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Authors: Alison Prince

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BOOK: The Lost King
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Olwen tutted. ‘There's stupid you are, Bryn Jones. Those men ride fast and hard, same as they do everything else. She'd never be safe with them.'

‘Ah,' said Bryn. ‘I forgot about human nature. I need to think of something else, then.'

***

In the kitchen today, one of the maids said, ‘Someone at the door for you.'

Oh, what magic! There stood Tom.

I couldn't believe it. With one gasp, I was in his arms.

‘Your Uncle Bryn sent me some money,' he said. ‘So I hired a horse. He's not fast, but he's big and strong. He'll take the two of us, no bother.'

We are at Bryn's tonight. I've brought my things, tied in a small bundle. We start out in the morning.

And, yes, Tom, yes – I will marry you.

***

On the broad back of the horse, my arms round Tom and my head leaning against his strong shoulder, my
thoughts turn constantly to the boys. I feel disloyal, although in London I could do nothing for them and never even knew if they were alive. In that teeming city, I was as insignificant as a sparrow, or the breadcrumb it picks from the gutter.

Olwen tried to console me. She said, ‘The princes were not free like ordinary children,
cariad
. They were little circus performers, waiting for the day when they'd be ringmaster.'

Perhaps she is right. But I look back to the early days and the fun Edward and I had, and the new pleasure when his little brother came to join us.

I loved them both, and I always will.

Homecoming, war and tragedy

Tom and I were married on May Day. My little sisters had flowers in their hair and the boys wore clean shirts, and everything looked beautiful. We'd baked and cooked for days and spread a great feast on trestle tables under the trees because we'd never have all got into the house. The birds sang. The sun shone.

In the months while I was away, Tom built a cottage. It's nearly done. He is thatching its roof now. He still works at the Castle, and I am back there as a kitchen hand.

Annie looked up from beating eggs when I came into the kitchen and said, ‘Lisa!' She gave me a great
hug – then of course she wanted to know the latest news from London.

‘When will Henry Tudor's wedding be? Any time soon?'

‘Christmas Day.'

‘Huh. Trust him to make a big splash. I hate that man.' Then her face turned serious. ‘But what's this about the princes, Lisa? People are saying Richard murdered them. You and I know he'd never do that – he adored them. They're trying to make him out a monster.'

‘Yes, they are. Annie – I'm so worried.'

‘We can only pray for them.'

She was right. A constant prayer was in my mind and it still repeats itself again and again.

Dear Lord, if it be Thy Will, watch over my lovely boys and keep them safe. Amen. Dear Lord...

Dear Lord...

19
th
March 1485

King Richard's wife died three days ago. The malicious gossip gets worse and worse. They are saying Richard poisoned Anne so that he can marry
Elizabeth Woodville's daughter, to prevent her from marrying Henry Tudor.

This final unkindness broke Richard's reserve. He was so furious that he called the mayor and aldermen of London to the Great Hall of the Mercers' Company, and berated them for their cruel slander. Their records preserve the occasion, and the wording has been circulated among his supporters. Bryn sent them to me in a letter. Richard said it ‘never came into his thought or mind to marry in such a manner'. He had adored Anne ever since they were children, and to have it said that he killed her added an unbearable anguish.

He is now utterly alone. I wish I had some way to tell him that I trust him and believe in him. But I am nobody, and in the life of kings, everyone has to be somebody. King Edward broke that rule when he married Elizabeth Woodville, and we have paid for it to this day.

There is still silence about the boys. Surely, if they had been killed, rumours would have spread? The people who work at the Tower will have the same detailed knowledge of the place as we have of Ludlow. How could two bodies be smuggled out without their knowing? How could their cell be
empty one morning without questions being asked? I still persuade myself that they are alive.

Meanwhile, Henry Tudor has been gathering an army over there in France, preparing to cross the Channel again and invade England. There is going to be a war. I feel that all human kindness has gone. I fear for the future and for ourselves as well as for the helpless boys caught up in wicked schemes.

