Queen of Trial and Sorrow (28 page)

Yet even at that point, I believe if he had only flung himself to the floor, begging forgiveness, Edward would have stepped down from the dais, raised him up and embraced him, and all present would have politely applauded the reconciliation and there would have been a brief harmony between the brothers until the next time.  But he did not.  

That night, in my chambers, we Wydevilles quietly celebrated.

Dressed in her bridal finery, little Anne Mowbray was led from my chamber through the White Chamber to St. Stephen’s Chapel; the young Earl of Lincoln (the Sussexes’ eldest son and a most likable lad) on her right hand and my brother, Earl Rivers on her left, and attended by many lords and ladies.  Just within the door, on a carpet of azure and under a canopy of cloth of gold, I stood with the king, our son Richard, now the Duke of York, our three eldest daughters and the Dowager Duchess of York. 

I was not present when the duchess arrived at the palace from her place of retirement at Birkhamstead Abbey, and Edward said very little about their interview, though I heard she had warned him that for the sake of the house of York itself the present state of affairs could not continue.  The duke’s ‘misdeeds’ must be swept under the carpet for to do otherwise was to involve the family in a scandal of such proportions that every member would be stigmatized by it.  Edward listened to his mother’s pleas but kept his own council.

Doctor Goldwell, Bishop of Norwich read out the dispensation from the pope allowing the marriage despite nearness of blood.  Thereupon the ceremony proceeded, the king himself giving the diminutive bride away.

While largesse of gold and silver pieces was tossed to the crowd assembled at the palace gates on behalf of the newlyweds, the bride was led by the Duke of Gloucester on her right hand and the Duke of Buckingham on her left to the king’s great chamber for the wedding feast.  Seated at the high table with the king and I, the children were quiet, overawed, I’m sure, at being the center of so much ceremonial. 

On Plough Sunday, in honor of the bridal pair, my lord the king created twenty-four Knights of the Bath, and the following Thursday a tournament was held in Old Palace Yard, observed by ambassadors from France, Scotland, Burgundy and Germany.  Many of my kinsmen, including my two eldest sons, took part.  One of the prizewinners was one of my Haute cousins and he received a gold
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from my lady Bessie.

I’m sure the ambassadors noted nothing amiss, and yet the festivities were subdued, for an uninvited and unwelcome guest moved among us.  While we were celebrating, Clarence’s day of reckoning was upon him. My son the Marquis of Dorset was present when parliament assembled the day after the wedding. 

Both houses were packed into the Painted Chamber when a blare of trumpets announced the entrance of the king.  Crowned and wearing robes of state and the Order of the Garter, he took his seat on the dais.  Having been subjected to an unrelenting onslaught of pressure from the lords of his council, he had agreed to bring in a bill of attainder against his brother: in effect, to hand him over to the law and allow justice to take its course.  The chancellor took as his opening address the loyalty that subjects owe their king, and when the bill was read, Clarence’s old treasons and Edward’s leniency toward him were remembered and a multitude of new treasons were added.

He stood accused of plotting against the king and his children with the aid of forces both within the kingdom and without; of attempting to alienate the natural affection of subjects for their king by giving money and gifts to his men to distribute among the people and persuade them that Thomas Burdett had been wrongfully accused; that the king used necromancy to poison his subjects; of claiming the king was a bastard and compelling men to swear on the Blessed Sacrament to be faithful to himself and his heirs, contrary to the allegiance they owed their Sovereign Lord; of speaking of and showing the document signed between himself and Margaret of Anjou, which stated that if Henry’s heirs failed, he and his heirs would inherit the throne; and of sending his people into various parts of the country to incite them to help him make war on the  king.

And yet, the chancellor stated, after all these various and heinous treasons, the king stood ready to forgive his brother for the sake of their nearness of blood, if he would only make due submission and show himself worthy of it.  But the duke was obdurate and would remain a threat to king’s peace as long as he lived.  In conclusion, the bill asked that the duke be attainted of high treason and all his lands and goods forfeited. 

“The duke brought in a few witnesses.” Thomas said.  “But truly they sounded more like accusers.  No one spoke in his defence.  In the end, he was abandoned by all.”

“How did he look?”

