Richard’s gaze does not leave my eyes. ‘This is a grave allegation against a queen.’
‘I make it only to you, in private,’ I say. ‘I would never publicly accuse the queen. We all saw what happened to George who publicly accused her.’
‘George was guilty of treason against the king,’ Richard reminds me. ‘There was no doubt of his guilt. He spoke treason to me, I heard him, myself. He took money from France, he plotted a new rebellion.’
‘There is no doubt of his guilt but he had always been forgiven before,’ I say. ‘Edward on his own would never have taken George to trial. You know it was on the advice of the queen. When your own mother went to beg for clemency she said it was the queen who insisted that George be put to death. The queen saw George as a danger to her rule, she would not let him accuse her. He named her as a murderer and to silence him she had him killed. It was not about a rebellion against the king, it was about his enmity to Her.’
Richard cannot deny this. ‘And your fear?’ he asks quietly.
‘Isabel told me of the queen’s jewellery case, and two names written in blood, that she keeps inside an enamel box.’
He nods.
‘Isabel believed that it was our names: hers and mine. She believed that the queen would kill us both to avenge her father and her brother that were killed by our father.’ I take his hands. ‘Richard, I am sure that the queen will have me killed. I don’t know how she will do it, whether by poison or something that looks like an accident, or some passing violence on the street. But I am sure she will contrive my death, and I am very afraid.’
‘Isabel was poisoned at Warwick,’ he says. ‘She was far from London, and it didn’t save her.’
‘I know. But I think I would be safer at Middleham than right here, where she sees me at court, where you rival her in Edward’s affections, where I remind her of my father every time I walk into her rooms.’
He hesitates.
‘You yourself warned me not to eat the food that came from the queen’s kitchen,’ I remind him. ‘Before George was arrested. Before she pressed for his death. You warned me yourself.’
Richard’s face is very grave. ‘I did,’ he says. ‘I thought you were in danger then, and I think you are in danger now. I agree with you that we should go to Middleham and I think we should stay away from court. I have much to do in the North, Edward has given me all of George’s Yorkshire lands for my own. We will leave London and we will only come to court when we have to.’
‘And your mother?’ I ask, knowing that she too will never forgive the queen for the death of George.
He shakes his head. ‘She speaks treason, she says that Edward should never have taken the throne if he was going to make such a woman his queen. She calls Elizabeth a witch like her mother. She is going to leave London and live at Fotheringhay. She too dares not stay here.’
‘We will be northerners,’ I say, imagining the life we shall lead, far from the court, far from the constant fear, far from the edgy brittle amusement and entertainment that always now seems like a veneer over the manoeuvrings and plottings of the queen and her brothers and sisters. This court has lost its innocence; it is no longer joyful. This is a court of killers and I shall be glad to put miles and miles between them and me.
MIDDLEHAM CASTLE, YORKSHIRE, SUMMER 1482
We do not live at peace, as I hoped; for the king commands Richard to lead the armies of England against the Scots, and when the treaty between Scotland and England breaks down, and Anthony Woodville finds himself without his promised Scottish royal bride, it falls to Richard to lead the Rivers’ revenge: taking a small English force, mostly our northerners, to victory, winning the town of Berwick and entering Edinburgh itself. It is a great victory; but even this does not persuade the court that Richard is a great soldier and worthy heir to his father. Within the month we hear that the Rivers are complaining at court that he should have gone further, and won more.
I hear Elizabeth’s whispered counsel in this, and I grit my teeth. If she can persuade her husband to call this victory against the Scots a treasonous failure, then they will summon Richard to London to answer for it. The last royal brother accused of treason had a trial without a defence and choked away his life in a vat of the queen’s favourite wine.
