To the Tower Born - Robin Maxwell (28 page)

“Your heart? What about your mind! You, of all people, Nell.

Where is the proof? In
my
heart, I cannot believe that my uncle Richard would harm his brother’s sons. You heard him yourself.

He did not wish to be king. ’Twas thrust upon him.”

“True. And for a time I suspected Harry Buckingham of the deed. But now I can see that once on the throne, Richard came to believe himself the rightful king. Believed he could do good in England. When your mother’s rebellion in the south raised the specter of losing the crown—”

“He became a murderous, child-killing fiend?” Bessie finished for her. “I tell you, ’tis not Richard of Gloucester’s nature.”

“He executed his own brother, Clarence,” Nell argued.

“On my father’s orders,” Bessie countered.

“He had beheaded, on his
own
volition, Lord Hastings, Lord Grey, and Antony—” Nell’s voice cracked. “Lord Rivers. Do you not think it possible that to protect against further uprisings in Edward’s name he might wish to rid himself of any further claimants to his throne?”

“If he wishes to rid himself of claimants,” said Bessie, “then he had better be prepared to spill much more blood than my brothers’. The Duke of Clarence’s son would stand in his way, as would the Earl of Lincoln. I know the man’s heart, Nell, and he is not capable of this!”

Nell softened, part from pity, part from the good logic of Bessie’s words. “You may well be right. But the fact is, whether dead or alive, murdered by Richard’s hand or not, your brothers are
gone,
and their chances of returning soon are next to nothing.

Someone must be King of England, and it appears Tudor, if his invasion is successful, will be that man. You don’t know him. None of us does. He may be a loathsome creature, and I’m sure that you could never love him as you do your uncle Richard. But one thing is certain. If you marry Henry Tudor and join the York and Lancaster bloodlines, that marriage will once and forever end the war that your two families have been fighting for thirty years!

There will be a united England. There will be peace.” Bessie was listening hard. She was dry-eyed and seemed to be gazing into the future.

“You always knew you would have to marry for dynasty,” Nell continued, “but you believed ’twould be a foreign prince. Exile in a foreign kingdom. This way, at least your husband would be English. You’d not be forced to leave your home. Your destiny has always been to be a queen, Bessie. This way you would be Queen of
England
.”

The door opened and Elizabeth Woodville entered. Nell could see that she meant to command her daughter to consent to the marriage, but Bessie was not about to be commanded or coerced.

She stiffened her spine and lifted her chin. “I’ll marry Henry Tudor,” she announced, “and I’ll be Queen of England. But never, ever, expect me to believe that Uncle Richard murdered my brothers. Now leave me,” Bessie said, her beautiful face contorted with grief. “Both of you.”

In her entire life, Nell had never experienced such misery Ias she did now. She was altogether unaware of the ceaseless rain beating on the roof and the violent jolting motion of the coach, such was her despair. Her dearest friend in life hated her now, had dismissed Nell from her presence in the same breath as her despised mother. Worse still was the stunning realization that her dismissal may have been well deserved.

Logic had always driven Nell. Logic and intellect. Logic suggested that as Edward and Dickon had disappeared under King Richard’s watch, from his fortress, he and his henchmen were responsible. His motives for the desperate act had seemed clear enough. Much as she loathed Harry Buckingham, she had believed his accusation of his once-respected master’s culpability, and so had the sharp and analytical Lady Margaret. ’Twas a tightly woven fabric, this theory of Richard as the boys’ murderer.
Have I been
unduly influenced by Margaret Beaufort’s opinion?
she wondered. She was in awe of the woman, sharp and analytical as any person she’d ever known.
Have I become too malleable? Too easily moved?

Bessie’s intuition, on the other hand, her instinct seen through the eyes of love—that Richard of Gloucester was innocent of any wrongdoing against her brothers, and her refusal to believe they were dead—seemed a flimsy, gossamer web in comparison.

The coach door opening shocked Nell from her rumina-tions. So deep had her reverie been that she’d not even felt the carriage stop. Now John, his oilcloth dripping wet, came inside and, slamming the door closed behind him, took the seat across from her. He pushed his hood back and she regarded his rugged features, aglow with exertion.

