‘If Richard Plantagenet built this tomb, he’d have handled these bricks,’ he said.
‘Well, we still don’t know, do we?’ Claire said, irritably. ‘In fact, if you ask me, the whole thing has just been pointless and done nothing but cause a lot of trouble.’ She stalked away to the far end of the church. Rob and Chris exchanged glances, then went back to sorting the bricks. Rob did feel guilty, when he looked at the damage that had been done to the tomb. That would not have happened without their – without his meddling. But he could not regret starting the quest. His only regret was that, as Claire said, they still did not know the end of the story.
‘Here, this must be what he wanted to show Pierson, when – ’ Chris’s glance flicked to Laura, and away again.
‘What?’ Rob put down his brick and went over to Chris.
‘That Chazza bloke was going to show this to Pierson, but then it all kicked off.’
Chris angled the slab of stone he was holding so Rob could see. In the middle, roughly carved – scratched, really – was a flower. A rose.
‘The white rose,’ Rob said quietly.
‘Yeah. Like where we found the document.’
‘This was in the tomb?’
‘Yeah. I think it must’ve been set in the floor. Look. You can see where he took it from.’
Rob stuck his head into the tomb, trusting that Chris would have told him if there was any risk of it collapsing on him. It was dark in there, his body blocked the light, but he could just see.
‘He’d just broken through to the vault below.’
‘Yeah, I think that stone must’ve been the last thing they put in, to seal it off.’
Curiosity prevailed over Claire’s bad temper. She came over to see what they were looking at.
‘This piece of stone must have been damaged, or used for carving practice, or something, that’s why they put it where no one could see it,’ she said. ‘Look at all these marks on the back.’
Rob looked, then looked again, with closer attention.
‘I don’t think those are random marks. Put it down here.’
Claire did as he directed, and he squinted, looking at the stone from one angle, then another.
‘Damn, it’s getting dark in here.’ The late October sun had set and dusk was closing in.
‘Try this,’ Chris said, handing Rob his powerful torch.
‘Thanks. That’s good, actually, better than an overhead light.’ Rob shone the torch at an angle across the stone, clearly revealing the letters cut in the surface.
‘Does it actually say anything?’ Claire asked doubtfully. ‘I can’t make any sense of it. And it’s not very well done, is it? Not proper carving.’
‘Like the rose,’ Rob agreed. ‘Something done privately, that no-one else would know about.’
‘This stuff is pretty soft,’ said Chris, fingering some of the chips that had broken off when Chazza pulled out the panel. ‘I reckon anyone could mark it with a knife, you wouldn’t need any special tools.’
‘If we had the right materials, we could make a rubbing,’ said Rob.
‘Like a brass rubbing?’ said Claire.
‘Yes. People do it with gravestones, too, when the lettering’s too worn to read easily. Anyone got pencil and paper?’
Claire went and hunted in the curtained off area under the tower, that appeared to be a dumping ground for all kinds of things. She came back with an old visitors’ book, with a ballpoint pen attached with a piece of string.
‘No-one’s signed it in two years anyway,’ she said. She sat with her back against the tomb, the book resting on her raised knees, opened at a clean page, ready to write. Chris held the torch, and Rob read out the letters one by one, tracing them with his fingers when he could not read them, even with the torchlight. Eventually, he straightened up.
‘That’s all, I think. If there’s any more, it’s too worn to read.’
He and Chris came and stood one on each side of Claire, looking over her shoulders to see what she had written.
HICIACRIC
DUCEBFILED
IVRREQOSS
INPACDGRAT
‘I put the line breaks in where you told me, but I can’t tell where one word ends and another begins,’ she said.
‘That’s how they’ve been carved, the letters all run on with no spaces between.’
‘It doesn’t make any sense. Is it a code or something?’ Chris said.
‘It’s probably Latin. And heavily abbreviated Latin, too.’ Rob took the paper from Claire and looked more closely, Chris peering over his shoulder.
