The Kingmaker's Daughter Read online

  Richard rides his great grey horse right up to me, as I stand, like a martyr, on the mounting block, as if he thinks I might mount behind him and ride pillion. His young face is grim. ‘Lady Anne,’ he says.

  ‘Princess,’ I say weakly. ‘I am Princess Anne.’

  He takes off his hat to me. ‘Dowager princess,’ he corrects me.

  For a moment his meaning does not sink in. Then I sway and he puts out a hand to steady me so that I do not fall. ‘My husband is dead?’

  He nods.

  I look around for his mother. She is inside the priory still. She does not know. The horror of this is quite beyond me. I think she will die when she hears this news. I don’t know how I am going to tell her.

  ‘At whose hands?’

  ‘He died during the battle. He had a soldier’s death: honourable. Now I am taking you into safe-keeping, according to the orders of my brother King Edward.’

  I draw close to his horse, I put one pleading hand on his horse’s mane and I look into his kind brown eyes. ‘Richard, for the love of God, for my father’s love for you, let me go to my mother. I think she is in an abbey somewhere called Beaulieu. And my father is dead. Let me go to my mother. There is my horse, let me mount it and go.’

  His young face is stern; it is as if we are strangers, as if he had never seen me in his life before. ‘I am sorry, Dowager Princess. My orders are clear. To take you and Her Grace Margaret of Anjou into my keeping.’

  ‘And what of my husband?’

  ‘He’ll be buried here. With the hundreds, thousands of others.’

  ‘I will have to tell his mother,’ I say. ‘Can I tell her how he died?’

  His sideways glance, as if he is too afraid to meet my eyes, confirms my suspicions. That was how he used to look when he was caught out in some misdemeanour in the schoolroom. ‘Richard!’ I accuse him.

  ‘He died during the battle,’ he says.

  ‘Did you kill him? Or Edward? Or George?’

  The York boys stick together once more. ‘He died in battle,’ Richard repeats. ‘A soldier’s death. His mother may be proud of his courage. You too. And now I must bid you get on your horse and come with me.’

  The door of the priory opens and he looks up and sees her as she comes slowly down the steps in the sunshine. She has her travelling cape over her arm and a little satchel on her back; they caught us only by moments, we had nearly got away. She sees the fifty cavalrymen, and looks from Richard’s grim face to my shocked one, and she knows at once the news that he brings. Her hand goes out to the stone doorway to steady herself, and she holds the arch at the height where she used to hold her son’s little hand when she was Queen of England and he was her precious only boy.

  ‘My son, His Grace the Prince of Wales?’ she asks, clinging to the title now that she will never hold the young man again.

  ‘I regret to tell you that Edward of Westminster died in the battle,’ Richard says. ‘My brother, the King of England, King Edward, has won. Your commanders are dead, or surrendering, or fled. I am here to take you to London.’

  I jump down from the mounting block and go towards her with my hands out to hold her; but she does not even see me. Her pale blue eyes are stony. ‘I refuse to come with you, this is hallowed ground, I am in sanctuary. I am a Princess of France, and Queen of England, you cannot lay hands on me. My person is sacred. The dowager princess is in my keeping. We will stay here until Edward comes to parley, and I will speak to none other but him.’

  Richard is eighteen years old, born nothing more than the youngest son of a duke. She was born a princess and has fought half her life as a queen. She faces him down, and he drops his gaze. She turns from him and snaps her fingers at me to follow her inside the nunnery. I obey, jumping down from the mounting block and falling in behind her, aware of his eyes on my back, wondering if we will get away with this magnificent gamble of prestige against power.

  ‘Your Grace, you will get on your horse and ride with us to London or I will have you bound and gagged and thrown in a litter,’ he says quietly.

  She rounds on him. ‘I claim sanctuary! You heard me! I am safe here.’

  His face is grim. ‘We are dragging them out of the sanctuary of Tewkesbury Abbey and slitting their throats in the churchyard,’ he says without raising his voice, without a trace of shame in his voice. ‘We don’t recognise sanctuary for traitors. We have changed the rules. You should thank God that Edward wants to show you as part of his triumph in London or you would be down in the dirt with them with your head staved in by an axe.’

  In a second she has changed her tactics and she is off the steps and at his side, her hand on his rein. The face she turns up to him is warm and inviting. ‘You are young,’ she says gently. ‘You are a good soldier, a good general. You will be nothing while Edward lives, you will always be a younger son, after Edward, after George. Come to me and I will name you as my heir, get us away from here and you shall marry Her Grace Anne, the princess dowager, I shall name you Prince of Wales, my heir, and you can have Anne. Put me back on the throne and I will give you the Neville fortune and then make you the next king after my husband.’

  He laughs out loud, his laugh warm and genuine, the only healthy noise in the stable yard today. He shakes his young curly head in amusement at her persistence, at her refusal to give up. ‘Your Grace, I am a boy of York. My motto is loyauté me lie. I am faithful to my brother as to my own self. I love nothing in the world more than honour. And I would as soon put a wolf on the throne of England as you.’

  She is still for a moment. In his proud young voice she hears her defeat. Now, she knows she is beaten. She drops her hands from his rein, she turns away. I see her put her hand to her heart and know that she is thinking of the son she adored, whose inheritance she just threw on the ground for a final last desperate cast.

  Richard looks over her head to me. ‘And the princess dowager and I will make our own arrangements,’ he says surprisingly.

  She takes hours to pack her things. I know she has been kneeling before her crucifix in speechless weeping for her son; she begs the nuns to say mass for him, to get hold of his body if they can and bathe it and wrap it and bury him with the honours of a prince. She orders me to ask Richard for his body, but he says that the prince will be buried in Tewkesbury Abbey when the soldiers have scrubbed the blood from the chancel steps and the church has been re-consecrated. The Yorks have fouled a holy place with the blood of Lancastrian martyrs and my young husband will lie beneath bloodstained stones. Oddly, this is one of my family churches, endowed by the Nevilles for generations, our family resting place. So, as it happens, my young husband will lie near my ancestors, in a place of honour below our chancel steps, and his memorial stone will be bright with sun shining through the stained glass of our windows.

  The queen has the priory turned upside down until we can find two gowns of white – the colour of royal mourning in France. She wears a bleached wimple and coif that drains her stricken face of any colour so that she looks indeed like the queen of ice that they once called her. Three times Richard sends to the door of her chamber to demand that she come now, and three times she sends him away saying she is preparing for the journey. Finally, she can delay no longer.

  ‘Follow me,’ she says. ‘We will ride, but if they want to bind us to our horses we will refuse. Do as I do, obey me in everything. And don’t speak unless I say you can.’

  ‘I have asked him if I could go to my mother,’ I say.

  She turns on me a face like stone. ‘Don’t be a fool,’ she says. ‘My son is dead, his widow will have to pay the price too. He is dead and you are dishonoured.’

  ‘You could ask for me to be released to my mother.’

  ‘Why would I do anything for you? My son is dead, my army defeated, the struggle of my life is overthrown. Better for me to bring you into London at my side. Edward is more likely to pardon us as two women in mourning.’

  I follow her out to the stable yard. I cannot deny he