The Kingmaker's Daughter (7 page)

‘The king? King Edward?’ I say stupidly, as if our old enemy the sleeping King Henry might have woken and risen up from his bed in the Tower.

‘Of course King Edward.’

‘But Father loves him.’

‘Loved,’ Isabel corrects me. ‘George told me this morning. It’s all changed. Father can’t forgive the king for favouring the Rivers. Nobody can earn a penny, nobody
can get a yard of land, everything that can be taken, they have taken, and everything that is decided in England is done by them. Especially Her.’

‘She’s queen . . .’ I say tentatively. ‘She’s a most wonderful queen . . .’

‘She has no right to everything,’ Isabel says.

‘But to challenge the king?’ I lower my voice. ‘Isn’t that treason?’

‘Father won’t challenge the king directly. He’ll demand that he surrenders his bad advisors – he means Her family, the Rivers family. He will demand that the king restore
the councillors who have guided him wisely – that’s us. He’ll get the chancellorship back for our uncle George Neville. He’ll make the king consult him on everything, Father
will decide on foreign alliances again. We’ll get it all back again, we’ll be where we were before, the advisors and the rulers behind the king. But one thing I don’t know . .
.’ Her voice quavers in the middle of these firm predictions, as if she has suddenly lost her nerve: ‘One thing I really don’t know . . .’ She takes a breath. ‘I
don’t know . . .’

I watch as they swing a great cannon on a sling and lower it into the hold of a ship. ‘What? What don’t you know?’

Her face is aghast, like when we left her in her marriage bed last night, and she whispered: ‘Annie, don’t go.’

‘What if it’s a trick?’ she asks in a voice so quiet that I have to put my head against hers to hear her. ‘What if it is a trick like they played on the sleeping king and
the bad queen? You’re too young to remember but King Edward’s father and our father never challenged the sleeping king. They were never open rebels against him. They always said only
that he should be better advised. And they led out the armies of England against him, always saying that he should be better advised. It’s what Father always says.’

‘And when they beat him in battle . . .’

‘Then they put him in the Tower and said that they would hold him forever,’ she finishes. ‘They took his crown from him although they always said they just wanted to help him
rule. What if Father and George are planning to do that to King Edward? Just as Father and Edward did it to the sleeping king? What if Father has turned traitor to Edward and is going to put him in
the Tower along with Henry?’

I think of the beautiful queen, so confident and smiling at her coronation feast, and imagine her imprisoned in the Tower instead of being the mistress of it, and dancing till dawn. ‘He
can’t do that, they swore fealty,’ I say numbly. ‘We all did. We all said that Edward was the true king, the anointed king. We all kissed the queen’s hand. We said King
Edward had a better claim to the throne than the sleeping king. We said he was the flower of York, and we would all walk in the sweet garden of England. And we danced at her coronation when she
looked so beautiful and they were so happy. Edward is the King of England: there can’t be another. She’s queen.’

Isabel shakes her head impatiently. ‘You think everything is so easy! You think everything is straightforward like that? We swore fealty when Father thought that he would rule through King
Edward. What if he now thinks he will rule through George? Through George and me?’

‘He will put you on the throne of England?’ I say incredulously. ‘You’re going to wear Her crown? You’re going to take Her place? Not waiting for Edward to die?
Just taking everything?’

She does not look excited as she did when we used to play at queens. She looks aghast. She looks afraid. ‘Yes.’

CALAIS CASTLE, SUMMER 1469

Isabel’s new husband George, my father, and all the men that assembled as wedding guests, turn out to be a recruited force, sworn to loyalty to each other, ready to
invade England, and they set sail, land in Kent, and march on the Midlands. Men pour out of the cities to join them, throw down their spades in the fields and run after Father’s army. He is
still remembered by the people of England as the leader who freed the country from the curse of the sleeping king, he is beloved as the captain who holds the narrow seas and keeps both pirates and
the French from our shores. And everyone believes him when he says that all he wants is to teach the young king how to rule, and free him from the command of his wife: another strong-minded woman,
another bad queen that will curse England if the men give way to another female ruler.

The people of England learned to hate the bad queen, Margaret of Anjou. At the first mention of another woman, a strong-willed determined woman who is presuming on her position as the
king’s wife to try to rule the kingdom, they turn out in a frenzy of offended male pride. My uncle George, whose post of Lord Chancellor was taken off him by the king and his wife, catches
Edward on the road as he is riding to join his army, captures him and sends him under guard to our home: Warwick Castle. Father captures the queen’s own father and her brother as they ride
away into Wales. He sends a special force to Grafton in Northampton and snatches the queen’s mother from her home. Events tumble after one another too fast for the king. Father hunts down the
Rivers family before they realise they are prey. This is the end of the king’s power, this is the end of the bad councillors for the king. For certain, it is the end of the Rivers family. Of
the queen’s extensive family, Father holds in his power three of them: her father, mother and brother.

Only slowly, with a growing dread, do we realise that this is not a threat from Father, to teach them a lesson. These are not kinsmen who have been taken for ransom in the ordinary way: this is
a declaration of war on the Rivers. Father accuses the queen’s own father and her handsome young brother John of treason and orders their execution. Without rule of law, without a proper
trial, he has them brought from Chepstow to our stronghold, Coventry, and executed without chance of appeal, without a chance of a pardon, outside the hard grey walls. The handsome young man,
married to a woman old enough to be his grandmother, dies before his ancient bride, his head on a block, his dark curls gripped by the executioner. Lord Rivers puts his head down in his son’s
blood. The queen, stricken with grief, in terror for herself, separated from her husband, fearing that she will be an orphan, barricades herself and her little girls into the Tower of London and
sends for her mother.

