‘Thank you.’ I picked up my hat and gloves and stood up.

‘She may choose to talk about it later,’ he warned me mournfully.

‘That is up to her, isn’t it?' I replied, wondering how in Heaven a woman of her quicksilver intelligence could bed with this exciting, cheerful lump of manhood.

‘I'll know it all sooner or later.’ He smiled dully. ‘Waiting doesn’t bother me, Buckingham.’

 

CAXTON’S fellow printer, de Worde I think his name was, ushered me into the printing house while he went to find Lady Margaret. I breathed in the smell of ink and paper. It had been years since I had come with the rest of the court to gape at the new invention Dead Ned had imported from his sister’s court in Burgundy, so I watched the activity with renewed curiosity.

Several apprentices were arranging metal letters back to front in frames. Another was using a large pad to ink a completed frame that had already been set in the great press and when that was done, he and another lad turned the great screw which pressed a sheet of white paper down onto the inked surface. After the print was made, the screw was twisted up again and fresh paper was inserted and the frame containing the next folio was carried over. It was a laborious process but faster than using a whole monastery of copiers. No wonder the Lord Bastard had sneered at the book of hours I had given him. I suppose he had paid many a visit here and regarded any book that was not printed as old-fangled.

‘Your grace, your presence does us great honour.’ Caxton himself emerged from the stairwell. He was a gaunt fellow with the slight stoop that so often characterises the very tall. His inky fingers left a stain on my glove. ‘My lady will be here in a moment. Have you had a look around yet, my lord? May I say your patronage would be an honour, and inquire if there is any learned work your grace would care to purchase or perhaps invest in? We should naturally dedicate it to you.’

‘A book on gardening perhaps.’ An astonished silence met my answer.

‘By St Anthony!’ exclaimed Margaret Beaufort, pausing on the bottom stair. ‘Now I have heard everything.’

Caxton made no comment on her outburst, and promised to consider the matter if I provided the money.

‘Why do you not write a treatise, my lord?’ probed Margaret waspishly, as we left the bustle of Caxton’s shop behind us. ‘How to pluck a white rose at the proper season. How to pinch off the young buds.’

‘You are very froward and ill-mannered for a noblewoman.’

‘Ill-mannered and agog with curiosity as to why the high and mighty Henry Stafford has sought me out in a printer’s shop. Is the palace on fire or is it something more important?’

‘Dear Aunt,’ I murmured sarcastically. We skirted two esquires playing palm ball.

‘By the Sweet Virgin, must you “aunt” me with every breath? It makes me feel guilty.’

‘Guilty?’ I echoed, picking up the leather ball that had trickled to my feet. I tucked in the wisps of hair that had forced their way out and threw the ball back.

‘Guilty that I never bought you a wooden horse that ran on wheels or a toy dagger to stick in your friends.’

I gave a snort of amusement. ‘Heavens, my lady, when you visited us at Pembroke, your son and I were past such toys.’

That made her haughty. ‘I am sorry. Life never gave me any practice at motherhood.’

We walked in silence for a few minutes. God knows what filled her mind, honest guilt probably, but I was remembering my short sojourn at Pembroke Castle as a fellow esquire of her son Tudor. Those few months in William Herbert, Earl of Pembroke’s household were like Heaven after being Elizabeth’s errand boy. I found the Herberts a cheerful, loving family, who treated the esquires like welcome cousins, and it opened my eyes to the greed and calumny of the Queen’s household. Alas, the earl, God save his soul, was slain in the war with Warwick and I was summoned back to Westminster again.

I remembered Tudor as a quiet, intelligent boy. Not a muscular, athletic fellow nor puny either. His mother’s visit for a week when he was ten meant all the world to him. I came across him sobbing into his pillow after she had gone. At least she visited him.

‘Can we start again, my lady?’ I sighed. ‘Is it to late to become friends?’

‘Who has friends?’ We circumnavigated a herbal bed on separate sides.

‘What was your business with Caxton?’ I asked as I rejoined her and we continued on the path towards the Tyburn.

She broke off a sprig of lavender. ‘I should like him to print an English translation of a French book of devotion but he says he has too much work at the moment.’ Her dark skirts swished down the steps ahead of me. ‘Do not be taken in by Caxton’s bonhomie. He has not forgiven you for executing his patron, Lord Rivers.’

‘I must apologise to him, then,’ I countered witheringly. ‘Gloucester and I were not considering what damage the loss of Lord Rivers might cause to England’s literature when our lives were in danger at Stony Stratford. I should also point out that the Duke of Northumberland sat in judgment on Rivers, Vaughan and Grey, not I.’

‘But my husband tells me you were rather anxious for the Royal Council to condemn them. But no matter, expediency dictates that one must make allowances for the action of kings. By the by, Buckingham, this pleasant little walk you insisted upon is attracting a great deal of attention. My constant shadow over there is wondering what you and I have to say to each other and I imagine he will present exciting conclusions to the King your master. Or do Sir Richard Ratcliffe and Sir William Catesby control what King Richard hears?’ So she was singing that song again. No doubt she had her spies too.

‘I should be very wary of Catesby if I were you, Buckingham. He has already played Judas to Lord Hastings and I’m sure he’d like to make another thirty pieces of silver.’

‘Thank you for the advice.’ I pulled her aside to avoid a dog turd on the path. ‘Actually, the King is quite aware of what I wish to say to you. He is anxious for genuine reconciliation between the Houses of York and Lancaster. In a nutshell, your son is welcome to return to England.’

‘The King’, she replied, freeing her arm, ‘should advise you to save your breath.’ She stopped by the rail and rested her hands upon it, the lavender still clasped in her skewed fist. ‘What is it you really want from me?’ she asked over her shoulder.

‘Trust.’

‘Is that all?’

‘My terms are different from Richard’s,’ I promised, as she started down the stairs. ‘I shall stand warranty for your son’s safety. It’s better my way.’

‘Your way?’

‘You are planning a rising while our liege lord is in the north, aren’t you?’

That brought her up short. She turned and stared at me though her features betrayed no sign I was correct. ‘All those rumours,’ I added. ‘It had to be you.’

‘I didn’t start them all.’

‘I started quite a few myself.’

I had her full attention at last. She ran a finger round her pointed face to ease the hard white coif. ‘Why on earth should I organise a rising?’

‘Because it will be the first opportunity you have ever had. Let me see, you are going to tell the Woodvilles you will support them putting their little prince back on the throne and then when the Tower is raided, pfft.’

‘Pffft?’

‘The boys won’t be there. The Woodvilles and their supporters will say, “Alackaday, here we are with a rebellion, what do we do now?” and you say, “The princes have been murdered by a tyrant, so support my son, Tudor, instead.”’

‘And shall they be?’

‘What?’

‘Murdered?’

‘No, of course not. Richard is taking them north with him. Anyway, let’s continue with my hypothesis, shall we? Before poor old Richard has a chance to trundle the boys south to prove his innocence, the whole of southern England is up in arms against his alleged tyranny. So when Henry lands on the south coast, all the southern lords flock to him as though he is – forgive the heresy – the Second Coming. Meantime, you have ordered your Cheshire men south so when Richard charges back down like a wounded boar, you have him caught between two thumbs.’ A boar between thumbs! I could not believe I was coming out with all that but maybe my babble had hit the nail upon the head. Margaret was staring at me as though I was a vision of Our Lady. ‘Well now, is that how you imagined it, my lady?’

Her nostrils quivered as she took a deep breath. ‘Listen, Buckingham, when I was first widowed – Henry’s father, as you know, died when I was only thirteen – yes, I spent much of my time romancing that my baby son would one day become king and a great king too. At fourteen one’s ideals are so important but as one ages those fantastic hopes strive with practicalities and eventually one compromises with life.’ Her hooded eyes suddenly fixed upon my face. ‘Not only is my son barred from the throne by the 1407 Act of Parliament, but he is unknown to the English people. He has no captains, no army, no ships, and you believe I would encourage him to risk his life against such overwhelming odds? Try remembering what happened to Queen Margaret d’Anjou and her son.’

Well, I could have pointed out to her that Edward Woodville was roaming the Channel with half’s England’s treasury available, but that was better left unsaid.

‘I can see your point,’ I agreed. ‘But, listen, it does not have to be that way. Just send him a sweet letter saying Richard wants to be friendly. Henry shall have his earldom back and one of Edward’s daughters to warm his bed. I promise it, my lady. Does my word mean nothing to you? I am second to the King, I hold more offices than any nobleman in history and yet you still seem to see me as some little boy strutting up and down in a paper coronet.’

Her expression told me that was exactly how she had been seeing me but I sensed the wind had changed now. We moved in silence beneath the thick canopies of two venerable oaks, stepping over the roots that veined the ground. She stopped abruptly as a startled squirrel raced past us streaking for safety up the ancient trunk like a flame. I turned around. The human dog following us could not break cover to eavesdrop without being obvious. Margaret had not appeared to notice any longer. If her pebble eyes strayed over the bright summer leaves above her head, her thoughts were earthbound.

‘Let me ask you this, Buckingham. If King Richard should die, what shall you do? Stand as Regent to his lad or make yourself king?’

I glanced warily behind me, took her elbow and we reclaimed the path.

‘No question at all.’ I answered softly. ‘In those circumstances, I should claim the throne as the legitimate heir of the House of Lancaster.’ I looked her straight in the face. ‘Would you support me?’

She nodded. ‘Yes, yes, I would, and you would safeguard Henry?’

‘I should give him high office and a princess for wife.’

‘All very well, my lord, but we are speaking of ifs and maybes. The reality is we have a man as king now, not a child, and if I were not the doting mother of Henry Tudor, I should say you have given England a most excellent king. Our new queen has told me of all the changes he intends and they sound fair and just. Can you do better, Buckingham? Is total lack of scruple a regal quality?’

I turned slowly, my face cold and implacable.

‘Crowns are not won by caution. Neither, tell your son, are earldoms.’

 

CHAPTER 12

It seems more than just a season ago I journeyed by barge to Reading and then took horse with my retinue along the road through the Chilterns. July was at her kindest; the warm air was drowsy with songs of bees and grasshoppers. About the villages, orchard trees stooped, overburdened with fruit, while the wasps feasted on the windfalls; and beyond the thickets of hawthorn and ivy, heedless of the scythes being whetted, the corn was ripening to gold and the meadows were knee-deep in buttercups. It was the time of year to tumble a willing girl in the long grass and to Hell with the consequences.

Alas, my thoughts needed to match my destination. Oxford, city of rhetoric and unruliness. I lodged my retinue at a comfortable inn on the London road and next day after much deliberation I rode in clothed in my most sober doublet. It had been tempting to wear the emerald imperial doublet with a daffodilly stomacher – clerics hate wild wood green because it is arcane and redolent of anarchy.

Hosted by Bishop Waynflete and President Mayhew at Magdalen College, my royal cousins had already spent a morning at the University Great Hall and were thoroughly soused in moral and natural philosophy when I joined them for dinner. I suggested we should go hunting in the afternoon but no, it was receptions at the other colleges, huzzahs from students with knobbed complexions and hand-kissing by shabby scholars unearthed from their library burrows. All very lofty. Mind, I have to acknowledge that my cousin is very well read and of course this monkish community adored his no-whoring-or-doing-anything-to-excess streak.

Each to his own. Lincoln, Surrey and I thieved some of the student gowns and slunk off into the city after supper. But the tavern ale did not lighten my spirits. I discovered from young Lincoln that Sasiola, the cloying ambassador from Isabella of Castile, was thick with my cousin, and there could be an alliance in the offing. Definitely time to dislodge the foreigner and request a private audience with Richard in Mayhew’s parlour.

Once we had got rid of pleasantries, I came to the crux: how soon would the betrothal between his son and my daughter take place? I saw with dismay how his eyes grew troubled. Around us it was as if the books and papers fell silent in embarrassment. Even Loyaulté, belly-up at my bootcaps, sensed the sudden unpleasantness between us and removed himself to the hearth. A pox on Sasiola! I hoped his balls shrivelled!

‘Circumstances have changed by a mile, Harry. I am genuinely sorry to cast cold water on your earlier proposal but you surely can understand that as our future king, the Prince of Wales, must marry a foreign princess and cement an alliance that will keep the realm secure. Besides he is only nine years old and you surely remember your own reluctance to be made handfast at so tender an age. What about Northumberland’s son for your Bess and…’ Cement an alliance! A murrain on that! He could take all the posts he had given me and ram them up his arse! I did not listen to the rest of his excuses. He had promised!

Could the fool not see that the betrothal would content my vaunting ambition? My child as queen. Had he learned nothing from Warwick the Kingmaker’s rebellion? By Jesu, just some vague promise might have saved my sanity. I left the room as soon as I could.

‘Hang about, Harry!’ At the sound of his voice behind me, my heart lifted but he had not changed his mind. ‘Anne and I are going to take the dog for an evening stroll along the millstream. Pray you, accompany us.’

I had to stow my temper.

An evening stroll? We had half the plaguey college and most of the retinue trailing behind us and it was only when we lingered afterwards on the freshly-scythed grass of the quadrangle that they drifted away and afforded us some privacy.

Richard, still sensitive to my hurt, busied himself throwing a stick for Loyaulté but Anne had been trying to fathom the reason for my rare silence.

‘Are you truly sure you will not come with us to York, Harry?’ she asked.

‘There will be good hunting,’ promised Richard, resisting the urge to wipe his sticky glove on his haunch. He made a sheepish face at me across her wired veil.

I admit I was still sulking. Pah, let him go swagger in front of his son and the northerners.

‘Harry? No, listen.’ He knuckled me in the chest and looked up at me as though I was a troublesome stripling. ‘Do not take the quarrel between us so personally. I am a public creature now. I cannot let my selfish desire dictate policy.’

‘Forget the matter,’ I muttered, looking beyond him. The marriage between our children would have joined the Houses of York and Lancaster. Could he not see that?

‘I need you, my friend.’ Another gentle buffet. Ah, so appeasement was definitely on the agenda. He gestured to the building surrounding us. ‘Look at what we can do.’

‘What do you mean?’ I asked, making a sullen art of being obtuse.

‘Open your eyes.’

There was still some wooden scaffolding along one side of the cloister, but the waning sun had ripened the fresh wall of the Great Hall behind us to the hue of saffron and conjured the window glass to blazing buckles and jewelled pins. It lit my cousin’s face as he turned to me and he seemed to burn within as if his soul was reflecting back the fire of the sunset.

‘Think of all that can be done, must be done, to make England a just and fair land to dwell in. We can achieve so much, you and I. With lords like you and Jock behind me, there is no limit to the possibilities. I ask you, cousin, how do men remember King Edward the Confessor?’

I groaned inwardly; the schoolmaster was back. ‘Banishing birds for disturbing his contemplations?’

‘Try again.’

‘The abbey at Westminster?’

‘Exactly! Every night, Harry, I pray to God that men shall look back on my reign as a golden age. An age not just of good laws and justice but of beauty such as this.’ Another flourish of sleeve at the architecture. ‘By such as this shall men shall remember us.’

It was impossible to face down his dreams with huffs and sullens. He had clasped his queen’s hand and now swung her arm playfully. ‘Anne has decided to continue Elizabeth’s patronage of Queen’s College at Cambridge and I want to see King’s Chapel finished. It shall be one of the most magnificent buildings in Christendom.’

‘Cambridge!’ I scolded, crossing myself in mock fear. ‘I hope none of these doctors and demies overheard that heresy.’

Anne prodded a finger into the pleats of my doublet above my heart. ‘Perhaps you should think about endowing a college, Harry.’