To comfort myself, I go to the schoolroom and sit at the back while the children wade through their Latin grammars, reciting the verbs that were taught to Isabel and me so long ago in the schoolroom at Calais. I can almost hear Isabel’s voice, even now, and her triumphant crow when she gets through them without making a mistake. My boy Edward is nine years old, seated beside him is Isabel’s daughter, Margaret, nine this year, and beside her is her brother Edward, who we all call Teddy, just seven.
Their tutor breaks off and says they can stop work for a little while to greet me and the three of them gather round my chair. Margaret leans against me and I put my arm around her and look at the two handsome boys. I know that these may be all the children I ever have. I am only twenty-six years old, I should be ready to bear half a dozen more children, but they never seem to come, and nobody, not the physicians, the midwives nor the priest, can tell me why not. In the absence of any others, these three are my children, and Margaret, who is as pretty and as passionate as her mother, is my darling and the only daughter I expect to raise.
‘Are you all right, Lady Mother?’ she asks sweetly.
‘I am,’ I say, brushing her unruly brown hair out of her eyes.
‘Can we play at being at court?’ she asks. ‘Will you pretend to be queen and we can be presented to you?’
The return of the game that I used to play with my sister is too poignant for me today. ‘Not this morning,’ I say. ‘And anyway, perhaps you don’t need to practise. Perhaps you children won’t go to court. Perhaps you will live like your father does: as a great lord on his lands, free of court and far from the queen.’
‘Won’t we have to go to court for Christmas?’ Edward asks me with a worried frown on his little face. ‘I thought that Father said that we would all three have to go to court for Christmas this year?’
‘No,’ I promise myself. ‘Your father and I will go if the king commands it; but you three will stay safe here, at Middleham.’
WESTMINSTER PALACE, LONDON, WINTER 1482–3
‘We had no choice,’ Richard says to me as we pause before the royal presence chamber. ‘We had to come for the Christmas feast. It is bad enough that you left the children behind. It looks like you don’t trust them in London.’
‘I don’t,’ I say bluntly. ‘I will never bring them while she is on the throne. I won’t put Isabel’s children into her keeping. Look at the Mowbray child – married to Prince Richard, her fortune signed over to the Rivers family, and dead before her ninth birthday.’
Richard scowls at me. ‘Not another word,’ is all he says.
The great doors before us are thrown open and a blast of trumpets heralds our arrival. Richard recoils slightly – the court becomes grander and more glamorous every time we visit. Now every honoured guest has to be announced with trumpets and a bawled introduction, as if we did not know already that half the wealthy people in England are her brothers and sisters.
I see that Edward is walking about among the courtiers, a head taller than everyone, broader now, he will run to fat, and the queen is seated on a throne of gold. The royal children, from the new baby Bridget who is toddling at her mother’s feet, to the oldest princess, Elizabeth, now a young woman of sixteen, are exquisitely dressed and seated around their mother. Prince Edward, fair-headed and handsome as his father, a boy of twelve, back from Wales for the Christmas feast, is playing at chess with his guardian Anthony Woodville, whose handsome profile is turned to the puzzle of the board.
No-one could deny that they are the most handsome family in England. Elizabeth’s famous face is sharper and more elegant as age wears her prettiness away to real beauty. She lost her fifteen-year-old daughter Princess Mary this year and her thir
d son George a year after she won the execution of his namesake and uncle. I wonder if these losses have given her pause in her unending ambition and search for revenge. Sorrow has given her a single white streak in her golden hair, and grief has made her quieter and more thoughtful. She is still dressing like an empress, wearing a gown of cloth of gold, and gold chains are roped around her slim waist. As I enter, she whispers something to Anthony Woodville and he looks up and they both show me the same charming insincere smile. Inside the thick sleeves of my gown I can feel my hands tingle with cold as if her gaze is a chill wind.
‘Onward,’ Richard says, as he said once before, and we go in and bow to the king and queen and receive Edward’s joyous greeting to his beloved brother, and her tepid welcome to the man she has named in secret as a traitor.
