第 14 页

'You don't say.'

'Odd to think that if Richard had seen to it that Stanley went to the block like his much-loved Hastings, he would have won the battle of Bosworth, there would never have been any Tudors, and the hunchbacked monster that appears in Tudor tradition would never have been invented. On his previous showing he would probably have had the best and most~ enlightened reign in history. What was done to Morton?'

'Nothing.'

'Another mistake.'

'Or at least nothing to signify. He was put into gentlemanly detention under the care of Buckingham. The people who did go to the block were the heads of the conspiracy that Richard had arrested at Northampton: Rivers and Co. And Jane Shore was sentenced to do penance.'

'Jane Shore? What on earth has she got to do with the case? I thought she was Edward's mistress?'

'So she was. But Hastings inherited her from Edward, it stems. Or rather - let me see - Dorset did. And she was go-between between the Hastings side of the conspiracy and the Woodville side. One of Richard's letters existing today is about her. About Jane Shore.'

'What about her?'

'His Solicitor-General wanted to marry her; when he was King, I mean.'

'And he agreed?'

'He agreed. It's a lovely letter. More in sorrow than in anger - with a kind of twinkle in it.'

"Lord, what fools these mortals be!

'That's it exactly.'

'No vindictiveness there, either, it seems.'

'No. Quite the opposite. You know, I know it isn't my business to think or draw deductions - I'm just the Research Worker - but it does strike me that Richard's ambition was to put an end to the York-Lancaster fight once and for all.'

'What makes you think that?'

'Well, rye been looking at his coronation lists. It was the best-attended coronation on record, incidentally. You can't help being struck by the fact that practically nobody stayed away. Lancaster or York.'

'Including the weather-cock Stanley, I suppose.'

'I suppose so. I don't know them well enough to remember them individually.'

'Perhaps you're right about his wanting a final end to the York-Lancaster feud. Perhaps his lenience with Stanley was due to that very thing.'

'Was Stanley a Lancastrian, then?'

'No, but he was married to an abnormally rabid one. His wife was Margaret Beaufort, and the Beauforts were the reverse side, so to speak - the illegitimate side - of the Lancaster family. Not that her by-blow side worried her. Or her son.'

'Who was her son?'

'Henry VII.'

Carradine whistled, long and low.

'You actually mean to say that Lady Stanley was Henry's mother.' -

'She was. By her first husband Edmund Tudor.'

'But - but Lady Stanley had a place of honour at Richard's coronation. She carried the Queen's train. I noticed that because I thought it quaint. Carrying the train, I mean. In our country we don't carry trains. It's an honour, I take it.'

'It's a thundering great honour. Poor Richard. Poor Richard. It didn't work.'

'What didn't?'

'Magnanimity.' He lay thinking about it while Carradine shuffled through his notes. 'So Parliament accepted the evidence of Stillington.'

'They did more. They incorporated it into an Act, giving Richard the title to the crown. It was called Titulus Regius.'

'For a holy man of God, Stillington wasn't cutting a very glorious figure. But I suppose that to have talked sooner would have been to compass his own ruin.'

'You're a bit hard on him, aren't you?' There wasn't any need to talk sooner. No harm was being done anyone.'

'What about Lady Eleanor Butler?'

'She had died in a convent. She's buried in the Church of the White Carmelites at Norwich, in case you're interested. As long as Edward was alive no wrong was being done anyone. But when it came to the question of succession, then he had to talk, whatever kind of figure he cut.'

'Yes. Of course you're right. So the children were proclaimed illegitimate, in open Parliament. And Richard was crowned. With all the nobility of England in attendance. Was the Queen still in sanctuary?'

'Yes. But she had let the younger boy join his brother.'

'When was that?'

Carradine searched through his notes. 'On 'June the 16th. I've put:. "At the request of the Archbishop of Canterbury. Both boys living at the Tower."

'That was after the news had broken. The news that they were illegitimate.'