‘A university at Brecknock,’ I countered with a Welsh lilt. They could have a course on rearing godly sheep and writing poetry that was not about phalluses. Aloud I said, ‘I heard that an estimate of a good reign is whether a man can leave a bag of gold hanging upon a tree for a day and a night, and return to find it untouched.'

‘Or, better still, a woman can walk from Cornwall to Carlisle without fear of assault,’ declared Anne.

‘Indeed? Not even a tumble?’ I teased her.

But Richard was too serious for my wit. ‘My brother was a fool to underestimate the gold in you, Harry. He mistook you for base metal when you have such ability, such energy.’

Thank you for disclosing what Dead Ned truly thought, Richard! That’s shaken my self-esteem again no end.

‘Holy Paul, I thank God you had the stomach to come to me at Northampton else England shall not see what we three may yet achieve, eh Anne?’

And yet you would not unite your house with mine!

Oh Richard, Richard, Richard, what fools we were, what fools we were.

 

BORING Brecknock! Although I was now the most powerful nobleman in England, riding back into the town, I found no exuberant welcome for me such as Richard would receive from York. Naught but a formal little reception, an exchange of news; yes, some acknowledgment that I now was overlord of Wales but not a skerrick of enthusiasm, no ‘Well done, my lord!’

At least Uncle Knyvett, bless him, was waiting in the bailey in front of the assembled household to offer me a mazer of wine. He had arrived direct from London ten days ahead of me.

‘Did you enjoy the royal progress, your grace,’ he asked in formal greeting, dapper in his London doublet of mulberry velvet.

‘Yes, indeed, I met with the King and Queen at Oxford and then we ambled to Gloucester where we parted. God’s truth, it was like a jolly pilgrimage after the stink and strain of London.’ Apart from the hunting at Woodstock, it had been tedious. ‘How was your journey?’

‘Nothing remarkable, your grace.’ Then he lowered his voice. ‘Apart from my Lady Beaufort’s retinue passing us on the road. Her ladyship was right disappointed that you were on a different road and then she insisted on having a few words with Morton. I could not very well say her nay, could I? I hope I did naught wrong in that, Harry.’

‘Of course not.’ I flung an arm about him and my officers fell in behind us as we walked towards the steps. ‘But otherwise no trouble with our prisoner?’ I glanced up at the keep wondering whether Morton was watching me through an arrow-slit. ‘The worthy doctors of Oxford begged me earnestly to have a care of him.’

‘No, her grace your duchess has seen him well bestowed.’

Oh, I swear she had.

Cat looked as lively as Lot’s wife as I mounted the outside steps to greet her at the door of the Great Hall.

‘Ah, such a pleasure to be home.’

‘How many loans did that cost you?’ she sneered at my scarlet cote as I strode into the solar with our little girls in my arms and Ned tugging for attention on my hanging sleeve.

‘My dear, if anything gave delight to the Lombards, it was the bill for the cartload of damasks and Italian velvets that you have yet to peruse. I hope your fingers are not sticky, Ned.’ Across his neat head, my wife’s Woodville eyes still wished me to the Devil but the acquisitive greed in her was fully stoked.

‘My lord father,’ whined my son. ‘Why were we not allowed to come to the coronation?’

I stooped so I was eye to eye with him. ‘Ned, how could I send for you when the King’s own son was absent?’

Around us, my household knights muttered approval at my reply.

Cat’s expression was evil. ‘Your pardon, my lord, I am confused. Whose absent son are we talking about? The usurper’s brat? Or the king’s son you should have crowned?’

 

CHAPTER 13

‘The only ruddy thing that has happened here since we left is a substantial increase in the numbers of fleas,’ grumbled Pershall as he unpacked. Cat had deliberately let my apartments accumulate a summer of dust. One only had to stamp on the floor and a score of eager blood-suckers hopped out from the rushes. ‘Do you wish me to see if I can rustle up those twins, my lord? You haven’t had your leg over any wench since she-who-is-virtuous, an’ I think it’s puttin’ you in the dumps. It ain’t natural. A hearty bit of fornication—’ He thrust his hips forward.

‘Hold your tongue, Pershall.’ But he was right to warn me.

Within a few days I was back down at the bottom of the well of misery. Soon I should be thirty years old and it felt like I had never left Brecknock. God knows, I had plenty to occupy me; dispatches from here, there and everywhere, including a letter from Richard still fussing about whether I truly understood his view that his son should marry a foreigner and hinting it might be worthwhile writing thank you et cetera to various worthies in Oxford. Ha, perish the thought, your highness, and there I was going to tell the deans in my own hand that their wittering made me spew. My cousin may be almost thirty-one going on a hundred but how old does he reckon me?

I was never idle. My responsibilities as Justiciar for Wales were a distraction and, of course, local matters. I had two of the Vaughans’ ruffians hanged. (I’ll swear they were behind the burning of my second largest barn in Newport but we could only get witnesses against them for sheep-stealing.) I also rode around my demesne with my officers to estimate the harvest and the work of my bondsmen in my absence, and I was not particularly happy with the way I found things. Thieving Welsh! Some might say I dispensed justice with a heavy hand.

I swear many of my dull-witted tenants barely knew that there had been another change of monarch let alone that I had become the most powerful man in England save for the King. All that they could mumble at me was about the hot sun scorching the grain and a murrain that was laming the cattle and giving them sores about the mouth.

And in the evenings? Ah, the evenings. Such amiable repasts in the great hall with Catherine sitting next to me like a wooden funeral effigy! No, I lie. She wasn’t inanimate. Woodville waves of scorn constantly lashed my averted profile.

‘I don’t care if you are now High Constable of England and can piss on Wales from a great height,’ she had hissed at me as we took our places at the board on my first day at home, ‘all I can see before me, my lord, is the usurper’s arse-wiper.’

 

VISITING Morton became like a breath of Westminster. If it had not been for his presence, I might have thought the kingmaking had been just voices in my head.

The first time I went up to the keep, I found him sitting on a settle in a narrow patch of sunlight, peering over a manuscript from my personal library.

‘Who authorized this?’ I demanded curtly, jerking my head round to chide Bannaster.

‘Lady Catherine.’ Morton lowered the book. ‘How pleasant of you to call, Buckingham. Enjoying Wales again, are you?’ I ignored the jibe. I was inspecting the room. It had been whitewashed and there were new bedhangings. Cat’s meddling again. A fire burned in the grate and the vase of meadow flowers that stood on the window embrasure looked like my daughter’s gift. So hardly a prison, save for the window slit, the naked flagstones and the locked door.

‘Such idleness and luxury,’ observed Morton facetiously, as though he could plumb my thoughts.

I bent down to brush a streak of mud from the Spanish leather of my boot. ‘Prisoners are not supposed to enjoy their captivity. Word gets out, even from Wales.’

‘I think you are wise, my son, for I have a good memory for faces. It is quite possible that the flaxen-haired groom with the slashmark on his forehead who you took from Lord Hastings’ household reports to Catesby still, and I am wondering if your swordmaster from Bedford is in Ratcliffe’s pay, and as for her grace’s hurdy-gurdy player…’

‘The hurdy-gurdy player!’

‘There was an excellent little entertainment beneath my window. The fellow has such a memorable nose. I would swear by our Holy Church that he was once in Lord Howard’s employ but I doubt he serves two masters since your wife pays him so royally. No, let us forget the hurdy-gurdy player. But it would seem that our new King’s friends like to keep themselves informed of each other’s activities ’

I smiled but I was not amused. The fat old devil was trying to tuck burrs of jealousy beneath my girths.

I strode to the arrow-slit. The poppies drooped like penitents’ heads among the wilting scabious. My summer was fading too and I felt misery swirling round me like a vengeful miasma. ‘Have you given thought to your future yet, Morton? You’ve changed your coat often enough.’

The pectoral cross, heaving on the broad, cassocked chest, rose with a sigh.

‘It would be foolish to lie to you for I’m sure your grace would not believe me, but if the world had gone as I would have wished, Edward of Lancaster,’ he crossed himself in memory of the dead, ‘should have had the crown and not Edward of York. But only a madman would fight for the dead against the living.’ He closed the book, his blue eyes distant as he nodded wistfully. ‘Yet I was a loyal servant to King Edward and would have been so to his son but God’s will be done. Yet as for my Lord Protector who is now king…’ He broke off and looked up at me with resignation. ‘I have already meddled too much in the affairs of the world and I think it is God’s Will that I now meddle with beads and books and no further.’

‘Bishop,’ I smiled, leaning back against the wall. ‘We are not overheard. Why do you think I made myself your gaoler? I am most interested in your point of view and I can assure you that no harm will come of speaking your mind to me.’

Morton folded his hands upon his paunch. ‘I know full well that it is dangerous to talk about princes since innocent words can easily be misconstrued.’ He lifted a finger to staunch my protest. ‘Surely your grace remembers Aesop's Fables from your nursery days? The Lion and the Horned Beast?’

‘What of it?’

‘Remember how the lion, who was king of the wild wood, proclaimed that no beast which bore a horn upon his brow should remain in the wood on sentence of death. One creature with a weird cluster of flesh upon his forehead began to run away and a fox called out after him: “Where are you going in such a pother?”

The creature made answer, “I must leave the wood. I am fleeing because of the proclamation.”

“Pah, you addlepate!” exclaimed the fox. “The lion meant horned creatures. That does not include you.’

“Yes, I know this bunch of flesh is not a horn,” replied the beast, “but what if the lion should decide it is a horn, where am I then?”’

‘My lord bishop,’ I assured him, grinning. ‘I promise neither the lion nor the boar shall hear any of the words you speak in Brecknock.’ The boar was Richard’s badge.

He nodded. ‘If I said what I truly thought, my innocent words would do neither of us much good.’ Interesting.

I went to the door. ‘Well, since I cannot press you…’ but he had risen and moved over to the fire place, flexing his clasped fingers. His back was turned to me but still I hesitated to leave.

‘Buckingham,’ he said at last, ‘with regard to the Lord Protector, since he is now made king, I do not purpose to dispute his title, but as for the well-being of the realm of which he has the governing and of which I am but one poor member…’

‘Go on, bishop,’ I said coldly. ‘You are talking of the king I have made.’

‘I was only going to say that although he has so many admirable qualities, it might have pleased God to have given him some of those other virtues necessary for the ruling of the realm such as Our Lord has planted in the person of your grace !’

He turned and his smile was broad as a cathedral door.

 

I LEFT him alone again for another few days until I could bear it no longer. From then on I began to visit him daily. Sometimes we talked about books or hunting; other times, when the conversation slewed around to something more dangerous, it was like dancing with a shadow. Morton was the master of circumlocution. Phrase built upon phrase so skilfully that it was hard to find the cornerstone of truth, let alone purpose. But each day he grew bolder. At first when he spoke of Dead Ned, it was with respect. But gradually, drawing a fine line dextrously between comment and calumny, he shook out the tales surrounding Dead Ned, George and Richard: how King Harry of Lancaster had died so conveniently of ‘melancholy’ in the Tower after hearing that his son had been slain by the Yorkist brothers, how Lady Oxford had found herself impoverished after his grace of Gloucester’s dealings with her, and how, after George’s execution, his lands had all fallen into the hands of his brother Richard. Scandals, executions and slayings – including those of my grandfathers and my Beaufort kinsmen – all mentioned with a shrug, a world-weary smile or a sudden lift of eyebrow.

Yes, I began to see more and more how the House of York had scythed the Houses of Lancaster, Beaufort and Stafford. Events that had been distant to me as a child, I could now understand as a man. Of course, Morton was trying to draw me back to my family’s traditional loyalty but he constantly sang a counter tenor of rather agreeable flattery in descant to the plainsong gossip. Eventually I put an end to the game and asked him outright whether he would support me, the heir of the House of Lancaster, as claimant to the throne.

He beamed at me as though I had just been on the road to Damascus.

‘My lord, I have been waiting on this day. God be praised that he has given you both courage and wisdom.’ From the purse on his belt, he flourished a small sealed square of paper. ‘I have had in my keeping this letter from Lady Margaret. Read it at your leisure, my son, and you shall see that since last you spoke with her, she has been praying that our Lord God might bless you with enlightenment.’

I took it without smiling and dropped it into the slit of my hanging sleeve.

‘It would be a very dangerous gamble, bishop. Let us be frank here. I do not have the King’s military experience if I have to meet him on the field.’

‘My gracious lord, I assure you if you were to raise your banner, you would find friends aplenty. Not only has this tyrant lost the common people’s trust, but he has remorselessly made enemies of those who loyally served his brother.’

But so had I. Yes, certainly, several score of Hastings’ men now wore my livery, but it would take some mighty laundering to wash me white as snow again.

‘Strange isn’t it,’ I remarked. ‘I paid my cousin homage at his coronation and pledged him fealty, yet you counsel me to perjury and treason. In your book, it looks as though an oath doesn’t amount to much and I find that a rather unsettling thought. Just suppose I risk my neck and raise a rebellion, succeed even, how do I know that Tudor and Pembroke won’t break their oaths to me at some opportune moment.’

‘Your grace, it is—’

‘No, let me finish, Morton. You can play the serpent to my Adam for all your worth, seduce me from my alliance with Richard, but the worst that could befall you is exile or being booted back into the Tower whereas I….’

‘My lord duke, if you are leading a cause that is both true and just, God will protect you.’ He grasped the velvet epaulettes on my shoulders and peered into my face so close I could smell the perfumed comfits he liked to suck. ‘Seek out a mirror, my lord. Can you not discern how much you have changed since King Edward’s death? The realm needs your vision and guidance. You are the heir of the House of Lancaster and the blood of the victor of Agincourt flows in your veins seeking vengeance and justice.’ He shook me gently before he let go. ‘I promise you Almighty God will give you the courage, Harry.’

I stood staring down at him. There was a seriousness in his face that I had never glimpsed before. Even compassion. He reached up and thumbed an invisible cross upon my forehead. ‘May your soul find light in the darkness that surrounds you. Be at peace, my son.’

I swallowed and stepped back. How did he know? But before I reached the door to flee that penetrating scrutiny, he called out to me. I turned round with the greatest reluctance and saw his fingers were tightly clasping his cross above his heart.

‘If you decide this cup is not for you, my son, I swear by the Blessed Christ that Lady Margaret and I will accept your decision and not a word of our conversations here will go beyond these walls.’ As I nodded gravely, he added, ‘But all I ask is that you think hard but not long, my lord. If this enterprise is to take place, there is no time to fritter.’

I had to show that I was not lightly led. All men have their price. For the last ten years Morton had enjoyed high office under Yorkist rule.

‘I suppose a cardinal’s hat would suit you, Morton?’

‘Your grace, I think it would suit me very well.’

 

MY LUST to prove myself further warred mightily with my fear of failure and vanquished sleep. In the morning I was still hesitant in yoking myself to the Tudor arms wagon, but Morton conjured up more weaponry. This time it was missives from acquaintances across the Channel: Archbishop Angelo Cato, physician to King Louis; Adam Redesheff, a scholar at Louvain and Giovanni de Giglis in Rome, each reviling Richard as a child murderer. Pah, what of it? The foreign courts tittle-tattled like whores waiting for takers. Maybe I was a fool to listen further, but then my wily prisoner began to speak of redemption. One pebble may not bring a man to his knees but a stoning will and Morton bombarded me.

Why did I agree to play his game at last? Because the Devil inside the ermine wanted to be king; because, above all, restlessness was eating into my skin like leprosy. I no longer felt alive in Brecknock, more like some poor beaten donkey yoked in a treadmill, but every time I thought about becoming king, my imagination flared brightly and the darkness lifted.

