The Plantagenet Mystery

by Victoria Prescott

  ‘We’ve come for Auntie Emily’s book,’ she said.

  ‘Oh – um, I’m afraid it’s not here,’ Rob said. ‘I took it into work last week.’ He explained about the record office.

  ‘So will you be able to get it on Monday?’ Laura said. ‘I could come and collect it on Monday evening.’

  Claire turned and looked at her in surprise.

  ‘You don’t want to come all that way, after a day’s work, just for a book!’

  ‘But Auntie really wants it, and to know about the writing in it, and I want to do something for her. She won’t come and stay with me, or let me stay with her.’

  ‘I’m afraid not,’ said Rob. ‘I don’t go in on Mondays.’

  ‘Tuesday, then,’ Laura suggested, and now Claire was looking at him suspiciously. He was reminded of what Chris had said – that while he was mending Emily’s back door, she had watched him as if she thought he was going to make off with the family silver.

  ‘What’s the matter?’ Claire asked. ‘Was there something rude written in the book that you’re embarrassed to tell Auntie Emily about? She might look like a sweet little old lady, you know, but I expect you’re more easily shocked than she is.’

  Laura might be put off, Rob realised, but not Claire. He held the door wider.

  ‘You’d better come in. There’s something I should tell you.’ He ushered them into the front room. He and Chris were on their second mugs of coffee; courtesy demanded that he offer drinks to Laura and Claire. Claire refused, looking as if she suspected him of delaying tactics, but Laura accepted. Rob had to hunt through cupboards to find enough mugs, and in the end had to wash up his own mug for Laura and use a chipped one himself. He rarely made coffee for anyone but himself, and, recently, Chris.

  When he returned, Laura was standing by his worktable, looking at some of the photocopied documents he was using in his research.

  ‘What strange writing. Is it English?’

  ‘Yes.’ Rob read out the first line for her. ‘A piece of woodland called West Wood containing by estimation fifteen acres bounded on the north side by the King’s highway That letter with the long loop below the line is an h. And that’s a long s. This style of writing is called secretary hand, it was used in the Elizabethan and Jacobean periods – ’

  ‘Where do you get this stuff?’ Claire had come over to the table to see what they were talking about.

  Rob explained about the record office.

  ‘Are they valuable?’ Laura asked.

  ‘Well, not these. They’re only photocopies, I could get more if I needed to. But the originals – you couldn’t put a value on them.’

  ‘Because they’re old?’ Claire said sceptically.

  ‘Because of what they can tell us about people who lived centuries ago, how they lived – ’ He stopped, embarrassed at his own enthusiasm.

  ‘You won’t believe some of the weird stuff he knows,’ Chris said to Claire.

  ‘So what do you do, exactly, other than teach Auntie Emily’s family history class?’ Claire asked. Rob explained, while handing round the coffee and finding everyone somewhere to sit. Claire looked at Chris as if wondering why he was still there when they were about to discuss her family’s business, but said nothing.

  Rob explained how he had helped Emily sort out her family history, and the conclusions he had drawn. He said nothing of ‘Homer’ Simpson, or his and Chris’s conversation with Jason. It did not feel right to reveal Chris’s involvement in what had, after all, been a criminal act. And, if he was honest with himself, he felt a little uncomfortable about his own part. He had never thought of himself as a bully – if anything, he had been on the receiving end at school – yet he had contributed to the bullying of a much younger and weaker person. Without Homer and Jason, the story did not sound very convincing.

  ‘But why would anyone want to steal the book?’ Claire said. ‘Is it valuable?’

  ‘I don’t think so,’ said Rob. ‘I think it’s rare, but the content would only be of interest to someone like Emily, and I don’t think there’s anything special about the binding which might make it valuable to a collector. I could try to find out, if you like. Unless you’d like to?’ he said, deferring to Claire’s closer connection to Emily.

  ‘It’s more your sort of thing,’ said Claire.

  ‘All right.’

  Rob showed Claire and Laura the photocopied pages from the book and recounted the story of Sir Thomas Mildmay’s marriage to Catherine Finch and the new house he had built at Ashleigh.

  ‘Using his wife’s money, no doubt,’ said Claire.

