The Fate of Princes (15 page)

Catesby watched me digest this news as if I was eating a strange meal.

‘The King needs you, Francis,’ he said quietly. He leaned across the table. ‘Whatever you may think, Francis, remember Collingbourne’s couplet – you and I are indistinguishable from the King. If he falls, so do we.’ Catesby waved a hand and tried to encompass the whole of Minster Lovell. ‘All this will go.’ I stared at him. Whatever Catesby was, God rest his soul, he was accurate. Five days later I left Minster Lovell. Anne watched me go, her face hard, her eyes unsmiling, no hand raised in friendly farewell. Despite the treacherous roads and continuous downpour I was back in London in two days. The narrow, shit-strewn streets, the huddled houses, the merchants in the Chepe, the midden-heaps, the glorious banners of gold and purple, orange and red, the sound of trumpet and the clink of harness in the street.

I was welcomed rather coolly, Howard, Ratcliffe and others of their ilk clasping my hand while their eyes slid away as if they still liked me but did not know whether to trust me. On November 29th, dressed in my scarlet, ermine-lined robe, I joined the Chief Justice and other
judges of the King’s Bench, together with Norfolk and other earls, to try Collingbourne. This did not take place before the great marble bench of the King’s Court at Westminster but in the great cavernous Guildhall, as if the King wanted Londoners to see justice done. We judges sat high, behind a green-baize table on the broad dais at the far end of the Guildhall. On either side of us tables for the secretaries, scribes, clerks and lawyers. Collingbourne was brought before the bar. He looked pale, dishevelled, tired, but the torture had stopped and some effort had been made to tidy him up for his appearance in court. He rested almost nonchalantly on the bar, the great beamed rail which separated him from the dais, coolly inspecting each of us. When he saw me sitting at the far end, he smiled lazily, as if we were two friends meeting before a stall in Cheapside or a tavern in Southwark.

The trial was a foregone conclusion; Collingbourne refused to acknowledge Richard as King and therefore rejected us as his rightful judges. He called Richard a usurper, boldly confessed to sending letters and money to Henry Tudor in Brittany and offered no apology or defence. The sentence was delivered in the slow, sepulchral tones of the Lord Chief Justice, that William Collingbourne, being adjudged a traitor to the King, be dragged to a place of execution, that he be hanged, cut down whilst still alive, his body opened, his entrails hacked out, before the decapitation and the quartering of his body. The same was to be displayed on London Bridge as a warning to all other enemies of the King both here and abroad.

As a judge I was present when Collingbourne was dragged on a cheap wooden hurdle through the cobbled streets of London to Tower Hill. A cold filthy day; the hurdle rattled over the cobbles, the stones beneath cutting the poor man’s back, making him wince and cry out with pain. On Tower Hill a new scaffold had
been specially erected. Collingbourne was hoisted up on the back of the same horse which had dragged him through the streets. A noose was put round his neck, the gory and muddied body being allowed to hang for a short while before being cut down and tossed on a great blood-soaked table. The executioner ripped open his belly with a large knife, plucking out his entrails which he burnt on a fire alongside. Collingbourne’s screams were terrible to hear. A scene from the depths of hell: the scaffold, the table and executioner black against the lowering sky, the blood pouring in rivers down the table, Collingbourne shrieking, the stench and the orange-tongued fire roaring up as if asking for more. I turned away as the executioner put his hand back into Collingbourne’s body.

‘Oh, Lord Jesus!’ Collingbourne screamed. ‘Yet more trouble!’ and died as I, crouching down, vomited the goblet of wine I had drunk earlier to stiffen my resolve. God rest Collingbourne. An undoubted traitor but a witty and brave man. He deserved a better death.

I stayed for a number of days in Westminster. Richard came to see me. He was dressed completely in black with a small purple cap displaying the silver badge of the boar. He looked careworn, his face tight and drawn with tension and anxiety. We spoke awhile, Richard begging me with his eyes for a return to our old friendship, but I could not give it. So he smiled, a lopsided grin on his thin sallow face, and patting me gently on the arm, walked away without a backward glance. God knows I think he wanted to say something, take me into his confidence, but he must have seen the pain in my eyes. Roses when they rot smell as sour as any dank weeds. So it is with the wine of friendship; it can curdle to the most bitter vinegar.

