The Kingmaker's Daughter (33 page)

Reluctantly, sick in my belly, I go to the rooms that have been allocated to my mother, that evening, after dinner. They have served her the best dishes from the evening meal,
and presented them to her on one knee, with all the respect that a countess should receive. She has eaten well; they are taking out the empty plates as I come in. Richard has ruled that she shall
be housed in the northwest tower, as far away from us as it is possible to be. There is no bridge from her corner tower to the main keep; if she were allowed out of her rooms, she would have to go
all the way down the stairs and through the door to get into the courtyard, cross the courtyard, and then go up the stairs to the keep to get to the great hall. There are guards at every doorway.
She will never visit us without invitation. She will never leave the tower without permission. For the rest of her life she will have a blinkered view. From her windows she can see only the roofs
of the little town, the wide grey skies, the empty landscape and down to the dark moat.

I go in and curtsey to her – she is my mother and I have to show her respect – but then I stand before her, my chin up. I fear that I look like a defiant child. But I am only just
seventeen and I am terrified of my mother’s authority.

‘Your husband intends to hold me as a prisoner,’ she says coldly. ‘Are you, my own daughter, serving him as his gaoler?’

‘You know I cannot disobey him.’

‘You should not disobey me.’

‘You left me,’ I say, driven to speak out. ‘You left me with Margaret of Anjou and she led me to a terrible battle and to defeat, and to the death of my husband. I was little
more than a child and you abandoned me on a battlefield.’

‘You paid the price of overweening ambition,’ she says. ‘Your father’s ambition, which destroyed us. Now you are following another ambitious man, like a dog, just as you
followed your father. You wanted to be Queen of England. You would not know your place.’

‘My ambition didn’t take me very far,’ I protest. ‘Isabel imprisoned me, my own sister!’ I can feel my anger and my tears welling up together. ‘There was
nobody to defend me. You let Isabel and George hold me against my will. You put yourself safely in sanctuary and you left me to be picked up from the battlefield! Anybody could have taken me,
anything could have happened to me.’

‘You let your husband and Isabel’s husband steal my fortune from me.’

‘How could I stop them?’

‘Did you try?’

I am silent. I did not try.

‘Return my lands to me, and release me,’ my mother says. ‘Tell your husband he must do this. Tell the king.’

‘Lady Mother – I cannot,’ I say weakly.

‘Then tell Isabel.’

‘She can’t either. She is expecting a baby, she’s not even at court. And anyway – the king does not hear petitions from Isabel and me. He would never listen to us in
preference to his brothers.’

‘I have to be free,’ my mother says, and for a moment her voice trembles. ‘I cannot die in prison. You have to set me free.’

I shake my head. ‘I can’t,’ I say. ‘There’s no point even asking me, Lady Mother. I am powerless. I can’t do anything for you.’

For a moment her eyes blaze at me; she can still frighten me. But this time, I hold her gaze and I shrug my shoulders. ‘We lost the battle,’ I say. ‘I am married to my saviour.
I have no power, nor does Isabel, nor do you. There is nothing I can do for you if it goes against my husband’s will. You will have to reconcile yourself, as I do, as Isabel does, to being
the defeated.’

FARLEIGH HUNGERFORD CASTLE, SOMERSET, 14 AUGUST 1473

It is a relief beyond measuring to leave my home with the silent brooding presence of my mother in the northwest tower, and go to Isabel for the birth of her baby in Norton St
Philip, Somerset. Isabel is in confinement when I arrive and I join her in the shadowed rooms. The baby comes early and the two days of labour do not give her great pain, though by the end she is
very tired. The midwife hands the baby to me. ‘A girl,’ she says.

‘A girl!’ I exclaim. ‘Look, Iz, you’ve got such a pretty girl!’

She barely glances at the perfect face of the baby, though her face is as smooth and as pale as a pearl, and her eyelashes are dark. ‘Oh, a girl,’ she says dully.

‘Better luck next time,’ says the midwife drily, as she bundles up the bloodstained linen and rubs her hands on her soiled apron, and looks around for a glass of ale.

‘But this is the best of luck already!’ I protest. ‘See how beautiful she is? Iz, do look at her – she’s not even crying!’

The tiny baby opens her mouth and yawns, and she is as delightful as a kitten. Iz does not stretch out her arms for her. ‘George was determined on a boy,’ she says shortly. ‘He
will not thank me for this. He will see it as a failure, as my failure.’

‘Perhaps a boy next time?’

‘And She never stops giving birth,’ Isabel says irritably. ‘George says that her health must break down soon. They have a baby almost every year. Surely one of them will kill
her in childbirth?’

I cross myself against her ill-will. ‘Almost always girls,’ I say to console her.

