Sovereign

by C. J. Sansom

  ‘What?’

  ‘You will think me an old fool.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘I felt a sudden horror, that is all I can call it. For a second I did not know where or who I was. When the King turned away I stumbled away into the crowd and almost fell. Fortunately I know the townsmen and they helped me back to York without anyone seeing my piteous state.’ He reached for a mug by his bed and took a draught. I caught the spicy smell of an ale posset. He shook his head. ‘When I looked at the King’s eyes it was as though all the power drained out of me.’

  ‘His eyes are cruel.’

  Giles gave a sudden bark of laughter, yet I caught fear in the sound. ‘It made me think of that old legend of the commotion time.’

  ‘That the King is the Mouldwarp?’

  ‘Ay.’ He raised his eyebrows. ‘You know of it?’

  ‘I have heard.’

  He shook his head. ‘It is dangerous to speak of such things, such foolish superstitions. I had been working too hard, the strain was too much. But still – well, I have often wondered what the King was really like. Now I know.’ He shook his head. ‘And the Queen, she is so young.’

  ‘I feel sorry for her.’

  ‘A buxom little thing. Yet not regal.’

  ‘She has Howard blood.’

  ‘The Howards. Their lineage is not as old as they make out.’ He sighed. ‘Perhaps all those trappings of power, all we are told of the ordained power of royalty, perhaps they addle the mind so that when we see the reality it is a shock.’

  ‘The reality. Ugly and sordid.’

  Giles looked at me. ‘Yet we must have royalty, it is the peak of the social order, without it everything would collapse into chaos.’

  ‘It has already done that in York, has it not? Five years ago, and nearly this spring too?’

  ‘Ay, there is a great grudge here. Tell me, how did the city receive the King?’

  ‘Barak said the cheers were ragged.’

  ‘How different it was for Richard III.’

  ‘Richard Crouchback,’ I said softly. ‘I remember . . .’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Once when I was small, I was playing in the parlour. My father and some of his friends were talking round the table. Someone mentioned something that had happened in Richard’s time. Richard Crouchback’s time was what they said, forgetting I was there. My father looked at me. I can still see the look on his face. Pity. Disappointment.’

  ‘You had a hard time of it,’ Giles said gently.

  I shrugged. ‘Mayhap.’

  He sighed. ‘That was propaganda, anyway. You forget I saw King Richard. His back was straight. He had a hard face, serious. But not cruel.’ He leaned back on his pillows. ‘I was a boy then, so long ago.’ He looked up at me. ‘Matthew, I had hoped to keep my strength a little longer. But this attack of pain and weakness has been bad. If it goes with me as with my father, there will be spells of better health but more of these attacks. I may not be an easy companion on the road back to London.’

  ‘Do not fear. You will have any aid that Barak and I can give.’

  ‘You are kind.’ He looked at me, and I saw his eyes were wet with tears in the second before he turned away, that I might not see them.

  I thought, all my life I never saw tears in my father’s eyes, even when my mother died. There was silence in the room for a moment. Then I said, lightly, ‘I came to ask a small favour as well as to see you.’

  ‘Of course. Anything.’

  ‘I need to check something on a map of southern England. In connection with a matter I have on in London. Are there any maps in your collection?’

  His eyes lit up with interest. ‘Why yes, I have some. They are mostly old monkish things but you are welcome to look. Most are of the north but I have one or two of the southern counties, I think. I wanted to show you my collection, it is in two rooms at the back of the house. Tell Madge to give you the keys. The maps and plans are on the third shelf on the south wall in the first room. I must stay in bed, I fear.’

  ‘Of course.’ I rose, for I could see he was tired. ‘I shall send word tomorrow, see how you are. If you are still poorly I will speak to Maleverer about getting someone else to deal with the petitions. Maleverer will not allow me to chair the arbitrations.’

  He smiled and shook his head vigorously. ‘I will be better by tomorrow.’ He hesitated, then said, ‘Do not take what the King said too hard, Matthew. It was part of a political game. It was not personal.’

  ‘A chance to praise a Yorker at my expense. That point has been made. No, the worst thing was that I could see the King enjoyed what he did.’

  Giles looked at me seriously. ‘Politics is a hard and cruel game.’

  ‘I know.’

  I left him and descended the stairs. In the hall Dr Jibson was talking to Madge. ‘Master Wrenne says I may check something in his archive,’ I told her.

  She hesitated a moment, then said, ‘I will get the keys.’