  ‘Least he spent it on something useful,’ Chris said. ‘Not clothes or shoes or handbags or – ’

  ‘Sexist pig,’ said Claire.

  ‘Yeah, and proud of it.’

  ‘There wasn’t actually all that much to spend money on back then,’ Rob said. ‘The consumer revolution didn’t begin until – ’

  ‘See what I mean? Weird stuff in his head,’ Chris said to Claire.

  ‘Can we just get on?’ Laura said, a sharp tone in her voice that surprised them all. ‘I’ve got other things I need to do this afternoon.’

  Rob repeated the story he had read to Chris, of Richard Plantagenet, the bastard, who had lived out his life secretly at Ashleigh.

  ‘A bastard?’ said Claire. ‘Whose bastard?’

  ‘Well, Richard’s – Richard III – I suppose,’ said Rob. ‘Edward Finch says he was a son of the late king, and he says if King Richard won the battle everyone would know him – Richard of Ashleigh, I mean – as the King’s son. And Richard certainly had one bastard son, that everyone knew about, and a daughter.’

  ‘If Richard III had another illegitimate son that everyone knew about, why was this one kept secret?’ Claire wanted to know. ‘And why would Richard then decide to acknowledge him if he won the battle?’

  Rob shrugged.

  ‘Perhaps there was some reason Richard couldn’t acknowledge him before. Political reasons, I mean. Because of who his mother was, or something.’

  ‘And once he’d won the battle and was secure on the throne, those reasons wouldn’t matter any more. Yes, that would make sense,’ Claire agreed.

  ‘Richard would be the one chopping his enemies’ heads off, instead of Henry,’ Chris said.

  ‘That wasn’t really Richard’s style,’ Rob said. ‘He chopped some heads off, but there were a few he didn’t chop that he should have.’

  ‘Not your average ruthless bastard monarch, then?’ said Claire.

  ‘No, he wasn’t. When he was Duke of Gloucester, his brother Edward IV put him in charge of governing the north of England. He did a good job and made himself popular up there. And he was a good soldier.’

  ‘Sounds like a good bloke,’ said Chris.

  ‘But Richard III killed the little princes!’ Laura protested.

  ‘I expect he thought it was for the good of the country. Edward V was a minor, wasn’t he? And minority reigns were bad for the country, weren’t they?’ Claire said, looking at Rob.

  ‘Yes, they were, usually.’

  ‘How can you talk like that?’ Laura protested. ‘We’re talking about two children here. How old were they?’ Laura asked Rob.

  ‘When they were last seen, about ten and twelve.’

  ‘Two innocent little angels!’

  ‘After working on the Greenway, you must know that children aren’t all innocent little angels,’ Claire said.

  ‘Hey!’ said Chris.

  ‘Those princes might have been a pair of little brats,’ Claire went on, ignoring him.

  ‘You don’t really mean that. I hate it when you pretend to be all hard and cynical. And even if they were, that’s no excuse.’

  Claire shrugged.

  ‘You can bet Richard, and the men who supported him, weren’t thinking about them being innocent little angels,’ she said. ‘The stability of the country, versus the lives of two children, that’s what they’d have been thinking.’

&n
bsp; ‘Richard’s enemies put it about that it was his ambition, not the good of the country, that drove him to usurp the throne,’ said Rob. ‘But there’s no evidence that Richard was responsible for the princes’ deaths. No evidence that they died at all, in fact. All that’s known is that there’s no record of them having been seen after the summer of 1483.’

  ‘So why is everyone so sure Richard killed them?’ Chris wanted to know.

  ‘Big propaganda campaign put about by the Tudors when they took over,’ said Rob. ‘And then Shakespeare joined in, and the story stuck.’

  ‘But there are people who don’t believe Richard III was a villain, aren’t there?’ said Claire. ‘Isn’t there a society, or something?’

  ‘Yes, I came across it when I was researching Richard III online last night.’

  Claire picked up the photocopied pages and read the passage again.

  ‘It couldn’t really have happened like this, could it?’ she said.

  ‘How?’ said Rob.

  ‘Well, after so many years of living as an ordinary bricklayer, could he really have been – what was it – more learned and gentle than the other men? Wouldn’t he have forgotten all that?’

