C Sansom - Sovereign

I nodded, frustrated the physician never had anything definite to say. Madge reappeared with the keys, and I bade him farewell. I followed the housekeeper back upstairs, to a passage beyond Wrenne’s bedroom.

‘Maister doesn’t let many in here,’ she said, looking at me dubiously. ‘Tha won’t disturb his books and papers, will tha? He likes them kept in order.’

‘I promise.’

She unlocked a stout door and ushered me into a room that smelt of dust and mice. It was big, the master bedroom in fact, and half a wall had been knocked through to another room beyond. The walls of both were covered from floor to ceiling with shelves filled to bursting with books and papers, rolled parchments and piles of manuscript. I looked round in astonishment.

‘I had no idea the collection was so big,’ I said. ‘There must be hundreds of books alone.’

‘Ay. Maister has been collecting near fifty years.’ The old woman looked round the library and shook her head, as though Wrenne’s occupation was beyond reason.

‘Is there an index?’

‘Nay, it is all in his head, he says.’

I saw that a little picture of the points of the compass had been set on the wall. The third shelf by the south wall was full of rolled-up papers, as he had said.

‘I will leave you, sir,’ Madge said. ‘I must prepare the powder the physician prescribed, to ease maister’s pain.’

‘He suffers, then?’

‘Much of the time.’

‘He conceals it well.’

‘Ay, that he does.’ She curtsied and went out.

Left alone, I stood looking round the shelves. I went to investigate the maps, and my wonder grew. The collection Wrenne had rescued was astonishing, and fascinating. I unrolled ancient painted maps of the Yorkshire coast and countryside, illuminated by monkish scribes with pictures of pilgrim shrines and places where miracles had been wrought. There were maps of other counties, too, and among them I found a large one of Kent, perhaps two hundred years old. It was none too accurately drawn, but full of place names.

There was a desk by the window, giving a view of the Minster. I sat and studied the map. I located Ashford, and then, to the southwest, saw the name Braybourne. To the west I saw the Leacon, where the young sergeant hailed from. I stroked my chin. So, a man called Blaybourne or Braybourne might have come from Kent some time last century, and left a confession in York that was of concern to kings. But where did that get me? I realized I had been hoping for some further clue, some lead, from the map, but there was just the name – a village off the main routes.

I returned the map to its place and walked along the shelves, wondering at the variety and the age of the books and papers. There were biographies, histories, books on medicine and horticulture and the decorative arts, books in English and Latin and Norman French. It struck me I had seen no books on law, but when I walked into the other room there were whole shelves of them, classic works like Bracton, old casebooks and yearbooks and volumes of Acts of Parliament. Some of them, I saw with excitement, had dates that were missing from Lincoln’s Inn library, for there were many gaps in the records of law cases there.

I took some of the yearbooks and went back to the desk. These were indeed lost casebooks. I sat reading the old cases, becoming lost to time. Since I was a child, whenever I was troubled I had always been able to escape into the world of books, and as I delved through Wrenne’s collection I felt my mind and body settling, relaxing. By the time I came to myself again with the thought that Lincoln’s Inn would pay well to have copies of some of these casebooks, I realized that hours had passed. I went downstairs to the kitchen, feeling a little embarrassed. Madge sat there sewing. I coughed.

‘I am sorry, Madge, I lost myself in the books up there.’

She smiled, the first smile I had had from her, a surprisingly sweet one. ‘ ’Tis good to see someone take an interest in maister’s collection. Few do. People now say we must forget the past and the old ways, bury them.’

‘It is a remarkable library.’

‘Maister is sleeping.’ She looked out of the window, where the rain still fell through the mist. ‘It’s still mizzling. Would tha like something to eat?’

‘Ay, thank you.’ I realized I was hungry.

‘I can bring it to the library if you wish. And a candle.’

I thought, why not. ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I think I will stay. Thank you.’

I went back upstairs, where Madge soon brought me some bread and beer, more of her tasteless but filling pottage, and a big beeswax candle which she set upon the desk. As I ate I looked round the library. It was an oddly Spartan place: no furniture apart from the desk, the floorboards bare, not even any rushes laid. How many years had Giles laboured here alone, I wondered? And what would happen to his collection when he died?

A thought struck me, and I went to the shelves where the books of Acts of Parliament stood. It was a long shot, but just as some of the yearbooks were unique, so some of the collections of Acts might be. I looked along the shelves until I found a volume that covered the latter third of the preceding century. A big book with a brown leather cover and the Minster’s coat of arms on the front. I took it to the desk. I was glad of the candle, for the sky was starting to darken.

I turned the heavy parchment pages. And there it was, among the Acts for the year 1484. The Act I had glimpsed in Oldroyd’s box, the same heading: Titulus Regulus. The title of the King. ‘An Act for the Settlement of the Crown upon the King and his Issue…’ My heart began to pound. I examined the binding, studied the seal of Parliament at the foot, compared it with the Acts before and after. This was an authentic copy, bound here half a century ago. I thought, this Act is no forgery. Maleverer lied. But I had never heard of it; at some point this Act had been expunged from the Parliamentary record, quietly suppressed.

Now I read it through. It was short, only five pages. It was couched as an address to King Richard III, stating why the Lords and Commons wished him to take the throne. After much flowery language about the decay of the country, it turned to the marriage of King Edward IV. This was a story I vaguely remembered. King Edward, our King’s grandfather, had married a commoner, Elizabeth Woodville, though it had been alleged he had already had a contract of marriage, that he had been, as the Act said, in

truth plight to Dame Eleanor Butler… the said King Edward during his life, and the said Elizabeth, lived together sinfully and damnably in adultery… it followeth, that all th’issue and Children of the said King Edward, been bastards, and unable to claim any thing by Inheritance.

The Act related that since the next heir, the Duke of Clarence and his line, had been disbarred for treason, the next in line was the Duke of Gloucester – Richard III,

the undoubted Son and heir of Richard late Duke of York… ye be born within this land; by reason whereof you may have more certain knowledge of your birth and filiation.

I sat back in my chair. No wonder Maleverer had wanted knowledge of this Act kept hidden. My mind went back to the family tree. King Henry’s principal claim to the throne came through his mother, the daughter of Edward IV. If she was illegitimate, Henry VIII had no real claim to the throne. And that meant the issue of George Duke of Clarence were the true heirs, which explained why Margaret of Salisbury and her son had been butchered in the Tower. I got up abruptly and walked agitatedly around the room.

But my lawyer’s instincts reasserted themselves. I had heard the story of King Edward’s precontract before, it was not a secret. And precontracts were slippery things, difficult to prove. Any man who wished to nullify his marriage could say he had promised to marry another before he and his wife were betrothed; I had heard of husbands who had paid women to swear falsely they had a precontract, to escape an unwanted marriage. And King Edward, his queen Elizabeth Woodville and this Dame Eleanor Butler had all been dead half a century, nothing could be proved now – unless there was a written contract, and there could not have been, for such conclusive evidence would have been referred to in the Titulus. No, the whole thing read of a cobbling together of whatever reasons could be found to justify Richard’s seizure of the throne after the fact; he had already been king a year when this Act was passed in 1484. Revelation of the Titulus now would be an embarrassment, but not a real threat.