Queen of Trial and Sorrow (40 page)

“But how is that possible?” I asked Lionel, who gave me the news.  “Dickon is Duke of Norfolk in right of his dead wife.”

“Howard and Berkeley have a good claim.  Edward played fast and loose with the inheritance laws in order to obtain that plum for your son, but the fact remains that the prince has been confirmed in his title and rights by acts of parliament, and those acts have not been repealed.  And since the title comes to him through marriage and not inheritance, any future statutes debarring him from the throne do not affect his rights.  It is another instance of Gloucester’s haughty disregard for the law, despite his hypocritical mouthings about justice.”

“And Buckingham has the Bohun estates, I suppose?”

“Not yet.  They’re part of the royal demesne, remember.  Gloucester would be robbing himself. Still, Gloucester’s loaded him with offices and lands.  He’s given him the same kind of viceregal powers in the marches that Gloucester himself enjoyed in the north during his brother’s latter years.”

“Has he lost his mind?  It is customary to reward those who have done good service, but he’s bought Buckingham’s loyalty and paid far above the going rate.”

“Buckingham is a cretin.  He’s going about London boasting that he’ll soon have as many Stafford Knots as Warwick had Ragged Staffs.  He doesn’t see anything incongruous in comparing himself to a proven traitor.” 

Lionel leaned back, lacing his fingers across his belly, which was spreading.  “You know,” he said, “it’s one thing to get himself the crown; it’s quite another to keep it.  A king, even a popular king as Edward was, needs the support of his lords and yet he’s done nothing to appease them.  They mislike his acts of tyranny and the way he set aside the rightful king and usurped the throne with the help of these northerners.  There is a great deal of murmuring against him and talk of rescuing the princes from the Tower.” 

“Is there news of my sons?” I asked eagerly.

His eyes drifted down to his shoes and he shook his head.

Dorset was safe in Brittany, but of my sons in the Tower there was never any news.  After their removal to the White Tower they had been seen infrequently: pale faces at a window, but never at play or sport outside and now such sightings had stopped altogether.  I believe Doctor Argentine was one of the last people, other than their guards and servants, to have seen and spoken to them.  I had sent a message asking him to come to see me.  He sent back a reply that he could not but wrote an account of what had occurred that day that broke my heart all over again.  He had been summoned because Ned had an ache in his jaw, and he found that my boys were kept in a barren room and never let out, with four attendant-gaolers.  Whatever the truth of their birth, Doctor Argentine wrote, they had done no wrong; they were children and didn’t deserve to be so treated.  Both were depressed and dispirited, and Ned said to him: ‘I wish my uncle of Gloucester would leave me my life, even if he takes my crown.’ They
knew
!  My poor babes.  Every day they woke up to the knowledge that it might be their last day of life, and every night they must have lain in bed terrified that every sound they heard was the footfall of an assassin coming to steal away their lives.

You would think that as their mother I would know if they were alive or dead, but maternal intuition was silent, perhaps because – God help me – hope was a crumbling wall behind which I cowered in fearful trembling against the certainty of their deaths.  I wanted to keep the wall intact.  I had little else to sustain me.

There were many plots and conspiracies, schemes to free the princes, or to seize Gloucester. The men of the south and west were in a constant ferment, encouraged by my husband’s household men.  Nothing was obtained except, perhaps, to spoil the usurper’s sleep.

One day Lionel came to me with a new scheme.  He had been involved in everything and was in touch with Dorset and our brother Edward in Brittany, and he now suggested that my two eldest daughters be spirited away across the sea.  I saw the virtues of the idea at once.  It would ensure a degree of safety for all my children.  For if anything happened to my two younger sons, the Lady Bessie would be regarded by many as the legitimate successor to her father.  There were many foreign princes who would be willing to marry her and take up arms on her behalf in order to win a kingdom.  Another heir and the prospect of war might well make Gloucester stay his hand should he be tempted to remove my sons.

To my dismay, Lionel said he wanted to leave.  There was so much happening and he felt he could be of greater benefit to me in the outside world.  I made no attempt to detain him, and before he left I gave him the rest of my jewels.   The scheme came to nothing.  Gloucester must have learned of it, for guards appeared at every exit and entrance of the monastery and no one could get past them without proving their business.  So it was only my daughters and I and our few servants.  I had never felt so alone and fearful in all my life.   