‘There’s hic iac at the beginning – that’s short for hic iacet, here lies. Ric – that’s Richard.’
‘So far so good. That’s what we want it to say,’ said Claire.
‘Can’t make out the next bit, though.’
‘It says filed there,’ said Chris, pointing to the end of the second line.
‘Not if it’s Latin,’ Claire objected.
‘Could be fil – short for filius, son of – fil Ed – ’ Rob’s voice trailed off as he read the beginning of the next line, then went back and read from the beginning. He felt as if all the breath had been knocked out of his body. When he was finally able to take in enough air to speak, all he could say was,
‘Shit. Shit shit shit!’
Chris and Claire looked at him.
‘What? Isn’t it our bloke after all?’ Chris said.
‘Yes. And no.’
‘That’s helpful,’ said Claire.
‘It says,’ Rob cleared his throat and tried again, but his voice still shook. ‘It says, here lies Richard Duke of York, son of King Edward the Fourth, may his bones rest in peace by the Grace of God.’
There was a deep silence and stillness in the church when Rob finished speaking. It seemed to him as if time stopped for a moment, as the secret was spoken for the first time in nearly five hundred years.
Claire was the first to speak. Her voice, like Rob’s, was not quite steady.
‘So this wasn’t an illegitimate son of Richard III at all. It was...’ her voice trailed off, as if the truth was too fantastic to speak.
‘It’s one of the Princes in the Tower,’ Rob finished for her.
‘One of the kids Richard was supposed to have done in?’ Chris said.
‘Yes.’ They were all speaking in low tones, as if, even so many years later, danger could come from being overheard.
‘But there was two of them. What happened to the other one?’
‘Richard – this Richard – said his brother was already dead when he went to see the King before Bosworth,’ Claire said.
‘Yes, that’s right, he did. There were suggestions that his brother – Edward – wasn’t in good health,’ Rob said.
‘So he died of natural causes?’
‘Almost certainly, I should think. There’d be no point in anyone killing him if his brother was left alive.’
‘And the King – Richard III – seems to have done his best to keep this boy safe,’ said Claire. ‘Telling him that if the battle was lost, he must go back to Ashleigh and never tell anyone his true identity.’
Chris was still looking at what Rob had written.
‘I don’t get it. How do you make it say – what you said?
‘Like I said, it’s heavily abbreviated. Look.’ Rob wrote it out again, the English translation alongside the Latin words.
‘HIC IAC is here lies. RIC DUC EB – Richard Duke of York. Dux, ducis is duke. EB is Eboracum, the Roman name for York. FIL ED IV – son of Edward IV. R, that’s rex, King. REQ OSS IN PAC – may his bones rest in peace.’
‘Can it be proved?’ Claire said. ‘I mean DNA tests and so on?’
‘Maybe, I don’t know, it’s not really my field. We don’t even know what remains are down there. If there are bones, the age could be confirmed by carbon dating, and dendrochronology could be used to date the coffin, if there is one, I suppose.’
‘Dendro-what?’
‘It’s a technique archaeologists use to date the timber in buildings and ships and so on. It uses tree rings to tell when and where a tree was felled.’
‘It’ll be the discovery of – well, not just this century, but of the last five hundred years,’ Claire said.
‘You’ll be famous, just like Pierson said,’ said Chris.
‘What do we do? Who do we report this to, to get things moving?’ Claire said. Rob said nothing.
‘What?’ said Claire.
‘I don’t think we should do anything,’ Rob said finally. ‘I think we should just put it all back and leave it.’
‘What? Why? Chris is right, this could make your reputation – the man who solved the mystery of the Princes in the Tower.’
‘It won’t be the sort of reputation I want.’
‘He thinks tv’s beneath him,’ Chris told Claire.
‘Snob,’ said Claire.
‘Well, yes, all right, I am. But that’s not it.’ Rob looked at Chris and back to Claire again. ‘I don’t think we should disturb him. He wanted to lie undisturbed, he said so in his will, and it says it here – by the Grace of God, may his bones rest in peace.’
