The Secret in the Tower

The Tower in the title is the Tower of London where the two princes are supposed to have been murdered by Richard III.  This story takes a slightly different tack,  as Jack Broom, who lives an uncertain life with Old Ma Cobb helping with her apothecary but has a desire to become a surgeon, resembles one of the Princes to the extent that he becomes involved in a plot to spirit Dickon away from the Tower and England, to save him from being killed by Henry Tudor after the Battle of Bosworth Field.

This is an exciting story which tells well the complicated background of the England of Richard III, but because of the lack of evidence of the fate of the two princes Andrew Beattie has taken a different route in which Edward the elder of the two princes has already died and Dickon, (Richard), lies languishing in the Tower very unwell.  Jack is brought in by his friend Alice, aka Lady Alice Grey, to use his limited knowledge to help cure the young prince, and subsequently Dickon is spirited abroad.   Jack turns out to have been his twin brother taken from his mother Elizabeth Woodville at birth because her mother thought twins were of the devil.

Up to the point where Jack Broom meets his supposed mother, Lady Elizabeth Woodville who is living in seclusion in a convent, the story has real credibility but I fear loses that in the supposed encounter between the two. The adventures up to that point have real excitement and possibility, but that does stretch the story too far, maybe it would have been better to make Jack an illegitimate child of King Edward?  Dr. Argentine appears to have been a real figure, and Jack’s desire to become a surgeon makes him an interesting character.  One of the Princes may of course have been spirited away and turned up again as there were several imposters purporting to be one of them.   It is always a difficult line to tread when writing historical fiction which uses real historical figures to invent scenarios, and of course in this instant so little is known about the fate of the Princes in the Tower it was quite easy to do so, but in this instance less would have been better.