The Kingmaker's Daughter (38 page)

I never tell Richard what she said about him, I never ask him is our marriage valid, is our son legitimate? And I never ask her if she is certain, or was she just speaking from
spite to frighten me? I am never going to hear her say again that she thinks my marriage is invalid and that my husband tricked me into a false service and that I live with him now balanced on his
goodwill, that he married me only for my fortune to him, and has made cold-hearted preparations to keep my fortune and lose me. To avoid her repeating this I am prepared to never hear her speak
again. I will never let her say that to me – or to anyone else – as long as she lives.

I wish she had never said it, or that I had never heard it, or that having heard it I could simply forget it. I am sickened that she should say such a thing to me and I am unable to refute it. I
am sickened that I should know, in my heart of hearts, that it is true. It eats away at my love for Richard. Not that he should marry me without a papal dispensation in the first place – I
don’t forget that we were so much in love and so steeped in desire that we could not wait. But that he should not apply for dispensation after our wedding, that he should keep that decision
from me, and that – most chillingly and worst of all, far and away the worst thing – he should secure his rights to my inheritance even if he were to put me aside and deny his marriage
to me.

I am bound to him, by my love, by my submission to his will, by my first passion, and since he is the father of my son and he is my lord. But what am I to him? That is what I want to know and
what I can now – thanks to my mother – never confidently ask him.

In May Richard comes to me and says that he wants us to leave Edward at Middleham with his tutor and the lady of his household, and go to York to start the procession to
Fotheringhay, for a solemn service: the reburial of his father.

‘Margaret of Anjou’s army beheaded him, and my brother Edmund, and put their heads on stakes above Micklegate Bar at York,’ Richard says grimly. ‘That’s the sort of
woman she was, your first mother-in-law.’

‘You know I had no choice in my marriage,’ I say, speaking steadily though I am irritated by the fact that he cannot forget or forgive that part of my life. ‘And I was a child
in Calais when that happened, and my father was fighting for York, fighting alongside your brother.’

He gestures with his hand. ‘Yes, well, that doesn’t matter now. What does matter is that I am going to have my father and brother honourably reburied. What d’you
think?’

‘I think it would be a very good thing to do,’ I say. ‘They lie at Pontefract now, don’t they?’

‘Yes. My mother would like them buried together in the family vault at Fotheringhay Castle. I should like him to be honoured properly. Edward has trusted me to arrange it all, he prefers
me to George for this.’

‘There could be no-one who would do it better,’ I say warmly.

He smiles. ‘Thank you. I know you are right. Edward is too careless and George has no love of chivalry and honour. But I shall take pride in doing it well. I shall be glad to see my father
and brother properly buried.’

For a moment only I think of my own father’s body dragged off the battlefield at Barnet, the blood pouring from his helmet, his head lolling, his great black horse lying down in the field,
as if he were asleep. But Edward was a good enemy; he never abused the bodies of his foe. He showed them in public so that the people would know that they were dead, and then he allowed them to be
buried. My father’s corpse lies in Bisham Abbey, in the family vault, buried in honour but without ceremony. Isabel and I have never gone to pay our respects. My mother has never visited his
grave, and now she never will. Bisham Abbey will not see her, till I bury her there, beside him: a better wife than she was a mother. ‘What can I do to help?’ is all I say.

He thinks. ‘You can help me plan the route, and the ceremonies at each place. And you can advise me as to what people should wear and the ceremonies we should order. Nothing like this has
ever been done before. I want it to go off perfectly.’

Richard, his Master of Horse and I plan the journey together, while our priest at Middleham advises as to the ceremonies of walking with the body and the prayers that should be said at each
halt. Richard commissions a carved model of his father, to lie on top of his coffin, so that everyone can see the great man that he was, and adds a silver statue of an angel holding a golden crown
over the effigy’s head. This symbolises that the duke was a king by right, dying in his fight for his throne. It shows also how wise Edward was, to trust only Richard with this ceremony and
not his brother George. When George joined my father he denied that the duke was a king by right, and that his son Edward was legitimate. Only Richard and I know that George still says this, but
now he speaks in secret.

Richard makes a beautiful procession to bring the body of his father and his brother from Pontefract to their home. The cortege travels south from York for seven days and at every stop it goes
into great churches on the way to lie in state. Thousands of people file silently past it to pay their respects to the king who was never crowned, and are reminded of the glorious history of the
House of York.

Six horses draped in black pull the carriages, and ahead of them rides a knight, quite alone, carrying the duke’s banner as if he were going into battle. Behind him rides Richard, his head
bowed, and behind him come the great men of the realm, all honouring our house, all honouring our fallen father.

For Richard this is more than a proper reburial of his father; this is a re-stating of his father’s right to be King of England, King of France. His father was a great soldier who fought
for his country, a greater commander, a greater strategist even than his son Edward. In this lengthy procession Richard honours his father, claims his kingship, reminds the country of the greatness
and nobility of the House of York. We are everything the Rivers are not, and Richard shows this in the wealth and grace of this remembrance service.

Richard keeps watch by the coffins every night that they are on the road, rides before them every day on a black horse with dark blue trappings, his standard lowered before him. It is as if for
the first time in his life he allows himself to grieve for the father he lost and for the world of nobility and honour that went with him.

