The Daughter of Time

Brent shifted his long legs to a more comfortable position. ‘There is only one explanation,’ he said. ‘And that is that the boys weren’t missing.’

There was a still longer silence this time, while they stared at each other.

‘Oh, no, it’s nonsense,’ Grant said. ‘There must be some obvious explanation that we are failing to see.’

‘As what, for instance?’

‘I don’t know. I haven’t had time to think.’

‘I’ve had nearly three days to think, and I still haven’t thought up a reason that will fit. Nothing will fit the facts except the conclusion that the boys were alive when Henry took over the Tower. It was a completely unscrupulous Act of Attainder; it accused Richard’s followers – the loyal followers of an anointed King fighting against an invader – of treason. Every accusation that Henry could possibly make with any hope of getting away with it was put into that Bill. And the very worst he could accuse Richard of was the usual cruelty and tyranny. The boys aren’t even mentioned.’

‘It’s fantastic.’

‘It’s unbelievable. But it is fact.’

‘What it means is that there was no contemporary accusation at all.’

‘That’s about it.’

‘But but wait a minute. Tyrrel was hanged for the murder. He actually confessed to it before he died. Wait a minute.’ He reached for Oliphant and sped through the pages looking for the place. ‘There’s a full account of it here somewhere. There was no mystery about it. Even the Statue of Liberty knew about it.’

‘Who?’

‘The nurse you met in the corridor. It was Tyrrel who committed the murder and he was found guilty and confessed before his death.’

Was that when Henry took over in London, then?’

‘Wait a moment. Here it is.’ He skimmed down the paragraph. ‘No, it was in 1502.’ He realised all of a sudden what he had just said, and repeated in a new, bewildered tone: ‘In – 1502.’

‘But – but – but that was—’

‘Yes. Nearly twenty years afterwards.’

Brent fumbled for his cigarette case, took it out, and then put it hastily away again.

‘Smoke if you like,’ Grant said. ‘It’s a good stiff drink I need. I don’t think my brain can be working very well. I feel the way I used to feel as a child when I was blindfolded and whirled round before beginning a blindman’s-buff game.’

‘Yes,’ said Carradine. He took out a cigarette and lighted it. ‘Completely in the dark, and more than a little dizzy.’

He sat staring at the sparrows.

‘Forty million schoolbooks can’t be wrong,’ Grant said after a little.

‘Can’t they?’

‘Well, can they!’

‘I used to think so, but I’m not so sure nowadays.’

‘Aren’t you being a little sudden in your scepticism?’

‘Oh, it wasn’t this that shook me.’

‘What then?’

‘A little affair called the Boston Massacre. Ever heard of it?’

‘Of course.’

‘Well, I discovered quite by accident, when I was looking up something at college, that the Boston Massacre consisted of a mob throwing stones at a sentry. The total casualties were four. I was brought up on the Boston Massacre, Mr Grant. My twenty-eight-inch chest used to swell at the very memory of it. My good red spinach-laden blood used to seethe at the thought of helpless civilians mowed down by the fire of British troops. You can’t imagine what a shock it was to find that all it added up to in actual fact was a brawl that wouldn’t get more than local reporting in a clash between police and strikers in any American lock-out.’

As Grant made no reply to this, he squinted his eyes against the light to see how Grant was taking it. But Grant was staring at the ceiling as if he were watching patterns forming there.

‘That’s partly why I like to research so much,’ Carradine volunteered; and settled back to staring at the sparrows.

Presently Grant put his hand out, wordlessly, and Carradine gave him a cigarette and lighted it for him.

They smoked in silence.

It was Grant who interrupted the sparrows’ performance.

‘Tonypandy,’ he said.

‘How’s that?’

But Grant was still far away.

‘After all, I’ve seen the thing at work in my own day, haven’t I,’ he said, not to Carradine but to the ceiling. ‘It’s Tonypandy.’

‘And what in heck is Tonypandy?’ Brent asked. ‘It sounds like a patent medicine. Does your child get out of sorts? Does the little face get flushed, the temper short, and the limbs easily tired? Give the little one Tonypandy, and see the radiant results.’ And then, as Grant made no answer: ‘All right, then; keep your Tonypandy. I wouldn’t have it as a gift.’

‘Tonypandy,’ Grant said, still in that sleepwalking voice, ‘is a place in the south of Wales.’

‘I knew it was some kind of physic.’

‘If you go to South Wales you will hear that, in 1910, the Government used troops to shoot down Welsh miners who were striking for their rights. You’ll probably hear that Winston Churchill, who was Home Secretary at the time, was responsible. South Wales, you will be told, will never forget Tonypandy!’

Carradine had dropped his flippant air.

‘And it wasn’t a bit like that?’