'Yes.' He tidied his notes into some kind of neatness and put them away in the enormous pocket. 'That seems to be all, to date. But here's the pay-off.' He gathered his train from either side of him on to his knees with a gesture that both Marta and King Richard might have envied. 'You know that Act, that Titulus Regius.'

'Yes; what about it?'

'Well, when Henry VII came to the throne he ordered that the Act should be repealed, without being read. He ordered that the Act itself should be destroyed, and forbade any copies to be kept. Anyone who kept a copy was to be fined and imprisoned during his pleasure.'

Grant stared in great astonishment.

'Henry VII!' he said, 'Why? What possible difference could it make to him?'

'I haven't, a glimmer of an idea. But I mean to find out before I'm much older. Meanwhile, here is something to keep you amused till the Statue of Liberty brings your British tea.'

He dropped a paper on to Grant's chest.

o 'What is this?' Grant said, looking at the torn-out page of a note-book.

'It's that letter of Richard's about Jane Shore. I'll be seeing you.' '

Left alone by himself in the quiet, Grant tinned over the page and read.

The contrast between the sprawling childish handwriting and the formal phrases of Richard's imagining was piquant in the extreme. But what neither the untidy modern script nor the dignified phrases could destroy was the flavour of the letter. The bouquet of good humour that came up from the page as a bouquet comes up from a good-humoured wine. Translated into modern terms it said:

I hear to my great astonishment that Tom Lynom wants to marry Will Shore's wife. Apparently he is infatuated with her, and is quite determined about it. Do, my dear Bishop, send for him and see if you can talk some sense into his silly head. If you can't, and if there is no bar to their marriage from the Church's point of view, then I agree to it, but tell him to postpone the marriage till I am back in London. Meanwhile, this will suffice to secure her release, on surety for her good behaviour, and I suggest that you hand her over for the time being to the care of her father, or anyone else who seems good to you.

It was certainly, as young Carradine had said, 'more in sorrow than in anger.' Indeed, considering that it was written about a woman who had done him a deadly wrong, its kindness and good temper were remarkable. And this was a case where no personal advantage could come to him from magnanimity. The broadmindedness that had sought for a York-Lancaster peace might not have been disinterested; it would have been enormously to his advantage to have a united country to rule. But this letter to the Bishop of Lincoln was a small private matter, and the release of Jane Shore of no importance to anyone but the infatuated Tom Lynom. Richard had nothing to gain by his generosity. His instinct to see a friend happy was apparently greater than his instinct for revenge

Indeed, his instinct for revenge seemed to be lacking to a degree that would be surprising in any red-blooded male, and quite astonishing in the case of that reputed monster Richard III.

11

The letter lasted Grant very nicely until The Amazon brought his tea. He listened to the twentieth-century sparrows on his window-sill and' marvelled that he should be reading phrases that formed in a man's mind more than four hundred years ago. What a fantastic idea it would have seemed to Richard that anyone would be reading that short, intimate letter about Shore's wife, and wondering about him four hundred years afterwards.

'There's a letter for you, now isn't' that nice,' The Amazon said, coming in with his two pieces of bread-and-butter and a rock bun.

Grant took his eyes from the uncompromising healthiness of the rock bun and saw that the letter was from Laura.

He opened it with pleasure.

Dear Alan (said Laura),

Nothing (repeat: nothing) would surprise me about history.

Scotland has large monuments to two women martyrs drowned for their faith, in spite of the fact that they weren't drowned at all and neither was a martyr anyway. They were convicted of treason - fifth column work for the projected invasion from Holland, I think. Anyhow on a purely civil charge. They were reprieved on their own petition by the Privy Council, and the reprieve is in the Privy Council Register to this day.

This, of course, hasn't daunted the Scottish collectors of martyrs, and the tale of their sad end, complete with heartrending dialogue, is to be found in every Scottish bookcase.

Entirely different dialogue in each collection. And the gravestone of one of the women, in Wigtown churchyard, reads:

Murdered for owning Christ supreme

Head of his Church, and no more crime

But her not owning Prelacy

And not abjuring Presbytry

Within the sea tied to a stake

She suffered for Christ Jesus sake.