Perhaps I should have left for I had another visitor, someone I least expected, forgotten like a meal eaten and never remembered. Yet I wished she had not come
for she only hastened the spread of the canker. One of the palace bailiffs, I forget his name, hastened up to tell me how a young maid sought an audience. On any other occasion, he blustered, he would have turned her away, but she had come to the palace many times before whilst I was hiding away in Oxfordshire. She said she had news, for my ears only, about a person of common acquaintance. I reluctantly agreed to see her in a small whitewashed chamber near the Great Hall.

I hardly recognised the girl when she entered, but she kept repeating her name and where we had last met. I remembered her then, from the tavern, the sweetheart of William Slaughter, the Princes’ dead gaoler.

‘What is it you want?’ I asked peevishly, for I had made a quiet resolve not to speak further on the King’s secret matter.

‘I have a description,’ she replied hastily, frightened of my anger.

‘Of whom?’

‘Of the man last seen with Black Will drinking in a tavern.’

‘Give it to me,’ I said tiredly, half wishing the girl was gone. She described what she had learnt, haltingly at first but more confidently as she spoke. My tiredness dropped away like a cloak. I made her repeat the description time and again until I knew it was correct. I gave her a small purse of silver and swore her to silence before she left. For a while I just sat, head in hands, one part of me wishing to run out and confront the man she had described, but I knew I would get no truth from him. Sir Robert Brackenbury, Constable of the Tower, would never admit to being the last person seen drinking with the gaoler of the banished princes. He would angrily rebut any claim to lay the man’s death at his door. Such a confidence must be kept secret. I would have to wait for better and fairer times. For why should Brackenbury kill a common servant? What did the
fellow know which was so dangerous? If Brackenbury killed Slaughter, he must have executed the Princes, and he would only have done that on Richard’s orders.

I left Westminster the following day and journeyed back to Minster Lovell. Anne greeted me frostily. I saw Belknap standing behind her and resented the way he flitted from room to room like some silent shadow. Nonetheless, when I poured my heart out to her, entrusting her with my suspicions about the King and the possible fate of the Princes, Anne’s icy demeanour began to thaw. I saw the old glint of merriment dance back into her eyes. She hugged me like she did, oh so long ago, before I became lost in the marshes of the King’s tortuous mind. Richard, of course, sent me invitations to join him for Christmas at Westminster but I replied that I was ill, unable to travel. I left him to his own devices. The rumours, of course, came through, of how the King hid his cares under the mantle of splendid celebrations. The shops in Cheapside were full of silver goods and the choirs from London churches serenaded the gentry and merchants with festive carols. In the palace itself there were masques, mummers’ plays, dancing and gorgeous banquets. Yet I was glad I was not there. Indeed, I still am, for Anne and I drank the loving-cup, hunted, danced, feasted and surprised each other with presents. We decorated the hall with greenery, hiring troupes of minstrels and mummers. Children from the village came up to entertain us with their songs and dances. A splendid Christmas. A time for wining and eating, of enjoyment during the day and
warm silken passion at night. I am glad. It was the last Christmas Anne and I were ever to spend together.

After Twelfth Night, teasing and cajoling Anne, I put an end to the festivities. I insisted we both concentrate on the administration of our estates, not only around Minster but those held in other shires. I summoned bailiffs, reeves, tenants and other members of my retinue to present their accounts, instructing Belknap to take careful measures to ensure our new-found wealth was not wasted. Of course, I kept an ear cocked for any news from Westminster. We had our visitors, Catesby, Ratcliffe, and on one occasion, Howard himself, the Duke of Norfolk cantering up into our main courtyard, filling it with noise and the blue and gold colours of his retinue. The news was always the same. Richard crouched in Westminster, melancholic and sad. Like King Saul from the Old Testament, he felt rejected by God, waiting for the sword to fall on his house. His queen was dying, taken to her bed, her thin body wasting away, coughing her lungs out in short, sharp, bloody gasps. The physicians would not allow Richard anywhere near her and so the rumours had begun, how the King was poisoning his wife. Richard howled like a cornered wolf, cursing God for taking his son and now his own wife in a long-drawn-out death agony of pain. March came. The winds howled in over the country and news arrived that Queen Anne had at last died at Westminster. Outside, Londoners stared and marvelled at the great shadow which crossed the sun. They took this and the Queen’s death as an omen that heaven had deserted the House of York.

