8
The Council meeting. I was not entitled to be present, of course, but Richard made special arrangements for me to be accommodated in a tiny gallery, high in the wall of the room, which had obviously been put in to allow some crafty king to overhear what his Council had to say when he was supposedly somewhere else. The style of the architecture made me think that it was probably the first Edward. Anyway, the point is that from this gallery you could hear and see everything going on below and, unless you really leaned forward and shouted, there was no chance of anyone downstairs spotting your presence.
Buckingham was one of the first to arrive, with old Jocky Howard. Then the Archbishop of York, Rotherham, showed up, thin as a lath, wearing an expression that made you feel he grudged you the air you breathed. Stanley was next. I’d not been able to tie him into the conspiracy, which was a blow bearing in mind his wife’s known links with Morton. He started to tell the others about some nightmare he had had, involving a bore that had razed an elm, but no one was interested.
(Some people will tell you that Stanley was involved in the Hastings conspiracy. This is a lie. He had history rewritten later on in an attempt to prove himself a long-term supporter of Henry Tudor. The truth is that at this point he was backing Richard to the hilt. He always was good at choosing the winning side. Richard was later to make him Constable of England, which he most certainly would not have done if Stanley had already committed overt treason. Richard made his mistakes, but he wasn’t a complete idiot.)
Morton rolled in next. A gross, shifty looking fellow with deep-set eyes, unimpressive to look at but as clever a rogue as has ever been born. It is of course he who, in late years, has devised the method of taxation known as Morton’s Fork. By this, a man who is obviously rich is judged to be well able to afford to cough up for the King. A man who appears to be poor is assumed to have money hidden away somewhere, and so is equally eligible to pay. Hence the expression: ‘Fork off, Morton.’
Hastings arrived. He looked cheerful, and greeted his colleagues as if they all owed him money and were proposing to pay it back immediately with double interest. He started to tell Buckingham what he’d been up to the previous night with Mistress Shore, doubtless trying to make him jealous.
‘It’s getting on the late side,’ said Stanley, interrupting. ‘Must be near on five-and-twenty to nine. Where’s Gloucester? Still abed?’
‘A bit rough,’ Buckingham answered. ‘Too much London ale. Eh?’
One or two of them forced a laugh. Powerful men can always make people chuckle, even when they’re not so much wits as half-wits. Buckingham could have earned a living on any stage. They always need someone to sweep up.
It was after nine before Richard arrived, bringing with him Francis Lovell and Will Catesby. It’s ironic, but a fact, that Catesby had been put on the Council at Hastings’ recommendation. Trust none but theesen, as they say in Yorkshire.
Richard looked poorly. There’s no other word for it. He sat down, but he was restless, uncomfortable, almost squirming in his place. They had just got about half way through the minutes of the last meeting when he stood up, clutching his belly.
‘My lord,’ he said to Morton, ‘you’ve some right good strawberries in your garden at Holborn. Let’s have a mess of them. Nothing like a strawberry to settle the stomach.’ Gloucester knew how to dig. I thought I saw Morton flinch, but if he did it was only for an instant. The man was always a rea the errand.
Richard had no sooner resumed business than he had to halt it again. He was away for a good hour, and when he came back again I could see that he was just about holding himself together. He sat in silence, twisting his rings, his face white. He was so unlike himself that even Hastings realised that something was wrong.
‘Are you ill, Richard?’ he asked.
Gloucester flared up. He was, after all, in quite a bit of pain. He punched the table with his fist.
‘What have they deserved,’ he demanded, ‘that compass and imagine the destruction of me, being so near in blood unto the King, and the Protector of his royal person?’
‘Death,’ said Hastings, as much out of habit, I think, as anything else.
‘Whoever they may be?’
‘Absolutely.’
‘That sorceress, my brother’s wife, and the Shore witch, and others with them, have wrought this on my body.’
He rolled back his left sleeve, and showed the blotches left on his skin by the poison. It was clever of Richard to blame it on sorcery. It’s always very difficult to prove deliberate poisoning. Of course it’s also difficult to prove sorcery, but the point is that you don’t need to bother. The accusation is usually enough.
You could see that Hastings was worried, and for the first time. He’d not exactly made a state secret of the fact that he’d spent the previous night rolling around in Elizabeth Shore’s bed. Buckingham grinned, and winked at him.
‘If they have done this…’ began Hastings.
‘If?’ bawled Richard. ‘If? Bugger the “ifs”! Look at my arm. Look at it, traitor!’
He hammered the table again, and this time the signal worked. The door flew open, and armed men flooded into the room. Roger was in the forefront, with Thomas Howard, James Tyrell, and Rob Percy. I noticed that Roger’s war-hammer accidentally smacked into Stanley’s face, with the result that Stanley ended up under the table, his nose spouting blood, but this was not at all intentional. Not at all.
From where I was sitting it was as good as a play.
‘Hastings, you are arrested,’ said Gloucester. I had never heard his voice grow so cold. ‘I swear I’ll not dine until your head is off.’
I thought that this was a figure of speech, but it wasn’t. Richard had him taken outside and beheaded on a pile of logs, without further ado. Morton and Archbishop Rotherham, being clergymen, could only be locked up, and they were.
This was Richard’s first big mistake. He should have given Hastings a trial, if only for the look of the thing. He should have questioned him in depth, if only to get to the bottom of the conspiracy. He should, moreover, have arranged for Morton to have a tragic accident. I told him all this later, but by then it was too late. He sighed wearily, like a man being nagged by his wife, and made me Acting Head of Yorkist Intelligence.
‘And what’s to stop them trying again?’ asked Anne.
I stared at her, surprised. There was quite a crowd of us gathered in the solar at Baynards Castle, and her loud question turned many heads besides mine.
‘The King will not be a boy forever,’ she went on. ‘He’s a Woodville, through and through, everyone knows that. In a few years he’ll be after his revenge. My lord, he will do to you what his family did to Clarence. What will happen to our son? And your other children?’
Richard looked uncomfortable. He sat twiddling with his rings as he tried to come up with a good answer. The trouble was, he couldn’t think of one. ‘What would you have me do?’
‘Take the crown. It’s the only way to be safe.’
‘Anne is right,’ said Buckingham, loudly. He stood there, tossing his head, as if he wanted to be sure that everyone was watching him. They were. ‘It won’t just be you and your son. If the Woodville shower get back in the saddle it’ll be the whole lot of us.’
‘And what possible pretext can I use to justify such treachery? Tell me that.’