I shook my head. ‘I’ve only been in London since Friday.’
‘Ho! Friday is it? In that case, you surely must have heard about the ’heading o’ the Lord Chamberlain in the Tower.’
‘He wasn’t beheaded,’ I said loudly. ‘He’s awaiting trial.’
The man gave a sort of snorting hiccough which I took to be a laugh. ‘Who told you that fairy story? Them little elves at the bottom o’ the garden? You don’t want to believe everything you hear, y’ know.’
‘And neither do you!’ I could feel my temper rising. Timothy had been right. Once those sorts of lies were disseminated, they quickly took root. ‘You don’t like the Protector?’ I asked in a quieter tone, noting with relief that Amphillis’s boat was still within view. The influx of river traffic was making it difficult to proceed with any speed.
‘Don’t know much about him down here, do we? Barely set eyes on him these past few years. Caught a glimpse or two of him last year, o’ course, when there was all that fuss about him having won back some godforsaken, piddling little town in Scotland. What I say as a good Englishmen is bugger the Scots! Barbarians, all o’ them. No good t’ man nor beast. Same with northerners,’ he added darkly, speaking as a man of the south. ‘Weird, they are. Who knows what goes on up there? And he’s one o’ them. The Duke o’ Gloucester, I mean.’
There seemed to be no argument against such entrenched prejudice, so I held my tongue, concentrating instead on keeping the other boat in sight. I became aware, however, that we and all the smaller vessels on the northern side of the river were being forced closer to the bank as a number of great gilded barges rowed past. And I noted that the leading barge flew the Gloucester standard, while others sported those of the Duke of Buckingham and Lord Howard. But the most worrying aspect was the boatloads of armed men following in their wake. It at once suggested to me, as it most certainly must to others, that the queen dowager was not willingly parting with her younger son. My heart sank. If force were to be the order of the day, Prince Richard would forfeit a great deal of goodwill.
My boatman suddenly rested on his oars.
‘Might as well let ’em go,’ he grunted. ‘It’ll be easier when that lot have landed.’
‘Nonsense!’ I said sharply. ‘Go on, man! Go on!’
But he was not to be shifted, with the inevitable result that, by the time I did disembark at Westminster stairs, Amphillis was nowhere to be seen, having vanished into the crowds that were assembled in front of the sanctuary. I stood still perforce, but even though I was a head taller than most of my neighbours, looking for her was as much use as searching for a needle in a bottle of hay.
I could see that the sanctuary was surrounded by my lord of Gloucester’s men-at-arms. My lord himself, the Duke of Buckingham, Lord Howard and various other exalted personages, whom I failed to recognize, seemed to be locked in a violent altercation with a member of the queen dowager’s household. The lady was obviously proving recalcitrant, refusing to release the little Duke of York without a fight. Indeed, no one could force her to give up the boy without violating the law of sanctuary.
A fat, red-cheeked woman standing next to me yelled out, ‘Leave the child alone! He needs to be with his mother! Don’t you let him go, my dear!’
There was a murmur of agreement from the crowd and other voices, mainly women’s, were raised on Elizabeth’s behalf.
‘What’s he want with the lad, anyway,’ someone else, a man this time, grunted. ‘Seems suspicious to me.’
‘He’ I took to be the Duke of Gloucester, and there was a further mutter of assent, now definitely hostile. I could feel the charge of menace in the air, and began to sweat uncomfortably, as if my affection for the duke made me culpable as well.
As well? Did I then believe that my lord was wrong to wish for the brothers to be together on the eve of the elder’s coronation? Or, deep down, did I believe that Edward V would never be crowned? Did I secretly fear that there was a more sinister motive in removing little Prince Richard from sanctuary? Hastily I suppressed the idea. I had known Duke Richard for years and recognized him as a man of principle and honour. Whatever he did would never be from any ulterior motive.
Something was happening. My lords Gloucester, Buckingham and other dignitaries now withdrew to the nearby building which housed the Star Chamber, while Lord Howard and an old grey-haired man in episcopal robes — identified by the red-cheeked woman as Thomas Bourchier, Archbishop of Canterbury — disappeared in the direction of the abbot’s quarters, presumably to confront the queen dowager herself.
It was at this moment that I spotted Amphillis at the back of the crowd in earnest conversation with another woman whose back was turned towards me. Neither seemed to be interested in the drama unfolding in front of them, nor, I was certain, had Amphillis noticed me. Cautiously, and with bent knees in order to reduce my height, I began to push my way through the crowd. It was a struggle, but I had the advantage of moving in the direction no one else wanted to go, everyone being eager to get nearer the sanctuary rather than further from it. But even so, my passage was necessarily slow, and by the time I found myself close to the door of St Margaret’s church, where I had seen the two women, they had vanished.
Hot, frustrated and angry, I propped myself against the wall, stretched my bent and aching knees and once more looked about me. There was a sudden sibilance, a hissing that ran through the crowd like wind through corn, and I could see that the Archbishop had emerged from the sanctuary, the nine-year-old Duke of York clutching his hand; a small, bewildered and plainly — even from where I was standing — frightened child, his fair hair shining in the morning sun and what looked like tears glistening on his cheeks.
I saw my lord Gloucester go forward to greet his nephew, stooping to take the boy’s hand in his and obviously trying to reassure him that all was welclass="underline" he was being taken to be with his brother in the royal apartments in the Tower. I could hardly imagine that either boy was looking forward with any eagerness to the encounter. They didn’t know each other. The king had been brought up in his own household in faraway Ludlow, on the Welsh marches, while Prince Richard had lived with his mother and ever increasing brood of sisters, all of whom no doubt had made a great pet of him, as women will.
The royal party moved off to the water-stairs and the waiting barges and the crowd began to disperse. In what seemed like only a few minutes, the space in front of the abbey had cleared, and suddenly there was Amphillis again, walking with her companion towards Westminster Gate. The second woman still had her back to me, but there was something familiar about it. I felt sure I had met her before somewhere, but without seeing her face, I couldn’t be certain. Dodging around the street vendors with their trays of hats and spectacles, and keeping a firm grip on the pouch at my waist — Westminster was notorious for the speed and dexterity of its thieves — I tried to catch up with the two women, but they were moving too swiftly. For several moments I lost them as a troop of jugglers and mummers headed into Westminster with a great deal of unnecessary rattling of tambourines and blowing of trumpets in order to announce their arrival. And when I did at last catch sight of Amphillis again, she was alone, munching a pasty at one of the dozens of cook-stalls that proliferate around the gate.
It reminded me that I, too, was hungry, and although it was not yet dinner time, I bought a couple of eel pies which I ate standing up while never taking my eyes from my quarry. At least, that’s what I thought, but between one blink and the next it seemed that she had gone, and there was still no sign of the other woman, either. Disgusted with myself, telling myself that I was getting old and slow, I finished and paid for my meal, bought a cup — well, two cups — of ale from a neighbouring stall and decided there was nothing for it but to return to Baynard’s Castle and see if any more was to be discovered there.