Kate Sedley: The Goldsmith's daughter

‘Well,’ he said, seating himself at our table and accepting a mazer of ale, ‘it’s done then. The Duke of Clarence is dead; executed, presumably, but no one as yet knows how. Rumour talks of drowning in a butt of malmsey wine, but I don’t know that one can put much store by such a tale.’

I sat down slowly on the stool opposite him. ‘King Edward signed his brother’s death warrant?’ I asked incredulously.

‘Must have done.’ Richard Manifold wiped his mouth on the back of his hand. ‘As far as I can gather from the messenger who brought the news, the sequence of events was as follows. On the seventh day of this month, the Duke of Buckingham, as Lord High Steward, passed sentence of death upon Clarence. But even at that late stage, the King hesitated for so long about signing the warrant that, on the eighteenth, the Speaker of the Commons requested that whatever was to be done, be done quickly. And on the very same day, the Duke was executed in the Tower, having first offered up his Mass penny and been shriven. After that, all’s secrecy and mystery. They say that even his mother, the old Duchess of York, doesn’t know for certain how he died. But he is dead, that’s for certain. But as for details, we’ll have to contain our souls in patience for a while longer.’

So it was done, I thought to myself. The Woodvilles had triumphed. Those three brothers who had been through so much together were now only two, and I wondered what Duke Richard was feeling. Did he fear that the Queen’s rapacious family would one day turn on him?

I grieved silently for him. He faced a lonely and very dangerous future.