The Kingmaker's Daughter (42 page)

I shake my head. ‘He told me himself he would not go. He is mourning Isabel. He doesn’t want to go to Flanders. It is the king who is trying to get him out of the kingdom to silence
him.’

‘Nonsense. Edward would never allow it. He could never trust George as ruler of Flanders. The lands owned by the Dukes of Burgundy are enormous. None of us would trust George with that
power and wealth.’

I am cautious. ‘Who told you that?’

Over his shoulder I can see the queen seating herself at the high table that looks over the great hall. She turns and sees me, head to head with my husband. I see her lean to the king and say
one word, two, and then he turns and sees us both too. It is as if she is pointing me out, as if she is warning him about me. As her gaze flicks indifferently over me I shiver.

‘What’s the matter?’ Richard asks.

‘Who told you that George was trying to go to Flanders or to Scotland and that the king would not allow it?’

‘The queen’s brother, Anthony Woodville, Lord Rivers.’

‘Oh,’ is all I say. ‘It must be true, then.’

She looks down the great hall at me and she gives me her beautiful inscrutable smile.

Rumours swirl around court and everyone seems to be talking about me, and about Isabel and George. It is generally known that my sister died suddenly, having come through the
ordeal of childbirth, and people are starting to wonder if she could have been poisoned, and if so, who would have done such a thing. The rumours grow in intensity, more detailed and more fearful
as George refuses to eat in the great hall, refuses to speak to the queen, takes off his hat but does not bow his head as she goes past, crosses his fingers behind his back so that anyone standing
beside him can see that he is using the sign of protection against witchcraft against the queen as she goes by.

He is frightening her, in his turn. She goes pale when she sees him and she glances at her husband as if to ask what she should do in the face of this insane rudeness. She looks to her brother,
Anthony Woodville, who used to laugh when he saw George stalking down the gallery, acknowledging no-one; but now he too scrutinises him, as if taking the measure of an adversary. The court is
utterly divided between those who have benefited from the Rivers family’s long ascendance, and those who hate them and are willing to suspect them of anything. More and more people watch the
queen as if they wonder what powers she has, what she will be allowed to do.

I see George every day, for we are staying in London though I long to go home to Middleham. But the roads are too bogged down for travel and Middleham itself is snowed in. I have to stay at
court though every time I walk into her rooms Elizabeth the queen receives my curtsey with a look of blank enmity, and her daughter, Princess Elizabeth, draws back her gown in a mirror copy of her
grandmother the witch.

I am afraid of the queen now, and she knows it. I don’t know the extent of her powers or what she would do to me. I don’t know if she played any part in the death of my sister, or if
that was nothing but Isabel’s fearful imaginings – and now my own. And I am alone in these fears. I feel horribly alone in this merry beautiful flirtatious court, alert with gossip and
rich with whispers. I cannot speak to my husband, who will hear nothing against his brother Edward, and I dare not be seen speaking to George, who swears to me in our one secret meeting that he
will discover the murderer of my sister and destroy her – when he speaks of the murderer he always says ‘her’ – and then everyone will know what a woman of malice and evil
powers can do.

George comes to our London home at Baynard’s Castle to say farewell to his mother the duchess, who is leaving for Fotheringhay the next day. He is locked up with the
duchess in her rooms for some time; he is her dearest son, and her enmity for the queen is well known. She does not discourage him of speaking ill of his brother or of the queen. She is a woman who
has seen much of the world and she swears that the queen married Edward through enchantment, and that she has gone on using dark arts while the crown of England is on her head.

As George comes through the great hall he sees me at the doorway of my own rooms and hurries forwards. ‘I hoped I would see you.’

‘I am glad to see you, Brother.’ I step back into my rooms and he follows me. My ladies move to one side and curtsey to George – he is a handsome man and I realise with a pang
that he is now an eligible husband. I have to steady myself with a hand on the windowsill when I think that I may have to see another woman in Izzy’s place. Her children will run to another
woman and call her ‘Mother’. They are so young, they will forget how Isabel loved them, what she wanted for them.

‘Richard tells me that you are not going to marry Mary of Burgundy,’ I say quietly to him.

‘No,’ he says. ‘But who do you think is going to marry the sister to the Scottish king? They suggested the Scots princess for me, but who do you think is the king’s
preferred candidate?’

‘Not you?’ I ask.

He laughs shortly. ‘My brother has decided I am safer kept close at hand. He will not send me to Flanders or to Scotland. The Scottish princess is to marry none other but Anthony
Woodville.’

Now I am astounded. The queen’s brother, born the son of a squire, surely cannot dream of marrying royalty? Is there no height that she will not attempt? Are we to accept anything that the
Rivers propose for themselves?

George smiles at my astounded face. ‘A daughter of a little manor in Grafton on the throne of England, her brother on the throne of Scotland,’ he says drily. ‘It is a climbing
expedition. Elizabeth Woodville should carry her standard and plant a flag on the peaks. What next? Shall her brother become a bishop? Why should he not be Pope? Where will she stop? Can she become
the Holy Roman Emperor?’