“We’ll not be getting back to Woking tonight, I’m afraid,” he said. “I’ve been driving west along the north shore, and we should be able to cross the river at Brentford, but by now the road south will be too treacherous to attempt in the dark. I have an idea, though.”

“Tell me.”

“Lady Margaret has a house, more a small castle, on the south shore near Brentford. I’ve been there many times. We’re not far. We should stay the night there, and see what we see in the morning.”

“ ’Tis a sound plan, John,” said Nell, relieved for someone capable and trustworthy to be taking charge.

The beating rain had finally let up, but Nell could now hear the roar of the river nearby. John stopped the coach at Brentford Bridge’s north side and she let herself out. A rare glimpse of the moon moving between banks of clouds illuminated the scene before them. Another carriage was stopped, its driver silently assessing the safety of a crossing. Brentford was not nearly as grand as London Bridge, just a sturdy span of stone where the Thames’s mouth was normally narrow. The waters had reached the apex of its arches. Fallen branches and rubble from collapsed houses were wedged against the western wall, and the roadway itself was awash with spray flying up over the stone sidewall.

Their four horses were skittish and stamping, and rearing away from the bridge’s entrance. Even to her untrained eye, Nell could see that the waters had risen just in the time they’d been standing and watching.

“I don’t like the look of it!” John shouted over the roar. “But if we don’t go now, we may lose our chance altogether!” Nell hesitated for just a moment, then shouted back, “I say we chance it!”

John smiled. “You’re a plucky girl, Nell! I hope the horses are as brave as you! Get in, then, and hold on tight!” As she climbed inside, Nell could see that the other coach was preparing to follow their lead. She slammed the door closed, then raised the cloth window flap, looking west at the onrushing river. A cloud scuttled over the moon, obliterating it, and with John’s encouraging cry to the horses, the coach lurched forward in pitch blackness, with only the tiny lantern lights at the bridge’s southern end showing them the way. Nell held her breath, hoping the terrifying passage would at least be brief. It was not to be so.

They’d gone just a short way when the carriage stopped dead, then jolted backward as the team reared in fright.

Nell opened the window to the driver’s seat. “John, what’s happened?”

“Huge limb came flying past the horses’ heads not five feet in front of ’em! Git up!” he shouted, cracking the whip, but the terrified creatures were paralyzed.

There were frenzied calls from the coach behind for them to move, and move quickly, for the water was rising fast.

But John was having no joy with the animals. “I’ll have to get down and lead them!”

A moment later he had disappeared from the driver’s seat.

Several long moments passed and Nell realized they were still not moving. She flung the door open and jumped down into calf-deep water. A moment more of moonlight allowed her to find John tugging at the left fore horse, who, stubborn as a mule, was not budging from his spot. Nell grabbed the bit of the right fore horse and began urging him ahead.

“Come on, boys!” John shouted. “If a plucky girl can cross this bridge, so can you!”

As if his words had shamed them, the horses finally moved, thankfully forward this time, and with Nell and John leading the horses, the bridge’s south lights were growing larger.

Without warning, and with great crashing and shrieking, the bridge jolted beneath them. Nell and John were thrown off their feet. She looked up and saw, to her horror, a whole tree looming over them. By the look of it, it was ancient, with a thick gnarled trunk and limbs still leafy, its great snarl of roots pointing unnaturally skyward.

Another surge of the storm tide forced it farther over the bridge and it teetered, an obscene canopy, over the two coaches. Wordlessly, John and Nell scrambled to their feet. This time the horses needed no urging, for they were eager to be gone from the terrifying bridge. The coach had just cleared the last suspended branch when another wave lifted the tree from the west wall, but as it flew up and over the top, a stout limb hooked in the harness of the team behind, and to Nell’s unbelieving eyes, ripped the horses, driver, and carriage, like a child’s toy, toppling it into the river. The waters took the rig but for a brief distance before it sank beneath the churning darkness.

“Come on, Nell!” John cried, but Nell needed no further encouragement. She wished she could take off her heavy, water-logged skirts. Her thighs burned as she slogged through the now knee-deep water. But finally the bridge’s south lights were close, and two men rushed out to help them the final distance to safety.

Nell collapsed on the step of the coach. John stood above her, panting and looking back at the treacherous Thames.

“Those poor people,” she said, her teeth chattering.

“Close call for us,” he said. “But ’twasn’t our time to be taken.

