The Fate of Princes (13 page)

‘Lovell!’ Her voice hissed like a snake behind me. I glanced over my shoulder. Lady Margaret had half risen out of her chair, her face white, drawn with fury, one hand jabbing a finger towards me.

‘Lovell,’ she whispered, ‘I promise you this. I shall never forget you!’

I smiled and sauntered off, but in my heart, for the first time ever, I knew what it was to hate and be hated in return.

My meeting with the Beaufort woman rankled so deeply I could not continue with the matter. Instead I returned to Westminster, busying myself with household duties: I checked stores, paid wages, drew up indentures with servants, drafted letters to clerks and organised the despatch of purveyors for the King’s journey north again. I had news from Anne, how she was well and wished my speedy return.

‘Spring will come soon,’ she wrote, ‘and I would like you to be here. I was pleased to see Thomas and have full trust in his care and devotion for you.’ I kept the letter close to my heart, richly thanked Belknap and despatched him back to Minster Lovell with instructions to see my wife wanted for nothing and had no anxieties. As usual, the loyal, ever-faithful Belknap calmly agreed and quietly left. There was a time when I used to rage against the man but perhaps I am to blame – a poor soldier, so intent on watching the enemy from afar, never looking down to see who is crouching at my feet. I asked the King for permission to withdraw from the Court but again he refused. We walked, arms linked as we had as boys, down an empty, stone-vaulted corridor. He kept repeating how much he needed me, questioning me on the secret matter and confiding that if I had any doubts about his probity, he would soon provide both me and the world with ample proof of his good intentions. I remember stopping, studying him
carefully, noting the grey hairs sprinkled amongst the red. How white and pinched his face had become, his eyes constantly flickering as if searching out enemies. Once warm and friendly, they seemed to glitter frenetically as if trying to hide guilt or nagging doubt.

The boy from Middleham Castle had gone and so had the shrewd, patient general in the north. I felt sorry for him.

‘Richard,’ I asked. ‘Is all this worth it? Do you think you did right?’ He half turned, looking at me warily from the corner of his eye.

‘What answer can I give?’ he replied. ‘Do you remember, Francis, when we used to hunt? We would flush out a deer and make it run, keeping it within bounds; the creature fled but we were always behind him and there were traps on either side. He could only go forward. Well, that is me. What can, what could I do? Remain the King’s uncle? Stay in the north until the Woodvilles invited me to a banquet in London, insisting on sending a thousand lancers to accompany me? And then what? Some treasonable allegation, a secret trial in the Tower and join my brother Clarence, drowned in some vat of wine, or knocked quietly on the head? Is that what we fought for, Francis? At Tewkesbury, at Barnet? Is that why my father and brother lost their heads at Wakefield, just to hand it over? To see it all finished while the Woodvilles banqueted, drank and boasted how they would live and rule for ever? No, Francis, there is only one way we can go and that is forward!’

The King had made a similar speech on previous occasions but never with such passion and fury. At the time it shook me, and again I wondered if Richard thought the lives of two young princes were expendable? But then the King achieved something which, for a while, soothed my nagging doubts. In the middle of March, Elizabeth Woodville and her daughters left
sanctuary in Westminster Abbey, placing themselves under the King’s protection. Richard publicly vowed he would care for the ex-queen and all her daughters. The news was so sudden it took me and the Court by surprise.

The Woodville woman was placed in a very comfortable but isolated manor under the care of Captain John Nesfield, while her daughters were taken to the royal household. They were placed in the care of Richard’s queen but, as Chamberlain, I had direct responsibility for them. I decided to use this to continue my investigations, for the Woodvilles’ submission puzzled me. Here was a woman whose marriage, family and rights Richard had cruelly usurped. She must have hated Richard. How could such a woman submit to a man she believed had murdered her own offspring?

