A Rose for the Crown (101 page)

Kate unrolled the damp missive and began to read.

“This letter shall serve as proof that Master Richard Bywood, lately of the county of Suffolk, is hereby given employment as mason at the manor of Sir Thomas Moyle, Eastwell, in the county of Kent.”

The document went on to outline the terms of the agreement, but Kate barely glanced at them. Here was Dickon’s safe-conduct into the ordinary life she had urged him to lead. Perhaps he would rise in Sir Thomas’s household and forget his royal heritage. She hated to lose the only child left to her, but he had stayed with her for far too long. She forced a happy smile and tried to sound as excited as he was.

“In truth, Dickon, you shall be safe at Eastwell. Sir Thomas Moyle? ’Tis he I saw you talking with after the contest? Did he enquire about your work at Stoke-by-Nayland then and whether he might employ you? I am so proud of you, my son. Now I can return to Suffolk knowing you will fare well—”

He cut her off. “Mother, I have been thinking on my way here. Why
should you return to Suffolk? There is nothing for you there but sad memories. You should not be alone.”

Kate smiled. “I still have faithful Molly and little Wat. ’Tis true, with Margaret gone . . . but, Dickon, where shall I go?”

“I pray you, listen! Sir Thomas has agreed that you may be with me. I told him about your beautiful singing, and he has graciously consented to give us a cottage on his estate if you will teach his children to play the harp. You will come with me, won’t you?” The young man’s earnestness reminded her so much of his father that Kate could not forbear to smile. Her heart was beating faster, and her spirits began to lift.

“To Kent?” she murmured, a hundred memories flooding back. Dickon was right, there were only ghosts left at Dog Kennel House. Why should she not leave? Her mind cleared and she started to smile. “Aye, Dickon, I will go with you.”

Dickon picked her up from the chair and twirled her around just as John had done in a time past. “We’ll be happy there, I swear. And when you grow old, I shall look after you.”

“Put me down, Dickon!” She was laughing like a girl. “Fiddle-faddle! When have I ever needed looking after?”

Author’s Note

We know King Richard III had a mistress—perhaps more than one—because two of his bastard children are mentioned in records of the period. No one has discovered her identity, which has allowed me to invent her. This is her story, as plausible as thorough research into the period and the lives of the historical characters allows.

Richard III’s two known bastards, John of Gloucester and Katherine Plantagenet, were acknowledged—albeit illegitimate—and adopted into the royal household. Although a minor at the time, John was knighted and named Captain of Calais during Richard’s two-year reign. The year after his father’s death at the Battle of Bosworth, John was granted an annual pension by the new King Henry VII. It is believed, but not recorded, that Henry had John executed in 1491. Katherine married William Herbert, earl of Huntingdon, sometime before May 1484 but did not survive long afterwards.

Just before the Battle of Bosworth, however, King Richard is said to have acknowledged the existence of a third bastard, and, although there is no proof, many believe this to be one Richard of Eastwell. An entry in the parish records of Eastwell in the county of Kent makes mention of
the death of a Richard Plantagenet in 1550, and the following piece of folklore also supports this story:

A stonemason employed by Sir Thomas Moyle, lord of Eastwell, was one day discovered immersed in a book. Not only was it unusual for a mason to read, but the book was in Latin, a language taught only to the high born. When questioned by Sir Thomas, Richard explained that he had been raised by a schoolmaster and his board there paid by a great lord, possibly King Richard himself. When Richard III was slain at the Battle of Bosworth, he explained, he was warned that his life as a base-born son of the Yorkist king might be in danger and so opted for an inconspicuous life. Clever with his hands, he turned to stonemasonry. It is said Sir Thomas was so moved by the tale that he provided the old man with a cottage and had his steward take him food every day.

I have read innumerable accounts of Richard’s life, both traditional and revisionist, and all seem to recognize his loyalty and somewhat serious nature. Some go so far as to call him pious. His faithfulness to his wife, Anne, has never been questioned. And we know from the records that the births of John of Gloucester and Katherine predated that marriage. Taking all this information into consideration, I am firmly convinced that this high-minded young man fell in love with one woman and stayed true to her until duty necessitated a marriage of state. Richard’s fierce loyalty would have protected her identity and reputation. Though they were in love, she could not have been well born and was therefore out of the running as a marriage partner.

For the purpose of this book, I decided to research a character who could fit this theory. British historian Rosemary Horrox’s
Richard III: A Study in Service
provided me with my Kate. Horrox conjectures that an annuity given to “one Katherine Haute” entered in Richard’s household accounts might have been to support one of Richard’s bastards. Further research into the Hautes, a well-placed family of the time, revealed that a Richard Haute, Esq. had owned Ightham Mote in Kent (my very favorite of all English manor houses). Richard Haute, as far as we know, had a daughter named Anne, not Katherine. However, the chance to write about this beautiful house was too tempting, and as we do not know Katherine Haute’s identity, I gave her a family and a story that begins on a farm, progresses to Ightham and continues to marriage with a
branch of the Haute family. Martin Haute, her eventual father-in-law, was indeed an usher to Edward IV’s queen, but I know nothing more of his branch of the family.

