The Kingmaker's Daughter (47 page)

We are a house in deep mourning but we cannot wear blue. George, the handsome irrepressible duke, is dead. He died as he requested, drowned in a barrel of the queen’s
favourite wine. It was his last bitter brilliant gesture of defiance to the woman who ruined his house. She herself never drank the wine again, as if she feared that she would taste sputum from his
gasping lungs in the sweetness. I wish that I could see George in purgatory and tell him that he achieved that at least. He spoiled the queen’s appetite for wine. Would to God that he could
have drowned her too.

I go to court and wait for my chance to speak to the king. I sit in the queen’s rooms with her ladies and I talk to them of the weather, and the likelihood of snow. I admire their fine
lacework for which the queen herself drew the pattern, and I remark on her artistry. When she speaks to me briefly, I reply with pleasant courtesy. I don’t let her see from my face or from
any gesture, not even the turn of my hand or the set of my feet in my leather slippers, that I regard her as a murderer of my sister by poison, and my brother-in-law by politics. She is a killer
and perhaps even a witch, and she has taken from me all the people that I love, except my husband and my son. I don’t doubt that she would rob me of them but for my husband’s position
with the king. I will never forgive her.

When the king comes in, smiling and cheerful, he greets the ladies by name as usual and when he comes to me and kisses me as a brother on both cheeks I say quietly: ‘Your Grace, I would
ask you a favour.’

At once, he glances over to her and I see their swift exchange of looks. She half-rises to her feet as if she would intercept me; but I was prepared for this. I don’t expect to get
anything without the witch’s permission. ‘I should like the wardship of my sister’s children,’ I say quickly. ‘They are at Warwick in the nursery there. Margaret is
four, Edward nearly three. I loved Isabel dearly, I should like to care for her children.’

‘Of course,’ Edward says easily. ‘But you know they have no fortunes?’

Oh yes, I know that, I think. For you robbed George of everything he had gained by accusing him of treason. If their wardship was worth anything your wife would already have claimed it. If they
had been wealthy she would have the marriage contract already drawn up for their betrothal to one of her own children. ‘I will provide for them,’ I say.

Richard, coming towards me, nods his assent. ‘We will provide for them.’

‘I will raise them at Middleham with their cousin my son,’ I say. ‘If Your Grace will allow it. It is the greatest favour you could do me. I loved my sister and I promised her
that if anything happened to her I would care for her children.’

‘Oh, did she think she might die?’ the queen asks, with pretend concern, coming up to the king and slipping her hand in his arm, her beautiful face solemn and concerned. ‘Did
she fear childbirth?’

I think of Isabel warning me that one day I would hear that she had died suddenly and that on that day I might know that she had been poisoned by this beautiful woman who stands before me in her
arrogance and her power, and dares to tease me with the death of my sister. ‘Childbirth is always dangerous,’ I say quietly, denying the truth of Isabel’s murder. ‘As
everyone knows. We all enter our confinement with a prayer.’

The queen holds my gaze for a moment as if she might challenge me, see if she can drive me into saying something treasonous or rebellious. I can see my husband tense as if readying himself for
an attack, and he draws a little closer to his brother as if to take his attention from the she-devil who holds his arm. Then she smiles her lovely smile and looks up at her husband in her familiar
seductive way. ‘I think we should let the Clarence children live with their aunt, do you not, Your Grace?’ she asks sweetly. ‘Perhaps it would comfort them all in their loss. And
I am sure that my sister Anne here will be a good guardian to her little niece and nephew.’

‘I agree,’ the king says. He nods at Richard. ‘I am glad to grant your wife a favour.’

‘Let me know how they go on,’ the queen says to me as she turns away. ‘What a sadness that her baby died. What was his name?’

‘Richard,’ I say softly.

‘Did she call him after your father?’ she asks, naming the murderer of her father, of her brother, the accuser of her mother, her lifelong enemy.

‘Yes,’ I say, not knowing what else I can say.

‘What a pity,’ she repeats.

BAYNARD’S CASTLE, LONDON, MARCH 1478

I think I have won. That evening and in the days after I silently celebrate my victory. I celebrate without words, without even a smile. I have lost my sister; but her children
will be in my keeping and I will love them as my own. I will tell them that their mother was a beauty and their father was a hero, and that Isabel put them into my keeping.

I write to Warwick Castle and tell them that as soon as the roads are clear enough for the journey the two children shall go to Middleham. Weeks later, delayed by snow and storms, I get a reply
from the castle to tell me that Margaret and Edward have set off, well-wrapped in two litters with their nursemaids. A week later I hear from Middleham that they have safely arrived. I have
Isabel’s children behind the thick walls of our best castle, and I swear that I will keep them safe.

I go to my husband while he is hearing petitions in his presence chamber in Baynard’s Castle. I wait patiently while the dozens of people present their applications and their grievances
and he listens carefully and deals justly with each one. Richard is a great lord. He understands, as my father did, that each man has to be allowed to have his say, that each one will give his
fealty if he can be sure that a lord will repay him with protection. He knows that wealth is not in land but in the men and women who work the land. Our wealth and our power depend upon the love of
the people who serve us. If they will do anything for Richard – as they would do anything for my father – then he has an army on call, for whatever need. This is true power, this is
real wealth.

When the very last of them has finished and has bent the knee, thanked Richard for his care, and gone, my husband looks up from signing his papers and sees me. ‘Anne?’

