The Murders of Richard III (11 page)

“Bishop Morton was one of Richard's bitterest
enemies. More undoubtedly got some of his information from the old wretch, but…no, I think More wrote it. What does that prove? More may be a saint but he's not canonically infallible. Damn it, it's a terrible book! Full of lies, innuendos, dirty—”

“You people are such masochists,” Jacqueline said. “Why do you read it if it infuriates you so much?”

“I don't know. Maybe it's incredulity; I can't believe an intellectual like More could produce such stuff. He's a master of doublethink. Listen to this:

Thomas's tone italicized the phrases. He added, with mounting indignation, “Pure rumor, in other words. ‘Men say!' And did you get that incredible piece of logic in the last part? If the king had ordered Henry to be killed, he wouldn't have sent his own brother to do the deed; but
men say Richard did it, so therefore it must have been done without Edward's knowledge! The book is full of that sort of thing. Here…”

“You don't have to convince me. I agree with you.”

“Here, where he says…” Thomas put the book down. “If you agree, why are you being so obnoxious about Richard? Want to join the society?”

Jacqueline smiled. She stretched lazily; the long, wide sleeves fell away from her arms. Clasping her hands behind her head, she wriggled down into the chair.

“I'm not being obnoxious, just logical. You can't clear Richard of the boys' death any more than you can convict him. There is no proof. It is incomprehensible to me that any historian can take More's
Richard
seriously; or rather, it would be incomprehensible if I didn't know historians as I—Thomas, you aren't listening.”

“Why don't you come over here and get comfortable?” Thomas suggested.

“I'm very comfortable right here.”

“I'm not.”

Jacqueline lowered her arms and folded her hands primly in her lap. “Finish your drink,” she said in a kindly voice. “No, Thomas, stay right where you are. I refuse to engage in dalliance—if that is the phrase—during an English country
weekend. How conventional! And Percy is probably listening at the door.”

Thomas glanced nervously at the door. He didn't take the suggestion seriously enough to get up and look, but it dampened his ardor. Reaching for his glass, he said in resigned tones, “Well, at least you have an open mind. I still think there is serious doubt about Richard's guilt.”

“You don't really believe Henry the Seventh—”

“Yes, I do. I think that during the summer of 1483 the boys were removed from the Tower to a remote northern castle. That's why we don't hear any more of them in the contemporary annals, which were written by Londoners.”

Enthusiasm made Thomas's eyes shine and his face glow. Jacqueline's eagle eye softened as she watched him, but Thomas was oblivious. He went on, “All the anomalies are resolved by the assumption that Richard was innocent. Sir James Tyrrell did murder the boys—in 1485, at the command of Henry the Seventh, not Richard the Third. Twenty years later, after Tyrrell was safely dead, Henry put out the ‘confession,' altering the facts to fit the assumption of Richard's guilt. He didn't do it very skillfully; the story, as it has come down to us, is inconsistent throughout. But by that time there was no one alive who could or
would challenge Henry's version. Elizabeth Woodville, the boys' mother, was dead—”

“The boys' sister was still alive,” Jacqueline interrupted. “Henry's queen, Elizabeth of York.”

“Henry's queen, and the mother of the heir. What could she do, even if she knew the truth? I've always suspected Elizabeth of York was not the paragon of virtue the Tudor historians described. There is an old story that she took an active part in the conspiracy against Richard, and wrote personally to Henry Tudor promising to marry him if he was successful. She didn't love Henry; she'd never even met him, and by all accounts he was a particularly unlovable character. She wanted revenge—revenge against Richard, who had cast her family down from its high place, and publicly humiliated her by announcing he had no intention of marrying her. I think she was in love with Richard, before he rejected her.
He
was capable of inspiring love; one old woman, who had known him personally, described him as the handsomest man in the room, after his brother Edward—”

Jacqueline stood up.

“You talk about them as if they only died last week,” she said sharply. “It's unnerving, Thomas.”

The room was very still. Only the rustle of rain against the window broke the silence.