She can’t reach her. The queen’s mother, who planned the table for the children at the coronation dinner and smiled at me, is in my father’s power at Warwick Castle. Father
creates a courtroom to have her tried and brings witnesses against her. One after another they come with reports of lights burning in her still-room at night, of her whispering to the river which
runs near her home, of rumours that she could hear voices and that when one of her family was going to die she was warned by singing, spectral singing from the night sky.

Finally they search her home at Grafton and bring in the tools of necromancy: two little figures made of lead, bound together in a devilish union with wire of gold. Clearly one is meant to be
the king, the other Jacquetta’s daughter, Elizabeth Woodville. Their secret marriage was brought about by witchcraft, and King Edward, who has acted like a madman since he first set eyes on
the Northampton widow, was all this time under an enchantment. The queen’s mother is a witch who brought about the marriage by magic, and the queen herself is the daughter of a witch and
half-witch herself. Clearly, Father will obey the injunction in the Bible that says
Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live
, and put her to death, doing God’s work and his own.

He writes all this to Mother, as we wait in Calais, and she reads it in her measured voice as the ladies sit around and forget to sew, open-mouthed with shock. Of course, I want Midnight to ride
with his high-stepping stride over all the kingdom; but I cannot rejoice at the thought of that young man John putting his handsome head on the block. I remember how he looked like a lamb going to
the slaughter at the coronation feast when they made him go handfast with his elderly bride – but now he is a slaughtered lamb indeed and he has died before the old lady. My father rebels
against the rules of nature as well as those of kingship. The queen’s mother, Jacquetta, who smiled at me so kindly on the night of the coronation feast, has been widowed by my father’s
executioner. I remember her walking into dinner with her hand in her husband’s arm, their pride and joy shining from them like candlelight. Yet my father has killed her boy, and her husband
too. The queen herself is fatherless; is she to lose her mother as well? Is Father going to burn Jacquetta, Lady Rivers?

‘She is our enemy,’ Isabel says reasonably. ‘I know that the queen is beautiful and she seemed very pleasant, but her family are grasping and bad advisors, and Father will have
to destroy them. They are our enemy now. You must think of them as the enemy now.’

‘I do,’ I say; but I think of her in her white gown and her high headdress and her veil of lace, and I know that I don’t.

For most of the summer we are in a state of constant excitement as the reports come from England that Edward, the one-time king, is living as our forced guest at Warwick Castle, that Father is
ruling the realm through him, and the reputations of all of the Rivers are being destroyed. Father tells everyone that the evidence from the trial of the queen’s mother shows clearly that the
royal marriage was brought about by sorcery, and the king has been under an evil spell. Father has saved him, he is keeping him safe and he will kill the witch and break the spell.

My mother has waited in Calais for news before; we waited here when my father fought one brilliant battle after another to defeat the sleeping king. It is as if we are re-enacting those days of
victory and Father is once again unstoppable. Now he has a second king in his keeping and he is going to put a new puppet on the throne. The French servants who come into the city of Calais tell us
that the French call my father ‘the kingmaker’ and say that no-one can hold the throne of England without his permission.

‘The kingmaker,’ my mother murmurs, savouring the word. She smiles at her ladies, she even smiles at me. ‘Lord, what foolish things people do say,’ she remarks.

Then a ship from England brings us a packet of letters and the captain comes to the castle, to see my mother in private, and tell her that the news is all over London that King Edward was born a
bastard, not his father’s son but the misbegotten child of an English archer. Edward was never the heir of the House of York. He is base-born. He should never have been on the throne at
all.

‘Are people really saying that Duchess Cecily lay with an archer?’ I ask out loud as one of the ladies whispers the gossip. The king’s mother, our great-aunt, is one of the
most formidable ladies of the realm, and no-one but a fool would believe such a thing of her. ‘Duchess Cecily? With an archer?’

In one swift angry move, my mother rounds on me and boxes my ears with a ringing blow that sends my headdress flying across the room.

‘Out of my sight!’ she shouts in a rage. ‘And think before you dare to speak ill of your betters! Never say such a thing in my hearing again.’

I have to scuttle across the room to get my headdress. ‘My Lady Mother . . .’ I start to apologise.

‘Go to your room!’ she orders. ‘And then go to the priest for a penance for gossiping.’

I scurry out, clutching my headdress, and find Isabel in our bedroom.

‘What is it?’ she asks, seeing a red handprint across my cheek.

‘Lady Mother,’ I say shortly.

Isabel reaches into her sleeve and lends me her special wedding handkerchief to dry my eyes. ‘Here,’ she says gently. ‘Why did she box your ears? Come and sit here and
I’ll comb your hair.’

I stifle my sobs and take my seat before the little silvered mirror, and Isabel takes the pins out of my hair and combs out the tangles with the ivory comb that her husband gave her after their
one night of marriage.

‘What happened?’

‘I only said that I couldn’t believe that King Edward was a bastard foisted on his father by the duchess,’ I say defensively. ‘And even if I am beaten to death for saying
it, I still can’t believe it. Our great-aunt? Duchess Cecily? Who would dare to say such a thing of her? She is such a great lady. Who would say such a thing against her? Won’t they get
their tongue slit? What d’you think?’

‘I think it’s a lie,’ she says drily, as she twists my hair into a plait and pins it up on my head. ‘And that’s why you got your ears boxed. Mother was angry with
you because it’s a lie that we are not to question. We are not to repeat it, but we’re not to challenge it either. It’s a lie that our men will be telling all over London, Calais
too, and we are not to contradict it.’

I am utterly confused. ‘Why would our men say it? Why would we not forbid them to speak, as I am forbidden? Why would we allow such a lie? Why would anyone say that Duchess Cecily betrayed
her own husband? Shamed herself?’