Sovereign ms-3

by C. J. Sansom

  ‘I found my father on his deathbed.’ For a second his voice faltered. ‘He told me he had first felt a lump in his side the year before, and had gradually become iller and weaker.’ His hand went, unconsciously, to his own side. ‘He had been to a physician who told him there was nothing to do but prepare for death. I wished he had told me earlier but I think, like your father, he did not want to disturb my new life far away in London.

  ‘I remember the night he called me to his sickbed. He was near the end then, his big strong body half melted away. The road I am following him down now.’ He looked at the remains of the little loaf, almost crumbled away. ‘It was a still night, snow thick on the ground, everything silent. He told me he had a secret, a secret he had kept hidden over forty years. He wanted to dictate a confession. Shall I tell you what it says?’ As he spoke Wrenne’s hand went to his doublet, touching his pocket. I made out something there. He saw my glance and his expression hardened.

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Tell me.’

  ‘It relates he was born Edward Blaybourne, the son of a poor family of Braybourne in Kent. Like many such boys he went into the King’s service as an archer. Those were the last years of the French wars, Joan of Arc had been burned and all France had risen against us. My father was sent to garrison duty in the town of Rouen in the year 1441. The Duke of York, who was leading the campaign, was away fighting, and my father joined the guard in attendance upon the duchess.’

  ‘Cecily Neville.’

  ‘Yes. The duchess was young, lonely, afraid in a strange and hostile country. She befriended him and one night he ended in her bed. One night, that was all it was, but enough for her to fall pregnant. When she found out she decided to say the child was her husband’s; she would pretend it had been conceived before the duke went away and when it was born she would say it was overdue. The duchess could have had him killed but instead she sent him away, with enough money to start a new life, coins in a decorated jewelbox -’

  ‘The box-’

  ‘Yes. And an emerald ring she used to wear.’ He raised his hand. ‘My father always kept it and he gave it to me that night. I have worn it ever since.’

  He paused. I heard the rain hammering down, harder than ever, as though it would force a way through the walls. ‘Why did Cecily Neville not produce your father as evidence when she confessed to what else she had done in 1483?’

  ‘She had no idea where he was. My father did not hear the news until months later.’ He sighed again. ‘That winter night my father was in an agony of soul. All his life he had felt he had committed a terrible sin, been responsible for a man taking the throne who had no right to be King. He hid his feelings well under a hearty veneer, as I have learned to do. But when his son King Edward died and Richard III seized the throne he was overjoyed, for Richard was the true son of Cecily Neville and Richard Duke of York, entitled to the succession by virtue of the blood royal. But then Richard was overthrown and Henry Tudor seized the throne. He had only the thinnest stream of royal blood and he married Edward IV’s daughter to strengthen it. You remember the family tree?’

  ‘Yes. Elizabeth of York that married Henry VII, and is the mother of Henry VIII, was in truth the granddaughter of Edward Blaybourne.’

  ‘My niece. And the Princes in the Tower were my nephews, not King Richard’s. So by an irony of fate Henry VII had not strengthened his family’s claim, but weakened it beyond measure. That sore afflicted my father. He felt his dreadful illness was a punishment by God.’ Wrenne took a deep breath. ‘He made me swear that night, on the Holy Bible, that if ever a right time came to use his confession to bring the true line back to the throne, I would use it.’

  ‘Yet you have waited fifty years.’

  ‘Yes!’ He spoke with sudden passion, leaning forward. ‘Yes, I did nothing, I watched as the Tudors ruined Yorkshire. Watched as the present King, the Mouldwarp as he truly is, stole the lands and positions of the old Yorkshire families, replacing them with common rogues like Maleverer. Watched as he destroyed the monasteries, perverted our faith, stood by as the enclosers took the people’s land. Stood by, in the early years at least, because I did not believe my father’s story!’

  He spoke with fierce passion and I saw that he felt a guilt about his father far worse than anything I felt about mine.

  ‘I could not believe so fantastic a tale at first. But I set myself to seek out the truth, to trawl in old and forbidden papers to find if it could be true. It took me years, years of ferreting out old books, manuscripts, pictures. Some of them forbidden.’

  ‘So that was how you became an antiquary and built that astonishing library.’

