"What hope have I in that quarter? Particularly if this be true, since she is King Edward's eldest daughter?" Thomas tossed aside the apple core and strode to his father's side, impelled by love rather than by ambition. "Though there was a time when my hopes rose because you seemed to think our claim through the Beauforts at least as good as Gloucester's," he reminded him with tentative eagerness.

But Buckingham had made up his mind about that long ago.

"It was in order to save this very kind of bloodshed that I forgot that moons.h.i.+ne. Besides," he added, out of his fundamental integrity, "even on the Lancastrian side of the lineage the Countess of Richmond and her son come before us."

Thomas looked down upon him with affection. He knew that his father had loved King Edward and had acted for the best; and how sincerely concerned he was about the two boys. "I suppose it is partly because of Bess that I came," Thomas admitted, following his father's lead in. "But, believe me, Sir, in their shocked bewilderment all London looks to you. You are the most royal of all the barons. And, after all, are not poor Ned and d.i.c.kon your wife's nephews?"

"Yes, poor lads. But with King Richard one does not want to stress the fact that one is so closely related to the Woodvilles."

"Yet to you, I suppose, it must make this thing seem all the more horrible?"

The Duke heaved himself up and fell to pacing the room again. "So horrible that it becomes fantastic," he admitted. "I like the King. On this journey I am always about with him. In many ways-since we are speaking frankly-I find him finer than King Edward. He is just as manly and openhanded, and yet without his brother's lamentable lasciviousness. As everyone knows, his family life is impeccable."

"There is John of Gloucester, his b.a.s.t.a.r.d, who governs Calais. And some girl-child he would have married to the Earl of Huntingdon had she not died."

"Bah! Mere youthful pastimes when he was bored between battles, mending that arm of his," scoffed Buckingham, kicking aside a stool in his path. "I tell you he has always wanted Anne Neville, ever since the Kingmaker brought him up with his own daughters in Warwick Castle. Only consider what trouble he went to to get her!"

"Or the half of dead Warwick's wealth!" muttered Thomas, determined to hear no good of him.

His father did not hear him, but went on arguing out the issue half to himself. "He is capable and courteous. Not able to charm men and women into doing his will, perhaps, like Edward-but cool and cultured and friendly. How am I to believe, while chasing a wild boar with him or laughing with him at table, that he deliberately had murdered the sons of the man whom he so loyally loved and served?"

Because it seemed so impossible to believe, Buckingham felt that he must go straight to the King-to watch him at work, or catch him talking to others, all unaware. In order to look at him with eyes newly opened to this terrible doubt. For surely, if he had just ordered two innocent children to be put to death the hideous guilt of it must be written on his face?

But Richard Plantagenet looked much the same as usual. He was sitting at a table signing some papers with his secretary and one or two of his officers about him, and every now and then he would look up to question something or to give a brief order. And each time he lifted his face it was illumined by the torches stuck in iron sconces on the wall. They showed up everything that was there to be noted. The gentle, almost sad expression, belying ruthless activity and courage. The lines from eye to mouth, so weary for a man of thirty, which must have been etched by physical suffering of which neither friend nor foe had ever heard him complain. Every line of him, decided Buckingham, was a baffling contradiction. The taut body, quite as richly clad yet so much slighter than King Edward's. The slight hunch of the right shoulder, suggesting a clerk rather than a soldier. The long, thin hand holding the pen, which might well have been a monk's, and yet was more strong and supple on a hilt than any swordsman's in England.

How could one a.s.sess him, or be sure?

As if feeling such intentness of gaze upon him, King Richard looked up and smiled-and the case building itself up against him in his friend's mind was knocked endwise. "Why, Henry, you look as if something my cooks concocted has disagreed with you!" he said, handing the last parchment to the Captain of the Guard and rising with brisk relief.

"I wanted to see you-" began Buckingham, clumsily.

The King came and clipped him on the shoulder. "My dear fellow, have I not been visible all day?" he retorted good-humouredly, sending a small page scuttling for some wine.