……….

In France, Louis was dead after a long illness.  I have often reflected how strange it is that he and my husband, who were so different, had so much in common.  Although Louis was nearly twenty years older than Edward, they both assumed their crowns in the same year and ruled kingdoms impoverished by war.  They both had allies strategically placed on the borders of the other.  They were the twin powers of Europe.  They both had to deal with overmighty subjects and treacherous brothers.  Their heirs were born in the same year and they both died in the same year.  Luckily for him, Louis’ heir was put into the tender care of his wise and capable older sister and lived to rule France.

……….

The Feast of St. Gregory: Brigit was ill and I sent for Doctor Serigo.  He came at once and did not come alone.  With him was a hunchbacked beanstalk of a man with dry scaly skin on hands and face.   Doctor Lewis had attended me once or twice in the past but on this occasion he had come on behalf of his mistress, from whom he had brought a letter.  Margaret Beaufort was the wife of Lord Stanley, who had been involved in the Hastings’ conspiracy.

I knew Margaret’s ambition, though she tried to veil it.  She had a son in Brittany who was putting himself forward as the heir of Lancaster.  He was a nobody.  His father was from a Welsh family of no particular note, until Queen Katherine, Henry V’s widow, married (or not) Owen Tudor, her master of the wardrobe.  The union created a scandal whose dimensions belittled that of my own parents’ marriage a decade later. The illicit pair produced two sons, Edmund and Jasper who, after the outrage had faded and because they were half-brothers to Henry VI, were created Earls of Richmond and Pembroke.  Edmund Tudor died shortly after his marriage to Margaret and three months later she produced her son, Henry, who was now Earl of Richmond.  What claim Henry Tudor had to the throne came to him from his mother, who was descended from Edward III, but through the illegitimate Beaufort branch.

Few took his pretensions seriously, especially at a time when Edward had a secure hold on the throne and two sons in the nursery and, should he and his heirs fail, there were many others of the York line with a better claim than the son of Margaret Beaufort and Edmund Tudor.  Margaret, however, remained his ardent champion and advocate, entirely devoted to his interests.  She had just about persuaded Edward to let him come home and enter into his rights when the king died.

Margaret was a very scholarly and cultured woman, austere and pious and with a will of iron.  She and I had been friendly enough without ever being close and I was intrigued that she had written to me. 

When Doctor Serigo went in to see Brigit, who was prone to fevers, I took Doctor Lewis out into the garden away from the other children and the servants, and sat on the bench.  It was quite a cold day with a blustery wind but the garden was sheltered.  Breaking the seal with my thumb, I read:

To the most excellent Elizabeth, Dowager Queen: Madam, I greet you in all Christian humility and with deepest sympathy.  Whereas it is widely suspected that those fair babes, your sons, are no more, it is my sad duty to report to your Grace that I have irrefutable knowledge that they have passed to a better place.  Alas, who of us is safe when he has slain the poor lambs committed to him in trust?

My mind crashed.  Literally crashed.  Lay on the floor of my skull in a million shards.  All those little pieces were simply incapable of absorbing this latest shock, this unbearable sorrow.  Now at last I understood how bottomless was my grief.  This was the final blow. 

Beyond tears, I rocked on the hard seat and I remembered my husband’s deathbed and his final words to me:
Be good to our children.
I had not been good to them.  I had failed them.  Oh god oh god oh god.  Why did you leave me alone? 

Doctor Lewis was patiently watching me.  I made the effort to put myself together.  Smoothing out the crumpled letter against my skirt, I read on.

Madam, I exhort you, as one mother to another, to accept these tidings as the will of God, which is ever unknowable, but which we must believe is tempered by His wisdom and mercy.  I pray you, give all credence to the bearer of this letter as if his words are my own, for they are.

Your devoted friend, M. Beaufort.

Rising quickly I went through the hall into my bedchamber and closed the door.  And finally I gave myself up to grief without inhibition.  I felt like one of those grotesque stone creatures whose open mouths spew cascades of rain from the gutters, only from mine came a torrent of anguish, a stream of self-hate. 
Be good to our children.
  I had let myself be deceived by false promises and pushed my little son toward his dread fate.  I had delivered him into the hands of his murderer, knowing only apart were my sons were safe.  I had done this.  God forgive me, for I could never forgive myself. I screamed until my throat was raw. 
Mea culpa!  Mea culpa!
I tore off my headdress and pulled at my hair.  I rent my clothes and gouged my skin.  I turned my rage against a God who cared nothing for his people. 
Nothing!
  Else why would he permit the murder of two innocents and why would he permit their murderer to flourish?

