The Kingmaker's Daughter (43 page)

‘Written in blood it says: “Isabel and Anne”. Isabel is dead, I don’t doubt that she plans you will be next.’

I am shaking in my fear. ‘For vengeance?’ I whisper.

‘She wants revenge for the death of her father and her brother,’ he replies. ‘She has sworn herself to it. It is her only desire. Your father took her father and his son, she
has taken Isabel and her son. I don’t doubt she will kill you and your son Edward.’

‘Come back soon,’ I say. ‘Come back to court, George. Don’t leave me here alone at her court.’

‘I swear it,’ he says. He kisses my hand and is gone.

‘I can’t go to court,’ I say flatly to Richard, as he stands before me, in rich dark velvet, ready to ride to Westminster where we are bidden for dinner.
‘I can’t go. I swear I cannot go.’

‘We agreed,’ he says quietly. ‘We agreed that until we knew the truth of the rumours that you would attend court, sit with the queen when invited, behave as if nothing has
happened.’

‘Something has happened,’ I say. ‘You will have heard that the little baby Richard is dead?’

He nods.

‘He was thriving, he was born strong, and now he dies, only three months after his birth? Dies in his sleep with no cause?’

My husband turns to the fire and pushes a log into place with his booted foot. ‘Babies die,’ he says.

‘Richard, I think She killed him. I can’t go to court and sit in Her rooms and feel Her watching me, wondering what I know. I can’t go to dinner and eat the food from Her
kitchen. I cannot bring myself to meet Her.’

‘Because you hate her?’ he asks. ‘My dearest brother’s wife and the mother of his children?’

‘Because I am afraid of Her,’ I say. ‘And perhaps you should be too, perhaps even he should be.’

LONDON, APRIL 1477

George returns to London and comes at once to his mother’s house to see Richard. My ladies tell me that the brothers are together, behind closed doors in Richard’s
council chamber. In a little while one of Richard’s trusted grooms of the household comes and asks me will I attend my lord. I leave my ladies to their excited speculation and walk across the
great hall to Richard’s rooms.

When I enter I am shocked at George’s appearance. He has grown even thinner during his absence, his face is lean and weary, he looks like a man who is undertaking work he can hardly bear
to do. Richard glances up when I come in and holds out his hand to me. I stand beside his chair, handclasped.

‘George has bad news from Warwick,’ Richard says to me shortly.

I wait.

George’s face is grim, far older than his twenty-seven years. ‘I have found Isabel’s murderer. I have arrested her and brought her to trial. She was found guilty and put to
death.’

I feel my knees weaken, and Richard gets up from his chair and presses me into his seat. ‘You have to be brave,’ he says. ‘There is more and it is worse.’

‘What can be worse?’ I whisper.

‘I found the murderer of my son also.’ George’s voice is a hard monotone. ‘He too was found guilty by the jury that I sent him to, and was hanged. These two, at least,
will be no danger to you or yours.’

I tighten my grip on Richard’s hand.

‘I have been inquiring ever since Isabel’s death as to her murderer,’ George says quietly. ‘Her name was Ankarette, Ankarette Twynho, she was a maidservant in my
wife’s rooms. She served Isabel’s meals, she brought her wine when she was in labour.’

Briefly I close my eyes, thinking of Isabel accepting the service and not knowing that she was being cared for by an enemy. I knew that I should have been there. I would have seen the servant
for what she was.

‘She was in the pay of the queen,’ he says. ‘God knows how long she has been spying on us. But when Isabel went into childbirth and was so happy and confident that it would be
another boy – the queen ordered her servant to use the powders.’

‘Powders?’

‘Italian powders: poison.’

‘You are sure?’

‘I have the evidence, and the jury found her guilty and sentenced her to death.’

‘He has only proof that Ankarette named the queen as her employer,’ Richard intercedes. ‘We can’t be sure the queen ordered the murder.’

‘Who else would hurt Isabel?’ George says simply. ‘Was she not beloved, by everyone who knew her?’

I nod blindly, my eyes filling with tears. ‘And her little boy?’

‘Ankarette went to Somerset as soon as Isabel was dead and her household dismissed,’ George says. ‘But she left the powders with her friend John Thursby, a groom of the
household at Warwick. He gave them to the baby. The jury found them both guilty, they were both executed.’