It would be futile to question the former queen but her daughter was a different matter. I took every opportunity to cultivate Elizabeth’s acquaintance and placate any animosity. After a while I won her trust or at least part of it. Elizabeth was quiet, shy, but a very beautiful girl. Long blonde hair, pale skin with a fine sheen of gold and blue eyes, heavy-lidded, with lashes as long and as graceful as the wings of a butterfly. She enjoyed talking about her father’s triumphs and zest for life and I knew enough stories to keep her amused. One day, shortly after she rejoined us at the Court, I found her alone, sitting in a window bower singing softly to herself as she stared down at the garden below. The Court was quiet, stunned by the grievous news from the north – Richard’s one and only son had died. The boy had been frail, weakened by fits of coughing, sometimes unable to walk. Richard was distraught, not only because he had lost a son but also an heir to inherit his hard-earned conquests. The King, seeing it as God’s judgement, withdrew into himself. The gossip-mongers were quick to whisper how God had taken from the
King what the King had taken from his brother. Young Elizabeth, however, was untouched by this news. She kept her own counsel, so I seized the opportunity to question her about her brothers. I sat opposite, teasing her, but she just smiled shyly, fending off my questions. I sat closer.

‘Elizabeth?’

‘Yes, my Lord?’

‘Your brothers, the Princes?’ The blue eyes clouded with pain. ‘I know,’ I hurried on, ‘how the subject must hurt you but two things concern me. When I met your mother in sanctuary she must have heard the news. The rumours about her sons’ deaths. Nevertheless she remains calm and composed and, a few months later, actually submits to the man whom these rumours name as your brothers’ assassin!’ I thought the girl was going to break into tears; she bit her lip, twisting her long, white fingers together.

‘There is no mystery,’ she replied quickly. ‘My mother still believes her sons are alive.’ Elizabeth looked up earnestly at me. ‘And if they are, how can she blame the King?’

‘But the rumours?’ I insisted.

‘Oh,’ she said wearily, ‘we heard about them but my mother had a visitor, a man called . . .’

‘Percivalle,’ I added.

‘Yes.’ The princess smiled quickly. ‘Percivalle. He told my mother how the Duke of Buckingham had spirited her sons abroad but that in the end all would be well.’

‘Does your mother really believe that?’

‘Oh, yes. She has even written to my half-brother, the Marquis of Dorset, that he can leave France and come home and make his peace with the King.’ I nodded understandingly. I had heard such a tale myself, further vindication of how the Woodvilles, for all their hatred or Richard, might not really believe he had assassinated the young Princes. I could see the subject was
distressing her so I deftly turned the conversation onto other, lighter topics. Nevertheless what she told me confirmed my earlier suspicions; Buckingham had only been too willing to tell his listeners what they wanted to hear.

The ubiquitous Percivalle was another matter. I sent a hasty memorandum to the council demanding that all the powers of the Crown should be used in trapping this constant troublemaker. The King agreed, though, asserting himself after his son’s death, he was more involved in driving the Scots off the northern seas and securing a truce with the vacillating James III of Scotland. Richard was still subdued, shocked by his son’s death but elated at how the Woodvilles had come to accept him. Henry Tudor in Brittany was another matter. Our spies had reported how Duke Francis of Brittany had suffered some form of mental collapse brought on by evil humours of the brain. His chancellor Pierre Landois, more amicable to Richard, now insisted the Tudor Pretender should be kept in close confinement. Richard sent huge bribes to Landois and a secret emissary to ensure that the chancellor kept his word. At my request Thomas Belknap was one of these envoys. He had additional instructions to proceed from Brittany to Margaret of Burgundy to enquire if there were any truth in the rumours reported to him by Sir Edward Brampton.

The King also had secret instructions for me.

‘Francis,’ he remarked dourly. ‘We have had little joy in finding the whereabouts of the two Princes. I myself have spoken to Brackenbury and cannot make any sense out of the man. If we cannot find the truth, we can at least crush the rumours that I was their murderer. There has been no trace of my brother’s sons. nor has anyone pretending to be them come forward. The intelligence from foreign Courts is similar.’ He looked sharply at me. ‘I believe poor Brampton’s rumours are
more the result of wishful thinking than hard facts.’ He paused, rubbing his fingers across his lips. ‘I have read your memorandum about Percivalle. I agree. It is time we tracked him down.’ He clapped me on the shoulder. ‘Francis, let it be known that your loyalty to me is not what it should be. Perhaps we can then flush this Percivalle out into the open.’

At first I did not agree with the King, relying more on spies, rumours, whispers, in searching Percivalle out. Yet each time our nets dragged nothing out. In the middle of July, an act of gross impunity made the hunt more frenetic. Percivalle, or so I understood later, composed a doggerel. He distributed it around London, even copying it on a placard which he nailed to the door of St. Paul’s Cathedral. A rhyming couplet, it soon caught the imagination and tickled the humour of the Londoners:

The King was furious but I admired the ingenuity of its composer. It was a catchy, jingly phrase; a contemptuous attack upon Richard, his personal emblem of the White Boar, Sir Richard Ratcliffe, William Catesby and, of course, myself.

