The Daughter of Time

One could go through the catalogue of his acknowledged virtues, and find that each of them, individually, made his part in the murder unlikely in the extreme. Taken together they amounted to a wall of impossibility that towered into fantasy.

15

‘There was one person you forgot to ask for,’ Carradine said, breezing in, very gay, some days later, ‘in your list of kind inquiries.’

‘Hullo. Who was that?’

‘Stillington.’

‘Of course! The worthy Bishop of Bath. If Henry hated Titulus Regius, as a witness of Richard’s integrity and his own wife’s illegitimacy, he must still more have disliked the presence of its instigator. What happened to old Stillington? Judicial murder?’

‘Apparently the old boy wouldn’t play.’

‘Wouldn’t play what?’

‘Henry’s pet game. Out goes he. Either he was a wily old bird, or he was too innocent to see the snare at all. It’s my belief – if a mere Research Worker is entitled to a belief – that he was so innocent that no agent provocateur could provoke him to anything. Not anything that could be made a capital charge, anyhow.’

‘Are you telling me that he defeated Henry?’

‘No. Oh, no. No one ever defeated Henry. Henry put him on a charge and conveniently forgot to release him. And never home came he. Who was that? Mary on the sands of Dee?’

‘You’re very bright this morning, not to say exhilarated.’

‘Don’t say it in that suspicious tone. They’re not open yet. This effervescence that you observe in me is intellectual carbonisation. Spiritual rejoicing. An entirely cerebral scintillation.’

‘Well? Sit down and cough up. What is so good? I take it that something is?’

‘Good is hardly the proper word. It’s beautiful, perfectly-holy beautiful.’

‘I think you have been drinking.’

‘I couldn’t drink this morning if I tried. I’m bung full, full up to the gullet’s edge, with satisfaction.’

‘I take it you found that break in the pattern we were looking for.’

‘Yes, I found it, but it was later than we had thought. Later in time, I mean. Further on. In the first months everyone did what you would expect them to do. Henry took over – not a word about the boys – and cleaned up, got married to the boys’ sister. Got his own attainder reversed by a Parliament of his own attainted followers – no mention of the boys – and got an act of attainder through against Richard and his loyal subjects whose service was so neatly made treason by that one day’s ante-dating. That brought a fine heap of forfeited estates into the kitty in one go. The Croyland monk was terribly scandalised, by the way, at Henry’s sharp practice in the matter of treason. “O God,” he says, “what security are our kings to have henceforth in the day of battle if their loyal followers may in defeat be deprived of life, fortune, and inheritance”.’

‘He reckoned without his countrymen.’

‘Yes. He might have known that the English would get round to that matter sooner or later. Perhaps he was an alien. Anyhow, everything went on just as you would expect things to go with Henry in charge. He succeeded in August of 1485, and married Elizabeth the following January. Elizabeth had her first child at Winchester, and her mother was there with her and was present at the baptism. That was in September 1486. Then she came back to London – the Queen Dowager, I mean – in the autumn. And in February – hold on to everything – in February she was shut in a convent for the rest of her life.’

‘Elizabeth Woodville?’ Grant said, in the greatest astonishment. This was the very last thing he had expected.

‘Yes. Elizabeth Woodville. The boys’ mother.’

‘How do you know that she didn’t go voluntarily?’ Grant asked, when he had thought of it for a little. ‘It was not an uncommon thing for great ladies who were tired of court life to retire into an Order. It was not a severe existence, you know. Indeed, I have an idea it was fairly comfortable for rich women.’

‘Henry stripped her of everything she owned, and ordered her into the nunnery at Bermondsey. And that, by the way, did create a sensation. There was “much wondering”, it appears.’

‘I’m not surprised. What an extraordinary thing. Did he give a reason?’

‘Yes.’

‘What did he say he was ruining her for?’

‘For being nice to Richard.’

‘Are you serious?’

‘Sure.’

‘Is that the official wording?’

‘No. That’s the version of Henry’s pet historian.’

‘Virgil?’

‘Yes. The actual order of council that shut her up, said it was “for various considerations”.’

‘Are you quoting?’ asked Grant, incredulous. ‘I’m quoting. That’s what it said: “For various considerations”.’

After a moment Grant said: ‘He had no talent for excuses, had he? In his place I would have thought up six better ones.’

‘Either he couldn’t be bothered or he thought other people very credulous. Mark you, her niceness to Richard didn’t worry him until eighteen months after he succeeded Richard. Up till then everything had apparently been smooth as milk. He had even given her presents, manors and what not, when he succeeded Richard.’

‘What was his real reason? Have you any suggestion?’