The Fate of Princes (5 page)

After a few more desultory remarks Brackenbury agreed to show me the chamber where the two princes had been kept. We left the royal apartments and crossed a small green, the place where Lord William Hastings had his head shorn off for conspiring to free the same princes whose disappearance had brought me to the Tower. The entire area was dominated by the huge donjon or White Tower. We climbed up some outside stairs into the Chapel of St. John, one of the most beautiful churches in Christendom. The walls were covered with beautiful murals, done in gold and vermilion. The floor tiles, glazed white, bore crosses and leopards couchant while every window was filled with multi-coloured glass so the entire room seemed to swim in a sea of gorgeous colour. A stark contrast to the grey, bleak, staircase chamber above.

The cell of the bastard princes was spacious but stark, despite pathetic attempts to enliven it with tawdry hangings. There was a large trestle bed, covered in heavy, white, gold-fringed bolsters on a feather-bed
mattress half covered with blankets and a tapestry canopy. A large cupboard stood near the wall. I opened it. Musty clothes were piled high: a small jerkin, hose, a few robes and battered boots. The two tables were covered with caskets, scraps of parchment, a pen and an inkhorn. Most pathetic of all, the young princes’ toys: two small bows, quivers half-full of arrows, a wooden horse, some beads and a rusty dagger snapped at the hilt. The windows were no more than arrow-slits which overlooked the water-meadows of the Thames. The room was sombre, filled by a dreadful, baleful silence which not even the cawing of the rooks shattered. Just silence. Brooding, heavy, oppressive. There were no trap-doors, no other entrances. Brackenbury had every right to claim the Princes could not have escaped or been abducted. They would have to cross the chapel, skirt chambers, pass by sentries and go through at least three doors just to reach the Tower green. Even if they had reached there, any of the guards encircling the towers or walls would have espied them.

I heard Brackenbury stir behind me. He was as uncomfortable as I was.

‘Sir Robert?’ I asked. ‘On the sacrament, are you in any way responsible for the Princes’ disappearance?’

‘No!’ His honest face was taut and anxious but in my heart I felt he was lying.

I next saw the royal physician, Sir Giles Argentine, a graduate of Strasburg, who had served in the household of Edward IV. I met him in his own chambers in the Garden Tower. Tall, completely bald, an ascetic with sharp eyes and a narrow, hatchet-like face, he was dressed soberly in fustian brown, the only luxury being a small ring on one of his long, bony fingers and a simple gold chain round his neck. I mention these details for most doctors are open to bribes but Argentine struck me as an honest man. He invited me in and poured two goblets of chilled white Rhenish. I had glimpsed the fellow before at Court and we knew each other by sight and reputation. I was surprised by his intense dislike of me, well hidden, only his eyes betraying him.

‘My Lord,’ he began abruptly. ‘You are here about the Princes?’

‘How do you know?’

The doctor raised his eyebrows.

‘Obvious. We live in a small community. Rumours abound. Men confide in physicians. Moreover, you are one of the King’s right-hand men. I am sure,’ he added sarcastically, ‘the King has not sent you on a courtesy visit.’

‘You saw the Princes, Sir Giles?’

‘Yes, the last time was a week before Brackenbury arrived. The younger one, York,’ he added, ‘was
subdued, quiet, pitiful.’ The physician paused, weaving his fingers together in agitation. ‘Prince Edward,’ he continued, ‘was suffering from an abscess of the gum. He was melancholic, regarding every day as his last, regularly making his confession.’ His words chilled me. I thought of the two princes in that dreadful chamber.

‘So he expected to die?’

‘Yes,’ Argentine replied. ‘He often said that he hoped that now his uncle had taken his crown, he would at least leave him his life.’ The physician’s hostility was now obvious as if he found my presence obnoxious.

‘Sir Giles.’ I forced him to look at me. ‘You do not know me. Yet you regard me as an enemy.’

‘This is a sham!’ The words were spat out. ‘This, this,’ Argentine snapped, ‘asking me questions about the Princes. What do you care? You are one of the King’s henchmen, you already know the truth!’

‘I do not, sir, nor does the King!’ I snapped back. I nodded, rose and left abruptly, not caring whether he took offence or not. On the one hand I felt angry but on the other quite disgusted and frightened at the task the King had entrusted to me. I sent a servant to fetch Brackenbury to meet me in the Tower gardens. He came soon enough and I told him I was leaving. For one moment I thought he was going to say something but he remained tight-lipped and, spinning on his heel, strode away.

