A Ring of Truth
Mavis Gladstone was on the vacation she had dreamed of all her life, one she planned for more than a decade, the number one item on her bucket list. Her previous holidays (as the English called them) had been limited to places in the U.S. with one trip over the border into Canada. This vacation marked the first time she and her daughter, Lori, crossed the Atlantic.
Lasting three weeks, it was a grand tour of the British Isles: five countries (England, Ireland, Scotland, Wales and Northern Island) and five capitals (London, Dublin, Edinburgh, Cardiff and Belfast). After sightseeing in places such as Plymouth, Glastonbury, Bath, Killarney, Liverpool and York, Mavis and Lori had acquired a number of souvenirs for family members, friends and themselves. Lori bought a purse, a T-shirt, a hat and a number of shot glasses to add to her barware collection while her mother bought mainly books and history magazines.
Sadly, the old adage is true: all good things must come to an end. Two days before the Gladstone women were to take the plane from Heathrow to Newark, New Jersey, their coach stopped in Stratford-upon-Avon. Cameras in hand, the mother and daughter visited Shakespeare's birthplace, Anne Hathaway's cottage and Holy Trinity Church where the bard had been baptized, married and buried.
As they walked down a street that paralleled the Avon, they came to the Waterside UpMarket, which—since it was a bank holiday—was open.
"Oh, look!" Mavis exclaimed. "It's like a giant flea market. We've got time; why don't we have a look and see what they've got?"
Lori, her mother's voice of reason during the entire trip, said, "We don't have much room left in our suitcases."
"Don't worry. I'm not going to buy anything big."
As usual, the older woman was drawn to a selection of used books, like a magnet to steel shavings. Again, Lori had to remind her mother of the lack of space in their luggage.
"It's just a thin book," Mavis protested. "I can put it in my handbag. I have to get it; it's about the Titanic!"
Lori smiled. Her mother had an entire shelf of her bookcase dedicated to books and collector's edition magazines on the sunken luxury liner.
As Mavis continued to browse through the stacks of used books, her daughter walked to the next booth, which featured vintage jewelry. Normally, she would have walked right past the vendor's wares without looking, but since she had to wait for her mother, she perused the selection of necklaces on display. She was examining a Victorian choker when her eyes were drawn to a claddagh ring.
"Find anything?" her mother asked.
"There's a nice claddagh," she replied.
"Why don't you get it?"
"I can probably get one cheaper on Amazon."
"Yes, but it won't be the same as getting one in England," Mavis said, taking her Visa card out of her wallet. "I'll buy it for you."
The vendor reached beneath the counter, took out a jeweler's box and put it in a plastic bag bearing the Union flag.
Lori looked at her watch; it was nearly one o'clock, and they had not eaten since breakfast.
"Why don't we get one last cream tea?" she suggested, craving a scone smothered in clotted cream and jam.
"Sounds good to me," Mavis said, reluctantly walking away from a three-inch-thick, hard-cover book on the life of Mary, Queen of Scots.
* * *
Feeling like Cinderella on the morning after the ball, Mavis and Lori got off the plane in New Jersey, collected their luggage and waited in line to go through customs.
"As much as I loved the trip, part of me is glad to be home," Lori admitted.
"I know what you mean. It'll be nice to sleep in my own bed again."
When the two women were given the green light by the customs agent, Mavis took her cell phone out of her handbag and called the airport shuttle/parking service to give them the gate number where they were to be picked up. In under an hour, they were in their Subaru heading west on Interstate 80 toward home.
After walking into the house with their luggage in tow, Lori headed to her bedroom while her mother went to the laundry room with three weeks' worth of dirty clothes. Only when the first load of laundry was in the washer did Mavis begin unpacking her toiletries, camera, souvenirs, magazines and the travel brochures she picked up in the cities they had visited.
She had momentarily stopped her unpacking to admire the photograph of her and Lori taken at Titanic Belfast, when she heard her daughter complaining.
"What's wrong?" Mavis asked.
"The woman at the flea market in Stratford gave me the wrong ring. Look," she said, showing her mother the open jeweler's box.
"That's definitely not the claddagh you saw," the mother concurred. "Well, you can't very well take it back."
