Джозефина Тэй - The Daughter of Time

‘How?’

‘They presented him, in that nice polite English way, with an Act of Parliament that said that no one serving the sovereign lord of the land for the time being should be convicted of treason or suffer either forfeiture or imprisonment, and they made him consent to it. That’s terribly English, that ruthless politeness. No yelling in the street or throwing stones because they didn’t like his little bit of cheating. Just a nice polite reasonable Act for him to swallow and like it. I bet he did a slow burn about that one. Well, I must be on my way. It’s sure nice to see you sitting up and taking notice. We’ll be having that trip to Greenwich in no time at all, I see. What’s at Greenwich?’

‘Some very fine architecture and a fine stretch of muddy river.’

‘That’s all?’

‘And some good pubs.’

‘We’re going to Greenwich.’

When he had gone Grant slid down in bed and smoked one cigarette after another while he considered the tale of those heirs of York who had prospered under Richard III, and gone to their graves under Henry VII.

Some of them may have ‘asked for it.’ Carradine’s report had, after all, been a précis; innocent of qualification, insusceptible to half-tones. But it was surely a thundering great coincidence that all the lives who stood between the Tudors and the throne had been cut short so conveniently.

He looked, with no great enthusiasm, at the book that young Carradine had brought him. It was called The Life and Reign of Richard III ; by someone James Gairdner. Carradine had assured him that he would find Dr. Gairdner well worth his while. Dr. Gairdner was, according to Brent, ‘a yell.’

The book did not appear to Grant to be markedly hilarious, but anything about Richard was better than something about anyone else, so he began to glance through it, and presently he became aware just what Brent had meant by saying that the good doctor was a ‘yell.’ Dr. Gairdner obstinately believed Richard to be a murderer, but since he was a writer honest, learned, and according to his lights impartial, it was not in him to suppress facts. The spectacle of Dr. Gairdner trying to make his facts fit his theory was the most entertaining thing in gymnastics that Grant had witnessed for some time.

Dr. Gairdner acknowledged with no apparent sense of incongruity Richard’s great wisdom, his generosity, his courage, his ability, his charm, his popularity, and the trust that he inspired even in his beaten enemies; and in the same breath reported his vile slander of his mother and his slaughter of two helpless children. Tradition says, said the worthy doctor; and solemnly reported the horrible tradition and subscribed to it. There was nothing mean or paltry in his character, according to the doctor – but he was a murderer of innocent children. Even his enemies had confidence in his justice – but he murdered his own nephews. His integrity was remarkable – but he killed for gain.

As a contortionist Dr. Gairdner was the original boneless wonder. More than ever Grant wondered with what part of their brains historians reasoned. It was certainly by no process of reasoning known to ordinary mortals that they arrived at their conclusions. Nowhere in the pages of fiction or fact, and certainly nowhere in life, had he met any human being remotely resembling either Dr. Gairdner’s Richard or Oliphant’s Elizabeth Woodville.

Perhaps there was something in Laura’s theory that human nature found it difficult to give up preconceived beliefs. That there was some vague inward opposition to, and resentment of, a reversal of accepted fact. Certainly Dr. Gairdner dragged like a frightened child on the hand that was pulling him towards the inevitable.

That charming men of great integrity had committed murder in their day Grant knew only too well. But not that kind of murder and not for that kind of reason. The kind of man whom Dr. Gairdner had drawn in his Life and History of Richard III would commit murder only when his own personal life had been bouleversé by some earthquake. He would murder his wife for unfaithfulness suddenly discovered, perhaps. Or kill the partner whose secret speculation had ruined their firm and the future of his children. Whatever murder he committed would be the result of acute emotion, it would never be planned: and it would never be a base murder.

One could not say: Because Richard possessed this quality and that, therefore he was incapable of murder. But one could say: Because Richard possessed these qualities, therefore he is incapable of this murder.

It would have been a silly murder, that murder of the boy princes; and Richard was a remarkably able man. It was base beyond description; and he was a man of great integrity. It was callous; and he was noted for his warm-heartedness.

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.

‘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 carbonization. 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 scandalized, 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.’