Papa tells me not to distress myself, for I will have a baby of my own in the autumn, and the child growing inside me must not be disturbed by fretting and worry. But the prayer goes on in my mind.

Dear Lord, if it be Thy Will...

7th August 1485

Henry has landed an army of three thousand men on the west coast of Wales, near Milford. It would have been quicker to cross the Channel to southern England, but Tom says three thousand men are not enough for a major battle. Henry aims to gather Welsh supporters as he marches through the country, because he himself is Welsh. The servants at the castle laugh at this, because as far as they are concerned,
Henry is from France. He speaks English, it seems, but nobody has heard him say a word of Welsh. Quite a few have joined his army, all the same.

King Richard was in the North when news of the invasion came. He has done wonderfully well there, settling the age-old quarrel with the marauding Scots and getting the border town of Berwick returned to England. His Council of the North is much respected. But he will have to gather an army together as fast as he can now and start on the long march south-westward, to meet his enemy.

16
th
August 1485

Henry and his troops have crossed the border into England. King Richard's army is still on the road, making its way towards a town called Leicester. Soldiers from Northumberland and York are on the march as well, coming to join him. Stanley has formed a force of his own. He says he supports Richard, though everyone knows that he will go with whichever side he thinks will win.

Annie said, ‘I hear Henry is no fighter. He skulks round the edge, they say, trying not to get his shoes
dirty. That's why Stanley is on Richard's side. If anything goes wrong, though, he'll turn like a flipped coin.'

There is something awful about this slow moving of thousands of men from the west of Wales and from all over England, to a chosen place where they will meet other men then hack and slash at each other until one side is beaten. I try not to think about it. I stay at home now, in the little house Tom built, because my baby is due very soon. I clean and cook and tend the garden, and try to imagine the war is not happening.

24
th
August 1485

Annie is at our door, in tears.

‘He is dead, Lisa. They savaged him. Richard. Our King Richard. Oh, dear God.'

We are in each other's arms. The baby inside me moves uneasily as if it shares my distress.

After a while Annie gently detaches herself. She mops her eyes and we sit down at the table.

‘A man came to the castle. He'd been at the battle. Still filthy. Richard was betrayed, Lisa.'

‘Stanley.'

‘Yes. Richard saw Henry watching while soldiers hacked and battered at each other. Perhaps he thought if he could kill him, it would bring the war to an end. He charged towards Henry with some good men but the mud was so deep, the horses were floundering and couldn't get on. Richard dismounted and went for Henry on foot. He killed his standard-bearer and another man. Then Stanley saw he was alone and yelled for his men to attack him. Richard fought like a demon, the man who came said. But they were all round him, Lisa. He didn't have a chance.'

Annie takes a shuddering breath.

‘And the worst thing,' she goes on. ‘When he was dead, they stripped him naked and slung him across a horse like a stag killed in a hunt. They took him into Leicester like that, for onlookers to see and hack at with their own swords, shouting and cheering. They dumped him in a church. We don't even know – '

Her voice breaks and ends on a sob.

‘ – where he is to be buried.'

Afterwards

As I said at the start, it was a long time ago. Mama died the year after the Bosworth battle, but Papa still helps the people who need him.

Annie left the castle, saying she would have nothing to do with ‘that murderer' or his court. She had no job to go to, but Jane Shore came back to Ludlow with her adoring lawyer husband, and they took her on as a cook. Annie is shocked by Jane, though somehow she likes her.

‘What she got up to,' she says. ‘Unbelievable. But we do have a laugh.'

My two sweet daughters are almost young women now, and Huw, their younger brother, is as tall as Tom. He says he will keep the pages I have written and show them to children of his own one day. I
tell him not to take anything for granted, but I like thinking of it.

I know more now about what happened at Bosworth. On the night before the battle, Stanley told everyone he was ill in bed with the sweating sickness and would not be able to fight – but he was not ill at all. He was with Henry, planning battle tactics. Afterwards, when Richard had been killed and the fighting had ended, a soldier saw something glinting in a bush. It was the gold circlet Richard had worn over his helmet. Stanley snatched it from him and gave it to Henry, who crammed it over his own helmet and crowed that he was now King Henry the Seventh.