‘One boy already, which is all she needs for a Prince of Wales, and another baby due this very month. What if she is carrying a second boy? Then she will have two sons to inherit the
throne that their father usurped. And George will be pushed another step away from the crown. How will George ever get the throne if she has more sons?’

‘Hush,’ I say instantly. The midwife has her back to us, the wet nurse is coming into the birthing chamber, the maid is clearing away the linen and turning down the sheets of the big
bed, but still I am afraid that we may be overheard. ‘Hush, Isabel. Don’t speak of such things. Especially not in front of people.’

‘Why not? George was Edward’s heir. That was their agreement. But She goes on having children, as if She would never stop, like a farrowing pig. Why would God give her a boy? Why
would He make her fertile? Why does He not rain down pestilence on her and blow her and her baby to hell?’

I am so shocked at her sudden malice so soon after childbirth that I say nothing. I turn away from her to hand the baby to the wet nurse, who settles down in a rocking chair and takes the baby
to her breast and coos over her dark downy head.

As I help Isabel into the big bed, my face is grim. ‘These are not your thoughts, nor George’s, I know,’ I say firmly. ‘For it is treason to speak against the king and
his family. You are tired from the birth and drunk on the birthing ale. Iz, you must never say such things, not even to me.’

She beckons me close so that she can whisper in my ear. ‘Do you not think that our father would want George to challenge his brother? Do you not know that our father would think that the
very gates of heaven were opening if George were to take the crown and make me queen? And then your husband would be the next heir to the throne. This baby is a girl, she counts for nothing. If
George took the throne, then Richard would come next. Have you forgotten that the one thing our father wanted above everything else in the world was to see one of us as Queen of England and his
grandson as Prince of Wales? Can you imagine how proud and happy he would be if he saw me as queen and you as queen after me, and your son as king after us both?’

I pull away from her. ‘It cost him his life,’ I say harshly. ‘He rode out to his death. And our mother is imprisoned, and you and I all but orphaned.’

‘If George were to win then that would be the only thing that made it all worth while,’ she says stubbornly. ‘If George were to claim the throne then Father would be at
peace.’

I flinch at the thought that my father is not at peace. ‘Ah don’t, Iz,’ I say hastily. ‘I pay enough for masses to be said for his soul in every one of our churches.
Don’t say such things. Look, I’ll leave you to rest. The birthing ale has gone to your head. You shouldn’t say such things and I won’t hear them. I am married to a loyal
brother of the king and so are you. Let that be the truth. Anything else will only lead us into danger and defeat. Anything else is a sword through the heart.’

We don’t mention the conversation again and when I leave them, and George himself helps me onto my horse, thanking me for caring for Isabel in her time, I wish him every
happiness and that the child grows strong and well.

‘Perhaps she will have a boy next time,’ he says. His handsome face is discontented, his charm quite overshadowed by such a setback, his smiling mouth is downturned. He is as sulky
as a spoiled child.

For a moment I want to remind him that she had a boy, a beautiful baby boy, a boy who would have been the son and heir that he now wants so badly, a boy who would have been running around the
hall now, a sturdy three-year-old with his nursemaid hurrying behind him; but that Iz was so shaken by the pounding waves on board my father’s ship that she could not give birth to him, and
she had no-one but me as a midwife, and the baby’s little coffin was slipped into the grey heaving seas.

‘Perhaps next time,’ I say soothingly. ‘But she is a very pretty girl, and feeding well and growing strong.’

‘Stronger than your boy?’ he asks nastily. ‘What d’you call him: Edward? Was that in memory of your dead husband? Funny sort of tribute.’

‘Edward for the king of course,’ I say, biting my lip.

‘And is our baby stronger than yours?’

‘Yes, I think so.’ It hurts me to say the truth but little Margaret is a wiry hungry baby and is doing well at once, and my baby is quiet, and is not thriving.

He shrugs. ‘Well, it makes no odds. A girl’s no good. A girl can’t take the throne,’ he says, turning away. I can hardly hear, but I am sure that is what he says. For a
moment I think to challenge him, to dare him to repeat it, and warn him that this is to talk treason. But then I gather my reins in my cold hands and think better that he had never said it. Better
that I never heard it. Better go home.

BAYNARD’S CASTLE, LONDON, SUMMER 1473

I meet Richard in Baynard’s Castle, his family’s London home, and to my relief the court is away from London and the city is peaceful. Elizabeth the queen has gone
to Shrewsbury for the birth of her baby, another boy, the second son that Isabel feared, and the doting king is with her. Without doubt they will be joyfully celebrating the birth of another boy to
give certainty to their line. It makes no difference to me if she has one boy more or twenty – Richard is three steps from the throne, a fourth step makes little odds, but I cannot help a
twinge of irritation at her constant fertility which serves her so well.