  ‘You saying an ordinary bricklayer can’t be learned and gentle?’ Chris demanded.

  ‘Edward Finch was probably thinking backwards,’ Rob suggested. ‘If Richard Plantagenet really was the son of a king, by Edward Finch’s thinking, he must be different from other men, even if he had spent most of his life as an ordinary bricklayer.’

  Claire nodded.

  ‘Like the story of the Princess and the Pea.’

  The two men stared at her blankly.

  ‘It’s a fairy story. You can tell a real princess, however well disguised she is, because her skin is so delicate, she’ll bruise if there’s a single pea under her mattress. I think there were twelve mattresses by the end of the story. You remember it, don’t you?’ she said to her sister. ‘It was in that book we had when we were little, the one with the blue cover.’

  ‘The book I had,’ Laura said. ‘It was my book, Grandma gave it to me.’

  Laura had been sitting slightly apart from the rest of them, nursing her mug of coffee with a downturned mouth, not joining in the quick interchange of ideas. Rob decided that whatever the reason for her bad mood, it wasn't up to him to persuade her out of it. Claire was speaking to him and Chris again.

  ‘Didn’t either of you have books of fairy tales when you were little? No, of course you didn’t.’ She sat back, with a brief mutter about gender stereotyping and conditioning.

  ‘Huh,’ Chris folded his arms. ‘No chance of me being a prince in disguise, then. Not if I need to get a bruise on my backside any time I sleep on a lumpy mattress.’

  ‘Anyway, it’s a legend, this story about Richard Plantagenet. It doesn’t have to be logical,’ Rob said.

  ‘You don’t believe it, then?’ Claire asked. Rob shrugged.

  ‘It’s a good story, it livens up what would otherwise be a pretty dull book, but there isn’t a shred of evidence to back it up. I think it’s about as true as your story of the princess and the pea.’

  ‘Cynic,’ Claire accused him.

  ‘Well, you’re a lawyer, aren’t you? Would you go to court with it?’

  ‘I’m not that kind of lawyer,’ Claire said. ‘But no, it’s not terribly convincing. Why would he confide in Sir Thomas after keeping the secret all that time?’

  ‘Assuming for the moment that it is true, maybe he just wanted someone else to know the truth. He was an old man by then. If he didn’t tell someone, the truth would be lost when he died. He would have been a Catholic; maybe it was a sort of confession,’ said Rob.

  ‘Chancy,’ Chris said. ‘This Sir Thomas could have turned him in, couldn’t he?’

  ‘I suppose he was old enough by then not to care. Anyway, if Sir Thomas said anything, he’d have been in trouble himself, wouldn’t he?’ Claire replied.

  ‘Sir Thomas obviously told someone something, since the story was remembered two hundred years later, when Edward Finch put it in his book,’ Rob said.

  ‘Unless this Edward Finch invented the whole thing,’ Claire said. ‘So what about these notes that Auntie Emily wanted you to read? Is there anything in them to explain what's going on?’

  Rob picked up his transcript. He had not yet typed up his notes; grimacing at his own handwriting, he read aloud.

  My father did not tell here all this story as it is known in our family through Catherine, who was the wife of that Sir Thomas Mildmay here described, whose name I bear.

  ‘If all this happened to Sir Thomas Mildmay, how was it the story was passed down in the Finch family?’ Claire said. ‘I know you said he married a Finch, but he wouldn’t tell his in-laws, would he?’

  ‘Maybe he told his wife and she told them,’ Chris said. ‘Trust a woman to – ’

  Rob interrupted hurriedly.

  ‘The Finches and the Mildmays intermarried a few times after that. There are several ways the story could have been handed down in the Finch family.’

  He continued reading.

  As the story was told to me by my father, Richard Plantagenet wrote the story of his life, which account he gave to Sir Thomas, or was discovered by Sir Thomas on his death. In this account he told more particulars of King Richard and of his life at this manor of Ashleigh. Sir Thomas adjudged the times too dangerous for such matters, and kept the papers sub rosa, so it is said.

  ‘Sub rosa? What’s that?’ Chris said.

  ‘It’s Latin. Literally it means “under the rose”, but its usual meaning is “secretly.” Which it would have been.’