I walked back through the different gateways and down to the quayside. I hailed a skiff which was pulling away. The shrivelled-faced waterman turned and smiled, but his abrupt change of expression and the slight crunch on the gravel behind made me turn, just in time to see the assassin edge towards me, like a spider scurrying out of the darkness. Dressed completely in black, with a hood pulled over his face, he carried both sword and dagger. I drew my own and feinted as the assailant closed with me. One, two parries, our breaths
coming in short gasps, our feet scuffing the gravel; I heard the shouts of the boatman and the annoyed cawing of the ravens. My body was soaked in sweat. I am an indifferent swordsman and was frightened on how the attack would end. We closed once more; my assailant thrust and parried with sword and dagger, our blades striking in a sharp clash of steel. Suddenly I heard shouting. I glimpsed Belknap running down the trackway from the Tower gate, behind him members of the garrison. The assassin closed once more but I pushed him off. Belknap was now near. The fellow feinted, dodged by me and took to his heels, running like the wind along the riverbank towards the city.

Belknap was all concerned, talking in sharp bursts of breath; how he had returned to the Tower, learnt I had just left and come after me, calling out the soldiers when he saw the attack. I thanked him profusely, leaving him to dismiss the soldiers while I called the skiff in. We climbed aboard, the wizened, gap-toothed boatman all agog with questions. Belknap told him to mind his own business and soon we were in mid-stream heading back towards Abbots Place near Westminster Palace. Belknap was silent; I, still trembling, relieved at my narrow escape. Someone had sent that assailant after me. But who? Brackenbury? Argentine? One of Buckingham’s men? The agent Percivalle? Slaughter, the man I would have to search for? Or had he been sent by one of the many factions who hated King Richard and any of his supporters?

To be truthful, I wondered about Howard himself, even Richard. By the time we reached Westminster Hall, I was calm but quietly furious. I expected to find Norfolk but was informed he had returned to Crosby Place. So, using my authority and the King’s warrant, I immediately hired horses and, skirting the city, travelled via Aldgate, up into Bishopsgate and Crosby Place. Once again I thanked Belknap, that most
honourable of servants, that most faithful of retainers, with a bag of silver and searched out Howard. My anger only grew for the Duke had left, being busy sitting at the Guildhall with Royal Justices hearing cases. Still hooded and cloaked, though accompanied by my six retainers, I made my way through the city using all my authority and the presence of my retinue to push my way through the noisy, smelly throng. No apprentice dared run out to me offering geegaws, lace ribbons or hot pies. The sight of my livery and the naked steel of my escort soon cleared a path. I strode into the Guildhall, pushing aside bailiffs, officials with their white wands of office, telling them I was on the King’s business.

Norfolk was in the main chamber, seated behind a green baize table, his fellow-justices arranged on each side of him. To his left was the scriptorium, where sweating clerks recorded what was being said, whilst soldiers dressed in blue, wearing the white lion rampant of Norfolk, brought both plaintiffs and defendants up to the bar to be heard. I dare not interrupt. Norfolk dismissed me, his mouth hard and angry, his eyes beseeching for no public dispute about the King’s secret matter. I calmed down and sat on a bench, watching the Duke’s quick and summary justice. Two men to be hanged at the Elms for murder and rape; another to be branded with an ‘F’ for forgery; two river pirates to be hanged on the riverbank, their bodies to dangle there for seven turns of the tide; a man who wished to leave sanctuary and abjure the realm; and, finally, a fraudulent relic-seller, who claimed he owned the foreskin of some obscure saint. The court dissolved in laughter when the city official plaintively stated that the fellow had sold the same relic over sixty times. Norfolk bellowed out how this indeed was a miracle for how many foreskins did even a saint have! The man was sentenced to a week in the stocks. Norfolk announced the court was adjourned, rose and went off into a small
chamber. I followed him there. He took off his red robe, fringed with lambswool, replacing it with a velvet gown, and began to bandage his forehead with a piece of white linen.

‘Ten kernels of pepper ground in vinegar,’ he muttered. ‘Physicians say it is a sure remedy for headaches.’ He peered at me slyly and I realised he was frightened.

‘You look angry, Lovell!’ he snapped. ‘Out with it, man. What is the matter?’

I angrily questioned him about his visit to the Tower but Norfolk dismissed it as a matter of courtesy. He had rights there as Constable of England; it was his duty to visit the place.

