The Kingmaker's Daughter (35 page)

‘Don’t think you can suborn her,’ Richard warns her. ‘Anne knows where her loyalties lie. You threw her away into defeat, I rescued her from your neglect and made her a
great heiress and a duchess.’

I take my mother’s arm and she leans on me. Unwillingly, I lead her out of the presence chamber, down the stairs and across the great hall, where the servants are pulling out the tables
for dinner, to the bridge which leads to the outer walls and her rooms.

She pauses under the archway to the tower. ‘You know he will betray you and you will feel just like me, one day,’ she says suddenly. ‘You will be alone and lonely, you will be
in purgatory, wondering if it is hell.’

I shudder and would pull away; but she has my arm in her grip and she is leaning heavily on me. ‘He will not betray me,’ I say. ‘He is my husband and our interests lie
together. I love him, we married for love and we love each other still.’

‘Ah, you don’t know then,’ she says with quiet satisfaction. She sighs as if someone has given her a gift of great worth. ‘I thought you did not know.’

Clearly, she will not take another step and for a moment, I stand with her. Suddenly I realise that it is for this moment, alone with me, that she asked for my arm. She did not want a moment
alone with her daughter, she was not hoping for a reconciliation. No, she wanted to tell me some awful thing that I don’t know, that I don’t want to know. ‘Come on,’ I say.
But she does not move at all.

‘The wording of the law that makes me dead names you as his harlot.’

I am so shocked that I stop quite still and look at her. ‘What are you saying? What madness are you speaking now?’

‘It’s the law of the land,’ she laughs thinly, like a cackling witch. ‘A new law. And you didn’t know.’

‘Know what?’

‘The law that says that I am dead and you inherit goes on to say that if you and your husband divorce, then he keeps the lands.’

‘Divorce?’ I repeat the strange word.

‘He keeps the lands, and the castles and the houses, the ships on the seas, and the contents of the treasure rooms, the mines and the quarries and the granaries and everything.’

‘He has provided for our divorce?’ I ask, stumbling on my speech.

‘How could such a thing happen? How should you divorce?’ she crows. ‘The marriage has been consummated, you are proven to be fertile, you have given him a son. There can be no
grounds for a divorce, surely? But in this act of parliament, Richard makes provision for a divorce. Why should he do that, if no divorce could ever take place? Why would he provide for a thing
which is impossible?’

My head is whirling. ‘Lady Mother, if you must speak to me at all, then speak plainly.’

She does. She beams at me as if she has good news. She is exultant that she understands this and I don’t. ‘He is providing for the denial of your marriage,’ she says. ‘He
has prepared for his marriage to you to be set aside. If it was a true marriage it could not be set aside, there are no possible grounds. So my guess is this: you did not get a full dispensation
from the Pope; but married without it. Am I right? Am I right, my turncoat daughter? You are cousins, you are brother- and sister-in-law, I am his godmother. Richard is even a kinsman to your first
husband. Your marriage would need a full papal dispensation on many, many counts. But I don’t think you had time to get a full dispensation from the Pope. My guess is that Richard urged you
to marry and said that you could get a dispensation later. Am I right? I think I am right for here, in this very act where he shows why he married you – for your fortune – he also gets
a ruling that he will keep your lands if he puts you aside. He shows it is possible to put you aside. It all becomes wonderfully clear!’

‘It will be how the act is framed,’ I say wildly. ‘It will be the same for George and Isabel. There will be the same provision for George and Isabel.’

‘No it is not,’ she says. ‘You are right. If George and Isabel had the same terms you could be reassured. But it is not the same for them. There is no provision for the
annulment of their marriage. George knows that he cannot annul his marriage to Isabel so he does not provide for it. George knows that they got a dispensation for their kinship and their marriage
is valid. It cannot be set aside. But Richard knows that he did not get a full dispensation and his marriage is not fully valid. It can be set aside. He has that in his power. I read the deed very
carefully, as any woman might carefully read her own death certificate. My guess is that if I were to send to the Pope and ask him to show the legal dispensation for your marriage he would reply
that there was none, full dispensation was never requested. So you are not married, and your son is a bastard and you a harlot.’

I am so stunned that I just stare at her. At first I think that she is raving but then one after another the pieces of what she is saying fall into place. Our driving urgent haste to marry and
Richard telling me that we would do so without a dispensation, but get it later. And then I just assumed, like a fool, that the marriage was valid. I just forgot, like a fool, like a fool in the
honeymoon month, that being married by an archbishop with the blessing of the king was not as good as a dispensation from the Pope. When I was greeted by his mother, when I was received by the
court, when we conceived our son and inherited my lands, I assumed that everything was as it should be and I forgot to question it at all. And now I know that my husband did not forget, did not
assume, but has provided that he can keep his fortune if he ever decides to set me aside. If he wants to rid himself of me he has only to say that the marriage was never valid. My marriage to him
is based on our vows before God – at least those cannot be denied. But they are not enough. Our marriage depends on his whim. We will be husband and wife as long as he wishes it. At any
moment he could denounce our marriage as a sham, and he would be free and I would be utterly shamed.

I shake my head in wonderment. All this time I thought that I was playing myself, both the player and the pawn, and yet I have never been more powerless, never more of a piece in someone
else’s game.

‘Richard,’ I say, and it is as if I am calling out to him to rescue me once more.

My mother regards me with silent satisfaction.

‘What shall I do?’ I whisper to myself. ‘What can I do now?’

‘Leave him.’ My mother’s voice is like a slap in the face. ‘Leave him at once and come with me to London and we will overthrow the act, deny the false marriage, and get
my lands back.’