“It's only a game, Jacqueline,” Thomas said, after a moment. “An intellectual game, slightly absurd, perhaps, but harmless.”

“Not so harmless. You people are maddening. You sit around debating five-hundred-year-old murders while a mad comedian is in your midst. Have you forgotten what happened to you this morning?”

“No, and I haven't forgotten the letter, either.” Thomas told her of his talk with Weldon. “He's acting damned peculiarly,” he concluded. “I can't figure out what's bugging him.”

“Can't you?”

“Oh, well, he's worried about his precious letter. Nothing else seems to matter to him. I'm more concerned about the jokes. You know Philip is next on the list?”

Jacqueline nodded.

“I just stopped by to visit him.”

“You went to his room?” Thomas sat up. “Really, Jacqueline….”

“You didn't object to my coming here.” A glint of some indefinable emotion warmed Jacqueline's green eyes. “He's on the alert. I hadn't finished knocking before he had the door open and both hands wrapped around my throat. They didn't stay there,” she added thoughtfully.

Thomas decided not to pursue the subject.
“Well, I'm glad he's expecting trouble. Maybe he'll catch the joker.”

“Or vice versa.”

“Stop giving out mysterious hints,” Thomas snapped. “Is there something you want me to do? What can we do? Shall we tackle Sir Richard once more again about the letter?”

“No. I don't think the letter is important now.” Jacqueline drifted toward the door. “I've got to get dressed.”

“What in?” Thomas asked curiously.

“Just a little thing I whipped up.” Jacqueline turned her head and smiled at him over her shoulder. “If I do join the society, Thomas, I'll join the American branch.”

Whereupon she departed, leaving Thomas to ponder this most mysterious hint of all. After some minutes of fruitless cogitation he rang for another whiskey and soda.

Suitably refreshed, he turned to the matter of his costume. He had tried it on before, so he knew its intricacies, which were not many. There were no points to be tied—how the Hades did one tie a point, anyway?—no elaborate ruffs to be adjusted or tights to be smoothed over the legs. The outfit was surprisingly comfortable. Giving his fur-trimmed skirts a tentative kick, Thomas wondered why women were so determined to get into
trousers. Skirts gave a feeling of freedom, a lack of constriction…. He tripped, caught hold of a chair, and untangled his shoe from the hem of the garment. Of course it was rather difficult to
do
anything in skirts. They were suitable only for a leisured progress, a lounging, deliberate pace. The men of the fifteenth century didn't go to war in their elaborate robes. Romans wore the toga only on state occasions.

Meditating on costume, a subject he knew very little about, Thomas draped a heavy gold chain across his shoulders and studied the effect. Very nice. Too bad that men of his generation couldn't wear jewelry; it was a human impulse to like glitter and bright jewels. Only in the last century had men been deprived of their peacock habits and forced into somber blacks and grays. Pepys had gloated over his gold-trimmed cloak; the cavaliers had swaggered in plumes and velvet, in lace collars and crimson satin breeches.

Thomas added another chain, studied his reflection complacently, and went on reassuring himself. Tutankhamen's jewel boxes had bulged. Roman generals wore golden armor. D'Artagnan flaunted the queen's diamond ring and Porthos his embroidered cloak; male dress uniform, even now, sparkled and shone and dazzled the eye with primary colors. Maybe, Thomas thought
musingly, that was what was wrong with the older generation today. Repressing their natural tendencies in order to conform to some neurotic notion of propriety…. Thomas put rings on six of his ten fingers and viewed the posturing image in the mirror with complete satisfaction.

From the shadowy depths the Duke of Clarence looked back at him. Long fair hair flowed from under a gilt coronet. Jewels winked in miniature bursts of color. Velvet smoldered richly; ermined bands stood out like streaks of snow. One ringed hand rested lightly on the hilt of a jeweled dagger.

Thomas felt a small shock. He had not been aware of reaching for the dagger. Odd, how atavistic memories lingered. The hilt had felt right, somehow.

