‘You would put my brother’s son on the throne.’
‘I
would
, I swear it,’ Hastings said.
‘Ah, but my brother’s son is not the heir. Neither Edward nor Richard. We know now that their father’s marriage was a lie, so my nephews cannot inherit. Without them, who stands next to be king of England, William? Who is it who stands before you and calls you traitor? Can you see it yet?’
‘You,’ Hastings said. He seemed to deflate as he spoke, as if that one word had taken all the passion out of him.
‘Me,’ the Lord Protector confirmed. ‘Though I might wish it was any other way but this. I cannot undo my brother’s mistakes. All I can do is accept his crown and may God have mercy on my soul. I would rather this cup be taken from me, but if it cannot be … I will drink from it.’
Every eye in that room was on him and Richard bowed his head, visibly exhausted and saddened.
‘Take my lord Hastings away now. By his own word, he has admitted to conspiracy against me. I do not know how many stand with him, or what power they have gathered. Wait for me below, gentlemen. I will speak to him again before I leave this place.’ Hastings was taken outside. He
went in stunned disbelief, leaving the room without looking back.
Richard turned then to Lord Stanley and signalled to the soldiers to let him stand. The man spoke as soon as he was up.
‘My lord, I had no part in any conspiracy, of any kind. I have always been loyal and your brother trusted me completely.’
‘My brother trusted Hastings,’ Richard said.
‘Even so, I have not been anywhere near Westminster Sanctuary since the king’s death. I have played no part. If you have spies there, you know I speak the truth.’ Lord Stanley waited, sweating, knowing that his life depended on the answer he received. After a time, Richard nodded once.
‘I had no intent to arrest you, Thomas. You drew your sword, however. Morton too, waving his eating knife around. What was I to think?’
The Bishop of Ely had watched in fierce concentration. He saw his chance and stepped forward.
‘I must apologize, Your Highness. I did not understand all that was going on around me. Like Lord Stanley, I drew my knife in fear and stepped back, thinking only to save my own neck.’
Richard smiled at the bishop as Stanley went on quickly. ‘The bishop has the right of it. I moved only in reaction to Hastings. I thought nothing of it until I held my sword in my hand.’
Both men were sweating, Richard could see, very aware that he could have them killed with just a word. Yet Morton had called him ‘Highness’ and as for Stanley, his brother had said he was to be trusted. Richard made a quick decision.
‘You are both men of action then – and that is to the good. Morton, any hurt is forgiven. Stanley, I have need of a new
treasurer in England, to raise the funds that make possible all the rest. Will you accept?’
Stanley’s eyes widened and he went down on one knee.
‘I will of course, my lord. It would be my honour.’
The men around him shuffled back a distance, aware that they had laid hands on a man of considerable power who was clearly going to leave the room with more. There was suddenly not one soldier present who would meet Lord Stanley’s eyes. Richard smiled to see it. He turned then to Buckingham, who had watched it all.
‘There are conspiracies to be burned out still, my lord Buckingham. I will need a Constable of England, as well as a treasurer. Without gold, there can be no law. Without law, there can be no safety. It is all of a piece.’
Before Buckingham could do any more than stammer his pleasure and thanks, Richard crossed to where the Archbishops of York and Canterbury still sat. Neither man could rise easily, nor walk without a cane. Richard leaned on his fists and then lower, so he resembled a hawk or a wolf tensing to leap.
‘Your Graces, Archbishops Bourchier and Rotheram, you have shown your integrity here today. When I contemplated keeping a false oath, it was a moment of weakness that shames me. I fell short and I will confess it as a sin. Yet you both held firm and showed me the moral strength for which you are renowned. Now there are no shadows left, no plots and secrets.’ The old men were watching him closely, Richard saw. He looked back with wide and innocent eyes.
