Joan Wolf by Fool's Masquerade Read Free Book Online Page A

source?” I asked. One thing I had learned from my father was to evaluate the bias of historical sources before coming to any conclusions.
    Lord Leyburn looked at me speculatively. “The History of Richard III by Sir Thomas More.”
    “Sir Thomas More?” I shook my head. “I don’t think one can call into question the integrity of a man like More, my lord.”
    The earl made an abrupt gesture. “Sit down, Valentine.” I sat on a low stone wall and stretched out my legs. Lord Leyburn did the same.
    “Thomas More was brought up in the household of Cardinal Morton, the Archbishop of Canterbury. Morton was the right hand man of Henry the Seventh, the Tudor usurper who defeated Richard at Bosworth Field. Morton was also, and had been for years, Richard’s deadly enemy. There is no doubt that Morton is the one who supplied the information about Richard to his pupil, Thomas More. And the history was never published in More’s lifetime. It was found with his papers after his death. It was not finished. I’ve always thought that More, who was an extremely intelligent man, never finished it because he had begun to doubt the honesty and the value of the material supplied to him by Morton.”
    This was all extremely interesting. “Are there no other sources?” I asked thoughtfully.
    “Nothing chronological. There are, of course, Parliamentary records and decrees, personal letters from the time, the Patent Rolls, things like that.”
    “Things like that can be very informative.”
    He was sitting a little distance from me, staring straight ahead at the town clustered on the next hill. His hands were lightly clenched on a leather riding crop, and the breeze from the moors lightly stirred the raven thickness of his hair.
    “Very informative indeed, to those who care to look with an unbiased eye,” he said, and his dark eyes turned to me. “What do you know of Richard the Third, Valentine?”
    “That he murdered his nephews, the little princes in the tower,” I answered promptly.
    “And why would he do that, do you think? Richard had already been crowned king and widely accepted by the country.”
    “Because the princes were the sons of Edward the Fourth and Richard was only the former king’s younger brother. They had a better right to the throne than he.”
    “So did the boy’s five sisters. And his brother George’s son and daughter. In getting rid of the boys he would only be scratching the surface of the York heirs who supposedly stood between him and the throne.”
    I narrowed my eyes and stared at the stone walls of the ruined castle. “What happened to the other heirs?” I asked finally.
    “You have a beautiful mind, Valentine,” he said. “When Richard died, they were all alive and prospering.”
    “When Richard died,” I repeated. “What happened to them after he died?”
    “Henry took immediate steps to secure the persons of all of the heirs and kept them in close seclusion until he could get rid of them with a minimum of fuss.”
    “My, my, my.” I looked at him. “No one ever claimed Henry the Seventh was a pleasant man,” I remarked.
    “He was more than unpleasant. He was the murdering bastard who had the princes killed,” the earl said, and proceeded to set forth the evidence.
    “But these are facts,” I said when he had finished.’ ‘What you have just told me is there, in black and white, in the records of the time. Why has no one made this known?”
    “Because most historians look only for what they want to find, not for what is there.”
    “I think it is outrageous,” I said indignantly.
    A little of the grimness softened from his face. “Ned thinks it’s mad to get worked up over someone who has been dead four hundred years.”
    “The truth is never mad.” I had learned that from my father. “And injustice, no matter how old it might be, is never tolerable. Why, they’ve stolen his good name.”
    He looked at me, and his face was transformed by a sudden blazing smile.