by Jean Stubbs
‘The Earl of Richmond is safe enough, sir!’ said the duke testily, finding himself the enquired of rather than the enquirer. ‘He is even now at Paris with the Earl of Pembroke and some of their retinue.’
‘Then shall we give thanks to God, your grace. For we knew nothing — and without him we are nothing!’
‘How many, sir?’ asked the duke in his most royal manner.
‘Five hundred, your grace.’
‘Where is that cur, Landois? Give this nobleman money to convey himself and his friends to the court of Paris, while you are yet our treasurer! And mark you, Landois, we are much displeased! Nor do I think King Richard holds you so high in his favour. You have fallen between two masters.’ Then turning to Sir Edward he said in a different tone, ‘Convey our greetings to the Earl or Richmond. Tell him he has our friendship always, and that those who most heinously betrayed him shall be punished!’
Paris was nearer than Brittany and further allies flocked to join the Tudor cause. English students at the university swore their allegiance; among them Richard Fox, who left his studies to render service that was to last a lifetime. Nobles and gentry, even sheriffs, blew from England on this new wind to pledge themselves. And Bishop Morton, grave and shrewd and haughty, lifted a political nose to the air and found it good. But best and greatest of all who fled was John de Vere.
The grizzled Earl of Oxford had been imprisoned as far back as 1474 in Hammes Castle, near Calais, for capturing St Michael’s Mount during one of Clarence’s rebellions. And there he had lain, though not rusted, for a decade. This fresh turn of affairs had affected both the jailer and the jailed, and Oxford’s warder, James Blount; not only set his charge free but came with him. The Earl, now forty-two years old, possessed the double benefit of high rank and superior military standing, and captivity had sharpened his appetite for both. He asked no more than to lay down his experience and his life for Lancaster. So he knelt before Henry, and Henry raised him to his feet: radiant with this noble prize.
‘Now I begin to have good hope of success,’ said Henry warmly.
There was, however, a slight blemish on his pleasure. The Marquis of Dorset seemed to have inherited his mother’s changeable nature. He and Hastings had been King Edward’s favourite companions in the lists of drinking and wenching — and all had enjoyed Jane Shore in their turn. With the king’s death, he had fled into sanctuary, then slipped out to join Buckingham’s rebellion and declare Henry king at Exeter, escaping across the Channel afterwards. But now his mother wrote, under Richard’s influence, to persuade him to return home; where, she said, he would be pardoned and honoured. His attempted flight from Paris was checked, and Henry, fulfilling an old ambition to combine finance with politics, left Dorset as a guarantee against the money France had lent him; to be bought back if the second invasion was successful, and kept as bargaining power if it were not.
‘Never trust a Grey or a Woodville, Harry!’ said Jasper, too old in policy to be surprised. ‘And give thanks to God that Richard has despatched so many of them. It shall save us a bloody reckoning. The daughters are well enough,’ he added hastily, remembering that one of them would be Henry’s queen, ‘but the mother should be kept somewhere out of harm’s way, for she was ever a fickle and a wayward woman!’
‘The Stanleys, too, are cautious,’ said Henry, pursuing a thought of his own. For Lord Thomas Stanley, Steward of the King’s Household, had first held aloof and then hedged his promises with safeguards.
‘I should be cautious, were I at the English court!’ said Jasper.
In the November of 1484 the French council had lent three thousand livres towards the expedition, and the preparations for invasion were mounting steadily. They were at Rouen, negotiating for supplies when rumours reached them that Richard III, determined to cut his rival’s chief comb, planned to marry Elizabeth of York.
‘This nips me at the very stomach!’ said Henry slowly, for her possession had been one of his strongest claims, and in a curious way he was fond of this pretty stranger.
‘Nay, let your stomach be at ease,’ said Jasper, thinking. ‘For she is his niece, his brother’s daughter, and such an incestuous union must be granted dispensation by the Pope himself. We know not that His Holiness will favour it — and if he does it will take time.’
‘We have no time!’ Henry cried, and was bitter at the thought of the little fleet, even now being assembled at Harfleur.
