The Kingmaker's Daughter Read online

  ‘A declaration of war?’ I repeat. ‘Why?’

  ‘George is saying openly that Edward was not our father’s true-born son and heir. He is telling everyone that Edward’s marriage was brought about by witchcraft and his sons are bastards. He is saying Edward prevented him from marrying Mary of Burgundy because he knows that he would claim the throne of England with her army. He says that many people would rise in his support, that he is better loved than the king. He is openly repeating everything he has whispered before. This is as bad as a declaration of war. Edward will have to silence him.’

  We ride into the courtyard of Westminster Palace, the herald announces our titles and the trumpeters blow a blast of welcome. The standard bearers dip the flags to acknowledge the arrival of a royal duke and duchess. My horse stands still as two liveried servants help me down from the saddle and I rejoin Richard as he waits in a doorway.

  ‘How can the king silence his brother?’ I pursue. ‘Half of London is now saying the same thing. How can Edward silence them all?’

  Richard puts my hand on his arm and smiles around at the people who throng the gallery that leads to the stable yard. He leads me onward. ‘Edward can silence George. At last, I think he is driven to do it. He is going to give him one last warning and then he will charge him with treason.’

  The crime of treason carries a death sentence. Edward the king is going to kill his own brother. I stop still with the shock and feel my head swim. Richard takes my hand. We stand for a moment, handclasped as if we are clinging to each other in this new and terrifying world. We don’t notice the passing servants, or the courtiers hurrying by. Richard looks into my eyes and once again I know us for the children that we were, who had to make our own destiny in a world we could not understand.

  ‘The queen has told Edward that she will not feel safe, going into her confinement, if George is still at large. She has demanded his arrest for her own safety. Edward has to satisfy her. She is putting the life of his child against his brother.’

  ‘Tyranny!’ I breathe the word and for once Richard does not defend his brother. His young face is dark with anxiety.

  ‘God knows where we are going. God knows where the queen has taken us. We are the sons of York, Edward saw our three suns in the sky. How can we be divided by one woman?’

  We turn into the great hall of Westminster Palace and Richard raises his hands to acknowledge the cheers and bows from the people gathered there and in the gallery to watch the nobility arrive. ‘Do you eat the food?’ he asks quietly.

  I shake my head. ‘I never eat the food from the queen’s kitchen,’ I tell him in a whisper. ‘Not since George warned me.’

  ‘Neither do I,’ he says with a sigh. ‘Not any more.’

  MIDDLEHAM CASTLE, YORKSHIRE, SUMMER 1477

  We leave London, with George’s fate still unsettled. I might almost say we flee from London. Richard and I ride north away from the city, which is racked with rumour and suspicion, to get home, where the air is clear and where people speak their minds and not for their own advantage, and where the great northern skies bear down on the mossy green hills and we can be at peace, far from court, far from the Woodville family and the Rivers adherents, far from the lethal mystery that is the Queen of England.

  Our son Edward greets us with joy, and has much to show us with the bursting pride of a four-year-old. He has learned to ride his little pony and tilt at the quintain; his pony is a skilled steady little animal that knows its business and rides at a bright trot at exactly the right angle for Edward’s little lance to hit the target. His tutor laughs and praises him and glances at me to see me alight with pride. He is progressing in his studies and is starting to read Latin and Greek. ‘So hard!’ I protest to his tutor.

  ‘The earlier he starts, the easier it is for him to learn,’ he assures me. ‘And already he says his prayers and follows the mass in Latin. It is just to build on that knowledge.’

  His tutor allows him days at liberty so that he and I can ride out together and I buy him a little merlin falcon so that he can come hunting with us with his own bird. He is like a little nobleman in miniature, astride his stocky pony with the pretty falcon on his wrist, and he rides all day and denies that he is tired, though twice he falls asleep on the ride home and Richard, astride his big hunter, carries his little son in his arms, while I lead the pony.

  At night he dines with us in the great hall, sitting between us at the top table, looking down over the beautiful hall crowded with our soldiers, guards and manservants. The people come in from Middleham to see us dine, and to carry away the scraps from the dinners and I hear them comment on the bearing and charm of the little lord: my Edward. After dinner, when Richard withdraws to his privy chamber and sits by the fire to read, I go with Edward to the nursery tower and see him undressed and put to bed. It is then, when he is newly washed and smelling sweet, when his face is as smooth and as pale as the linen of his pillow, that I kiss him and know what it is to love someone more than life itself.

  He prays before he sleeps, little Latin prayers that his nurse has taught him to recite, hardly understanding their meaning. But he is earnest over the prayer that names me and his father, and once he is in bed and his dark lashes are softly lying on his little cheek, I get to my knees beside his bed and pray that he grows well and strong, that we can keep him safe. For surely there never was a more precious boy in all of Yorkshire – no, not in all of the world.

  I spend every summer day with my little son, listening to him read in the sun-drenched nursery, riding out with him over the moor, fishing with him in the river, and playing catch, and bat and ball in the inner courtyard, until he is so tired that he goes to sleep on my lap as I read him his night-time story. These are easy days for me, I eat well, and sleep deeply in my richly canopied bed with Richard wrapped around me, as if we were lovers still in our first year of marriage; and I wake in the morning to hear the lapwing calling over the moorland, and the ceaseless chatter and twitter of the nesting swallows and martlets that have made their nests in cups of mud under every corbel.

  But no baby comes to us. I revel in my son but I long for another baby, I am yearning for another child. The wooden cradle stands below the stairs in the nursery tower. Edward should have a brother or a sister to play with – but no child comes. I am allowed to eat meat on fast days, a special letter from the Pope himself gives me permission to eat meat during Lent or any day of fasting. At dinner Richard carves for me the best cuts of the spring lamb, the fat of the meat, the skin of the roast chicken, but still no little body is made from the flesh. In our long passionate nights we cling together with a sort of desperate desire but we do not make a child; no baby grows inside me.

  I had thought we would spend all the summer and autumn in our northern lands, perhaps going over to Barnard Castle, or looking at the rebuilding work at Sheriff Hutton, but Richard gets an urgent message from his brother Edward, summoning him back to London.

  ‘I have to go, Edward needs me.’

  ‘Is he ill?’ I have a pang of fear for the king, and for a moment I think the unthinkable: can She have poisoned her own husband?

  Richard is white with shock. ‘Edward is well enough; but he’s gone too far. He says he is putting a stop to George and his unending accusations. He has decided to charge George with treason.’

  I put my hand to my throat where I can feel my heart hammer. ‘He will never . . . he could not . . . he would not have him executed?’

  ‘No, no, just charge him, and then hold him. Certainly, I shall insist that he holds him with honour, in his usual rooms in the Tower, where George can be well-served by his own servants and kept quiet until we find an agreement. I know that Edward has to silence him. George is completely out of control. Apparently he was trying to marry Mary of Burgundy only so that he could mount an invasion against Edward from Flanders. Edward has evidence now. George was taking money from the French, as we suspected. He was plotting against his own country, with France.’