The Burgundian's tale

It seemed to me that I had stood in that room only yesterday, instead of nine years earlier. There was no fire of scented pine logs on the hearth, it was true, but everything else was surely just the same: the table against the wall supporting silver ewers and goblets of the finest Venetian glass; the armchairs with their delicately carved backs, depicting birds and trailing, interwined vine leaves; the tapestries, slightly more faded perhaps, showing Hercules’s fight with Nereus; and the copper chandelier with its scented wax candles, all lit because of the overcast day and the general gloom of the chamber.

But the dark-haired young man (exactly my own age for, according to my mother, we had been born on the selfsame day) who rose to greet me was older and far more careworn than he had been on the occasion of our first meeting. Lines of suffering and sorrow were deeply scored into the thin, olive-skinned face. Sadness lurked behind a smile that had once been sweet and gentle, but which, now, could suddenly transform itself into a kind of rictus grin. Once described by the Countess of Desmond as ‘the handsomest man in the room after the King’, Richard of Gloucester’s good looks had been eroded by the twin evils of great grief for the death of his brother, George of Clarence, and his hatred for those he considered responsible for that death, the Queen’s family, the Woodvilles.

Then, as he came towards me, he smiled again, and this time his whole face lit up. I realized with gratitude that the man I had known and to whom I had sworn lifelong devotion was still there, inside that shell of suspicion and disillusionment that had hardened around him for his own protection.

‘Roger!’ The Duke held out a heavily beringed hand, which I knelt and kissed. He raised me, adding, ‘It’s good to see you once more. Thank you for coming. I know you’re married and a father. And also, rumour has it, a householder. You must tell me how that happened, for you’d never accept any help from me. But first, here’s someone who wants to meet you.’ He turned and beckoned.

A boy, who had been sitting in one of the armchairs, came forward; a tall, smiling, shining — for I can think of no better way to describe him — child of some eleven or twelve years of age.

‘My son, John,’ the Duke said proudly. ‘John, this is Roger Chapman of whom you’ve heard me speak.’

I bowed. ‘My Lord.’

This, I knew, was Duke Richard’s bastard son, born before the Duke’s marriage to his beloved cousin, Anne Neville. There was also a bastard daughter, Katherine, as much the apple of her father’s eye as this bright and lively young man. (I wondered fleetingly about Prince Edward, the Duke’s legitimate heir, who, if everything said of him were true, had inherited his mother’s fragile constitution.)

The boy grinned broadly. ‘My Lord father has been singing your praises, chapman. My cousin, John of Lincoln, insisted on haring off to Bristol just to steal a march and get a glimpse of you before I did. I wanted to go, too, but it wasn’t allowed.’

I addressed the Duke. ‘Your Grace, I suspect all this underserved praise is a ploy, first to get me to London, secondly to ensure I do your bidding now I’m here.’

Duke Richard smiled. ‘You always did have a suspicious mind, my friend. But if you can solve the riddle of a death that will greatly distress my sister, the Dowager Duchess of Burgundy, when she hears of it, I don’t mind what you think of me.’ He gave his son a little push. ‘Off you go, my lad, and make yourself useful to your grandmother if she needs you.’ He ruffled the dark hair so like his own and watched with pride and affection as the Lord John made his courtesy to both of us in turn before quitting the room. ‘One of the lights of my life,’ he said simply as the door closed. ‘Now, come and sit down and tell me all that’s happened to you in these past two years.’

Half an hour later, he knew as much of my life as I had chosen to reveal; and, being an astute, shrewd man, probably much else that I had hoped to conceal.