The Stolen Crown: The Secret Marriage That Forever Changed the Fate of England (33 page)

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“Sanctuary? Why, for God’s sake?”

“She’s putting it out that you have ill designs on the entire Woodville family. And God knows, they’re scattering like rats. Edward Woodville’s out to sea. Dorset is with the queen in sanctuary. Though not before he tried to raise an army. Couldn’t do it. The council received your letters, Richard, and is glad you’re in control. Hastings is positively glowing.”

“Where’s the Bishop of Salisbury?” Lionel Woodville had achieved a bishopric the year before. “And Richard Woodville?”

“Oxford, as far as I know, for the bishop. And as for Richard, who knows? He’s never done much more than potter on his estates. One hopes he’ll keep doing that.”

I frowned. Not for the first time, it occurred to me to wonder what Kate would think when she heard that I’d arrested her brother and her nephew.

It wasn’t a thought upon which I liked to dwell. Richard, however, was grinning. Lovell said dryly, “You don’t seem too concerned.”

“I’m not. This proves that they’re guilty as hell. I’ve already told the council of the plots against us. This just buttresses our claims. It couldn’t be better.”

“But you’re not going to tarry here much longer, are you?”

“No. Tomorrow we’re leaving here. With all our men we’ll be moving slowly, but we should get into London the day after next.”

“The fourth of May. That was the day the council set for the king’s coronation.”

“It’s going to have to wait, then. We’ll tell the king that more time is needed to make it a grand affair—and that’s true enough.”

“Is the boy in good spirits?”

“The king,” corrected Richard. “His moods come and go. He has a chaplain he’s fond of. Tomorrow we’re going to appoint him to a church.

That should keep him happy for a while. And then when he enters London as king, there will be a grand show, of course. If he’s not reassured by all of that, then I don’t know what will.”

2 2 0 s u s a n h i g g i n b o t h a m “Has he asked you what you plan to do with his uncle and the rest?”

“Many times. I tell him that it’s for the council to decide.”

“And what when he finds that his mother is in sanctuary?”

Richard yawned. “We’ll deal with that when he finds out.” He stood.

“Anyway, it’s time to pay your respects now. Bow deeply. His grace gets touchy when you don’t.”

The king could not have wished for more ceremony than he received when the three of us, accompanied by five hundred men of Richard’s retinue and mine, rode into London on May 4. We had sent cartloads of arms belonging to the Woodvilles—rounded up, Richard told me, by his spies—ahead of us as proof of the plot, but they had not made much of an impression, we later heard. All wanted only to see the new king.

As we approached the city at Hornsey, we were greeted by a flood of scarlet and murrey—the mayor and the aldermen clad in the former, the hundreds of men from the city guilds clad in the latter.

Richard and I, garbed in mourning, looked downright gloomy next to them. The king was smiling, though, and he kept on his smile as the mayor launched into a long speech of welcome. Only when he had finished and the procession began to wind its unwieldy way toward Bishopsgate did Edward say, “My uncle Anthony should have been here! And my brother Richard and dear old Vaughan! When do you intend to release them?”

“When I am satisfied that they pose no threat to me,” said Richard. “Or to your grace.”

Edward stared sullenly at his horse’s mane for a moment. Then he lifted his head and resumed smiling at the guildsmen.

There is nothing so exhausting as ceremony, particularly royal ceremony.

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By the time the king had been settled at the Bishop of London’s palace and all of the necessary forms had been gone through, I could have crawled into a corner and slept for hours, and so, I suspect, could Richard.

At the palace, however, was William Hastings, and he was too elated to be tired. “The power in the right hands, and with no more blood than would have been spilled from a pricked finger!” he said after we had described the events at Stony Stratford and Northampton to him. “Though I really didn’t think that the Woodvilles would go as far as to try to assas-sinate you. An ambush, you say?”

“Yes, and we’ve the weapons to prove it. Four cartloads of weapons stored up outside the city.”

“Yet hadn’t those been stored there long ago for the Scottish campaign?