  ‘Yes, and found I loved the work for its own sake so that in the end it became a pastime rather than what should have been, a mission. It was hard, the Tudors hid traces of the Yorkist legacy well.’

  ‘They knew all along, though, didn’t they? The King knows he has no right to the throne.’

  ‘Oh, yes. The King and his father have always known that. But no doubt they convinced themselves they were each entitled to keep it. Those who have power do not give it up readily. And such power this King has.’ He was silent for a moment, then resumed in a quieter tone.

  ‘Years I worked away at it, years. I went to Braybourne, visited the grave of my grandparents, heard the local people speak in the same accent as my father. But it was a decade before I found a copy of the Titulus, in a chest of discarded papers at York Minster. Then I found a painting of Cecily Neville, in one of Lord Percy’s houses. I bought it, though it cost a year’s fees. It is hidden in my library. It shows her sitting at a table, with the jewelbox before her, the jewelbox my father kept to the end of his days and that Maleverer has now. And wearing this ring.’ He held up his hand, the emerald glinting. ‘Then I began making visits to London. I found, as you did in Hull, people who remembered Cecily Neville declaiming after Edward IV died that he was the son of an archer and that Richard III, not King Edward’s young son, was the true King. I had to be very careful, it was nearer in time to the event then, but gold loosens tongues and eventually I had a number of depositions written down.’ His hand went unconsciously to his doublet again. ‘In time I had enough evidence. Perhaps it is as well my wife and I had no children, or I would not have been able to afford my bribes, my purchases of papers and pictures.’

  ‘Yet you have left me your library. Or was that another falsehood to secure my friendship?’

  He winced. ‘No, I have left it to you and it is out of affection. Others will have removed the dangerous things before it comes to you.’

  ‘Before it comes to me. I will still be alive, then. I thought perhaps you plan to kill me now.’

  His eyes bored into mine. ‘I want you on our side, Matthew. I feel you are on our side already. I have seen that you know the King for what he is, feel for the cruel things he has done to the north, to all England.’

  ‘Why did you wait so long, Giles?’

  He sighed. ‘Yes, many more years went by and I did nothing, content with my life. But those were the quiet years, before the King married the witch Anne Boleyn and prohibited religion itself while we were taxed and oppressed more each year. Public opinion loved the King before then. To reveal what I knew would have brought punishment and death, not popular support. And I wondered, had I the right to threaten the throne when England was at peace? I did not want bloodshed. My father had said to act if a right time came, and this was not it.’ His face clouded. ‘Or was I just lazy, content in my prosperous middle age? Perhaps I needed to be looking my own death in the face before I found my courage.’

  ‘Then the north rose in rebellion. The Pilgrimage of Grace.’

  ‘Yes. And still I did nothing. To my shame. I thought the rebels would win, you see. I thought the King’s power would be broken and I could reveal the truth afterwards, when it would be safe. Back in 1536, as you know, the King promised negotiation. But then he broke his word, and sent an army to the north with fire and sword. You saw yourself w
hat he did to Robert Aske. Cromwell’s informers and servants came to run the Council of the North and supervise the destruction of our monasteries, selling their lands to London merchants who take the rents to the capital, leaving Yorkshire to starve. It was then I decided to act at last, reveal my knowledge to others. When my illness began, and I had nothing to lose. I screwed up my courage, my resolution.’

  ‘So you joined the conspirators.’

  ‘Yes. I made certain contacts in York, told them my secret, showed them the papers. They were ready at last to overthrow the King. Royal spies were everywhere and it was agreed I would keep silent until Yorkshire had risen and was ready with the Scots to march south. Then the truth of King Henry’s ancestry would be cast in his face to confound him. The papers were handed over to Master Oldroyd, to keep them safe and to bind me irrevocably to the conspirators.’

  ‘But the conspiracy was betrayed.’

  ‘There was an informer, yes. We do not know who. And after the leaders were taken someone must have been tortured into revealing that a cache of papers proving Edward Blaybourne was Edward IV’s father existed. But whoever talked did not know my identity. And why should anyone suspect a respectable old lawyer? But Broderick knew. It was he who came to me and told me to bring the papers to London, try to make contact with sympathizers there. He didn’t have names, but I had to look at Gray’s Inn.’