‘You could prove that Richard didn’t kill the Princes,’ Chris said.
‘I think Richard would rather we left his nephew in peace,’ Rob said. ‘There were rumours in his lifetime. He could easily have disproved them by producing young Richard, but he didn’t. He kept him safe. He made sure that he’d be safe, even if he lost the battle.’
‘I can’t tell you what to do,’ he said to Chris and Claire, ‘I can’t stop you telling people, if you want to. But that’s what I think.’
Chris and Claire looked at each other. Then Chris said,
‘I’ll see what I can do to fix up that tomb.’
It was dark when they left the church, locking the door by the light of Chris’s torch. Claire and Laura climbed into the passenger seat of the van. Rob had to travel in the back, bracing himself against the side of the van as it turned the sharp bends in the road. He ran into the pub to return the key, with thanks to the landlord, but did not stay.
‘Where can I drop you two?’ Chris asked Claire as they approached Wynderbury.
‘I want to pick up my car,’ Laura said. It was almost the first time she had spoken since they had left the church.
‘Don’t you think – ’ Claire began.
‘I want to get my car and I want to go home, Laura said obstinately. Chris, not wanting to get in the middle of a row between Claire and Laura, drove to Pierson’s house. The house was in darkness and Laura’s car was still on the drive. Laura opened the passenger door of the van.
‘I’ll come with you,’ said Claire.
‘No!’ said Laura. ‘I don’t want you. I don’t want you, pretending to be sympathetic, but all smug because now you think you were right all along! You never want me to be happy or to have anything you haven’t got and I don’t want to see you or speak to you!’ The words all came out in a rush, Laura barely managing to keep her voice steady. She got out of the van and slammed the door. There was a moment’s silence, then Claire said,
‘Well. I need to pick up the car, anyway.’
When they got back to Gladstone Street, somehow Claire ended up coming into the house with Rob and Chris. They had stopped at the supermarket and bought a basket load of food to supplement the contents of Rob’s fridge and freezer. Now they were feasting on a variety of junk food. Rob felt wound up, elated. This must be what getting high felt like, he thought.
When they had all taken the worst edge off their hunger, they relaxed, sat back and began to talk.
‘So that’s why no-one ever heard of this son of Richard’s,’ said Chris. ‘He never existed.’
Claire was leafing through Rob’s transcript of Richard’s testament.
‘He never actually says Richard III is his father,’ she said. ‘Just that he said he would care for him as a father, if he won the battle. I suppose he thought if he won the battle, there’d be no-one left who might be a threat to the boy.’
‘But I don’t get it,’ Chris said, munching on a slice of pizza. ‘Everyone thought it was Richard who killed the boys, so if he didn’t, who did want to hurt them? Who was he hiding them from?’
‘Two factions,’ said Rob. ‘The Woodvilles, who wanted to use them for their own ends, to threaten Richard’s position – Richard the king, that is – and probably in the process stir up another civil war. And Henry Tudor, who had his own ambitions, which the princes were in the way of. That’s why the King told young Richard that if the battle was lost he should never tell anyone his true identity. He knew he’d never be safe under Henry.’
He took the transcript back from Claire, re-reading in the light of what they now knew.
‘Brackenbury!’ he said suddenly.
‘What?’
‘Richard said that on the way to Leicester, he saw Sir Robert Brackenbury. He said Brackenbury used to take time from his duties to play sometimes.’
‘What about it?’ Chris said.
‘Brackenbury was Constable of the Tower when the Princes were there. People saw them playing at shooting sometimes. Damn, he virtually spelled it out there and I missed it! Then it was said that the boys were withdrawn from sight and not seen again. I suppose that’s when Edward, the older one, became ill, or got worse, and eventually died, and then Richard was sent to Ashleigh. It was easier when it was just him. People would have been on the look out for two boys, not just one.’
