Джозефина Тэй - The Daughter of Time

From then on, Richard was always in the background of the story. Through that dreary winter in Bruges. Staying with Margaret in Burgundy for that kind moist-eyed Margaret who had stood on the steps of Baynard’s Castle with himself and George to watch their father ride away was now the very new Duchess of Burgundy. Margaret, kind Margaret, was saddened and dismayed as many people in future were to be saddened and dismayed – by George’s inexplicable conduct, and set herself to missionary work while she got together funds for her two more admirable brothers.

Not even Miss Payne-Ellis’s interest in the magnificent Edward allowed her to conceal that the real work of outfitting the ships hired with Margaret’s money was done by Richard; a Richard not yet eighteen. And when Edward with an absurd handful of followers found himself once more camped in an English meadow, facing George with an army, it was Richard who went over to George’s camp and talked the Margaret-weakened George into alliance again and so left the road to London open to them.

Not, Grant thought, that this last was any great achievement. George could obviously be talked into anything. He was a born missionee.

He had not nearly exhausted The Rose of Raby and the illicit joys of fiction when, next morning about eleven, a parcel arrived from Marta containing the more respectable entertainment of history as recorded by the sainted Sir Thomas.

With the book was a note in Marta’s large sprawling writing on Marta’s stiff expensive notepaper.

Have to send this instead of bringing it. Frantically busy. Think I have got M.M. to the sticking point re Blessington. No T. More in any of the bookshops, so tried public library. Can’t think why one never thinks of public libraries. Probably because books expected to be soupy. Think this looks quite clean and unsoupy. You get fourteen days. Sounds like a sentence rather than a loan. Hope this interest in Crouchback means that the prickles are less nettlish. Till soon.

Marta.

The book did indeed look clean and unsoupy, if a little elderly. But after the light going of The Rose its print looked unexciting and its solid paragraphs forbidding. Nevertheless he attacked it with interest. This was, after all, where Richard III was concerned, ‘the horse’s mouth.’

He came to the surface an hour later, vaguely puzzled and ill at ease. It was not that the matter surprised him; the facts were very much what he had expected them to be. It was that this was not how he had expected Sir Thomas to write.

That was all right. But when he added that ‘this he had from such as were secret with his chamberers’ one was suddenly repelled. An aroma of back-stair gossip and servants’ spying came off the page. So that one’s sympathy tilted before one was aware of it from the smug commentator to the tortured creature sleepless on his bed. The murderer seemed of greater stature than the man who was writing of him.

Which was all wrong.

Grant was conscious too of the same unease that filled him when he listened to a witness telling a perfect story that he knew to be flawed somewhere.

And that was very puzzling indeed. What could possibly be wrong with the personal account of a man revered for his integrity as Thomas More had been revered for four centuries?

The Richard who appeared in More’s account was, Grant thought, one that Matron would have recognized. A man highly-strung and capable of both great evil and great suffering. ‘He was never quiet in his mind, never thought himself secure. His eyes whirled about, his body was privily fenced, his hands ever on his dagger, his countenance and manner like one always ready to strike again.’

And of course there was the dramatic, not to say hysterical, scene that Grant remembered from his schooldays; that every schoolboy probably remembered. The council scene in the Tower before he laid claim to the crown. Richard’s sudden challenge to Hastings as to what was the proper fate for a man who plotted the death of the protector of the kingdom. The insane claim that Edward’s wife and Edward’s mistress (Jane Shore) were responsible for his withered arm by their sorcery. The smiting of the table in his rage, which was the signal for his armed satellites to burst in and arrest Lord Hastings, Lord Stanley, and John Morton, bishop of Ely. The rushing of Hastings down into the courtyard and his beheading on a handy log of wood after bare time to confess himself to the first priest who could be found.

That was certainly the picture of a man who would act first in fury, in fear, in revenge – and repent afterwards.

But it seemed that he was capable of more calculated iniquity. He caused a sermon to be preached by a certain Dr. Shaw, brother of the lord mayor, at Paul’s Cross, on June 22, on the text: ‘Bastard slips shall take no root.’ Wherein Dr. Shaw maintained that both Edward and George were sons of the Duchess of York by some unknown man, and that Richard was the only legitimate son of the Duke and Duchess of York.

This was so unlikely, so inherently absurd, that Grant went back and read it over again. But it still said the same thing. That Richard had traduced his mother, in public and for his own material advantage, with an unbelievable infamy.

Well, Sir Thomas More said it. And if anyone should know it would be Thomas More. And if anyone should know how to pick and choose between the credibilities in the reporting of a story it ought to be Thomas More, lord chancellor of England.

Richard’s mother, said Sir Thomas, complained bitterly of the slander with which her son had smirched her. Understandably, on the whole, Grant thought.

As for Dr. Shaw, he was overcome with remorse. So much so that ‘within a few days he withered and consumed away.’

Had a stroke, probably, Grant considered. And little wonder. To have stood up and told that tale to a London crowd must have taken some nerve.

Sir Thomas’s account of the princes in the Tower was the same as The Amazon’s, but Sir Thomas’s version was more detailed. Richard had suggested to Robert Brackenbury, constable of the Tower, that it might be a good thing if the princes disappeared, but Brackenbury would have no part in such an act. Richard therefore waited until he was at Warwick, during his progress through England after his coronation and then sent Tyrrel to London with orders that he was to receive the keys of the Tower for one night. During that night two ruffians, Dighton and Forrest, one a groom and one a warder, smothered the two boys.

At this point The Midget came in with his lunch and removed the book from his grasp; and while he forked the shepherd’s pie from plate to mouth he considered again the face of the man in the dock. The faithful and patient small brother who had turned into a monster.

When The Midget came back for his tray he said: ‘Did you know that Richard III was a very popular person in his day? Before he came to the throne, I mean.’

The Midget cast a baleful glance at the picture.

‘Always was a snake in the grass, if you ask me. Smooth, that’s what he was: smooth. Biding his time.’

Biding his time for what? he wondered, as she tapped away down the corridor. He could not have known that his brother Edward would die unexpectedly at the early age of forty. He could not have foreseen (even after a childhood shared with him in uncommon intimacy) that George’s on-goings would end in attainder and the debarring of his two children from the succession. There seemed little point in ‘biding one’s time’ if there was nothing to bide for. The indestructibly virtuous beauty with the gilt hair had, except for her incurable nepotism, proved an admirable queen and had provided Edward with a large brood of healthy children, including two boys. The whole of that brood, together with George and his son and daughter, stood between Richard and the throne. It was surely unlikely that a man busy with the administration of the North of England, or campaigning (with dazzling success) against the Scots, would have much spare interest in being ‘smooth.’