‘My brother’s sons cannot be king, not now, Your Graces, not after what we have heard. If there was a moment to cast a shroud over it all, that has passed, before all these witnesses. Yet if I am to be king, I am still Lord Protector today. There are plots still – men who call Lancaster their master,
though some think they are left in rags. My nephews are safe in the Tower – and I am safe with armed men at my back. Archbishop Bourchier, will you crown a son of York, Your Grace? If I ask, will you crown me as King Richard the Third?’
The archbishop had seen events whirl past with astonishing speed, but he understood there was one man in that room who would not be denied. The fate of Hastings could hardly have been a better lesson for anyone with eyes to see.
‘Of course, Your Highness,’ he said softly.
The more elderly of the men within the White Tower left with care down the steps to the ground below. Richard had waited behind until he was alone with Robert Stillington. The Bishop of Bath and Wells had been terrified as Richard put an arm around him and summoned a writing table and a jug of good ale to give him strength. The Lord Protector had left the man scribbling away and came lightly down the steps to the great yard of the Tower. He paused on the lowest step and breathed in the warm day, turning his face to the sun. Old men died only too often and he needed Stillington to testify to Parliament. Richard knew he would yet face argument and dissent, there was little doubt, but as with the gate to London he had kept open, such things could be foreseen. He would have Stillington kept under close guard until Parliament gathered in Westminster. If fate or some enterprising murderer found a way to reach the old man, the Lord Protector would still have his sworn testimony, sealed with his ring and signature. All obstacles could be avoided, he thought.
A little way beyond the White Tower, Richard saw a group of soldiers had waited on his orders, as he had asked. Lord Hastings stood with them, disarmed though standing without any obvious restraint. Richard made a tutting sound. It
was astonishing how the common soldiery stood in awe of his lords – or perhaps they were men who had known Hastings personally. The baron had high standing, so it was said.
Richard approached the group with confidence. Hastings raised his head, ready for some new accusation or perhaps a deal to be brokered between them. Richard smiled, enjoying the sun.
‘I am sorry, Hastings. Sorry to have kept you waiting. Sorry for what you must now endure.’ Richard signalled to the soldiers at Hastings’s back. They took his arms and though he shouted in surprise and anger, they walked him a dozen yards and kicked his legs out from under him. He fell forward in their grasp, staring in astonishment at the builder’s beam left out on the grass in front of him.
‘What is this? Gloucester! Where is my trial, you whoreson? Where is justice?’
‘This is justice for a traitor, my lord. As I said, I am sorry, but I must send a message to all those who think me too weak. This will serve.’
Hastings tried to speak again, but the men holding him pressed him down so that his throat lay across the beam.
‘Wait,’ Richard said. ‘My lord, would you like to confess? I can fetch a priest for the task.’
Hastings was allowed to rise up on his knees. He saw no mercy in Richard’s gaze and he became resigned, nodding briefly. He too turned to feel the sun on his face for the last time. The Lord Protector removed himself some distance while a priest was found and knelt with William, Lord Hastings, hearing his muttered sins and offering forgiveness. It took an hour before the man rose on stiff legs and bowed to Hastings and then to the Lord Protector. The priest did not like what he saw in the faces of the soldiers and he hurried away then.
When Richard returned, he saw a kind of peace had come to Hastings. The man looked up calmly enough when he saw it was time. He stretched his neck well on the beam and did not flinch as the axe was brought down.
‘God be with you,’ Richard said, crossing himself.
London seemed quiet that June, though the sun was hot and trade was brisk enough on the river. Not many of the common subjects knew the discussions that went on right across the capital in every great house. The men of Parliament had been called to Westminster from all the shires and cities and market towns, as so often before. Yet the talk did not begin as they arrived in dribs and drabs. It went on and on in private. In many senses, the true conversation would end as they took their seats in Westminster.
On the Sunday before they met, the Lord Protector rode out with his friend Buckingham and a great procession of lords and senior men. They gathered first at the Tower, where the princes were observed by all in the central yard, shooting arrows at a butt and tipping their hats to any lords who peered in at them.