The so-called Wars of the Roses is one of English history’s most complex periods. I am aware that too much historical detail could confuse and alienate the reader. However, as it had an immediate effect on each character in my story, I have attempted to weave it as concisely as possible through my narrative. This is a story of a woman who lived in those turbulent times, not of the turbulent times themselves. Also, to help the reader with the medieval convention of calling a man by his first name, his family name or his title—sometimes all in one breath—I have provided a genealogy of the Plantagenets and a Dramatis Personae. Where possible, I have used real people in my story, including everyone mentioned in John Howard’s household.

Records from the period are extensive. In the early stages of my research, I availed myself of the New York Public Library’s excellent collection until I built up a library of my own with the help of family and friends in England. Thanks to Anne Crawford’s master’s thesis
The Career of John Howard, Duke of Norfolk,
which my sister gamely photocopied from the University of London’s library, I have a treasure of information about the fascinating, wealthy nobleman. That, together with his
Household Books,
provided me with names, dates and events of the Howard family. (For the skeptical, John Howard did indeed physically move a house from Chelsworth to Stoke, see
The Choreography of Suffolk,
ed. D. N. J. MacCulloch. How he did it was for me to guess, for without cranes and sixteen-wheel tractor trailers it could only have been dismantled piece by piece.)

Another treasure was
Medieval Women: A Social History of Women in England 1450–1500
by Henrietta Leyser. It was there I found the amazing story of how a medieval woman had to prove her man was impotent in order to divorce him or annul the marriage. Ms. Leyser’s new research has been invaluable in my quest to authentically depict the life of a fifteenth-century woman who happened to become the mother of King Richard III’s bastard children.

The language of the period is too stilted for modern-day ears, but I have made a valiant attempt not to put anachronistic words into my
characters’ mouths. The result is a formality that I hope will put readers back into an unfamiliar time but not hinder their comprehension and enjoyment.

A plethora of books, essays and articles has been published about Richard through the centuries. It is unfortunate that Shakespeare’s unflattering depiction of the last Plantagenet king has become the standard characterization of Richard in our history books. Using Tudor accounts of Richard’s life and times, Shakespeare wrote for the Tudor Queen Elizabeth I, granddaughter of the very man who took Richard’s crown. Shakespeare knew on which side his bread was buttered. But contemporary accounts make no mention of any deformities, and portraits of him by Tudor artists, painted after he was dead, show none either.

The Shakespearean Richard’s personal culpability for the deaths of Edward of Lancaster, Henry VI, and his own brother, George of Clarence, makes for good drama, but has many times been disproved.

The disappearance of Richard’s nephews—young Edward V and his brother Richard, often referred to as the princes in the Tower—is still a mystery and will remain so unless some startling new evidence is brought to light. The boys were last seen publicly in the late summer of 1483, not long after Richard’s coronation. Richard had no motive for eliminating them. They had been declared illegitimate through the revelation of the famous pre-marriage contract between Edward IV and Eleanor Butler, which rendered Edward’s marriage to Queen Elizabeth unlawful. Their children could not, therefore, wear the crown. No one knows what happened to the boys, but if Henry VII was so eager to denigrate Richard and justify his whisker-thin claim to the throne, why was the murder of those princes not the first item on the list of Richard’s crimes posted on church doors all over England following Henry’s victory at Bosworth? After all, Richard was no longer alive to deny anything.

Anne Easter Smith, Newburyport, Mass.

Glossary

arras
—Tapestry or wall hanging.

attaint
—Imputation of dishonor or treason; estates of attainted lord often forfeited to the crown.

buckler
—Small round shield.

burthen
—Refrain or chorus of a song.

catafalque
—Funeral chariot.

caul
—Mesh hair covering, often jeweled or decorated, encasing braids wound on either side of the head.

chaperon
—Elaborate soft hat, often with a liripipe attached.

churching
—First communion given to a woman following a period of seclusion after giving birth.

coif
—Scarf tied around the head.

conduit
—Drinking fountain in a town or city with piped-in water.

coney
—Rabbit or rabbit fur.

cote
—Long gown worn by men and women.

crenallation
—Indentation at top of battlement wall.

ewerer
—Water-pourer and holder of hand-washing bowls at table.

gemshorn
—Polished, hollowed goat’s horn.

gittern
—Plucked, gut-stringed instrument similar to a guitar.

groat
—Silver coin worth about fourpence.

gipon
—Close-fitting padded tunic.

hennin
—a tall conical headdress from which hangs a veil; steepled hennins were as much as two feet high; butterfly hennins sat on the head like wings with the veil draped over them.