Walter was a strong hulk of a man who was used to trundling his cart over the drawbridge and through the imposing entrance gate of the Tower of London, with the rotting heads of traitors looking down at him from the stakes on to which they had been thrust.
Walter regularly ferried provisions to the house of the Constable of the Tower, who since King Henry’s victory at the Battle of Bosworth in August 1485 was Sir John Vere, Earl of Oxford. Sir John was one of the highest-ranked men in the land, and was not often in residence at the Tower, but today, the 10th of January 1486, was an exception. Sir John welcomed Walter in person.
Walter was expecting this, because he had been visited late in the evening some weeks previously by a messenger from the Tower. Walter had followed his instructions to the letter, although he had no idea why he was been being asked to do what he was now doing.
It was a long-standing tradition that the Constable of the Tower was entitled to any horse, pig or sheep that fell into the Thames from London Bridge. One of Walter’s tasks, as a servant of the Tower, was to keep watch for any such incident and recover the body whether dead or alive, but usually the former. Fresh meat was always welcome at the Tower, which had many mouths to feed.
As Walter was well aware it was not only stray animals that occasionally fell from the bridge but people. They might be victims of violence or merely unfortunates who had missed their footing for one reason or another. It was the bodies of two such individuals, covered by a thick cloth, that were now in Walter’s cart as he made his way to the Constable’s house.
“Your timing could not have been better”, said Sir John when the two men were able to talk without fear of being overheard. “I was getting worried that it might be too late to do what I intend.”
“May I ask what that is, Sire?” Walter asked.
“I have to insist that you carry out my instructions in absolute secrecy”, said Sir John. “Not a word of this to anyone. I am about to show you something that very few people have seen and even fewer have suspected. Follow me”.
So saying, Sir John led the way to a room on the upper floor of the house. He pushed the door open a fraction and invited Walter to peer through the gap. Walter could see two young men playing chess. “Should I know these fellows?” Walter asked.
“You should not,” said Sir John, “because everyone believes them to have been dead for at least a year. They are the former King Edward V and his brother Richard.”
“I don’t understand”, said Walter.
“I am King Henry’s man to the core”, said Sir John, gently closing the door. “I fought for him at Bosworth and would gladly do so again on any battlefield in England or abroad. But he is now asking me to do something that I simply cannot do.”
Sir John ushered Walter back down the stairs to the main room of the house and sat him down with a glass of mead as he explained the situation further.
“As you might or might not know” he said, “King Richard seized the throne from his nephew, the late King Edward’s son, and sent young Edward and his brother Richard here, where they were placed in the care of my predecessor, who was killed at Bosworth. King Richard claimed that the boys were bastards, because their parents’ marriage was invalid. With that claim enshrined in law, his path to the throne was assured.
“However, King Richard died at Bosworth and Henry is now the King. In order to bring the warring Houses of York and Lancaster together, Henry has proposed marriage to Elizabeth, the sister of the two young men you saw upstairs.”
“The bastards, as you called them?”
“Exactly”, said Sir John. “And if they are bastards, Elizabeth, who very soon will become Queen of England, is also officially a bastard.”
“She can’t like that much.”
“Indeed so. And what is to stop her asking her new husband, the most powerful man in the land, to undo the attainder that declares her so? Should that happen, then the boys also become legitimate and their claims to be the rightful King and heir become valid once more.”
“Does that matter, if Henry has the throne anyway?”
“It does if you are Henry! What would happen if the boys were to escape from the Tower? It would not be long before a new rebellion was under way, based on the fact that King Edward’s legitimate heirs were alive and well.”
“So why are you telling me all this now?” Walter asked.
“Because Henry wants to do now what he has told everyone else that King Richard did years ago, namely murder the Princes. I now have my orders to do precisely that.”
Walter suddenly got wind of what Sir John had in mind. He stood up and glared angrily at Sir John.
“No!” he shouted. “I won’t do it. You can’t make me. I’m not a murderer. I know I have the strength to strangle two young men with my bare hands, but I don’t have the heart or soul for such an evil deed.”
“Calm yourself,” said Sir John, pouring Walter a fresh glass of mead. “That’s not what I mean at all. I have absolutely no intention of killing the Princes, because I also have a heart. Your task is to help them escape. Show me what you have in your cart.”
Walter took Sir John outside and showed him the bodies of two drowned young men, of roughly the same ages as the Princes upstairs.
“Perfect”, said Sir John. “At least they will get a decent burial, as opposed to floating down the river and being eaten by the fish. Please help me carry them to where their coffins are waiting.
“We won’t nail the lids down just yet, just in case King Henry sends a spy to check that the job has been done. The only person who really knows what the Princes look like is their sister, and she has long believed them to be dead. I’ll put the Princes’ rings on their fingers, which should be enough to convince anyone else.”
Sir John then went upstairs and brought the Princes down with him. He asked them to take off their outer clothes as well as their rings. When they realized that this was all being done in order to save their lives, they did so without much protest. They then climbed aboard Walter’s cart and were covered by the same cloth that had previously covered the corpses.
“What will happen to them now?” Walter asked Sir John, making sure that the boys couldn’t overhear.
“Take them to All Hallows Church”, said Sir John. “A priest will meet you and take the boys into his care. I have arranged for them to be taken to a monastery in Suffolk where they will be accepted as novices and may in time be accepted into the order.”
“Not quite the same as being royal princes”, said Walter.
“It’s a very wealthy monastery”, said Sir John. “Believe me, they’ll live like princes all right, with a few prayers thrown in, and they’ll have a much safer life than that lived by real kings and princes”.
“But how do I get them out?” Walter asked. “I always arrive with a full cart and leave with an empty one. Won’t having a load in the cart on the way out make somebody ask a few awkward questions?”
“Leave that to me”, said Sir John.
Before Walter had reached the gate, Sir John had called out “Guards! Guards! Prisoner escaping!”, while pointing in the opposite direction to where Walter was heading. It did the trick perfectly.
© John Welford
