Lady of the Rivers Read online

  I move her to the big bed, and press her gently down. When her head is on the pillow her tears run back from her face and wet the fine embroidered linen. She does not scream or sob, she just moans behind her gritted teeth, as if she is trying to muffle the sound, but it is unstoppable, like her grief.

  I take her hand and sit beside her in silence. ‘And my son,’ she says. ‘Dear God, my little son. Who will teach him what a man should be? Who will keep him safe?’

  ‘Hush,’ I say hopelessly. ‘Hush.’

  She closes her eyes but still the tears spill down her cheeks and still she makes the quiet low noise, like an animal in deathly pain.

  She opens her eyes and sits up a little. ‘And the king?’ she asks as an afterthought. ‘I suppose he is well as he said? Safe? I suppose he has escaped scot-free? As he always does, praise God?’

  ‘He was slightly injured,’ I say. ‘But he is safe in the care of the Duke of York. He is bringing him to London with all honour.’

  ‘How shall I manage without Edmund?’ she whispers. ‘Who is going to protect me now? Who is going to guard my son? Who is going to keep the king safend what if he goes to sleep again?’

  I shake my head. There is nothing I can say to comfort her, she will have to suffer the pain of his loss and wake in the morning to know that she has to rule this kingdom, and face the Duke of York, without the support of the man she loved. She will be alone. She will have to be mother and father to her son. She will have to be king and queen to England. And nobody may ever know, nobody can even guess, that her heart is broken.

  In the next few days she is not like Margaret of Anjou, she is like her ghost. She loses her voice, she is struck like a mute. I tell her ladies in waiting that the shock has given her a pain in the throat, like a cold, and that she must rest. But in her shadowy room, where she sits with her hand to her heart in silence, I see that in holding back the sobs, she is choking on her own grief. She dares make no sound, for if she spoke she would scream.

  In London there is a terrible tableau enacted. The king, forgetful of himself, forgetful of his position, of his sacred trust from God, goes to the cathedral of St Paul’s for a renewed coronation. No archbishop crowns him; in a mockery of the coronation itself it is Richard of York who puts the crown on the king’s head. To the hundreds of people who crowd into the cathedral and the thousands who hear of the ceremony, one royal cousin gives the crown to another, as if they were equals, as if obedience was a matter of choice.

  I take this news to the queen as she sits in darkness, and she stands up, unsteadily, as if she is remembering how to walk. ‘I must go to the king,’ she says, her voice weak and croaky. ‘He is giving away everything we have. He must have lost his mind again and now he is losing the crown and his son’s inheritance.’

  ‘Wait,’ I say. ‘We can’t undo this act. Let us wait and see what we can do. And while we wait you can come out of your rooms, and eat properly, and speak to your people.’

  She nods, she knows she has to lead the royal party, and now she has to lead it alone. ‘How will I do anything without him?’ she whispers to me.

  I take her hands, her fingers are icy. ‘You will, Margaret. You will.’

  I send an urgent note to Richard by a wool merchant that I have trusted before. I tell him that the Yorks are in command again, that he must prepare himself for them to try to take the garrison, that the king is in their keeping and that I love and miss him. I don’t beg him to come home, for in these troubled times I don’t know if he would be safe at home. I begin to realise the court, the country, and we ourselves are sliding from a squabble between cousins into a war between cousins.

  Richard, Duke of York, acts quickly, as I thought he would. He suggests to the palace officials that the queen should meet her husband at Hertford Castle, a day’s ride north of London. When her steward tells her, she rounds on him. ‘He’s going to arrest me.’

  The man steps back from her fury. ‘No, Your Grace. Just to give you and the king somewhere to rest until parliament opens in London.’

  ‘Why can’t we stay here?&rsqo

  The man shoots a despairing look at me. I raise my eyebrows, I’m not disposed to help him, for I don’t know why they want to send us to Henry’s childhood home either, and the castle is completely walled, moated, and gated, like a prison. If the Duke of York wants to lock away the king, queen and the young prince he could hardly choose a better place.

  ‘The king is not well, Your Grace,’ the steward finally admits. ‘They think he should not be seen by the people of London.’

  This is the news we have been dreading. She takes it calmly. ‘Not well?’ she asks. ‘What do you mean by “not well”? Is he sleeping?’

  ‘He certainly seems very weary. He is not asleep as he was before; but he took a wound to his neck, and was very frightened. The duke believes he should not be exposed to the noise and bustle of London. The duke believes he should be quiet at the castle, it was his nursery, he will be comforted there.’

  She looks at me, as if for advice. I know she is wondering what Edmund Beaufort would have told her to do. ‘You may tell His Grace, the duke, that we will journey to Hertford tomorrow,’ I say to the messenger, and as he turns away I whisper to the queen, ‘What else can we do? If the king is sick we had better get him out of London. If the duke commands us to go to Hertford we cannot refuse. When we have the king in our keeping we can decide what to do. We have to get him away from the duke and his men. If we hold the king in our keeping at least we know he is safe. We have to have possession of the king.’

  HERTFORD CASTLE, SUMMER 1455

  He does not look like the king who rode out to reprimand the great lord with his two friends at his side, d

  ressed for a day of pleasure. He looks as if he has collapsed in on himself, a pillow king with the stuffing gone, a bubble king deflated. His head is down, an ill-tied bandage round his throat shows where the Warwick archers nearly ended the reign altogether, his robe is trailing from his shoulders because he has not tightened his belt, and he stumbles over it, like an idiot, as he walks into the poky presence chamber of Hertford Castle.

  The queen is waiting for him, surrounded by a few of her household and his, but the great lords of the land and their men have stayed in London, preparing for the parliament which is going to do the bidding of the Duke of York. She rises up when she sees him and goes forwards to greet him, stately and dignified, but I can see her hands shaking until she tucks them inside the shelter of her long sleeves. She can see, as I can see, that we have lost him again. At this crucial moment, when we so badly need a king to command us: he has slipped away.

  He smiles at her. ‘Ah,’ he says, and again there is that betraying pause as he searches for her name. ‘Ah, Margaret.’

  She curtseys and rises up and kisses him. He puckers his lips like a child.

  ‘Your Grace,’ she says. ‘I thank God that you are safe.’

  His eyes widen. ‘It was a terrible thing,’ he says, his voice thin and slight. ‘It was a terrible thing, Margaret. You have never seen such errible thing in your life. I was lucky that the Duke of York was there to take me safely away. The way that men behave! It was a terrible thing, Margaret. I was glad the duke was there. He was the only one who was kind to me, he is the only one who understands how I feel . . . ’

  Moving as one, Margaret and I go towards him. She takes his arm and leads him into the private rooms, and I stand blocking the way after them, so that no-one can follow them. The door closes behind them, and her chief maid looks at me. ‘And what happens now?’ she asks wryly. ‘Do we all fall asleep again?’

  ‘We serve the queen,’ I say with more certainty than I feel. ‘And you in particular, mind your tongue.’

  I have no letter from Richard, but a stonemason who went over to supervise some building work takes the trouble to ride out to Hertford Castle with news for me. ‘He is alive,’ is the first thing he says. ‘God bless him, alive and well and drilling the men and