The Sunne in Splendour: A Novel of Richard III (115 page)

furious, bitterly resentful that she should, at seventeen, be treated like a child.
Just what did their plot encompass? How far did they mean to go? It was a question Bess had put to her mother, to no avail. A question that need not be asked, for she already knew the answer. For Mama and her kin to regain power, Dickon had to die. They dare not let him live. And what was she to do now?
Betray her own mother, her half brother Tom? How could she do that? But if she didn't, if she said nothing and Dickon died, how could she live with herself?
She arose the next morning hollow-eyed and pale, but clutching to her a shaky resolve. Dickon's life had to come before loyalty to Mama. She must find some way to warn him, even if it meant Mama would hate her forever for doing it.
She'd spent the morning mentally composing letters of caution, letters that might alert Dickon to his danger without exposing her mother's complicity, and then in midafternoon had come word of the council meeting at the Tower. To Bess, it seemed suddenly as if the world had gone mad and all in it. That
Dickon, of all men, would have sent Will to the block without a trial . . . and not even a block, but a bloodstained log! Bess shuddered, found she could not stop shivering. Barely two months dead Papa was, and nothing was familiar anymore; she was in a landscape without recognizable landmarks, trapped in a nightmare that daylight wouldn't dispel.
What frightened her the most, however, was her mother's reaction to Hastings's death. Elizabeth hadn't wept, hadn't raged, had stared at Bess and then said in a queerly hushed voice, "It's done then." And said no more.
Bess and Cecily had never seen Elizabeth like that, were at a loss. She seemed to be in shock, they agreed, but why should Hastings's death affect her so deeply as this? She'd hated Hastings, could not be mourning him. The plot had failed, of course, but she had nothing to fear for herself. Whatever Dickon might choose to do to Morton, Jane Shore, and the other conspirators, she was the King's mother, could indulge in intrigue with impunity, and who knew that better than she? Moreover, Tom was still safe, still eluding those hunting him. So why, then, did she lie abed, refusing food and drink? Why did she stare into space like one bewitched, like one seeing specters that weren't there?
N Monday morning, a delegation of clergy and nobles came again to the Abbot's lodging. Bess received them in the Abbot's refectory, listened attentively as the Archbishop of Canterbury urged her to come forth with

her brother and sisters from sanctuary. Madame her mother need not fear, he assured Bess earnestly.
The Lord Protector was willing to overlook her treason, would not seek vengeance against a woman.
John Howard had interrupted at that, said that the young Duke of York must be yielded up, even if the girls were not. A child had no right to claim sanctuary, he said pointedly, since he was incapable of sin.
Bess understood; her mother's refusal might not be heeded. So it was up to her, she decided, to make
Mama see reason. Bess had no doubts whatsoever that Dickon should join Edward in the Tower. An active, lively child with a normal measure of curiosity and mischief in his makeup, he was thoroughly miserable in confinement, and for what? Why should he continue to pay the price for Mama's foolishness?
Taking Cecily along for moral support, she went to her mother's bedchamber, marshaling her arguments in favor of letting Dickon go to Edward. Much to her surprise, they weren't needed. Elizabeth had listened in silence, and then said, almost indifferently, "Does he want to go?"
Bess nodded. "Yes, Mama, of course he does." We all do. The words hovered on her tongue; she bit them back, waited.
"Why not? What difference does it make now?"
The two girls exchanged uneasy glances. Mama was acting so strange! Cecily cleared her throat, ventured hesitantly, "Can we not go, too, Mama? Edward's coronation be set for next week. Surely you don't want to miss that."
She flinched then, for Elizabeth had begun to laugh, a strained mirthless sound as chilling as it was inexplicable. "Coronation? There'll be no coronation. Not for Edward. . . ." She turned her head aside on the pillow, mumbled, "Yes, let Dickon go if he wishes. Maybe it'll help Edward, having him there when he's told. ..."
Bess decided it best not to pressure her mother about their departure from sanctuary. Better to wait till
Mama was more herself again. She made a hasty retreat before her mother could change her mind, sent
Cecily to help Dickon pack while she returned to the refectory to tell the Archbishop of Canterbury and
Lord Howard that her little brother would be going with them.
She stood watching now at the east window of the refectory as| Dickon exited into the Abbot's courtyard. He was frisking about like a| mettlesome colt, had managed to entangle the Archbishop of
Canterbury! in the long lead attached to his dog's collar. Bess grinned, but it faded as| she glanced across the chamber. Her four-year-old sister Katherine wa coming through the doorway from the kitchen; she clutched a handful candied orange peels, was struggling to hold on to a very disgruntle grey kitten. Bess sighed; they all should be going with Dickon. Somehow!

