The Lady of the Rivers Read online

  ‘You don’t even deserve to be in our company! You have no right even to speak without being spoken to. We are of the blood royal and you are a nobody.’

  ‘I am a peer of England and I have served under my king in France and Calais and England, and never disobeyed him or betrayed him,’ Richard says very loudly and clearly.

  ‘Unlike them,’ Anthony supplements gleefully to me.

  ‘You are an upstart nobody, the son of a groom of the household,’ Warwick shouts. ‘A nothing. You wouldn’t even be here if it was not for your marriage.’

  ‘The duchess demeaned herself,’ young Edward of March says. I see Anthony stiffen at the insult from a youth of his own age. ‘She lowered herself to you, and you raised yourself only by her. They say she is a witch who inspired you to the sin of lust.’

  ‘Before God, this is unbearable,’ Anthony swears. He plunges forwards and I snatch at his arm.

  ‘Don’t you dare move, or I will stab you myself!’ I say furiously. ‘Don’t you dare say a thing or do a thing. Stand still, boy!’

  ‘What?’

  ‘You are not fit to come among us,’ Salisbury says. ‘You are not fit to keep company.’

  ‘I see what they are doing, they’re hoping you will lose your temper,’ I tell him. ‘They are hoping you will attack them and then they can cut you down. Remember what your father said. Stay calm.’

  ‘They insult you!’ Anthony is sweating with rage.

  ‘Look at me!’ I demand.

  He darts a fierce glance at me and then hesitates. Despite my hasty words to him, my face is utterly calm, I am smiling. ‘I was not the woman left in Ludlow marketplace when my husband ran away,’ I say to him in a rapid whisper. ‘I was the daughter of the Count of Luxembourg when Cecily Neville was nothing more than a pretty girl in a northern castle. I am the descendant of the goddess Melusina. You are my son. We come from a line of nobles who trace their line back to a goddess. They can say what they like behind my back, they can say it to my face. I know who I am. I know what you were born to be. And it is more, far more, than they.’

  Anthony hesitates. ‘Smile,’ I command him.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Smile at them.’

  He raises his head, he can hardly twist his face into a smile but he does it.

  ‘You have no pride!’ Edward of March spits at him. ‘There is nothing here to smile at!’

  Anthony inclines his head slightly, as if accepting a great compliment.

  ‘You let me speak like this of your own mother? Before her very face?’ Edward demands, his voice cracking with rage. ‘Do you have no pride?’

  ‘My mother does not need your good opinion,’ Anthony says icily. ‘None of us care what you think.’

  ‘Your own mother is well,’ I say to Edward gently. ‘She was very distressed at Ludlow, to be left on her own in such danger, but my husband, Lord Rivers, took her and your sister Margaret and your brothers George and Richard to safety. My husband, Lord Rivers, protected them when the army was running through the town. He made sure that no-one insulted them. The king is paying her a pension, and she is in no hardship. I saw her myself a little while ago and she told me she prays for you and for your father.’

  It shocks him into silence. ‘You have my husband to thank for her safety,’ I repeat.

  ‘He is base-born,’ Edward says, as someone repeating a lesson by rote.

  I shrug my shoulders as if it is nothing to me. Indeed, it is nothing to me. ‘We are in your keeping,’ I say simply. ‘Base or noble. And you have no cause to complain of us. Will you give us safe passage to England?’

  ‘Take them away,’ the Earl of Salisbury snaps.

  ‘I would like my usual rooms,’ Richard says. ‘I was captain of this castle for more than four years, and I kept it safe for England. I usually have the rooms that look over the harbour.’

  The Earl of Warwick curses like a tavern owner.

  ‘Take them away,’ Salisbury repeats.

  We don’t have the rooms of the captain of the castle, of course, but we have good ones looking over the inner courtyard. They keep us only for a couple of nights and then a guard comes to the door and says that I am to be taken by ship to London.

  ‘What about us?’ my husband demands.

  ‘You’re hostages,’ the soldier says. ‘You’re to wait here.’

  ‘They are to be held with honour? They are safe?’ I insist.

  He nods to Richard. ‘I served under you, sir, I’m Abel Stride.’

  ‘I remember you, Stride,’ my husband says. ‘What’s the plan?

  ‘My orders are to hold you here until we move out, and then to release you, unhurt,’ he says. ‘And I’ll obey them, and no others.’ He hesitates. ‘There’s not a man in the garrison would harm you, sir, nor your son. My word on it.’

  ‘Thank you,’ my husband says. To me he whispers, ‘Go to the queen, tell her they are preparing to invade. Try and see how many ships you can count in the pool. Tell her I don’t think they have many men, perhaps only two thousand or so.’

  ‘And you?’

  ‘You heard him. I’ll get home when I can. God bless you, beloved.’

  I kiss him. I turn to my son, who goes down on his knee for my blessing and then comes up to hug me. I know he is broad and strong and a good fighter, but to leave him in danger is almost unbearable.

  &lsquour Grace, you have to come now,’ the guard says.

  I have to leave them both. I don’t know how I get up the gangplank of the merchant ship or into the little cabin. But I have to leave them both.

  COVENTRY, SPRING 1460

  The court is in Coventry, readying for war, when I arrive in England and take the queen the news that our enemies in Calais are holding my husband and son, and that they are certain to invade this year.

  ‘Jacquetta, I am so sorry,’ Margaret says to me. ‘I had no idea. I would never have put you in danger like that . . . when they told me that you had been captured I was beside myself.’ She glances around and whispers to me, ‘I wrote to Pierre de Brézé, the Seneschal of Normandy, and asked him to take Calais and rescue you. You know what would happen to me if anyone found out I am writing to him. But you are this important to me.’

  ‘I was never in any great danger,’ I say. ‘But the rebel lords taunted Richard and Anthony and I think if they could have killed them in a brawl they would have done so.’

  ‘I hate them,’ she says simply. ‘Warwick and his father, York and his son. They are my enemies till death. You know the rumours they are spreading now?’

  I nod. They have spoken slander against this queen from the moment she arrived in England.

  ‘They are openly saying that my son is a bastard, that the king knew nothing about his birth and christening and also – nothing about his conception. They think to disinherit him with slander, since they cannot hurt him by war.’

  ‘Do you have news of the Yorkist lords?’

  ‘They have met,’ she says shortly. ‘I have spies at York’s little court in Ireland and they tell me. Warwick went to meet the Duke of York in his castle in Ireland. We know that they met, we can guess they plan to invade. We cannot know when for sure.’

  ‘And are you ready for an invasion?’

  She nods grimly. ‘The king has been ill again – oh, not very ill – but he has lost interest in everything but praying. He has been at prayer for all of this week and sleeping, sometimes as much as sixteen hours a day . . .’ She breaks off. ‘I never know if he is here or if he has gone. But, at any rate, I am ready, I am ready for anything. I have the troops, I have the lords, I have the country on my side – all but the perfidious people of Kent and the guttersnipes of London.’

  ‘When, do you think?’ I do not really need to ask. All campaigns start in the summer season. It cannot be long before they bring the news that York is on the march from Ireland, and Warwick has set sail from Calais.

  ‘I’ll go and see my children,’ I say. ‘They will be anxious ab