‘How does she do it?’

His dark glance reminds me that we both know how she achieves her goals. I shake my head. ‘She has the ear of the king because he loves her so dearly,’ I say. ‘He will do
anything for her now.’

‘And we all know how this woman, out of all the women that he could have had, took hold of his heart.’

BAYNARD’S CASTLE, LONDON, JANUARY 1477

The Christmas feast is over but many people are staying in London, trapped by the bad weather. The roads to the North are impassable, and Middleham is still closed in by snow.
I think of its safety, guarded by storms, moated with the great rivers of the North, shielded by blizzards; and my son, safe and warm behind the thick walls before a roaring fire with the gifts I
have sent him spread out on the rug before him.

In the middle of January there is a quiet tap on the door of my privy chamber, a little rat-a-tat-tat that is George’s knock. I turn to my ladies. ‘I’m going to the
chapel,’ I say. ‘I’ll go on my own.’ They curtsey and stand as I leave the room and I take my missal and rosary and walk towards the chapel door. I sense George fall into
step behind me and we slip into the shadowy empty chapel together. A priest is hearing confession in one corner of the church, a couple of squires muttering their sins. George and I step into one
of the dark alcoves and I look at him for the first time.

He is as white as a drowned man in the gloom, his eyes hollow in his face. All his debonair good looks are wiped away. He looks like a man at the very end of his tether. ‘What is
it?’ I whisper.

‘My son,’ he says brokenly. ‘My son.’

My first thought is of my own son, my Edward. Pray to God that he is safe at Middleham Castle, sledging in the snow, listening to the mummers, tasting a mug of Christmas ale. Pray God he is well
and strong, untouched by plague or poison.

‘Your son? Edward?’

‘My baby, Richard. My baby, my beloved: Richard.’

I put my hand to my mouth, and beneath my fingers I can feel my lips tremble. ‘Richard?’

Isabel’s motherless baby is cared for by his wet nurse, a woman who had raised both Margaret and Edward, whose milk had fed them as if she were their mother. There is no reason why
Isabel’s third child should not thrive in her keeping. ‘Richard?’ I repeat. ‘Not Richard?’

‘He’s dead,’ George says. I can hardly hear his whisper. ‘He’s dead.’ He chokes on the word. ‘I just had a message from Warwick Castle. He’s dead.
My boy, Isabel’s boy. He has gone to heaven to be with his mother, God bless his little soul.’

‘Amen,’ I whisper. I can feel a thickening in my throat, a burning in my eyes. I want to pitch down onto my bed and cry for a week for my sister and my little nephew and the hardness
of this world, that one after another takes all the people that I love.

George fumbles for my hand, grips it tight. ‘They tell me that he died suddenly, unexpectedly,’ he says.

Despite my own grief, I step back, pulling my hand from his grasp. I don’t want to hear what he is going to say. ‘Unexpectedly?’

He nods. ‘He was thriving. Feeding well, gaining weight, starting to sleep through the night. I had Bessy Hodges as his wet nurse, I would never have left him if I had not thought he was
doing well, for his own sake as well as his mother’s. But he was well, Anne. I would never have left them if I had any doubt.’

‘Babies can fail very suddenly,’ I say weakly. ‘You know that.’

‘They say he was well at bedtime and died before dawn,’ he says.

I shiver. ‘Babies can die in their sleep,’ I repeat. ‘God spare them.’

‘It’s true,’ he says. ‘But I have to know if he just fell asleep, if it is innocent. I am leaving for Warwick right now. I shall have the truth of this, and if I find
that someone killed him, dripped poison into his little sleeping mouth, then I will take their life for it – whoever they are, however grand their position, however great their name, whoever
they are married to. I swear it, Anne. I shall have vengeance on whoever killed my wife, especially if she killed my son too.’

He turns for the door and I grip his arm. ‘Write to me at once,’ I whisper. ‘Send me something, fruit or something with a note to tell me. Write it in such a way that I will
understand but nobody else can know. Make sure that you tell me that Margaret is safe, and Edward.’

‘I will,’ he promises. ‘And if I see the need I will send you a warning.’

‘A warning?’ I don’t want to understand his meaning.

‘You are in danger too, and your son is in danger. There is no doubt in my mind that this is more than an attack on me and mine. This is not an attack solely on me, though it strikes me to
the heart; this is an attack on the kingmaker’s daughters and his grandsons.’

At his naming this fear I find I am cold. I go as white as him, we are like two ghosts whispering together in the shadows of the chapel. ‘An attack on the kingmaker’s
daughters?’ I repeat. ‘Why would anyone attack the kingmaker’s daughters?’ I ask, though I know the answer. ‘He has been gone six years this spring. His enemies have
all forgotten.’

‘One enemy has not forgotten. She has two names written in blood on a piece of paper in her jewel box,’ he says. He does not need to name the ‘she’. ‘Did you know
this?’

Miserably, I nod.

‘Do you know whose names they are?’

He waits for me to shake my head.