The Tudor Rose (15 page)

“We have been working you too hard. Stanley was saying only last night that you were looking queasy. Is that the reason?” asked Richard, all concern at once.

“That—and some urgent affairs on my estate,” lied Buckingham.

Why in God's name, he wondered, could he not bring himself to take his son's advice and startle the truth out of Gloucester by asking straight out, “What have you done with our nephews?” If any man in England had the right to ask, it was he; but the question which had simmered so long in his mind stuck in his throat. And Richard was being so considerate, giving him permission to go—a little coldly, perhaps, supposing him to be peeved because Stanley had been appointed Lord Steward for the coming celebrations in York. “Anne will be joining us at Warwick Castle, which is always home to us, and I had hoped that you would be there to see our boy,” he was saying, with the fondness of any proud father. “But perhaps, after all, it is just as well that you should be at Brecknock to keep an eye on Morton. He has the same kind of mind as the Woodville woman, except that when he meddles he has the strength of purpose to carry his schemes through. As well, too, that he is in Wales and she in Westminster,” he had added, turning briskly to take cloak and gloves from his body squire, John Green, so as to satisfy the delirious shouting of his own people by riding through the streets again. “Else, being met together and finding some unity of purpose, those two might so ignite each other with their wild ideas as to blow up the whole country!”

A
ND SO THE MAGNIFICENT Duke of Buckingham set out, his mind already a breeding-place for revolt and lacking only impetus. And on his way to Wales he encountered his kinswoman, Margaret Beaufort. By chance—or so he supposed. And what was more pleasant or natural than that they should sup together? Margaret was as likeable as she was well read, as truly devout as she was wordly wise. Having had three husbands must have helped to make her such good company, he supposed, and even the fact that his rival Thomas Stanley happened to be the current one could put no blight upon a pleasant evening. Certainly it did occur to Buckingham to wonder why she should be travelling on the Bridgnorth road when her husband was bound for York; but women these days had so much liberty, and Margaret was a Plantagenet countess in her own right. The inn was excellent and it was days since Buckingham had enjoyed his supper so much. But inevitably afterwards, when their attendants had withdrawn, the minds of each of them reverted to their young relatives who had disappeared so mysteriously in the Tower.

“I am just come from the King,” he said. “He never speaks of them, yet I find it almost too horrible to believe.”

“And I am come from London where everybody believes it,” said Margaret.

“One sees now why Gloucester was so set upon getting young Richard from sanctuary. Murdering one without the other would have been useless!” mused Buckingham, shuddering at the idea of such deliberate intent. “Did you send and let Stanley know?”

“Yes.”

“Yet he does nothing!”

In spite of the urgency in her heart Margaret Beaufort's beautiful ageing face looked serene as ever in the candlelight. “The more reason why we should,” she said, avoiding all discussion of her husband's affairs.

“We?” repeated Buckingham, feeling that he was being rushed into something bigger than he had intended. “Of course, if one wanted either to avenge the boys or to profit by their deaths,” he added with reluctant generosity, “the Lancastrian succession centres in yourself.”

“I am John of Gaunt's nearest living descendant,” said Margaret, with a touch of her youthful haughtiness. “But I am getting to be an old woman and I ask nothing more in this world for myself. Only for my son.”

And for him, it appeared, she was asking the very utmost—the crown of England.

Of course she had always adored him. In spite of three marriages, Henry of Richmond was her only son—by that Welshman, Edmund Tudor, long since dead in battle. Probably that marriage had been the romance of her brilliant life. The Tudors were people to be reckoned with, else how had Edmund managed to be sired by Henry the Fifth's French widow, who—though a daughter of the proud Valois—had loved her handsome Master of Horse, Owen Tudor, so desperately that she had married him. And probably it was the satisfying success of Margaret's own Tudor marriage that accounted for the way she managed still to be spoken of as Countess of Richmond and spent so much time travelling around by herself to relatives and convents and places of learning that could not possibly interest Lord Stanley. And why was she turning to a mere kinsman like himself for co-operation? “Even Stanley's wife doesn't trust him,” thought Buckingham.

Though faced by the goodness of Margaret Beaufort's face, the simple truth did not occur to him. When she began to outline the design for her idolized son, he never supposed her to be merely too scrupulous to draw into such dangerous plans a husband who, although no Edmund Tudor, had never shown her anything but kindness.

“If both those unfortunate boys are dead,” she was saying, “there is still Elizabeth.”

“Elizabeth? Of course she should be Queen. But I supposed you wanted the crown for Henry Tudor.”

Margaret looked pained at his slowness. “My dear Henry, do you suppose the people of England would ever accept him? We may be descended from John of Gaunt, but only through his older children's governess, when she was his mistress.”

“He married her afterwards and Richard the Second passed a special law to make our ancestors legitimate.”

“Which Richard the Third would very soon unmake! He seems to be proving himself a very able ruler, and, murderer or not, most of his subjects like him. That was a very popular move of his, removing the payment of benevolences, for instance. Particularly with the Londoners. To the people of Yorkshire and Gloucestershire, of course, he is almost God. So that even if we could raise enough supporters here and Henry could get ships from France and all Wales rose for him, the English people would still have none of him. Without Elizabeth. So he must marry Elizabeth.”

“How,” asked Buckingham, “when her fool of a mother keeps her in sanctuary?”