The dagger was a compromise between the sword Thomas secretly yearned to wear and his knowledge that such a weapon would have been inappropriate with court costume. He didn't think the dagger was out of character. The Duke of Clarence had been a sneaky devil, who suffered—with justification—from feelings of persecution.

The first warning bell echoed down the corridor. Thomas adjusted his coronet and smoothed the long flaxen locks that fell to his shoulders. The
wig was the only part of the costume that made him self-conscious, but it would have spoiled the effect to omit it. He turned from the mirror. He had ten more minutes before the next bell, which would summon the committee to cocktails in the drawing room, but he did not linger. This period of time was potentially dangerous, for the guests had to pass along the mazelike corridors. Perhaps Jacqueline had been hinting, in her oblique fashion, that Philip could do with an escort.

Thomas peeked out into the corridor. It was deserted. Picking up his skirts, he went to Philip's room and knocked on the door.

It was not until he felt the prick of a sword point at the base of his throat that he realized Philip might misinterpret his motives.

“Hey,” he croaked, looking down the shining blade at Philip's grim face. “It's only me.”

“Oddly enough, that doesn't reassure me.” Philip stepped back a pace, but the sword remained in position. “Come in, if you like. Sit down over there.”

Walking very lightly, Thomas crossed the room and took the indicated chair. He smiled. “It's only me,” he repeated.

Philip lowered his point. He was wearing a costume similar to the one he had worn the day before, but even more striking. His doublet of black
velvet was trimmed with ermine and had enormous padded sleeves. Across his broad chest hung a heavy chain of silver suns and roses—the Yorkist collar. Black and silver made a somber dress, Hamletian rather than Ricardian; Frank had probably borrowed it from a colleague's theatrical wardrobe. The actor's coloring echoed the cold shades. His silver-gilt hair shone pallidly, and his gray eyes were as hard as the steel of the sword blade.

“I didn't recognize you at first,” he admitted. “Where the hell did you get that wig?”

“Costumer's in London.” Thomas adjusted his coronet, which had slipped sideways. “Don't you like it?”

“Absolutely love it, dear boy,” Philip said viciously.

Thomas leaned back in the chair, but he was not feeling happy. The other man was not merely tense; he was a mass of jangled nerves.

“What are you worried about?” Thomas asked. “The jokes are probably finished. They were easy to arrange when no one was suspicious, but now that we've been alerted to the danger, the unknown can't hope to catch you off guard. You can handle yourself pretty well, even without that sword. And there's no cause for alarm. At worst, just a joke; a little embarrassing, maybe, but…”

His voice died as he saw the other man's eyes.

He could not entirely blame himself. It had been a long time since he had been that young. Maybe he had never been that young; an average bumpkin, with no particular vanities, he had taken the inevitable jokes of his contemporaries with equanimity. But the prickly years of adolescence are always painful. It is a period of mental imbalance; every glance silently criticizes you, every whisper concerns your secret weaknesses.

But, Thomas reminded himself, you grow out of it. You learn, with mingled relief and chagrin, that people are too absorbed in themselves to care much about you; you discover that you are no more and no less comical than any other man. Your doings are just as trivial in the vast web of the universe, and the only way to endure your own insignificance is to laugh at it before the last great joke is played upon you.

This boy had never learned any of these things. He was still a boy, whatever his actual age, and his acquired facade was as smooth and as brittle as an eggshell. He could suffer pain, but he could not endure humiliation.

The moment of communication had been mutual. Philip looked away. He straightened up, lowering his blade. He knew his trade; even
when he was intensely preoccupied his movements were graceful and economical.

“Let's have a drink.”

“I've already had one.”

“So have I. I'm about to have another.”

Sheathing his sword, he crossed to the bureau, took out a bottle, and splashed liquid lavishly into a glass.

“I know it's ill-bred to carry one's own booze,” he said sarcastically, handing the glass to Thomas. “But I'm not an aristocrat by birth, and it unnerves me to have servants popping in and out. Cheers.”