‘Then let us cast about us for another queen, since this one eludes us!’ said Jasper shrewdly. ‘A Welsh queen, that shall bring Wales to us twice over. Sir Walter Herbert has a sister.’
‘I was once promised to a Herbert,’ said Henry, weary of it all.
‘And we shall be sure of him, if the cause is so close to home!’
‘I know not, uncle. I wonder if I care not? We chop and change and go from this to that and the other, always.’ Another piece of policy occurred to him. ‘And though Wales love me twice over — once for myself and once for her — it is England that must love me, too. We need a broader view than Welsh king and queen, uncle.’
‘And England needs a prince, Harry. There must be knowledge of the succession. They must have future princes in their heads before we land.’ Jasper summoned his scrivener. ‘Another of Sir Walter’s sisters is married to a Northumberland,’ he said. ‘We may negotiate through him. And you may swear upon it,’ he added, ‘that the queen-dowager is hot with the notion of Richard and Elizabeth of York already! She cares not who her daughter marry, so long as she be a queen. And the girl can do nothing but what she is told.’
‘And kings must do as subjects order them,’ said Henry coldly, glancing at the scrivener, busy with his materials. ‘Write if you must!’
He had made enquiries about Elizabeth, and though he knew it was their business to flatter and glorify, he cherished what he had heard. No one questioned her beauty, and he wanted her to be beautiful. But it was the little things that pleased him: her obedience and devotion, her kindnesses to servants, and above all her helplessness. For he knew what it meant to be helpless, and to feel imprisoned by circumstance.
The girl can do nothing but what she is told.
She had been promised to the present king of France, and jilted cruelly and publicly. She had fled to sanctuary and lived on charity. Even at the court Queen Ann had given her a gown because her others were so shabby. She had been promised to him, and he had failed to win her. And how did he seem to her? Better than King Richard, of that he was sure, but how much better? Had she enquired of him as he had enquired of her? Or did she sit and wait and watch and pray, past caring how they disposed of her?
The girl can do nothing but what she is told.
But, he had lived with the idea of her for almost eighteen months, and filled his head with dreams that a boy might be ashamed of in daylight. He had raised her to her feet, victorious from the field, and looked into her face. He had ordered her to be treated with all honour, lavishing clothes and jewels upon her. He had savoured the delight, the double delight, of holding a kingdom in his hand while they grew to know each other better. For even in the most ravishing visions he kept his head, and had no intention of being other than sole ruler of the realm and undisputed master of his household. He had imagined the pageantry of his wedding, the pageant of her crowning. He had entered on more domestic pleasures: their children playing about them, the royal progresses from which they retired in privacy to talk of lesser matters. He had bestowed her least desires upon her. He had ordered her chamber to be strewn with flowers, and his minstrels to play airs. He had, in short, made a fool of himself over someone whom he had never seen, and who must now be replaced. And, though he was sure that Sir Walter Herbert’s sister would be both handsome and virtuous, he had not the heart to conjure her up.
Neither letter nor messenger ever reached their destination. Somewhere in the passage of time they were lost and remained untraced: suggestions for a match that was never intended to take place.
&
nbsp; But more than ambition and the quest for a queen drove them. Delay promised to strengthen Richard’s position and to weaken their own. Their stay at the French court was threatened by internal difficulties. Madame de Beaujeu, wife of the Duke of Bourbon, elder sister to Charles VIII, and present Regent of France, held sway only for the moment. The queen-mother and her younger daughter’s husband, Duke Louis of Orleans, were forming a powerful opposition. The expedition hung between the two factions, frail as a thread.
‘So it must be soon an’ it be at all, sire!’ Oxford advised him privately. ‘We must move inch by inch, and what we grasp we must hold. Our safety lies in speedy preparation.’
‘Yet must we seem at ease, and patient, as we press forward,’ Jasper added, wise with long waiting.
‘My lords,’ said Henry simply. ‘I am not merely patient. I have become patience itself — how could I live else?’
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Shall I have the girl I love,
The grove of light, my truelove
With her silk top like a star
And her head’s golden pillar?
A Girl’s Hair, Dafydd ab Edmwnd, fifteenth century, translated by Anthony Conran
The Lord Thomas Stanley, furred against the cold of 1485, rubbed his hands partly for comfort and partly out of habit, as Humphrey Brereton delivered his lady’s message in a low voice.
