The Daughter of Time

‘A bit unappetising, let us say. It is quite easily digested once you have swallowed it. History for the student. Set out in detailed fact.’

‘Ugh!’

‘At least I’ve discovered where the revered and sainted Sir Thomas More got his account of Richard.’

‘Yes? Where?’

‘From one John Morton.’

‘Never heard of him.’

‘Neither did I, but that’s our ignorance.’

‘Who was he?’

‘He was Henry VII’s Archbishop of Canterbury. And Richard’s bitterest enemy.’

If Marta had been capable of whistling, she would have whistled in comment.

‘So that was the horse’s mouth!’ she said.

‘That was the horse’s mouth. And it is on that account of Richard that all the later ones were built. It is on that story that Holinshed fashioned his history, and on that story that Shakespeare fashioned his character.’

‘So it is the version of someone who hated Richard. I didn’t know that. Why did the sainted Sir Thomas report Morton rather than someone else?’

‘Whoever he reported, it would be a Tudor version. But he reported Morton, it seems, because he had been in Morton’s household as a boy. And of course Morton had been very much “in on the act”, so it was natural to write down the version of an eyewitness whose account he could have at first hand.’

Marta poked her finger at Oliphant again. ‘Does your dull fat historian acknowledge that it is a biased version?’

‘Oliphant? Only by implication. He is, to be honest, in a sad muddle himself about Richard. On the same page he says that he was an admirable administrator and general, with an excellent reputation, staid and good-living, very popular by contrast with the Woodville upstarts (the Queen’s relations) and that he was “perfectly unscrupulous and ready to wade through any depth of bloodshed to the crown which lay within his grasp”. On one page he says grudgingly: “There are reasons for supposing that he was not destitute of a conscience” and then on a later page reports More’s picture of a man so tormented by his own deed that he could not sleep. And so on.’

‘Does your dull fat Oliphant prefer his roses red, then?’

‘Oh, I don’t think so. I don’t think he is consciously Lancastrian. Though now that I think of it he is very tolerant of Henry VIIs usurpation. I can’t remember his saying anywhere, brutally, that Henry hadn’t a vestige of a shadow of a claim to the throne.’

‘Who put him there, then? Henry, I mean.’

‘The Lancastrian remnant and the upstart Woodvilles, backed, I suppose, by a country revolted by the boys’ murder. Apparently anyone with a spice of Lancastrian blood in their veins would do. Henry himself was canny enough to put “conquest” first in his claim to the throne, and his Lancaster blood second. “De jure belli et de jure Lancastriae.” His mother was the heir of an illegitimate son of the third son of Richard III.’

‘All I know about Henry VII is that he was fantastically rich and fantastically mean. Do you know the lovely Kipling story about his knighting the craftsman not for having done beautiful work but for having saved him the cost of some scroll-work?’

‘With a rusty sword from behind the arras. You must be one of the few women who know their Kipling.’

‘Oh, I’m a very remarkable woman in many ways. So you are no nearer finding out about Richard’s personality than you were?’

‘No. I’m as completely bewildered as Sir Cuthbert Oliphant, bless his heart. The only difference between us is that I know I’m bewildered and he doesn’t seem to be aware of it.

‘Have you seen much of my woolly lamb?’

‘I’ve seen nothing of him since his first visit, and that’s three days ago. I’m beginning to wonder whether he has repented of his promise.’

‘Oh, no. I’m sure not. Faithfulness is his banner and creed.’

‘Like Richard.’

‘Richard?’

‘His motto was: “Loyaulté me lie”. Loyalty binds me.’

There was a tentative tap at the door, and in answer to Grant’s invitation, Brent Carradine appeared, hung around with topcoat as usual.

‘Oh! I seem to be butting in. I didn’t know you were here, Miss Hallard. I met the Statue of Liberty in the corridor there, and she seemed to think you were alone, Mr Grant.’

Grant identified the Statue of Liberty without difficulty. Marta said that she was in the act of going, and that in any case Brent was a much more welcome visitor than she was nowadays. She would leave them in peace to pursue their search for the soul of a murderer.

When he had bowed her politely to the door Brent came back and sat himself down in the visitor’s chair with exactly the same air that an Englishman wears when he sits down to his port after the women have left the table. Grant wondered if even the female-ridden American felt a subconscious relief at settling down to a stag party. In answer to Brent’s inquiry as to how he was getting on with Oliphant, he said he found Sir Cuthbert admirably lucid.