For everyone else at court, the Christmas feast is an opportunity to get close to the royal family and try to establish friendships and flirtations that may pay well in the future. There is a constant swirl of interest around the king, who still has fortunes to give away and great patronage in his gift. But it is even more obvious that the queen and her family, her brothers and sisters, even her sons from her first marriage, control the court and control access to the king. She allows him to take his mistresses, he even brags about them; she allows him to favour strangers. But the great gifts in the royal household go only to her family and her affinity. Not that she ever asserts herself. She never speaks in any discussion, she never gets to her feet or raises her voice, but all the power of the court is at her fingertips and her brothers Anthony, Lionel and Edward survey the comings and goings of the court at play as if they were card cheats watching a table and waiting for a fool to come to play. Her sons from her first marriage, Thomas and Richard, ennobled by the king, enriched by the king, control the access to the royal chamber. Nothing happens without their observation, and nothing is allowed without her smiling permission.
The royal family is always beautifully dressed, the royal rooms glow with wealth. Edward, neglecting ships and castles, ports and sea walls, has lavished money on his family palaces, especially on the grand rooms for the queen that he has enlarged and beautified in every place that she declares is her new favourite. Leaving Richard to guard the nation against Scotland with a scratch force of his own mustering, Edward has spent a fortune on a new suit of jousting armour, which will never see a real sword. A perfect king in looks and charm, I think this is all he can do now: outward façade. He looks like a king and he speaks like a king, but he does not rule like a king. Power is in the hands of the queen and she looks and speaks as she has always done – a beautiful woman, married for love, devoted to her children, and charming to her friends. She is, as she has always been, quite irresistible. No-one could tell by looking at her that this is a most unscrupulous schemer, the daughter of a known witch, a woman with blood on her beautiful white hands, her slim white fingers stained at the nails.
The twelve days of the Christmas feast would have been the most celebrated that the court has ever known but just after Christmas Day the news comes from Burgundy that the queen’s kinsman Duke Maximilian has played her false. Seeking his own good, just as she always seeks hers, he has made peace with Louis of France, given his daughter to the king’s son in marriage, and given him Burgundy and Artois as her dowry.
Richard is beside himself with anger and worry – Burgundy has always been the great power that we use to balance against the might of France. The countries that have been given to France – Burgundy and Artois – are English by right, and this will be the end of the French pensions which have made Edward and his court so wealthy.
In this desperate moment I have to laugh in my sleeve at the queen whose daughter Elizabeth was betrothed to the French prince and now finds herself jilted – and a cousin on her mother’s side is preferred. Princess Elizabeth herself seems to be indifferent as she plays with her brothers and sisters in the frozen gardens, or goes hunting with the court in the cold marshes by the river; but I am sure that she must realise that she has been humiliated by France, since she has lost the chance to be Queen of France, and has failed to fulfil her father’s ambition. Surely, this is the worst thing of all: she has failed to play her part in her father’s plan.
In this crisis it is Richard who advises on policy – the queen has no idea what should be done – and he tells his brother that in the spring he will march again against the Scots. If they can be defeated and sworn to our cause then they can serve as our allies against France, and we can invade. It is Richard who takes this proposal to the houses of parliament. In return they give Richard a massive grant: the whole of the huge county of Cumberland. In addition, he is to keep any land he conquers in southwest Scotland. It is all to be his. It is a massive gift, it is the princedom that he deserves. For the first time Edward truly recognises what his brother has done for him and gives him great lands – in the North, where Richard is beloved and where we have made our home.