  ‘Now he is dead.’

  ‘There are others in London. I will find them before I die. That is my final task.’

  ‘You must have lived in constant fear that Broderick would talk.’

  ‘I knew what manner of man he was. Far braver than me. I knew it would take the utmost torture to make him talk. It was my duty to help him die. I am not ashamed; you should be more ashamed of helping keep him alive against his will. I was deeply shocked when you told me Cranmer gave you that task.’

  ‘Perhaps you were right to be,’ I said slowly.

  Wrenne’s keen eyes narrowed. He leaned back in his chair. ‘That is my tale, Matthew. I regret nothing. Believe me, though, when I say I never meant to kill you at King’s Manor. Only knock you out, as I did Radwinter. Sometimes one must do unpalatable deeds for a higher end. I hated deceiving you. Sometimes it brought me to tears.’

  Another shiver ran through me, followed by a hot flush. I felt sweat on my brow. I was catching a fever.

  ‘But it was for a higher end,’ I repeated. ‘The overthrow of the King.’

  ‘You have seen him. You have seen Yorkshire. You know he is the Mouldwarp, the Great Tyrant, cruelty and darkness personified.’

  A heavy splash of rain from outside, as a gutter flooded over, made me start.

  ‘Yes,’ I agreed. ‘He is a monster.’ I rubbed at my wrist, where the manacle was chafing again.

  ‘And no rightful King, a pretender to the throne as his father was. He does not have the royal blood that God ordains for Kings.’

  ‘A few drops from the Tudor side. But none from the House of York, no. There too you are right.’

  He patted his pocket. ‘I have the papers here. Tomorrow I take them into town. I will find the men I seek. I will have those papers printed and posted all over London. With the arrest of the Queen there will be more discontent. What better time could there be to start a new rebellion?’

  ‘Your last chance.’

  ‘Come with me, Matthew, be a part of it. A part of the new dawn.’

  ‘No,’ I said quietly.

  ‘Remember how he mocked you at Fulford. A casual piece of cruelty that people will gossip about behind their hands for the rest of your life.’

  ‘There is far more than my feelings at stake. Whom would you make King in Henry’s place?’ I asked quietly. ‘The only Clarence left, if she still lives, is a female child. And the law is not even clear a female can inherit. The people will not rally to a little girl.’

  ‘We shall offer a regency to the next living Clarence. Cardinal Pole.’

  ‘A papist bishop?’

  ‘The Pope would let him renounce his office to take the throne. Come with me, Matthew,’ he said intently. ‘Let us destroy these brutes and vultures.’

  ‘And Cranmer?’

  ‘The fire,’ he said with certainty.

  ‘No,’ I told him again.

  For a moment he looked deflated, then a calculating look came into his eyes. I thought, what will he do? This was why I had wanted Barak back; to provide force if it was needed to keep Giles Wrenne here.

  ‘You are still a reformist at heart?’ he asked. ‘You oppose the restoration of true religion?’

  ‘No. I am beyond allegiance to either side, I have seen too much of both. I oppose you because your belief in the rightness of your cause blinds you to the reality of what would happen. I doubt your rebellion would succeed but whether or not it did there would be bloodshed, anarchy, protestant south against papist north. Women left widows, children orphans, lands laid waste. The Striving of the Roses come again.’ I shook my head. ‘Papists and reformers, you are so alike. You think you have a holy truth and that if the state is run by its principles all men will become happy and good. It is a delusion. It is always men like Maleverer who benefit from such upheavals while poor men still cry out to heaven for justice.’

  ‘We shall have true faith back again,’ he said with a sudden cold fierceness. ‘True faith and a rightful monarch.’

  ‘And the fire for Cranmer. And how many more? Even if you win you will create a mirror-image of the world we have, perhaps a worse one.’

  ‘I should have realized.’ Wrenne sighed deeply. ‘You are not a man of faith. But knowing the King is not of royal blood, does that count for nothing with you?’ His tone was almost pleading.

  ‘Not enough to countenance drowning England in fire and blood, no. Not enough for that.’

  ‘Then let me go quietly. I will not trouble you again. I will leave you to your peaceful life.’ There was angry bitterness in his voice now.

