"Who says so?"

"How do you know?"

In the general hubbub no one noticed a fair-haired lad stagger against the table, or a mug half full of ale clatter to the stone floor.

"Seems some sailors had it from Will Slaughter's doxie. They be all round her on the water-stairs now."

"And who is this Will Slaughter?"

"He looks after them, she says."

"'She says'!" scoffed Brother Ambrose, closing his account-book with a bang. "It is always someone else who says. And is this-loose-living person with so sinister a name supposed to be the murderer?"

The tale-bearer, not having thought so far, could only scratch his tousled head.

"It seems scarcely likely, Brother Ambrose," pointed out the cook with the scalded toes, forgetting his pain. "Or he would have been the last to start the news."

"Then who is supposed to have done this dastardly thing?" demanded the Surrey farmer, his gaze upon his own two sons and the Abbot's money lying forgotten in his gnarled hand.

For a moment it seemed as if some powerful presence they all feared were holding men's tongues dumb. Some of them glanced apprehensively over their shoulders in the direction of the Palace buildings. "He who has most cause to benefit, surely," suggested someone at last.

"There's but one man who stands more firmly through the slaughter of King Edward's innocent sons," persisted the farmer, uninhibited by such townsmen's caution.

"King Richard is miles away making a circuit of the north," Father Ambrose reminded him sternly.

"But, absent or present, there be those left at the Tower who still do his bidding," mimicked a falconer from the Abbot's mews, remembering what the upstart young corporal had said.

"And mighty popular he makes himself, remitting fines and prison sentences and such," added his mate.

The slender lad in black who had stumbled seemed to have recovered himself. To the amazement of all, he suddenly flung himself upon the bearer of the hideous tale. "How were they murdered?" he demanded, clutching at the other's coa.r.s.e jerkin as if he would shake the truth out of him.

The hefty young swineherd goggled in surprise. "In their beds, they do say," he stammered.

"'They say' again!" raged the clear, accusing voice. "But, in G.o.d's name, do you know?"

"How should I, fool?" countered the country boy, fending him off.

"Then speak no more out of your ignorance, rending people's hearts!" cried the one in black, fetching him a stinging welt across the face with his open palm.

The placid peasant's anger was roused at last. He swung back a red ham of a fist which would have persuaded an ox from one furrow to the next. In that moment the lads' two faces, coa.r.s.e and cultured, came very close; and some vague recollection, stirring at the back of his slow mind, must have stayed the blow. His mouth gaped and his arm fell to his side. Not until his whirlwind of an aggressor had vanished through the backstairs door did his wits begin to function. "'Twas like our true King," he said, awe-struck. "I saw him when they brought him through London. Close I was to him as I am to you, reverend Sir. And all white and pale he looked, just like him."

"'Twas his very clothes," confirmed a Smithfield man, who had often watched royalty at the tournaments.

"And the way he spoke-with that clipped Norman accent."

"Must have been the poor King's ghost," muttered the credulous old falconer.

And, to be on the safe side, the two lay brothers crossed themselves.

"Ghosts don't talk such common sense. Follow the fellow and bring him back," ordered Father Ambrose, despairing of ever getting any work done in his kitchen that day. But they all hung back. No one wanted to be the first to climb the dark and winding backstairs for fear of what they might meet there. And by the time the hard-breathing pack of them had pushed each other to the top the gallery leading to the living-rooms was deserted, and colour would be added to any tale that might be told against the usurper because every man among them would believe until his dying day that he had seen the avenging ghost of unfortunate young Edward the Fifth.

UNAWARE OF WHAT HER reluctant pursuers thought, Elizabeth regained her room. She, too, was thankful to find the gallery deserted; and more thankful still for the privacy of her small, makes.h.i.+ft apartments. She shot the bolt and leaned breathless against the door. "It can't be true! It can't be true! Uncle Richard couldn't have done it!" she kept telling herself. "That fellow was only a village half-wit, and the people will believe anything." She began fumbling with shaking fingers at the unfamiliar lacings of her brother's suit. "Instead of giving up my project I ought to have slipped out while they were all gaping, and by now I might have seen them-Edward and Richard-moving about in the ordinary sunlight, living..." She had peeled off Edward's hose and now stared down at it, lying coiled and empty as a dead thing about her feet. "But of what use to go if they be dead?" She shuddered, shutting out the significant sight with both hands.

