The Devil in Ermine by Isolde Martyn

Author:Isolde Martyn
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: Isolde Martyn
Published: 2013-08-19T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 8

The Royal Council met in Westminster Palace at ten next morning. My cousin and I were hoping to gain their permission to fetch Prince Richard from Westminster Sanctuary. It was crucial that we had possession of both the princes before I made my arguments to Parliament that Gloucester should by right be king. What point in deposing the older prince, if the Queen still held the younger?

It proved to be the stormiest session of the Royal Council that I had ever attended. On the surface of it, nothing could have been more reasonable than my cousin’s suggestion that Prince Richard should attend his brother’s coronation. No one argued with that but we spent an infernal time debating the question of extricating the boy from sanctuary against his mother’s wishes. Richard was determined to send Chancellor Russell to negotiate with Elizabeth, however, he made it quite clear that if that failed, force might be the only way.

At that suggestion, all the bishops puffed up their feathers at the idea of sacrilege, and the old story about St Peter manifesting in person to consecrate the abbey was dredged up. It is incredible that the imagination of some drunken fisherman out on the dusky marshes hundreds of years ago should affect the decisions of grown men in this day, but there it was. It annoyed me so mightily that I made the first of many speeches that were to direct events within the realm. What loosened my tongue was Russell blethering about Elizabeth’s fears as a mother.

‘Womanish fear!’ I exclaimed loudly. ‘Don’t you mean womanish perversity, chancellor?’ I stared down the board at where he sat with the other bishops. ‘I dare swear by my very soul, my lords, that she does not need to fear anything, either for her sons or herself. There is no man here who wants to got to war against women.’ I smiled and added smoothly, ‘Would to God some of her kinsmen were women, and then we should have some peace.

‘However, what does concern me,’ I continued after their chuckles had died down, ‘is that if Russell’s golden eloquence fails to convince her, she may well try to smuggle the child out of the kingdom, and what fools we shall all look then if she succeeds. The little prince will be at the mercy of the King of France or any foreign prince who desires to see our country riven by civil strife once more. I say we should get the child out by any means rather than have him slip through our fingers.’

Russell cleared his throat. ‘Even assuming you may be right in the long term, my lord of Buckingham, nothing will make me change my mind about breaking into the sanctuary.’

‘And do you suppose that I , Lord Chancellor, would dare what no one else has dared? I have no argument against the rights of sanctuary but I’ve never heard of children needing sanctuary. Has this little boy committed any crime? No, of course not.

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