Laughing sheepishly, the older man pa.s.sed a hand across his forehead and was surprised to find it moist with sweat. "Stupid of me... Too much of your potent Burgundy at dinner, perhaps," he apologized. "But I just wanted to rea.s.sure myself, Richard. You see, if a friend you had always had-was not really there..."

The King quirked a mystified eyebrow at him as if he were mad. "It must have been the Burgundy," he said. "But I hope you are sober enough to take in the gist of something I want you to do for me."

"Work should be good for the whimsies," smiled Buckingham, getting a grip on himself.

"I have always found it so," said Richard, without smiling at all. "And mercifully just now this realm pro vides me with all the work I want."

"What would you have me do, Sir?" asked Buckingham.

Standing gla.s.s in hand, the King came to the point with his usual economy of words. "It is about John Morton, Bishop of Ely, who with the unfortunate Hastings opposed my succession. I want you to make yourself responsible for him. He is an enterprising sort of person, so his-host-must be someone I can trust."

"And so?" prompted Buckingham, shamed by so swift a lesson to his own distrust.

"I am releasing him from the Tower, and, with your permission, sending him under armed escort to your castle at Brecknock. That seems far enough away, in the wilds of Wales. I have just signed the necessary orders." Sipping appreciatively at the good red wine, he nodded towards the table where his writing things were still set out. "But I would like you, if you will, to send with them a letter to your Constable, telling him to have a comfortable room prepared and some books set out for the Bishop's use, and so forth."

"So you are releasing him from the Tower?" said Buckingham, surprised at such clemency.

"Why not? He is a man of unusual ability, one of our coming churchmen, I suspect, and if by some little show of friendliness we can win him over to our side, so much the better. In these times all our best brains ought to be used in the service of the country, not shut up to turn sour. And if you remember, my dear Henry, Stanley opposed me at that Council-meeting, too, and had to be hit on the head with a pike before he came round and saw reason."

"Would you say he has one of the best brains?" enquired Buckingham, who, having upheld Gloucester from the first, resented the pardon and easy favour shown his rival.

"Perhaps not," said Richard tersely. "But he has the most men."

"And you want me, I take it, to use my persuasive powers with Morton as a gentle subst.i.tute for a pikestaff?"

"That was my idea," smiled the King. "You will have all the long winter months shut up there with him, and you and Katherine should find his pithy conversation a G.o.dsend." Buckingham, who was ageing, had been looking forward to a few weeks' peace after such an avalanche of disturbing events, and his royal kinsman grinned at the ill-concealed glumness of his looks. "Or perhaps one does not want for pithy conversations when one happens to be married to a Woodville?" he laughed. "I fancy that is how my brother must have felt when he solaced himself with so many nitwit beauties!"

"Jane Sh.o.r.e is no nitwit," Buckingham reminded him defensively.

"No," agreed Richard. "Otherwise she would scarcely have lost so little time in getting first Hastings and then that odious Dorset to protect her."

"Is Dorset back in England?"

"Yes. Waiting to stir up trouble, no doubt. Had your Woodville wife not told you?"

And so, with Richard's pleasant friendliness fresh in his ears, Buckingham's horror would be lulled. But, again and again, as the days pa.s.sed, he would find himself watching the King's face, seeing it as crafty and secretive; and then suddenly the Plantagenet would smile, and an impression of soldierly straightforwardness would remain. To Buckingham, the Sovereign he had backed with all his considerable standing became an enigma. Uncertainty chafed his days, suspicion kept him awake at night. He lost appet.i.te at meals and accuracy at sport. He would recall pleasant scenes in which his friend, the fourth Edward, was playing with his children, and suddenly rage would surge uncontrollably in him. Remembering the good looks of young Ned and the charm of small d.i.c.kon, he would marvel how any normal person could have the heart to undo the Creator's work and still such animation. There were men, he knew, who seemed to have two personalities. It was as if in some strange way their minds were split in twain and good and evil stood apart, not humanly mixed, in them. Dangerous men, touched by the same supernatural forces which inspired witchcraft, in whose presence one felt beyond one's depth and shuddered. Could this youngest and most able of the great Duke of York's sons possibly be one of them? And if so, wondered Buckingham, was Anne the Queen aware of it? She did not seem to be. But could that be, perhaps, because she was not particularly clever or because she had been accustomed to Gloucester's ways since childhood? The whole idea grew frightening. By the time the royal progress had reached Richard's own city of Gloucester all triumph and enjoyment seemed to have gone from it for Buckingham, in spite of the tumultuous welcome. "I think, by your Grace's leave, I will go home to Brecknock for a while," he said, taking advantage of one of the King's rare moments of leisure.

