The Gallows Murders

smoothly.
    'Surely the Crown and its spies at the House of Secrets must know something about the fate of these two Princes?'
    We have combed the records.' Wolsey stopped speaking and looked round the darkening church.
    ‘Your Grace, the door is sealed.' Agrippa, standing at the back, shouted from the darkness. 'No one can hear.'
    The Cardinal leaned forward. "Then listen well, Nephew. I shall tell you about those two princes. They were last seen in the summer of 1484, then they disappeared. The King's illustrious father, after his great victory against the usurper Richard the Third at the battle of Bosworth, came into London and lodged at the Tower. He announced his betrothal to the Prince's sister, Elizabeth, our noble King's illustrious mother: at her insistence, he organised a most thorough search of the Tower and its precincts.'
    'Who was constable under Richard the Third?' Benjamin asked.
    'Sir Robert Brackenbury,' Wolsey replied. ‘But he, too, was killed at the battle of Bosworth and could not be questioned. Now the search organised by the King's father found nothing. The most industrious of his spies, both here and abroad, could elicit little more.' Wolsey paused. He glanced at the King but Henry had his eyes closed. ‘Now, our King's illustrious father and his good wife spent twenty-four years of his reign wondering what had happened to those two Princes. Matters were not helped by a succession of pretenders, the most serious being the Flemish boy Perkin Warbeck. He claimed to be the younger prince Richard. As you know, for a while Warbeck nourished. He was supported by both France and Scotland, who accepted his explanation that he had escaped from the Tower whilst his brother had been murdered. Now Warbeck was captured and executed.'
    ‘Not before he confessed to being a Fleming of low birth,' Henry snarled.
    ‘Precisely,' Wolsey continued, ‘but the mystery still remains. Some say the Princes were murdered by their uncle, Richard the Usurper. Others that they escaped.'
    'Is there any truth in the latter theory?' Benjamin asked.
    ‘We do know,' Wolsey replied, 'that in January 1485, Sir James Tyrrell, one of Richard's henchmen, took three thousand pounds abroad. Some people say that this huge fortune was because Richard allowed his nephew to go abroad to live a life of wealthy but relative anonymity.' Wolsey shrugged his shoulders. ‘But, there again, there are other stories that, on the morning of Bosworth, the usurper Richard was seen in his tent conversing with a young, silver-haired boy whom many thought to be one of the Princes.' 'So they could be alive?' Benjamin asked.
    Tom More doesn't believe that,' Henry declared, squirming in his chair. "He learnt a different story from Cardinal Morton, my father's principal minister. According to him, the three thousand pounds Sir James Tyrrell received in January 1485 was a reward for smothering both Princes in their beds.'
    Wolsey took up the story. 'Sir Thomas More believes that the usurper Richard sent his agent John Greene with orders to the constable to kill the Princes. Brackenbury refused, so Richard dispatched Sir James Tyrrell together with two assassins, Dighton and Greene, into the Tower, where they smothered the Princes and buried them in a secret place.' Wolsey smiled bleakly. (He had little love for Sir Thomas More!) There's no evidence for such a story,' he continued. 'Sir James Tyrrell was arrested by the King's father in 1502 for conspiring with Yorkists abroad. Some say he confessed to the murder of the Princes, but that is more fanciful thinking than fact.'
    The Tower grounds have been searched,' Henry declared. 'No remains were ever found.'
    What about those servants who waited on the Princes?' Benjamin asked.
    'All are long dead.' Wolsey replied. 'And they could tell the King's spies nothing…'
    They are dead! The Princes are dead! They are dead!' Henry pounded his fists on the arm of the chair. He glared at the crucifix as if he expected confirmation from God Himself.
    'My Lord King.' Wolsey turned and bowed. 'I fully agree with you, but where do those seals come from? If the Princes were killed, those seals would have been destroyed. If the Princes escaped, they might well have taken them with them.'
    Henry glared at his first minister, his face mottled with fury.
    ‘Your Grace,' Wolsey whispered, I am as desperate as you are for this villainy to be unmasked.' 'Show them the second letter,' the King growled.
    The Cardinal put