She sank down upon her bed wondering how she could find out for certain. Frightening rumours like this had reached them before, but never so vividly and crudely. Her thoughts flew to Tom Stafford, who would help her if he could. But how to get a message to him with that lynx-eyed Nesfield outside? Lord Stanley would tell her, perhaps. He was Gloucester's acquiescent subject now; but for years he had been her father's friend. And Margaret Beaufort, his wife, had shown herself kind. But perhaps the likeliest means of all to get reliable news would be through the d.u.c.h.ess of Buckingham. She must care profoundly, being the boys' maternal aunt. But that would almost certainly mean telling the Dowager Queen, since they were sisters. And, however badly in need of comfort herself, the habit of years made Elizabeth feel that at all costs her mother should not be distressed unless one were sure.

"I suppose the simplest thing would be to speak to the Abbot," she decided, unable to bear the suspense any longer. "I will dress now and waylay him as he comes from Ma.s.s." But she had barely pulled on her dress again before the unusual quiet was broken by women's agitated voices and by footsteps hurrying along the pa.s.sage. She had scarcely supposed that people would be up yet, but someone was banging urgently upon her door. "Madam! Madam! You were not in your room and we have been searching for you everywhere!" they called, as if she had neglected something tremendously important.

Hastily Elizabeth rolled up Edward's suit and crammed it into a corner of her clothes chest. When she opened the door they all came pouring in. Their relief at finding her was so great that they forgot to pursue their enquiries as to where she had been. "It is the Queen!" they tried to tell her, all speaking at once. "She is prostrate... We can do nothing with her. This will kill her... Mercifully the doctor is with her..."

"It is the boys," said old Mattie simply, coming straight to her and holding her hands for comfort much as she used to do when Elizabeth was small.

"How did you hear?" asked Elizabeth, speaking to her alone.

"That Welsh doctor of the Countess's was sent with the news almost before her Grace was dressed. He and the Abbot broke it to her as best they could."

So this horrible thing was no tavern rumour. It was really true.

"I will come at once," said Elizabeth, fastening the last hook and pulling a cap with long pearled lapels over her disordered hair. She pushed past the hysterical women dry-eyed. Almost running along the gallery to the Abbot's parlour, she remembered inconsequently how she used to run singing through the Palace to see her father. She had been happy then-happy and secure. And now girlhood seemed so far behind.

Coming into the parlour already shocked by experience and emotionally drained, Elizabeth could survey the scene almost sardonically. The Abbot was there, and Doctor Lewis-the one tall, the other short; one offering spiritual comfort, the other herbal remedies. And in the centre of the scene her mother, who had now lost every male relative except Dorset. The hour that followed was Elizabeth Woodville's and unforgettable. Alternately she paced the room and threw herself down among the rushes on the floor. Her fingers tore distractedly at the fairness of her prematurely greying hair. And all the time she called aloud the names of her young murdered sons, until the whole building seemed to be filled with the torment of her grief. It seemed that Cicely and Ann had tried to comfort her and retreated, inept and frightened, before an anguish beyond their comprehension. Now they were crying quietly for the brothers in a corner. Their relief at Elizabeth's appearance was patent. For Bess, and only Bess, would understand and know what to do.

By forgetting her own grief which ran too deep for frenzy, and emptying herself out in a tide of pity, Elizabeth could help. Both pity and the need of it were utterly sincere. Surely, she thought, cradling her mother's thin shoulders in loving arms, no woman could have been called upon to bear so much. That she might have aggravated fate did not lessen her suffering. "It may not be true," murmured Elizabeth.

"It is true!" cried the Queen Dowager, spurning false-hope. "After my brother Anthony and your brother Grey what else could we expect? I knew it when I let Richard go. It is the very kind of devilry that that Gloucester fiend would do." And standing slim and straight before them she cursed him with the cruellest curse of all. "O G.o.d, if there be any justice, avenge my innocents!" she cried. "And make Richard of Gloucester's only son die too!"