"We have been working you too hard. Stanley was saying only last night that you were looking queasy. Is that the reason?" asked Richard, all concern at once.

"That-and some urgent affairs on my estate," lied Buckingham.

Why in G.o.d's name, he wondered, could he not bring himself to take his son's advice and startle the truth out of Gloucester by asking straight out, "What have you done with our nephews?" If any man in England had the right to ask, it was he; but the question which had simmered so long in his mind stuck in his throat. And Richard was being so considerate, giving him permission to go-a little coldly, perhaps, supposing him to be peeved because Stanley had been appointed Lord Steward for the coming celebrations in York. "Anne will be joining us at Warwick Castle, which is always home to us, and I had hoped that you would be there to see our boy," he was saying, with the fondness of any proud father. "But perhaps, after all, it is just as well that you should be at Brecknock to keep an eye on Morton. He has the same kind of mind as the Woodville woman, except that when he meddles he has the strength of purpose to carry his schemes through. As well, too, that he is in Wales and she in Westminster," he had added, turning briskly to take cloak and gloves from his body squire, John Green, so as to satisfy the delirious shouting of his own people by riding through the streets again. "Else, being met together and finding some unity of purpose, those two might so ignite each other with their wild ideas as to blow up the whole country!"

AND SO THE MAGNIFICENT Duke of Buckingham set out, his mind already a breeding-place for revolt and lacking only impetus. And on his way to Wales he encountered his kinswoman, Margaret Beaufort. By chance-or so he supposed. And what was more pleasant or natural than that they should sup together? Margaret was as likeable as she was well read, as truly devout as she was wordly wise. Having had three husbands must have helped to make her such good company, he supposed, and even the fact that his rival Thomas Stanley happened to be the current one could put no blight upon a pleasant evening. Certainly it did occur to Buckingham to wonder why she should be travelling on the Bridgnorth road when her husband was bound for York; but women these days had so much liberty, and Margaret was a Plantagenet countess in her own right. The inn was excellent and it was days since Buckingham had enjoyed his supper so much. But inevitably afterwards, when their attendants had withdrawn, the minds of each of them reverted to their young relatives who had disappeared so mysteriously in the Tower.

"I am just come from the King," he said. "He never speaks of them, yet I find it almost too horrible to believe."

"And I am come from London where everybody believes it," said Margaret.

"One sees now why Gloucester was so set upon getting young Richard from sanctuary. Murdering one without the other would have been useless!" mused Buckingham, shuddering at the idea of such deliberate intent. "Did you send and let Stanley know?"

"Yes."

"Yet he does nothing!"

In spite of the urgency in her heart Margaret Beaufort's beautiful ageing face looked serene as ever in the candlelight. "The more reason why we should," she said, avoiding all discussion of her husband's affairs.

"We?" repeated Buckingham, feeling that he was being rushed into something bigger than he had intended. "Of course, if one wanted either to avenge the boys or to profit by their deaths," he added with reluctant generosity, "the Lancastrian succession centres in yourself."

"I am John of Gaunt's nearest living descendant," said Margaret, with a touch of her youthful haughtiness. "But I am getting to be an old woman and I ask nothing more in this world for myself. Only for my son."

And for him, it appeared, she was asking the very utmost-the crown of England.

Of course she had always adored him. In spite of three marriages, Henry of Richmond was her only son-by that Welshman, Edmund Tudor, long since dead in battle. Probably that marriage had been the romance of her brilliant life. The Tudors were people to be reckoned with, else how had Edmund managed to be sired by Henry the Fifth's French widow, who-though a daughter of the proud Valois-had loved her handsome Master of Horse, Owen Tudor, so desperately that she had married him. And probably it was the satisfying success of Margaret's own Tudor marriage that accounted for the way she managed still to be spoken of as Countess of Richmond and spent so much time travelling around by herself to relatives and convents and places of learning that could not possibly interest Lord Stanley. And why was she turning to a mere kinsman like himself for co-operation? "Even Stanley's wife doesn't trust him," thought Buckingham.