The sounds of my distress certainly permeated beyond the door, and at some point Anne and Bessie came running in.  They knelt on the floor beside me, and took hold of my hands forcibly so that I couldn’t do further harm to myself and wiped my face with damp linen.  They didn’t even ask what had happened to put me into such a state, it was as if they knew, and their tears fell as abundantly as mine, and we held each other and rocked back and forth in a paroxysm of grief.    

I felt quite unable to speak to Doctor Lewis again that day without breaking down and I had an absolute of horror of other people witnessing my distress.  So I delegated to Anne the task of finding out from him whatever Lady Margaret wished me to know.  To my surprise the doctor refused outright.  His message, he said, was for the queen dowager and no one else, and if necessary he would return tomorrow and the day after that, until I felt ready to speak with him.  The illness of the Lady Brigit was all the excuse he needed to get past the guards.

Having exhausted myself with grief and lack of sleep I was in a state of near-numbness when the doctor returned the following day.  He started out by telling me, as so many others had in the past, that I must not despair; there was still hope.  Had I not been so numb, I think I might have sent him away at that point.  Didn’t he know, foolish man, that all hope was dead with my sons?  The very worst had happened. 

I asked the only question that mattered to me, a last shred of hope: “How is it that Lady Margaret is so sure that my sons are… no more?”   

His skin was pale, flawed by flaking and raw pink spots but his eyes gleamed with excitement.  “Because, Madam, she has learned of it from an unimpeachable source.  The Duke of Buckingham!” he said with a flourish, and the words penetrated my numbness.

“
Buckingham!
” Anne said, disbelieving.  She and my two eldest daughters were grouped around me, ready to catch me, I believe, if I should swoon.  I was hardly aware of her taking my hand.

According to Doctor Lewis, Buckingham had been with the usurper on his progress but left at Gloucester to go to his castle of Brecknock on the pretext of attending to his personal affairs.  But, in fact, he had learned from Gloucester’s own mouth that the princes had been put to death on Gloucester’s orders while he was absent from the city, and Buckingham was so horrified at this cruel deed that he forthwith withdrew his support from Gloucester and resolved to work with his enemies. 

At the time, not thinking coherently, I accepted Doctor Lewis’s words at face value, and it wasn’t until later that I came to the conclusion that Buckingham, along with such as Viscount Lovel, must have been in Gloucester confidence from the start and would have approved the foul deed, for if by chance my Ned should be restored to his rights they would fall along with their master.  So I quickly came to believe that Buckingham’s sudden and, to some, inexplicable defection had nothing to do with his repugnance at the murder of two children. 

The full truth I learned much later from Doctor Morton, Bishop of Ely, who, it will be remembered, had been arrested at the time of Hastings’ death and was being held in the custody of Buckingham at Brecknock.  Buckingham did indeed leave the usurper’s train to attend to personal business but it was because he was angry that Gloucester had refused to yield the Bohun lands.  Upon arrival at his castle, he fell into conversation with Doctor Morton who was a most cunning man, and told him that the princes were no more.  Gloucester did not want this information kept secret, in fact, although he wanted no more known than the bare fact of their deaths; he wanted his enemies to know that their efforts were pointless, as the focus of their rebellion had been removed.  Doctor Morton was a friend of Lady Margaret’s and was in touch with her, and through her, her son, even while at Brecknock, and little by little he began to plant the idea in Buckingham’s head that he ought to abandon the usurper and throw in his lot with Henry Tudor.  Buckingham was having none of that.  He was a little disgruntled that he hadn’t been granted the Bohun lands, but he was high in favor, had been rewarded with high offices and much property and still hoped to receive the coveted Bohun lands one day.  What had the poor exile in Brittany to offer?  Furthermore, it was clear that Tudor, Lady Margaret and the bishop were aiming for nothing less than the overthrow of Gloucester and the ascension to the throne of Tudor himself, and Buckingham wasn’t going to stomach that.  He had more royal blood in his little finger than that obscure Welshman had in his entire body, and if anyone was going to be king after the toppling of the tyrant, it ought to be him.