"You mean you wouldn't want to go back to England?" the younger woman teased.
"Not right now," her mother replied with a laugh. "Give me a few days to recharge my energy first."
Lori looked closely at the ring and grimaced.
"It's such an ugly ring. Do you want it?"
"Thanks," her mother said facetiously.
"I'm serious. I won't wear it."
Mavis took the jeweler's box from her daughter and examined the contents. It was a replica of a medieval ring with a dark blue-violet bullet gemstone.
"It isn't the nicest looking piece of jewelry I've ever seen, but I'll keep it as a reminder of our trip."
"Why don't we order Chinese for dinner?" Lori suggested.
"Sounds good. Let me just put the wash in the dryer and another load of laundry into the washing machine, and I'll call it in."
Mavis then put the ring in her dresser drawer and, for the time being, forgot all about it.
* * *
After the dream vacation had faded away into a happy memory and life returned to normal, Mavis found the jeweler's box in her dresser drawer. She opened it, took out the ring and put it on her finger.
It doesn't look that bad once it's on, she thought, holding out her hand to admire the piece of jewelry.
After finishing her housework, she sat down in her reading chair beside the bay window with a cup of coffee and a history magazine she had bought from a WHSmith in Cardiff. Despite the caffeinated beverage, she began to get sleepy.
I must still be suffering from jetlag.
She put the magazine on the windowsill and closed her eyes. In her dream, Mavis sensed she was back in England, although there were no recognizable landmarks to pinpoint her location—nothing except darkness and a heavy fog. There was also a sense of time displacement as though she had traveled back to the past.
Am I in London? the dreamer wondered. Am I wandering the crime-ridden streets of Whitechapel?
It was by no means a farfetched idea since she and Lori had taken a Jack the Ripper walking tour during their vacation.
Suddenly a face appeared in the darkness. Ironically, Mavis was not frightened by the encounter; she was not even surprised.
"You don't look like a killer," she said, assuming she had encountered arguably the most famous murderer in history.
The man's face was pleasant and fairly handsome—although appearances could very well be deceiving. He appeared to be in his late twenties or early thirties. His long hair, which nearly touched his shoulders, was sandy colored and likely to have been blond when he was a child. His eyes, his most attractive feature, were a soft shade of blue. A look of immeasurable sadness clouded his face. With some difficulty, he opened his mouth to speak.
Brrrrrring.
Ripped from her dream world, Mavis took several moments to realize the phone was ringing.
"Hello?"
It was a recording from a company that wanted to sell her a home security system, and she hung up the phone before the message was done.
I suppose there were some advantages to living in Victorian London: there were no telemarketers!
* * *
That night at dinner, after Lori told her mother all about her day at work, Mavis described the bizarre dream.
"At first I thought it was Jack the Ripper coming out of the fog," she said as she sprinkled grated parmesan cheese on her spaghetti. "But when I woke up, I recalled seeing his face when we were in York."
"York?"
"Yes, on a placard announcing a new exhibit at the Yorkshire Museum, one entitled Richard III: Man and Myth."
"You had a dream about Richard III?"
"I believe so. All I saw was a face in the fog, but except for the hair color, the face looked remarkably like Richard's."
"That's the way dreams are, though," Lori observed. "Jack the Ripper can look like Richard III, and your subconscious mind accepts it without question."
"Can you pass the garlic bread?" Mavis asked.
Lori handed her mother the loaf, and the older woman broke off a slice, which she proceeded to dip in the excess spaghetti sauce.
"He looked so sad," she continued her narrative. "I actually felt sorry for him."
"Who? Jack or Richard?"
"You know, I'm not exactly sure. I'll bet a psychiatrist would have a field day with me!"
"I think it's natural you would dream about both those men. The tour we took in Whitechapel must have made quite an impression on you. And then, of course, we were in London when they reburied Richard in Leicester."
"I'm sure you're right. I wonder who I'll dream of next. Henry VIII?"
"Maybe someone a little more current, like Prince William."
Mavis had no dream that night; either that or she did not remember it upon waking up. However, the memory of Richard's face peering at her from the fog still haunted her.
