‘I know. I have a friend in York who has told me stories of the Striving between the Roses.’
‘Hard times,’ he said. ‘Hard times.’
A thought struck me. ‘You will remember Richard III’s seizure of the throne after King Edward V died. The disappearance of the Princes in the Tower?’
He nodded. ‘Ah, yes.’
‘When Richard took the throne, rumours were put about that his brother Edward IV’s marriage was invalid.’ I hesitated. ‘And was there not something about King Edward’s own legitimacy?’ I looked at Brother Swann keenly. Giles had been little more than a boy in 1483, but this ancient would already have been a man of almost thirty.
Brother Swann was silent, turning to look into the fire. The wind drew the yellow flames up the chimney with a faint roar. I wondered if he had forgotten me, but then he turned back to me with a smile.
‘That is a matter no one has spoken of for many years. Many years.’
‘I am something of an antiquarian. Like my friend from York. He was telling me about the rumours, about King Edward.’ I felt guilty, lying to the old man, but I wanted to know what he remembered.
Brother Swann smiled. ‘It was an interesting story. How much of it was true no one knows, nor ever will for the King’s father suppressed all talk of it.’
‘Yes, I heard.’
He looked at me. ‘Edward’s mother, Cecily Neville, she made the claim after Edward died. She said in public that Edward IV’s father had not been the late Duke of York, her husband. She said Edward was illegitimate, the son of a liaison she had with an archer, when they were in France during the wars.’
My heart started beating fast.
‘That made a mighty stir,’ the old man said softly. He paused and wrapped his cloak around himself. ‘There is a bitter draught from that window. This wind nearly blew me off my feet on my way here. I remember the gale of 1460…’
I controlled my impatience. ‘Yes, you told me. But you were talking of Cecily Neville -’
‘Ah, yes. Cecily Neville stood up outside St Paul’s – I think it was St Paul’s – and told the world that Edward IV was the offspring of a liaison between her and an archer. A lawyer came up here from London on a case shortly after, he told me all about it.’
‘Do you remember the archer’s name?’
‘Blaybourne. Edward Blaybourne, a Kentish archer.’
The blood was thudding in my ears. ‘What happened to him?’
‘I think he must have been dead by the time of Richard III’s usurpation. The liaison had been forty years before, after all.’ He looked at me seriously. ‘Perhaps he was done away with.’
‘So there was no real evidence for the story?’
‘Not that I know of. As I said, it was hushed up after the Tudors came to the throne. For Henry VII married Edward IV’s daughter, the present King’s mother. There was an Act of Richard’s -’
‘The Titulus Regulus.’
‘You know of that?’ He looked at me with sudden concern. ‘I am not sure we should be talking of such things, even now. I have not thought of it for years.’
‘You must be one of the few who remember it.’
‘Yes. Not many reach eighty-six,’ he said proudly. ‘But it was only rumour, even then.’
I got up suddenly. ‘Sir, I have just remembered something. I was so interested in our talk, I forgot I have an appointment.’
Brother Swann looked disappointed. ‘Must you go so soon?’
‘I fear so.’
‘Well, perhaps I shall see you again. I am often here in the mornings, by Brother Davies’s good fire.’ He looked at me, sudden sadness in his eyes. ‘He indulges me. I know I talk too much and distract people. But you see, sir, all my contemporaries are dead.’
I took his hand, thin and light as a bird’s claw, and pressed it. ‘You have a store of memories to be proud of, brother. Thank you.’ And with that I went out. My head was in a mighty whirl.
Chapter Thirty-eight
I WALKED RAPIDLY BACK through Hull, my head down against the buffeting wind. My mind was racing, making calculations, connections.
So I had been right all along when I hazarded to Barak that Edward IV might have been illegitimate, and Blaybourne his father. But Blaybourne had not been done away with as old Brother Swann surmised; he had survived to write a confession on his deathbed. I remembered those few words I had read, in that rough uneducated hand: ‘This is the true confession of me, Edward Blaybourne, that I make in contemplation of death, that the world may know of my great sin…’ He must have died before 1483, when old Cecily Neville made her announcement, or, as Brother Swann had said, surely she would have produced him as evidence of her claim.
And in the Tower, back in April after the conspiracy was discovered, someone had confessed on the rack to the existence of those papers, but had not known where they were nor who had them. The conspirators’ policy of limiting information to those who needed to know had served them well. Bernard Locke, taken to the Tower, did know that Oldroyd had the papers, but ironically they had feared to torture him because he had connections and because the evidence against him was thin. Meanwhile they had arrested Broderick. My guess was that he did know something about the papers, but they had been unable to get him to talk in York and decided to bring him south.
And what of the other documents in that box? Probably more evidence about Blaybourne, to support his claim. Like the Titulus. And that family tree was a sort of aide-memoire. I asked myself who knew about the Blaybourne story now. The King and the Privy Council would have known for months. When I told Maleverer that Oldroyd had spoken the name Blaybourne before he had died, he had taken it to the Duke of Suffolk. The Duke knew what that name meant. He would have told Maleverer then. That explained his saying that it all went back to Cecily Neville. I remembered the rest of Oldroyd’s words: ‘No child of Henry and Catherine Howard can ever be true heir. She knows.’ I stopped dead in the street. Of course. He meant no child of theirs could be true heir, not because a child of Catherine Howard’s might be Culpeper’s, but because Henry was the grandson of an archer. And when he said, ‘She knows,’ he had meant Jennet Marlin, who had just knocked him off his ladder. ‘This is not about Catherine Howard at all,’ I said aloud.
IN OUR ROOM AT the inn Barak was stumping around; he had abandoned his stick, too soon in my opinion, and was limping around the chamber, wincing as he put his foot to the floor.
‘Be careful,’ I said.
‘It’s all right if I put only a little weight on it!’ He took a step forward, winced again and sat down heavily on the bed. ‘Fuck it!’
‘Jack,’ I said, sitting on my own bed next to his, ‘I have found something out.’
‘What?’ There was irritation in his tone, but when I told him what Brother Swann had told me, and of what I had deduced on the way back, he whistled.
‘Jesu.’ He was silent a moment, letting it all sink in, then he looked at me. ‘So it’s true, the King is truly the grandson of a Kentish archer.’
‘That’s how it looks.’
His eyes were wide. ‘And the King knows – he’ll have known since the existence of these papers came out.’
‘And will have been told I found the papers, and lost them. No wonder he wanted to hurt me at Fulford. And no wonder the rebels were desperate to get those documents, if Blaybourne’s confession is in there.’
‘Yet Bernard Locke wanted Jennet Marlin to destroy them, to save his skin.’
‘Yes. It’s an irony.’
‘But how the hell did that confession get from Blaybourne in Kent, assuming that’s where he went back to, into the hands of the Yorkshire rebels? And if it’s – what – over sixty years old, why only use it now? Why not during the Pilgrimage of Grace five years ago?’