The Fate of Princes by Paul Doherty Read Free Book Online

branded with an ‘F’ for forgery; two river pirates to be hanged on the riverbank, their bodies to dangle there for seven turns of the tide; a man who wished to leave sanctuary and abjure the realm; and, finally, a fraudulent relic-seller, who claimed he owned the foreskin of some obscure saint. The court dissolved in laughter when the city official plaintively stated that the fellow had sold the same relic over sixty times. Norfolk bellowed out how this indeed was a miracle for how many foreskins did even a saint have! The man was sentenced to a week in the stocks. Norfolk announced the court was adjourned, rose and went off into a smallchamber. I followed him there. He took off his red robe, fringed with lambswool, replacing it with a velvet gown, and began to bandage his forehead with a piece of white linen.
    ‘Ten kernels of pepper ground in vinegar,’ he muttered. ‘Physicians say it is a sure remedy for headaches.’ He peered at me slyly and I realised he was frightened.
    ‘You look angry, Lovell!’ he snapped. ‘Out with it, man. What is the matter?’
    I angrily questioned him about his visit to the Tower but Norfolk dismissed it as a matter of courtesy. He had rights there as Constable of England; it was his duty to visit the place.
    ‘And Slaughter?’ I asked. ‘Black Will, the Princes’ only servant and gaoler?’
    Norfolk shrugged. ‘I sent Slaughter there,’ he muttered. ‘Because the King ordered it. Someone from my household. Someone who never knew the Princes and could not be suborned. I agreed. He seemed a sensible enough fellow and he was one less mouth to feed in my own household.’ Norfolk suddenly pulled out his dagger and, turning, cut a capon pie which was on a platter on a table behind him.
    ‘Here!’ he said. ‘I have answered your questions. Now eat. It will settle your humours.’
    I accepted, mollified by Norfolk’s generosity, but he must have read the silent accusation in my eyes. Poor, bluff Norfolk. He dismissed the matter of the Princes as of little import, more worried and concerned about the growing restlessness and conspiracies in London and the surrounding shires. I was about to leave when suddenly I remembered Slaughter and made one last request of him. The Duke looked surprised but agreed, saying he would send the information to Crosby Place as soon as it was available.
    After my meeting with Norfolk, I set off forWestminster. If the Princes were missing or dead, then surely their mother, Elizabeth Woodville, would know something about it? The former Queen, on hearing of Richard’s seizure of her elder son at the end of April, had lost her nerve. She broke into great lamentations, bewailing her child’s ruin, her friends’ mischance and her own misfortunes. She immediately took sanctuary in the abbott’s lodging at Westmister, taking with her the nine-year-old Duke of York and her considerable bevy of daughters. Her son by her first marriage, Thomas Grey, Marquis of Dorset, had made a feeble attempt to protect her but quickly lost heart and joined his mother at Westminster. Avaricious as ever, Elizabeth had insisted on taking as many of her possessions as possible, chests, coffers, packs, bundles. Once there, she had squatted like a serving-girl on the rushes, all desolate and despairing. She did not trust her brother-in-law, Richard of Gloucester, loudly cursing him and saying he was dedicated to destroying both her and her blood. Two weeks later, under pressure from the Archbishop of Canterbury, Cardinal Bourchier, and the silent menaces of the Duke of Norfolk, she had given up her younger son, saying with considerable pathetic insight, ‘Farewell, my sweet son. Let me kiss you once more, for only God knows when we shall kiss again.’
    I should have felt sorry for the stupid woman but I always have, and always will, consider her the real cause of all our problems. She had driven a wedge between Edward and his brothers, Richard and George of Clarence, allowed