Some Touch of Pity

by Rhoda Edwards

  ‘You, my lord Archbishop of York — you, my lord of Ely — you, Dr King — you were my brother’s trusted servants — would you undo at a stroke twenty years of his work? You, Stanley, you whisper with these men — do you see the battlefield as a market where you sell your wares to the highest bidder?’

  Oh God, I thought, Richard, stop — you injure yourself more than them. I could not recognize him in this state. The bitterness of a lifetime was erupting as if a torch had been set to a great bombard. Even Morton, who’s a cold-blooded old bird, looked afraid. I knew what was coming.

  ‘And you!’ Richard’s voice subsided briefly into a snarl, then rose again. ‘You!’ He was snarling too, over the table at Hastings, his teeth showing, like a boar about to gore the hounds. ‘You, who were my brother’s friend, who fought with us, who were loyal. What have you done? I’ll tell you. You’ve driven my brother into his grave before he was old, by your friendship. What sort of a friend is it who spends his days with a man in swilling and guzzling, and in procuring whores for him?’ They all gasped. Richard was really savage now, shouting at the top of his voice. ‘You killed him! You and that goat Dorset, and that woman Shore! Now you and Shore’s wife plot to kill me. Well, I’m not so easy to kill. I’ve not lived soft, and I’m not ready to die. Shall I tell you your offence, Lord Hastings?’ A tiny pause, in which Hastings sat immobile, as if he did not understand, and the fury had slid unnoticed through an empty mind. There was no fight in him. Then Richard brought his fist crashing down on the table. We all jerked in our seats. Ink slopped out of the pot in front of me, making a creeping puddle on a sheet of paper.

  ‘Treason!’ Richard yelled. The door burst open. Soldiers with halberds and drawn swords rushed through it; the word had been their signal. The churchmen were seized easily, without too much affront to their dignity. Stanley struggled, protesting loudly, but a man-at-arms promptly clouted him over the head with a halberd. He fell to his knees, blood flowing over his left ear, and crawled under the table, where he crouched, nursing his head and swearing.

  Hastings put up no resistance. I looked at him and felt sick. Tears flowed unchecked down his face; his mouth was working. It was as well King Edward could not see this — the two men he cared for most — one destroying the other.

  Richard was leaning his hands on the table, staring downwards, his shoulders hunched forward. ‘He is guilty of treason,’ he said. ‘Let him pay the penalty. I will not wait.’

  ‘N-n-now?’ The captain of guard stuttered with shock. ‘Your Grace, there’s no scaffold ready.’

  ‘I will have no waiting. See he is shriven. At once!’

  So it was done. At the door, Hastings seemed to come out of his inertia, and began to struggle. The guard dealt very summarily with him. They hoisted him up by the arms and legs like a frog, shoved him through the door and down the stairs. Richard turned his face away. I thought he sickened, as I did. But he did not relent.

  We waited in the council chamber until word came back that Hastings was dead. No one spoke. Richard leant against the wall, his shirt sleeve hanging down over his left arm, the points trailing. Even from where I sat, I could see how he trembled. The anger had gone now, leaving only a knowledge of the finality of the deed. I could do nothing for him. Buckingham did not dare to approach. The captain of guard returned soon, white-faced. He told us that the Lord Protector’s order had been carried out. Richard barely gave him a nod. ‘Let Hastings be taken to Windsor,’ he said dully. ‘Bury him beside King Edward. It was my brother’s wish.’

  The news of Hastings’s beheading had to be explained to the people. The Mayor was sent for immediately, and hastened to the Tower. He had been worried over the danger of riot in London in support of Hastings, and seemed relieved to find the affair resolved, if in this alarming way. The City of London is always on the side of order and strong government, and Sir Edmund Shaa was willing to do whatever necessary for the safeguard of trade. A herald was sent to Paul’s Cross to read a proclamation of Lord Hastings’s treasonable plot to murder the Protector, and seize the King, and of his execution.