 

THE HOUR after I gave my consent to captain Margaret’s rebellion, Morton’s prison began to resemble the Chamber of the Privy Seal. The bishop wrote letters like a man obsessed. The tip of his third finger grew swollen where he held the quill against it. The missives – shafted not only at Margaret’s allies but also the men who had served Dead Ned – were cunningly worded and I suppose he had already crafted the phrases during his solitude.

I appreciated his haste. By Jesu, a woman with a babe beneath her girdle had more time than us. The rebellion had to take place before Richard returned to Westminster. Less than two months to topple a king.

He applauded the agendum I had facetiously suggested to Margaret. We would raise our banners in Prince Edward’s name then give out the boys were dead. Without them, the Woodville affinity would be crazed and hot to follow us.

It was not easy doing the webspinning from Brecknock but much had already been done by Margaret. Now she wasted no time but straightaway sent her receiver, Reginald Bray, a blunt-spoken man who had worked for my uncle, to visit us at Brecknock. I told him my terms to carry to Henry Tudor.

Meantime, I dispatched Nandik with a letter to John Russhe, my merchant friend, who replied that he would sound out his wealthy acquaintances. Cat wrote to Elizabeth of my miraculous conversion to the Woodville cause, and Nick Latimer, who had ever been loyal at heart to Lancaster, visited his native Dorset and found friends there who would uphold our enterprise.

Since I held so many offices, neither the increase in couriers nor the commissions given to blacksmiths, armourers, fletchers and lorimers roused any suspicions. I sent my servants to make purchases at the horse fairs and every day I practised a full hour at single combat.

The rebellion, like a bear cub, was gradually licked into shape. Bray returned from Brittany with the news that Edward Woodville had yielded the treasury money to Henry Tudor so he now could buy mercenaries, and on 24 September I received a letter from Tudor giving me his sworn word that he would land at Poole Harbour in mid-October. I wrote back that day.

Other reassuring news trickled in: Morton’s friends, the Brandons and the Cheneys agreed to fight for me and Russhe wrote that many of the London merchants considered I should make a worthy king. It only remained for Elizabeth Woodville to commit her followers. Without them we did not have the numbers.

It was because of me that Elizabeth baulked. That stubborn she-devil wanted to do her own scheming. News reached us that fifty of her friends had made a fresh attempt to rescue the boys from the Tower and Howard now had the conspirators under arrest. Of course, when we heard that, we renewed our assault on her. Tudor’s youngest uncle was a monk at Westminster, so Morton wrote to him begging him to intercede with Elizabeth, and Margaret’s physician, Dr Lewes, made another visit to the sanctuary. I confess by now I was growing edgy. The sand of the glass was starting to run out.

Finally Elizabeth gave an ultimatum. She requested proof of my change of heart: firstly, that I must sign a warrant for the day of the rising giving her servants safe passes in and out of the Tower. Secondly, I was required to write a letter to the Lieutenant of the Tower ordering him to release her sons. If I refused to supply either, she would take it as proof of my treachery and forbid all the Woodville loyalists in the southern shires to join us.

I knew the boys were not there so as High Constable of England I willingly signed the authority and gave the documents to Bray to deliver to Dr Lewes.

My compliance won her over. Within two weeks, families related to the Woodvilles, such as the Guildfords and the Lewkenors, not to mention Richard’s forgiven sinner, Sir John Fogge, promised support. The Marquis of Dorset was still at large and he went from friend to friend with news of the rebellion. In the west, Cat’s brother, the Bishop of Salisbury, who was still being pursued by the King’s officers, wrote to me that he hoped the St Legers, Courtenays and Bourchiers would join the rising. I promised him refuge at Kimbolton. Thence he fled and my cousin’s soldiers never thought to look for him on my land.

Morton wrote both to the King of France (reminding him how hungry Richard had been for battle during Dead Ned’s invasion of France back in ’75), and to his Holiness Pope Sixtus IV, promising more contribution to the papal coffers once King Richard was deposed.

Do not think I did not have doubts. Sometimes I would dream that I was fighting Richard again in the practice yard and wake up sweating and fearful with his blade at my throat.

‘Are you sure that Lady Margaret is not using you?’ asked Uncle Knyvett, when I first discussed my plans with him. ‘I can’t see she would want you as king if there’s a chance in friggin’ hell she could become queen-mother.’

‘She needs a captain for her army before her son lands. I’m supposed to be overcome with shame for my sins and anxious to depose the tyrant.’

‘You do realise you are risking everything you’ve gained.’

‘Well I am not, am I? If things go awry, I shall pretend I was stringing them along to lure Tudor home. But if everything shapes up, I shall be king and you can be Chamberlain of England.’

‘I haven’t the rank.’

‘You will if I make you a baron.’

He chuckled. ‘I’ve the greatest respect for Lady Margaret but yonder bishop…’

‘He’s my hostage for Margaret’s compliance.’

‘Aye, but in peril his cloth will save him. Nothing will save you unless you’ve become a closet Franciscan since I last saw you.’ He plucked at my collar lacing. ‘No hair shirt? I thought not.’ He was right to warn me. Fire burns when you meddle with it.

‘I am not a fool. I read every one of the letters that Morton sent out.’

‘No code words saying: “Huzzah, we’ve gulled Buckingham”?’

‘God’s Sake, give me some slack, uncle.’ The trouble was that he voiced my own fears. ‘My claim to the throne is better than Tudor’s. What’s more I’ll marry my little Bess to Richard’s boy. Hell take it, I could even put Edward V back and marry her to him. Tudor can have his earldom back and he’ll be happy with that.’

‘And what about Jasper Tudor, who styles himself Earl of Pembroke? What about Stanley? They will want power in Wales.’

‘If I secure the crown, they can stuff Wales up their arses.’

He pulled a face.

‘Not a blow was struck at Stony Stratford and yet we gained a kingdom, see,’ I exclaimed in the local dialect. He did not laugh.

‘But this time, Harry, Richard of Gloucester will be your enemy.’

 

PEPPERED with Woodvilles and buttered with Beaufort money, the date of the rebellion was fixed for 18 October and there was to be a rising on that day throughout the south. My only fear was that so great a number – and we are talking about a conspiracy stretching from Maidstone to Exeter – could keep so great a secret. My anxiety turned out to be better founded than the rebellion: before September was out, I received a letter from Richard, saying that Howard had heard all manner of wild tales and that some of them implicated me. My cousin suggested that I should meet him in the Midlands on his return from York so we could demonstrate that this talk of rebellion was idle nonsense.

I took his letter with me to the little private garden that I had made within my castle walls and set Bannaster on guard outside the gate to preserve my solitude.

I had planted the garden some years before. Like the great sightless ridge of Pen-y-Fan, it gave me solace. I sat down upon the turf seat and stared about me. It was well tended now but when I had returned in August, milkweeds had stood high between the clumps of lavender, and ivy had crawled amok among the speckled musk and orange marigolds.

I sighed and idly tugged a sowthistle out from here, a dent-de-lion from there. Out in the fields harebells and eyebrights, purple mallows and the white sprays of fool’s parsley flowered at no man's bidding, while within my little kingdom the dead petals already clung to the spent daisyheads and the best was over.

Desperate, I thought of Meg. I clothed her before me in a robe of lustrous green satin and fastened about her neck a collar of jewels that matched her eyes and upon her head I set a duchess’s diadem. ‘Be mistress to a king,’ I whispered but before I could bare her shoulders and worship her breasts with my lips, she faded. Burning against my fingers, I felt the parchment of my cousin’s letter.

It was in his neat hand and I let my eye trace once more the familiar signature. It was not too late to ride to him with my list of traitors save that I knew my new allies were keeping close watch on me for signs of second thoughts. I buried my head in my hands and wished that the world would heave me off its back.

The rustle of damask disturbed me. For an instant of madness, I believed that Meg had come to me, warm and desirable. But when I raised my head from my clasped knees, it was to recognise the straight folds that fell from the girdle of my wife’s gown; threads that elderberry and catkin, blackberry and medlar could bewitch into subtle colours danced before my eyes. I turned my face away to hide from her my tears.

I heard her pick up Richard’s letter from where it had fallen at my feet.

‘You have not answered him.’

‘No, I cannot. Not yet.’

‘Don’t be a damnable fool! You must reply. Nothing else will content him. Say you are sick and cannot come.’ She watched me haul myself to my feet. ‘You must right the wrong you have done and free my nephew, the rightful king.’

Rightful king? She had forgotten that the boys’ father stole the crown.

 

CHAPTER 14

You think, Saints of Heaven, that I should have kept faith with my cousin Richard, but you are not sealed within my skin. The Plantagenet blood does not congeal in the sores of the dying; it is passed on with the ambition that made our first great-sire a king. That is why we rebel; Henry II and his restless prodigy, Bolingbroke, Prince Hal, Humphrey of Gloucester and Richard of York. We are all kickers against the rut. Even that pious, monkish Henry VI was as perverse as the rest. Being born a king, he did not desire to be one. As for Edward, George and Richard? Just like the rest! Contrary, wilful, we are never content with our rank at birth but need must fight with teeth and claws to swing our fortunes up a notch. And now? And now, Richard, being king, is not truly happy for he has betrayed his brother's trust and his subjects will never live up to his ideal world. And I, rich in offices and lands, must fulfil my destiny.

 

BY THE EVE of the day appointed for my army to march from Brecknock, I had over four hundred footsoldiers, including twenty-five Russhe had brought from London (I had expected more but others were pledged to join the Kentish rebels), fifty mounted knights and eleven arms-and-supply wagons. Several hundred archers and halberdiers were to meet us at Hereford and I could rely on a hundred more from my manors across the River Severn to come to my banner once we reached England. Together with the Woodville affinity and Tudor’s mercenaries, we should be an army fit to hold off an impassioned and unprepared Richard while the Cheshire men of Margaret Beaufort and her Lancaster adherents closed in on him from the north.

 

I DID not like the temper of my army. The harvest had arrived late and the men had been loath to leave the binding of the sheaves to the women. Only bribes had drawn them away from the prospect of the harvest home, the corn dolls and the ale.

My other anxiety was the weather on the morrow; louring clouds bruised the sky above Pen-y-Fan. Water cascading from the mountains had swollen the bellies of the streams. Already, the roads streaking out from Brecknock were too syrupy for my peace of mind.

‘What do you think, Nick?’ I stared at my precious guns that had been delivered in great secrecy earlier in the week. Latimer, standing alongside me in the barn, heaved a deep sigh and pulled the canvas down to conceal them.

‘I reckon they’re too heavy for the road as it is, my lord, let alone if there’s more rain blowing up. We can have them follow us as soon as maybe, but it will mean leaving two dozen men behind to manage them. Shall I see to it?’

I nodded. ‘A cursed shame.’ I could take the risk but if the carts sunk in to their axles, digging them out would be Herculean, and they were worth a fortune.

Ah, misgivings! They skittered across my mind, gnawing at my fear. Still, if aught went wrong, I should be able to talk my way out of the mess.

‘What did your astrology chart foretell for October?’ I asked Nandik, summoning him to my chamber that evening. He seemed surprised at my renewed interest.

‘By my very soul, the death of a king, your grace.’

‘All very well, Nandik,’ I answered, trying not to wince at his pied hose. ‘But how precise are your calculations? I am told King Louis no longer enjoys good health. The planets may be predicting a new occupant for a tomb at St Denis.’

He grinned. ‘Oh no, your grace, definitely England.’

I never knew with Nandik how much was buttering and how much truth but I believed him. It is well, I reflected, as the door closed behind him. No man, not even a king, can withstand his destiny.

 

THE WAY seemed clear as we left Brecknock: straight east to Hereford. No piddling villagers would question the purpose of the High Constable of England. The only difficulty would be the crossing of the river Severn because the bridges were few.

My cheeks were still moist from my little daughters’ kisses but I had Ned and his nursemaid with us so no one could use him as a hostage against me. My little lad was full of questions as he rode with Uncle Knyvett. God willing, I though, you will be Prince of Wales before by the Feast of All Saints in November.

But then the rain began. The Black Mountains, visored by low clouds, disappeared from sight in less than an hour and the golden leaves and vibrant coverlets of the fields shed all hue as though some apprentice launderer had boiled the vat. Our world shrank from a beauteous, broad valley to a grey passage walled by thickets spiky as the Blessed Christ’s crown of thorns, and beyond that a nothingness. Many of the Welshmen grew fearful, crossing themselves and muttering to St Alud for her protection lest the Wild Hunt hurtle out of the fog.

When my horse stumbled in a rut outside of Bronllys, and the cursed rhymer in our company conjured the incident into a portent, I halted the column in the red mud. Devil take it! If I could address parliament, I could surely deal with a host of superstitious fools.

‘Good Friends and Comrades-in-arms, remember the story of how William the Bastard stumbled as he landed on the beach at Pevensey. Did his cause fail? No, he became King of England. Friends, use your wits. If a man is doomed to misfortune every time his horse slips on this shit of a road then this realm will be a country of beggars.’

I looked down the column of pikes and halberds, wondering whether it would have been quicker to have hanged the rhymer on the nearest elm rather than give these louts a history lesson. Half of them were swineherds and delvers with brains as small as walnuts. Oh well.

‘I promise you this,’ I exclaimed. ‘There are rewards to be had. Knighthoods and riches for those who march with me this day. I cannot change the weather, good friends, but I can change your fortunes.’

My captains cheered and then every man was huzzahing.

‘And now,’ I roared, ‘for Sweet Christ’s Sake, let us get out of this stinking mud and get to England as fast as we may. Forward!'

We made camp that night towards Glasbury. It was a mistake; we all rose damp and short of temper to pack up in the pouring rain. In fine weather, we should have reached Hereford in a couple of days; now we would be lucky to manage ten miles a day. Brooks that pissed little in summer were now full-bladdered. But there was other mischief afoot: saddle girths broke, tethered barrels rolled mysteriously from their canvas moorings, and a wheel came off one of the hindmost carts. Had we brought the guns, the mud would have sucked them down like a monstrous incubus.

Just past Glasbury, Limerick informed me that the wagon with the mended wheel had not caught up with us and that some of the men were missing. Well, in such conditions, I was not surprised but Morton snuffled up that little morsel.

‘Desertion?’ he suggested, edging his horse up beside mine. Foolish man! It was not helpful and he had those around me glancing at one another uneasily.

I was not in the best of tempers. Heavy gobs of water were splashing down my helm, spilling onto my sodden cloak, seeping down beneath my collar.

‘I thought you and God were allies, Bishop Morton. Perhaps you’d have a polite word with Him about improving the weather.’

Behind the waterfall trimming his broad-brimmed hat, his expression was most discomforted. ‘What I am praying for, Buckingham, is a good dinner and clean, dry sheets but I daresay that is not in the offing.’

‘Why not?’ I retorted with mock cheer. ‘Perhaps we should halt and offer prayers, my lord.’ I flung up my arm and the entire army rattled to a standstill. For once the old rascal was caught off guard. He should have thanked me for it; few men can surprise John Morton with a fresh experience.

‘I hardly think the men will be in a reverent frame of mind, your grace,’ he countered, and sighed in relief as we resumed the march.

My wretched soldiers, pathetic as soaked sheep in their dripping brigandines, tramped until twilight with the mud fastening round their ankles like manacles at every step. By the time we reached Hay, they were glad to disperse among the cottages for warmth. I put up at The Three Tuns. The landlord was so fulsome in his praise of our new king that we had to tell him that our army was for Richard’s invasion of France.

It was still pelting hard next morning and we were all saddled up ready to move off when the cry of ‘Messenger!’ went up. I expected to behold the horseman approaching from the east but he had come from behind us, an old man who had been left behind to serve the garrison at Brecknock. I noticed with an icy feeling in my guts that he rode Cat’s mare.