Though faced by the goodness of Margaret Beaufort's face, the simple truth did not occur to him. When she began to outline the design for her idolized son, he never supposed her to be merely too scrupulous to draw into such dangerous plans a husband who, although no Edmund Tudor, had never shown her anything but kindness.

"If both those unfortunate boys are dead," she was saying, "there is still Elizabeth."

"Elizabeth? Of course she should be Queen. But I supposed you wanted the crown for Henry Tudor."

Margaret looked pained at his slowness. "My dear Henry, do you suppose the people of England would ever accept him? We may be descended from John of Gaunt, but only through his older children's governess, when she was his mistress."

"He married her afterwards and Richard the Second pa.s.sed a special law to make our ancestors legitimate."

"Which Richard the Third would very soon unmake! He seems to be proving himself a very able ruler, and, murderer or not, most of his subjects like him. That was a very popular move of his, removing the payment of benevolences, for instance. Particularly with the Londoners. To the people of Yorks.h.i.+re and Gloucesters.h.i.+re, of course, he is almost G.o.d. So that even if we could raise enough supporters here and Henry could get s.h.i.+ps from France and all Wales rose for him, the English people would still have none of him. Without Elizabeth. So he must marry Elizabeth."

"How," asked Buckingham, "when her fool of a mother keeps her in sanctuary?"

"I think her mother is no fool there, for if Elizabeth were not in sanctuary you can lay your last groat Gloucester would get her into his hands. Like he had her brothers. And then there would be no way out." Margaret leaned forward across the deserted table to lay a persuasive finger on the Duke's fas.h.i.+onably puffed sleeve. "Listen, cousin," she said softly. "I have in my household a very devoted doctor. A doctor both of divinity and medicine, who served the Tudors and the great Glendowers. He has initiative and discretion-and, like most Welsh people, a creative kind of courage."

"Creative courage?" Buckingham sat back more patiently in his chair, thinking how beautiful was the Countess's voice compared with the nagging shrillness of his wife's.

"He dreams. His dreams are set to music," explained Maragaret, drawing upon something she must have learned years ago in Pembroke Castle when she was youthfully in love. "And when the music of his dreams swells so insistently that it possesses him he has the courage to turn them into practical reality, though it may take a lifetime."

Buckingham began to perceive that he was destined to be the mainspring of those dreams and that they had already begun to materialize. "Then I take it that this invaluable p.a.w.n of yours has already made his first move-to Westminster?"

"Several moves."

"And that the women there know?"

"He attends the Queen Dowager, poor woman. In his medical capacity."

"Very well thought out! And I can well imagine that in her desperate situation the Woodville Queen welcomes any such scheme. But surely Elizabeth herself would resist to the last gasp uniting herself with a Lancastrian?"

"Do not forget what her feelings must be about her beloved brothers," said Margaret. "She has told Doctor Lewis that she will marry my son-on one very natural condition."

"And that is?"

"That when he comes he will avenge them."

"He will need to! For the Plantagenet is not likely to relinquish one foot of English soil save over his own dead body," said Buckingham, remembering the look of Richard's sword hand. For himself, he would have wished the thing done without that condition. It was natural enough, he supposed, and quite inevitable; though it sounded cruel on the lips of Margaret Beaufort. But even good women, when they wanted something for a loved one or saw it as ultimately right, could be more ruthless than men, he had found. Perhaps because they cared more pa.s.sionately.

"I will think upon all that you have said," was all that he would promise. "For the next few months I shall be staying quietly at Brecknock, where the King has put the Bishop of Ely in my care."

Not by so much as the flicker of an eyelid did Margaret betray how prodigally Richard had played into her hands. "A churchman with an extraordinary fine intellect who should go far," was her polite comment. Nor did she think it necessary to explain just how far the prelate would go was dependent upon the success of this Lancastrian plan, since it had originated in his own fertile brain; or that even since his arrival at Brecknock the ubiquitous Lewis had been in touch with him.