The King’s council met in secret session; Richard furiously demanded what progress I had made in searching out Percivalle. He sarcastically derided me as futile, glowering at me as if I was to blame. I argued back just as fiercely, saying that in this matter, as with the fate of the Princes, I was just floundering in the dark. Nevertheless, I acted on his advice, I sent an anonymous letter to Lady Margaret Beaufort for I knew she lay at the centre of this web of intrigue. The message, unsigned, simply related how Viscount Lovell now believed the Duke of Buckingham was right. I
thought the ruse would work but it failed. The only answer I received was a scrap of parchment nailed to my own door with the words ‘Not even a dog bites the hand which feeds it’. My success in capturing Percivalle was more due to sheer chance than any guile. The King sent me on a mission, as personal envoy to his mother, Cecily, who lived as a virtual recluse in her own apartments at Berkhamsted Castle. The Queen Mother, once so beautiful she was called the Rose of Raby, was now a white-haired, austere old woman with her mind more on spiritual matters than those of this world. Relations between her and Richard had always been very cool. The King had confided to me years earlier how this was due to his birth being a most difficult one. Princess Cecily was cordial enough to me; accepting her son’s letters but not bothering to open them, she continued her polite conversation. At length, exhausted by this, I rose and gratefully withdrew. I was hungry and rather thirsty and went down to the buttery for victuals and a pot of ale. The wood-panelled room was thronged with retainers and servants and, like a bell sounding through a mist, I heard that sing-song accent I had last heard in my chamber in Crosby Place. The voice died away and though I searched the room, I could not trace the speaker. Nonetheless, elated at my discovery, I hastened back to London, secured troops, and returned to Berkhamsted Castle.

Perhaps my lack of interest in the buttery had soothed the anxieties of this most secretive of spies for, once the castle was thronged with soldiers, I learnt that no one had left. I seated myself in the great hall beneath its smoke-blackened timber beams, and questioned each of Princess Cecily’s retainers. The process was long and exhausting. I had the Queen Mother’s steward sitting alongside to ensure no one staged any pretence and eventually I had trapped my quarry, a young fellow, perhaps in his early thirties, with tousled black hair and
an open frank face. He introduced himself as William Collingbourne, a gentleman from Wiltshire, and of Princess Cecily’s household. He had the effrontery to think he would escape. I formally arrested him, loading him with chains to take him back to London, and his cool demeanour began to crumble.

I ignored the due process of the law and swiftly transported him to one of the dankest cells at Newgate. There the questioning began, first by me, afterwards by those more skilled in wrenching out the truth – dark, shadowy men who lived in the twilight of the law, garbed completely in black, their faces hidden by red masks. They tortured Collingbourne. He broke and confessed, admitting he was a loyal adherent of both the Tudor in Brittany and the late, but not lamented, Duke of Buckingham. He confessed he was the Tudor’s agent, sending him information about the King’s defences both on land and at sea, as well as being the author of the doggerel rhyme pinned to the door of St. Paul’s Cathedral. Once news of his confession had reached me, I insisted on questioning him myself and went up into West Chepe to the sombre, stark buildings of Newgate prison. These are no more than a collection of towers and tenements built into the old city wall. A pest-ridden place, as on its far side was the city ditch, the open latrine and cesspit of London.

Richard Scarisbrooke, royal serjeant and Constable of the King’s prison, insisted on greeting me himself. A frightening sight. Tall, angular, dressed in a dirty red gown tied loosely round the middle, he tried to ape the manners of a courtier. His lean, sallow face with its deep-set eyes and mouth tight as a purse, was covered in small black warts, but his yellow hair was crimped and curled like a boy’s. He stood like Satan with his minions around him, a collection of rogues dressed in black rags and leather aprons. They escorted me in mock solemnity through the prison courtyard to Collingbourne’s cell, a
stone cavern, with wet mildewed walls and rotting black straw, with rays of light let in through the cracks and seams of a heavy trapdoor. A diabolical place, I describe it, yet I have found there are more terrifying prisons to die in than Newgate.