The riding party set off at noon, with the Lord Protector and his personal guard at their head. Richard’s banners were held high enough to be on a battlefield, though they rode only to the west of the city, up Aldgate Street to the stocks market at Cornhill then the Poultry and across to the wide road of Cheapside and Ludgate Hill, where fifty-two goldsmiths had fine establishments along the row. At St Paul’s Cathedral, they halted and dismounted, a great lively group, lords and captains mingling with priests and aldermen.
They put aside jesting and laughter as they took their places to hear the speaker, a friar who was brother to the mayor and known to be sound. He was in the middle of an exhortation
to the crowd on the nature of forgiveness when he saw the men who had entered. Friar Shaw lowered his great head for a moment, collecting his thoughts. When he spoke again, the words were from the Wisdom of Solomon, in Latin first and then in English.
‘And glorious is the fruit of good labours, and the root of wisdom that faileth not. Yet the bastard slips shall not take root! No, brethren, the seed of the unlawful bed will be torn out.’ Friar Shaw had already gathered an audience of hundreds for his Sunday lecture. They nodded along with him, though some looked behind at the Protector and his lords, all come to listen.
‘In such a manner will the fate of York be decided, I am certain,’ Friar Shaw went on. There was a hush then, a perfect stillness. The crowd knew very well who stood at their backs with armed men. They watched the friar closely, though he smiled. If he had gone mad enough to challenge the Lord Protector, they wanted no part of it.
‘Of the sons of York, only one was born in England, making him of English blood and clay. The Lord Protector, whom I see before me. Richard of Gloucester, who was born at Fotheringhay Castle, Northamptonshire, a wild and verdant part. His brother the king was born in France, I believe. In Rouen. And Clarence, that poor benighted soul?’
‘Ireland, Father,’ Richard said clearly from the back. ‘Dublin. What you say is true.’
‘And has that sole Englishman of York come to hear my judgement upon him?’ Friar Shaw asked, his voice booming out across the lowered heads. ‘On his brother’s marriage?’
‘If it please you, Father, I have nothing to fear from the truth,’ Richard replied.
‘And I will not shrink from the truth, Lord Protector! Not even with you staring at me now. You heard the words of
King Solomon. Your brother’s marriage was a false thing, made false by his own hand and dishonest desires. Is it true that he made a promise to another? For the usual purpose of minstrels and courtiers? Long before the marriage to Elizabeth Woodville?’
A moan of discomfort came from the crowd and Richard spoke over them all.
‘It grieves me sore, but yes, Father. Yes, it is true.’
‘Then all his children are bastard slips of green, Lord Protector. Bastard-born. Yet poor Clarence has a son, does he not?’
Richard found his mouth pursing in irritation. He had not planned this part.
‘His father was attainted, Father. That part of the line has no claim.’ The crowd murmured once again and Richard stared at the white and tanned necks of working men.
‘Then who stands next in line, Lord Protector? If bastard slips cannot take root – and attainted slips cannot, who else shall stand?’
‘I shall, Father,’ Richard said. ‘I shall stand. For my brother’s sake and to honour his memory, I shall be king.’
The crowd began to cheer, beginning with those who had been paid, perhaps, but spreading quickly to all the rest. Richard basked in their approval. He wondered if the sound of their cheering would carry all the way to Parliament. Probably not, though they would hear it anyway, passed in whispers and held behind hands, but with the force of a weed growing through stone. They would accept what they could not stop, if only because England had seen too much of war.
Buckingham had said it best, perhaps. The country had been torn apart from the moment Henry of Agincourt died too soon and left a child to rule. The cities and the lords would not allow another child to take the throne, not with a
better man waiting. Richard of Gloucester was of York – and a name they knew. He had also shown he would take it from their bloody hands if they stood in his way. There was no other choice in that year. The entire country would choose to crown the Lord Protector, rather than some stripling boy.