‘God save your grace,’ he gasped, dismounting and stumbled over to clutch my stirrup. Those closest saw the spreading bruise upon his forehead.

His message spewed out like vomit and I hauled him into the inn before his tidings infected every Jack in my company: tidings that Vaughan of Tretower, the fornicating bastard, was bombarding my castle with cannonballs. What’s more, the rogue had sent a company after us to pick off the stragglers. It was only when they were attacking the poor devils mending the wagon that the old messenger had managed to skirt around them and get through to warn us.

‘My guns!’ I exclaimed, sinking on to a settle in utter shock. ‘The whoreson is using my guns.’

‘Do you want to send back a detachment?’ asked Delabere but I felt Morton’s cynical gaze upon me.

‘No!’ I answered. Cat was capable when she roused herself. I could trust her to take care of our children, the rent rolls and all the fine possessions I had brought from London. ‘No going back, we have greater matters ahead.’

‘I do not like the smell of this, Harry,’ whispered Uncle Knyvett, catching up with me outside. ‘Are you sure we should not return to Brecknock while it’s still standing.’

‘You think we could hot foot it there in time in this deluge?’ I answered. ‘No, I do not think so, but what you can do, uncle, is take some of our best horsemen and slit the throats of any of Vaughan’s curs who are following us and round up any stragglers. We’ll wait for you at the bridge in Bredwardine.’

Uncle Knyvett is so blessedly efficient. His lads rejoined us long before we crossed the Wye boasting their swords had enjoyed a brisk but efficient excursion. Of course, some decent action was what the rest of my army expected. However, a respite from the pelting rain might suffice so we crammed into the church of St Andrew, adding crosses of holy water to our dripping foreheads.

The parish priest nearly had an apoplexy at the sight of armed men leaning against his font and sullying the floor tiles but when he realised we had a bishop snug among our breastplates, he began to wag his tail. So while he drooled over Morton’s ringfinger, I knelt in the gloom with Ned beside me and stared up with humility at the poor tormented face of crucified Christ frozen in perpetual agony on the Rood Screen.

Silently, I pledged a college, two colleges. By Heaven, I would found a blessed monastery, find some fledgling St Benedict to play the abbot, go on crusade! I’d do anything if only the sun would dry the roads. But Christ still looked agonised. All I heard in reply was the endless, endless rain spewing from the gargoyles.

Ned was awed and silent beside me. Brave little fellow. Away from his mother’s cloying care, he never whined at all but now he was shifting from knee to knee.

‘I need to go and pee,’ he whispered, pulling at my cloak, and then, shamefaced, he muttered, ‘Well, actually more than that.’

I rose and took his little hand, which was cold as a toad. The men managed smiles for us as we walked out through them. We found his blushing nursemaid in the porch walled in by Delabere’s arms in earnest conversation but she instantly slid back into her duty and hurried Ned off to do his business outside the churchyard wall.

‘So, is she willing to grant you her favours?’ I asked Delabere, but instead of serving me his usual banter, he stood beside me like a stranger full of secrets. ‘Another Elizabeth Woodville, eh? A betrothal ring or naught?’

‘Her reputation is beyond rebuke, my lord.’

What had I said wrong? He had not even looked at me as he spoke. ‘Well, it is time to think about leaving. Play sheepdog, Dick, and whistle up our captains!’

Before we remounted, I jested with them, but my shoulders were tense inside my embroidered surcote. I just hoped sunshine was burnishing the kettle helms of the Woodville men of Maidstone and Ightham and a good wind was blowing Tudor’s hired sails to Dorset. And, if not, so be it. I’d manage. The cold of the earth might be seeping up through my soles, yet I was like a horse in the shafts of ambition – unable to turn.

We crossed the Wye as it frothed close beneath the timbers of the bridge then we marched northeast to join the Roman road that led direct to Hereford. The highway, though in disrepair, had retained many of its original stones and the ruts were not so deep. However, I began to grow suspicious when we passed no carts or riders journeying from Hereford and then, while the men were struggling to get the carts across Maddle Brook, one of the scouts, sent ahead of us the day before, returned and we took him aside.

No wonder there were no other travellers: one of my distant relations, Humphrey Stafford, curse him, was ahead of us, felling trees across the narrow stretches and setting bowmen ready to shower us with arrows when we tried to clear the route for the arms wagons.

‘Then let us avoid the main road,’ I exclaimed.

The weary scout shook his head. ‘My lord, I cannot advise it. Sir Humphrey has men on every road and lane into Hereford, and the city gates are closed against you. The King has offered a free pardon to any man who deserts your army and a reward of a thousand pounds or one hundred pounds’ worth of land to anyone who takes you prisoner.’

‘How very flattering.’

Uncle Knyvett gave a low whistle. ‘Lord God preserve us! If the King knows what is happening in Wales, then what of the risings in the south?’

Russhe cleared his throat. ‘I hate to be a dampener, my lord, but clearly this Vaughan fellow must have been prepared if he was ready to lay siege to Brecknock the moment we were a day’s march away.’

I could hardly tell my London friend to bite his tongue. ‘Fetch me the map!’ I commanded Limerick.

We stood beneath an oak tree but to prevent the ink from blotching, Bannaster and Pershall held a cered canvas above us. Not the splendid coronation canopy I had planned. This was tasselled by dripping rain and gilded with water.

‘If Hereford is blocking us, it is useless trying to pass to the south so I reckon our best chance is to go north to Weobley and still make for the bridge at Tewkesbury. We have to reach Dorset before the King’s force sweeps down on us.’

Latimer swallowed unhappily: ‘Christ forbid he is making better speed than us in this weather, my lord. But what if he is? Do you think we shall have to face him on our own?’

‘I wouldn’t know. He’ll have to send out commissions of array first.’ But in my mind, I knew that if he could put heart in his men like his brother used to, he would be upon us before we could draw breath let alone our swords. I looked intently upon each anxious face in the circle about me. ‘Good friends, we have to keep this army loyal. That is our dilemma for the present. Too many have deserted because of the weather and the news from home, and now if word of this gets around…’

‘It will, it will,’ put in Uncle Knyvett dismally.

‘Pay them,’ interrupted the smooth voice of Morton. I do not know how long he had been standing there listening to every word for he had been napping in one of the wagons when we had halted. ‘I’ve been doing a reckoning. Your army is bleeding men.’

‘Our army, my lord bishop.’ I corrected, staring at the map. I did not need this Jonah and I cursed that I had ever heeded him. ‘I know what we shall do,’ I declared at last and looked around at my captains with a grin. ‘What if tonight we sleep at Lord Ferrers’ manor house at Wooton Devereux and grab some stock to replace the supplies we have lost? It lies in our path to Weobley and if Lord Ferrers is at home so much the better. We shall seize the house from him. It will restore the men’s morale. What say you?’ Their nods were heartening. I turned to Limerick. ‘Call the men together. I’ll announce it now.’

As I strode towards my horse, Morton puffed after me:

‘Buckingham, if you give me an escort, maybe I can get a ferryboat across the Severn and warn our friends of our circumstances.’

‘No, Morton, we stay together.’ He was my safeguard for Margaret Beaufort’s compliance.

 

MY MEN cheered when I promised them a hearty supper, a blazing fire to warm them to bed plus extra wages for the hardships they had endured, and then we took the road north skirting Garnon’s Hill.

It was hard going and the light was fading when we finally left the hollow way through the woods. On the rise, an ugly manor house squatted blackly with no warming light behind its windows, but in the field to the west there were sheep aplenty.

‘Ah, roast mutton!’ I exclaimed loudly. ‘Supper may be late but it will be worth waiting for.’

 

THE ANCIENT caretakers succumbed willingly to half-scabbarded arguments. We seeped past them into the darkening hall but alas the damned place was damp and as miserable as we were. Naked of tapestries, bereft of rushes, the walls were speckled and smelly with mould.

We bawled at Ferrers’ servants to kindle the dusty logs in the central hearth or be hanged for their failure. My men peeled off their wet brigandines and the pong of the vinegar they used against lice reeked through the hall. Once the manor’s supply of candles was raided, the light and warmth lifted our hearts somewhat, and with the aroma of Devereux mutton to titillate our nostrils, the men wrung their sodden shirts while the manor's steward wrung his hands. We ate hours after nightfall, greedily filling our bellies with the meat, for there was little else to go with it.

Pershall kindled a fire in the solar and there Lizbeth the nursemaid made up a temporary bed for my tired little boy. Ned had been stoic despite the rain and hours in the saddle and I was proud of him.

Morton dozed off by the hearth in the hall and I was relieved not to have his company. Instead, I sat by my slumbering child, wondering where my royal cousin slept that night.

The rain, oh Christ, if only the beat upon the roof would cease,

 

FOR several days, we lingered at Wootton Devereux. The rain continued without mercy. It was impossible to return across the Wye and word reached us that the Severn River had burst its banks. The chapman, who brought us the news, said that such a flood had not been seen for decades; with awe he told us how he had seen great beasts struggling in midstream and a wooden cradle, with the mewling babe still in it, rocking on the surge amidst the shattered planks of its mother’s dwelling.

But this weather could not last forever. I thought of raising my banner and proclaiming myself king once the sun showed its face but the truth was we could do naught until the floodwaters fell. Our opportunity of reaching the south before the day of the rising was gone.

On the morning of 16th October, Delabere and Uncle Knyvett came purposefully into the solar.

‘Where’s Ned?’ I demanded.

‘Collecting mushrooms from the sheep pasture. No, calm yourself, Harry. He can discern the toadstools.’ A restraining hand fell heavily on my shoulder. Uncle Knyvett wore a grim determination that boded ill. ‘I want you to listen to me.’ He glanced at his fellow knight for support. ‘Delabere and I have been doing some serious talking. You have to admit it’s all up with us.’

‘Devil’s weather!’ They were about to spoon some poisonous decision down my throat.

Uncle Knyvett cleared his throat. ‘You’re a man grown and can shift for yourself, Harry, but the boy is another matter. Delabere’s castle at Kinnersley isn’t that far from here.’

‘You are suggesting we march on to there?’

‘No, your grace.’ Delabere was swift to disagree. ‘I suggest I take your son there, away from his enemies.’

I was completely floored. ‘Enemies!’ I spluttered. ‘What nonsense is this? The King would not let him come to harm.’

‘That’s just it.’ Delabere glanced suspiciously at the closed door before he lowered his voice. ‘King Richard would not, I'll warrant you, but there’s others as might. If aught goes amiss with King Richard then your son will be a rival to that bastard Tudor.’ He saw the pained astonishment in my face. ‘I’ve followed you in everything, my lord, whether I’ve thought you were right or not but…’

‘But this is no place for a child.’ Uncle Knyvett stared me down. ‘You have to let him go to safety.’

‘I endanger my son?’ Pain throbbed through every syllable. I turned to the mantle and stared up at Ferrers’ greyhound device. Their silence was my answer. ‘I see.’ It took me a moment to compose myself to face them before I turned. ‘You realise if you do this, Dick, it will take the heart out of every man left to me?’

The lack of compassion in his eyes stoned me. ‘With your grace’s consent, we’ll leave early tomorrow before everyone is awake.’

I swallowed, forcing myself to be realistic. ‘Kinnersley may be too close. Once the rivers are passable, every bounty hunter in the Marches will be out.’

‘My lord, if that is so, we shall disguise Lord Stafford as a little maid and move him further north.’

I wanted to argue. I wanted to keep Ned with me. Instead, I nodded and turned back to the mantle, playing the brisk commander. ‘So be it.’

‘Harry. Harry.’ The soft plea forced me to look round. Christ! Only a blindman could have ignored the battle of emotions in my beloved uncle’s face.

‘You want to go with them, uncle?’ I kept my voice calm and reasonable but, Heaven be my witness, I should have liked to break Delabere’s teeth for this. Without William Knyvett…

‘I do, Harry. I would give my life for the little rascal.’

‘But not for me?’ I tightened my lips. ‘No, I do not blame you, uncle. I would not want my body parts distributed throughout the kingdom either.’

Tears tumbled down his cheeks and clogged in his moustache as he flung his arms about me. ‘Harry, I care for you, you know that full well!’

I returned his embrace, loving him for his honesty, for he had been like a father to me.

Delabere coughed as though our embrace embarrassed him. ‘We shall leave before tomorrow’s dawn, your grace.’ The fellow seemed to be relishing his chance to give me orders.

‘So be it,’ I muttered, disentangling from my uncle, and my angry thoughts were like a rosary prayer to Satan.

Damn you, Dick! Damn you! Damn you!

 

SAYING farewell to Ned that dusk wrung my heart. I found my boy before the hearth playing knucklebones, becoming skilled at it too.

‘Ned.’ I dropped on one knee to face him. ‘Early tomorrow Uncle Knyvett and Sir Richard are going to take you and Mistress Lizbeth somewhere out of the rain.’

He thought about it as he tossed the bones in the air. ‘But you are coming with us, sir.’

‘No, I must stay with our soldiers and… Ned, it may be a long time before I see you again.’ The cracking of my voice made him look up and the game was forgotten. ‘So I…I want you to be a brave, good boy and…and be content with all that God gives you in this life and put your trust in Him.’

He frowned and stood up and came to stand before me like an earnest scholar. His hose was wrinkled and there was a potage stain down his jacket, yet my little rogue’s cheeks shone wholesomely. ‘You do not have to understand what those words mean, Ned, just remember them when you are older.’

‘Why?’

‘Because I never had a father to give me advice and I would have welcomed it. Say it back to me: “I-must-be-content-with-all-that-God-gives-me-in-this-life.”’

I might have been teaching him amo, amas, amat but maybe one day he would remember and avoid the envy that had been my lover ever since I could remember.

I hugged him. He permitted it with childish embarrassment. Ah, he felt so tiny. ‘Listen, fledgling, Uncle Knyvett is going to wake you before cockcrow and you will have to creep out like a mousekin.’

‘Why?’

‘Because mice are very quiet and I do not want you to wake everyone.’

‘But mice are not quiet, Father. I have often had mice visit my bedchamber and they make a great noise.’

‘Then you must be a quiet mouse. And, Ned…’

‘Yes, Father.’

‘One day you will be head of our family and you must look after your sisters and brothers. Promise me.’

He nodded solemnly and I pulled his cap down over his eyes. ‘Little rascal.’

That night after Mistress Lizbeth had tucked him in the truckle bed in Lord Ferrers’ bedchamber, I sat beside him and told him of how I would take him fishing in the Usk when we returned to Brecknock and that one day he must help the town to put a tower on their church – a promise I had never fulfilled. I told him that he was a Plantagenet and descended from kings and that he must serve the King of England with a true heart just as his great-grandfathers had.

‘I’ve been thinking, Ned, see this ring of mine.’ I tugged off the ring I wore on the little finger of my left hand. ‘See, it has “HS” for Harry Stafford. Well, I want it to be a token betwixt us and if ever I send this to you, you must trust the messenger and let him bring you to me.’

He nodded, so busy moving his pillow that I wondered if he had listened, but then he pulled out the little dagger I had given him last Yuletide. It was scarcely longer than a fisherman’s bodkin with a bone handle.

‘You might need this, Father.’

‘No, I—‘

‘I know you gave it me, sir, but now I’m giving it you.’

‘Oh, Ned.’ I gathered him once more in my arms, my heart breaking. Soon, I would make him Prince of Wales but for now we had to part.

 

I LAY that night with Ned in my arms and Lord Ferrers’ bed seemed hard as rock to me. Beside us, Uncle Knyvett snored like a bacon pig until Delabere came to rouse him.

