lighting a candle for her every Sunday after Mass. Her and Arnold.’
Jack met Grace’s gaze and nodded in silent gratitude. Saying one last prayer, he turned away, walking with her across the graveyard.
Titan barked in expectation as they approached. There, waiting on the street, were Ned Draper, Valentine Holt and Adam and David Foxley, dressed for travel in cloaks and boots, all with packs slung over their shoulders. There was a mule standing patiently between them, its sides loaded with baskets in which had been hidden the Foxleys’ crossbows and Holt’s arquebus and powder. All of them had warrants out for their arrests and it wouldn’t do to attract the attention of the town bailiff or his men. Grace had given Jack an old scabbard of her husband’s for his father’s sword, hidden beneath his cloak.
Grace hung back before they reached the others. ‘Do you have to go so soon?’
Jack halted with her, brushing a strand of hair from her face. ‘You said your father and brother will be back any day now. If they see me . . .’
She nodded before he finished. Her eyes met his. ‘Will I see you again, Jack Wynter?’ She smiled slightly as she said the name.
‘I hope so.’ Jack took her hands.
As her fingers entwined with his, Grace raised his hands to her lips and kissed them softly. The worst of the burns had healed, enough for him to wear his father’s ring, but his skin was still scarred. He guessed it always would be. Those injuries were joined now by a long scar on his arm, marked by his brother’s blade.
After fleeing his father’s house, they had hidden out in Westminster until Valentine’s wounds were healed enough that the five of them could go together to make another search. This time they found the mansion empty, the only sign that anyone had been there a picture scratched in the soft whitewash of a small chamber on the upper floor. Two boys holding hands.
They had hunted throughout Westminster, but with no sign of Harry Vaughan or the prince, and with the city swarming with patrols of guards and curfews imposed, ready for King Henry’s triumphal entry to London, they had been forced to leave.
‘Jack.’
When he saw Ned nod his head towards the road, he squeezed Grace’s hands. ‘Thank you,’ he murmured. He kissed her hands, then her mouth and knew, as he did so, that there was a part of him that would always be here with her.
Leaving Grace standing there in the sunlight, her gown snatched at by the wind, Jack headed to his men, pulling up his hood. He didn’t have the map and he didn’t have Edward, but he still had many questions and he knew where the
answers might be found. He might have failed in the task his father had entrusted him with, but he could now follow in his footsteps. Jack imagined them, tracing faint lines away from him, leading out through Lewes, east towards Dover, across the water to France. With the autumn breeze tugging at his cloak and the sun on his face, he followed them.
Author’s Note
I admit, I came to the late fifteenth century knowing little about it. As with the crusades and the Anglo-Scots wars I tackled in previous novels, the Wars of the Roses were largely ignored in my schools, overshadowed by Tudor heavyweights Henry VIII and Elizabeth I. Jumping almost two centuries ahead of the period I’d spent six novels immersed in, I was surprised to see just how much and how little had changed.
On the one hand, gunpowder, and the increasingly sophisticated weapons that employed it, had begun to alter the nature of war, forcing changes in armour and battle tactics. The heavy cavalry charge of noblemen, backed up by infantry mostly armed with pike or bow, still existed, but knights increasingly fought their battles on foot and, unlike earlier civil wars in Britain, nobles were no longer prizes to be hauled alive from the field for ransom, but traitors to be destroyed in battle or executed after it. The Wars of the Roses, born out of a dynastic struggle for the throne, were far more brutal for the upper classes.
Another, more seismic, shift was taking place in the spiritual structure that underpinned the whole of western society. Having held the monopoly over learning and tradition for centuries, the Church was now being challenged. Both the fall of Constantinople to the Ottoman Turks, which flooded Christendom with countless texts and opportunities for new thought and beliefs, and the invention of the printing press had massive impacts on the way society was starting to view its ancient administrator, which was about to be further tainted by a succession of corrupt popes.
Not only in the religious sphere, but in the temporal too similar shifts in power were visible. Serfdom had almost disappeared from Britain and the merchant classes were rising in power and affluence, some even surpassing their noble overlords. The Black Death had helped to level the playing field and this was a time when a common Welsh soldier like Thomas Vaughan could rise to become one of the most powerful men in Britain, and when families such as the Medici could come to far exceed the influence and wealth of older, aristocratic rivals. It was a time of possibility, expansion, ambition and of wild dreams, epitomised by the pioneering voyages of the Portuguese and Spanish, the Italians and, later, the English. In it we catch the first real glimpses of modernity – of a world we can recognise.
On the other hand, here in Britain at least, most people still had to get around on foot on badly maintained roads, most families shared a bed, poverty and disease were rife, with death a close companion, superstition and xenophobia came naturally to the majority who rarely left their own parishes, justice was brutal and bloodthirsty, and for all our advances – in weaponry, exploration, banking and legal systems – we still didn’t have forks.
I think what surprised me most, however, were the many gaps in our knowledge of the period. Writing about Templars crusading in Syria and Robert Bruce on the run in the Western Isles, I was used to finding gaping holes in the records or four historians who all vehemently disagreed with one another, but I had expected that two centuries on, in such a well-researched and popular era, those gaps would have closed somewhat. Of course, while the broken and contradictory nature of many of the sources may be a headache to historians, it is perfect ground for the historical novelist. In those spaces our imaginations get to play.