‘My mother says they are much reduced,’ Henry Tudor said to his uncle. Jasper grunted in reply, leaning back in his chair with his legs crossed to enjoy the Paris sun. The gardens at the Palace of the Louvre were particularly bright that year, with entire beds of iris and lily in yellow and purple that scented the air in fragrances so heady as to be dizzying.
Jasper had never been a particularly willing listener to his nephew’s letters. It seemed that he had opened a floodgate of words by arranging their little meeting with Margaret Beaufort in London all those years before. From that point on, the little woman wrote almost constantly, reporting everything that went on at home. She was well placed to do it too, Jasper conceded. Her new husband seemed to have risen with Richard of Gloucester as a trusted man. Perhaps some of that changing status lay behind the delight King Louis now took in them. They were not often invited to the capital to be feasted and fitted with new garments, after all. Jasper scratched himself at the thought, hoping the cloth would itch a little less in time. King Louis’s stipend had sufficed for a dozen years to keep them, but hardly in luxury.
It was true the French king no longer paid seventy thousand in gold to England, not since the news had reached him of King Edward’s sudden death. Louis had thrown a great banquet in celebration of his victory over an old enemy, spending some great part of the payment on so many courses and rounds of fine wine that he had been reduced to a vomiting old man for three days afterwards. At sixty, it seemed
King Louis had become a rather elderly spider, more grey-legged than black. Still, his pleasure was infectious. It was only a shame that Margaret of Anjou had passed away in her sleep a few months before on her family estates. She had been denied even the satisfaction of outliving King Edward.
Henry Tudor had grown from the withdrawn boy Jasper had rescued at Pembroke Castle into a tall and saturnine man. They ate most evenings together and fenced for exercise in the yard of the small farmhouse they had been given, close by the city of Rennes, far to the west of the bustle and energy in Paris. They had become close enough in their years together, living peaceably, almost as father and son. Neither one had sought out a family or even many friends beyond each other. In his private pursuits, Jasper went from serving girl to lady’s maid, if one took his fancy and seemed willing. He had no idea if his nephew sought out such vices.
On summer evenings, his nephew would sit by the naked oak on the hill and stare into the north and west. It was the only sign of restlessness in him and Jasper thought Henry had become resigned to a simple life. It was true Henry read voraciously in Latin and English, studying law and exchanging books with a local abbot, who had them sent from Paris. The young man seemed hardly to spend his stipend at all and had often made loans to his uncle without appearing to notice that they were not repaid.
Though Jasper felt the frost of age, he was still thin and energetic enough on most days, or so he told himself. Yet the chance to return to Paris and doze in the sun had been too good to resist, even with all the bruises and inconvenience of travel to reach it.
In the winters, Jasper still dreamed sometimes of Pembroke, his dream-self wandering its halls and standing atop
the walls like a ghost. Summer was a happier time, and in the heat he slept more soundly.
Jasper cracked one eye and watched Henry pace up and down the long hall, its windows open to the magnificent gardens outside. A soft breeze blew in the scent of flowers and if he had been asked to describe heaven at that moment, it would have been that spot, with a jug of English ale waiting at his elbow. The long hall was said to have been created for the act of pacing. Some previous king had discovered the action aided him in his thinking. Henry seemed to enjoy the practice.
‘My mother says …’ Henry stopped suddenly, his eyes moving back and forth over the lines of dense script. It was unusual enough to make his uncle sit up and repress a yawn.
‘Your mother was a sweet girl when I knew her,’ Jasper said. ‘Sharper than she looked as well. Certes I am surprised how many husbands the woman has found for herself.’
‘Wait, Uncle … she says King Edward’s son will not inherit.’
Jasper sat up straighter at that.
‘Why not? Did the boy die? Come on, Harry, you’ve caught my interest now. Tell me or read it aloud or just hand the letter to me and let me read for myself. Don’t gape at it.’
