Джозефина Тэй - The Daughter of Time

‘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?’

‘Well, I’ve another little item that may give you ideas. It certainly gave me one hell of a big idea.’

‘Go on.’

‘In June of that year –’

‘Which year?’

‘The first year of Elizabeth’s marriage. 1486. The year when she was married in January and had Prince Arthur at Winchester in September, with her mother dancing attendance.’

‘All right. Yes.’

‘In June of that year, Sir James Tyrrel received a general pardon. On the 16th June.’

‘But that means very little, you know. It was quite a usual thing. At the end of a period of service. Or on setting out on a new one. It merely meant that you were quit of anything that anyone might think of raking up against you afterwards.’

‘Yes, I know. I know that. The first pardon isn’t the surprising one.’

‘The first pardon? Was there a second one?’

‘Yes. That’s the pay off. There was a second general pardon to Sir James exactly a month later. To be exact on the 16th July, 1486.’

‘Yes,’ Grant said, thinking it over. ‘That really is extraordinary.’

‘It’s highly unusual, anyway. I asked an old boy who works next me at the B.M. – he does historical research and he’s been a wonderful help to me I don’t mind telling you – and he said he had never come across another instance. I showed him the two entries – in the Memorials of Henry VII – and he mooned over them like a lover.’

Grant said, considering: ‘On the 16th June, Tyrrel is given a general pardon. On the 16th July he is given a second general pardon. In November or thereabouts the boys’ mother comes back to town. And in February she is immured for life.’

‘Suggestive?’

‘Very.’

‘You think he did it? Tyrrel.’

‘It could be. It’s very suggestive, isn’t it, that when we find the break in the normal pattern that we’ve been looking for, Tyrrel is there, on the spot, with a most unconscionable break in his own pattern. When did the rumour that the boys were missing first become general? I mean, something to be talked openly about.’

‘Quite early in Henry’s reign, it would seem.’

‘Yes; it fits. It would certainly explain the thing that has puzzled us from the beginning in this affair.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘It would explain why there was no fuss when the boys disappeared. It’s always been a puzzling thing, even to people who thought that Richard did it. Indeed, when you come to think of it it would be impossible for Richard to get away with it. There was a large, and very active, and very powerful opposition party in Richard’s day, and he left them all free and scattered up and down the country to carry on as they liked. He had all the Woodville-Lancaster crowd to deal with if the boys had gone missing. But where interference or undue curiosity was concerned Henry was sitting pretty. Henry had got his opposition party safely in jail. The only possible danger was his mother-in-law, and at the very moment when she becomes capable of being a prying nuisance she too is put under hatches and battened down.’

‘Yes. Wouldn’t you think that there was something she could have done? When she found that she was being prevented from getting news of the boys.’

‘She may never have known that they were missing. He may just have said: “It is my wish that you should not see them. I think you are a bad influence on them: you who came out of sanctuary and let your daughters go to that man’s parties!”’

‘Yes, that’s so, of course. He didn’t have to wait until she actually became suspicious. The whole thing might have been one move. “You’re a bad woman, and a bad mother; I am sending you into a convent to save your soul and your children from the contamination of your presence.”’

‘Yes. And where the rest of England were concerned, he was as safe as any murderer ever could be. After his happy thought about the “treason” accusation, no one was going to stick his neck out by inquiring particularly about the boys’ health. Everyone must have been walking on eggs as it was. No one knowing what Henry might think of next to make into a retrospective offence that would send their lives into limbo and their estates into Henry’s kitty. No, it was no time to be over-curious about anything that didn’t directly concern oneself. Not that it would be easy, in any case, to satisfy one’s curiosity.’

‘With the boys living at the Tower, you mean.’

‘With the boys living in a Tower officialled by Henry’s men. There was none of Richard’s get-together live-and-let-live attitude about Henry. No York-Lancaster alliance for Henry. The people at the Tower would be Henry’s men.’

‘Yes. Of course they would. Did you know that Henry was the first English king to have a bodyguard? I wonder what he told his wife about her brothers.’

‘Yes. That would be interesting to know. He may even have told her the truth.’

‘ Henry ! Never! It would cost Henry a spiritual struggle, Mr. Grant, to acknowledge that two and two were four. I tell you, he was a crab; he never went straight at anything.’

‘If he were sadist he could tell her with impunity, you know. There was practically nothing she could do about it. Even if she wanted to. She mightn’t have wanted to all that much. She had just produced an heir to the throne of England and was getting ready to produce another. She might not have the spare interest for a crusade; especially a crusade that would knock the ground from under her own feet.’