Kate Sedley: The Goldsmith's daughter

Others were also suffering from the heat generated by this press of bodies. The Duke of Buckingham, appointed Lord High Steward for the occasion, was wiping his neck with a silken handkerchief, while the Duke of Suffolk’s fleshy face was suffused with blood, looking like nothing so much as a piece of raw meat. But it was not simply the warmth that was making us sweat. There was another emotion abroad, ugly and dark; the expectation, the anticipation of death.

On some countenances, like that of the Duke of Gloucester, it took the semblance of fear; fear for the death of a loved one. On others, it reflected the shame that two brothers, one of them the King, should be about to rend each other in public. And on still others, as on the face of John Morton, Master of the Rolls, it had twisted itself into a look of greed for the skill and thrill of the chase and the final destruction of the quarry.

The sound of muted cheering heralded the arrival of King Edward; and as soon as he had taken his place on the central dais, the Duke of Clarence, who had earlier been brought by water to Westminster from the Tower, was led to the bar. I was shocked to see how thin and pale he had grown, but at the sight of his old arrogant, contemptuous smile, I guessed that however much his appearance might have altered, no real inward change had taken place.

The King gestured for the proceedings to begin, and the Chancellor, Thomas Rotheram, Archbishop of York, rose ponderously to his feet to deliver a sermon on — if my memory serves me aright — the subject of fidelity towards one’s sovereign. When he had finished, he sat down again, drawing his episcopal robes about him, rather like a bird folding its wings after flight, and King Edward indicated that the Bill of Attainder should be read.

The Duke of Buckingham, whose task this was, was noticeably nervous, his breath catching in his throat on more than one occasion, and twice faltering almost to a stop. Finally, he had done, and a profound silence settled over the hall, broken only by the occasional cough or a shuffling of feet. The King waited, his steely gaze resting on first one face and then another, but nobody moved: everyone sat as though carved out of stone. At last, when it became apparent that no one was willing to continue the proceedings, he stood up himself, with a suddenness that made his neighbours jump.

Brother faced brother across the hall.

It began quietly, the King reproaching the Duke for his constant treachery and reminding him of his own constant forgiveness. The Duke answered, in a tone equally subdued, that a divided family had naturally resulted in divided loyalties; and as he spoke, he glanced towards the serried ranks of Woodvilles. There, said his look, was the real cause of the division between himself and his elder brother.

The King hesitated, then shifted his ground. Had he not always loved George and treated him well? Had he not given him more money and lands than any King of England had ever before bestowed upon a brother? Had he not made him one of the two richest men in the kingdom after himself? And how had the ungrateful George repaid him?

‘By depriving me of my crown and driving me out of the country! Me! Your own flesh and blood!’

Clarence laughed at that, and I saw the Duke of Gloucester flinch from the sound. I could guess what he was thinking; that the Duke’s last hope of throwing himself on the King’s mercy had gone. And so it proved. The polite, civilised masks were torn off and cast away. It was no longer brother and brother, no longer subject and overlord. It wasn’t even man and man, but two animals, fanged and clawed.

‘You are malicious, unnatural and loathsome!’ shouted the King.

‘And you are a bastard!’ yelled the Duke. ‘Hasn’t our own mother more than once offered to prove you so?’

‘Leave our mother’s name out of this! Did you not unlawfully order the execution of the Widow Ankaret Twynyho?’

‘And did you not retaliate by hanging Thomas Burdet, an innocent man?’

‘He was not innocent! On your orders, he maligned the Queen and members of her family!’

Clarence’s features were suddenly contorted into a barely recognisable mask of hatred. ‘No one could malign that Devil’s brood,’ he all but screamed. ‘Everyone knows that they indulge in the most extreme forms of all the black arts!’

The people in the hall were now avoiding one another’s eyes, but glancing furtively every now and then at the Duke of Gloucester, where he sat staring at the ground and biting his underlip. Only the foreign envoys and ambassadors looked on with interest at the unedifying spectacle before them, storing up all the details for their royal masters in their next dispatches.

There was a momentary lull in this exchange of insults, while the two protagonists paused to draw breath. Then, in a torrent of foam-flecked words, the King began reciting all Clarence’s many sins: his desertion to Warwick; his marriage to Warwick’s elder daughter, Isabel Neville, without his brother’s consent; his invocation of the statute of 1470 in order to lay claim to the throne; his attempt to marry Mary of Burgundy (a lady now safely the wife of Maximilian of Austria) until finally. .

‘I could have forgiven you all this,’ the King roared, ‘but for your last, malicious, more dastardly treason!’

An air of expectancy hung over Westminster Hall. This, surely, must be the moment we had all been waiting for; the moment when we should at last learn the truth; the real reason for the Duke of Clarence’s indictment and trial. The charges which had been adduced so far were old tales: they did not account for the King’s sudden decision to rid himself of his brother. A few of those present might believe that Edward had genuinely reached the end of his tether, but not very many. Most of us felt that some new and so far undisclosed treachery, something that struck at the very heart of his right to the throne, would now be revealed.

But then, suddenly, it was all over: I never quite fathomed how. A flurry of half-sentences on the part of the King; a bewildered Duke of Buckingham pronouncing a verdict of ‘Guilty’; warders closing in on their prisoner, leading him away from the bar, and it was finished.

Abruptly, the Duke of Gloucester was on his feet, shouting his brother’s name. For a brief moment Clarence turned, looked steadily at him across the intervening space, raised one hand in farewell and then was lost to view amongst his guards. Prince Richard, his naturally pale face now the colour of parchment and seamed with sweat, sank back into his chair, sightlessly scanning the crowds at the back of the hall. But then his eyes suddenly focused themselves, and he half rose again from his seat. It was with a sinking heart that I realised he was looking directly at me.

‘So,’ exclaimed Philip Lamprey, ‘Brother George was found guilty, but is not yet sentenced. There’s time enough still for a reprieve.’

I shook my head. ‘Somehow I don’t think so. Not on this occasion. Unless you were there, you can’t begin to comprehend the animosity — no, more than that, the sheer, unadulterated hatred — that flowed between those two. I can only liken it to a festering sore that one day bursts, letting out all the poison and pus that has been accumulating inside.’

‘As bad as that, eh?’ said Philip ruminatively, scratching his head. He had come that afternoon to seek me out at the Voyager to enquire on Jeanne’s behalf after Adela’s state of health, and to satisfy his own curiosity as to the outcome of the trial. ‘For I knew that against all my good advice you’d be bound to go and see for yourself,’ he had chided me. He added now, ‘I trust you kept yourself well hidden and did nothing to attract my Lord of Gloucester’s attention?’