They are even a subject for fine Presbyterian sermons, I understand ? though on that point I speak from hearsay. And tourists come and shake their heads over the monuments with their moving inscriptions, and a very profitable time is had by all.

All this in spite of the fact that the original collector of the material, canvassing, the Wigtown district only forty years after the supposed martyrdom and at the height of the Presbyterian triumph, complains that 'many deny that this happened'; and couldn't find any eyewitnesses at all.

It is very good news that you are convalescent, and a great relief to us all. If you manage it well your sick leave can coincide with the spring run. The water is very low at the moment, but by the time you are better it should be deep enough to please both the fish and you.

Love from us all,

Laura

P.S. It's an odd thing but when you tell someone the true facts of a mythical tale they are indignant not with the teller but with you. They don't want to have their ideas upset It rouses some vague uneasiness in them, I think, and they resent it. So they reject it and refuse to think about it. If they were merely indifferent it would be natural and understandable. But it is much stronger than that, much more positive. They are annoyed.

Very odd, isn't it.

More Tonypandy, he thought.

He began to wonder just how much of the school-book which up to now had represented British history for him was Tonypandy.

He went back, now that he knew a few facts, to read the sainted More again. To see how the relevant passages sounded now.

If, when he had read them merely by the light of his own critical mind, they had seemed to him curiously tattling, and in places absurd, they now read plain abominable. He was what Laura's small Pat was in the habit of calling 'scunnered'. And he was also puzzled.

This was Morton's account. Morton the eyewitness, the participant. Morton must have known with minute accuracy what took place between the beginning and, end of June that year. And yet there was no mention of Lady Eleanor Butler; no mention of Titulus Regius. According to Morton, Richard's case had been that Edward was previously married to his mistress Elizabeth Lucy. But Elizabeth Lucy, Morton pointed out, had denied that she was ever married to the King.

Why did Morton set up a ninepin just to knock it down again?

Why the substitution of Elizabeth Lucy for Eleanor Butler?

Because he could deny with truth that Lucy was ever married to the King, but could not do the same in the case of Eleanor Butler?

Surely the presumption was that it was very important to someone or other that Richard's claim that the children were illegitimate should be shown to be untenable.

And since Morton - in the handwriting of the sainted More - was writing for Henry VII, then that someone was presumably Henry VII. The Henry VII who had destroyed Titulus Regius and forbidden anyone to keep a copy.

Something Carradine had said came back into Grant's mind.

Henry had caused the Act to be repealed without being read.

It was so important to Henry that the contents of the Act should not be brought to mind that he bad specially provided for its. unquoted destruction.

Why should it be of such importance to Henry VII?

How could it matter to Henry what Richard's rights were? It was not as if he could say: Richard's claim was a trumped-up one, therefore mine is good. Whatever wretched small claim Henry Tudor might have was a Lancastrian one, and the heirs of York did not enter into the matter.

Then why should it have been of such paramount importance to Henry that the contents of Titulus Regius should be forgotten?

Why hide away Eleanor Butler, and bring in in her place a mistress who no one ever suggested was married to the King?

This problem lasted Grant very happily till just before supper; when the porter came in with a note for him.

'The front hail says that young American friend of yours left this for you,' the porter said, handing him a folded sheet of paper.

'Thank you,' said Grant 'What do you know about Richard the Third?'

'Is there a prize?'

'What for?'

'The quiz.'

'No, just the satisfaction of intellectual curiosity. What do you know about Richard III?'

'He was the first multiple murderer.'

'Multiple? I thought it was two nephews?'

'No, oh, no. I don't know much history but I do know that. Murdered his brother, and his cousin, and the poor old King in the Tower, and then finished off with his little nephews. A wholesale performer.'

Grant considered this.

'If I told you that he never murdered anyone at all, what would you say?'

'I'd say that you're perfectly entitled to your opinion.