But your intelligence is no doubt superior to mine. The king looked well, considering. Poor lad, all this must be a shock to him. We must get his brother to him; he’s a merry lad and will be good company. If the queen had had more sense than to scamper into sanctuary with him… But all will come right. You’ll find the council most amenable to your serving as protector, your grace.”

“So Lovell said.”

“Those letters from you were very reassuring to the council. Which, I presume, my lord of Buckingham will be joining now?”

“Indeed,” said Richard. “Harry’s been invaluable to me.”

I smiled.

“And there shall be offices for Harry as well, very soon.”

I gulped. All those years in outer darkness…

Hastings just barely raised his eyebrows. Perhaps he was wondering about the speed of my ascent, and wondering if something might come his way as well, but he was too polished to say anything other than, “Well deserved, I’m sure.”

“Shall you stay for supper with us?” I stammered.

“I must decline, your graces, as I have a previous engagement. Mistress Shore has asked me to sup with her tonight. Indeed, I should be setting out now.”

2 2 2 s u s a n h i g g i n b o t h a m He took his leave, a decided spring in his step. Richard shook his head after he was gone. “Taking over that Shore wench, and Ned dead for less than a month. The old rooster.”

xvi

May 1483 to June 1483

Once the ceremony of the king’s entry into London was over, the council—including me—set busily to work. We scheduled the king’s coronation for June 22, and it was I who suggested that his lodgings be moved to the Tower. It was a sensible enough suggestion; there were comfortable royal apartments there, room enough for both the king and his brother when the queen came to her senses and saw fit to let him leave sanctuary.

Rivers, Grey, and Vaughan were all still in prison: Rivers at Sheriff Hutton, Grey at Middleham, and Vaughan at Pontefract. Richard was all for executing them, and requested that the council authorize him doing so. But the council would not agree without more definite proof of a plot.

Richard’s own word was good enough for me, but I didn’t gainsay the council on this point. I’d already written Kate to tell her the news, and I’d received a furious letter in her own hand, then another letter in the same hand a day later, this one begging me to use my influence to see that the three men were shown mercy.

I frowned at the second letter with irritation. Kate was a grown woman, who’d not taken it all that amiss when the late king executed his own brother. Did she really expect Richard to show mercy to the men who had plotted against his own life—and perhaps mine? But yet these were her blood relations; I couldn’t expect her not to be angry. So I was glad to write to her and say that they were still in prison, but that nothing had been decided and that there was an excellent chance that in time—perhaps

2 2 4 s u s a n h i g g i n b o t h a m when the king was a man grown and they could cause him or Richard little trouble— they might go free again.

I believed that, Kate. I truly did.

In the meantime, Richard more than kept his word to grant me offices.

I was made chief justice and chamberlain of North and South Wales, and constable and steward of so many castles, I could not tell you all of them now, less than six months later.

From nobody to virtual king of Wales was a dazzling change, and I would be a liar if I told you that it did not go to my head. I careened around town with a large escort, spent huge sums of money, and slapped Stafford knots on any man who would stand still long enough to allow it. Yet I did attend to my new duties conscientiously, as all of us on the king’s council did. I wanted to be worthy of the trust Richard had placed in me—and perhaps I also wanted to show the dead king how ill-advised he had been not to place such trust in me.

As for the living king, despite the initial signs of a thaw he had exhibited, he had not really warmed to Richard or me—that, I knew, would not happen, if ever, until the day came that Rivers, Grey, and Vaughan were released. Maybe not even then. Hastings, however, was not at the same disadvantage we were, and as he had sons and wards not far from the king’s age, he made considerable inroads in Edward’s confidence. One day, he requested permission to take the king hunting, a proposition to which Richard agreed, though somewhat reluctantly.

“You’ve not rewarded him much,” I said after Hastings had made his amicable way out of the door.

“Should I relieve you of some of your offices?”

“Well, no. But simply reappointing him as Master of the Mint didn’t seem that generous to me.”

