What finally decided it was that the Princes had indeed disappeared. The population of London became increasingly anxious about it, but Duke Henry was never to know by what contrivance they were whisked out of sight, or how close to his own home lay the cause of it. It was enough.
“Brecon is too far from London. Shall I trust your agents? Will you keep me in their confidence?”
The Duke was hooked. He was now in the hands of Tudor’s most dangerous servant.
“Your Grace, I will now confess, I still have communications with the Earl of Richmond. He is as concerned as any honest Englishman for the honour of England.”
Duke Henry suffered agonies of doubt still. It was impossible not to listen to Morton but he needed time to think…
He was almost absolute ruler in the west, he could act now, by joining with Henry Tudor; the quarrel then would be the murdered princes, not his own claims to the throne. He had to decide, he had to move, his mind turned through all the labyrinth John Morton set for him.’
Henry, duke of Buckingham, was sucked into rebellion almost in a dream. Through the raising of musters, calling for support, Margaret Beaufort’s son promising to bring soldiers from Brittany, all slid him into open treason against his best friend. Of one thing he was certain, Richard had killed his nephews, he was therefore unfit to rule and must be removed.
The Duke knew nothing of warfare. His estates and following were a sleeping giant, spread right across England and Wales, but his rebellion was disorganised. His followers were unready and faced by a choice between loyalty and good sense. It took just six weeks to quash the rising and bring the Duke to summary execution. But the consequences for Richard were devastating.
First was a truly huge hole in England’s administration, from the top to the very most local level. Not only had those who followed the Duke now run, but those who were left were not keen to serve their lord’s enemy. Not only that, those who ran went to Margaret Beaufort’s son, Henry Tudor, in Brittany. They made Henry, for the first time, look a serious opponent to King Richard.
A worse problem was this; if Henry Buckingham, the man who put Richard on the throne, believed Richard killed the Princes what man in England would not? The English hated child murder, they hated abuse of guardianship. The Buckingham Rebellion ended English loyalty to Richard, at least in south and central England. It no longer mattered how good a king Richard was. It opened the door to Henry Tudor’s invasion less than two years later.
***
Comment So Far
If there were not to be a second part to this book I’d very much like to answer some questions here and now; but to do it properly requires Part II.
Given Thomas breached the security in the White Tower, and given the success of Morton’s propaganda, without any evidence of murder; why were the Princes not simply killed in their beds? If the corpses were left, perhaps with incriminating evidence, would this not have served Morton and Margaret Beaufort better?
Why did King Louis want the Princes alive and in captivity in France?
And why were there to be doubles substituted? Indeed, why did the Young Gentlemen consent to play such a role?
It goes further:
What became of Thomas?
What became of Prince Richard?
The Tudor vilification of King Richard went on long after he was killed, why did they need to keep placing the blame on him so actively?
A rather profound question is how was Thomas Nandyke able to move between worlds? When I asked this I got no magic answer. I did get a simple answer, but it wasn’t High Magic. Perhaps it wasn’t magic at all and perhaps, one day we will all be able to do it, and know we can do it. If that day ever comes you may reasonably expect a degree of confusion; but ‘reason’ has very little to do with this particular skill.
I hope, in Part II, to answer these questions. I hope you may already think Part I fits the facts. Does it answer some of the puzzles set by the mystery of the Princes’ disappearance? Or the added mystery of the discovery of the bodies found under the stone staircase in the reign of Charles II? Did you know; the distance to the point below the stone stairs where the bodies were found, from the point where Thomas dropped the box, was the same as from a corresponding point above the floor in Hatfield’s Great Hall to the bottom of the well?
***
The Necromancer - PART II
Chapter 31 – Making Ready
I left Thomas in this condition of instability, while I heard his complete story, up until he felt himself trapped in Hades, and at the same time I explored for myself. I could not act, beyond the urgent need to take Prince Richard out of King Louis’ clutches: that is, I could not act until I knew where my course should be.
It isn’t lightly you should meddle with the course of what has been; it alters what is and will be. Of course, this alone makes it rare for any of us to have the chance. I had already intervened, over Prince Richard, but this merely ensured History could be as I knew it: Sir George Buck has it that Perkin Warbeck, who appeared on the European stage in the 1490s, was Prince Richard. By sending him to Circe I had merely retained that possibility.
Now I contemplated something much more radical; the changing of History from what I knew it to be.
If philosophers are right, that there is no such thing as a single-pointed external or objective Reality, it follows there must be an uncountable number of contradictory realities of which we are not aware. We could not be aware of alternate realities precisely because they contradict the reality in which we find ourselves and in which we believe. The whole question is a matter of belief and love.
What keeps us fast within the World we know? It is a combination of the bonds of attachment to those we love and the wish to experience the events and feelings that arise in our lives. There is a large and growing literature on this; psychologists, counsellors and some academics have been exploring life beyond Life for decades, and it appears, before we are born, we agree, with quite a number of people, what the reality of our lives will be. There is just too much for me to suggest further reading, I’ll mention just one book which happens to be on the shelves above my desk as I write; Caroline Myss, ‘Sacred Contracts.’