  In the council chamber, the Duke of Buckingham urged that Rivers, Grey and Vaughan should be tried and executed. Their implication in the plot was sufficient reason. There and then, a commission was sent north to the Earl of Northumberland, to try these three, and condemn them. I could see the necessity of it. Richard did what was required of him without a word. Rivers, Grey and Vaughan were dealt with as quickly as a terrier deals with rats. The scene had an unreal quality, as empty of emotion as a disguising, now that the agony of Hastings’s accusal was over. Stanley, because nothing was proven against him, was allowed to go free, which was more than he deserved. Morton, Rotherham and King were consigned to the Tower. Within hours, Dorset made a bolt from Sanctuary. Men with dogs were sent to search the fields beyond Westminster, but he got clean away.

  As I left the Tower, I averted my eyes from the gravelled part of Tower Green. The blood was still there, covered by sawdust, and the lump of carpenter’s timber they’d used as a block. It lay stained and discarded on a heap of ropes, pulleys, and planking. I shuddered. Dickon, I thought, this is the worst day’s work you’ve ever done. Hastings would have died, I suppose, for his folly and treason, but not like this, with scarcely time to swallow the Host when his neck was severed. There should have been some kind of formal trial. Richard would be censured for it, in the eyes of the world, and worse, in his own heart. He must have acted for so many difficult, tangled reasons, some of them only half understood. The office of Lord Protector is indeed ill-omened; it entails a constant, murderous battle to survive, from which no man, even of Richard’s probity, can come unscarred.

  June–July 1483

  4

  Vivat Rex!

  Told by Queen Anne

  And herupon we humbly desire, pray, and require youre seid Noble Grace, that, accordyng to this Eleccion of us the Thre Estates of this Lande, as by youre true Enherritaunce, Ye will accepte and take upon You the said Crown and Royall Dignitie, with all thyngs thereunto annexed and apperteynyng, as to You of Right bilongyng, as wele by Enherritaunce as by lawfull Eleccion: and, in caas Ye so do, we promitte to serve and to assiste your Highnesse, as true and feithfull Subgietts and Liegemen, and to lyve and dye with You in this matter, and every other just quarrel.

  Petition of the Three Estates to Richard, Duke of Gloucester, later passed as Act of Parliament

  Poor Bo in his spaniel’s coat must have been even hotter than I was. He lay on his side near my feet and his pink and white belly palpitated in time with his panting. Where his tongue lolled out, he had dribbled a small puddle onto the floor, and the petal fringes along his jaws blew in and out with his breath. One of his orange-tawny ears had turned inside out, and fell like a skein of silk over his head. I turned it back the right way with the toe of my shoe, and his feathery tail flopped feebly on the tiles, though he did not bother to raise his head. Richard had given him to me a few years ago, thinking him small enough to be a lady’s pet, but not a silly size like some tiny dogs. A winter gift, I remember. Richard had come to me one day smiling in some secret amusement, and the furry sleeve of his gown had looked peculiar, swollen and heaving as if something were squirming inside. Then he’d given a yell, as needle puppy teeth had sunk in his wrist, and a little domed white head with orange ears and round brown eyes had popped out. We named him Hercules at first, but as this seemed so ridiculous, he became plain Bo. He preferred to stay near me, rather than to explore the corridors of Baynard’s Castle. Richard’s deerhound bitch Eilidh — this means Helen in the Scots language — looked even more miserable, panting under the table, and too big to fit into the shade.

  Like the dogs, I’d have preferred not to be in London, stewing in June. My chair had been set in the shaded part of the room, but the sun shone blindingly in the window; I’d ask for the shutters to be closed soon, though this made me feel more mewed up than ever. Outside, under a cloudless sky, the Thames shi
vered with light. The river traffic plied as usual, and London went about its business as if this were just another sweltering summer day, hoping plague would stay away, and indifferent to the deathly games played in high places. Because of the plot against Richard’s life, which had been discovered three days after my arrival in London, I was not allowed to go out, even under armed guard. I had now been immured in Baynard’s Castle for a week.

  I drowsed, heavy-eyed in the heat, and hoped that Richard would come home in better shape than he had last night. Yesterday, Lord Hastings had been executed on Tower Green over a log of wood, within half an hour of my husband’s ordering of his death. Richard had returned from that terrible council meeting, and poured out his remorse on me. I knew that a great bitterness against the Queen and her family had lain hidden in him for many years, but I had not guessed how deep and dangerous it was. He’d spent all the night telling me things from the past that I’d never heard before.