Come on, then, get back in. The castle’s not far. It wouldn’t do to save you from a tree falling on your head to die of a bloody chill.”

he silhouette of Barkley Manor in the fitful moonlight Tproved John right. It was less a manor than a castle, much like Woking, though it was made of old-fashioned timber and plaster rather than stone. Perhaps, thought Nell as they clattered over the moat’s drawbridge, Margaret Beaufort chose to call her residences “manors” to draw attention away from what must surely be her astonishing wealth.

The moat guard had been asleep, and now Nell could see that Barkley was almost altogether dark, even its front lanterns extinguished. Faint light could be seen through the small windows, and when she knocked there was no answer. It took several minutes of pounding with the heavy knocker, Nell shivering miserably, to raise a servant, and when the door was finally opened, the portly steward in his nightclothes wore such a scowl that she thought for a moment he would turn her away.

It took some proving of her identity and circumstances to finally be allowed entry into the house, clearly shut up and manned only by a skeleton staff. Even by torchlight Nell could see that this residence was as grand as Woking, rich tapestries adorning every one of the walls, fine furniture, and portraits of Margaret Beaufort’s ancestors hanging proudly in the corridors.

Nell was surprised, as the steward led her to the kitchen, to see a heavy carven wood door, much like the one that led to Lady Margaret’s offices at Woking, and wondered briefly at what creatures of habit all people were.

By the time John had seen to the horses and come in, Nell was wrapped in a blanket and was gratefully partaking of a slice of warmed-over meat pie and some spiced wine in the servants’

kitchen. John joined her at the table, and the cook, who was as dour and unfriendly as any house servant Nell had ever known, provided him with a portion of the same, grumbling the whole time.

The steward and the cook, who listened wide-eyed to John’s telling of his and Nell’s adventure of Brentford Bridge, were otherwise quite uninterested in them, most eager to put their visitors to bed and get back to their own.

John was sent to the stables, where grooms, stableboys, and drivers lived when the house was open. Nell was given a bedchamber on the upper floor, small but comfortably appointed. The cook had provided her with one of her own nightgowns, which Nell gratefully donned and fell, instantly, into an exhausted sleep.

She was floating on a gilt barge with Antony, colorful banners snapping above them. Amidst red silk pillows they reclined, he with his fair
head in her lap, she lazily caressing his face with her fingers. The air was
soft and warm on their skin, and the only sound was water lapping gently
at the hull. They were speaking to each other as lovers do, but the language was Latin gibberish, which both of them seemed to understand.

Nell became aware that the sound of the snapping banners was growing
louder, so loud, in fact, that all conversation was drowned out. The
sound, now a roar, alarmed her, and when she turned to look upriver, she
saw a great wall of water rushing toward them, with houses and trees and
the bodies of cows and horses balanced high on its roiling crest.

Antony was yet unaware, but when Nell opened her mouth to warn
him, no sound emerged. She shook him, but he was fast asleep and altogether peaceful. She thought,
I must wake him from so peaceful a dream.

Then the wave struck and the barge was lifted high and overturned.

Nell hung, for dear life, onto the wooden boat and lay half drowned on
her belly in the cook’s nightdress. Red pillows floated on the water now,
a meat pie, and many of her father’s books. She spotted Antony’s long
yellow hair floating like a tangled mass of golden seaweed, and reached
out for it. She pulled with unnatural strength and he came bobbing to
the surface, alive, the sweet peaceful smile on his face, altogether unperturbed at his near drowning. Their hands were clasped now and Nell began tugging him up to the overturned barge with her, but something was
holding him down and he could never quite be hoisted aboard.

Slowly she began losing him, more and more of his torso, neck, and
chin submerged. Still the sweet smile played on his lips, even as he was
pulled deeper and his face disappeared under the water, leaving only the
golden tresses floating on the surface. Nell clutched his hand desperately, 
refusing to lose him. With all the strength she had, she gave a great,
final tug. To her joy the yellow-haired head surfaced once again, water
streaming down the face. But it was not Antony Woodville’s face. It was
young Edward, gray-skinned and skeletal. Dull eyes were sunken in
their sockets, and when he opened his mouth to speak to Nell, the
hideous head of a green eell slithered out. Nell shrieked and tore her
hand from Edward’s.