Six of One by JoAnn Spears Page B

femme fatale, was building up into quite an interesting sidebar. I regret to this day that I did not take the opportunity to explore it with her more fully. The story of the Tower Princes fascinated me so much, though, that I let the opportunity pass. I inquired instead about Little Richard.
    “What happened to little Richard?” I asked. How did you extract him from sanctuary?”
    “My fourth husband, the Lord High Constable, was able to help out there. Elizabeth had provided us with the name of the man who was expected to escort Little Richard out of sanctuary and to his brother Edward’s prison cell the next morning. My husband had a henchman who bore a passing resemblance to that escort. We sent our henchman in before the sun was up. What with the dim light and all the excitement, he was able to, with Elizabeth’s connivance, deceive her mother into delivering Little Richard into his hands.”
    “What did you do once you had both boys safely in your custody?” I asked.
    “I entrusted them to the care of an Italian priest, one Father Carbonariis. He had quite the crush on me as well, back in the day, but he was a man of the cloth, so we never pursued it.”
    “You preferred your admirers afar to afire, didn’t you, Margaret?”
    “I wouldn’t say I preferred them that way; quite the opposite, in fact. But I had a job to do, and men are of a lot more use all whipped up than they are basking in afterglow. Father Carbonariis was no exception; he was eager to come to my assistance. He was wealthy and known to be involved in the funding of those mysterious Bristol explorations, so he suited Elizabeth’s purposes as well as mine. He was Italian, and he was departing for a visit to his homeland at that very time. The boys were safely en route to Italy with him before the week was out.”
    “Well, that’s step one achieved in short order,” I said. “Step two?”
    “Step two was to get the boys trained in seamanship. Once Carbonariis got the boys to Italy, he would deliver them into the capable hands of one John Cabot to be apprenticed in the maritime arts.”
    “John Cabot, the famous explorer? The man who first claimed Canada for England?”
    “The very same,” said Margaret.
    I found this all very intriguing. John Cabot was the Anglicized name of the Italian Giovanni Caboto, supposedly assumed when he undertook a voyage funded by King Henry VII. There are those who purport that the man actually was English and born in Bristol—that he only immigrated to Italy temporarily and then returned to England. The plot was getting thick enough to coat the back of a spoon.
    Step three, I guessed aloud, was a witness-protection program of some kind. Margaret Beaufort informed me that I was correct.
    “John Cabot had the simple, but perfect, solution to the problem of the young princes’ false identities. The boys, when they had completed their apprenticeship and arrived in England to set sail from Bristol on their venture, would be introduced as Cabot’s sons.”
    “So the boy King Edward V, missing Tower Prince, was recycled and returned to the historical stage as Sebastian Cabot?”
    “Yes. An appropriate name, don’t you think? Like Saint Sebastian pierced with arrows, the boy was thought to be dead, when, in reality, he was very much alive.”
    “What name did Little Richard assume?”
    “Little Richard became Ludovico; it means ‘famous warrior.’ For all his training in seamanship, Little Richard wanted nothing more than to be a great knight, like those of the Round Table.”
    “And step four?” I asked, more intrigued.
    “Step four was my son, Henry Tudor, wresting the crown of England from Evil King Richard, Elizabeth’s uncle.”
    “At the Battle of Bosworth Field, of course!” I exclaimed. “Evil King Richard was felled, and his crown landed on a hawthorn bush. It was taken up from there and put onto the head of the triumphant Henry Tudor, now officially Henry VII.”
    “You are correct,