‘I too wanted to see you and ask a favour.’

He smiles and steps down from his throne on the dais. ‘You can ask me anything, at any time. You don’t have to come here.’ He puts his arm around my waist and we walk to the
window that overlooks the courtyard before the house. Beyond the great wall the trade and bustle of London goes on, beyond that is the Palace of Westminster and the queen sits behind those walls in
her power and her mystery. Behind us, Richard’s clerks clear away the papers that the petitioners have brought, carry away the writing tables with the quills and ink and sealing wax. Nobody
is eavesdropping on our conversation.

‘I have come to ask you if we can go home to Middleham.’

‘You want to be with your sister’s children?’

‘And with little Edward. But it is more than that.’

‘What is it?’

‘You know what.’

He glances around to make sure that no-one can hear us. I observe the king’s own loyal brother fearful of speaking in his own house. ‘The truth is that I think that George was right
to accuse Ankarette of being in the queen’s pay, of poisoning Isabel,’ I say bluntly. ‘I think the queen set her spy to poison Isabel and perhaps even to kill the baby, because
she hates Isabel and me and wanted her revenge for the murder of her father. It is a blood feud, and she is waging it against my father’s children, Isabel, and her son Richard. I am certain
that I, and the children, will be next.’

Richard’s gaze does not leave my eyes. ‘This is a grave allegation against a queen.’

‘I make it only to you, in private,’ I say. ‘I would never publicly accuse the queen. We all saw what happened to George who publicly accused her.’

‘George was guilty of treason against the king,’ Richard reminds me. ‘There was no doubt of his guilt. He spoke treason to me, I heard him, myself. He took money from France,
he plotted a new rebellion.’

‘There is no doubt of his guilt but he had always been forgiven before,’ I say. ‘Edward on his own would never have taken George to trial. You know it was on the advice of the
queen. When your own mother went to beg for clemency she said it was the queen who insisted that George be put to death. The queen saw George as a danger to her rule, she would not let him accuse
her. He named her as a murderer and to silence him she had him killed. It was not about a rebellion against the king, it was about his enmity to Her.’

Richard cannot deny this. ‘And your fear?’ he asks quietly.

‘Isabel told me of the queen’s jewellery case, and two names written in blood, that she keeps inside an enamel box.’

He nods.

‘Isabel believed that it was our names: hers and mine. She believed that the queen would kill us both to avenge her father and her brother that were killed by our father.’ I take his
hands. ‘Richard, I am sure that the queen will have me killed. I don’t know how she will do it, whether by poison or something that looks like an accident, or some passing violence on
the street. But I am sure she will contrive my death, and I am very afraid.’

‘Isabel was poisoned at Warwick,’ he says. ‘She was far from London, and it didn’t save her.’

‘I know. But I think I would be safer at Middleham than right here, where she sees me at court, where you rival her in Edward’s affections, where I remind her of my father every time
I walk into her rooms.’

He hesitates.

‘You yourself warned me not to eat the food that came from the queen’s kitchen,’ I remind him. ‘Before George was arrested. Before she pressed for his death. You warned
me yourself.’

Richard’s face is very grave. ‘I did,’ he says. ‘I thought you were in danger then, and I think you are in danger now. I agree with you that we should go to Middleham and
I think we should stay away from court. I have much to do in the North, Edward has given me all of George’s Yorkshire lands for my own. We will leave London and we will only come to court
when we have to.’

‘And your mother?’ I ask, knowing that she too will never forgive the queen for the death of George.

He shakes his head. ‘She speaks treason, she says that Edward should never have taken the throne if he was going to make such a woman his queen. She calls Elizabeth a witch like her
mother. She is going to leave London and live at Fotheringhay. She too dares not stay here.’

‘We will be northerners,’ I say, imagining the life we shall lead, far from the court, far from the constant fear, far from the edgy brittle amusement and entertainment that always
now seems like a veneer over the manoeuvrings and plottings of the queen and her brothers and sisters. This court has lost its innocence; it is no longer joyful. This is a court of killers and I
shall be glad to put miles and miles between them and me.

MIDDLEHAM CASTLE, YORKSHIRE, SUMMER 1482

We do not live at peace, as I hoped; for the king commands Richard to lead the armies of England against the Scots, and when the treaty between Scotland and England breaks
down, and Anthony Woodville finds himself without his promised Scottish royal bride, it falls to Richard to lead the Rivers’ revenge: taking a small English force, mostly our northerners, to
victory, winning the town of Berwick and entering Edinburgh itself. It is a great victory; but even this does not persuade the court that Richard is a great soldier and worthy heir to his father.
Within the month we hear that the Rivers are complaining at court that he should have gone further, and won more.

I hear Elizabeth’s whispered counsel in this, and I grit my teeth. If she can persuade her husband to call this victory against the Scots a treasonous failure, then they will summon
Richard to London to answer for it. The last royal brother accused of treason had a trial without a defence and choked away his life in a vat of the queen’s favourite wine.

To comfort myself, I go to the schoolroom and sit at the back while the children wade through their Latin grammars, reciting the verbs that were taught to Isabel and me so long ago in the
schoolroom at Calais. I can almost hear Isabel’s voice, even now, and her triumphant crow when she gets through them without making a mistake. My boy Edward is nine years old, seated beside
him is Isabel’s daughter, Margaret, nine this year, and beside her is her brother Edward, who we all call Teddy, just seven.