The Stolen Crown: The Secret Marriage That Forever Changed the Fate of England (41 page)

“What did Anne say?” I asked for the sake of saying something.

“What do you expect? She’s a woman. She wept and carried on and said that God would have his revenge on me, that I’d doomed the entire House of York. Oh, she also said that if my father had known what I would do, he would have had the midwife strangle me when I came out of my mother’s womb.” Richard winced. “One thing you can say about my wife; she’s not shy in expressing her opinions when the occasion suits. I let her huff and storm for a while, and then I reminded her that those boys would be a threat to our own son’s crown and that they had to be eliminated because of that. That calmed her a bit, and I think after that she began to see reason.

Or she will, given a little time. Women will forgive a great deal when you tell them it’s for the good of their children, especially when it also happens to be the truth.”

“And God? Will He forgive you?”

Richard sighed. “I suppose the Lord might be even less understanding than Anne, but when my time comes He will weigh the good to the entire nation against the harm to the two boys; I’m sure of it. What sort of life

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would it have been for the poor lads, anyway? I never would have felt safe having them at large; they would have had to be prisoners always in deed if not in name. Even at your Welsh paradise of Brecon, Harry.”

I could hardly bear to ask my next question. “There was no plot by Anthony Woodville and the rest. Or by William Hastings. Was there?”

For a passing moment, I saw what I had never seen before in Richard’s face when he looked at me: contempt. Then he shrugged. “Not that I could verify. There would have been if they had been allowed to live.

Some chances aren’t worth taking.”

“The precontract?”

“Come now, Harry! You heard the evidence as well as I. It’s damn shabby. But all it takes is a promise of marriage, followed by sexual intercourse. It certainly could have happened. I wouldn’t underestimate Ned’s determination when he was rutting. Hell, he could have secretly married half of the female population of England before he got around to Eleanor Butler. Edward’s real queen could be one of my mother’s laundresses for all I know.”

“Did you plan to take the throne all along? Back at Northampton?”

“Lord, Harry, you’d think you had me on the witness stand! The possibility did occur to me, but back then all I really wanted to do was to clear the queen’s nuisance relations out of the way. What real choice did I have?

It would have been nothing but struggles between me and them as long as Edward was a child, and what would that have accomplished? We’d have been at arms against each other in the end. I didn’t need that again. Neither did England. Sooner or later, one side was going to be vanquished, and it sure as hell wasn’t going to be mine.” He smiled at me. “Actually, it was you, with your dire warnings about the fates of the dukes of Gloucester, and your information about Eleanor Butler, who finally decided the issue for me. So you truly have been a kingmaker, Harry. Who would have thought it back all those years ago at Writtle?” Richard laughed. “Did I ever tell you what a snotty-nosed brat you were at the time?” He put his hand on his hip and his nose in the air and squeaked, “‘I am Harry, and one

2 8 0 s u s a n h i g g i n b o t h a m day I will be the second Duke of Buckingham!’ Thank God you improved with age.”

“Indeed,” I managed.

“Now, there are some others waiting for me, Lovell said. I’d best see them; we’ll be off early tomorrow. You don’t mind, old man, if I leave you alone after your journey?”

“No.” I forced a smile and rose off the stool. “I’m stiff from riding, anyway. I need to stretch my legs before the sun sets.”

I’d had my conversation with Richard alone, with a couple of my men waiting outside his chamber for me. I ordered them off and wandered around the streets of Gloucester, scarcely knowing or caring where I went.

Two young boys were dead, after I had promised them they could trust me. True, the killings hadn’t been my idea. None of the deaths had been.

But I’d not done anything in defense of the victims. Instead I had helped place Richard on the throne. If I had protested, refused to give him my support, King Edward’s sons might still be alive today.

There was no more despicable crime than infanticide. And my hands were hardly cleaner than Richard’s. From the day those boys’ attendants were withdrawn and their confinement became closer, I should have known what fate awaited them. Anyone who knew his history would have known. Edward II, Richard II, Henry VI—all had died when they lost their thrones.

But the boys were children. Who would have thought that he would put them
to death?

Everyone. The men who had staked their lives upon getting them out of the Tower. The men whom I had passed in the streets on occasion, pointing to that fortress and whispering, tears streaming down their faces.

Aunt Margaret. The boys themselves. Only I, foolish I, had willed myself blind to their danger.

What if I had resisted Richard’s quest for the throne or sided with my

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wife’s relations? Probably Richard would have disposed of me as easily as the others, with some regret, perhaps, but without hesitation. But the thought that I would resist had probably never crossed his mind. He knew me, and the love that had made me abandon all honor, much better than I did myself.

I had wandered to the quay. The sun had long since set, and under the cover of the darkness it would be easy enough to throw myself into the Severn and disappear from the world forever. Indeed for several hopeless moments I stood there contemplating just that. But then sense took hold.

My children would already have to live down the association of the Stafford name with infanticide—and regicide. How could I shame it more by staining it with my own self-destruction?

I turned and made my way back to St. Peter’s Abbey, where the king and his nobles were staying. Instead of going straight to my lodgings in the priory, I knocked at the Cemetery Gate, where the pilgrims entered. If the monk who opened the door thought there anything odd about my appearance, as there surely must have been in my state of mind, he said nothing.

“Take me to the tomb of King Edward, please. I should like to stay there alone for a while.”

“Yes, your grace.”

King Edward II was an ancestor of mine, and Richard’s too of course, and it was his deposition following his disastrous reign that had set the stage for so much misery to come by showing men that it was not all that hard, after all, to get rid of an unwanted king. He had suffered a horrid, unspeakable death at Berkeley Castle. As a young boy in the queen’s household, I’d snickered about the means—a red-hot poker shoved into his fundament.