It is an enormous wrench for anyone to depart from their attachments, what they have made and experienced in life, and, above all, what they believe – even if their ‘sacred contract’ provides for it, for the normal person in a normal life it is just too much. Beyond this, in all humanity, there is a deep and inbuilt fear of anything unknown.
I KNOW the Princes in the Tower disappeared, I know, in 1485, Henry Tudor invaded England and King Richard was killed. I know England did not support the lawful king and chose an unlawful one instead, and all the history that followed. Could I depart from all that into a reality in which it never happened, with all the awful uncertainty of the unknown?
However terrible our history has been, and much of it has been very terrible, I defy anyone to give a simple ‘Yes’ to that question.
For Thomas, none of this history had been. True, he knew of the deaths of King Edward IV and Prince Edward; but for him none of the other deaths which made our history had yet happened. He, at least, might yet be saved from the consequences of his own actions.
I devised a plan.
The first step was to practice a little masonry.
I found it remarkably easy to go to the well in the Great Hall at Hatfield, and to go there while the stone lining was still being constructed. I went there at dead of night with a very narrow beamed torch and certain other tools besides. I went to the northernmost point of the part built lining and started with hammer and chisel to knock out the stones, a cloth between hammer and chisel to deaden the noise. It was easy enough to break the mortar where it was still soft, but an enormous labour to draw out the stones to the height and width of a man. I do not think I could have done it in my normal reality but here will and urgency gave me the strength.
The next step was
paradoxically easier. With my mind I cut out a space in the earth and stone behind the lining; big enough to hold my body, with enough space to spare for movement and work. The debris I sent to the spoil tip created by the builders themselves. That done I rebuilt the lining, using exquisite care to make my mortar, and the wall itself, look as it had looked before.
It was a prodigious labour and by the end of it I was exhausted. The whole work had to be completed between the end of one day and the beginning of the next; but now I could work at my leisure. The new lining had to appear strong enough for normal purposes, but be weak enough that it would give way under the desperate efforts of someone buried alive. This was not something I could test, but I believed it would work.
The next step was to go back to the space behind the well and carve out a tunnel or entrance; in fact, I created three.
The first entrance simply led to another spot in Thomas’ ordinary reality of 1483, at the same time he had left the Bishop’s room in Brecon. I debated, geographically, where it should come out. In the end I opted for the Bishops garden at Ely Palace in Holborn, it had the advantage of allowing Thomas to go wherever he wanted, he could even take ship for Europe, from the Thames, but it had the disadvantage that it had to be constructed only to work one way. I could not run the risk of Legley discovering it by accident.
The next entrance was to the world described by Odysseus, it was a way back to Circe, should Thomas need it.
Of the last entrance I am particularly proud. It was a ‘time- door.’
I had to calculate how much of his recent life Thomas would be able to give up.
It is all very well for people to say, ‘I wish I hadn’t done that, that I had done this: I wish I could have my time over.’ However strong the wish, if you could go back in time, the subconscious mind would take you back to the state of mind you had at the time; you are overwhelmingly likely to repeat the behaviours you did before: that way none of your life is given up. What was needed was some very strong magic to stop this natural process from happening. Even so, go far enough and the subconscious will insist; it simply will not let you give up what you deliberately did.
My calculation was decided by necessity. Edward IV had to die sometime, and there was still a chance to reverse the spell cast against the others. I would have to guide Thomas back to the latest point, before that fateful night at the Tower, when he still had a choice. He had to go to the last time he used the well before the construction of the ‘new place.’
I did not think he would be able to ‘time-travel’ directly. For my scheme to work he must go to the well, knowing it to be full of rubble; he must then push through the wall and find the three entrances I constructed. If he chose the third entrance, and my magic worked, he could then confront his own past. I thought him courageous enough to be buried alive, but was he brave enough to confront that past?
The third entrance contained my best effort to give Thomas the will and ability to do it; containing spells to keep Reality at bay and to stop his subconscious mind scrambling what he now knew
Perhaps this is the only time I ever really practised High Magic, at least with such a high degree of will and wish. The conjuration was one of my own devising which, forgive me, I will not repeat; it would be all too dreadful if people took to reversing their immediate past actions, the consequences for Reality would be devastating. Let me simply reveal it included the use of what I will call a ‘poppet,’ a physical device to act as a ‘virtual memory’ of the wish and purpose of the spell. The power of the subconscious mind, and the tendency to restore what was, could not be overcome by any other means.
The complexity of the third entrance does not end with introducing the present Thomas into his own past. What of the Thomas who was already there? That Thomas had to be moved to another place, out of the way. It needed a stronger suggestion than that practised by Morton; in fact a further step in High Magic, but at least this one was easier.