After she was done with her housework, she turned on her laptop and went to amazon.com where she purchased a number of books on the infamous Plantagenet king. Two days later when Lori arrived home from work, she brought the mail in with her.
"You got a package from Amazon," she told her mother.
"Ah, my books are here!"
That's my mom! Lori thought with affection.
Her mother already had a room full of books, many of which she had not read yet. Still, she would rather buy a book than clothes, shoes, handbags, jewelry or any of the other items most women wanted.
"What books did you buy?"
"A couple of biographies of Richard III."
"You're really hooked on the car park king, aren't you?" Lori asked as she set the table for her mother.
"I'm just curious; that's all."
"Well, given your interest in crimes and unsolved mysteries, maybe you'll unravel the greatest mystery in British history: the disappearance of the princes in the Tower."
"According to Shakespeare, Richard is the culprit, but I intend to keep an open mind."
* * *
For the next week, every spare moment she could find, Mavis sat in her reading chair with one of her books and a cup of coffee. As was the case with the Kennedy assassination where some people believed it was a conspiracy while others were convinced Oswald acted alone, opinion varied as to Richard's guilt—although far more people thought he was guilty.
One night when Lori came home from work, she was surprised to find her mother in the chair reading and not in the kitchen cooking.
"Want me to make something for us to eat?" the daughter offered when she saw Mavis's nose buried in her book.
"That won't be necessary. I ordered pizza. It ought to be here in a few minutes."
By the time Lori changed into more comfortable clothes, the food had arrived.
"Have you reached a verdict yet?" she asked as she helped herself to a slice of pepperoni pizza.
"If I were on a jury, I'd have to vote for acquittal."
"Really?" her daughter asked with surprise.
"From what I've read about Richard, the murder of his nephews is completely out of character. Richard was steadfastly loyal to his brother, King Edward. And even though his other brother, George, the Duke of Clarence tried to thwart Richard's marriage to Ann Neville and thus keep the vast Beauchamp estate for himself, Richard grieved when George was later executed for treason."
"Maybe it was all an act."
"It could be, but everything I've read about Richard contradicts what Shakespeare wrote about him. Far from the ruthless villain that the bard paints him, Richard supposedly was a kind and honorable man, a fair and just master, a loving and faithful husband and a devoted father. According to one book I read, he shunned the intrigues and gay life at court, preferring to remain on his estate at Yorkshire."
"You have to keep in mind that Shakespeare lived during the reign of Elizabeth I," Lori pointed out. "It was her grandfather that killed Richard at Bosworth Field, thus enabling the Tudors to come to power."
"Richard did have one enemy, however: his sister-in-law, Elizabeth Woodville. After she married Edward, she used her influence with the king to gain advancement for the ambitious Woodville family. Yet when Edward IV died, his will named Richard the protector and guardian of his two sons: the heir, Edward V, and his younger brother, Richard, Duke of York. The Woodville clan acted quickly. They passed a resolution through the Council to replace Richard's office as protector with a regency council. They also made arrangements for the immediate coronation of young Edward. Richard, however, learned of their plans and intercepted the boy. Both he and, later, his younger brother were housed in the Tower of London where Richard could keep close watch over them."
"And where he could kill them," Lori said.
"Meanwhile," Mavis continued, ignoring her daughter's comment, "it was made public that the late King Edward had entered into a marriage contract with Lady Eleanor Butler before he wed Elizabeth Woodville. This previous contract invalidated the marriage and made Edward's two sons illegitimate and thus unable to rule. Parliament then met and voted in favor of a document petitioning Richard to accept the crown, which he did."
"But if everything was on the up and up, why was it necessary for him to have his nephews killed?"
"We don't know that he did. People have based this assumption on the fact that the princes were often seen playing in the Tower when they were first brought there. Then they seemed to have just disappeared. Oh, there was a confession by James Tyrell, Richard's loyal servant. He claimed to have strangled the boys under Richard's orders although it's believed he confessed only after being tortured."
"But they later found the children's bones buried beneath a staircase in the White Tower."
"There were no DNA tests done on those remains. It's merely assumed that the bones belonged to the princes."
"How many children's bodies do you think were buried in the Tower?" Lori asked logically. "Besides, Richard is the only person who would benefit from the nephews' deaths."
