The Kingmaker's Daughter Read online

  Across the room, someone tells George that there has been a quarrel and he comes quickly to stand beside Isabel and glare angrily at Richard and me. For a moment Isabel and I are open enemies, staring across the great hall at each other, neither of us ready to back down, Isabel standing beside her husband, me with mine. Then Richard touches my arm and we go to be introduced to the new earl. I greet him pleasantly and we talk for a few moments and then there is a lull. I turn, I cannot help but look back, as if I hope that she would call me over to her, as if I hope that we might make friends again. She is laughing and talking with one of the queen’s ladies. ‘Iz . . .’ I say quietly. But she does not hear me, and only as Richard leads me away do I think I hear, like a tiny whisper, her call to me: ‘Annie.’

  This is not the last family greeting I undertake this autumn season, for I have to meet with Richard’s formidable mother, the Duchess Cecily. We go to Fotheringhay, riding up the Great North Road in bright sunny weather to her home. She is in all but exile from the court, her hatred of her daughter-in-law the queen meant that she did not attend most of the major court festivities, and when she joined with George against his brother for the rebellion, she lost the remnants of love she had been able to exact from her son Edward. They all keep up appearances when they can; she still has a London house and visits court from time to time, but the queen’s influence is clear. Duchess Cecily is not a welcomed guest; Fotheringhay is partly repaired and equipped, and given to her as her home. I am cheerful, riding beside Richard, until he says with a sideways glance at me: ‘You know we go through Barnet? The battle was fought along the road.’

  Of course I knew it; but I had not thought that we would ride along the actual road where my father died, where Richard, fighting with his brother, uphill against terrible odds, was able to come out of the mist, surprise my father’s forces and kill him. It is the battlefield where Midnight did his last great task for his master: putting down his black head and taking a sword into his great heart to show the men that there would be no retreat, no running away and no surrender.

  ‘We’ll skirt round,’ Richard says, seeing my face.

  He orders his guard and they open a gate for us, so we leave the road to circle the battlefield by riding through the pastures and over the stubble of oat crops, and then rejoin the Great North Road on the northern side of the little town. Every step my horse takes I flinch, thinking that he is treading on bones, and I think of my betrayal, riding alongside my husband, the enemy who killed my father.

  ‘There’s a little chapel,’ Richard volunteers. ‘It’s not a forgotten battle. He’s not forgotten. Edward and I pay for masses to be said for his soul.’

  ‘Do you?’ I say. ‘I didn’t know.’ I can hardly speak, I am so torn by guilt that I should be married into the house which my father named as his enemy.

  ‘I loved him too, you know,’ Richard says quietly. ‘He raised me, like he raised all of his wards, as if we were more to him than boys for whom he would get a fee. He was a good guardian to all of us. Edward and I thought of him as our leader, as our older brother. We couldn’t have done without him.’

  I nod. I don’t say that my father only turned against Edward because of the queen, because of her grasping family and her wicked advice. If Edward had not married her . . . if Edward had never met her . . . if Edward had not been enchanted by her and her mother and their potent brew of sensuality and spells . . . but this is just to open a lifetime of regret. ‘He loved you,’ is all I say. ‘And Edward.’

  Richard shakes his head, knowing as I do where the fault lay, where it still lies: with Edward’s wife: ‘It’s a tragedy,’ he says.

  I nod, and we ride on to Fotheringhay in silence.

  FOTHERINGHAY CASTLE, NORTHAMPTONSHIRE, AUTUMN 1472

  The castle, Richard’s birthplace and his family’s house, is in disrepair, and has been ever since the wars started and the Yorks could only spend money fortifying the castles that they needed as bases for rebellion against the sleeping king and the bad queen. Richard frowns as he looks at the outer wall that is bowing dangerously over the moat, and scrutinises the roof of the castle where the rooks are making bundles of twiggy nests on the leads.

  The duchess greets me warmly, though I am the third secret bride in her family. ‘But I always wanted Richard to marry you,’ she assured me. ‘I must have discussed it with your mother a dozen times. That was why I was so pleased that Richard was made your father’s ward, I wanted you to know each other. I always hoped you would be my daughter-in-law.’

  She welcomes us into the smaller hall of the castle, a wood-panelled room with a great fire built at either end, and three huge tables laid for dinner: one for the menservants, one for the women servants and one table for the nobility. The duchess, Richard and I and a few of her kinswomen take the top table and oversee the hall. ‘We live very simply,’ she says, though she has hundreds of servants and a dozen guests. ‘We don’t try to compete with Her and Her court. Burgundian fashions,’ she says darkly. ‘And every sort of extravagance.’

  ‘My brother the king sends you his good wishes,’ Richard says formally. He kneels to his mother and she puts her hand on his head in blessing. ‘And how is George?’ she asks at once, naming her favourite. Richard winks at me. The overt favouritism of the duchess was an open joke in the family until the moment when it led her to favour George’s claim to the throne. That was too far, even for the indulgent affection of the king.

  ‘He is well, though we are still trying to settle the inheritance of our wives,’ Richard says.

  ‘A bad business.’ She shakes her head. ‘A good estate should never be broken up. You should make an agreement with him, Richard. You are the younger son after all. You should give way to your brother George.’

  This favouritism is less amusing. ‘I follow my own counsel,’ Richard says stiffly. ‘George and I will agree to share the Warwick fortune. I would be a poor husband to Anne if I let her inheritance be thrown away.’

  ‘Better to be a poor husband than a poor brother,’ she says smartly. ‘Look at your brother Edward, under the cat’s-paw and betraying his family every moment of the day.’

  ‘Edward has been a good friend to me in this,’ Richard reminds her. ‘And he has always been a good brother to me.’

  ‘It’s not his judgement I fear,’ she says darkly. ‘It’s Hers. You wait till your ambitions run counter to hers and then see whose advice Edward will take. She will be his ruin.’

  ‘Indeed, I pray not,’ Richard says. ‘Shall we dine, Lady Mother?’

  Her theme, the ruination of the family by the scheming of Elizabeth Woodville, is a constant one throughout our visit, and though Richard silences her as frequently and as politely as he can, it is impossible to deny the many cases she cites. It is apparent to everyone that the queen gets her way and Edward allows her to put her friends and family into places that belong to other men, she exploits her royal fees more than any queen has done before, and favours her brothers and sisters. Richard will not hear a word said against his brother the king; but at Fotheringhay nobody loves Elizabeth Woodville and the radiant young woman that I first saw on the great night of her triumph is quite forgotten in the picture of the grasping ill-wisher that the duchess describes.

  ‘She should never have been crowned queen,’ she whispers to me one day when we are sitting in her solar, carefully embroidering the cuffs of a shirt which the duchess will send to her favourite, George, for Christmas.

  ‘Should she not?’ I ask. ‘I remember her coronation so well, I was only a little girl and I thought her the most beautiful woman I had ever seen in my life.’

  A scornful shrug shows what this ageing beauty now thinks about good looks. ‘She should never have been crowned queen because the wedding was never valid,’ she whispers behind her hand. ‘We all knew that Edward was secretly married before he even met her. He was not free to marry her. We all said nothing while your father planned the match with Princess Bona of Savoy because