‘A matter of great secrecy, Master Brereton?’ he said softly, pondering, ‘These are perilous times for secrets. You must be close to the Lady Elizabeth to be entrusted with secret messages.’
‘Aye, my lord, and her true esquire.’
Stanley looked shrewdly at the fresh young face and steady eyes, and leaned forward lest any of his secretaries should overhear.
‘Then tell the Lady Elizabeth to send away her servants before the hour of nine tonight. And have a charcoal fire burning, that our eyes might not smart from smoke. And have divers spices and wine ready. For I find that counsel is best given and taken at length and at ease. And bid your lady listen well, for I shall knock but softly and have none with me.’ Aloud, he said in a dry voice, ‘Commend me to the Lady Elizabeth, and tell her that if she needs more money she should apply to the king. I am but her host, Master Brereton, not her purse! The king has been liberal to her family, and will doubtless bend his mind to this matter also.’
‘I thank you, my lord.’
‘And mark you well, Master Brereton, that the king’s patience be not tried further! I have suffered grievous treachery in mine own household, and the knowledge lies heavily upon my heart. I would not that the king were troubled by any under my roof.’
The young man bowed in silence, one hand on his pleated doublet, and withdrew.
‘And if there be any here that so much as approach the Lady Elizabeth’s quarters, they shall seek their bread elsewhere!’ he said coldly, looking round the chamber. ‘I will have no plots hatched. Heads shall part from shoulders else, and necks be stretched. You have my word upon it.’
There was silence for fully half an hour.
Elizabeth of York had put on a furred mantle for warmth, and Stanley noted that the velvet was rubbed. But her beauty made nonsense of the shabby garment.
She was nervous, making sure that he sat well out of the draughts and within the heat of the fire. Then setting wine and spices before him, she said, ‘Blend it, my lord, and drink to me!’ and sat opposite.
‘What are you reading in this ill light, my lady?’ he asked, seeing that she did not know how to begin.
She looked at him steadfastly as she replied.
‘It is a book of prophecy, my lord, that the king my father gave to me. Wherein it says I shall be queen of England.’
He laid down the book as though it burned him, was taken by a fit of coughing, and said he had mixed the spices too strong.
‘Then shall I blend the wine myself, my lord, even as the king my father taught me.’ A little pause ensued. ‘My lord Stanley, I seek your counsel on a matter of some moment and great peril to us all.’
Her hands trembled as she gave him a fresh cup of wine.
‘My lord, but half a year ago, my mother the queen and your wife the Lady Margaret would have had me marry the Earl of Richmond...’
‘An ill-fated matter!’ cried Stanley testily, ‘and one in which I had no part.’
She was silent, perplexed how to find her way through this maze of politics. For she had heard that Stanley knew very well what the Lady Margaret was about, and would have welcomed Henry Tudor. But, as the rebellion failed, he had apologized to King Richard for his wife’s conduct, and promised to keep her safely guarded so that she should plot no more.
‘Ill-fated it was, my lord,’ she began again, ‘and now my lady mother turns this way and that. Not knowing, my lord,’ she added hastily, out of duty, ‘what best to do for my welfare.’
She shaded her eyes from the glare of the fire, and he wondered what strengths and what weaknesses lay behind that gentle face.
‘I have heard rumours, my lord, that I fear to speak on.’
‘Rumours, rumours!’ said Stanley uneasily, moving in his chair. ‘Only the king holds the key to these riddles, and even he — it is said — is not privy to all matters!’
‘My lord, I have heard that Queen Ann is sick unto death,’ the girl said hurriedly, afraid of her own words. ‘I have heard that should she die King Richard may twine a white rose with a white, to secure the house of York.’ She turned her face from him, and he saw that she was crying silently. ‘My lord, I have learned much of the affairs of state since my father died. I have learned that a prince may be taken from sanctuary, and him and his brother never seen after. I have learned that a proud queen must accept charity from one she mistrusts, and outwardly mend a quarrel that should be healed with blood. Yet she is but a woman,’ she added, ‘and lacks powerful friends. And the king has promised that we shall be found husbands and portions, and she be granted seven hundred marks a year.’