There was something so awesomely prophetic about her that the children huddled, silenced, in their corner. The Abbot came to her reprovingly, holding out as if in expiation the jewelled cross that hung upon his breast. By sharing the burden of her anguish Elizabeth managed to quieten her at last, and Mattie coaxed her, in her exhaustion, to accept a few hours' merciful oblivion by means of the sleeping draught which Doctor Lewis had prepared.

"How did you hear this-terrible thing?" Elizabeth asked him, when at last the Queen Dowager lay quiet on her bed.

"The Countess had a message from milord Stanley and sent me here immediately, fearing some chance rumour or some rougher tongue might be the means of killing the Queen Dowager."

"If grief could have killed her Grace surely it would have done so long ago!" sighed Elizabeth, thinking that it is seldom the women who involve others in their lamentations whom sorrow kills, and herself longing for the ordinary relief of pent-up tears. "But it was very kind," she added, marvelling afresh that the woman who should by rights have been her worst enemy should have sent to help her over some of the worst patches of her life. "We have much to thank you for too, Doctor Lewis. To sleep and to forget is perhaps the greatest mercy of all." She stood for a moment or two looking almost enviously at her mother's quiet form, experiencing something of the relief that even death can bring to a household after days of a loved one's painful breathing. "But not for those who are very young!" her heart cried. "Not for d.i.c.kon, with all the s.h.i.+ning adventure of life before him!"

Turning, she noticed the Abbot's pitiful gaze upon her; but the added reverence in his manner escaped her. "Can we be sure that it is true?" she asked, drawing the bed curtains close and shooing away most of the weeping women before walking slowly with him to the anteroom.

"I think so, Madam," he told her gently.

"But why this time, for certain?" Rebelliously, scarcely noticing what she did, she stopped before a prie-dieu and let her fingers drum upon the open book of devotions which her mother must have been reading when the news came. "There have been so many rumours. My brothers' bodies have been seen floating round in the Thames. They have been sent abroad. The young King was killed and Richard, Duke of York, kept in prison-"

"My dear child! That you should have heard such things!"

Shocked by the fierce hardness of her face, the Benedictine laid a restraining hand upon her arm and Elizabeth relaxed. "Oh, what does it matter what I heard!" she cried. "It is nothing compared with what they must have suffered, my poor lonely loves." She stood by the window, unable to speak, her lovely eyes suffused with tears. But after a while, summoning all the courage of her breed, she made a great effort to be practical. "You are able to go out about London and meet people, Father. What convinces you this time that it is true?" she asked.

After the trying hour he had been through the Abbot was grateful for her composure. Her behaviour, he considered, merited nothing less than the truth. "Margaret, Countess of Richmond, is one of the wisest women I know. And also one of the kindest," he began tentatively.

"The saintly woman with the paragon of a son!" thought Elizabeth, who was growing tired of hearing this.

"Do you suppose she would have sent such tidings to you were she not sure that they were true?"

"Not purposely, of course. But is she so infallible that she could not be mistaken?"

"She would be more likely than most to hear the truth. You must remember that Lord Stanley, her husband, is now Chamberlain of King Richard's household."

"I remember that Lord Stanley was once my father's friend," said Elizabeth bitterly.

The Abbot moved to a side-table and stood absently fingering the red-and-white pieces set out upon a chess-table. "There is also something else which gives colour to the story," he said thoughtfully. "Sir Robert Brackenbury, as you know, succeeded your half-brother as Governor of the Tower."

"And I have always felt that with Sir Robert they must be safe," said Elizabeth, coming to seat herself by the table and giving him her complete attention.

The tall, black-robed churchman whose hospitality had been so sorely tried looked down with real affection at the steady intelligence of her lovely face. Small wonder, he thought, that the late King had loved her so. "Your intuition was probably right, Madam," he said. "And that is, I imagine, the reason why he was relieved of his command."

She was quick to grasp the implication. "Relieved of his command?" she gasped.

"For one night only."

"Was he ill?"

"No."

"How do you know this, Father?"

