Джозефина Тэй - The Daughter of Time

‘I don’t know the first thing about painting.’

‘I didn’t mean that. I meant what do you make of the subject?’

‘Oh. Oh, I see.’ Williams bent forward and drew his bland brows into a travesty of concentration. ‘How do you mean “make of it”?’

‘Well, where would you place him? In the dock or on the bench?’

Williams considered for a moment, and then said with confidence: ‘Oh, on the bench.’

‘You would?’

‘Certainly. Why? Wouldn’t you?’

‘Yes. But the odd thing is that we’re both wrong. He belongs in the dock.’

‘You surprise me,’ Williams said, peering again. ‘Do you know who he was, then?’

‘Yes. Richard the Third.’

Williams whistled.

‘So that’s who it is, is it! Well, well. The princes in the Tower, and all that. The original wicked uncle. I suppose, once you know, you can see it, but off-hand it wouldn’t occur to you. I mean, that he was a crook. He’s the spit of old Halsbury, come to think of it, and if Halsbury had a fault at all it was that he was too soft with the blighters in the dock. He used to lean over backwards to give them the benefit in his summing-up.’

‘Do you know how the princes were murdered?’

‘I don’t know a thing about Richard III except that his mother was two years conceiving him.’

‘What! Where did you get that tale?’

‘In my school history, I suppose.’

‘You must have gone to a very remarkable school. Conception was not mentioned in any history book of mine. That is what made Shakespeare and the Bible so refreshing as lessons; the facts of life were always turning up. Did you ever hear of a man called Tyrrel?’

‘Yes; he was a con man on the P & O. boats. Drowned in the Egypt .’

‘No; I mean, in history.’

‘I tell you, I never knew any history except 1066 and 1603.’

‘What happened in 1603?’ Grant asked, his mind still on Tyrrel.

‘We had the Scots tied to our tails for good.’

‘Better than having them at our throats every five minutes. Tyrrel is said to be the man who put the boys out of the way.’

‘The nephews? No, it doesn’t ring a bell. Well, I must be getting along. Anything I can do for you?’

‘Did you say you were going to Charing Cross Road?’

‘To the Phoenix, yes.’

‘You could do something for me.’

‘What is that?’

‘Go into one of the bookshops and buy me a History of England. An adult one. And a Life of Richard III, if you can find one.’

‘Sure, I’ll do that.’

As he was going out he encountered The Amazon, and looked startled to find anything as large as himself in nurse’s uniform. He murmured a good-morning in an abashed way, cast a questioning glance at Grant, and faded into the corridor.

The Amazon said that she was supposed to be giving Number Four her blanket bath but that she had to look in to see if he was convinced.

‘Convinced?’

About the nobility of Richard Coeur-de-Lion.

‘I haven’t got round to Richard the First yet. But keep Number Four waiting a few moments longer and tell me what you know about Richard III.’

‘Ah, those poor lambs!’ she said, her great cow’s-eyes soft with pity.

‘Who?’

‘Those two precious little boys. It used to be my nightmare when I was a kiddy. That someone would come and put a pillow over my face when I was asleep.’

‘Is that how it was done: the murder?’

‘Oh, yes. Didn’t you know? Sir James Tyrrel rode back to London when the court was at Warwick, and told Dighton and Forrest to kill them, and then they buried them at the foot of some stairs under a great mound of stones.’

‘But it doesn’t say that in the book you lent me.’

‘Oh, that book is just history-for-exams, if you know what I mean. You don’t get really interesting history in swot books like that.’

‘And where did you get the juicy gossip about Tyrrel, may one ask?’

‘It isn’t gossip,’ she said, hurt. ‘You’ll find it in Sir Thomas More’s history of his time. And you can’t find a more respected or trustworthy person in the whole of history than Sir Thomas More, now can you?’

‘No. It would be bad manners to contradict Sir Thomas.’

‘Well, that’s what Sir Thomas says, and, after all, he was alive then and knew all those people to talk to.’

‘Dighton and Forrest?’

‘No, of course not. But Richard, and the poor queen, and those.’

‘The queen? Richard’s queen?’

‘Yes.’

‘Why “poor”?’

‘He led her an awful life. They say he poisoned her. He wanted to marry his niece.’

‘Why?’

‘Because she was the heir to the throne.’

‘I see. He got rid of the two boys, and then wanted to marry their eldest sister.’

‘Yes. He couldn’t marry either of the boys, you see.’

‘No, I suppose even Richard the Third never thought of that one.’

‘So he wanted to marry Elizabeth so as to feel safer on the throne. Actually, of course, she married his successor. She was Queen Elizabeth’s grandmother. It always used to please me that Elizabeth was a little bit Plantagenet. I never was very fond of the Tudor side. Now I must go, or Matron will be here on her round before I have Number Four tidied up.’

‘That would be the end of the world.’

‘It would be the end of me ,’ she said, and went away.

Grant took the book she had lent him off the pile again, and tried to make head or tail of the Wars of the Roses. He failed. Armies marched and counter-marched. York and Lancaster succeeded each other as victors in a bewildering repetition. It was as meaningless as watching a crowd of dodgem cars bumping and whirling at a fair.

But it seemed to him that the whole trouble was implicit, the germ of it sown, nearly a hundred years earlier, when the direct line was broken by the deposition of Richard II. He knew all about that because he had in his youth seen Richard of Bordeaux at the New Theatre; four times he had seen it. For three generations the usurping Lancasters had ruled England: Richard of Bordeaux’s Henry unhappily but with fair efficiency, Shakespeare’s Prince Hal with Agincourt for glory and the stake for zeal, and his son in half-witted muddle and failure. It was no wonder if men hankered after the legitimate line again, as they watched poor Henry VI’s inept friends frittering away the victories in France while Henry nursed his new foundation of Eton and besought the ladies at court to cover up their bosoms.

All three Lancasters had had an unlovely fanaticism which contrasted sharply with the liberalism of the Court which had died with Richard II. Richard’s live-and-let-live methods had given place, almost overnight, to the burning of heretics. For three generations heretics had burned. It was no wonder if a less public fire of discontent had begun to smoulder in the heart of the man in the street.

Especially since there, before their eyes, was the Duke of York. Able, sensible, influential, gifted, a great prince in his own right, and by blood the heir of Richard II. They might not desire that York should take the place of poor silly Henry, but they did wish that he would take over the running of the country and clean up the mess.

York tried it, and died in battle for his pains, and his family spent much time in exile or sanctuary as a result.

But when the tumult and the shouting was all over, there on the throne of England was the son who had fought alongside him in that struggle, and the country settled back happily under that tall, flaxen, wenching, exceedingly beautiful but most remarkably shrewd young man, Edward IV.

And that was as near as Grant would ever come to understanding the Wars of the Roses.