The Stolen Crown: The Secret Marriage That Forever Changed the Fate of England (42 page)

“No. Bishop Morton feared for their lives, he told me. And I never expected anything good from Gloucester once he arrested my kinsmen.”

“I did. Try to believe me, Kate. I did. I never thought him capable of shedding the blood of infants.” He fiddled with the dagger at his side, a gesture he’d copied from Richard years ago. “Yet there is more. You were right about your brother and the rest, and about Hastings. They were innocent.”

“The precontract?”

“A lie, most likely. No one shall ever probably know the truth but Edward and Eleanor Butler. And perhaps William Hastings. At the very least, there’s not enough evidence to say that there was one.”

We were silent for a time. Then I asked detachedly, “What shall you do?”

“I don’t know. I have been asking myself that since I left Richard at Gloucester.” He gazed out the window. “I tell myself that he can do no worse than he has done, that with this deed—no, these deeds—done and over with, he will be a good and just king. He might be, Kate. He is not a cruel man by nature.”

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I chose not to argue the point. “What of my nieces?”

“I don’t believe he would harm women or girls. But I cannot be sure. I am sure of nothing now.”

“Have you spoken to your confessor of this?”

“No. You are my first confessor, Kate.” He sank on the bench beside me and put his arm around my rigid shoulders. His voice cracked as he said, “Try to forgive me. I have wronged you so much, but that seems the least of my sins now.”

We sat there in mute misery. Finally, I drew back. “You need counsel, Harry, wiser counsel than I can give. There is someone here who can give you such, if you will heed it.”

“Who?”

“Bishop Morton.”

“Amen.”

We all maintained a moment of respectful silence for the poor boys who had died in the Tower. Then Bishop Morton raised his head. “So, your grace. What do you intend to do?”

“Kate asked me the same question. I still don’t know. He might do naught but good from now on.”

“Or he might do more evil, your grace. Six people have died, two of them children. And more, God help them, will die for their role in this failed plot to rescue the poor lads.”

“Yes.” Harry stared into space. “I just don’t know what I can do. Put someone in his place? The young Earl of Warwick has a better claim to the throne than he. But he’s a child—and the son of Clarence, for whom no one mourned overmuch. No one even advocated on his behalf when Richard seized the crown. Would people fight for him?”

“There is yourself.”

“Me?” Harry smiled tiredly. “Do you know, I actually thought of that while riding here? My claim to the throne isn’t a poor one. But no. I

2 8 8 s u s a n h i g g i n b o t h a m would inherit all of Richard’s enemies, and none of his friends. And—”

He shook his head sadly. “I’d not make a good king. These last few months have taught me that. And besides, what joy could I take from a throne that came to me through the deaths of innocents? No. I don’t want it.”

“Then allow me to suggest another candidate. Henry Tudor.”

“That spotty boy?” I said involuntarily.

Bishop Morton smiled at me. “He is surely neither a boy nor spotty now, my lady.”

“I know; it is just how I remember him. But king?”

“His claim is not a remote one. Through John of Gaunt—”

“But it is a bastard one,” said Harry. “And no one knows anything of him, save his mother, who is hardly impartial. I met him myself only briefly.”

The bishop spread his hands wide. “What can I say, your grace?

Desperate times call for desperate measures. I do not believe that the people would accept you as king, as you yourself say, and the Earl of Warwick is under the disadvantage of youth.” He nibbled at a sweet cake I had set out; I had learned that the bishop appreciated good food. “You might protest that I am attempting to restore the House of Lancaster, which I supported for many years. I can only tell you that I have served the House of York faithfully since the battle of Tewkesbury, and that the late King Edward was well pleased with my services. It was through his own good offices that I was made Bishop of Ely. Were his son on the throne, I would have gladly continued to serve the House of York. It comes down not to Lancaster or York, but to this: with the poor boys gone, what is left is a choice between this unknown Welshman and the murderer Gloucester.”