I wrapped Ned tight as a case moth and scooped him into my arms and then mutely, mechanically, I followed them down the stairs. Their esquires had the horses ready saddled. Uncle Knyvett took my son from me then he carried my hand to his lips.

‘God keep you, Harry.’

 

CHAPTER 15

I watched them walk the horses to the road bearing my son away and then I closed the door and leaned back against it.

Pershall found me later sitting before the unstoked embers of the bedchamber’s hearth. There was no longer the usual laughter in his voice as he set a cup of mulled wine before me.

‘Your grace, a dozen of the Newport men have left this morning. Downstairs they are asking whether Sir William and Sir Richard are gone too. Would it please you come and speak with them?’

‘Good Pershall, tell them I have sent Sir William back to command the Brecknock garrison, and that every man who stays with me shall have a silver penny and double wages when we’ve crossed the Severn.’ I patted his arm in thanks.

He was gone but a minute when Morton’s great bulk blocked the door like a magpie stuffed in a chimney. ‘Rats jumping ashore, eh, Buckingham?’

‘Pardon?’ I clambered stiffly to my feet and picked up the jack of wine.

‘It seems that your captains are turning lily-livered. What are you going to do, my boy? Grovel before King Dick and plead for a whipping?’ I took a swig of wine, watching through narrowed eyes as he waddled in and sank onto the chest that sat at the foot of Ferrers’ bed. The coat of arms carved on its lid creaked in protest.

‘Undecided, are you, Buckingham? It looks as though it is not just the King but God who is against you.’

It was hard to keep my temper sheathed. ‘Against me! I find your choice of words very curious.’

‘Where’s the child?’ He had noticed the empty trundle. ‘Ah, so it is true that Knyvett has fled with him.’

I glared at Morton’s fat face. Not a flicker of pastoral sympathy was there; he looked so unmoved by our circumstances that I wondered if there was actually any rising planned and whether this had all been some monstrous connivance to detach me from Richard. As if he read my thoughts, he flicked them aside with a wave of podgy hand.

‘Doesn’t it matter to you that we have failed to meet up with our allies?’ I blurted out.

He shrugged, his mouth a scythe of diffidence. ‘Quite frankly, if King Dick rounds up the Woodville captains and lops off a few heads, no, it doesn’t matter. Just so long as he does not snare Henry Tudor. Still, Margaret’s lad is not a fool, he’ll hoist sail back for Brittany if there’s a hint of doubt.’

By Jesu, was he now saying my claim as the last legitimate heir of Lancaster was of no consequence? That I and the Woodvilles were dispensable? Well, I was not finished yet.

‘You’ve been a disappointment, Buckingham, not raising the numbers we hoped for and now this.’

‘This is not my fault.’

I had risked everything, believing him my ally, and now he sat there like God at my doomsday. By rights, I should have been riding that very hour to claim the throne yet the curl of his lip told me I was a fool and not worthy of respect.

‘You Judas!’ I snarled, grabbing him by the neck of his vestments. ‘You stinking lump! You’ve dragged me down to your pit of treason. By Heaven, I should have lopped you straight after Hastings!’ I punched my thumbs into his windpipe, determined to choke the air out of that cavernous throat. ‘Liar, blasphemer! By God, the Jew priest Caiaphas could learn nothing from you.’

Latimer burst in and grabbed hold of me. ‘Your grace, desist, I pray you. The men can hear your quarrel.’

Morton’s serpent eyes glittered, unchanging. I let him go and he flopped back on the chest, one bloated hand crawling up like an ugly familiar to knead his flesh but still he could not resist aiming a fist of hoarse words to bruise me further.

‘“More is worth a good retreat than a foolish abiding.”’

‘Get out!’ I hissed. ‘God grant you burst when they coffin you and, by Heaven, I’ll spit on your tombstone. Set a guard on him, Nick, under constant watch!’ I would keep him as a hostage. If need be, he would be a peace gift to Richard.

 

A DAY LATER, they told me he had escaped, taking his guards with him. They? Limerick, Latimer, Russhe, Pershall and Bannister. The rest of my army had vanished save for a few indecisive fellows who were fearful of Stafford’s men.

We gathered together that morning in final council.

‘The river is almost passable, my lord, and then it will be open season for the bounty hunters. Should we not separate? At least that way we may save our lives.’ It was Russhe who spoke. Counting out gold pieces in Thames Street had not hardened him to riding in the mire.

‘I agree with Master Russhe.’ Latimer turned his grey eyes on me. ‘We have our families to think of. If we go now, the King will have little evidence against us.’

‘Then save yourselves, good friends. I thank you for your service of me with all my heart.’ I embraced each of them, promising that once matters improved, I would reward them

‘What shall you do, my lord?’

‘I shall heed the fox’s wisdom and lie low while the hunt is on. There are plenty of possibilities. I could go to Brittany or France. Talk the Scots King into giving me support, perhaps.’

Limerick bowed. ‘Then God keep your grace.’

He and Latimer mounted up and took the lane westwards. The remaining soldiers ran after them. Russhe had slipped away too.

Jesu, had every one of them gone? Drawing my sword, I skirted the stable and found Pershall and Bannaster leading out three saddled horses. The dog from Clerk’s Well was trotting at their heels.

‘Where to, now, my lord duke?’ Dear, loyal Pershall.

I eyed the man at his side. ‘I gave you a holding north of Shrewsbury, did I not, Bannaster?’

‘Aye,’ he mumbled. ‘It be north of Shreswbury, my lord.’

‘Good man! Then guide us there. I purpose to keep my head down for a few weeks until the hue and cry is past. And then I shall quit England or else make my peace with the King Richard.’

Bannaster agreed but he looked fit to piss himself. He had worn my livery all his life and performed his duties efficiently but he was so self-effacing that I could not recall one conversation that did not consist of a command from me and a murmur of compliance from him.

In the solar, I abandoned my expensive German armour for a stained jacket that one of my lily-livered soldiers had discarded in the hall. With my finery gone, I felt naked but it was better so. No one would recognise me now.

I almost had my foot in the stirrup when Thomas Nandik ran out of the house.

‘Everyone’s gone,’ he exclaimed, staring about him.

‘Ah, that’s what a good education does for you,’ jeered Pershall. ‘Makes you observant.’

Nandik looked even worse than me. The dye of his new gaudy doublet had run like veins down his long, spindly legs ruining his fine woollen hose.

‘Your grace, your stars… I…’

‘Jesu ha’ mercy, you think I acted on your predictions?’ I exclaimed contemptuously, easing my crude belt a notch. ‘Use your head and go! Every other jack has.’ I turned away but he flung his arms around my dirty leggings babbling:

‘No, no, my lord, nothing was false, nothing! Remember in Northampton, I warned you to beware rivers. Is that not come to pass? Believe me, this very month the King will die and you may once more prosper.’ I tried to shove him away but the sodding fool was clutching at my hose. ‘I beg you, lord, return home. Make pretence you were warned of the rebellion and were setting out on King Richard’s behest.’

Pershall grabbed him by the shoulders and hurled him from me.

‘Fuckin’ incubus! Have done with your poxy prophecies! Would we had never set eyes on this accursed wretch, my lord.’

As we galloped away down the sodden track, I realised in hindsight that Nandik had prophesied the truth. It had not been Lord Rivers I needed to fear but the bloody River Severn.

 

ICY damp was in my bones, my liver, my heart, my head but I refused to let courage trickle out of me like piss into the soggy earth. How I longed for the soft comfort of my deerskin boots. The mud-caked hose chafed at every step I took. And the filthy jacket offended me, too. Every spatter that befouled it was only bearable because it made me look less like Harry Buckingham.

Bannaster led us along the contours of the hills and the higher ground was less water-logged than the furrowed highways, but we made pitiful speed at first, our hearts jumping every time we heard a stick snap in the wild woods.

When the sun at last withdrew out of the mist at noon in a belated answer to my prayers, glorious warmth lit the peace of the forest and the bright cloak of the Autumn king swirled around the roots of the trees in a flurry of scarlet and amber. Alas, the radiance lasted scarce longer than a woman’s sigh before the clouds again took dominance. No matter, I would survive this, I vowed.

One of the horses cast a shoe at dusk and so, not daring to show ourselves at a blacksmith’s, we turned the beast loose. Then the next morning, the second horse began to limp. It had picked up a shard of stone in the frog of its hoof. With one mount between us after that, we made ill progress. I was unused to walking, let alone for hours at a time, and my feet blistered painfully.

My servants conversed sparingly leaving me to hobble along with my thoughts. Taking heed for tomorrow outweighed all else and there were healthy precedents to cheer me. Bolingbroke, Edward IV and Warwick had all returned from exile to rule England. I could, too. And this rebellion had not been a mistake. Richard’s friends would have talked him into not trusting me. I’d have been squeezed out between their thumbs like a blackhead. No, that’s too distasteful. A splinter is better. A splinter since childbirth, that’s me.

But I had no taste for this adventure any more. The wind continually blew in squalls from the south, and trudging through the Malvern Hills, avoiding the villages, was poor sport. Nor was I accustomed to an empty belly. I had to rely on Pershall to forage for us and I despised myself for being so dependent on him and Bannaster. I could not even conjure damp kindling into a fire.

We reached Shropshire and were about half a day’s journey from Wem when Pershall returned with ill news. Tudor had sailed back to Brittany, Howard had subdued the rebels in the east and the King had passed through Coventry and was setting out to hunt his ‘Cousin of Buckingham’ with a deadly vengeance. Proclamations were everywhere. I should definitely have to hole up until the hue-and-cry calmed down.

‘I been thinking,’ Pershall announced to me as we shared the meagre food. ‘I’ll go with the pair o’ you nigh Shrewsbury but no further.’ At that, Bannaster looked up fearfully, and anger drove the blood into my cheeks.

‘Why don’t you turn me in and have done with it?’ I hurled my bread at him and stumbled from their company to lean against a nearby tree.

‘I’m now a traitor, am I?’ growled Pershall at my elbow. ‘Do y’ know it’s only just dawned on my feeble wits how great a traitor you are, my lord of Buckingham! All those letters you and that great turd of a bishop wrote from Brecknock about King Edward’s son or that Welsh knave being rightful king when all along it’s you who wanted the crown. You’ve no right to the kingdom.’

I whirled round on him, my hand on my sword hilt. ‘A murrain on you for a liar! I’ve far more right than Gloucester. His brother took the crown in blood.’

‘But that’s just it, isn't it?’ Pershall exclaimed, turning to include Bannaster. ‘We just can’t have any bloody-minded beggar knockin’ the King out of the way and takin’ the crown just cos he feels like it.’

‘Oh, come now, Pershall…’ I knew I could talk sense into him.

‘No, you listen to me for a change,’ he exclaimed. ‘Gloucester is king because Parliament passed a law agreeing to it, an’ that was your doing but, bless me,’ and here sarcasm dripped from his voice, ‘now your grace has had a change of mind. ‘By Christ!’ he snarled further. ‘Your blood are never satisfied. Thirty plaguey years an’ more you lords have been slashing at each other an’ what good has it done? All your kinsmen slain an’ you, a duke, fallen to running like a wretched hare before the hounds. An’ here’s another thing.’ He wagged a calloused finger at me. ‘Tell me this, what sort of king does a traitor make? Eh? Eh?’

‘I do not follow your reasoning, man,’ I protested.

‘Well, supposin’ a bleedin’ miracle occurs and you do become the friggin’ king. You won’t trust anyone. You’ll be even afraid of your own friggin’ shadow.’

‘No, Pershall,’ I began but again he was too anguished to listen.

‘Rot you!’ he cried, his lips an ugly sneer as he railed further. ‘King Richard gave you all a man might dream of and what did you do? Throw it away like it was some soiled rag not fit enough for your grace’s hands. O God!’ he clapped his hands to his temples as though the pain of his thoughts was agony. ‘An riskin’ good men’s lives to show the bloody world how great you are.’

My tongue froze. I could not believe that Pershall of all people could abuse me so. He had one last insult.

‘By Our Lady, you are a fool, Harry Stafford,’ he snarled, ‘an’ I am done with you!’ Grabbing up his knife from beside the fire, he stuffed it in his belt. ‘God be wi’ you, Bannaster, you poor bastard.’

Then without another glance at either of us, the insolent rogue whistled the dog from the field and scrambled down the bank, taking our only horse and leaving Bannaster and I staring at each other in disbelief. I should have sprung down and wrestled the bridle from the bastard but I was not swift enough and Bannaster could not think that fast.

‘You ungrateful, stinking, thieving son of a whore!’ I yelled. ‘After all I’ve done for you. Damn you, Pershall!’

 

Wrath and indignation walked with me as Bannaster and I set forth again. We were to sorely miss Pershall’s foraging. In truth, the sides of our bellies were almost clanging together in emptiness when we finally reached Wem. We dared not show ourselves until after nightfall and then we crept past the cottages and at long last sighted Bannaster’s farm, a crude little holding north of the village with a modest orchard, a few cows and a small flock of sheep.

Three farm dogs barked at us as we wearily stumbled up the track. Bannaster kicked them away, cursing, and smote upon the door. It was scraped open by a pinch-faced, skinny slattern bearing a candle. Bannaster thrust me inside with an oath and swiftly barred the door.

‘Can’t you recognise your own man, you slut?’ he snarled and received the woman’s spittle for answer.

The place stank of beasts and cheap tapers. There was a scramble from the loft and I found myself surrounded by curious faces, all of them sleepy, dirty and unkempt: four children, a serving wench and an old gaffer.

‘Bring food, wife, an’ stop your gapin’, the rest o’ you. You’ll have your pennyworth of tidings in the mornin’ an’ much joy to you. ’ Bannaster shooed the brats away and growled at the woman, ‘Say aught, yer mawkin, an’ you’ll have the back o’ my hand!’

His wife bit back her shrewish tongue and sullenly stooped to rekindle the embers below the cooking pot, hanging from the hob. The children scrambled back up the crude ladder and the old wight disappeared behind a ragged curtain.

Mistress Bannaster slapped jacks of thin ale before us and glared at her husband. I dared not say a word but hung my head. I could see this was a mistake but I was too weary to leave. Nor did the tepid broth restore my spirits for it was greasy with fat, lacked flavour and its maker looked as though she wished it full of poison.

Bannaster ignored her. Not one word more was spoken between them until he had drunk and eaten his fill and then he checked to make sure the old man was asleep.

‘What pitherin’ be you at then? Who be this stranger?’ demanded his bawd.

‘Been on fut for days,’ he muttered. ‘Duke’s army was flooded out.’

‘Need some fuckin’ sense shaken into ye, the lot of ye.’ Now she had time to inspect me, she seized my hand and jerked it over. I had calluses from holding the reins but her fingers found the soft skin of my palm. ‘I tell ye, Ralph Bannaster, ye are not riskin’ our necks givin’ shelter to one of ’em as is on the proclamation.’ She flung my hand back at me, her face ugly with contempt.

‘Get you gone then!’ growled Bannaster. ‘You and ’im.’ I started to my feet but he shoved me down. ‘Nah, sir, ’er and her da! Ha, see, now yer pipin’ to a different tune!’

The slut’s rebellion subsided but she was still sullen.

‘E’s not one of our kind,’ she muttered. ‘Just look at them nails.’ I had put a weary hand to my face. ‘Wait on.’ Her eyes narrowed to vicious slits. ‘Without that beard…’

Pox take the bawd! She must have glimpsed me some time in the past.

‘You brainless ful, Bannaster!’ She crossed herself as though I was Satan come to visit.

‘God nail your tongue to your arse or I’ll do it for you, you foolish blabbin’ shrew,’ snarled Bannaster.