"Not true! The boys were declared bastards, and Richard had already been crowned king, so there was no need to kill them. And we must remember that Richard had loved his brother deeply and probably his nephews as well. Richard's own young son died, followed soon after by his wife. Those boys were all the family he had left."
"But as long as they were alive, there was a chance the Woodvilles or the Lancastrians could rally around them and thus pose a threat to Richard's reign."
"Cui bono?" Mavis argued, quoting Alec Baldwin from The Departed. "Ultimately, who benefited most from the disappearance of the princes?"
"I don't know. If not Richard, then I suppose his successor, Henry Tudor."
"Right! Henry Tudor had a weak claim to the throne through his mother, but his grandfather, Owen Tudor, was nothing but a Welsh squire. His Uncle Jasper Tudor, by the way, who practically raised Henry after his father died, was married to a Woodville."
"Small world."
"Anyway," Mavis continued, "in order to bolster his claim to the throne, Henry Tudor married the princes' sister, Elizabeth of York."
"But she would also have been declared illegitimate."
"Yes, but Henry had the act declaring Edward IV's marriage annulled repealed during his first Parliament. Only when there was no doubt about her legitimacy would he marry Elizabeth of York. Which leads me to wonder how Henry hoped to legitimize his wife without doing the same for her brothers, the princes. If they were no longer considered bastards, they would be the rightful heirs and Henry would have no claim on the throne."
"But Henry was in exile in France when the boys disappeared."
"No one can say for certain what happened to them. We know the Woodvilles wanted to get the boys away from Richard. There may have been a plot against him, forcing the king to send them away in secret."
"Or murder them."
"You seem so sure he's guilty."
"He had the means, the motive and the opportunity. The children were in his care and then were never seen again. You can't deny those basic facts. For all the talk about Richard's loyalty and honor, he was King of England in a time when the general rule was either kill or be killed."
"As I said, the act doesn't seem at all consistent with Richard's character. Henry Tudor is another matter. Richard wasn't the only one in line for the throne. Remember his brother George, the Duke of Clarence? He had a son, Edward Plantagenet, 17th Earl of Warwick, who was only ten years old after Richard was killed at Bosworth Field and Tudor was crowned Henry VII. Because young Warwick posed a threat to Henry's claim to the throne, he was imprisoned in the Tower of London and was later beheaded for treason when it was learned he planned to escape."
"It does make you wonder," Lori admitted. "But I don't suppose anyone will ever really know the truth. Not at this late date."
"It makes me wonder why we study history at all!"
"Maybe I'll read the books when you're done with them."
"Start with this one," Mavis said, handing her daughter a book on the Wars of the Roses. "It was the best one I've read so far."
Lori skimmed through the book, stopping at a full page illustration of a 16th century portrait of Richard III, now housed in London's National Portrait Gallery.
"In this painting, he does look like the forensic reconstruction they did of him. He's wasn't a bad looking man."
Suddenly, she spotted something on the portrait that her mother had missed. She brought the book up closer to her face to get a better look.
"What is it?" Mavis asked.
"Did you see what's in his hand?"
The older woman leaned forward, adjusted her trifocals and gave the picture a cursory glance.
"It's a ring, isn't it?"
"Yes, and it looks a lot like the one we got in Stratford-upon-Avon."
Lori went to her iPad and googled Richard III's ring. She found an enlargement of the portrait, clearly showing the ring Richard was either slipping onto or taking off of the pinkie finger of his right hand.
"From this close-up, it looks exactly like the ring we bought."
"Let me see," Mavis said, reaching for the computer.
She clicked on the accompanying link, which brought her to a website for a company that specialized in historical jewelry.
"Here it is," she said and then read the advertisement. "Richard III medieval ring with a bullet gemstone. Price: eighty-five pounds."
"You got it at a bargain then," Lori said. "You paid only fifteen pounds."
"That was the price for the claddagh ring," her mother reminded her. "In giving us the wrong ring, the woman gypped herself out of seventy pounds."