  When he was just fourteen, he had been taken away from our household at Middleham, where he was happy, because the King had married the Queen, who was a widow and a nobody, and as a result quarrelled violently with my father. So from the first, he’d resented her as the cause of this unwelcome change in his life. Two years spent at Westminster had turned resentment into hatred. He told me so many little things, cruel things, that made me weep over him, because I’d never known how much he’d been hurt. It’s a bad time for being hurt, fourteen — I know. Then he’d told me about Barnet, things he’d never told before, because he didn’t want to harp on the battle in which my father had been killed. At Barnet, most of Richard’s friends had fought against him, and died for it: my father, who’d taken the place of his own father, my uncle John Neville, Marquess Montagu, for whom he’d had a great affection, and worst of all, his boyhood friend John Parr, who was merely my father’s squire and had no quarrel with anyone.

  I looked round at the ladies who were my friends and servants; they were the daughters and wives of Warwick’s men, almost all north-country women, with a comforting variety of north-country voices. There’s Anna, Francis Lovell’s wife, who is my cousin, Joyce Percy and Grace Pullyn, my special friends, then Elizabeth Parr, Margaret Huddleston, Anne Tempest, Katherine Scrope, and Alice Skelton; all their husbands are Richard’s allies. A backgammon board was laid out on the table, and one for merels, but we were disinclined to play because of the heat, and made little conversation. A bowl of roses, put out fresh in the morning, had blown and begun to drop. The petals lay limp and shrivelling on the silk carpet table covering, their scent fading. Beside them in ajar was a sheaf of violet-blue columbines, and a little pot of purple heartsease, the Trinity herb. Flowers for Our Lady, the Holy Ghost and the Trinity — I wondered if the summer weather had been warm enough at home yet to make them bloom in the gardens at Middleham. The only sound in the room was the chirp of the linnet in his cage on the wall. He liked the sun, and hopped to and fro on his perch cocking his head on one side and eyeing us. Then he began to sing as if he’d never stop. The sound reminded me of my son and his bird whistle. Some misguided person had given him one of these — a little green pot in the shape of a bird, with a spout to blow through and an open beak for putting a spoonful of water inside. Blowing produces so lifelike a trilling that they are used as lures by men netting small birds. In the manner of little boys, my son knew no moderation in his blowing, and soon every child in the place had a bird whistle; we were driven mad by them. As a result, they were banned indoors at Middleham. I wished that the children might be here. If I am to stay in London as the Protector’s lady, I may see my son only a few times in a year. This thought brings me to the verge of tears every time it enters my head, but I cannot let Richard see. I dare not begin to think how much I will miss my life in the north, or how lonely a woman’s lot can be in strange places.

  I had to wait a long time for Richard’s barge to return from Westminster. When at last he joined me, he seemed more tired than ever, wanting to do nothing but sit by the window, in silence. The heat had laid hold of him as much as it had me; I could see he wished himself a hundred miles away from London. I sent for food, so that at least we might have supper quietly together, though we were not likely to remain alone for long. Richard showed no interest in eating. I didn’t know where, or even if, he’d dined. He was still brooding over the events of the previous day.

  As if he read my thoughts, he said, sighing, ‘I have to see someone tonight, Anne, in private. You’ll forgive me if I talk to him up here? It should not take long; there’s no need for you to go. I couldn’t refuse a Bishop.’

  ‘You’ve had a hard day,’ I said, resenting the threatened intrusion. ‘Which Bishop?’

  ‘Bath and Wells — Dr Stillington.’ He fell silent again, frowning, an unquiet, taut silence, in which he drummed his fingers nervously on the chair arms, and slid the dagger he wore ceaselessly up and down in its sheath.

  I went to stand beside him. ‘Won’t you eat now?’

  ‘Not yet.’ He took my hands and held them to his face, so that they covered his eyes, as if we played a child’s game of hoodman-blind. ‘Your hands smell sweet,’ he said, pushing his face against them. ‘They’re cool. We fried at Westminster today.’ His face was warm, and slightly sticky. He slid one arm round me and held me close against his shoulder. I wished the Bishop of Bath and Wells anywhere but on his way to Baynard’s Castle. As I had thought, we did not have long alone together. Within minutes, an usher came knocking at the door, and Richard let go of me.