“Pale, older, a little thinner perhaps, his eyes dull and red.  But defiant to the end.”

“It isn’t the end.  He still breathes,” I said.

“Not for much longer.”

“Are you sure?”  I longed to believe it.

“It’s out of the king’s hands now.  The Commons will demand his head.”

Six months he had been in the Tower, with few creature comforts and with nothing to do, no book to read, no letters to write, no companionship except those officials sent by the king who were hardly companionable, nothing to do to distract him from contemplation of whatever fate awaited him.  I imagined him there in that bare cold tower room that had once been used to store weapons, lit by one high, splayed window through which would come voices and other sounds, men calling greetings to each other, children laughing as they played football on the green, dogs barking and horses neighing and stamping, the sounds of everyday life in all its prosaic panoply; and yet he would see nothing through that narrow rectangle but the changing patterns of the clouds or the movement of the stars.  He had a straw pallet and an extra blanket now that winter was here, but no brazier, for he was often drunk and it was feared he would knock it over.  There was a slop bucket for his bodily wastes and a small table and chair.  In the mornings a chaplain came to him, followed by a barber and then the first meal of the day.  And then he was left to his own devices.  I imagined him sitting there on his narrow cot, bowed and wrapped in a blanket, hour after dreadful hour, drinking himself mindless while time trickled away.  How could he have borne it?  Wouldn’t you lose your mind?  But perhaps he had.  To his visitors, his guards, even while he lived in the shadow of the axe, he shouted of his innocence and that his brother the king was baseborn, gotten on the Duchess of York by a common archer of her bodyguard.  The throne was rightfully his, he asserted, so how could he be accused of treason?

I have made no secret that I wanted him dead.  Yet I could almost pity him for his suffering – a harsh imprisonment for one born to rank and privilege – but I still wanted him dead.  Dorset said it was out of the king’s hands now, but we all knew Edward might yet pardon him and I, for one, wouldn’t have been surprised.  I wanted him dead for Edward’s sake and our children’s, as much as for any desire on my part for vengeance.  While he lived we would never be free of the threat he posed.  Even then the western shires were stirring, for he still had friends and adherents there.

Since Richard of Gloucester, as Constable of the Realm, could not be expected to pass sentence on his brother, the Duke of Buckingham was appointed in his place, and when the Commons brought in a guilty verdict, Buckingham it was who sentenced Clarence to death. 

Even then Edward hesitated to give the final word.  As may be imagined, he was in an agony of indecision.  I was afraid to speak to him of the matter, his temper was so uncertain.  But one night, soon after sentence had been passed, I awoke to see him seated by the fire in my chamber and I rose too and went to him and sat at his feet with my head in his lap.  He had added more wood to the fire and the sap hissed and spat.  After we had sat in silence for a while, he said: “What would you do if it were your brother?”

Did he forget John?  Of course, I would have done all I could to save John, who was blameless.  I couldn’t imagine any of my brothers doing what Clarence had done but if one of them committed high treason and found himself in the Tower under sentence of death, why, yes, I would do all I could to save him.  It is in the nature of families.  Attack my brother and you attack me; kill my brother and you amputate a little of my power that will never grow back again.  But, none of my brothers had the potential to make trouble as the king’s brother had. 

Not wishing to say these things, I gave him back his own words.  “I would remember what you have always told me: We are symbols.  Duty must come first.”  I raised my head to look up at him.  “Make an end,” I said, deliberately ambiguous.  “Only then will you be at peace.”

“Peace!” He spat the word from his mouth as if it were venom.  He had poured himself a glass of wine and lifted it to his mouth.  With his other hand he stroked my loose hair.  “Do you remember the night Henry was slain?  You told me then that with the death of one man I could ensure peace and the safe succession of our son.  You were wrong.  Peace belongs to another time, Bess.  Perhaps our son’s, perhaps later.  Perhaps never. But not in our time.”

“I was speaking of your peace of mind.”

“Ah, that is chimerical, no matter what becomes of my brother.  I have no more illusions.” He took another drink of wine, staring into the fire.  Outside snow was blowing against the windowpanes, melting, sliding down.  He said: “My mother writes almost daily.  She says no matter that parliament has found him guilty and Buckingham passed sentence, his blood will be on my hands and ten thousand absolutions will not wash them clean.  She says I will be damned.  She’s right, of course.  It will be another black stain on my soul.”