Neither mother nor daughter knew that the ring in Mavis's possession was not a replica but the actual ring Richard III was known to have worn on his right pinkie, a ring that had somehow come off his finger when he was killed on Bosworth Field on August 22, 1485. It was a ring found more than fifty years ago by a young boy walking his dog across the field and handed down through several family members until it fell in the possession of a vendor at the Waterside UpMarket and was finally purchased by an American who took it home to Pennsylvania.
* * *
After dinner, Lori went to the movies with a group of friends. Having finished another of her books on Richard III, Mavis watched a cake-decorating show on the Food Network. During one of the many commercials, she closed her weary eyes to rest them and promptly fell asleep.
Once again she sensed a change in time, but on this occasion it was not a dark, foggy night, but a clear, sunny day.
The air feels younger, she thought illogically, knowing it was an atmosphere not bombarded with cell phone signals, television and radio broadcasts and other unseen electronic transmissions that traveled through the air in her own time.
Although she did not see him approach, she knew there was someone standing behind her. She turned and, to no surprise, saw Richard III a few feet away from her. There was no doubt as to his identity. His fifteenth century attire was identical to the black and gold outfit he wore in his portrait. The face, while similar to both the painting and the photograph of the three-dimensional forensic head, was much more handsome than either rendering.
"You're Richard, Duke of Gloucester," Mavis said.
"I was, but that was before I became Richard III, King of England."
"Forgive me, Your Majesty."
"No need to apologize, dear lady. It was an honest mistake, and no offense was taken."
Richard seemed so kind, so gentle that Mavis found it impossible to believe he was capable of killing two children, especially the children of his much-loved brother.
As though he had read her mind, Richard announced, "I didn't hurt them. In fact, I would have died to protect them, which is why my brother Edward wanted his son and heir left in my care."
"But if you didn't ...."
Mavis stopped speaking, fearful of incurring the monarch's anger.
"The Woodvilles were desperate to get their hands on the boys. They plotted with some of the guards to smuggle them out of the Tower, but the plot was uncovered before it could be carried out. I moved my nephews to more secure quarters and forbid them to venture out of their rooms, until I could neutralize the threat."
"That was why no one ever saw them playing in the Tower again?"
"Yes. I was going to have them taken to my estate in Yorkshire where they would be safe, but before I could, Henry Tudor landed in England."
Neither of them mentioned the battle at Bosworth Field, but it was obvious to Mavis that Richard was well aware of his own cruel fate.
"Young Edward and Richard were both alive when I left the Tower."
"What happened to them, then?"
"After my death, Henry Tudor became king. He had my niece declared legitimate before he married her, but in so doing he also legitimized her brothers. That meant my older nephew was the rightful king and all that Henry had done to reach the throne would be for naught."
"Henry killed your nephews?"
"Whether it was his hand or one of his followers that did the deed, there is little doubt that Henry was the one to benefit from the boys' deaths. But that was five hundred years ago. I don't suppose it matters now who killed them."
"Don't you want the truth to come out and clear your name?"
"The truth can't bring me back nor can it restore the stolen childhood to my brother's sons."
"What do you want then?" Mavis asked, believing there was a reason Richard had appeared to her in her dream.
"The ring," he replied, his eyes misted with unshed tears.
"Ring? Oh, you mean the replica of the ring my daughter and I got when we were in England?"
"It's not a replica. I had the ring with me when I fell at Bosworth Field. It slipped off my finger as I was being slain. I have waited for five centuries to get it back."
"It's your ring?" she asked with disbelief. "You must have small fingers. It's tight on me."
"It belonged to my wife, Anne. When she died, I removed it from her finger and wore it on my pinkie, even though I could get it down no further than my knuckle. It was all I had left of her, except for my memories."
"Why have you waited all this time to claim it?"
"I was imprisoned under—what do you call it?—a car park."
"Actually, here in America we call it a parking lot."
"When my bones were at last unearthed, my soul was free to search for the ring, and I finally found it."
"How am I to give it back to you? Can I hand it to you in a dream?"
"No. You must put it on my beloved Anne's finger."
"Anne Neville? I don't know where she's buried, but I'm sure it's not here in Pennsylvania."
"The body of my wife lies in Westminster Abbey."
"No one at the Abbey would ever agree to dig up the queen's remains."
"Her body may be in London, but her soul is much closer."
The front door of the Gladstone house slammed shut, and Lori entered the room.