Harry shook his head. “For all that Richard has done, he is my friend, and I don’t know if I can bring myself to betray him,” he said softly. “I must mull this over, Bishop.”

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That night, Harry came to my bedchamber. Instinctively, I gathered the covers around me protectively. He sighed. “Might I lie beside you? Just to sleep?”

“I suppose.”

He crawled in beside me and touched my unresponsive hand, then rolled over on his side. Much later, long after the time we both should have been sleeping, I heard the sounds of sobbing. I lay there rigid, staring at the canopy. Then the sobs at last stopped, and we both fell asleep.

Though the plan to rescue the boys from the Tower had failed, and its four leaders had been hung, England was at last arising from the stupor into which she had sunk in the days before Richard’s coronation. From Harry, I heard that plans were being made to smuggle my nieces out of sanctuary.

Alas, Gloucester learned of the plan from a spy, and men were sent to guard Westminster Abbey so that it looked, so I was told later, like a foreign city under siege. But with that plan foiled, others sprang up in its place. Soon Harry was appointed by Richard to investigate treasons in London, Surrey, Sussex, Kent, Middlesex, Oxfordshire, Berkshire, Essex, and Hertfordshire.

The plans were to smuggle the poor boys out of the Tower, for besides Richard and the men who had done his bidding, only Harry, Bishop Morton, and I knew that they were dead.

During this time, Harry acted as Richard’s trusted servant, carrying out his orders with an alacrity and ability that made me wonder how differently things might have turned out if the late King Edward had shown him more favor.

Yet he continued to closet himself with Bishop Morton daily, and I knew that he was struggling with the question of whether to remain loyal to Richard.

For once I restrained myself and said nothing, thinking that my womanly meddling might produce an effect opposite from that I most desired.

Meanwhile, unwelcoming as I had been on his first night home, Harry continued to come to my bed at night. We slept as close to our respective edges as possible at first, but each evening we moved a little closer and

2 9 0 s u s a n h i g g i n b o t h a m exchanged warmer good-nights, and one night in mid-September, perhaps out of sheer loneliness more than anything else, we found ourselves in each other’s arms again. Harry let me initiate each stage of the lovemaking that followed. When it was over, I was at last ready to share the knowledge I’d had for some days. I put his hand on my belly. “Harry,” I said quietly. “I am with child again.”

“Sweetheart! But when—” Harry buried his face in my neck. “Christ,” he whispered. “Kate, try to forgive me for the pain I caused you that night.”

“I have. I goaded you into it, perhaps.”

He shook his head. “What I said and did was inexcusable.” He rolled on his back. “But I loved him so much. It hurt me when you spoke ill of him as if you spoke against my very self, and I lost all reason.” He caressed my belly again. “I can’t believe it. It is a mercy that something good came out of that miserable night.”

“A mercy, and more than that, perhaps. Harry, this cannot go on, your being half Richard’s man and half the good man I married. Let our babe be a sign to you. Will you join the fight against the king?”

The world seemed to stop as I waited for Harry’s answer. It was short and simple. “Yes.” He took my hand. “I shall join forces with the rebels—the very men I have been investigating for Richard. And I’ll write and invite Henry Tudor to take the throne.”

The news that Harry set in motion the next morning—that the old king’s sons had been murdered at the command of King Richard, their own uncle—was the final spark the rebellion needed to take fire.

Men started galloping to and from Brecon, bearing news of a new arrival to our cause each day. Men from the fourth Edward’s household joined. My brother Lionel, the Bishop of Salisbury, joined. My brother Richard—his modest landholdings seized by Gloucester solely because he was a Woodville—joined. The husband of my brother Anthony’s bastard daughter joined. The late Duchess of Exeter’s husband, Thomas St Leger,

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joined. Lionel and Richard, a home-loving man who I knew would have rather been doing anything besides raising men in revolt, joined because of what had been done to our brother Anthony and our nephew Richard Grey.

Some joined because of the land or the positions the king had taken from them. Yet others—many others—joined for the love of their old master, Edward IV, and for their anger at what had been done to his young boys.