I give a shuddering sigh, and I look up at Richard.

‘You must guard yourself,’ George cautions me. ‘Eat nothing that comes from her kitchens, no wine but from your own cellars, have them open the bottles before you. Trust none
of your servants. That’s all you can do. We cannot protect ourselves from her witchcraft except by hiring our own witch. If she uses dark forces against us, I don’t know what we can
do.’

‘The queen’s guilt is not proven,’ Richard says doggedly.

George laughs shortly. ‘I have lost a wife, a blameless woman that the queen hated. I don’t need more proof than that.’

Richard shakes his head. ‘We cannot be divided,’ he insists. ‘We are the three sons of York. Edward had a sign, the three suns in the sky. We have come so far, we cannot be
divided now.’

‘I am true to Edward and I am true to you,’ George swears. ‘But Edward’s wife is my enemy, and she is the enemy of your wife too. She has taken the best wife a man could
have had from me, and a boy of my making. I shall make sure she does not hurt me again. I will employ food tasters, I will employ guards, and I will employ a sorcerer to protect me from her evil
crafts.’

Richard turns away from the fireside and looks out of the window as if he could find an answer in the sleety rain.

‘I shall go to Edward and tell him of this,’ George says slowly. ‘I don’t see what else I can do.’

Richard bows his head to his duty as a son of York. ‘I’ll come with you.’

Richard never tells me in detail what passes between the three brothers in the meeting when Edward accuses George of taking the law into his own hands, packing a jury, inventing
charges and executing two innocent people and George replies to his brother that Elizabeth Woodville set murderers on Isabel and her baby boy. Richard only tells me that the gulf between George and
Edward is perhaps fatally wide, and that his loyalty to one brother is on the brink of destruction because of his love for the other, and that he fears where this will take us all.

‘Can we go home to Middleham?’ I ask.

‘We go to dine at court,’ he says grimly. ‘We have to. Edward has to see I stand by him, the queen cannot see that you are afraid of her.’

My hands start to shake, so I clasp them behind my back. ‘Please . . .’

‘We have to go.’

The queen comes to dinner white-faced and biting her lips; the look she shoots at George would fell a weaker man. He bows low to her, with ironic respect, a flowery court bow
like a player might make as a joke. She turns her shoulder towards George’s table, speaks constantly to the king as if to prevent him even glancing at his brother, leans close to the king at
dinner, sits at his side as they watch an entertainment, allowing no-one else near him; certainly not George, who stands leaning back against the wall and stares at her as if he would put her on
trial too. The court is agog with the scandal and horrified at the accusations. Anthony Woodville goes everywhere with his thumbs in his sword belt, walking on the balls of his feet as if ready to
spring up to defend his sister’s honour. Nobody is laughing at George any more, not even the careless Rivers family who have always taken everything so lightly. Matters have become serious:
we all wait to see what the king will do, whether he will allow the murderous witch to guide him, yet again.

BAYNARD’S CASTLE, LONDON, MAY 1477

‘I am not afraid,’ George tells me. We are seated by the fireside in my privy chamber at Baynard’s Castle. Unseasonal rain is running down the windows, the
skies are heavily grey. We are head to head not for warmth but for fear. Richard is at court, consulting with his brother Edward, trying to reconcile his brothers, trying to balance the unending
drip of poisonous advice that is the counsel of the queen, trying to counteract the unending gossip that comes from L’Erber, where George’s household speaks of a bastard clinging to the
throne, a king enchanted by a witch, and a poisoner at work in the royal family. Richard believes that the brothers can be reconciled. Richard believes that the House of York can stand with honour
– despite the Rivers family, despite their death-dealing queen.

‘I am not afraid,’ says George. ‘I have my own powers.’

‘Powers?’

‘I have a sorcerer to protect me from her spells. I have hired a cunning man named Thomas Burdett, and two others, two astronomers from Oxford University. They are very skilled, very
serious scholars, and they have foreseen the death of the king and the throwing down of the queen. Burdett has traced the influence of the queen, he can see her path through our lives like a silver
slime. He tells me what is to be, and he assures me that the Rivers will fall by their own hand. The queen will hand over her sons to their murderer. She will end her own line.’