I meet him at Fotheringhay and find him thoughtful and tender with me. He remembers that his dead father and mine were allies, kinsmen. His father died before my father’s disastrous
alliance with the bad queen, died even before he saw his son come to the throne, died before Richard had fought his first battle. That night, before Richard goes out for his last vigil by his
father’s coffin, we kneel in prayer together, side by side in the beautiful family church. ‘He would have been glad of our marriage,’ Richard says quietly as he rises to his feet.
‘He would have been glad to know that we were married, despite everything else.’

For a moment, as he stands and I look up to him, the question
And is our marriage valid?
is on the tip of my tongue. But I see the grave sadness in his face, and then he turns and takes
his place as one of the four knightly watchers who will stand all night around the coffin until dawn releases them from their vigil.

George and Isabel come to the funeral at Fotheringhay and she and I stand next to each other, both wearing beautiful gowns of the royal mourning colour of dark blue as the king and the queen and
their family receive the two coffins at the cemetery at Fotheringhay church. Edward kisses the effigy’s hand and I see George and then Richard follow suit. George is especially tender and
pious in this scene, but nobody takes the eye more than the little princesses. The ten-year-old Princess Elizabeth, exquisitely beautiful, is in the forefront; she leads her sister Princess Mary by
the hand, and behind them come ambassadors from all the countries in Christendom to honour the head of the royal family of York.

It is a masque – a performance rich in symbols as well as an act of mourning. Nobody can see the royal family burying their forebear as if he were a king without reflecting how kingly is
Edward, and his brothers, how reverent is the little prince, and how enchanting and queenly are Elizabeth and her daughters. I cannot help but think that they are more like actors than real kings
and queens. Elizabeth the queen is so poised and beautiful, and her girls – especially the Princess Elizabeth – so conscious of themselves and their place in the procession. At her age
I was frightened that I might step on my mother’s train, but little Princess Elizabeth walks with her head up, looking neither to left nor right, a little queen in the making.

I should admire her – everyone else seems to adore her, and perhaps if I had a daughter I would point to the princess and tell my little girl that she must learn the poise of her cousin.
But since I don’t have a little girl, though I pray for one, I cannot look at the Princess Elizabeth without irritation, and think her spoiled and artificial – a precocious pet who
would be better confined to the schoolroom rather than walking through a serious ceremonial as if she were taking the steps of a dance, revelling in all the eyes on her.

‘Minx,’ my sister says briefly in my ear, and I have to lower my eyes and suppress my smile.

As ever, with anything that Edward does, there has to be a banquet and a great show. Richard sits beside his brother and drinks little and eats less, as more than a thousand guests dine in the
castle, and thousands more in beautifully dressed tented pavilions outside. Throughout the dinner there is music playing and good wines poured, between each course there is a choir singing solemn
beautiful anthems and fruit served. Elizabeth the queen sits on the right hand of her husband as if she were a fellow ruler of the kingdom and not merely a wife, a crown on her head, dark blue lace
covering her hair, and she looks around her with the serene beauty of a woman who knows that her place is safe, and her life beyond challenge.

She catches me staring at her, and she gives me the glacial smile that she always shows me and Isabel, and I wonder if she is thinking, at this ceremonial reburial of her father-in-law, of her
own father who died a hasty criminal death at the hands of my father. My father hauled hers into the town square at Chepstow, accused him of treason, and beheaded him – without trial, without
rule of law – in public. His beloved son John died beside him, his last sight would have been his son’s severed head.

Isabel, seated next to me, shivers as if someone had stepped on her grave. ‘D’you see how she looks at us?’ she whispers.

‘Oh, Iz,’ I reproach her. ‘What can she do to hurt us now? When the king loves George so much? When Richard is so honoured by them? When we two are royal duchesses? They went
to France as allies, and they came home as good friends. I don’t think she wastes much love on us but there is nothing she can do to us.’

‘She can put us under an enchantment,’ she says very softly. ‘She can blow up a storm that nearly drowns us, you know that yourself. And every time my little Edward runs a
fever, or is sleepless while he is cutting a tooth, I wonder if she has turned her evil gaze on us, and she is heating up his image, or putting a pin into his portrait.’ Her hand covers the
swell of her belly beneath her gown. ‘I wear a specially blessed girdle,’ she says. ‘George got it from his advisor. It is specially blessed to ward off the evil eye, to protect
me from Her.’

Of course my mind goes at once to Middleham and my own son, who could fall from his pony, or cut himself while practising jousting, catch a chill or take a fever, eat something bad, breathe a
miasma, drink foul water. I shake my head to dismiss my fears. ‘I doubt she even thinks about us,’ I say stoutly. ‘I bet she thinks of nothing but her own family, her two precious
sons, and her brothers and sisters. We are nothing to her.’

Isabel shakes her head. ‘She has a spy in every household in the land,’ she says. ‘She thinks about us, believe it. My lady in waiting told me that she prays every day that she
never has to run into sanctuary again, that her husband holds his throne unchallenged. She prays for the destruction of her enemies. And she does more than pray. There are men who follow George
everywhere he goes. She watches me in my household, I know she has a spy on me. She will have someone placed to watch you in yours.’

‘Oh really, Iz, you sound like George!’

‘Because he’s right,’ she says earnestly. ‘He is right to watch the king and fear the queen. You’ll see. One day you’ll hear that I have died suddenly,
without good reason, and it will be because she has ill-wished me.’

I cross myself. ‘Don’t say it!’ I glance at the high table. The queen is dipping her fingers in a golden bowl of rosewater and wiping them on a linen towel held out to her by a
kneeling manservant. She does not look like a woman who keeps herself safe by putting spies in the households of her sisters-in-law, and sticking pins in images. She looks like a woman who has
nothing at all to fear.