The Kingmaker's Daughter (45 page)

He prays before he sleeps, little Latin prayers that his nurse has taught him to recite, hardly understanding their meaning. But he is earnest over the prayer that names me and his father, and
once he is in bed and his dark lashes are softly lying on his little cheek, I get to my knees beside his bed and pray that he grows well and strong, that we can keep him safe. For surely there
never was a more precious boy in all of Yorkshire – no, not in all of the world.

I spend every summer day with my little son, listening to him read in the sun-drenched nursery, riding out with him over the moor, fishing with him in the river, and playing catch, and bat and
ball in the inner courtyard, until he is so tired that he goes to sleep on my lap as I read him his night-time story. These are easy days for me, I eat well, and sleep deeply in my richly canopied
bed with Richard wrapped around me, as if we were lovers still in our first year of marriage; and I wake in the morning to hear the lapwing calling over the moorland, and the ceaseless chatter and
twitter of the nesting swallows and martlets that have made their nests in cups of mud under every corbel.

But no baby comes to us. I revel in my son but I long for another baby, I am yearning for another child. The wooden cradle stands below the stairs in the nursery tower. Edward should have a
brother or a sister to play with – but no child comes. I am allowed to eat meat on fast days, a special letter from the Pope himself gives me permission to eat meat during Lent or any day of
fasting. At dinner Richard carves for me the best cuts of the spring lamb, the fat of the meat, the skin of the roast chicken, but still no little body is made from the flesh. In our long
passionate nights we cling together with a sort of desperate desire but we do not make a child; no baby grows inside me.

I had thought we would spend all the summer and autumn in our northern lands, perhaps going over to Barnard Castle, or looking at the rebuilding work at Sheriff Hutton, but
Richard gets an urgent message from his brother Edward, summoning him back to London.

‘I have to go, Edward needs me.’

‘Is he ill?’ I have a pang of fear for the king, and for a moment I think the unthinkable: can She have poisoned her own husband?

Richard is white with shock. ‘Edward is well enough; but he’s gone too far. He says he is putting a stop to George and his unending accusations. He has decided to charge George with
treason.’

I put my hand to my throat where I can feel my heart hammer. ‘He will never . . . he could not . . . he would not have him executed?’

‘No, no, just charge him, and then hold him. Certainly, I shall insist that he holds him with honour, in his usual rooms in the Tower, where George can be well-served by his own servants
and kept quiet until we find an agreement. I know that Edward has to silence him. George is completely out of control. Apparently he was trying to marry Mary of Burgundy only so that he could mount
an invasion against Edward from Flanders. Edward has evidence now. George was taking money from the French, as we suspected. He was plotting against his own country, with France.’

‘This is not true, I would swear that he did not plan to marry her,’ I say earnestly. ‘Isabel was hardly buried, George was beside himself. Remember how he was when he first
came to court and told us! He told me himself that it was a plan of Edward’s to get him out of the country, and only forbidden by the queen, who wanted Mary for her own brother
Anthony.’

Richard’s young face is a mask of worry. ‘I don’t know! I can’t tell the truth of it any more. It’s the word of one brother against another. I wish to God that the
queen and her family would stay out of the business of ruling the country. If she would only stick to having children and leave Edward to rule as he sees fit, then none of this would ever
happen.’

‘But you will have to go . . .’ I say plaintively.

He nods. ‘I have to go to make sure that George is not harmed,’ he says. ‘If the queen is speaking against my brother, who will defend him but me?’

He turns and goes into our bedroom where his servants are packing his riding clothes into a bag. ‘When will you come back?’ I ask.

‘As soon as I can.’ His face is dark with worry. ‘I have to make sure that this goes no further. I have to save George from the queen’s rage.’

MIDDLEHAM CASTLE, YORKSHIRE, AUTUMN 1477

The summer days with my son turn to autumn, and I send for the tailor from York to come and fit him for his winter clothes. He has grown during the summer, and there is much
exclaiming at the new length of his riding trousers. The cobbler comes with new boots, and I agree, despite my own fears, that he shall go on to a bigger pony, and the little fell pony that has
served him so well will be turned out to grass.

It is like a sentence of imprisonment when Richard rides home and tells me that we have to return to London to be at court for Christmas. Elizabeth the queen has come out of her confinement,
mother to a new boy, her third; and as if to add lustre to her triumph, she has arranged for the betrothal of her younger royal son Richard to a magnificent heiress, the richest little girl in the
kingdom, Anne Mowbray, a cousin of mine, and the heiress to the mighty Norfolk estate. Little Anne would have been a great match for my Edward. Their lands would have tallied, they would have made
a powerful alliance, we are kinswomen, I have an interest in her. But I did not even bother to ask the family if they might consider Edward. I knew Elizabeth the queen would not let a little
heiress like Anne into the world. I knew that she would secure her fortune for the Rivers family, for her precious son, Richard. They will be married as infants to satisfy the queen’s
greed.

‘Richard, can we not stay here?’ I ask. ‘Can we not spend Christmas here for once?’