There was other news. Charles VIII of France had agreed to finance Henry Tudor with money, men and ships. Rumour had it that once spring came the banners of the Red Dragon would be seen again in England. Richard stirred himself. He sent letters begging my return. I was sorely tempted to reply but remembered
Brackenbury’s closed face and wondered if Richard had been secretly laughing at me all the time. Catesby returned one evening, claiming he had been sent by Richard. Once Anne heard of his arrival, she withdrew to her own chamber saying she would have nothing to do with the King’s cat. Catesby’s face told me all, worried, tense and fearful. He gave the gossip of the court, gulping noisily from his cup as if he wished such matters out of the way. I just sat opposite him, relaxed, listening to the man’s chatter and through him Richard’s pleas that I return to court. After a while Catesby lapsed into silence. He rubbed the wine-cup between his hands, biting his lip, looking down at the floor like the clever lawyer he was, preparing his words carefully. At last he got up and walked over to the dresser to fill his wine-cup. He checked that both doors and windows were locked fast and secure and, dragging his chair over, crouched like a conspirator beside me.

‘The Tudor will come!’ he said. He stopped and flickered his eyes nervously at me. ‘The Tudor will come!’ he repeated. Still I remained silent. ‘For God’s sake, Francis,’ he hissed, ‘Richard is finished! The Stanleys hate him. The Beaufort bitch plots against him. The Earl of Northumberland detests him for taking away his power in the north. And who is there left? Jack of Norfolk?’ Catesby gulped from the cup. ‘Old Jack, sixty years old. And our King? He has no heir, not even a wife. Do you know, he has to nominate his own nephew as a possible heir-apparent?’ Catesby snorted with laughter. ‘Do you really think we would allow the crown to go to John de la Pole? He may be the Earl of Lincoln but his ancestors were merchants from Hull. And the Tudor? He has Oxford, an army, French gold and French ships. Francis, what will happen to us?’ I stared back at him. ‘What will happen to you, Francis? To Anne?’ Then, echoing Belknap’s words, ‘A careful man, Francis, plans for the future.’

‘What are your plans, William?’ I asked. ‘What do you suggest? Shall we ape Buckingham? Invite the Tudor over, to be caught, trapped in some river valley while our troops desert us? Richard furious, more work for Sir Ralph Assheton, and finally some market square, our heads hacked off for the amusement of gawking rustics. Is that what you want, William? Our King may well survive. If we deserted him, I know Richard, and he would have no mercy.’ Catesby nervously wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.

‘But if God is against us,’ he replied, ‘Richard will be defeated.’

‘What makes you think God has taken sides?’ I asked.

‘Richard thinks so himself,’ Catesby answered. ‘Last August he had the corpse of Henry VI exhumed from its thirteen-year-old resting-place in Chertsey Abbey and reinterred in St. George’s Chapel in Windsor. Richard has turned it into a shrine and no wonder – the dead King’s corpse was pleasantly scented, uncorrupted, the face as it was on the day of burial, except a little sunken and emaciated.’ Catesby shook himself as if trying to drive away an evil phantasm. ‘Richard sees all this as signs that God has left him. He cannot sleep at night and insists on paying for thousands of Masses for all members of his family. He gives vestments to York Minster and plans to install a massive chancery there with six altars and a hundred priests. The cost will be enormous. It means Mass will be celebrated incessantly without any break.’ Catesby looked down at his hands and I noticed they were trembling slightly. ‘I once asked Richard,’ the lawyer continued, ‘was he trying to buy himself into heaven? The King just stared at me and answered, I think before he could recollect, “I do it, William, in part satisfaction for those things which, on the dreadful day of judgement, I shall answer for”.’ Catesby looked at me. ‘What things, Francis? What dreadful things have been done?’ He chewed his lower
lip. ‘His nephews? The bastard princes? He must have murdered them, Francis. How can such a King survive?’

I just sat there, refusing to commit myself. I could smell Catesby’s fear but, if I let him talk, perhaps he might shed some light on the King’s secret matter. Catesby refilled his wine-goblet.

‘I know nothing of the Princes,’ he murmured, as if talking to himself. ‘But have you heard, Francis, of St. Julian the Hospitaller?’ I nodded. Who hadn’t? William Caxton with his new printing-presses in his shop near the palace of Westminster, had published the legend for all who could read. Despite the warm room, I shivered and caught Catesby’s meaningful stare. Julian the Hospitaller was a soldier who had killed his own father and mother, spending years doing penance. God finally appeared to him in a vision to say his sins were forgiven. Had Richard committed such a crime?