Instead, being too wise to goad a half-persuaded man, the Countess was able to settle down to more amusing topics and to part company with her kinsman quite merrily, being certain that the fortunes of her son would be argued in the most favourable of circ.u.mstances by a tongue far more subtle than her own.

And so the long wet winter evenings in Wales were enlivened for the Staffords by their guest, although not at all with the kind of persuasive conversation that the King had hoped. For it was John Morton, who had refused to support his accession, who did most of the persuading. "All these gifts from various towns which he makes such show of refusing-for how long does your Grace imagine Richard of Gloucester will be able to live without them? With the Exchequer as it is he will almost certainly have to revive the hated levying of benevolences," he urged. "And then his popularity with the common man will wane. The people will begin to remember the brilliant Lord Rivers, who did so much for their arts and crafts-and William Hastings, an honest administrator if ever we had one. And now comes this hideous story about the disappearance of the young King and his brother. The news of it is running like wild-fire about the country, your Constable tells me. Gloucester's partisans up in York may still shout for him, but decent people who live within sight of the Tower and who are accustomed to seeing those two delightful boys about will not stomach it."

"We have no definite proof," Buckingham would demur.

"Then why does he not produce them?" his wife, Katherine Woodville, would be sure to shrill. Because she was their aunt it seemed impossible to keep her out of such debates.

And the Bishop would turn back the rich sleeves of his vestments, helping himself with delicate fingers to his host's best wine. "The south would rise to a man for Elizabeth. They love her. Apart from being a very lovable person, she is for them a part of her father, who reigned over them affably for twenty years. And by all accounts this young man, Henry Richmond, is quite as gifted as Gloucester," he urged repeatedly. "Do you not see how such a union must bring an end at last to these interminable Yorkist and Lancastrian struggles which have been wasting the life-blood of the country? How it would give men a sense of permanent security in which this new invention of the printed word could bring enlightenment to all, in which our sailors would be free to compete with Spain and Portugal in exploring the uncharted places of the world, and how our craftsmen would have time to make things of lasting beauty instead of grim instruments of destruction? Can your Grace remain unmoved by the belief that so definite a clinching of this succession argument could promote goodwill and prosperity, creating a kind of golden age?"

"Simply by grafting the red rose upon the white," thrilled Katherine ecstatically.

Her pretty floral imagery left her husband cold, but Morton's more poetic mind was quick to cap it. "And so produce one indisputable, thornless, golden rose," he added.

"A Tudor rose!" agreed Buckingham contemptuously, hating to be coerced in his own castle.

"A son of Elizabeth's by Henry Tudor should be very gifted," her aunt reminded him. And for the sake of that son, as yet unborn, Buckingham found himself able to face the thought of inviting a stranger from abroad to fight a Plantagenet for the crown. "But suppose this paragon offends the people with his foreign ways, wants all the power or sells us to the French in return for Louis of Valois's help?" he asked, raising a few final objections.

"He must be made to take a solemn oath to marry Elizabeth immediately he lands," Morton told him.

"And at least he is no murderer!" said Katherine.

"Even if Richard is a murderer he would never sell a single sod of England!" muttered Buckingham. But the Bishop's silver tongue had beguiled him, and he was soon reaching for a map and pus.h.i.+ng the memory of Richard's smile behind him. "Mercifully Dorset is back and can join forces with the Devon Courtenays to raise the west," he calculated, his voice gathering the old tones of command. "The Bishop of Salisbury, being a Woodville, can, of course, be counted on for Wilts.h.i.+re. Then there is a useful man called Bray who was in the Countess of Richmond's service in the days when she was married to my uncle."

"Sir Reginald Bray is still with her and au fait with our plans," the Bishop told him.

"Then we must send him to sound the men of Kent."

"And it is imperative that we let the Queen Dowager and the Princess know the good news that your Grace is with us," said Morton, finis.h.i.+ng off the wine.

"Doctor Lewis will gladly be our go-between again," declared Katherine. "You see, Henry, how easy it is to pierce the gloom of sanctuary!"