Here the physical vehicles of virtual memory were two small crosses, ‘programmed’ so Thomas could not ignore them; the first said, ‘Notice me – behind the wall is the way to take,’ the second, placed by the first tunnel behind the wall, ‘Notice me – this is the way to your true Brothers.’
My hope was the younger Thomas would emerge into the garden at Holborn, not having taken the Princes, wondering what had happened to all the lost time. Perhaps the two little crosses would lead him back to a more godly life.
And as to the older Thomas, now back in his previous life? He could dissemble to Morton he had now lost the gift, or he could use the entrances behind the well. He could do anything at all, except, ever again; go to Saint John’s Chapel in the White Tower of the Tower of London.
Such was the hope, but for it to happen the present Thomas had to choose the third entrance, he had to appear in the well and guide his younger self. All that would be needed would be a gesture; either to the cross, or to the wall.
And if all or any of this failed I had, at least, created an escape route from the well; one Thomas could use at any time, and be presented with the three choices.
***
Chapter 32 – The Scheming of King Louis
At the end of Part I of this book I raised some questions and here I would like to answer the first two.
The reason the Princes were not killed in their sleep was because King Louis would not allow it. Why not? The reason is in the answer to the second question. And why did King Louis want the Princes alive and in captivity in France? The short answer is one word, Calais; though it may go much further than that.
After dealing with his enemies in what we now call France, particularly Burgundy and Brittany, Louis turned to ‘the old enemy,’ England. While England held the strong and defended port of Calais, an English king could mount an invasion at any time he liked, even the lazy and luxurious Edward IV had done just this, and had to be bought off by large bribes in 1475.
What was needed was that an English king should give up Calais willingly. There seemed no chance of that, and even if a deranged king were willing, the people of England would not allow it.
First, Louis needed an English king over whom he had secret and complete power, next he needed to arrange events with that king that made the people of England, particularly the nobility, believe there was no choice.
There was no chance of gaining such power over a legitimate, Plantagenet, king. But if the Plantagenets were removed, and a king with no right to the crown was put in their place? And if King Louis had in his prison the son of a former much loved king? Then the new King of England would do anything to keep his crown, especially if that former king’s son were released, quietly, into his hands to be killed: he might even connive to surrender Calais. And after that, if it were revealed what he’d done?
The illegitimate Princes in the Tower presented no threat to the legitimate Richard III, the whole of the nobility, the Church, Parliament, London and the country had unanimously proclaimed Richard above the Princes. It is true many did so out of fear of a queen’s faction, but any idea of the Princes being preferred to Richard is fantasy.
For all Margaret Beaufort’s insane obsession that her son be king, it is equal fantasy that England would prefer Henry Tudor to either of Edward IV’s sons. To dismiss Henry Tudor from the throne of England all King Louis would need to do would be produce either Prince Edward or Prince Richard to the nobility, the Parliament, or the people of England. To turn England into a province of France, therefore, all that was needed was to put Henry Tudor on the throne and keep hold of the Princes.
The willing treason of Morton and Margaret Beaufort made it seem simple. Morton had almost fallen into Louis’ lap, so eager was he to please.
Louis’ only fear was that he might not live long enough to bring this ‘glorious’ victory about. He had suffered from ill health, from a variety of causes, for some time. On the other hand, Edward IV was in glorious health, despite his prodigious and prodigal lifestyle. Louis took
care not to be offended by this; his resentment was well hidden, while the frugality of his own lifestyle was proclaimed a virtue.
I realised Louis XI envied King Edward IV. I think he may have hated him.
Was Louis the inspiration for Morton’s spell against King Edward?
Of course it was a speculation. One of the rules of psychic investigation is to avoid going too far; otherwise facts start to be fitted to imagination, and you fall into the picture instead of staying outside it.
King Louis is not part of what I set out to investigate; but, for all that, there is one impression I have from him,
“Ah, these English! They think themselves above la France.”
He tapped his nose and smiled broadly,
“We shall show them, eh?”
It made me uncomfortable: so, too, did the assurance and competence of ‘Legley.’ It was as if Master Pierre believed England was already bought and sold; and how was it he was so quickly and easily inside Morton’s most secret workings?
In one thing Louis was right, not Richard, not Margaret Beaufort, not even Morton himself saw the threat to England’s future from across the Channel.
***
Chapter 33 – The Young Gentlemen
The first two questions were remarkably easy. The third question, about the Young Gentlemen, was remarkably difficult, frustrating and depressing.
I started with the simplest part of it, their names. In the training of spirit mediums you will often hear it said that finding names can be impossibly difficult; the reasons being that names do not matter to spirit, possibly or sometimes this is true, and that the rate of vibration of spirit, being higher than that of the living, makes the sounding of names too quick to catch accurately. The second reason is more like an excuse; I have known mediums that have no difficulty with precise and accurate facts, including names. I have taught the members of my own circle to find names without thinking. If you can hear conversations you can hear names.