  The Bishop of Bath and Wells was a smallish, elderly man, with the face of a monk, parchment-skinned and deeply furrowed near the mouth. He walked very slowly, as if his body were exhausted with heat, or some longer-standing ill health. When he was settled in a chair, Richard said, ‘My lord Bishop, you asked to see me privately. Is this some matter of importance?’

  ‘Yes, your Grace, I would prefer us to talk alone.’ He sounded nervous, and looked at the usher, who prepared to leave, then apprehensively at me. Richard noticed his glance.

  ‘My wife will remain with us, Dr Stillington,’ he said gently. Stillington coloured briefly; he probably did not approve of women knowing too much of men’s affairs.

  ‘I’d be obliged,’ Richard said, still gentle, ‘if your lordship would be brief. I am so seldom allowed privacy myself, it is difficult for me to grant interviews alone to all those who desire them.’

  The Bishop bent his head in apology. His hands were twisting his episcopal ring round and round on one of his thin, knobbly-jointed fingers. ‘For a number of years, your Grace,’ he murmured, ‘twenty to be precise — I have lived greatly troubled by my conscience. In the year 1464, you will remember, our late sovereign lord, King Edward, was married — in a strangely furtive manner — to Lady Elizabeth Grey, a widow.’

  ‘Yes,’ Richard said, grimly, his mouth, becoming very tight.

  ‘Since then, your Grace, Lady Elizabeth Grey has been Queen, and her numerous relatives have made many enemies in England. Men have gone in fear of their lives if they dared oppose the will of the Queen’s family. I have lived in great fear myself, for many years. I have suffered unjust imprisonment

  ‘My lord Bishop, I am as aware of all this as you are.’ Richard’s voice had a very sharp edge to it now. ‘Come to the point.’

  ‘I do, your Grace, I do. I have suffered these things because I had a secret — a secret which caused the Queen to fear me greatly. It is this: when your renowned father the Duke of York still lived, your brother, then Earl of March, plighted his troth to a lady. That lady was not the Queen.’

  ‘What?’ Richard stared down at the Bishop. ‘Be careful, my lord, what you say!’ Shock and fright made me move suddenly, close to Richard’s side. He took my hand, gripping it uncomfortably tight.

  ‘It is the truth, your Grace.’ Stillington looked frightened, but surprisingly determined. ‘The vow of betrothal is a solemn one, taken before an ordained priest of Holy Church. That priest was my ch
aplain. I swear it, by Christ on the Cross!’ He said this with his hand clutching the crucifix that hung round his neck.

  At the sight of this, and feeling the man’s sincerity, I became very afraid. My heart began to jump, sending the blood rushing up my neck, into my face. Richard’s fingers were hurting me, but I did not try to pull my hand away.

  ‘You swear my brother was bound to another woman?’ He sounded unbelieving, stunned.

  ‘Yes, to the Lady Eleanor Butler, who was daughter of the Earl of Shrewsbury.’

  ‘Old Shrewsbury — the great John Talbot!’

  ‘Yes. Your brother was seventeen, and she every day of five and twenty, a widow…’

  Richard cut him short. ‘You are telling me, my lord,’ he said grimly, ‘that my brother married Elizabeth the present Queen when he was already troth-plight to Talbot’s daughter. You are telling me that this marriage was unlawful in the sight of God, in short, he lived with his Queen in adultery. You do know, Dr Stillington, how serious this is?’

  ‘I do, your Grace, I have spent twenty years thinking of it. I have lived in guilt and fear, which is not good for a priest. The concealment of truth is as grievous a sin as a lie — mea culpa. Could I watch my lord Cardinal — the Archbishop of Canterbury — anoint a King before the High Altar at Westminster, before God Himself, knowing that King to be a bastard?’

  ‘Be silent!’ The order whipped out before Richard could control his anger. His fingers dug painfully into my hand, making me gasp.

  Bishop Stillington shrank, but said nothing to excuse himself, or refute this monstrous revelation.

  Richard said carefully, ‘Where is Lady Eleanor Butler?’

  ‘Dead, your Grace, in a convent at Norwich, fifteen years ago.’

  I said, ‘My lord Bishop, if this is true, why did you wait until the woman we’ve known as Queen bore King Edward ten children, and abused her power in the realm for nearly twenty years? Why?’