  ‘That’s all it said?’ asked Laura.

  ‘Yes. That’s all.’

  ‘But I – I mean, that’s nothing, is it? Nothing to make anyone want to steal it.’

  ‘No instructions on how to find the buried treasure?’ said Claire. ‘But we don’t know if it was the writing, do we? We don’t even know for sure that they were after the book. I mean, how would anyone even know that Auntie Emily had the book?’

  ‘Emily’s interest in Finch family history is quite well known, and she always talks about her finds. Anyone could easily have heard about it,’ Rob said.

  ‘Well known to you and other people interested in family history, maybe, and to us, her family. But how would a complete stranger know about it?’

  ‘She regularly tours the second hand bookshops here, looking for anything Finch related. Most of the dealers know her.’ Rob wished he had asked Emily where she had bought the book when she had first showed it to him. To ask now would only focus her attention on it, when he was hoping she would forget about it for a while.

  ‘I suppose we should be glad she hasn’t discovered the internet and e-bay,’ said Claire.

  ‘I must go,’ Laura said suddenly, abruptly. She stood up. ‘I promised to phone someone this afternoon. You’ll have to come now if you don’t want to walk back to Auntie’s,’ she added, to Claire.

  ‘I don’t suppose you set a time to the exact minute, did you? Twenty minutes here or there won’t make any difference.’ Claire was still seated, evidently in no hurry to leave.

  ‘He’ll be waiting for my call,’ Laura said obstinately.

  ‘He? Is this the mysterious boyfriend? You don’t have to arrange your days around him, you know. I don’t suppose he’s sitting by the phone waiting for your call.’

  Laura flushed, and Rob saw Claire wince slightly, as if realising she had said the wrong thing.

  ‘He’s not mysterious,’ Laura said.

  ‘Not? You haven’t told us his name, or anything about him.’

  ‘Why should I tell you anything? You’re always so suspicious and looking for the worst in everything.’

  ‘Is he married?’ Claire asked bluntly.

  ‘No! Why can’t you just be pleased for me? I think you’re jealous, just because you haven’t got a boyfriend.’

  ‘Good grief, we’re not twelve
! And even when I was twelve, I was never that petty!’

  ‘Of course not! Never wrong about anything, are you?’ Laura pushed past Rob, out of the room. A moment later they heard the front door slam. Claire stood up.

  ‘Sorry about that. My fault, I suppose. I’d better go after her.’

  Rob accompanied her to the front door. Laura was standing near a small dark blue car parked a little way down the road. She was searching through her bag, presumably for her keys. Claire began to walk swiftly towards her. Rob had no desire to overhear what they said to each other; he shut the door and returned to the front room.

  They had not agreed on what to tell Emily, and whether to return the book to her. Well, he thought, it was Claire’s problem; she would see Emily before he did.

  Chapter Eight

  ‘So which one do you fancy, then?’ said Chris, when Rob came back into the room. ‘Wouldn’t want to tread on your toes,’ he added with a grin.

  ‘Neither,’ said Rob, with certainty.

  ‘Yeah, me too. That Claire’s a ballbreaker, and the other one’s the sort who’d be in floods if you forgot her pet hamster’s birthday.’

  Rob could not disagree with Chris’s assessment.

  ‘Anyway, Laura’s got a boyfriend,’ he reminded Chris.

  ‘Rather him than me. You didn’t tell them about us and Jason,’ Chris continued.

  ‘No, I didn’t think Claire would approve of what we did there.’

  ‘Wimp.’

  ‘Yes, and not ashamed of it,’ Rob agreed. He began to gather up the coffee mugs. ‘Any sign of Wayne resurfacing?’

  ‘I haven’t had a chance to find out, being away all week. I’ll ask around this evening.’

  ‘All right. And I’ll go round the second hand bookshops this afternoon, see what they can tell us.

  The first two booksellers Rob visited could not recall ever having seen a copy of the book. They agreed with Rob’s assessment that the it might be worth more to someone with an interest in the Finch family, but it was not particularly valuable. If anything, one of the dealers pointed out, the writing in the book would reduce its value to a collector of eighteenth century books. At the third place, Rob learned more.