“I think her mother is no fool there, for if Elizabeth were not in sanctuary you can lay your last groat Gloucester would get her into his hands. Like he had her brothers. And then there would be
no
way out.” Margaret leaned forward across the deserted table to lay a persuasive finger on the Duke's fashionably puffed sleeve. “Listen, cousin,” she said softly. “I have in my household a very devoted doctor. A doctor both of divinity and medicine, who served the Tudors and the great Glendowers. He has initiative and discretion—and, like most Welsh people, a creative kind of courage.”

“Creative courage?” Buckingham sat back more patiently in his chair, thinking how beautiful was the Countess's voice compared with the nagging shrillness of his wife's.

“He dreams. His dreams are set to music,” explained Maragaret, drawing upon something she must have learned years ago in Pembroke Castle when she was youthfully in love. “And when the music of his dreams swells so insistently that it possesses him he has the courage to turn them into practical reality, though it may take a lifetime.”

Buckingham began to perceive that he was destined to be the mainspring of those dreams and that they had already begun to materialize. “Then I take it that this invaluable pawn of yours has already made his first move—to Westminster?”

“Several moves.”

“And that the women there know?”

“He attends the Queen Dowager, poor woman. In his medical capacity.”

“Very well thought out! And I can well imagine that in her desperate situation the Woodville Queen welcomes any such scheme. But surely Elizabeth herself would resist to the last gasp uniting herself with a Lancastrian?”

“Do not forget what her feelings must be about her beloved brothers,” said Margaret. “She has told Doctor Lewis that she will marry my son—on one very natural condition.”

“And that is?”

“That when he comes he will avenge them.”

“He will need to! For the Plantagenet is not likely to relinquish one foot of English soil save over his own dead body,” said Buckingham, remembering the look of Richard's sword hand. For himself, he would have wished the thing done without that condition. It was natural enough, he supposed, and quite inevitable; though it sounded cruel on the lips of Margaret Beaufort. But even good women, when they wanted something for a loved one or saw it as ultimately right, could be more ruthless than men, he had found. Perhaps because they cared more passionately.

“I will think upon all that you have said,” was all that he would promise. “For the next few months I shall be staying quietly at Brecknock, where the King has put the Bishop of Ely in my care.”

Not by so much as the flicker of an eyelid did Margaret betray how prodigally Richard had played into her hands. “A churchman with an extraordinary fine intellect who should go far,” was her polite comment. Nor did she think it necessary to explain just how far the prelate would go was dependent upon the success of this Lancastrian plan, since it had originated in his own fertile brain; or that even since his arrival at Brecknock the ubiquitous Lewis had been in touch with him.

Instead, being too wise to goad a half-persuaded man, the Countess was able to settle down to more amusing topics and to part company with her kinsman quite merrily, being certain that the fortunes of her son would be argued in the most favourable of circumstances by a tongue far more subtle than her own.

And so the long wet winter evenings in Wales were enlivened for the Staffords by their guest, although not at all with the kind of persuasive conversation that the King had hoped. For it was John Morton, who had refused to support his accession, who did most of the persuading. “All these gifts from various towns which he makes such show of refusing—for how long does your Grace imagine Richard of Gloucester will be able to live without them? With the Exchequer as it is he will almost certainly have to revive the hated levying of benevolences,” he urged. “And then his popularity with the common man will wane. The people will begin to remember the brilliant Lord Rivers, who did so much for their arts and crafts—and William Hastings, an honest administrator if ever we had one. And now comes this hideous story about the disappearance of the young King and his brother. The news of it is running like wild-fire about the country, your Constable tells me. Gloucester's partisans up in York may still shout for him, but decent people who live within sight of the Tower and who are accustomed to seeing those two delightful boys about will not stomach it.”

“We have no definite proof,” Buckingham would demur.

“Then why does he not produce them?” his wife, Katherine Woodville, would be sure to shrill. Because she was their aunt it seemed impossible to keep her out of such debates.

And the Bishop would turn back the rich sleeves of his vestments, helping himself with delicate fingers to his host's best wine. “The south would rise to a man for Elizabeth. They love her. Apart from being a very lovable person, she is for them a part of her father, who reigned over them affably for twenty years. And by all accounts this young man, Henry Richmond, is quite as gifted as Gloucester,” he urged repeatedly. “Do you not see how such a union must bring an end at last to these interminable Yorkist and Lancastrian struggles which have been wasting the life-blood of the country? How it would give men a sense of permanent security in which this new invention of the printed word could bring enlightenment to all, in which our sailors would be free to compete with Spain and Portugal in exploring the uncharted places of the world, and how our craftsmen would have time to make things of lasting beauty instead of grim instruments of destruction? Can your Grace remain unmoved by the belief that so definite a clinching of this succession argument could promote goodwill and prosperity, creating a kind of golden age?”

“Simply by grafting the red rose upon the white,” thrilled Katherine ecstatically.

Her pretty floral imagery left her husband cold, but Morton's more poetic mind was quick to cap it. “And so produce one indisputable, thornless, golden rose,” he added.

“A Tudor rose!” agreed Buckingham contemptuously, hating to be coerced in his own castle.

“A son of Elizabeth's by Henry Tudor should be very gifted,” her aunt reminded him. And for the sake of that son, as yet unborn, Buckingham found himself able to face the thought of inviting a stranger from abroad to fight a Plantagenet for the crown. “But suppose this paragon offends the people with his foreign ways, wants all the power or sells us to the French in return for Louis of Valois's help?” he asked, raising a few final objections.