To his surprise, his nephew did just that, dropping the letter in his lap as he passed by, pacing faster. Henry was twenty-six years old and he had not seen his home for half his life. As Jasper read, he looked up from the letter and saw the young man brushing a mane of dark hair away from his face, then securing it with a leather strip. Henry looked a great deal as his father had done, reminding Jasper of his brother in moments of surprising pain when they came. It was one such instant, in the way he looked at his uncle. Jasper held up a finger in response, reading the entire letter
carefully. When he looked up again, he was breathing more shallowly.
‘Is it a chance?’ Henry asked. ‘ “The house of York is much reduced this year” – are they not, Uncle? There was no hope at all with King Edward on the throne, a man at forty years, with his brood of sons, and daughters to marry away for titles and wealth. Even now, even with his death, he has two strong sons. And yet … and yet! Did you read to the end?’
Jasper scratched his chin. It had been a while since he had visited the barber and he knew his bristles came in white and aged him. Perhaps it was time again to be smooth-shaven.
‘I did. If your mother is right and has not misunderstood.’
‘Uncle, she attends court. Her husband is the royal treasurer. She would know how important this was to me. Tell me! Is this a weakness in them? Instead of a strong line, they have this Richard of Gloucester ascending the throne. If we can strike when it is all new, before they settle into a long line of traitors and usurpers, who knows but we might win it all back. Is it madness, Uncle? I have thought so long on this that I no longer know what is real and what is not. Lend me your judgement.’
‘It is enough to speak to King Louis, that much is certain. With respect to your mother, he’ll have a dozen ears in that court and he can confirm what she says. I imagine this is why we have been summoned to Paris. King Louis will ask you the same questions. Is this a chance? I will not be found asleep if it is, Harry! I swear that much. I will not be found wanting.’
‘It would be worth losing all this, Uncle, wouldn’t it?’ Henry said, gesturing to the magnificence all around them. The Palace of the Louvre was a place of great beauty, but not one tile, not one pane of glass belonged to them. Henry meant safety and peace. They were considering throwing to hazard every part of their quiet life.
‘It is worth any risk,’ Jasper agreed. ‘Come, let us see what Louis has to say to your mother’s letter. Perhaps we will write back and give her good news.’
Richard came out on to the balcony at Baynard’s Castle, looking down on a great throng of lords and wealthy merchants, Members of Parliament, knights, captains and men of the Church. He wore doublet and hose in gold and blue, with pineapples embroidered as a pattern. Over such rich colours lay a gown of purple velvet trimmed in ermine. He was very taken with the effect.
He smiled on them all. The great and the good had made their way to his family home on the banks of the Thames to acclaim him as king. Parliament had debated his right to the throne without him the day before, his presence expressly forbidden. Yet they had known his gaze was upon them even so.
He caught the eye of Buckingham, who had spoken so well on his behalf that very morning and in Westminster the day before. The young duke had gone too far when he’d begun explaining to London crowds that King Edward himself may have been illegitimate. Buckingham seemed not to understand what a grievous insult it was to Richard’s own mother, Cecily. Richard had tried and failed to shut Buckingham’s mouth on the subject. The young duke was just bursting with his own importance and had insisted on addressing great gatherings of commons on Richard’s behalf.
What mattered was that the Members of Parliament had nodded their wise old heads: men of the shires, serjeants-at-arms, justices of the peace, representatives from every city in the kingdom, barons and earls and dukes all drawn together in one great assembly in Westminster Hall, all present to vote on his right to ascend the throne.
They had agreed to accept the Lord Protector as king. Richard was still giddy with the knowledge. It was not three months since his brother’s death and he had not wasted a day of it, not one.
The crowd below were cheering him in the great hall of Baynard’s, packed in and spilling out through every open door and window, with men and women there craning just to see him.
‘I have been told of good tidings,’ Richard announced, causing them to laugh. ‘I have been told I should turn my steps to Westminster, to sit on a chair and be crowned!’