Richard shrugged. “He’s a decent fellow. But he’s Ned’s boon companion, not mine.” He drummed his fingers on the table at which

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we sat. “I wonder if I should have allowed Hastings to take the king hunting. He’s been pressing in council to release Rivers and his ilk, you know, and the king’s bound to ask him about it. I’ve a mind to recall my permission.”

“I wouldn’t. You’ll only make more of an enemy of the king than he is already to you. And to me.”

“Enemy?”

“I’m not overstating it, Richard. The boy hates us for those arrests.

Before Northampton, when I saw him at Ludlow, he would talk to me readily, laugh. All has changed.”

“You’re right, I suppose. I did right to have the council extend my powers as protector beyond the coronation, until he’s of age.”

“But after that? You’re Duke of Gloucester. Not a title without ill omens.

You know the history as well as I. My forebear Thomas of Woodstock, Duke of Gloucester, was murdered on orders of Richard II. Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester, died suspiciously during the sixth Henry’s reign.”

“You speak of ill omens, and yet you tell me to allow the boy to go off alone with Hastings?”

“Yes. You don’t want the boy growing up with a grudge against you.

He’s no fool, no more than his father ever was. So you need to gain his confidence. Do more than let him go hunting. Free his Woodville kin, Richard. My wife would thank you for it also. You can keep a close eye on them, limit their landholdings and power, to ensure there’s no trouble.”

“I don’t know. Maybe I should just start by taking him hunting, like Hastings did.”

“You could do Hastings one better by taking him to a brothel.”

“That’s more Hastings’s department.” For the first time, Richard smiled.

“He’s made a conquest of that Shore woman, I hear. He spends every night with her; it’s convenient that his wife hasn’t arrived in London yet.”

“Dorset in sanctuary must be going mad with envy.”

“Sometimes I wonder, Harry, who corrupted whom: Hastings, my brother, or my brother, Hastings?”

2 2 6 s u s a n h i g g i n b o t h a m “It’s surely a toss-up.”

“Well, Ned has Hastings beat by sheer numbers, not to mention variety.

Tavern wenches, shopkeepers, merchant’s wives, gentry—they’ve all been well represented in my brother’s bed. A miniature parliament in skirts, you might say, except for the nobility.”

“Well, there was the Earl of Shrewsbury’s daughter, Eleanor Butler.” I chuckled. “Kate told me some choice gossip about that years ago.”

“Oh?” Richard yawned.

“Yes. According to the Duchess of Norfolk—Lady Eleanor’s sister, that is, not the old dowager—Edward went so far as to promise marriage to her if she would succumb. Or maybe she simply succumbed without the inducement. It’s all hazy now—Richard?”

Richard’s face had gone white. “What the hell did you just say?”

“The Duchess of Norfolk said—“

“I heard you, I heard you. For God’s sake, Harry, how could you have kept this to yourself?”

“What was to report? That Edward had made yet another conquest? And the lady was long dead when I heard about it.”

“Christ, Harry, don’t you see? If he promised her marriage and they had sexual intercourse, there was a marriage! This could change the whole succession! Don’t you see? If there was a marriage between those two, there was no valid marriage between the king and that Woodville woman. That means—”

“Young Edward is a bastard. All of the king’s children are bastards.

Leaving Clarence’s son next in the line for the throne.”

“No. Clarence was attainted. So leaving—”

“You.”

We sat there staring at each other for a few minutes. Then Richard shoved his chair back. “We have to find out the truth. Now. Starting with the Duchess of Norfolk.”

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“The king took advantage of my sister,” said the Duchess of Norfolk.

We had been so fortunate as to find her at hand in London, where she’d traveled to attend the upcoming coronation. “She was widowed and vulnerable, and he young and handsome, so she was an easy mark for him. It didn’t take long for her to fall into his bed.”

“But did he promise her marriage beforehand?” Richard asked.

“She didn’t care to speak of the matter, not to me at least. Perhaps to her confessor. But I can tell you this: my sister was a lady of the highest principles.