Edward announces this in council, but we hear of it in court when the brothers come back, arm in arm, to the queen’s rooms. The queen hears Edward declare that Richard must set up a council of the North to help him rule his great lands, and I see the shock on her face and her quick glance of consternation to her brother Anthony. It is clear to me that the king has not consulted her, and that her first thought is how can he be overruled, and her first ally is her brother Anthony. Anthony is more diplomatic than his sister; he comes forwards to congratulate Richard on his new wealth, smiles and embraces him, and then turns and kisses my hand and says I will be as a princess among the snows. I smile and murmur nothing, but I think that I have seen much, and understood more. I have seen that the king does not trust her with everything, I have seen that she would overrule him if she could, and that she counts on her brother as her ally, even when she wants to act against the king. But there is still more; from the quick exchange of glances between brother and sister I know that neither of them loves or trusts Richard any more than we trust her. Worse, they suspect and fear him.
The king knows well enough she does not like this. He takes her hand and says to her: ‘Richard will keep the North for me, and – please God – Richard’s young strength on my side will make this a greater kingdom even than it is now.’
Her smile is as sweet as ever. ‘Under your command,’ she reminds him. I see Anthony Woodville stir as if he would say something, but then he shakes his head slightly at his sister and falls silent.
‘He will be warden of the West Marches. And when my son comes to his throne, Richard will have guarded his borders for him, he will be his advisor and protector, and in heaven I shall be glad of that.’
‘Ah! My lord, don’t say it!’ she exclaims. ‘Your son will not sit on his throne for many years yet.’
I wonder if I am alone in feeling a prickle of unease, a shiver at her words.
That was his death sentence. I am sure of it, I would swear to it. She judged that his favour to Richard was growing, his dependence on Richard was greater than the dependence she had tried to create on her family. She might have made her brother Anthony the guardian to the prince and so ruler of Wales, but the gift of land to Richard was far greater than this. Richard was given the command of the armies, Richard was given almost all of the North of England. She knew that if the king were to write his will, Richard would be made regent. She thought that in giving Richard the North of the country the king was on the way to dividing the country: the Rivers family would rule Wales and the south, and Richard would rule the North. I believe that she saw her power slipping away, that she thought the king favoured his brother, that he knew Richard would keep the border with Scotland, would hold the North. I believe she thought that Richard was his true heir and would only grow in power and prestige in the northern lands. And as soon as she came to that conclusion, she poisoned the king, her own husband, so that he could not favour Richard any more, so that Richard could not develop his power and threaten her own.
I don’t th
ink this all at once. At first, I ride out of London with the sense of relief that I always have when we put the Bishop’s Gate behind us, and I go north to my boy and my little nephew and niece with my usual feeling of joy. I have an odd lingering sense that the queen’s swift glance to her brother meant no good for us, and no good for anyone outside that tight pair – but I think nothing more than this.
MIDDLEHAM CASTLE, YORKSHIRE, APRIL 1483
I am in the hay meadow outside the castle walls, watching the children practising their riding. They have three strong horses, bred from the rugged wild ponies that live here on the moors, and they are trotting them over a set of little jumps. The grooms set the jumps higher and higher as each rider gets successfully clear. My task is to rule when it is too high for Teddy, but Margaret and Edward can continue, and then to declare a winner. I have picked half a dozen stems of foxgloves and I am winding them into a crown for the winner. Margaret jumps clear and throws a triumphant beam at me; she is a brave little girl and will set her pony at anything. My son follows her over the jumps, riding with less style but even more determination. I think that soon we must give him a bigger horse and he will have to learn to joust in the adult tiltyard.
The bells from the chapel start to toll with a sudden jangle. The rooks pour out of the rafters of the castle with a harsh black cawing, and I turn in alarm. The children pull up their ponies and look at me.
‘I don’t know,’ I answer their puzzled faces. ‘Back to the castle at the trot, quickly now.’
It is not the tocsin that sounds the alarm but the steady knell, which means a death, a death in the family. But who could have died? For a moment I wonder if they have found my mother dead in her rooms and ordered the tolling of the bell as if to announce a death that was actually declared years ago. But surely they would have come to tell me first? I hold my gown bunched in my hands, free of my feet, so that I can run sure-footed down the stony path to the castle gate and follow the children into the inner garth.
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