While the Wars of the Roses were devastating to the nobility, we still do not know what impact the wars, waged over a period of around thirty years, had on the general population. Earlier observations depict a land ravaged by conflict, but more recently historians have come to question this, positing the view that for most of the population these wars had little lasting effect. We only have any sort of eyewitness account for four of the thirteen battles in the period and until very recently the Battle of Bosworth was as much debated – in terms of location and sequence of events – as Bannockburn. But perhaps the most contentious areas for debate are the character of Richard III and the enduring mystery of the Princes in the Tower.
Richard III remains an enigma. Demonised by Shakespeare for his Tudor masters, defended by the Fellowship of the White Boar, recently rediscovered and reburied in a remarkable display of pomp and ceremony, even his bones have divided opinion. I had the benefit, perhaps, of coming to him with little prior knowledge except that he had a hunched back, may have killed his nephews and offered his kingdom for a horse. I found in my research a conflicted and ambitious man, struggling to keep his hard-fought place in the realm, a man who was thrust into the heart of unexpected events, who attempted to ride the vertiginous waves of power and ultimately came crashing down – a man of his time, neither unspeakable sinner nor unblemished saint. Two years as king with only one parliament, surrounded by new, mostly inexperienced counsellors and with attacks from all sides, Richard was doomed from the start. The disappearance of the princes under his watch – whether at his hand or not – grievously harmed his reputation and gave rise to Tudor support, even among the old Yorkist guard, meaning Bosworth was less York versus Lancaster, more Tudor vs Plantagenet.
In the case of the princes, we know that Edward and his brother, Richard of York, went into the Tower of London in their uncle’s custody shortly after the death of their father, Edward IV, in April 1483. There was an attempt to rescue them around June or July, which failed. There are then reports of them playing in the gardens of the Tower as late as September, but beyond that the two boys disappear entirely. The common belief – and the one supported by most historians – is that they were quietly done away with on the orders of their uncle, Richard. However, this is not (and may never be) known for certain.
Some have speculated that one or both of the boys could have died of natural causes, others that Richard sent them abroad to grow up in obscurity, or that one escaped and survived to return as one of the later claimants to Henry Tudor’s throne – Lambert Simnel, Perkin Warbeck, Ralph Wilford, although these for the most part have been proven to be pretenders. Yet more debates have revolved around whether someone other than Richard might have been responsible for their deaths. Suspects include the Duke of Buckingham, Margaret Beaufort and – arguably the most plausible after Richard – Henry Tudor.
In the seventeenth century two sets of bones were found buried in the White Tower. In the 1930s these were claimed to be the remains of the two princes, but without DNA testing, which to this date has not been sanctioned, we cannot be sure that these really are the bodies of Edward and Richard.
I certainly do not have an answer to the mystery, nor have I gone with the view held by many historians, that Richard killed his nephews. Rather, I have woven my story through the gaps in the records, the contradictions and the possibilities, in the realm of ‘what if’, choosing the routes that best fit my narrative and the ongoing journey I am creating for Jack, my fictitious protagonist.
For all the many parts of my story that either follow established fact or exist in the places where the facts fade or the sources are convoluted, there are some things I have purposefully tweaked or changed to suit my plot.
The sequence of events surrounding Richard’s bid for the throne, while fairly well documented in terms of who was doing what and when, becomes incredibly murky when it comes to motivations. We have no idea what Richard thought he was doing when he arrested Rivers, Vaughan and Grey at Stony Stratford and took Edward into his custody – whether, by then, he had already decided to seize the crown, or whether that decision came gradually to him in the turbulent weeks that followed. The reason for his execution of Hastings also remains unclear. Was Hastings, as Richard claimed, involved in a conspiracy against him with Elizabeth Woodville, or did Richard confide in him his intention to take the throne and when Hastings baulked at this, he had to go?
It is v
ery much the accepted view that the subsequent bastardising of the princes on the back of an earlier contract of marriage between Edward IV and Eleanor Butler was specious, concocted in order for Richard to take the crown; however where I have deviated from the sources is to have Catesby as the instigator of this plan who coerces Stillington to help him execute it. It is believed Catesby was simply the go-between, sent to get Hastings’s reaction, although Stillington did allegedly make the marriage contract known.
I have also changed Stillington’s role in the conspiracy between Elizabeth Woodville and Margaret Beaufort in the run-up to Buckingham’s rebellion and Tudor’s first attempt to challenge Richard. It is thought to have been a physician both women knew who conveyed messages between them in this time. The exact details and nature of their involvement in both the plot to rescue the boys and the subsequent rebellion remain sketchy, as do Buckingham’s motivations for turning against his cousin and supporting Tudor’s bid for the throne. Jack’s attempt to free the princes with the aid of my Marvellous Shoreditch Players is pure fiction, as are most of those involved in it. The spiriting away of Edward to his aunt in Burgundy is likewise my invention, although this does form the basis of one of the hypotheses that surrounds the princes’ disappearance.
In terms of Buckingham’s rebellion, some of the dates and the sequence of events are fairly hard to pin down, including whether Tudor was aiming for Poole or Plymouth on his first crossing. His second invasion is said to have left from the mouth of the Seine and although I have it as Harfleur it could just as easily have been Honfleur.
It was John Morton, then in Flanders, who is thought to have discovered Richard’s plot to extradite Tudor with the help of Pierre Landais rather than Harry Vaughan intercepting the message on the boat, although there were certainly secret messages being sent back and forth across the Channel in this period. Morton sent a trusted man to warn Tudor and seems to have remained in Flanders. Harry was indeed the son of Thomas Vaughan, but little is known about him.
