The Kingmaker's Daughter Read online

  ‘He is behaving like a fool,’ my husband rules. ‘It is a performance of suspicion like a masque, and if Edward stands for it because he is lazy and indulgent with George, he can be very sure that the queen will not.’

  ‘He cannot really think that he is endangered?’

  Richard scowls. ‘Anne, I really don’t know what he thinks. He has not spoken to me about Edward since I told him that I took his warnings to be treason. But he speaks to many others. He speaks ill of the queen—’

  ‘What does he say of her?’

  ‘He constantly speaks ill of the king.’

  ‘Yes, but what does he say?’

  Richard turns and stares out of the mullioned window. ‘I can hardly repeat it,’ he says. ‘I wouldn’t stoop to repeat it. Let me leave it that he says the worst thing one can say of a man, and the worst thing one can say of a woman.’

  I don’t press him, as I have learned that his sense of honour is always alert. Besides, I don’t need to ask, I can guess. George will have been saying that his brother Edward is a bastard – slandering and dishonouring his own mother in the attempt to show that he should be king. And he will be saying that Elizabeth got into the king’s bed by witchcraft and that their marriage is not holy or valid, and that their children are bastards too.

  ‘And I am afraid that George is taking money from Louis of France.’

  ‘Everyone is taking money from Louis of France.’

  Richard laughs shortly. ‘None more than the king. No – I don’t mean the pensions, I mean that Louis is paying George secretly to behave like this, mustering men and reciting his claims to the throne. I am afraid Louis will pay George to make an attempt on the throne. It would suit him to have the country at war again. God knows what George is thinking.’

  I don’t say that George will be thinking what George is always thinking – how he can get the most advantage from any situation. ‘What is the king thinking?’

  ‘He laughs,’ Richard says. ‘He laughs and says that George is a faithless dog, and that our mother will speak to him, and that after all, there is little that George can do except curse and glower.’

  ‘And what does the queen say?’ I ask, knowing that she will oppose any slur on her children, she would fight to the death for her son, and that it will be her advice that will control the king.

  ‘She says nothing,’ Richard replies drily. ‘Or at any rate, she says nothing to me. But I think if George continues the way he is going she will see him as her enemy, and the enemy of her sons. I would not want to be her enemy.’

  I think of the scrap of paper in the enamelled box and the two names written in blood. ‘Neither would I.’

  When I next go to the Clarence apartments the door is standing open and they are carrying boxes out, down the tower stairs to the stable yard. Isabel is sitting by the fire, with her travelling cloak around her shoulders, her hand on her big belly.

  ‘What’s happening?’ I ask, coming into the room. ‘What are you doing?’

  She gets to her feet. ‘We’re leaving,’ she says. ‘Walk me down to the stable yard.’

  I take her hand to keep her inside the chamber. ‘You can’t travel like this. Where are you going? I thought you were going to L’Erber for your confinement?’

  ‘George says we can’t stay at court,’ she says. ‘It’s not safe. We won’t be safe even at L’Erber. I’m going into confinement at Tewkesbury Abbey.’

  ‘Halfway to Wales?’ I exclaim in horror. ‘Iz, you can’t!’

  ‘I have to go,’ she says. ‘Help me, Anne.’

  I take her hand in my arm and she leans on me as we go down the winding stone stairs and out into the cold bright stable yard. She gives a little gasp at a stab of pain in her belly. I am certain that she is not fit to make the journey. ‘Isabel, don’t go. Don’t travel like this. Come to my house if you won’t go to your own.’

  ‘We’re not safe in London,’ she whispers. ‘She tried to poison George and me. She sent poisoned food to our rooms.’

  ‘No!’

  ‘She did. George says that we are not safe at court nor even in London. He says that the queen’s enmity is too great a danger. Annie, you should leave too. Get Richard to take you home to Middleham. George says that she will turn Edward against both his brothers. He says she will strike against us this Christmas. She will bring the court together for the Christmas feast and then accuse both brothers and have them arrested.’

  I am so frightened that I can hardly speak. I take both her hands in mine. ‘Isabel, surely this is madness. George is making a war in his dreams, he constantly speaks against the king and his right to the throne, he whispers against the queen. The dangers are all of his own making.’

  She laughs without humour. ‘D’you think so?’

  George’s master of horse brings up her litter, drawn by matched mules. Her ladies in waiting draw back the curtains and I help her seat herself on the soft cushions. The maids put hot bricks beneath her feet and the kitchen boy comes with a brass tray of hot coals.

  ‘I do,’ I say. ‘I do.’ I am trying to suppress my fear for her, so near her time, travelling cross-country on muddy roads. I cannot forget that she had to travel near her time once before and that ended in a death and heartbreak and the loss of a son. I lean into the litter and whisper: ‘The king and the queen are bent on pleasure this Christmas, and showing off their new clothes and their endless children. They’re drunk on vanity and luxury. We’re not in danger, neither of us are in danger, nor our husbands. They’re the king’s own brothers, they’re royal dukes. The king loves them. We are safe.’

  Her face is white with the strain. ‘I have a dead lapdog who stole a piece of chicken from a dish meant for me,’ she says. ‘I tell you, the queen is set on my death, on yours too.’

  I am so horrified I cannot speak. I just hold her hand and warm it between my own. ‘Iz, don’t go like this.’

  ‘George knows, I tell you. He knows for certain. He’s had a warning from someone in her household. She is going to have both brothers arrested and executed.’

  I kiss her hands and her cheeks. ‘Dearest Iz . . .’

  She puts her arms around my neck and hugs me. ‘Go to Middleham,’ she whispers. ‘For me: because I ask it of you. For your own safety: because I am warning you. For your boy: to keep him safe. For God’s sake go. Get away from here, Annie. I swear they will have us all killed. She will not stop until your husband and my husband and both of us are dead.’

  All through the cold days which grow increasingly dark and wintry I look for news of Isabel’s confinement, and think of her in the guest rooms of Tewkesbury Abbey, waiting for her baby to come. I know that George will have provided her with the best of midwives, there will be a physician nearby, and companions to cheer her, and a wet nurse waiting, and the rooms will be warm and comfortable for her. But still I wish I could have been with her. The birth of another child to a royal duke is an important event, and George will have left nothing to chance. If it is a boy then it establishes him as a man with two heirs – as good as his brother the king. Still, I wish I had been allowed to go to her. Still, I wish that he had allowed her to stay in London.

  I go to Richard as he sits at his table in his privy chamber to ask him if I may join Isabel in Tewkesbury, and he refuses me out of hand. ‘George’s household has become a centre of treason,’ he says flatly. ‘I have seen some of the sermons and chapbooks which are being written under his patronage. They question my brother’s legitimacy, they name my mother as a whore, and my father as a cuckold. They suggest his marriage to the queen is invalid and that his sons are bastards. It is shameful what George is saying. I cannot forgive it, Edward cannot overlook it. Edward is going to have to act against him.’

  ‘Would he do anything to Isabel?’

  ‘Of course not,’ Richard says impatiently. ‘What has she to do with it?’

  ‘Then can’t I go to her?’

  ‘We can’t associate with them,’ Richard rules. �€