she must make Mama see that, must- She heard her name, turned to see John Howard standing in the doorway.
"Is there someplace where we may talk alone?"
Bess nodded. "We can go into the Jerusalem Chamber if you like."
She was pleased that John Howard had remained behind to talk to her; she liked him enormously, this man who'd been her father's friend, liked his gruff blunt-spoken manner, much like an elderly uncle. Bess thought of him as just that, in fact, as more of an uncle than her own blood uncles. Bess was not dose to any of her mother's brothers; secretly, she was a little ashamed of her unpopular Woodville kin, preferred to think of herself as Plantagenet. Of her father's brothers, she'd never liked her Uncle George, and while
Dickon had always been her favorite relative, she'd never really thought of him as an uncle; he was too young for that, only thirteen years older than she. Jack Howard, however, filled the need perfectly, and for all that he affected a no-nonsense, brusque manner, she sensed he was secretly delighted that she'd chosen to call him Uncle Jack.
He didn't look very comfortable now, however, looked troubled. "Your uncle asked me to speak with you," he said abruptly. "There's something you've got to be told, lass. Stillington's going before the council this afternoon, so it'll be all over Westminster by nightfall, and Dickon didn't want you to hear it that way, to hear some garbled account likely to give you even greater grief."
"I don't like the sound of this," Bess said uneasily.
"You'll like it even less by the time I be through," he said grimly, "but there's no help for it, Bess. You have to know. It be about your father. We're all born to sin, all have our weaknesses. Your father's was women. Forgive me for being so blunt, but I know no other way. He sinned when he did marry your mother, did her a wrong and you and your brothers and sisters a greater one. He wasn't free, lass. More than two years before he went through that ceremony with your mother at Grafton Manor, he entered into a plight-troth with another woman. The Lady Eleanor Butler, the Earl of Shrewsbury's daughter.
They said their vows before Stillington, and to keep him quiet, your father made him Chancellor. For more than twenty years, he held his tongue, knowing that the marriage was invalid, that-"
Bess at last found her voice. "God in Heaven, what are you saying? That my father plight-trothed with this . . . this Eleanor Butler and then married my mother, knowing full well that any children of such a union would be bastards? And you expect me to believe that? Believe my father would do that to me, to us?"
He winced as her voice rose, reached toward her, but she backed away from him, shaking her head.

"No. ... I don't believe it! Papa would never have done that, never!"
"Bess. . . ."
"No!" She was continuing to back away, stumbled as the room blurred in a haze of tears. "It's not true!
It's not!"
CECILY was knotting a handkerchief, jerking it through trembling fingers and pulling it taut, as if it were a lifeline.
"Bess . . . Bess, could we have been wrong about Uncle Dickon? Could Papa have been wrong to trust him so? Would he do that, make use of a lie to take Edward's throne?"
"No!" Bess said fiercely, almost desperately. "I cannot believe that of him, Cecily, I cannot! Stillington must have somehow convinced him that it was true. To believe otherwise, to believe he'd concoct such a slander, falsely swear that we be bastards so that he might be King . . ."Her voice trailed off.
Cecily was not as sure as Bess; she was an avid reader, and history was replete with stories of honorable men seduced by the golden glimmer of a crown. She wanted to believe, however, needed to believe as much as Bess did. If Papa could have so misjudged Uncle Dickon ... It was a frightening thought.
"Mama has to be told," she said huskily, and Bess nodded.
elizabeth had risen to bid her son farewell, had then taken to her bed again, clad only in a bed robe, blonde hair hanging uncombed and tangled down her back, showing unmistakable streaks of grey. To herdaughters, who'd grown up with a beauty that was flawless, as cold and I polished and perfect as finely grained ivory, this haggard middle-aged woman was a stranger, a stranger who heard them out in apathetic si-1 lence, seemed scarcely to be listening at all.
"Mama? Mama, you do understand what I be saying? Mama, they; mean to deny Edward the crown!"
"Yes, Bess, I heard you the first time." Elizabeth sat up slowly, put I her fingers to her forehead, winced.
"Cecily, fetch me that glass vial, the I one with the oil of roses. My head feels like to split."
Expecting hysterics, tantrums, tears, Bess and Cecily were non| plussed by this almost nonchalant acceptance, this eerie indifference. :| Cecily obediently brought the vial, sat beside her mother and began to rutHf the scented oil into Elizabeth's temples. Bess sat on the other side of the bed, said, "Mama, I
seem to remember Bishop Stillington being arrest about the time that my Uncle George was executed.
Isn't it likely that hfl|