  She left me with the doctor. ‘How is he?’ I asked.

  Jibson shook his head. ‘He has a wasting sickness.’

  ‘He told me his father died of the same thing. Is there nothing to be done?’

  ‘No. These cruel growths eat away at a man. One can only pray for a miracle.’

  ‘And without a miracle? How long does he have?’

  ‘It is hard to say. I have felt that lump in his stomach, it is not too large yet, but it will grow. A few months at most, I would guess. He says he plans to go to London. I must say I think that foolish.’

  ‘Perhaps. But it is important to him. I have said I will take care of him.’

  ‘That may not be easy.’

  ‘Then I will deal with that.’ I paused. ‘Have you seen Broderick again?’

  ‘Ay. He has thrown off the effects of whatever poisoned him. He is young and strong, for all his ill-treatment.’

  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.

  I read it through again, carefully. One passage puzzled me, that description of Richard as ‘the undoubted Son and heir of Richard late Duke of York’. Had someone suggested Richard was a bastard? The child of Cecily Neville and someone else? I remembered the strange comment Maleverer had bitten off when I told him about the family tree. ‘Oh yes,’ he had said. ‘Everything starts with Cecily Neville.’ Yet that made no sense either. If Richard III was illegitimate, the Tudors would not have hidden the fact – they would have shouted it from the rooftops as another justification for their usurpation of his throne.

  I read through the Act again, but could gain no further illumination about what that passage meant. I sat looking out at the Minster, its beautiful windows alight with colour now for the sun was sinking. Had I really been here all day?

  I replaced the book then stepped out, closed the door and went back to Madge. She was in the solar, feeding the greyfalcon with a plate of chopped meat.

  ‘I am sorry to have been so long. The time ran away with me.’

  She put down the tray and wiped her hands on her apron.

  ‘Thank you, Madge, for your hospitality.’

  ‘Maister still sleeps. Sir,’ she added suddenly, ‘if he goes to London, you – you will take care of him?’

  ‘As though he were my own father.’

  ‘How is he, maister? That physician won’t say, thinks I’m just a poor silly servant.’

  ‘Not well.’

  She nodded. ‘Ay, Maister says he will never get better. I shall miss him, he has been good to me, as his wife was before him, Jesu rest her.’ She crossed herself. ‘He is a good man, for all the bad feeling there was when he quarrelled with his wife’s family. And now he seeks to make matters right, by finding young Martin.’

  ‘I will help hi
m there.’

  ‘It was but a quarrel over politics. Maister was wrong to cut Martin off. I think he knows that.’

  ‘Is that what it was about?’

  She bit her lip. ‘You did not know? I thought he had told you.’

  ‘I won’t say anything, Madge. And with God’s aid I will deliver him safe back to you.’

  She nodded, her eyes full of tears but too proud to cry before me. She let me out and I walked away.

  OUTSIDE, THE RAIN had stopped, but there was a cold and biting wind. I remembered the night Master Wrenne had quoted from Thomas More’s writing about the Striving between the Roses. ‘These matters be Kings’ games, as it were stage plays, and for the most part played upon scaffolds.’ I shivered again and began walking back to St Mary’s, keeping to the centre of the streets, on the lookout for shadows in doorways, a hand on the hilt of the dagger beneath my coat. It would be like this, I thought, from now on.

  St Mary’s was quiet. I passed by the looming bulk of the church and made my way to the lodging house. I paused at the door, for I could hear merry voices within. I must face the law clerks again. I pushed the door open. A group of them sat before the fire playing cards, the central hall hot and fuggy with smoke. All turned to look at me, their faces full of curiosity, except for Master Cowfold, whose head Barak had threatened to smash against the wall, who looked hastily away.

  ‘Good evening,’ I said. ‘Is Master Barak about?’

  ‘He’s out, sir,’ young Kimber said.

  ‘With a pretty wench,’ another added, and several laughed. I nodded and went to my cubicle. I felt their eyes on my back until, with relief, I closed the door behind me, locked it and lay down on my bed.

  After a while I heard the clerks leave the lodging house, making their way over to the refectory for dinner. I was hungry again but could not face all those staring eyes, and I confess I was nervous at the thought of walking to the dining hall alone. I closed my eyes, and at once fell asleep.

  When I woke it was very late; the clerks had come back and gone to bed for I could hear their snores and mumbles. I went outside to the hall. The fire was low but still burning.