  ‘If you give me the papers,’ I said, ‘I will let you walk free.’

  He leaned back in his seat, casting his eyes down. He seemed to be reflecting. But I knew he would never give up the documents, not having come so far.

  He looked at me again, his eyes still fierce though his voice was quiet. ‘Do not make me do this, Matthew. I cannot give you the papers. It has taken me so long -’

  ‘I will not join you.’

  Then in a movement I had been half-expecting, but more speedily than I could have imagined him capable of, Wrenne leaped up, grasped the bowl of pottage and threw it in my face. A terrible growling noise came from his throat, fury and sorrow somehow mixed together. I cried out, jumping up. Half-blind, I grabbed at Giles but he twisted away and tumbled out of the door. I heard his heavy footsteps as he went out to the hall in a sort of shambling run, then a curse as he hauled uselessly at the locked front door. He turned again, gasping as he ran for the door to the garden. I felt a gust of cold air as it was thrown open.

  I stepped into the hall. The garden door yawned wide, giving on to a blackness through which a curtain of rain fell. Apart from the rain there was silence. Joan must be asleep in her room at the front of the house. I stared out into the darkness and the hammering rain.

  Chapter Forty-eight

  LITTLE WAS VISIBLE beyond the doorway, the light from the parlour window showing only the rain, still falling hard and straight as ever, and the dim shapes of bushes and trees. My face smarted, but the pottage had not really scalded me. It had been standing for some time and had cooled. My hand went to my dagger. I pulled it from my belt. I shivered again, violently.

  ‘Giles!’ I called out. ‘You are trapped! There is no way out of the garden except the gate to the orchard, and the door from the orchard to Lincoln’s Inn is locked at night! Surrender yourself, it is all you can do.’ There was no reply, only the relentless sound of the lashing water.

  ‘For pity’s sake, man,’ I called. ‘Come out of the rain!’

  I could wait,
here in the doorway, till Barak returned. But what if Wrenne managed to climb the orchard wall? He was old and ill but he was also desperate. If he got away with those papers – I stepped outside.

  It was hard to see. I kept to those parts of the garden where there was some illumination from the windows and the open door, watching lest he run at me out of the darkness. The rain appeared to be lessening at last but it was still hard to see and I stumbled and nearly fell against a bench. I walked to the back of the garden, feeling my boots squelch into mud as I approached the orchard gate – the water was now seeping under the wall, as I had feared. I saw the gate was open; large footprints in the mud showed that Giles had gone through. I saw the key was in the lock and pulled it out. Passing through, I locked the gate behind me, put the key in my pocket and stood with my back against it, inside the orchard. I began to shiver again.

  Looking up, I caught a faint white glow of moonlight through the still-roiling clouds. Even so, I could see little in the orchard beyond a vista of black mud.

  ‘Giles!’ I called again. ‘Giles! I am armed! You cannot escape!’ I looked at the high walls separating the orchard from Lincoln’s Inn. No, Wrenne could not scale those. He was in here with me, somewhere.

  The clouds parted and the full moon appeared, showing a sea of undulating mud broken by the water-filled holes where the trees had been. Up against my wall there was now a pond thirty feet across, little ripples dancing in the moonlight. I squinted and stared out across the mud.

  Then I thought I saw something move slightly. I leaned forward, staring at a dim shape in the mud by the pool. Holding the knife firmly, I began moving carefully towards it. My boots sank deep into the mud, making squelching sucking sounds. The shape did not move again. Had Wrenne collapsed here, the strain too much for him? I reached the figure and bent carefully, ready for a sudden spring. If I had to I would stab him. Then I gritted my teeth as I saw a surface of uneven bark and realized I was staring at a log half-buried in the mud.

  He struck from somewhere behind me, his weight sending me tumbling to the ground and making me drop the dagger. I gasped as I hit the mud, the breath knocked from my body. A knee crunched into my back, then I felt Giles lean over to one side to grab the dagger. So he would kill me. I bucked and heaved to throw him off balance, and he toppled sideways. As I hauled myself to my feet I saw his bulky shape rising too, slowly, the knife gleaming in his hand. I could not see the expression on his face because it was black with mud, no more than a dark circle with two glinting eyes.