He tried to confiscate all the property of Richard and the men who had fought for him, claiming that they were guilty of treason against himself as the ruling monarch. But Richard was the ruling monarch until the moment of his death, so any treason before that could only be against him, not Henry. Truth had ceased to matter, though. The confiscation request Henry put to Parliament gave the date of his kingship as the day
before
the Bosworth battle. A sharp-eyed clerk changed it to the correct one, thank goodness.

The next thing was, Henry repealed Bishop Stillington's confession that he had officiated at King Edward's previous marriage. He declared the
Titulus Regius
an illegal document and forbade anyone to read it and burned every copy he could find.

Papa was perplexed.

‘He must think the
Titulus Regius
simply set out Richard's right to be king,' he said. ‘Perhaps he does not read Latin. But it was also Parliament's testimony that young Edward and Richard were illegitimate. In destroying that document, Henry has made it possible for Edward's sons to inherit the throne. So their supporters may challenge Henry's right to be king. Your lovely boys could yet be recognised as royal.'

For one brief moment, the heavy certainty that they are dead lifted and I had a thrill of excitement – but Papa was frowning.

‘If Henry sees his mistake, or someone points it out – which they will do – he will have to get rid of the boys. He may already have done it.'

That nightmare moment is still with me. We will never know the truth, because Henry and his helpers have constructed an alternative version, in
which King Edward's first marriage never happened. There was no secret that gave Elizabeth Woodville such power over the King, they say. Clarence and Warwick only rebelled in order to defend the country against Richard's evil determination to rule. There is one mystery, though.

Henry issued a long list of Richard's ‘wrongs, odious offences and abominations against God and men and in special our said sovereign lord.' (Henry himself.) And yet, the detailed list made no mention that Richard might have killed the princes, although suspicion was running wild about what had happened to them. Henry's trump card would have been to say Richard was their murderer. But he did not do it. Much later, his supporters painted Richard as the killer of his nephews, but not at the time. Why was that? Was Henry aware of a different truth, and avoided any mention of the boys for fear of starting a troublesome enquiry? We will never know.

The fate of Elizabeth Woodville is also strange. Despite her energetic efforts to support Henry Tudor, he confiscated all her lands and property and made them over to her daughter, whom he had married. Then he banished her to an abbey in Bermondsey
for the rest of her life. What had Elizabeth done to cause such drastic retribution? The reason Henry gave seemed feeble for a man well used to shifts of allegiance for diplomatic purposes – it never worried him that Stanley veered from one side to the other as it suited him. All he could say against Elizabeth was that she and her daughters had lived for some months in Richard's palace when they came out of sanctuary and were thus ‘contaminated' by him.

There is another possibility. Elizabeth must at some point have found out the terrible truth about her boys. Either she knew all along, and colluded in it for the sake of keeping in with the Tudors – which seems impossible for any mother – or someone whispered that Henry was responsible for their deaths.

If that happened, it would have been typical of her to confront him in righteous fury. She would then have been as dangerous to Henry as poor Clarence had been to her, years earlier. He had to silence her, before she could spread her dangerous knowledge. Elizabeth would have gambled on the assumption that he could not kill her, for it would have raised too much of a scandal, but perhaps she never thought he
might banish her from public life. Too late, she saw her danger and protested desperately that Richard had dragged her to his court by force – but Henry was in a class of his own when it came to inventive lying. Elizabeth vanished behind the closed walls of Bermondsey Abbey and spoke no further word to anyone in the outside world. Her death a few years later was hardly noticed.

Others have been lavishly rewarded. Dr Alcock is Controller of the Royal Works and Buildings. Morton is the Archbishop of Canterbury and also the Lord Chancellor. People loathe him for the double-edged tax system known as ‘Morton's Fork', which holds that a man who lives frugally will be saving money, so he must pay as much tax as the wealthiest. Henry is paying several writers as well as Morton to produce approved versions of Richard's life. One of them, Polydore Vergil, is Italian, and knows only what he is told.

BOOK: The Lost King
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