‘What you brought him here for?’ she mouthed. ‘Godssakes, we’ll all be hanged!’ Her knuckles rose to her mouth and I swear she would have screamed if Bannaster had not grabbed the neck of her kirtle.

‘He is our lord, woman,’ he growled. ‘This place is his.’

‘Not any longer,’ the woman hissed with sudden glee, looking afresh at me. ‘He’s naught but Harry Stafford now.’

I stumbled to my feet. Weary and desperate though I was, I did not want her charity and the thought of bearing either of them gratitude filled me with loathing.

‘Gracious mistress,’ I began and inclined my head grandly. ‘My life is in your hands but I’ll relieve you of it.’

‘Ohh, gracious mistress, now, is it?' she mimicked. ‘It wanna gracious when we was askin’ to ha’ our rent reduced last Lent. It wanna gracious when you denied us new thatch las’ winter an’ refused us the stewardship at Yalding.’

‘Good lady, I leave such matters to my bailiffs. My estates are too great for them to inform me of every little grie…matter. If I had known. Bannaster, you should…’

‘If?’ she jeered. ‘This poor ful ’as worked his guts out for you. Pah, we allus knew you for a hard man.’

Bannaster raised his fist to her but I stayed his arm.

‘Mistress Bannaster,’ I replied proudly. ‘I had hoped that you might give me shelter for a few days until the hue and cry has passed but if you lack the stomach for it then I’ll not endanger you further. Ralph, I thank you, and I’ll be on my way.’

‘Ballocks, ye cannot go any further tonight nor me neither.’ He turned on the harridan. ‘You drive him out wi’ your friggin’ tongue an’ I’ll go too an’ God knows when you’ll see me again.’

She stuck her hands on her hips. ‘You’d do that, for ’im?’ She spat.

I swore, but as I laid my hand upon the doorlatch, Bannaster knocked her to the floor.

‘I am the master here!’ Then he turned to me. ‘If you are minded to remain here, you must dissemble. There’s them as would turn you over to the sheriff right willingly. I'll tell ’em you’re a soldier an’ you deserted Buckingham’s army, right? But you must do the rest, see?’

‘I shall one day make you wealthy beyond your dreams,’ I promised.

‘We shall most like be dead o’ the plague ere that day comes,’ sneered Mistress Bannaster. ‘An’ where would your gracious lordship like to sleep, in the grand solar at the end of the great hall?’

‘In the barn, I thank you,’ I replied tersely and let myself out into the fresh air promising that I must be quit of this harridan, but I had not the strength to run that night. Finding the door to the byre, I stumbled in with several dogs joyously joining me. The place smelled mungy and there was a crack in the roof that let in the moonlight. Ralph followed me with a lantern and a poor blanket. Two labourers roused up but he grunted at them and they settled down again. When he had gone, they tried to question me but I feigned sleep.

Nightmares trampled through my slumber and I dreamed I was still struggling through the mud. I might have slept deeply through the dawn with three happy dogs against my legs but I was woken by prods. Eager, stupid faces, anxious for tales to thrill their humdrum lives loomed over me. I swore at them like a soldier, but they pestered me like children and so I told them how we had fled the traitor Buckingham’s army.

Bannaster suggested I work that day lugging bales of hay into the feeble barn against the winter. I did not complain for the work was not arduous and the pale sun on my back was comforting. Besides, the more hardened my hands became, the safer I felt. I even scraped my nails into the dirt to make them ragged. All day I laboured and felt some satisfaction although my belly was gnawing on itself from hunger. I should leave. Yes, I knew that, but my feet still had painful blisters.

Bannaster took off in the farm wagon to Wem next morning without a by-your-leave and returned with a squealing piglet for roasting. His reasoning was that, better fed, I’d recover sooner and he would be quit of me. He was terrified of being hanged. The gossip who had sold him the sucking pig had been right curious, wanting to know why he was back in Shropshire. Bannaster was sure he had dissembled well enough but he also told me that every man and his dog was eager to bring me in for the reward on my head and that Sir James Tyrrell was already in the shire, riding round with the sheriff to seize my holdings.

We agreed that after dark, he would take me to a safer hiding place at Milford, which was a small holding near Barchurch that he had inherited from his family. It was not far, down to the south-west, but when nightfall came, and I sought Bannaster out, he had drank so deeply that he could scarce direct himself to his bed let alone guide me six miles across the fields.

I thought about making my own way but without a local guide, it was too dangerous. Tomorrow night I would definitely move on, maybe make for Chester and thence to the Mersey.

Next morning, Mistress Bannaster took great pleasure in setting me to muck out the byre. I did not argue. If the sheriff’s men chanced by, they would not look to find a duke spattered with cowdung. A neighbour came a-calling. Perhaps it was the curious owner of the sucking pig. For sure, my taskmistress made a great show of bawling at us underlings across the yard. Bannaster at least had sobered up. I told him we should leave for Milford.

‘At dusk,’ he promised.

Towards the late afternoon when my arms were aching and my clothes reeked worse than a swineherd’s armpit, one of the children came racing into the yard yelling that soldiers were coming. I heard the hoofs, saw the collars of authority rattling across the breastplates of the first two riders. One of them was Tyrrell. The other, I guessed, was Mytton, the sheriff.

I had no intention of taking off across the fields. Calmly, I pulled my filthy hat down further and leaned on my shovel.

Instead of ordering his men to surround the farmhouse, the sheriff waved a writ at Bannaster. Devil roast them, they were not here to search for me but to seize the farm. For an instant, relief flooded through me and then I realised the irony.

My hands were shaking as I backed into the byre. I exchanged my spade for a pitchfork and forced myself outside again to gape like my fellow labourers.

The Bannasters had taken Tyrrell and Mytton inside the homestead but their half-dozen soldiers were left outside. With naught else to do, these knaves sauntered across to the barn and began to poke the bales with their pikes. They jeered at me, holding their noses, and as I edged towards their horses, I prayed that my churlish companions would not blurt out that I was newly come but the churls, good fellows, said naught.

When Mytton and Tyrrell came out, their men swarmed back for further orders. All’s well I thought. But then Tyrrell looked straight at me. I swear the soldiers heard his command in disbelief before they came running.

I was ready.

‘No!’ I bawled, whirling my weapon in a vicious arc. I hurled the pitchfork at the nearest man, leapt for the closest saddle. As the beast moved forward with me half sprawled across its saddle, I grabbed the mane and dug my heels in hard. I gained the road but they were after me soon enough. I outrode them for a half a mile but the horse was a poor creature with little heart, and soon my hunters surrounded me and dragged me to the ground, wrenching my arms behind my back and twisting a rope around my chest until I was as helpless as a cobwebbed fly.

 

CHAPTER 16

1st November 1483, the Feast of All Saints

An inn cellar in Salisbury is my duchy now. A makeshift measure since the town gaol is already crammed with Woodville followers.

My face feels swollen. My belly is purple and tender with bruising. My hands are bound in front of me and my head aches. Tyrrell’s men did not permit me to sleep during the long journey from Shrewsbury and, when we arrived here, Dick Ratcliffe’s whoresons half-killed me as they hauled me in to him for interrogation. Mercifully, because I am of royal blood, they dared not scourge me or drive splinters beneath my nails.

I have some solitude at last and try to keep moving to stay warm. There are no rats – so far – and my keepers have left me a candle. I have had to cram my shirt into the grille that looks out onto the street to stop the children crouching down and spitting. One of them even managed to stick his prick in and piddle at me.

Oh Jesu, how cold it is. Even when I was sodden to the skin, I never felt so cold as this. The winter has come to Salisbury.

Have you ever been so lonely that words with any man are like snowflakes on the deep drift of your loneliness? Save for my few months of alliance with Richard, I have trod this lifetime alone. But no matter, I can survive. Once I have had speech with my cousin, all will be well. He is coming to Salisbury, they tell me.

The hours labour past. I try not to think. Thinking will bring despair. What if Richard does not come?

Has the landlord left no firkins of ale in this place? Yet again I search the corners of my small prison for some means of forcing oblivion.

If Richard does not come, I have thought about killing myself in Roman style. I still have my son’s little dagger hidden in my boot but men say that the ghosts of those who forestall God’s will never leave this earth. Haunting this cellar does not appeal.

Perhap some wrinkled churl can bring me some vipers in a bowl of pippins and I shall sit like ancient Egypt’s queen, seeing into the future with dead eyes. ‘Look!’ they will whisper. ‘How noble in death! How proud!’

God help me, Tyrrell and Ratcliffe want to watch me die in the marketplace.

 

‘MY LORD?’ It is one of Ratcliffe’s sergeants shaking me. The kindliest of the bastards.

‘What is it?’

‘You cried out, my lord. They could hear you up in the kitchen.’

‘Did I?’

‘Are you in pain, my lord?’

‘No.’ I say with faint puzzlement and then wearily, ‘no.’

‘I’ll have some clean water brought down to you, sir.’

Do I still smell? With difficulty I squeeze my fists into my eye sockets and realise my cheeks are wet.

He turns. His toe encounters one of my discarded boots and the interfering beggar picks it up and hears the rattle. ‘What’s this, eh? Can’t have you depriving the crowds now, can we?’

Damn the tidy-headed son of Satan! He’s found Ned’s dagger.

 

YESTERDAY, the Devil’s Eve, they dragged me with my wrists bound up to a hall packed with Yorkist surcotes; the boar badge was everywhere but not the Boar himself. Grim-faced Ratcliffe, in his soldier’s black leather with metal studding, and John, Lord Zouche, a Midlands baron – hardly impartial since he is Catesby’s brother-in-law – took their places upon the bench but the central chair was empty.

‘Make way for my lord the High Constable!’ I assumed it was me they spoke of but the throng parted to let through my deputy, Sir Ralph Assheton – the harbinger of death, the messenger who carried Rivers’ death warrant to Pontefract.

God’s fist squeezed my heart as I was thrust forward to face him.

‘You are Henry Stafford, late Duke of Buckingham?’

How quaint.

‘Not late. I think I arrived before you, Sir Ralph.’

The roar of laughter washed around me. My deputy smiled tightly at the double meaning but his face turned a dull red. ‘Clear the court!’ he ordered. ‘This is not a bear-baiting.’

The soldiers closed the door behind the last of my audience and now only the clerks waited for a fresh witticism. Beside Assheton, Ratcliffe lifted cold eyes to mine and I knew the dogs would bite.

The clerk of the court mumbled the litany of charges brought against me and then I was given a chance to answer.

‘If it is treachery to raise a banner on behalf of the rightful king, then, yes, I suppose I am guilty.’

I paused. Zouche was staring at me as though I had two horns; Ratcliffe showed no surprise and Assheton merely stroked his forefinger across his jowls.

‘However, that was not the sum of things at all, gentlemen, as I have reiterated in the several interrogations you have put me through already. My entire purpose was to lure out the King’s enemies and destroy them.’

Assheton had not heard any of this. He drew in a long breath. ‘I see from your confession that you have already named your fellow conspirators.’

‘Yes, I have provided names, but none of those traitors were my allies. I hope now that you will grant me leave to explain my actions to the King’s grace in person.’ Swift looks were exchanged between them before Assheton cleared his throat.

‘You do not deny that you raised an army against the King.’

‘No, it was against the King’s enemies. I dissembled to let Tudor’s supporters use me as captain of their forces. Have I lifted a sword against the King’s grace on the battlefield? Never!’ I let that sink in before I added, ‘Look, Assheton, I agree that it was a dangerous strategy easily misinterpreted. Did my lord the King not receive my letter from Weobley?’

They just stared at me with distaste. Damn them! Assheton should have galloped after that one, but Ratcliffe’s snort of disbelief had him sidestepping.

‘Why did you refuse to attend your liege lord the King when he requested your presence, giving out you were sick?’ he demanded. ‘We have testimony from our agents at Brecknock that you were in rude health.’

‘Of course, I was in rude health. How else would Morton have believed I could lead a rebellion?’

Zouche asserted himself at last. ‘Should you not have sent to the King and told him of your plan to deceive his enemies?’

‘I-did-send-to-the King, my lord.’ That had become my credo over the last week. Even a beating had not made me change the lie. ‘Mayhap someone envious of my friendship with his highness deliberately withheld my letter.’ I raised my eyebrows at Assheton, remembering that he had once said that Catesby did not have four limbs like a normal man but tendrils.

Maybe Assheton understood. He looked as though he wanted to chew his lower lip and then thought better of it. ‘Stafford, this court does not believe—’

‘May I suggest this court does not want to believe,’ I interrupted. ‘My lord, it is my understanding that his highness the King wishes justice to be dispensed impartially in this realm and yet I know full that at least one of you on the bench would cheerfully see me brought so low. Is that not the truth, Ratcliffe?’

A hit! Ratcliffe looked like he was whetting a knife for my throat beneath the board. His tanned visage darkened further, and an uncomfortable silence gripped the chamber until Zouche took up the reins again and leaned forward.

‘If you are innocent, Stafford, why did you not surrender your person immediately instead of evading capture?’

‘With a price on my head, it seemed risky.’ Then I let dismay suffuse my voice. ‘My lords, this entire business was not meant to become so messy. If my enterprise has been utterly misconstrued by those I thought friends, I assure you, this can be resolved. If his highness will graciously grant me an audience.’ I held up my tethered hands in supplication wondering why at least two of these fools were not moved by my words. ‘I assure you even before we left London, the King’s grace and I discussed ways to winkle out our enemies’

But these prejudiced judges were not listening. Grey, brown and fair, their heads were together. ‘We shall reassemble in an hour,’ Assheton announced.

‘If it please you, do so,’ I added courteously, ‘but this is ill done. A duke may only be judged by his peers. The lords of England will see this court as a mockery.’

 

NOTHING had changed in the upper room except the shadows when they marched me in again. My three judges awaited me bleakly, brooding hawks upon a naked branch.

Assheton read out the verdict:

‘Henry Stafford, late styling yourself Duke of Buckingham, you are found guilty of High Treason and I hereby sentence you to execution by beheading.’

Like Hastings? I stared at the row of gargoyles in utter horror. Beheading? They are going to behead me?

‘No! This court is not lawful!’ I roared, rushing forward and slamming my bound fists down upon their table.

My head spiked on London Bridge like a traitor’s?

‘No, no, you cannot do this!’ I screamed at them. ‘I am the loyalest of King Richard’s subjects. You would none of you be here if it were not for me. I shielded you from the Woodvilles’ vengeance. I made him king!’

Their faces only tightened like fists, and my anger chilled to pleading. ‘Ask the King! How can he forget the dangers we have faced together? He will understand how it was.’

But Richard is not in Salisbury yet. They have not asked him.

 

I CAN hear the fanfares and the bells. Is this my cousin come in a flurry of fur and velvet?

I wrench my shirt down from the grille. It is not easy on my wrists to haul myself up on the bars to look out. All I can see are hooves and feet. The air stinks of wet leaves and horses; their turds dapple the marketplace. Surely there are the dog’s slender legs bounding beside the feathery fetlocks of my cousin’s destrier? Thank God! This gives me hope.

For an instant, I glimpse the rider’s scabbard hanging below the horse’s white belly and the spurs spiking out from behind the cloth guard on his stirrups. Richard?

I swear at my helplessness. I’d shout if he could hear me but a forest of legs is hastening towards the horses, and here I am like a hare in a burrow.

The weight of my body has me gasping. I drop down and then heave myself up again.

I can hear the dog’s playful bark. It sounds like Loyaulté. He always frisks and barks when his master dismounts. Yes, so it has to be Richard. But this rider’s knees are not lapped by fur cuffs or the kiss of velvet. Instead, steel greaves encompass his legs, and as he disappears behind a palisade of pikes and halberd poles, I realise this is an enemy commander’s retinue, hungry for vengeance.