"That squire Gloucester always keeps about him-John Green, I think he is called-rode back from whatever town the Court had then reached on this northern circuit. Twice he came past Westminster. And I happen to know that each time he went straight to the Governor's lodgings in the Tower. The second time a close-eyed man called James Tyrrell rode with him, and when Green returned this Tyrrell person stayed behind."

There was silence in the Queen Dowager's bedroom and all that broke the quiet of the little anteroom was the low sound of their two absorbed voices and the singing of the birds outside. "What more?" prompted Elizabeth.

"Nothing much perhaps," shrugged the Abbot, "except that Sir Robert Brackenbury rode out of the Tower that evening with baggage for the night and a mere handful of servants. To spend the night with a relative on the other side of the river. I happened to meet him at the end of the bridge and he stopped to tell me so. It seems that he told several other people too, as he came along Thames Street. Which was strange in a busy man who seldom tells any body his business. And he positively loitered over the bridge, almost as if he wanted to be seen by as many people as possible."

"You mean-so that they should know he wasn't in the Tower that night?"

"Yes. Brackenbury is no fool-although he did forget," added the Abbot with a reminiscent smile, "that he had told me not so long ago that he hadn't a relative nearer than Calais!"

Deep in concentration, Elizabeth began pus.h.i.+ng the p.a.w.ns into impossible gambits up and down the squares of the chessboard. "And this man Tyrrell?" she asked.

The Abbot folded his hands noncommittally inside the wide sleeves of his habit. "As to that, I know nothing," he admitted. "Only those within the Tower could tell you, Madam."

"But that night," deduced Elizabeth slowly, "someone must have held the keys."

"It was the eighth day of August," said the Abbot, as if some day it might prove wise to have committed the particular date to memory.

"The eighth of August," murmured Elizabeth. "With wild roses sweet in the hedgerows and dawn glimmering early over the cornfields. Merciful G.o.d, what a night to be young-and die!" Suddenly she pushed aside the disordered chessboard and stood up. Inaction was intolerable. "And Sir Robert is back?" she asked, almost lightly.

"Oh yes. He and I are both supping with the Lord Mayor this evening."

"Then I suppose you could not possibly-"

"No, Madam, for all his humanity, Sir Robert is a soldier who serves with loyalty the hand that pays him." Elizabeth thanked her host none the less warmly for sparing her his time. "I so miss my father that I have need of someone-like yourself-to talk to sometimes," she explained, and would have knelt for his blessing had not her shaking knees betrayed her.

"I shall always be at your Grace's service," he promised; and because there was more than ordinary insistence in the courteous words she looked up questioningly. His eyes were very grave although his lips smiled.

"Your Grace-?" repeated Elizabeth, fumbling for enlightenment. And suddenly, in the midst of her wild confusion of grief, the momentous realization came to her, whipping the blood into her pale cheeks. "If it be true that my brothers are dead," raced her thoughts, "then I am Queen of England."

There was a usurper on the throne and a Lancastrian pretender across the Channel, and there had been much venomous and hypocritical talk about illegitimacy; but neither Gloucester nor the powerful, turncoat barons could alter the true bloodline of royal descent. For years the family of Edward the Fourth had lived and moved, familiar and accepted, about the land, and Elizabeth knew-and in their hearts the people must know-that if his sons died childless, then she, his eldest daughter, must be Queen in her own right.

During some formless s.p.a.ce of time, during which even bereavement ceased to be, Elizabeth Plantagenet stood withdrawn into her own consciousness, absorbing the sense of change in her own status. And as she did so a strange inner warmth sustained her, mingling with her awe and terror, and seeming to invest her with some second, and as yet unfamiliar, personality.

It was only a few minutes before Doctor Lewis came into the anteroom from her mother's bedside. "Madam, I must now entreat you to call your women and take some rest," he said with professional authority of manner.

But Elizabeth did not even hear him. In the light of royal obligation, she was thinking that whatever happened to her now there could be no more daydreaming about lovable young men who were commoners. And trying to realize that only an hour ago she had been nerving herself for an undignified gamin adventure. Well, there would be no need to nerve herself for it now. She wore Edward's difficult inheritance instead of his cast-off clothes, and she would never see either him or Richard any more. If only she could have s.h.i.+elded them with her own body! "Oh, d.i.c.kon, little d.i.c.kon!" cried her heart. "Did they hurt you hideously?"

