The Kingmaker's Daughter Read online

  Richard is on the steps leading up to the great hall, and people are gathering round him. He has a paper in his hand; I see the royal seal and my first leaping hope is that my prayers have been answered and the queen is dead. I run up the steps to stand beside him and he says, his voice choked with grief: ‘It is Edward. Edward, my brother.’

  I gasp but wait as the bell slowly falls silent and the household looks to my husband. The three children come at a run from the stables and stand, as they should, on the steps before us. Edward has uncovered his head and Margaret takes Teddy’s cap from his curly hair.

  ‘Grave news from London,’ Richard says clearly, so that everyone, even the labourers who have come running in from their fields, can hear him. ‘His Grace the king, my beloved and noble brother, is dead.’ There is a tremendous stir among the crowd. Richard nods as if he understands their disbelief. He clears his throat. ‘He was taken ill some days ago and died. He received the last rites and we will pray for his immortal soul.’

  Many people cross themselves, and one woman gives a little sob and puts her apron to her eyes. ‘His son Edward, Prince of Wales, will inherit his father’s crown,’ Richard says. He raises his voice: ‘The king is dead. God save the king!’

  ‘God save the king!’ we all repeat, and then Richard takes my arm and turns me in to the great hall, the children trailing behind us.

  Richard sends the children to the chapel to pray for the soul of their uncle the king. He is fast and decisive, burning up with the vision of what must be done. This is a moment of destiny, and he is a Plantagenet – they are always at their best in a crisis or on the brink of an opportunity. A child of war, a soldier, commander, warden of the West Marches, he has worked his way up through the ranks of his brother’s men to be ready for the moment now – the moment that his brother is no more, and Richard must protect his brother’s legacy.

  ‘Beloved, I must leave you. I have to go to London. He will have named me as regent and I have to make sure that his kingdom is secure.’

  ‘Who should threaten it?’

  He does not answer: ‘the woman who has threatened the peace of England every day since the cursed May-day that she seduced and enchanted him’. Instead he looks seriously at me and says: ‘As well as everything else, I fear a landing by Henry Tudor.’

  ‘Margaret Stanley’s son?’ I say incredulously. ‘A boy half-bred between the Houses of Beaufort and Tudor? You cannot fear him.’

  ‘Edward feared him, and he was treating with his mother to bring him home as a friend. He is an heir to the House of Lancaster, however obscure, and he has been in exile since Edward took the throne. He is an enemy and I don’t know what alliances he has. I don’t fear him; but I will get to London and secure the throne for York so that there can be no doubt.’

  ‘You will have to work with the queen,’ I caution him.

  He smiles at me. ‘I don’t fear her either. She will neither enchant nor poison me. She doesn’t matter any more. At her worst she can speak against me; but no-one of importance will listen. The loss of my brother is her loss too, though she will only understand that when she sees she is thrown down. She is a dowager queen, no longer principal advisor to the king. I will have to work with her son, but he is Edward’s boy as well as hers, and I will see that he knows my authority as his uncle. My task must be to take him in hand, guard his birthright, see him to the throne as my brother wanted. I am his regent. I am his guardian. I am his uncle. I am protector of the country and of him too. I shall take him into my keeping.’

  ‘Shall I come too?’

  He shakes his head. ‘No, I will ride fast with my closest friends. Robert Brackenbury has already left to provide horses for us on the road. You wait here until I have Elizabeth Woodville and all the cursed Rivers family in quiet mourning at Windsor and out of the way. I will send for you when I have the seal of office and England is mine to command.’ He smiles. ‘This is my moment of greatness, as well as my moment of grief. For a little while – until the boy is old enough – I will rule England as a king. I will resolve the wars with Scotland and negotiate with France. I will see that justice runs through the land and that good men can get places – men who are not Rivers kinsmen. I shall take the Rivers out of their offices and out of their great estates. I shall set my stamp on England in these years and they will know that I was a good protector and a good brother. And I shall take the boy Edward and teach him what a great man his father was – and what a greater man he could have been if it had not been for that woman.’

  ‘I’ll come to London as soon as you send for me,’ I promise. ‘And here we will pray for the soul of Edward. He was a great sinner, but a loveable one.’

  Richard shakes his head. ‘He was betrayed by the woman that he put in the very highest place in the land,’ he says. ‘He was a fool for love. But I shall see that the finest parts of his legacy are passed on to his boy. I shall make the boy a true grandson to my father.’ He pauses for a moment. ‘And as for Her, I shall send her back to the village she came from,’ he swears, in an unusual moment of bitterness. ‘She shall go to an abbey and live in retirement. We have all seen enough of her and her endless brothers and sisters. The Rivers are finished in England, I shall throw them down.’

  Richard rides out that very day. He pauses at York and he and all the city make an oath of loyalty to his nephew. He tells the city that they will honour the late king by their loyalty to his son, and he rides on to London.

  Then I hear nothing from him. I am not surprised at the silence, he is on the road to London – what should he write to me about but the slowness of the going and the mud in these spring days? I know that he is meeting the Duke of Buckingham, young Henry Stafford, who was married against his will to the Woodville sister Catherine when they were both children, who passed down the death sentence on George, against his conscience, to oblige his wife and her sister. I know that William Hastings, the king’s true friend, has written to Richard to come at once, and warned him of the enmity of the queen. The great lords will be gathering to protect the boy Edward, the heir to his father’s throne. I know that the Rivers will be wanting to surround and protect their heir from anyone else – but who can refuse Richard, the king’s brother, the named Protector of England?

  MIDDLEHAM CASTLE, YORKSHIRE, MAY 1483

  Then in the middle of May I get a letter from my husband, written in his own hand and sealed with his private seal. I take it to my chamber away from the noise of the household and I read it by the bright light of the clear glass window.

  You will hear that the coronation of my nephew will take place on 22 June, but do not come to London until I write in my own hand to tell you to do so. London is not safe for anyone who is not sworn or kin to the Rivers or their friends. Now she shows her true colours, and I am ready for the worst. She is refusing to be dowager queen, she hopes to make herself a king. I have to face her as an enemy, and I do not forget my brother George, your sister, or their baby.

  I go to the kitchen where the great fire stays lit night and day and I crush the letter into a ball and push it under the glowing logs and wait till it has burned away. There is nothing to do but wait for news.

  In the stable yard outside the children are watching the farrier shoe their ponies. Everything is safe and ordinary: the flare of the forge, the smoke billowing from the hoof in an acrid cloud. My son Edward is holding the halter rope of his new horse, a handsome cob, as the farrier grips the horse’s leg between his knees and taps in the nails. I cross my fingers in the old sign against witchcraft and I shudder as a cool draught blows in from the door to the dairy. If the queen is showing her true colours and my husband is ready for the worst, then her enmity to me and mine will be apparent for all to see. Perhaps even now she is whistling up a plague wind to blow against me. Perhaps even now she is laying a curse on my husband’s sword arm, weakening his strength, suborning his allies, poisoning the minds of men against him.

  I turn and go to the chapel, drop to my