“The church tells us there is no sin so great it cannot be expiated by true contrition.”

I, too, had been receiving letters from the duchess, begging me to use my influence to persuade the king to relent, and I knew a sad satisfaction that she, who had never had a kind word for me, who disdained me and all my family, should lower herself to ask my help in saving the worthless life of the son who had branded her adulteress.

“What happened?” he murmured, as if to himself.  “There was a time when I felt strong, invincible, when I felt I could take on all comers and send them off bruised and bleeding.  And now I cannot control my own brother.  I cannot shut his vile mouth.  I have locked him up, deprived him of all but the basic necessities of life and still he rides me.  Day and night he bedevils me.”

“It is your uncertainty that bedevils you.  I have never doubted your strength.  I know you can do whatever is needful.”

He sighed deeply and stirred against me.  The wine glass went to his mouth again.  He said nothing and I decided I had said enough.  Putting the glass down in the hearth, he rose to his feet.  I watched him moving about the room as if looking for something, and then he went to stand by the window.  I could see his face wavering in the glass.  Every day seemed to bring new lines of suffering.  His eyes were dull with weariness.  I pitied him.  And I loved him in spite of all the infidelities.  I sometimes wonder about the woman I once was, that impoverished widow with a bleak future; had she truly loved the golden youth who came to court her at Grafton, or did she fall in love with the glamor, the sheer physical beauty and the promise of him?  Isn’t it true that real love can only come with the years, with shared experience, bad as well as good, and anything else is just for poets and troubadours?  Now all that was left to love was the man himself.

……….

It was the Feast of St. Thomas Aquinas when I decided I must do what I could, little as that was.  I summoned Dorset to me and handed him a weighty purse of gold.

“The king is procrastinating.  Distribute this among the Commons, not those known to be our people, but the others, and make sure Speaker Alyngton gets a fair sum.  Only they can pressure the king to act.”

That’s all I did, I swear: distributed a little gold among the members in order to assist the process of justice.  Whether it helped or not, I have no way of knowing, but a few days later the speaker made an appeal to the Lords and a delegation from both houses was received by the king in audience to beg him to allow the execution to go ahead immediately. 

The following morning I was hearing mass in St. Stephen’s Chapel.  Dorset slipped in beside me.  Too eager to keep the news until the service was over, he said out of the corner of his mouth: “Clarence is dead.”

A shudder went through me, as if a wintry wind had just blown through the door.  “Is it certain?” I whispered back.

“Dead as a kippered herring.”

“It was done privily then?”

“In his cell.  No witnesses but the ones who did the deed.”

I made the sign of the cross. 
“Requiescat in pace.”

“Mother,” Dorset said, amused, “ought you not rather to be thanking God for His benevolence?”

“Come and see me later,” I said.

I wanted to hear the details.  It was necessary.  But there were no details, few anyway.  No one seemed to know how he’d died, or whether it was done at the king’s command, or parliament’s.  The whole business was shrouded in a mystery that was bound to spark rumors and speculation. 

A week later the king’s treacherous brother was laid in a vault behind the altar at Tewkesbury Abbey, beside the body of his wife, whose death, I think, was the catalyst for events that culminated in his own death.  The king kept most of the duke’s estates in his own hands, but Clarence’s son was allowed to succeed to the earldom of Warwick and provision was made for him and his sister until they should come of age.  The king also paid the overdue wages of his brother’s servants.

Many months later, when he was able to speak of the matter, Edward told me how Richard of Gloucester had been rewarded for his inertia in the affair.  One of his rewards had come three days before Clarence’s death when his small son was created Earl of Salisbury, which had been one of Clarence’s titles.  Edward never liked to speak of the indignity of his brother’s death, but since he was in the mood for confession, I got him to confirm what was already being rumored: that rather than have the duke subjected to a public execution, he had been put to death in the manner of his choosing after having been absolved of his sins by a priest.  Bizarrely, even by his standards, he had chosen to be drowned in a butt of malmsey, his favorite wine.