harbored a grudge against Papa for that? And it would explain why he made up such a story, why ..."
Elizabeth lay back against the pillows. "Robert Stillington, Bishop of Bath and Wells. I tried to tell Ned, did all but go down on my knees to him. But would he heed me? No. . . . He'd not have Stillington's blood on his hands, he said. Said, too, that we had nothing to fear from Stillington." She laughed unsteadily. "Nothing to fear! Tell me that again, Ned, tell me how you were going to make the crown safe for your son! You'll have to burn in Hell for a thousand years ere you can atone for what you've done to me and mine, and not even a thousand years would be time enough to win my forgiveness. ..."
"Mama . . . Mama, what are you saying? You make it sound as if Bishop Stillington spoke the truth!"
Elizabeth closed her eyes. "Of course he spoke the truth," she said tiredly. "Why do you think I've been so frantic since Ned died, why I fought so to deny Gloucester the protectorship? I knew . . . knew it was only a matter of time till Stillington came forward, until he-"
"No!"
Cecily was stricken dumb, but Bess was shaking her head vehemently, was trembling all over.
"No," she gasped. "I don't believe you! Papa would never have done that! I know he wouldn't!"
Elizabeth's eyes flew open, focused on her eldest daughter with a rage all the more embittered for being so long repressed. "You know nothing! You've never seen Ned as he truly was, never! Well, I think it time we spoke the truth about him, about your cherished beloved father who could do no wrong!
"The truth is that he was a man who cared only for his own pleasures, and most of them were found between a woman's legs! Nineteen years we were wed, and from the very first, he had his sluts on the side. Not because he didn't get what he wanted in my bed; he did. But one woman was never enough for him. He filled his court with harlots, thought nothing of seducing the wives of friends, and when he was through with them, passed them on to Hastings or my Tom. Nell Butler was merely one of many, notable only in that she was chaste enough to deny him her bed till he agreed to a plight-troth and then stupid enough to let him sweet-talk her into holding her tongue. He lay with her and lost interest and then married me, so cocksure he could get away with it, that he could get away with anything.
"And when Clarence found out, he had him put to death to keep the secret safe, but he balked at silencing Stillington and this"-with a wide sweep of her arm that took in the confines of the Abbot's bedchamber -"this is the result. I lay with him and bore him ten children;

put up with his wenching; I even raised his bastard brats by other women when he asked it of me and this
. . . this is my reward for it, this is the legacy he did leave me. The man you see as God Almighty, as the perfect father!
"Well, I'm done protecting him, done lying for him. Your brother will never wear a crown because his father went through life like a bloody rutting stag! And you, my daughter who once thought to be Queen of France, you'll have to set your sights a mite lower, get used to hearing people call you bastard when once they did call you princess, and none of it be my fault! When you give thanks for this, you give them to the man who most deserves them ... to your father, God curse him!"
"Oh, Mama, stop!" Cecily had begun to sob. "Name of God, don't say any more! Please!"
Elizabeth was panting, utterly exhausted by the violence of her outburst. Suddenly all her anger had gone;
she felt weak, very tired, and slightly sick.
"Well," she said dully, "so now you do know the truth. . . ."
Bess had yet to move. Her body had gone rigid with shock; the eyes that met Elizabeth's own were glazed, unseeing. Elizabeth felt a twinge of remorse, found herself wishing she'd used softer words, left some of it unsaid. Bess had always been Ned's particular pet, after all, and she looked ill, in truth she did.
Elizabeth reached out her hand, but at her touch Bess came to life, recoiled abruptly.
"You want me to hate Papa, don't you?" she whispered. "To hate him for ruining our lives. Well, maybe I
do. ... I don't know how I feel about him now. I don't-" Her voice broke, steadied. "But this I do know.
Whatever my feelings for him, I do hate you for telling me!"
rr had not taken long for the council to determine the fate of the conspirators. John Morton and Thomas
Rotherham were more fortunate than they deserved in that they were both Bishops of the Holy Roman
Catholic Church, and most of the council, particularly their fellow clerics, were loathe to shed the blood of a priest. As Richard shared this same reluctance, he made no objections when it was proposed that
Morton and Rotherham be spared the axe.
It was soon agreed, then, that Rotherham was to have a stay in the Tower. Morton was a more difficult case, for he was a far more dangerous man than the ineffectual Rotherham. It was Buckingham who came up with the solution. Why not have Morton sent under guard to his own castle at Brecknock in
Wales? Brecknock was in an isolated area, far from I London; it would make an ideal prison for the too-clever Lancastrian