‘A royal sum,’ said Stanley, who had paid that for two pairs of falcons. But he took pity on the girl, whose wit and experience were no match for his own. ‘I will speak plainly, Lady Bessie,’ he said kindly. ‘The king may not take his niece in marriage — neither the Pope nor the people would so let him. Neither do I know he so purposes,’ he added, covering himself. ‘Indeed, I have not heard so! So diverse are these rumours that none may trust in them.’
‘And yet the book of reason says I shall be queen of England. And you, my lord, believe in prophecy.’
He stared for a long time into the heart of the fire, thinking of past and present perils.
‘I had a dream once,’ he said to himself. And then, on a sigh, ‘Poor Hastings!’
She was at his side, a little breathless with her daring, laying one long pale hand on his sleeve.
‘Father Stanley, since you comfort me truly on this rumoured marriage, there is another way to make me queen. They tell me nothing, my lord, and yet surely the Earl of Richmond has not forgotten the crown?’
Ambition, ambition, always ambition, Stanley thought. Though he had a fair share of it, and was not the head of a powerful family solely by good fortune.
‘Tell me what is in your mind, Lady Bessie, and I will answer you truly.’
‘The Earl of Richmond is in the same case as myself. How should our fortunes change unless we risk all? Oh, my lord, Father Stanley, fetch him to England, raise friends and money for Lancaster, and unite the white rose and the red under one crown!’
Stanley had hardly been idle, but did not intend to say so.
‘Why, my lady, has your lady mother changed weathercock fashion for Henry Tudor again?’ he asked, and his voice was harder.
‘Nay, my lord,’ she whispered, suddenly afraid of him. ‘I have had no converse with my mother. This I thought on by myself. I have little wit, my lord, for politics. Yet it seemed to me that I was a king’s daughter and no bastard, and might take my brothers’ places. For so the king my fa
ther would have wished.’
He took her by the chin and looked intently at her face, but there was no guile in those blue eyes. She was just a girl who, by the dint of a book of prophecy, a clutch of broken promises, and an earl with yellow hair, had thought she should be queen of England.
‘Mark you well, my lady,’ said Stanley, releasing her. ‘I’ll have no Woodville meddling! Too many good gentlemen lie in the earth — aye, and shall lie yet — but not for the queen-dowager.’
‘You would not speak so, sir, if she were queen, and my father at her side!’ she said, soft and chilled.
‘I speak as all men speak that do not wish their heads risked at a whim, madam. Your lady mother shall command respect of any Stanley. But it is well to remember that she blows as the wind blows — and no wind blows crowns.’
‘You shall not be betrayed by me, my lord,’ said the girl, and returned with dignity to her chair. ‘Indeed,’ she added, trying to match him in policy, ‘had you a servant hidden that would bear you witness, you could despatch me to the block, my lord. So have I trusted you!’
He smiled, amused by her innocence.
‘And what of a clerk to write these treasonable letters, madam? For I dare trust no one here. Twice I have offended the king, and twice have my connections saved me. But I find strange faces about me and must be cautious. Nor have I a messenger that would not run to the king straightway!’
‘Then shall I find both clerk and messenger!’ she said triumphantly. ‘For I shall write the letters, my lord, and my squire Humphrey Brereton will bear them safely.’
‘Well, well!’ He pondered, for the girl had given him the opening he sought. ‘Take your pen, madam!’ he said, his mind made up. ‘And write this. To my brother, Sir William Stanley, at Holt Castle. Mine own heartily beloved brother, I recommend me unto you.’
Under her diligent fingers the letters took shape, brief and strange. Sir William was to ride to an old tavern on the outskirts of London, upon the third day of May. For his retinue he must bring no more than seven honest and sober yeomen, dressed in green. For his safety he must stay in hostels where he was not recognized. The purpose of the meeting was ambiguously worded, but a postscript bade him burn the letter the moment it was read. Similar instructions were addressed to Stanley’s son George, Lord Strange; to his younger sons. Edmund and Tames; to Sir John Savage and Sir Gilbert Talbot.