An enemy?

Then surely he must see me if only to smash his glove across my face? I shall talk him into seeing sense.

But how soon?

Tense, I pace and pace.

Footsteps are coming. Richard! Richard?

Yes, I have a visitor. Francis, Lord Lovell. Good. Perhaps he brings a life-line from Richard.

Lovell’s skin is tanned from summer riding but his fair hair is clipped for a helmet and he has aged since I saw him last. The boyishness has fled and spider lines web out from the corners of his eyes. He is in half-armour with a breast plate buckled across his leather jack.

I gesture him to the only stool in my little demesne and take the palliasse for myself but he does not sit down. I try not to show him how desperate I am to see Richard.

‘Why did you do it, Harry?’ Beneath the blond stubble, his handsome face is compassionate. At last I have an advocate.

‘I haven’t committed treason, Francis,’ I mutter.

My rebellion was no more treason than Richard disinheriting his nephews.

‘Will he see me?’

‘Who, the King?’ To my astonishment, he is indignant. ‘Of course he will not see you.’

‘But—’

‘By Heaven, man, how can you expect it of him after what you’ve done?’

‘I’m sorry, I—’

‘Damn you, Harry, when Delabere’s news of your treachery reached us, Richard was utterly distraught, almost destroyed. I tell you it was like King Edward’s death all over again.’

‘Delabere?’ I echo, appalled to learn of my henchman’s betrayal. So he was my Judas. God-damned traitor! I need time to digest this but Lovell is in too great an anger.

‘By Christ, Harry, Richard gave you everything he could but, no, you wanted his crown as well. The “most untrue creature living,” he reckons you, you malicious fool.’

‘Oh, I’m an untrue creature, am I? I suppose he planted his spies in my household waiting for me to set a foot wrong so he could kick me away the moment he chose.’

‘That is bollocks and you know it.’

I hold my fists to my lips. I’m confused, outraged. Delabere has Ned is what I’m thinking!

‘My son!’ I demand, searching his face. ‘Where’s my son?’

‘Your boy is safe.’ He dismisses the matter with impatience. ‘Tell me why, Harry!’

Tell him what?

‘Answer me, God damn you!’

Such rare anger from Lovell shocks my heart into inner panic. This is not going right. Maybe honesty is the only way from now. I swallow, rise to my feet and pace to the wall.

‘It was Brecknock, Francis. I hate the place. I get these black days, these megrims. It’s…it’s like I’m at the bottom of some monstrous dark well and I can’t get out. Away from him, from the King, I can’t get out.’ I turn. ‘You have to understand when I arrived back in Brecknock, it was as though the kingmaking had never happened, as if no one believed me. I felt…’

‘Go on.’ The cold command underscores his ebbing patience but I stumble onwards.

‘I felt…well, like a little boy again trying to make myself heard, but no one has ever listened – except Richard. He should not have let me go to Wales, Francis. He should have kept me by him. I should have been all right then and—’

‘Wait! You are telling me this rebellion was Richard’s fault?’

I nod, pleased that Lovell now understands. I long for him to put his arms about me like a brother and forgive me. Perhaps he sees that in my face because he leans away, recoils from me.

‘You’re talking through your arse!’

‘No,’ I argue swiftly. ‘Upon my soul, it’s true, Francis. You see, when I went to see Morton, he treated me like a man, who had achieved something. Believe me, he can say day is night and you can swear it’s gospel. That’s what happened.’

‘By Our Lady!’ Lovell strides back and forth now, his arms clasping his elbows and swirls round on me. ‘So all your confession about luring out the King’s enemies was a nonsense?’

‘Yes…no. I cannot…I cannot reason when I am in the dumps.’ But Lovell walks away from me, his face is working as though he is struggling to restrain himself and something nameless begins tying itself into a tight knot in my belly. ‘That is truly how it was, Francis,’ I plead. ‘Please, please tell him what I said. I beg of you. Ask him if he will see me. And ask him to spare my son.’

‘Spare your son? What do you imagine—’ He turns abruptly and draws so close to me that I can feel his breath upon my beard. ‘You see him? You are not worthy to come within ten miles of his bootcaps.’ His fist explodes into my belly like a cannonshot and the pain drives me staggering back across the mattress.

He steps back panting with rage. I stare up at him and then as if he sees me as a frightened child, the anger in his eyes gives way to shame, and he smites on the door for the guards and turns his furious face on me.

‘You brought me down to your level, curse you! I never did that before to any man.’ And then he deals me the coup de grâce. ‘But you are beneath a man!’

 

I AM still reeling from his lack of understanding when the tongue of the door lock withdraws again. It is Thomas Stanley who is escorted in. For an instant, I suppose he is to share my prison but he tells the guards to wait upstairs. I am appalled. How can he be free to do this? I have named his wife the greatest traitor in the realm and yet here he is wearing his fine collar of Yorkist sunnes again. When I get out of here, I’ll see it changed to a noose.

Warm in his fur-lined mantle, he looks me up and down. I am conscious of my untrimmed beard, my goose flesh showing through the lacing of my badly fitting gippon. I hope the salt of tears is not staining my cheekbones. I do not want him to see my weakness.

‘Come down to Salisbury for my execution?’ I ask cheerfully.

He nods dourly, looks round for a seat worthy of his buttocks and finding none, grunts briefly and stands.

One must be well mannered. ‘May I offer you a cup of congealed gruel, Lord Stanley?’

‘I see they haven’t yet ripped out that golden tongue of yours, Harry.’ He notices the pail in the corner and wrinkles his nose.

‘So, did the northern progress go well?’ I ask pleasantly, folding my arms and leaning back against the wall.

‘All right.’ He whirls his little finger round his right earhole. ‘Pity old Dick had to cut it short.’ He inspects his gingered nail with satisfaction.

‘And the Lords Bastard? Safe in some northern fortress, I suppose?’

Stanley seems surprised at my question. ‘Nay, the older lad was sick, toothache, trouble with his jaw, like, so Old Dick left ’im int’ Tower. As t’other lad…’ He shrugs.

I stare down at Stanley’s complacent features and suddenly in my head, I hear Nandik’s promise: the King shall die. And wouldn’t some men argue there are in truth two kings in England? And if one king is here in Salisbury, still alive, then Prince Edward…. God’s mercy, is it his death written in the stars? Here’s matter to chew. I need to think hard about this, keep a shrewd head.

I clear my throat. ‘So, enlighten me, Stanley, did you actually know anything of the rising?’

He smiles slowly: ‘It would be too dangerous to know, wouldn’t it? Me being kept right close to Old Dick, but I didn’t blab on you if that’s what you’re thinking, lad.’ He pulls a sheepish face that may pass for gleefulness. ‘Too many in’t secret, eh?’

‘Lucky Richard took you with him then, else you’d be a head shorter.’

Like I shall be if I don’t talk myself out of this chaos.

‘Aye.’ His eyes tell me he understands my precarious situation. ‘Morton got away then, did he?’

‘Oh yes, as far as I know. He came with us as far as Weobley.’ I feel like spitting but I do have some manners left. ‘So you haven’t seen Margaret yet?’

‘No, that pleasure to come. She’ll have to keep her head down and do some embroidery for a change.’

What am I dealing with here? I close my eyes and run my thumb and finger down my nose, still thinking about a prince with jaw ache. If I wrote out the safe pass to the Tower for Dr Lewes to take to Elizabeth, what became of it? Could it still be used? Was it used? I open my eyes and look hard at Stanley.

‘How far will your wife go to make her son king?’ I ask aloud.

Suddenly he is standing still, very still. ‘What are you witterin’ about, Harry Stafford?’

‘I’m not sure, in all honesty, Thomas.’ I begin walking to and fro like a lecturing divine, my mind frantic.

My plan for the rising was that when the princes could not be found at the Tower, we should spread the news that they were murdered so that Richard’s enemies would see me as their rightful king.

But one of the princes was there.

And I gave Bray the cursed pass.

Is Stanley watching the blood draining from my face? I put out a hand to the wall to steady myself.

‘Better hie off, eh?’ His Lancashire voice grinds through my frantic thoughts. He is looking at me like he knows. ‘Can’t have Old Dick thinking I’m commiserating with traitors, like.’ The timbers of the door shake beneath his fist.

‘I don’t suppose you’d care to intercede for me, Stanley?’

He shakes his head. ‘You haven’t a hope, lad.’

 

THE GUARDS are binding my wrists together again. My fingers are inkstained.

I have written my will and, more importantly, a letter to Richard informing him I know something of importance which I will only tell to him. It has taken me all afternoon, and at last it is ready. You see, I am certain both the princes are dead and that Margaret has had them murdered using the pass to the Tower with my signature.

I have requested a priest, as is my right, and shall ask him to carry my letter to the King.

Surely forewarning Richard will earn me a reprieve?

 

RATCLIFFE is visiting me, looking down his eagle nose with hate. He wears his dislike of me like a livery now.

‘I am here to advise you that you are to be executed at noon tomorrow morning.’

The priest has not come yet. I wonder if I dare trust the letter to Ratcliffe and decide against it. I know he is impatient for the world to heave me off its back.

‘Did you hear me, Stafford?’

‘Thank you,’ I reply diffidently as though he is a servant. ‘I shall endeavour to keep the appointment.’ But when he turns to go, my control shatters. ‘Will he see me?’

As Ratcliffe shakes his head, my hands pluck his collar. ‘He must, he must!’

Lord help me, I don’t mean to sound like a whimpering idiot.

Calmly he unfastens my fingers. ‘So you can stick a dagger in him, you scum, like the one you had hidden in your bootcuff? Rest your lying tongue! There’s no clemency for you tonight.’ He runs a disinterested eye around the shadows of the room, impatient to go.

‘Listen to me, damn you, Ratcliffe! I have to warn him. He is in such danger!’

Danger of being nailed in his coffin as a tyrant and a child murderer.

‘Save your fuckin’ breath, you Judas!’ He shakes his head at me, as unmoved as the Earth itself. ‘Even if Christ Himself were to intercede for you, Stafford, I doubt the King would let you have your life.’

He slams the door against my following. I rattle the ringlock, yelling: ‘Ask him where his nephews are, Ratcliffe. Tell him to show his nephews to the people!’

The key pulls back the bolt. I step back, pleased, but this time it his sinewy fingers that seize the worn neck of my doublet.

‘Just what do you mean by that obscenity?’ He is half-choking me. But his mind is clicking. ‘Have you had the boys killed? Have you? Have you, you bloody murderer?’

Me? Oh, God! I have to see Richard.

‘No! No! Don’t you see? It’s not about me any more. It’s about Richard. Oh Sweet Christ, how can I make you understand, Ratcliffe? Use your head! It’s still possible to put things right.’ I cradle my shivering body, wondering how far a cunning mother will go to make her only son a king? How ruthless is bloody Margaret Beaufort?

‘W-warn him, Ratcliffe! Let him look to his son. Warn him for the love of God! Poison, I’d say. A woman’s trick. The bitch is so clever, so plaguey clever and patient. That’s what he must beware. The bitch’s patience, her fucking patience.’ Are my words tumbling out all scrambled? Or this ruffian is not even listening?

Devil roast him! Can he not see? Richard is pitched against a mind that has more twists than any rope.

‘What in Hell are you babbling about, Stafford? Elizabeth Woodville’s a spent force.’

‘Elizabeth?’

Haven’t I made it clear to him that it is Margaret Beaufort? Pious, plain, little Margaret, disguised by works of charity, hiding the ambition of a man and the mind of a murderer behind her woman’s face. She wants the throne for her son and she’ll kill and kill.

It’s then I remember the kerchief Margaret gave Anne at the coronation. ‘Warn the Queen about Margaret Beaufort! They must take care of their son.’

I’m losing my objective here. I have to use this news to save my life.

‘But I can explain all this to the King, that will be easier. He will understand then. By Christ, Master Rat, even you never smelled her out. You must guard him.’

He lets me go, sneering, ‘You’ve lost your mind, Stafford.’

The door closes behind him and I am locked in with my fears.

I have not lost my mind, but God has snatched back my golden fluency. The stone is cold against my knees, the door timber unfeeling against my burning forehead. How have I failed to make Ratcliffe understand? I who could sway the Lords of Parliament? Yet God Himself has taken away my eloquence and I am naked now. What have I done to Him that I must pay so dearly? I am History’s jester.

 

IT MUST be hours now that I have crouched here in the greyness, my head on my knees, sobbing like a beaten schoolboy silently so that the soldiers cannot hear. My limbs are stiff as I stagger to my pallet, my throat is sore and I am empty and so utterly alone. Words spill out of my memory, the debris of thirty years now. I try to laugh but the sound comes out harsh and brash. I must keep my sanity. Only I can do that and I must keep control, but Jesu, I am terrified.

I am frightened of the coming dark. At thirty, my bones do not promise the nearness of Death that gentles the aged back into passionate prayers and hours of genuflections.

 

A PRIEST is come at last. He is the Salisbury gaol chaplain, he grandly tells me. He promises to ensure my letter reaches the King, and we talk about redemption between the hour bells.

If I can warn Richard against Margaret, is that not some form of redemption? A way to right the harm I’ve done? Even if my cousin lets me have my life, I’ll probably spend my days chained up at Middleham or Pontefract, but at least I’ll have the satisfaction of seeing Margaret hobbled.

Redemption, yes.

Ah, I am trying to find belief but it hangs beyond my reach like a haze of midges on a summer lane. You see, I thought I had no need of God this summer or rather I thought that I was become His favourite. I set up my mirror up as a graven image and the Devil is waiting for my soul.

Can gentle Christ find forgiveness for me? But what I have done to earn his mercy? A camel against the smallness of the needle’s eye?

The chaplain witnesses my will and I remember to give him the HS ring for Ned and the letter for Richard.

‘God bless you, my son, rest assured I shall return in good time tomorrow to confess you. Remember, as I have said to you, the Son of Man has power on earth to forgive sins. Spend the hours left to you in prayer so you will be in a state of grace to enter Our Lord’s kingdom.’

Father, I have no intention of departing this life tomorrow.

Aloud, I thank him. Providing he sees my letter safely delivered, all shall be well.

 

LIFE HAS become very simple. Left alone, I realise I have no material possessions left. Only my under drawers are mine. Actually, I still owe payment on my finery for the coronation. There’s a thought! I wonder if my debtors lit candles on the eve of the rebellion? Lord help me, by now Vaughan must be strutting in my cloth of gold mantle back at Tretower. I hope his balls rot.

Ha, it will be a hard task for the King’s creatures if Vaughan and his whoresons have burnt my rent rolls. My smile is gleeful.

I imagine Cat must be spitting. I suppose she will have to survive on some meagre pension like Lady Oxford. No chance of a chantry for me, I’ll wager. But my little children concern me. Shall they become royal wards, never permitted to mention their father? That thought stabs me in the gut and twists the blade.

Tomorrow’s duke! Ned, my tousled son. Oh Sweet Christ, shall his head be smitten off when he is grown to manhood because he is a threat to Richard’s blood?

My breath forms vapour. I cannot stop shuddering. This lousy blanket is plaguey thin, and someone has tugged my shirt from the grille.

What if Richard won’t give me a reprieve? What if he doesn’t believe my warning? Christ! Maybe he thinks I murdered the princes. Maybe he did. Maybe the boy has died from illness joined with melancholy? Maybe the boys aren’t even dead and I have jumped to a terrible conclusion. Well, that might be so, given my capacity for stupidity these last weeks.