‘And Slaughter?’ I asked. ‘Black Will, the Princes’ only servant and gaoler?’

Norfolk shrugged. ‘I sent Slaughter there,’ he muttered. ‘Because the King ordered it. Someone from my household. Someone who never knew the Princes and could not be suborned. I agreed. He seemed a sensible enough fellow and he was one less mouth to feed in my own household.’ Norfolk suddenly pulled out his dagger and, turning, cut a capon pie which was on a platter on a table behind him.

‘Here!’ he said. ‘I have answered your questions. Now eat. It will settle your humours.’

I accepted, mollified by Norfolk’s generosity, but he must have read the silent accusation in my eyes. Poor, bluff Norfolk. He dismissed the matter of the Princes as of little import, more worried and concerned about the growing restlessness and conspiracies in London and the surrounding shires. I was about to leave when suddenly I remembered Slaughter and made one last request of him. The Duke looked surprised but agreed, saying he would send the information to Crosby Place as soon as it was available.

After my meeting with Norfolk, I set off for
Westminster. If the Princes were missing or dead, then surely their mother, Elizabeth Woodville, would know something about it? The former Queen, on hearing of Richard’s seizure of her elder son at the end of April, had lost her nerve. She broke into great lamentations, bewailing her child’s ruin, her friends’ mischance and her own misfortunes. She immediately took sanctuary in the abbott’s lodging at Westmister, taking with her the nine-year-old Duke of York and her considerable bevy of daughters. Her son by her first marriage, Thomas Grey, Marquis of Dorset, had made a feeble attempt to protect her but quickly lost heart and joined his mother at Westminster. Avaricious as ever, Elizabeth had insisted on taking as many of her possessions as possible, chests, coffers, packs, bundles. Once there, she had squatted like a serving-girl on the rushes, all desolate and despairing. She did not trust her brother-in-law, Richard of Gloucester, loudly cursing him and saying he was dedicated to destroying both her and her blood. Two weeks later, under pressure from the Archbishop of Canterbury, Cardinal Bourchier, and the silent menaces of the Duke of Norfolk, she had given up her younger son, saying with considerable pathetic insight, ‘Farewell, my sweet son. Let me kiss you once more, for only God knows when we shall kiss again.’

I should have felt sorry for the stupid woman but I always have, and always will, consider her the real cause of all our problems. She had driven a wedge between Edward and his brothers, Richard and George of Clarence, allowed her brood of relatives the richest pickings in both church and state, and alienated everyone by her arrogance. I had seen her feasting alone, seated on a throne of gold in a chamber bedecked with silks and silver clothes, while her own mother and the King’s sister had to kneel whenever they wished to speak to her. Now she was in sanctuary, the Marquis of
Dorset, soon tiring of his mother, escaped from Westminster. The King had the surrounding countryside cordoned off by troops who searched the fields and woodlands with dogs but without success. The Marquis reached France and, so the King had confided in me, the ex-queen kept up constant communication with him.

In an attempt to forestall this as well as to prevent any future escapes, the King had the abbey cordoned off, entrusting the command to one of his own body squires, John Nesfield. I met the latter as soon as I arrived at the abbey, a northerner, a born soldier and swordsman. Stocky, sharp-tongued, his corn-coloured hair cropped close about his head, he, and over a hundred archers dressed in chain-mail and steel caps, had surrounded the abbey entrances, lighting the night with the flames of their camp-fires. Once he knew the reason for my visit, he allowed me entrance into the cloisters. I sent a message with one of the monks that I wished words with the Lady Elizabeth. She delayed her coming so long that I thought she was refusing to see me, but eventually she came down. Dressed completely in black, her headdress a mist of dark veils, she looked a shadow of her former self. Her face, once olive and heart-shaped, was now white, podgy and soaked with tears; those beautiful eyes which had enraptured and ensnared Edward of York were red-rimmed with constant crying. She was accompanied by her eldest daughter, also called Elizabeth, who was similarly dressed; a glimpse of her face and large grey eyes reminded me of her mother’s former beauty.

The ex-queen and I knew each other of old. I disliked her, and she hated me, not because I had given her any offence, she simply detested anyone who consorted with Richard of Gloucester. Her whole body and stance betrayed this rancour. She stopped a few paces from me, her black-gloved hand constantly dabbing at her
eyes with a white lace handkerchief. She was supported by her daughter and seemed to be on the verge of collapsing in a faint.