"Madam, you have been through a great deal with vast fort.i.tude." The doctor had given up speaking to her professionally and was now appealing to her with the ordinary compa.s.sion of a layman. "If there be anything at all that I can do for you-"

Brought back at last by his insistence to awareness of material things, Elizabeth caught sight of her reflection in the Queen Dowager's mirror. The last few tragic hours seemed to have snapped her youth. There were smudges of fatigue beneath her eyes, and their sad stare was set as a Medusa's. Yet she felt that both men were aware of her new-born regality as she answered, and she was glad that the Abbot of Westminster should be there to witness her words. He had been her confessor of late and had probably smiled tolerantly over all her foolish, immature sins. Now he would see something of her adult, naked soul. "There is nothing, I thank you, Doctor Lewis," she said, with a gesture of dismissal. "Except that I would have you tell the Countess of Richmond that I will marry her son if he will come back to England and kill my uncle Richard of Gloucester."

HENRY STAFFORD, DUKE OF Buckingham, first heard the horrible news when the royal party had reached Oxford. He was the greatest and most favoured baron on that northern progress and would not have credited the news for a moment had not his own son brought it. Even while surveying Thomas's concerned face and mud-bespattered clothing he could not bring himself to believe it.

"I honestly considered that a strong man like Gloucester would be best for England," he kept saying, pacing up and down within the privacy of a room which had been lent him in one of the colleges. "'Heaven help the country that is ruled by a child or a weak woman' is a wise old adage. How can this country survive, I asked myself, if she is to be rent much longer by these quarrels for the succession. Nor we ourselves, for that matter. Half the n.o.bility have been wiped out during the wars. I did not want that to happen to you, Thomas, or to our family."

"And so you made that speech in his first Council which moved men to offer him the crown," said Thomas, who had never quite been able to forgive it.

"Yes, and would do it again for the peace of this realm, were I sure Gloucester would keep his word!" declared Buckingham. "For did he not swear to Stanley and to me that no harm should befall those hapless children?"

Thomas unclasped his riding-cloak and threw it wearily across a table. "And now the news is all over London that they are foully murdered," he said flatly, thinking of what must be Elizabeth's torment of mind.

As the splendid Buckingham lowered himself carefully into a chair the thought pa.s.sed through his mind that either he must be getting old or that it took an exceptionally strong man to survive such troubled times. "Does the Woodville woman know?" he asked.

"Yes. They say it nearly killed her. And they say that the grief-stricken Princesses-"

"So much of it is 'they say,'" complained the Duke, whose journey in the new King's company had been so serene and enjoyable until this hot-head bore down upon him with his incredible rumours.

"It is true that I myself saw the Princes standing watching the s.h.i.+ps a few weeks ago," admitted Thomas. "But no one has seen them since."

"And if anything had happened to two defenceless boys in that grim rabbit-warren of a place who could possibly know?" cogitated his father.

"Only the man who did it..."

"And if there has been no murder?"

"The King would know-just the same."

The handsome greying Duke swung round upon him. "Have a care, Thomas!" he warned sharply. "Your implication is treason."

Thomas shrugged and wandered to a dresser to help himself from a dish of fruit. He had been in the saddle since dawn and was ravenous. "Murdered or not, Sir, the King had gone to great trouble to have them both in his care," he pointed out, biting deeply into an apple. "We know that no one else would dare to lay a finger on them-and that no one else would have cause."

"In either case, what can I do?" asked his father, after a silence during which the crunching of the apple had been the only sound.

"You could perhaps ask the King straight out how they fare," suggested his son, more diffidently.

It sounded so easy; but the very fact that it was not magnified suspicion. "There are things one does not ask the King," admitted the man to whose help he owed most. And then, as if to turn his kindly mind from such sinister thoughts, Buckingham smiled quizzically at his son. "I suppose it is for the sake of Bess's beautiful eyes that you have ridden here like a fiend to badger me?" he bantered.