Every lad my age had made a nervous jest about the subject. Yet in his time poor Edward had been thought a saint by some, and it was the offerings of his pilgrims that had made the abbey the fine place it was today. Even today, some still came to this tomb and prayed.

I stood next to the tomb and gazed at the king’s alabaster face. It was his love—some said a wicked and unnatural love—for his friends that had

2 8 2 s u s a n h i g g i n b o t h a m brought him down. He had clung to them when to forsake them would have been to save himself. This, then, was a man who could understand the love I bore for Richard, the love that until this day had proven steadfast against all other considerations.

“I didn’t think he would do it, your grace,” I said softly as the alabaster face with its sweetly sad look stared impassively at the tomb’s canopy.

“How could I? I loved him. I
still
love him.”

Then I leaned my head against the tomb and wept until sheer weakness sent me to my knees. Once upon them, I sent prayer after prayer to the skies.

Richard and I were both up early the next morning, and we met as if all were normal. He chatted about his recent visit to Magdalen College at Oxford, and twitted me about my own Stafford family’s distinct preference for Cambridge. Mostly, though, we spoke of business, chiefly concerning my duties in Wales.

“So you’re off for Brecon,” Richard said finally as I started to take my leave of him. “I can’t persuade you to venture north on my progress with me, just for a few days? Not even to see whether the northerners truly have tails, as all of you southerners seem to think?”

“I’ll take your word for it.” I managed a ghost of a grin.

He walked with me to the abbey entrance, where all my men had gathered, and embraced me as I prepared to mount my horse. “God keep you on your progress, Richard,” I said as we embraced in farewell. I held him more tightly than was my wont; did I know then that we would never meet again? “I shall write soon of events in Wales.”

“God keep you, Harry.” He smiled and said into my ear, “It was for the best, old man. Remember that.”

“I will.”

I longed, as I proceeded to Wales, to have someone beside me to whom I could unburden myself about what I’d learned the night before. But for

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all of the men who surrounded me, there was not a single one of them in which I could confide such a terrible secret and seek the counsel I so desperately needed. I had no close friends, I realized with a jolt—except for Richard.

The gods of old could not have played a better joke on a man if they had tried.

xxi

Kate: August 1483 to October 1483

While i mourned my brother and my nephew and fretted about my own future, my children, of course, were happily oblivious to all. They knew only that due to a puzzling turn of events that no adult could explain adequately, there was a new king on the throne and that their papa was a very important man now. Their only complaint was that he was not in Brecon with them, and when in early August a man brought news that Harry was expected shortly, their happiness was complete. For the children adored Harry, and much as I was schooling myself to despise him, I could not gainsay that he had always been a loving father. I could only hope that Richard would not poison even that.

Everything had to be perfect for Papa’s arrival, seven-year-old Elizabeth sternly informed the household, me included. Edward at five was not much less commanding. When word came that Harry was just a few miles away, he stared at my gown as if it were made of rags. “You’re wearing that?”

It was less than a year old, and as expensive as anything else in my wardrobe. “Yes.”

“But it’s not Papa’s favorite! You should wear his favorite.” Edward screwed up his face in deep thought. “He likes you best in your light blue gown. The one with the pretty golden birds on it.”

Edward was right. It was for that very reason that this gown had not seen the light of day this summer. But how could I tell a small boy that it no longer mattered what I wore for his father? “All right. I shall put on the one with the birds.”

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“And not that hennin either,” Elizabeth chimed in. She plucked it out of my lady’s very hands. “The one with the gold trim around the edges looks so much better. And it matches the birds,” she added firmly.

Just minutes after I was dressed to my eldest children’s satisfaction, I heard the sound of horses. Bracing myself, I went down with the children and the rest of the household to await my husband’s arrival. Even Bishop Morton was there, standing dutifully at attention.

Four-year-old Hal pumped my hand. “I see him! There’s Papa!”

“I saw him first!” protested Elizabeth, who was a little shortsighted but hated to admit it.

“
I
did,” said Edward, in a voice that indicated that as he was the heir, the matter was as good as settled.

“Me!” piped up three-year-old Anne. “I saw him too.”

For the sake of the children, I plastered a smile onto my face. “I think you all saw him at the same time.”

Elizabeth suddenly grabbed my free hand, “Mama, he looks ill.”

That was putting it mildly, I realized. He looked ghastly. Had there been illness recently in London? I wondered. It would not have been surprising; even without the devil sitting on the throne, the place was at its most unpleasant in summer.

Harry dismounted from his horse, far too slowly for a man not quite eight-and-twenty. The children swarmed around him while I stood politely nearby.

At last, Harry rose from the children’s level and kissed me on the cheek as I tried not to recoil. Quietly, he said, “Kate. I must see you alone. I will send for you when I am ready.”

My blood froze within me, but I said calmly, “Yes, my lord.”

“You’re wearing my favorite dress.”

“Edward forced me.”

“Sit down, Kate.”

2 8 6 s u s a n h i g g i n b o t h a m I obeyed, and decided I would go down fighting. “If you have called me here to tell me you are annulling our marriage, I promise you I shall not let you make a beggar of me or the children. I have relations in Luxembourg to protect me, you know.” I didn’t even know most of their names. “And—”

“Kate! It’s not that. It’s nothing to do with the two of us. Not in that way.” He drew a breath, then another one. Finally, he said, in a voice so low I had to strain to hear him, “King Edward’s boys are dead.”

I heard the news with a strange sort of calmness. “How?” I asked unnecessarily.

“Murdered.”

I forced myself to ask, “At your order?”

“No. I am innocent of that, at least. The king’s order. I knew nothing about it until it was too late. But I should have guessed.”

“Yes.”

He looked down into my face for the first time. “You’re not surprised.”