I saw it out of the corner of my eye as I swung again at one of the women — hitting off her mask whose strings had become loosened to reveal the plump, pretty features of Amphillis Hill — but so did Pernelle. With a cry of rage she turned away, leaving me to the frenzied attentions of the others and raised the knife.
I remember yelling ‘No!’ at the top of my voice, but in the event my cry was lost as the chamber door burst open and dozens of armed men in the Gloucester livery poured down the steps, swords and daggers drawn ready, if needs be, for use. After which I have only a hazy recollection of what happened, largely due to the fact that I disgraced myself by fainting yet again and did not recover consciousness until I had been safely conveyed back to Baynard’s Castle.
I came to to find the duke himself — no, the king himself — bending solicitously over me. A cool hand was laid on my brow.
‘I understand I have to thank you once again, Roger, for your services,’ he said, smiling. ‘You see, I was right to put you in charge. You have never failed me yet, even when it means putting your own life in danger. And this time you have also saved the life of a young boy, a very precious thing, and averted a very unpleasant scandal at the beginning of a new reign.’ I noticed that he carefully avoided saying whose reign. ‘So how can I reward you?’
I was in no doubt about that. ‘By just letting me go home, Your Grace,’ I said.
It wasn’t as simple as that, of course. Nothing ever is.
As a reward, I was to be given a place, humble and obscure maybe, but a place nevertheless in Westminster Abbey so that I might witness Richard’s coronation, and afterwards in Westminster Hall for the coronation banquet. As both these events were fixed for Sunday, the sixth of July, it meant that I had to kick my heels in London for almost another two weeks. This enforced delay, however, was alleviated by the discovery that I was being treated like a hero, and that even Timothy Plummer accorded me an uncharacteristic respect.
I did not enquire what was happening to those members of the Sisterhood, those Daughters of Albion, who had been arrested at the church. I’m a coward insomuch as while I uphold the due process of law, I’m reluctant to contemplate its workings, hideous as so many of its punishments are. I did ask if anyone of the Daughters was named Naomi, and when the reply was in the negative, I went so far as to visit Julian Makepeace, making him free of all that had happened and what I had learnt. He was appalled and I have reason to think that he sent Naomi away into the distant countryside for her own safety. But I felt sure that whatever had been between them was finished.
Three days after my ordeal I stood pressed against one wall of the great hall of Baynard’s Castle while a great concourse of nobles, both spiritual and temporal, packed it to capacity and listened to the Duke of Buckingham make the case for offering Richard the crown. And when, finally, the duke himself appeared at the head of the marble staircase, accompanied by his mother (who looked, I may say, far more triumphant than he did) they went wild with enthusiasm, waving their hats in approval and falling to their knees while their spokesmen — the Archbishop of Canterbury and half-a-dozen others — begged my lord, with tears in their eyes, to accept the throne.
He made a little show of reluctance for modesty’s sake, but he would have been a fool to carry it too far. The upshot was that he descended the stairs, mounted his horse, White Surrey, which had been led indoors, and rode off to Westminster Hall where, so I was later informed, he seated himself on the marble chair of the King’s Bench and formally laid claim to the crown as his father’s rightful heir. Again, the acclamation of the crowd was overwhelming. He then sent for Sir John Fogge, a close relative of the Woodvilles and one of his own deadliest enemies, gave him the hand of friendship and appointed him Justice of the Peace for Kent, a gesture of reconciliation which the crowd cheered to the echo. (But over which those of us who knew my lord well shook our heads despairingly. It was the same old story: he was clever, but too often not wise, letting his heart rule his head.) He then rode on to the abbey to make an offering at the shrine of St Edward the Confessor.
On the eve of his coronation, I was among the cheering, excited crowds who watched him ride from the royal apartments of the Tower to Westminster, dressed in blue cloth of gold embroidered all over with golden pineapples and with a purple velvet mantle trimmed with ermine. His seven pages wore white cloth of gold and crimson satin. The overall effect was magnificent. Two things bothered me, however. First, Queen Anne was being carried in a litter, obviously too frail to ride the distance on horseback. Second, the Duke of Buckingham was also wearing blue, blazoned all over with a design of golden cartwheels. There was a similarity between his and the king’s costume that I found vaguely disturbing.
The following day, I was squashed into a corner of the abbey to watch the crowning. (Well ‘watch’ is an exaggeration. I didn’t see much of the actual ceremony from where I stood, but it was described to me by various people afterwards.) And then it was off to Westminster Hall where I, along with hundreds of others, gorged ourselves on enough food to have kept the entire population of Bristol in victuals for a month. Probably longer. I have never, before or since, seen so many varieties of soup, joints of meat, roasted birds, pies, jellies, syllabubs, spiced fruits, nuts, fish — fried, boiled and baked — all crowded together on one table at the same time. As for the wines, I never knew the names of a quarter of them. All I do know is that it took me two whole days and nights to recover.
Then I went home.