"Are your eyes failing?" he asked. "It is De Lacy--he is on duty to-night."

"Did you know he was there?"

"Most a.s.suredly, my lord."

Stanley stared at the King in amazed silence, and despite his careful dissimulation the indignation blazed in his eyes.

"If Your Majesty deem it wise to discuss such matters before a simple attendant," he said, "it is not for me to criticise . . . yet, methinks, if it be not risky, it is at least unusual."

"Never fear, Lord Steward; I will answer for my Body-Knight," Richard responded.

During the colloquy, De Lacy had been leaning on the window edge, watching idly the courtyard below, but paying strict attention to all that was said behind him. Now he came forward and bent knee to Richard.

"My King's confidence," he said, "makes contemptible the insinuations of the fickle Stanley."

"How now, Sir------" Stanley began angrily; but Richard silenced him with an imperious gesture.

"Hold, my Lord Steward," he said sternly, "no words betwixt you two. And hark you both, no renewal of this hereafter. You are each acquittanced of the other now."

De Lacy drew himself up stiffly and saluted.

"The King commands," he said.

"And you, my lord?" asked Richard, eyeing Stanley.

"Pardieu! Sire, I have no quarrel with Sir Aymer," he answered, and affably extended his hand.

Just then there came loud voices from the outer room, followed immediately by the entrance of the page.

"May it please Your Majesty," the boy said, as the King's curt nod gave him leave to speak, "Sir Robert Brackenbury craves instant audience on business of state."

"Admit him!"

The next moment the old Knight strode into the room, spurs jangling and boots and doublet soiled by travel.

"Welcome, Robert," said Richard, giving him his hand. "What brings you in such haste?"

"Matters which are for your ears alone, Sire," said the Constable of the Tower, with the abruptness of a favored counsellor.

The King walked to a distant window.

"Might the two-faced Lord Steward hear us?" Brackenbury asked.

"No danger, speak--what is amiss in London?"

"Enough and to spare. Edward's sons are dead."

Even Richard's wonderful self-control was unequal to such news, and he started back.

"Holy Paul!" he exclaimed, under his breath; then stood with bent head. . . "How happened it?"

"No one knows, certainly. As you expressly ordered, either the lieutenant or myself regularly locked their apartments at sundown and opened them at dawn. Two nights since I, myself, turned key upon them.

In the morning I found them dead--in each breast a grievous wound--Edward's b.l.o.o.d.y dagger on the floor."

"And your view of it?"

"That Edward killed Richard and himself. He had lately been oppressed with heavy melancholy."

The King shook his head. "Yes, that is doubtless the solution, yet scant credence will be given it. To the Kingdom it will be murder foul. . .

Yet, pardieu! who else know it?"

"None but my lieutenant."

"And his discretion?"

"Beyond suspicion. He has forgotten it long since."

Richard called De Lacy to him. "Let Suffolk, Lovel, Ratcliffe, D'Evereux and Catesby be summoned instantly," he ordered.

"My friends," said he, when the last of them had come, "I have sore need of your wisdom and counsel. Hark to the mournful tidings Sir Robert Brackenbury brings."

Bluntly and simply the old Knight told the story. When he ended there was deep concern on every face and all eyes turned toward the King.

"You perceive, my lords, the gravity of the situation," said Richard.

"What shall be done?"

None answered.

"Come, sirs; it is here and we must face it. What say you, Stanley?"

The Lord Steward swept the circle with a keen glance.

"Your Majesty has put a direful question and given us scant time for thought," he replied. "Yet but two courses seem possible: either to proclaim the Princes dead by natural causes and give them public burial; or to conceal the death, and by letting the world fancy them life prisoners so forget them. Each has its advantage; but on the whole, the latter may be better. Nathless, this much is self-evident--the true tale dare not be told. Daggers, blood, and death are inexplicable when Kings'

sons are the victims, save on one hypothesis."

One after another endorsed these words, until finally it came back to the King for decision.

For a long while he sat silent, staring into vacancy. Through the open windows floated the noises of the courtyard--the neigh of a horse, the call of a soldier, the rattle of steel on stone; from the anteroom came the hum of voices, the tramp of a foot, the echo of a laugh. But within, no one spoke nor even stirred. Not a man there but understood the fatefulness of the moment and the tremendous consequences of the decision, which, once made, might never be amended. At length he spoke.

"It is an ill-fated event and leaves a dismal prospect," he said very quietly. "Sooner or later my nephews' death will be laid on me. To proclaim them dead would be to declare me guilty now. To conceal their death will be simply to postpone that guilt a time--a very little time, it may be. Curiosity will arise over their prolonged disappearance . . .

then will come suspicion . . . and at length suspicion will become accepted fact. . . So, my lords, their blood will be put on me--either now or in the future. That is my only choice--now or the future--. . .

and I choose the future. We will not announce the death; and the bodies shall be buried privately and in an unknown spot. To you, Sir Robert Brackenbury, I commit the task, trusting you fully. . . And, my lords, from this moment henceforth, let this council and its sad subject be forgotten utterly. . . Only I ask that when, in after days, you hear Richard Plantagenet accused of this deed, you will defend him or his memory. . . And now, good night."

One by one they came forward, bent knee and kissed his hand; then quietly withdrew, leaving him and De Lacy alone together.

"And yet, forsooth," he exclaimed, "Stanley advised that the Princes be removed! By St. Paul! if he sought to persuade me to my injury, the Fates have subserved his wishes well. Him I can baffle, but under their frown the strongest monarch fails."