‘And so he spent his life as a bricklayer, when he could have been a king,’ said Claire. ‘I mean, after his brother died, a lot of people would have thought he was the rightful king, wouldn’t they?’
‘He didn’t think so. As far as he was concerned, his Uncle Richard was the rightful king.’ Rob read from Richard Plantagenet’s testament.
He was Crowned and Annoynted in the Sight of God and therefore he was a King however it may be said that it was not rightfully done.
‘He probably lived longer as a bricklayer. Going by what you said about the Henries going round bumping off anyone who was related to Richard,’ said Chris.
Rob cleared away the remains of the pizza and brought out the cheesecake they had bought.
‘So what about the ring?’ Chris said.
‘Yes, let me see it,’ said Claire. Rob took it out of his pocket and handed it over. Claire examined it, then passed it to Chris.
‘You said there are people who’ll pay a lot of money for stuff like this, right? We could sell it?’ he said.
A few weeks ago, Rob’s reply would have been immediate and unequivocal. Now he felt he had no right to talk about honesty and morality.
‘Well, we’ve got no provenance – no proof of what it is or where it came from. But yes, there’d be a market for it somewhere, I should think.
Chris juggled the ring in his palm for a few moments, then threw it to Rob.
‘So what will you do with it?’ Claire asked.
‘And what about Pierson?’ Chris said. ‘So he didn’t actually kill Wayne, but he did plenty of other stuff. Are we going to let him get away with it?’
‘We could go to the police. But then we’ve done some stuff that’s almost as bad.’
‘And there’s Laura,’ said Claire. ‘She was stupid, gullible. But I’m sure she didn’t know Pierson was doing anything criminal. I don’t want her to have to go through a lot of police questioning, maybe even be charged. I don’t think she’d ever get over it, and it would be the end of her teaching career.’
‘Do you think she suspected at all?’ Rob said.
‘No,’ said Claire, definitely. ‘Not at first, certainly. Later, if she suspected, she’d try to explain it away. He must have been using her all along. He really must be a bastard. She was probably afraid he’d dump her if she made waves. Pathetic.’ Rob did not know who Claire was more angry with – Pierson or her sister.
Rob felt guilty about the ring. Looking for the
document in the hope of finding out the truth was one thing. But they had stolen the ring, however he tried to justify it. He could not keep it. He supposed it belonged to Lord Somerden, or to the bank or consortium or whoever now owned Ashleigh. He wondered if there was a way of returning it to Lord Somerden that could not be traced back to him. But Claire had said Lord Somerden was sharp. He might not be interested in the history of Ashleigh, but a gold ring would make him take notice. And Rob would have to be careful to do nothing that might throw suspicion on Chris. The two of them had been seen together at Ashleigh twice. It would not take any half-competent police officer long to put two and two together. Perhaps Chris could take the ring back to Ashleigh and ‘find’ it there? Or hide it for someone else to find? All fingerprints carefully wiped off, of course. But that in itself would be suspicious, if the ring should be forensically examined. Frodo Baggins never had this much trouble, Rob thought.
In the end, they went to Lord Somerden with what they had – Emily’s book, Catherine Finch’s letter, Richard Plantagenet’s testament and the ring. He was the nearest to a rightful owner of the last three. They hoped that Lord Somerden would not turn them in, as it would mean turning his own great-nephew in too.
‘They’d have to catch him first, though,’ Chris said. ‘I’ve been to his house, there’s no sign of him. Even asked the neighbours. Said he’d asked me to quote for some work and I was trying to get in touch with him. They haven’t seen him. I think he’s skipped.’
When Rob had finished the long explanation, there was a silence. Lord Somerden was looking away, out of the window. After a few moments, he turned his head and looked at Rob.
‘I’m not surprised by what you tell me.’ He turned to Claire. ‘I’m sorry for your sister. I hope she’ll get over it, in time.’
‘I don’t understand how he thought he could get away with it,’ Claire said. Lord Somerden sighed.
The Plantagenet Mystery Page 22