"I see how sensible it was of the King to set a guard about it, though many people called it uncivilized," retorted Buckingham.

And so Elizabeth Woodville was visited again by her favourite physician, and her health improved amazingly. With the threads of a conspiracy once more between her restless fingers she seemed to come to radiant life again. "When Doctor Lewis comes we are always sent to play in some other room," complained her younger daughters, weary of their confinement. But the privileged elder sister whom they envied listened with mixed feelings to the news their visitor brought. She was grateful for the carefully laid plans and her heart beat at thought of the important part she was to play. But her lovely face was no more animated than a piece of wood. "It is unbelievably good of the Countess of Richmond, my kinsman of Buckingham and the Bishop," she said, seeing herself as a p.a.w.n upon the great chessboard of England, being pushed frighteningly forward by the eager hands of two ageing women. She herself had given her word to go forward, swayed by a pa.s.sion of pity for her brothers which cried aloud for vengeance. The same motive, perhaps, which in smaller degree had moved her Uncle Buckingham. But already revenge was growing cold-cold as their poor murdered bodies. Vengeance could not bring them back. All she really wanted was to get out of this suffocating place where one heard things m.u.f.fled at second-hand-to have liberty to see people and ask questions-to search the Tower-to find out for herself what had really happened.

In her desire for freedom Elizabeth even consented to a wild plan whereby she was to be smuggled out of Westminster and join her relatives at Brecknock; but King Richard was better served than she imagined and that night Nesfield doubled the guard. Looking down upon the motionless, watchful figures in the courtyard Elizabeth of York, in her inmost heart, was thankful. No woman could have wanted to marry Henry of Lancaster less.

Yet Morton of Ely must have been right in his estimate of Henry's gifts, for once the names of places and sup porters for the rebellion were sent abroad that young man moved so quickly and efficiently that the King of England had a bare week's warning. Of the shock that it must have been to him to hear that his friend had rebelled against him and that Henry of Lancaster might be landing at any moment, Richard never spoke. And of that bare week he wasted not a moment.

The courier system he had organized in his brother's time with relays of horses every twenty miles along the roads proved invaluable, enabling him to issue far-flung orders and to keep himself informed of the movements of his enemies. As usual he called upon his trusty Yorks.h.i.+re-men, and brought every available man from London. He changed into well-worn armour, marched as only his men could march and took his enemies completely by surprise by setting up his standard at Nottingham, in the very centre of England.

"Where we can all converge and surround him!" laughed Dorset.

But Dorset was one of those men with a charmed life who always laugh too easily.

It was Buckingham who began to do the converging. With perfect timing, during the October week when Henry Tudor had promised to land, he marched a formidable army from Wales, with every promise of success. But Richard, antic.i.p.ating the movement, sent two trusty knights to cut every bridge across the river Severn, and the Almighty abetted him by sending torrential rains. Such floods swamped the Welsh borders that neither man nor horse could live in them, and the peasants whose homes were swept away saw them as a punishment for treachery. "Buckingham's great water" they called that devastation; and even among his stauncher supporters the superst.i.tious laid down their arms.

The Lancastrian came promptly with a fleet lent him by Louis the Eleventh of France; but the same fierce storm drove him back to Brittany, in spite of his manful efforts to land in little, landlocked Lulworth Cove. The rest of the rebels were defeated, and soldiers wearing Richard's cognizance of the white boar seemed to be rounding them up everywhere. Dorset and Morton were the type of men who usually escape, and Richard granted pardon to their soldiery. They had but obeyed orders, he said. For Henry Stafford, Duke of Buckingham, there was no such mercy. He was executed in the market-place of Salisbury. Sold for the sake of the reward by an old servant named Ralph Banister, with whom he had sought shelter.

"Why would you not see him before he died?" asked Anne, the Queen, seeing the bleak look on Richard's face in the midst of so much triumph. "Was it because your heart would have betrayed you into pardoning him?"

"That was not what he wanted. No man who wears the Stafford knot would have come cringing for his life," Richard told her.

"Then why did he beg so hard to speak to you?"

"Probably because he meant to kill me," said Richard lightly. "It seems he had strangled one of his guards to get a dagger."