Stupidity with an ‘S’ as high as a Colossus. What a fool I have been, envious all my life, wanting to show the world I am more magnificent, clever, wittier, eloquent, powerful. Stupid! Stupid!

I swear like a peasant and kick the palliasse as if it has ribs to be broken. At last, out of breath, I stand still, my heart lurching.

I let Richard have a kingdom; surely he can let me have my life?

 

THERE ARE voices just above the grille. A Salisbury woman bantering with her swain. They must be watching the carpentry in the square, my platform of death being banged together. They are teasing each other in gentle tones, purring like a tabby and a tom – lovers.

Meg, would she light a candle for me? Had she cared for me at all? If she chose to dally with me, neglect her children, what price her love? Oh God, if only I could have had a loving wife, maybe she could have tethered my restless ambition.

But I did it for my children, Yes, I did. Not just for me. For my little princess, Bess. I fall on my knees whispering my little darling’s name. Shall I ever hold her in my arms again?

Oh, God, what have I done?

Is this the beginning of contrition? Are you listening, you holy saints? This is your feast day after all. Dare you intercede for me and move my cousin’s heart? Else what is there? A millennium in Purgatory, the eternal scourge of Hell with Hastings wielding the lash or shall my soul be blown out by the breath of God? No, what’s done is done. Is a kingdom worth eternity in Hell?

Richard, cousin, I shall be waiting for you.

 

‘ROUSE up, my lord!’

‘What is it? Who’s there? What time is it?’

‘Six o’ the clock, my lord, the Feast of All Souls.’

‘My doomsday already?’ The carpenters have worked all night by torchlight, hammering between my thoughts. The flickers of torches play through the grille and caper round the walls like merry demons.

Voices come from the stairs. Yorkshire voices. The change of guard at sparrow’s fart.

‘No end of beasts lost, they reckon…down far as Bristol. Buckingham’s flood, they are calling it.’

‘And how is our gobbing traitor? Practising his speech for the scaffold?’

‘Crazed in the night, I’m told. Kicked his bed to bits.’

Bread and cheese and a jack of ale are left at my elbow.

 

I MUST HAVE slept again, despite the hardness of the floor beneath my ragged blanket. Outside there is a rattle of keys. The door to my grand chamber creaks open and Ratcliffe steps in.

‘There is no reprieve.’ Richard’s rat tosses my letter still virgin onto the floor then he prods my untouched platter with his bootcap.pol ‘The Last Supper, eh, your grace?’ With a wolf’s gleam of teeth, he smiles at me then he lopes off back to his master.

No reprieve! Pah, Richard is toying with me! They cannot truly intend to chop my head off. But if Richard hasn’t fucking well read my letter, then, well, fucking damn him for a fool!

Oh God, are they going to kill me in the marketplace. The noises from the marketplace tell me people are gathering.

There is still time for mercy. Surely?

 

CHAPTER 17

Someone has come in. I suppose at first it is the chaplain. The man’s shoes halt just inches from my nose and I see that the tongues are embroidered with eagle’s claws. Stanley is looking down at me, running a hand over his newly shaven jowls. He cocks an eyebrow up at the iron bars no longer wefted by my clothing.

‘I’ve brought you a clean shirt, Harry. You allus like to look your best, eh?’ He toes the platter. ‘This breakfast doesn’t look too bad. You’ll be hungry by noon.’

It will not even be digested.

I turn my face to the wall. I want to bawl, and with an obscenity learned from Lacon Farm, I tell the whoreson to go, but perversely he stays, stooping down to set a hand upon my shoulder.

‘Come, Harry, eat. It is something to do.’ There is kindness in his voice. In the doorway, the soldiers are watching me. He tells them to wait upstairs.

‘Here.’ He draws out a leather flask from his breast, unstoppers it and holds it out. I sit up scowling, hoist it between my bound hands and take a swig. The liquid fire is welcome but I do not want his charity.

‘No, keep it.’ He straightens up and folds his arms. The fur trims on his sleeve cuffs bump gently against his knees. ‘You worked things out, didn’t you?’

Now he has my attention. Is he talking about the boys, the princes?

‘Did I?’ I knuckle the moisture from each eye and try and find the truth in his face.

First he glances beyond the door to make sure we are not overheard.

‘As I see matters like, you’d win prizes for being the most transparent felon in t’ country, Harry Stafford, an’ it’s only because old Dick has got his head down his own hose that you’ve survived this long.’

Is this why Stanley is here? To gloat?

‘Where you went wrong, my lad, was to think you were the only two-faced scoundrel round t’ place.’

‘Don’t tell me you are jealous of my reputation?’ I retort sweetly. I heave myself onto my knees and splash the water left in the ewer onto my face.

He is clearly busting to share something. ‘Anyroad,’ he continues, ‘you know what the biggest jest in all this is? I’m the new High Constable of England, Harry, starting tomorrow. Summat, eh?’

I stare up at him, the icy water running down my face. Richard has done this? Oh this is too cruel. I can’t even find a jest to prick the bladder of Stanley’s vanity. My throat feels dry, corroded. I just stare at him in disbelief. Slowly, slowly the air settles once more between us like castle dust after a bombardment.

He stoops, his face close to mine, his voice a whisper.

‘Whatever’s happened int’ Tower, you are going to get the blame. Well, first away at anyroad.’ He straightens, sticking his lower lip out like a jug. ‘Reckon by next week old Dick will think he’s done the right thing, lopping you this morning, eh.’

This sniggering old Judas is going to nail the children’s murder on me. That’s it, isn’t it? He knows they are murdered, and by his bloody wife.

‘What’s more, Harry…’ I flinch at the familiarity as he steps closer to my rigid back like a gloating Mephistopheles.

I am trying to close my mind but my ears are rebels to my wishes.

‘I’m to be the wife’s gaoler,’ he whispers. ‘Yon simple Dick is handing all Margaret’s lands over to me.’

I turn my head, my expression contemptuous.

‘Nay, lad, it’s God’s truth.’ He is grinning, his fingers playing with the gilded claw upon his chain. ‘I’ll let Margaret meddle again. This year, next year, when the fancy takes me. All easier now wi’ you, Old Dick’s great friend, out o’ road. Great help to us you were. You pulled down the Woodvilles, you destroyed my good friend Hastings and finally you’ve put Greek fire up your own arse.’

‘Count on nothing, old man,’ I sneer. ‘You think Margaret’s lily-livered boy can best Richard? I hear the craven bastard never even disembarked.’

‘Nay, his fleet set sail right enow but the storm that upended you, scattered ’em. His ship reached Poole Harbour an’ he hung around waitin’ for the rest but only one other vessel made land an’ what wi’ the King’s men waving banners and pretending they were loyal to the Woodvilles, he pulled up anchor an’ got out of there ‘afore they could send their ships to grapple. Still no matter, gave the lad some experience at any road. Next time, eh? And he won’t have you cluttering things up.’

I snort. ‘The lad may die of the sweating sickness before the year is out or Richard will pay the Bretons to hand him over.’

Stanley chuckles and rubs his hands. ‘Doesn’t matter to me. I’ve convinced Old Dick he’d better rely on me to prop his throne up, otherwise he’s only got grizzled Howard and young Lovell left to lick his bootcaps among the great lords. Needs me like a whore needs customers, he does.’

‘And you’re so experienced in licking, Stanley.’ He doesn’t like it, the disdain.

‘Oh, I’ll die in my bed, I promise you that, Harry.’

Part of me wants to be rid of this preening old timeserver but the conversation is a distraction from my noon day arrangement and he does not seem to be in a hurry to leave.

‘You know what,’ he says, ‘as we were ridin’ down here, I was tottin’ up how many lords and their sons have died in these bloody feuds betwixt t’ royal Houses an’ I’m not talking about newcomers like the Woodvilles. How many do you reckon?’

I shrug.

‘At least sixty of the friggin’ fools. But not the Stanleys, never the Stanleys.’ He nods. ‘We allus hang back lad, watch which way the wind blows.’

What does he want? Applause?

‘Well, if I have my way,’ I assert, ‘I’d unite the Houses of York and Lancaster.’ I pick up his flask and take another swig to ease my rusty voice. ‘Richard’s son married to my daughter. That would have settled things down, but he wouldn’t listen.’

‘Stuck in your craw, did it?’ His stare is crawling over my face. ‘Was that what flipped you over like a pancake?’

I do not answer him. I cannot be bothered. I want to gather the blanket round my shivering shoulders.

‘Of course, taking things into consideration…’ His gloved hands rise like a priest’s at the Eucharist. ‘Admit it, you were daft not to flee with Morton.’ He is thinking of more pellets to lob at me. ‘An’ the rebellion, lad, too hasty, too hasty. People like things done slow and gradual. You need to prepare ’em, see. Margaret’ll manage it eventually an’ have ’em burnin’ like hell to get rid o’ the tyrant.’ His gargoyle smile revolts me. ‘Aye, we’ll daub old Dick the blackest villain since chronicles began.’ He nods to himself, his lips disappearing into his mouth like a tight seam. ‘Aye, that’ll be two kings he’s murdered. Old King Harry back in ‘71 and now his nephews.’

So they will use gossip and calumny, my old weapons, and continue the malevolence that I began. That I began. Oh God, Richard, you have to let me speak with you.

A market barrow creaks past the grille. It reminds Stanley to keep his voice soft.

‘Old Dick will blame you for the princes’ murder but the people of England will blame him and when the time comes, no one will mind him getting his come uppance.’

The villainy of it poisons the air I am breathing. Bastard!

I turn away from him. ‘I have heard enough. You may go.’ I say haughtily and I am surprised at how calm I sound, but the old rogue is still enjoying his sport with me.

‘You haven’t eaten anything, lad—’

I pick up the plate and consider how the potage will stain his velvet mantle.

‘No, truly,’ I maintain, with as much hauteur as I can muster, ‘I’ve had enough of this conversation and I do have a last speech on the scaffold to consider.’

That at least needles him. ‘Nay, don’t you try accusing the wife with some lofty speech ont’ scaffold neither or I’ll—’

I raise my eyebrows and look down my Stafford nose at him.

He sticks out his lower lip and bares his claws. ‘Or I’ll make certain tomorrow’s Duke of Buckingham, your precious son, hears it was actually his da who murdered his royal cousins.’

‘Get OUT!’

I hurl the platter as he runs for the door. I think the gravy spattered him but the gobbets missed. I watch the fatty meat slide slowly down the wall.

Pershall was right, damn him!. I have kicked away the cornerstones from the House of York and ripped away the garland of honour from my cousin. No matter that the Lords and Commons made him king, no matter that Canterbury crowned him with England’s diadem and anointed his brow in holy oil, the world already prefers the tastier tale of the wicked uncle.

Cousin, cousin, if only you can sidestep Margaret’s snares. You are blinded by her piety and gulled by her gender.

Can you forgive me! I was blind as well.

 

THE WHISPER of the chaplain’s chasuble rustles down the stairs and Holy Church knocks upon the door of my life and is come to shrive me. Nothing I can do now will scrape away the past or change the future unless Richard can find forgiveness.

For all my confessor’s mouthing, it is hypocrisy to believe I can wriggle into Heaven on my belly just because I say I am sorry for my life’s sins. So maybe I have some nobility of mind left, after all, for I am not going to choose the easy path of Christ’s compassion. Instead I shall welcome the thorny path that leads to God’s throne on Judgment Day for His justice is pure and I betrayed my greatest friend.

Kneeling, I confess my greed, my ambition, my envy and my hate. My forgiveness is for Bannaster and most of all for Richard. Only in that can I better him, and if I could gain from him an absolution then his loving mercy would speed us both unto the very door of Heaven. I shall meet you in hell, my cousin, for blood is upon both our souls.

‘Pax tecum, fili.’

‘Wait, father, I pray you light a candle this day for me in the cathedral in the chapel of our Lady.’

‘Of course, my son.’ But he looks reluctant. After all, I am a condemned traitor.

‘Not for me, but the woman I love. I promised I would light a candle to her every day of the rest of my life.’

And today is the last day.

 

THE MORNING AIR is so crisp it drives the shadows from my mind. All my senses are sharp. I can see every leaf, every pebble, the untied tag upon a child’s points, the freckles on a woman’s arm, the stain on the hose of the pikeman marching in front of me. The cathedral bells are tolling across the meadows by the river and the drumbeats pound. There are obscenities. There is spittle. I am deliberately trying not to keep in step but it is too majestic a measure to deny.

I do not expect the dog jumping up at me, knocking me back into my guards, trying to lick my face. Loyaulté! I cannot fondle you, last and honest friend, because my hands have been tied behind my back. Oh Christ, surely Richard has not come to watch? Has he? My eyes search fearfully for him among the cluster of scarlet, as my guards thrust the dog away and, cursing, close about me. He is not here, thank God, his face like rock above his high fur collar. Thank God, thank God.

But there is still time for him to forgive me.

I climb the wooden steps with a confidence I instantly regret, seeing the silver edge of the resting axe, the strangely familiar grain of the block. It is already stained. Bile rises in my throat. I was in control till now.

‘It is the block used for Lord Hastings, my lord. It has been brought from London.’

‘On whose orders? The King’s?’

‘No, my lord, not the King’s.’

There is something in that. The ruthlessness of the idea is significant, but there is no time to pull the meaning out of it, to assume it is Stanley’s doing. The only conclusion now is that of my life. And there is no word from Richard, no change of heart. It should not end like this. Surely he will…

They are leading me to face the crowd. I am supposed to make my last speech. I hold up my freed hands for a hearing. The marketplace is full. There are jeers but then they hush, waiting for a witticism to outlast my rotting corpse. I have them in my palm just as I had Parliament, that wonderful listening silence. But a gesture to my left distracts me. Stanley has his arm raised and as I draw breath, he lets it fall and the drummers savagely snatch the moment from me.

Now my guards are jerking me away from the edge of the scaffold. I am turned and pushed me to my knees. I can hear the gasp of the crowd’s breath beyond the pounding of my blood.

The wood is hard against my cheek. I have to lie my head sideways.

O Sweet Christ, Richard, it will be too late.

Then the drums go silent and I can hear…

I can hear the sad straining whine…oh God have mercy…Loyaul—

 

HISTORY NOTE

I always had the intention of writing a historical novel on Lady Margaret Beaufort, but every time I started out and surveyed the cast of characters, Harry put his hand up, just like a boy in the classroom: ‘What about me, Miss? Write about me, Miss!’ And, yes, there was this fascinating young man, who supported Richard of Gloucester, made him king and then betrayed him? Why? That was when my research began, an exploration of Harry’s childhood and then a journey that took me to Brecon and into a search for the route taken by his army.

Little is left of Buckingham’s castle at Brecon but there is a picture in the Castle Hotel that shows how his castle may have looked in its glory. The manor house at Wooton Devereux has vanished as well but some of the lovely architecture in nearby Weobley recaptures the era of the fifteenth century, and there is a house dating back to 1323.

Some of the palaces in London that were familiar to Harry still exist. The Manor of the Red Rose is long gone but Westminster Hall and the Guildhall where he made his speeches are open to visitors and so, too, is the chamber in the White Tower of the Tower of London, where the famous meeting with Lord Hastings took place. The great hall of Richard III’s beloved Crosby Place was moved, stone by stone, from Bishopsgate to Chelsea and is now under private ownership.

How true is Harry’s account of what happened in 1483? Who did murder the princes? Probably, we shall never know. Fifteenth century political history is scraps pieced together by historians. What clouds the truth for us even more is that contemporary histories, just like bestiaries, were designed to teach morality. ‘All is written for our doctrine, and for to beware that we fall not to vice,’ commented William Caxton. The Tudor Dynasty would agree with him.

Isolde Martyn