The Daughter of Time

‘If your two sons had been murdered by your brother-in-law, would you take a handsome pension from him?’

‘I take it that the question is rhetorical,’ Marta said, putting down her sheaf of flowers and looking round to see which of the already occupied vases would best suit their type.

‘Honestly, I think historians are all mad. Listen to this:

The conduct of the Queen-Dowager is hard to explain; whether she feared to be taken from sanctuary by force, or whether she was merely tired of her forlorn existence at Westminster, and had resolved to be reconciled to the murderer of her sons out of mere callous apathy, seems uncertain.

‘Merciful Heaven!’ said Marta, pausing with a delft jar in one hand and a glass cylinder in the other, and looking at him in wild surmise.

‘Do you think historians really listen to what they are saying?’

‘Who was the said Queen-Dowager?’

‘Elizabeth Woodville. Richard IV’s wife.’

‘Oh, yes. I played her once. It was a “bit”. In a play about Warwick the Kingmaker.’

‘Of course I’m only a policeman,’ Grant said.

‘Perhaps I never moved in the right circles. It may be that I’ve met only nice people. Where would one have to go to meet a woman who became matey with the murderer of her two boys?’

‘Greece, I should think,’ Marta said. ‘Ancient Greece.’

‘I can’t remember a sample even there.’

‘Or a lunatic asylum, perhaps. Was there any sign of idiocy about Elizabeth Woodville?’

‘Not that anyone ever noticed. And she was Queen for twenty years or so.’

‘Of course the thing is farce, I hope you see,’ Marta said, going on with her flower arranging. ‘Not a tragedy at all. “Yes, I know he did kill Edward and little Richard, but he really is a rather charming creature and it is so bad for my rheumatism living in rooms with a north light”.’

Grant laughed, and his good temper came back.

‘Yes, of course. It’s the height of absurdity. It belongs to Ruthless Rhymes, not to sober history. That is why historians surprise me. They seem to have no talent for the likeliness of any situation. They see history like a peepshow; with two-dimensional figures against a distant background.’

‘Perhaps when you are grubbing about with tattered records you haven’t time to learn about people. I don’t mean about the people in the records, but just about People. Flesh and blood. And how they react to circumstances.’

‘How would you play her?’ Grant asked, remembering that the understanding of motive was Marta’s trade.

‘Play who?’

‘The woman who came out of sanctuary and made friends with her children’s murderer for seven hundred merks per annum and the right to go to parties at the Palace.’

‘I couldn’t. There is no such woman outside Euripides or a delinquent’s home. One could only play her as a rag. She’d make a very good burlesque, now I think of it. A take-off of poetic tragedy. The blank verse kind. I must try it sometime. For a charity matinée, or something. I hope you don’t hate mimosa. It’s odd, considering how long I’ve known you, how little I know of your likes and dislikes. Who invented the woman who became buddies with her sons’ murderer?’

‘No one invented her. Elizabeth Woodville did come out of sanctuary, and did accept a pension from Richard. The pension was not only granted, it was paid. Her daughters went to parties at the Palace and she wrote to her other son – her first-marriage son – to come home from France and make his peace with Richard. Oliphant’s only suggestion as to the reason for this is that she was either frightened of being dragged out of sanctuary (did you ever know of anyone who was dragged out of sanctuary? The man who did that would be excommunicated – and Richard was a very good son of Holy Church) or that she was bored with sanctuary life.’

‘And what is your theory about so odd a proceeding?’

‘The obvious explanation is that the boys were alive and well. No one at that time ever suggested otherwise.’

Marta considered the sprays of mimosa. ‘Yes, of course. You said that there was no accusation in that Bill of Attainder. After Richard’s death, I mean.’ Her eyes went from the mimosa to the portrait on the table and then to Grant. ‘You think, then, you really soberly think, as a policeman, that Richard didn’t have anything to do with the boys’ deaths.’

‘I’m quite sure that they were alive and well when Henry took over the Tower on his arrival in London. There is nothing that would explain his omission to make a scandal of it if the boys were missing. Can you think of anything?’