Margaret Beaufort joined too—or, to put it more aptly, she connected her own conspiracy with ours. Angry that Richard had ignored her requests to bring her son safely home to England, she had been involved with the failed plot to free the boys from the Tower. Her half brother had already had his lands seized for his suspected role in the plot. When she learned from Harry of what had been done to the lads in the Tower, she became the heart and soul of the rebellion in London.

Margaret had a physician, Lewis Caerleon, who also served my sister. As my sister was indeed ailing, he was able to pass freely into sanctuary, despite the guards that questioned everyone coming or going. It was he who broke the news to Bessie that her boys were dead, and at whose hands. It was he who also carried another proposal: that Bessie salvage the wreck of our family’s fortunes by allowing her eldest daughter to marry Henry Tudor: a joining of the houses of York and Lancaster for once and for all. From their union, Caerleon told her, would result a son who would blend the best of the two houses.

So we plotted, and we prayed, as King Richard continued on his progress, making a show of refusing any monetary gifts that were offered to him and smiling benevolently upon the poor who were all but shoved into his path so that he could make a show of giving alms to them.

At Brecon, I was the one doing most of the praying, for Bishop Morton was enjoying himself much too thoroughly to spend much time on his knees. Instead, he helped Harry, dashing off letters and conferring with messengers late into the night and in general moving about like a man half his age. Harry needed the help, for though he had never swerved from his purpose once he committed to overthrowing his dear friend, I knew that

2 9 2 s u s a n h i g g i n b o t h a m it pained him deeply and that it took its toll on his body as well as on his peace of mind.

In early October, the letter that Harry had been dreading for days arrived.

It was a curt note from Richard ordering him to join him at Pontefract.

I had seen other letters from Richard, full of friendly affection; this bore none. “He knows?” I said, leaning over Harry’s shoulder.

“He knows.” Harry turned to the clerk nearby. “Tell him that I suffer from an infirmity of stomach, and cannot accede to his request.”

He sighed, and I wrapped my arms around him gently, for I knew that he was indeed sick at heart. “Soon this will all be over, Harry.”

“For one of us,” Harry said.

On a crisp, pleasant October day, Harry’s troops were finally ready to march east from Brecon.

My boys and I were among them. The plan was for the three of us to cross the Severn with Harry’s men, then settle at Thornbury in Gloucestershire; Harry had feared that if we were left in Wales, we might be taken hostage by one of Richard’s followers. The girls too were to have gone, but at the last minute, little Anne fell ill with a bad cold. She was a delicate creature at that time, and Harry and I, still nursing our grief for our dead son Humphrey, did not wish to risk the journey. So we left her and Elizabeth there, well attended. “We can send for them soon,” Harry reassured me. Clearly, he was trying to reassure himself as well. “It won’t be long, and no one shall bother a pair of little girls. You as a Woodville, and the boys as my heir and his brother, are more at risk.”

I nodded sensibly, stifling my misgivings. I had no knowledge of these things, but it did occasionally occur to me that our plan might be called a foolhardy one. A man with almost no experience was leading an army against a man who had defeated the Scots and helped to scatter Margaret of Anjou’s hopes to the winds. He was to be aided by a near stranger from Brittany with no service as a soldier whatsoever. And even I, woman that

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I was, could look at Harry’s troops and realize that they had no heart for this battle. Richard, Henry Tudor, the Earl of Warwick, King Arthur—it mattered not to them who was king. There was little glory to be won in a civil war, and there would be precious little booty to come out of this one. These men were here only out of duty, and grudgingly given duty at that.

“Papa! It al looks so glorious!” Elizabeth nodded at the banners with Stafford knots flapping in the breeze. “And you look so fine in your armor.”

For the first time in days, Harry smiled. He lifted Elizabeth in the air and twirled her around, just like King Edward had me that long-ago day at Reading. “It looks all the better because you helped polish it, sweetheart.”