He shakes his head. ‘Edward needs me,’ he says. ‘Now that George is imprisoned Edward needs his true friends even more, and I am the only brother he has left. He has William
Hastings as his right-hand man, but apart from William – who can he talk to but her kinsmen? She has him surrounded. And they are a choir of harmony – they all advise him to send George
into exile and forbid him ever to come again to England. He is confiscating George’s goods, he is dividing up his lands. He has made up his mind.’

‘But their children!’ I exclaim, thinking of little Margaret and Edward his son. ‘Who will care for them if their father is exiled?’

‘They would be as orphans,’ Richard says grimly. ‘We have to go to court this Christmas to defend them as well as George.’ He hesitates. ‘Besides, I have to see
George, I have to stand by him. I don’t want to leave him on his own. He is much alone in the Tower, nobody dares to visit him, and he has become fearful of what might happen. I am certain
that She can never persuade Edward to harm his brother, but I am afraid . . .’ He breaks off.

‘Afraid?’ I repeat in a whisper, even though we are safe behind the thick walls of Middleham Castle.

He shrugs. ‘I don’t know. Sometimes I think I am as fearful as a woman, or as superstitious as George has become with his talk of necromancy and sorcery and God knows what darkness.
But . . . I find I am afraid for George.’

‘Afraid of what?’ I ask again.

Richard shakes his head; he can hardly bear to name his fears. ‘An accident?’ he asks me. ‘An illness? That he eats something that turns out to be bad? That he drinks to
excess? I don’t even want to think about it. That she works on his sorrow and on his fears so that he longs to end his own life and someone brings him a knife?’

I am horrified. ‘He would never hurt himself,’ I say. ‘That’s a sin so deep . . .’

‘He’s not like George any more,’ Richard tells me miserably. ‘His confidence, his charm, you know what he is like – it’s all gone from him. I am afraid she is
giving him dreams, I am afraid she is draining his courage. He says that he wakes in a terror and sees her leaving his bedroom, he says he knows she comes to him in the night and pours ice water
into his heart. He says he has a pain which no doctor can cure, in his heart, under his ribs, in his very belly.’

I shake my head. ‘It can’t be done,’ I maintain stoutly. ‘She cannot work on someone else’s mind. George is grieving, well so am I, and he is under arrest which
would be enough to make any man fearful.’

‘At any rate, I have to see him.’

‘I don’t like to leave Edward,’ I say.

‘I know. But he has the best childhood a boy could have here – I know it. This was my own childhood. He won’t be lonely; he has his tutor and his lady of the household. I know
he misses you and loves you but it is better for him to stay here than be dragged down to London.’ He hesitates again. ‘Anne, you have to agree to this: I don’t want him at court
. . .’

He needs to say nothing more than that. I shudder at the thought of the queen’s cold gaze on my boy. ‘No, no, we won’t take him to London,’ I say hastily.
‘We’ll leave him here.’

WESTMINSTER PALACE, LONDON, CHRISTMAS 1477

The Christmas feast is as grand as ever, the queen exultant, out of the birthing chamber, her new baby with the wet nurse, her new boy paraded around the court and mentioned in
every conversation. I can almost taste the bitterness in my mouth when I see her boy, carried everywhere behind her, and her six other children.

‘She’s naming him George,’ Richard tells me.

I gasp. ‘George? Are you sure?’

His face is grim. ‘I am sure. She told me herself. She told me and smiled as if I might be pleased.’

The poisonous humour of this appals me. She has had this innocent child’s uncle arrested for speaking ill of her, threatened him with a charge that carries a death sentence, and she names
her son for him? It is a sort of malicious madness, if it is nothing worse.

‘What could be worse?’ Richard asks.

‘If she thought she were replacing one George with another,’ I say very low, and I turn from his aghast face.

All her children are gathered here at court for Christmas. She flaunts them everywhere she goes, and they follow behind her, dancing in her footsteps. The oldest daughter, Princess Elizabeth, is
eleven years old now, up to her tall mother’s shoulder, long and lean as a Lenten lily, the darling of the court, and her father’s particular favourite. Edward the Prince of Wales is
here for the Christmas feast, taller and stronger every time he comes back to London, kind to his brother Richard, who is just a little boy but a stronger and sturdier little boy than my own son. I
watch them go by with the wet nurse bringing up the rear with the new baby George, and I have to remind myself to smile in admiration.

The queen at least knows the smile is as real and as warm as her cool nod to me, and the offer of her smooth cheek to kiss. When I greet her I wonder if she can smell fear on my breath, in the
cold sweat under my arms, if she knows that my thoughts are always with my brother-in-law, trapped by her in the Tower; if she knows that I can’t see her happiness and her fertility and not
fear for my own solitary son, and remember my own lost sister.

At the end of the Christmas feast there is the shameful charade of the betrothal of little Prince Richard, aged only four, to the six-year-old heiress Anne Mowbray. The little girl will inherit
all the fortunes of the Dukes of Norfolk: she is their only heir. Or rather she
was
their only heir. But now Prince Richard will get this fortune, for the queen writes a marriage contract
for them that ensures that he will have the little girl’s wealth even if she dies as a child before they are old enough to be married, before she reaches adulthood. When my ladies tell me of
this I have to make sure I don’t shudder. I cannot help but think that the Norfolks have signed her death warrant. If the queen gets a great fortune on Anne’s death, how long will the
little girl live, after the contract has been signed?