The Daughter of Time

If, when he had read them merely by the light of his own critical mind, they had seemed to him curiously tattling, and in places absurd, they now read plain abominable. He was what Laura’s small Pat was in the habit of calling ‘scunnered’. And he was also puzzled.

This was Morton’s account. Morton the eyewitness, the participant. Morton must have known with minute accuracy what took place between the beginning and end of June that year. And yet there was no mention of Lady Eleanor Butler; no mention of Titulus Regius. According to Morton, Richard’s case had been that Edward was previously married to his mistress Elizabeth Lucy. But Elizabeth Lucy, Morton pointed out, had denied that she was ever married to the King.

Why did Morton set up a ninepin just to knock it down again?

Why the substitution of Elizabeth Lucy for Eleanor Butler?

Because he could deny with truth that Lucy was ever married to the King, but could not do the same in the case of Eleanor Butler?

Surely the presumption was that it was very important to someone or other that Richard’s claim that the children were illegitimate should be shown to be untenable.

And since Morton – in the handwriting of the sainted More – was writing for Henry VII, then that someone was presumably Henry VII. The Henry VII who had destroyed Titulus Regius and forbidden anyone to keep a copy.

Something Carradine had said came back into Grant’s mind.

Henry had caused the Act to be repealed without being read.

It was so important to Henry that the contents of the Act should not be brought to mind that he had specially provided for its unquoted destruction.

Why should it be of such importance to Henry VII?

How could it matter to Henry what Richard’s rights were? It was not as if he could say: Richard’s claim was a trumped-up one, therefore mine is good. Whatever wretched small claim Henry Tudor might have was a Lancastrian one, and the heirs of York did not enter into the matter.

Then why should it have been of such paramount importance to Henry that the contents of Titulus Regius should be forgotten?

Why hide away Eleanor Butler, and bring in in her place a mistress whom no one ever suggested was married to the King?

This problem lasted Grant very happily till just before supper; when the porter came in with a note for him. ‘The front hall says that young American friend of yours left this for you,’ the porter said, handing him a folded sheet of paper.

‘Thank you,’ said Grant. What do you know about Richard the Third?’

‘Is there a prize?’

‘What for?’

‘The quiz.’

‘No, just the satisfaction of intellectual curiosity. What do you know about Richard III?’

‘He was the first multiple murderer.’

‘Multiple? I thought it was two nephews?’

‘No, oh, no. I don’t know much history but I do know that. Murdered his brother, and his cousin, and the poor old King in the Tower, and then finished off with his little nephews. A wholesale performer.’

Grant considered this.

‘If I told you that he never murdered anyone at all, what would you say?’

‘I’d say that you’re perfectly entitled to your opinion. Some people believe the earth is flat. Some people believe the world is going to end in A.D. 2000. Some people believe that it began less than five thousand years ago. You’ll hear far funnier things than that at Marble Arch of a Sunday.’

‘So you wouldn’t even entertain the idea for a monument?’

‘I find it entertaining all right, but not what you might call very plausible, shall we say. But don’t let me stand in your way. Try it out on a better bombing range. You take it to Marble Arch one Sunday, and I’ll bet you’ll find followers aplenty. Maybe start a movement.’

He made a gay sketchy half-salute with his hand and went away humming to himself; secure and impervious.

So help me, Grant thought, I’m not far off it. If I get any deeper into this thing I will be standing on a soapbox at Marble Arch.

He unfolded the message from Carradine, and read: ‘You said that you wanted to know whether the other heirs to the throne survived Richard. As well as the boys, I mean. I forgot to say: would you make out a list of them for me, so that I can look them up. I think it’s going to be important.’

Well, if the world in general went on its humming way, brisk and uncaring, at least he had young America on his side.

He put aside the sainted More, with its Sunday-paper accounts of hysterical scenes and wild accusations, and reached for the sober student’s account of history so that he might catalogue the possible rivals to Richard III in the English succession.

And as he put down More-Morton, he was reminded of something.

That hysterical scene during the Council in the Tower which was reported by More, that frantic outburst on Richard’s part against the sorcery that had withered his arm, had been against Jane Shore.