"Were you sleeping?" she asked her mother.
It took Mavis a few moments to get reoriented to the twenty-first century.
"Did you enjoy the movie?" she asked sleepily.
"It was okay, but not one I would watch a second time."
Mavis was about to tell her daughter about her dream, but when she turned to face Lori, she became momentarily dizzy. Once again, she experienced the eerie feeling of a shift in time; however, she was not dreaming on this occasion.
"Are you okay, Mom?" Lori asked, suddenly worried about her mother's health.
"I'm ...."
Her daughter's T-shirt and jeans were momentarily replaced with a fur-trimmed medieval gown, and her hair was pulled back in a jewel-bedecked wimple.
"It's you," Mavis whispered with awe. "It was no mistake that you got the ring."
"What are talking about?"
"Richard's ring."
"You had another dream about Richard III, didn't you?"
"Yes. He told me the ring we got in England belonged to his wife, Anne Neville. He wants me to put it back on her finger."
"You were dreaming. No dead king wants you to go to England and put a ring on what remains of his wife's hand."
"She's not dead—not exactly. She's come back."
"Do you know how crazy that sounds?" Lori asked.
"It's you."
Mavis noticed a look of fright on her daughter's face, and sensed that it was not one of fear for her mother's mental health.
"I don't want to hear any more!"
"You're the reincarnation of Anne Neville."
"Stop it!" the girl shouted. "I won't listen to this insane talk!"
As Lori desperately denied her mother's claims, the temperature in the room dropped drastically. Although Mavis shivered from the cold, it had no effect on her daughter.
Suddenly, the spirit of Richard III materialized in the Gladstone living room.
"The ring," he said, reminding Mavis of what he asked of her.
"What will happen if I place it on her finger? Will she cease to be my daughter? If so, I'll destroy that ring first."
"I know what it's like to lose a child. I would not ask you to suffer as I did. If you put the ring on her finger, her troubled soul will be at rest; and when she eventually dies in fifty or sixty years, she and I will be reunited."
For a brief time, Lori Gladstone and Anne Neville were one.
"Richard!" she cried. "It's been so long!"
"It won't be much longer, my love. You, our son Edward and I will all be together again someday. I promise you."
"I've waited five hundred years," the queen said, her tears flowing freely. "I guess I can wait a little longer."
As Anne Neville and Richard III shared one last embrace, Mavis walked into her bedroom and retrieved the jeweler's box from her dresser drawer. She then returned to the living room, removed the ring from the box and placed it on her daughter's finger.
King Richard and Queen Anne stared into each other's eyes.
"Until we meet again, my beloved," the king said.
Suddenly Richard was gone, and the temperature returned to normal.
"It's warm in here," Lori said. "Do you mind if I put the air conditioner on?"
"No."
"What was I talking about? Oh, right. The movie. It was supposed to be a romantic comedy. The ending was predictable and unrealistic, and it wasn't very funny."
As her daughter went on and on about the film she had seen with her friends, Mavis realized Lori had no recollection of her brief excursion into the world of the supernatural, nor did she have any idea that she was the reincarnation of Anne Neville.
"I'm surprised you were watching television," Lori said. "I thought I'd find you in the chair with your nose in another book about Richard III."
"No. I'm done with those books. I now know everything I want to know about him."
"That he killed the princes in the tower?"
"I'm afraid no one will ever convince me of his guilt."
"That's funny," Lori said, suddenly noticing the ring on her finger. "I don't remember putting this on. In fact, I thought I gave it to you."
"You can have it back. I did buy it for you, after all."
"No, you bought the claddagh for me."
As she looked at the ring on her finger, a sudden smile appeared on Lori's face.
"It's not such an ugly ring, after all. In fact, I think it's beginning to grow on me."
Mavis laid her head back on her chair and smiled. Whatever the next forty or fifty years held in store for her daughter, be it good or bad, eventually she would know eternal love and happiness. What more could a mother want for her child?
One of history's greatest mysteries, the disappearance of the princes in the Tower of London has yet to be solved. This story is based on one theory.
One thing that is not a mystery: I know what happened to the two mice that disappeared from the Tower of London when Salem and I visited it.