I round on her. ‘Don’t you see yet that you will never get your lands back? D’you think you can fight against the King of England himself? Do you imagine you can challenge the
three sons of York acting together? Have you forgotten that these were my father’s enemies, Margaret of Anjou’s enemies? And we were fatally allied to Father and to Margaret of Anjou?
Have you forgotten that we were defeated? All you want to do is to throw yourself into prison in the Tower, and me alongside you.’

‘You will never be safe as his wife,’ she predicts. ‘He can leave you whenever he wants. If your son dies, and you fail to get another, he can go to a more fertile woman and
take your fortune with him.’

‘He loves me.’

‘He may do,’ she concedes. ‘But he wants the lands, this very castle, and an heir more than anything in the world. You have no safety.’

‘I have no safety as your daughter,’ I counter. ‘I know that at least. You married me to a claimant to the throne of England and abandoned me when we had to go into battle. Now
you call me to commit treason again.’

‘Leave him!’ she whispers. ‘I will stand by you this time.’

‘And what about my son?’

She shrugs. ‘You will never see him again but as he is a bastard . . . does it matter?’

Fiercely, I take her by the arm and march her towards her rooms where the guard stands to one side to let us go in, and will then block the door so she cannot go out.

‘Don’t call him that,’ I say. ‘Don’t you dare ever call him that. I stand by my son, and I stand by my husband. And you can rot in here.’

She wrenches her arm from me. ‘I warn you, I will tell the world that you are not a wife but a harlot, and you will be ruined,’ she spits.

I push her through the door. ‘No you won’t!’ I say. ‘For you will have no pen and no paper, and no way to send messages. No messengers and no visits. You have taught me
only that you are my enemy and I will keep you straitly. Go in, Lady Mother. You will not come out again, and no word you say will ever be repeated outside these walls. Go and be dead – for
you are dead to the world and dead to me. Go and be dead!’

I slam the door on her and I round on the guard. ‘No-one to see her but her household,’ I say. ‘No messages passed, not even pedlars or tinkers to come to her door. Everyone
coming or going to be searched. She sees no-one, she speaks to no-one. D’you understand?’

‘Yes, Your Grace,’ he says.

‘She is an enemy,’ I say. ‘She is a traitor and a liar. She is our enemy. She is enemy to the duke, to me and to our precious son. The duke is a hard man on his enemies. Make
sure you are hard on her.’

MIDDLEHAM CASTLE, YORKSHIRE, SPRING 1475

I think I am becoming a slate-hearted woman. The girl that I was – who dreaded her mother’s disapproval, who clung to her big sister, who loved her father like her
lord – is now an eighteen-year-old duchess who orders her household to guard her mother like an enemy, and writes with meticulous care to her sister. Richard warns me that his brother George
is becoming a dangerously outspoken critic of the king, and that Isabel is known to agree with him; we cannot be seen to associate with them.

He does not have to convince me. I don’t want to associate with them if they are walking into danger. When Isabel writes to me that she is going into confinement again, and would like me
to come to her, I refuse. Besides, I cannot face Isabel with our mother in my keeping, gaoled for the rest of her life. I cannot face Isabel with my mother’s terrible threats in my ears and
in my dreams every night of my life. Isabel knows now, as I do, that we have declared our own mother a dead woman so that we could take her lands to give to our husbands. I feel that we are
murderers, with blood on our hands. And what would I say if Isabel asked me if my mother is kept well? If she endures her imprisonment with patience? What could I say to her if she asked me to let
our mother go?

I can never admit that my mother is kept in her tower so that she cannot speak about my marriage. I cannot tell Isabel that not only have our husbands declared our mother dead but that now even
I wish her dead. Certainly I wish her silenced forever.

And now I am afraid of what Isabel thinks. I wonder if she has read the act that declares my mother dead with the care that my mother did. I wonder if Isabel has suspicions about my marriage, if
one day George will tell everyone that I am the duke’s whore just as much as Elizabeth Woodville is the king’s whore: that there is only one son of York with an honest wife. I dare not
see Isabel with these thoughts in my mind, so I write and say that I cannot come, the times are too difficult.

Isabel replies in March that she is sorry I could not come to her but that she has good news. At last she has a boy, a son and heir. He too is to be called Edward, but this boy will be named
after the place of his birth and after his grandfather’s earldom. He will be Edward of Warwick, and she asks me be happy for her. I try, but all I think is that if George makes an attempt on
the throne he can offer any traitors who might join with him an alternative royal family: a claimant and now an heir. I write to Isabel that I am glad for her and for her son, and that I wish her
well. But I don’t send gifts, and I don’t ask to be godmother. I am afraid of what George may be planning for this little boy, this new Warwick, the grandson of Warwick the
kingmaker.

Besides, while I have been troubled by my mother’s words, by my fears for my son, the country has been building up to war with France at a breakneck pace, and everything that was done in
peace has been forgotten as taxes have to be raised, soldiers recruited, weapons forged, shoes cobbled, liveries sewn. Richard can think of nothing but mustering his army from our estates, drawing
on tenants, retainers, household staff and everyone who has offered him their loyalty. Gentlemen have to bring their own tenants from their farms, towns have to raise funds and send apprentices.
Richard hurries to recruit his men and join his brothers – both his brothers – as they go to invade France, with the whole of the kingdom for the re-taking, laid out like a rich feast
before them.

The three sons of York are to march out in splendour again. Edward has declared himself determined to return to the glory of Henry V. He will be King of France again and the shame of
England’s failure under the bad queen and the sleeping king will be forgotten. Richard is cool with me as he prepares to leave. He remembers that the King of France, Louis, proposed and
organised my first wedding, called me his pretty cousin and promised me his friendship when I would be Queen of England. Richard checks and double-checks the wagons which will carry everything to
France, has his armourer pack two sets of armour, and mounts his horse in the stable yard at the head of about a thousand men. Even more will join him on the march south.