The Kingmaker's Daughter

‘Orphans and paupers,’ Duchess Cecily says acutely, drying her cunning old face.

I look back at her. ‘What?’

‘Their father will die for treason. A traitor’s lands are taken from him. Who do you think gets their lands?’

‘The king,’ I say dully. ‘The king. Which is to say the queen – and her endless family – of course.’

We are a house in deep mourning but we cannot wear blue. George, the handsome irrepressible duke, is dead. He died as he requested, drowned in a barrel of the queen’s favourite wine. It was his last bitter brilliant gesture of defiance to the woman who ruined his house. She herself never drank the wine again, as if she feared that she would taste sputum from his gasping lungs in the sweetness. I wish that I could see George in purgatory and tell him that he achieved that at least. He spoiled the queen’s appetite for wine. Would to God that he could have drowned her too.

I go to court and wait for my chance to speak to the king. I sit in the queen’s rooms with her ladies and I talk to them of the weather, and the likelihood of snow. I admire their fine lacework for which the queen herself drew the pattern, and I remark on her artistry. When she speaks to me briefly, I reply with pleasant courtesy. I don’t let her see from my face or from any gesture, not even the turn of my hand or the set of my feet in my leather slippers, that I regard her as a murderer of my sister by poison, and my brother-in-law by politics. She is a killer and perhaps even a witch, and she has taken from me all the people that I love, except my husband and my son. I don’t doubt that she would rob me of them but for my husband’s position with the king. I will never forgive her.

When the king comes in, smiling and cheerful, he greets the ladies by name as usual and when he comes to me and kisses me as a brother on both cheeks I say quietly: ‘Your Grace, I would ask you a favour.’

At once, he glances over to her and I see their swift exchange of looks. She half-rises to her feet as if she would intercept me; but I was prepared for this. I don’t expect to get anything without the witch’s permission. ‘I should like the wardship of my sister’s children,’ I say quickly. ‘They are at Warwick in the nursery there. Margaret is four, Edward nearly three. I loved Isabel dearly, I should like to care for her children.’

‘Of course,’ Edward says easily. ‘But you know they have no fortunes?’

Oh yes, I know that, I think. For you robbed George of everything he had gained by accusing him of treason. If their wardship was worth anything your wife would already have claimed it. If they had been wealthy she would have the marriage contract already drawn up for their betrothal to one of her own children. ‘I will provide for them,’ I say.

Richard, coming towards me, nods his assent. ‘We will provide for them.’

‘I will raise them at Middleham with their cousin my son,’ I say. ‘If Your Grace will allow it. It is the greatest favour you could do me. I loved my sister and I promised her that if anything happened to her I would care for her children.’

‘Oh, did she think she might die?’ the queen asks, with pretend concern, coming up to the king and slipping her hand in his arm, her beautiful face solemn and concerned. ‘Did she fear childbirth?’

I think of Isabel warning me that one day I would hear that she had died suddenly and that on that day I might know that she had been poisoned by this beautiful woman who stands before me in her arrogance and her power, and dares to tease me with the death of my sister. ‘Childbirth is always dangerous,’ I say quietly, denying the truth of Isabel’s murder. ‘As everyone knows. We all enter our confinement with a prayer.’

The queen holds my gaze for a moment as if she might challenge me, see if she can drive me into saying something treasonous or rebellious. I can see my husband tense as if readying himself for an attack, and he draws a little closer to his brother as if to take his attention from the she-devil who holds his arm. Then she smiles her lovely smile and looks up at her husband in her familiar seductive way. ‘I think we should let the Clarence children live with their aunt, do you not, Your Grace?’ she asks sweetly. ‘Perhaps it would comfort them all in their loss. And I am sure that my sister Anne here will be a good guardian to her little niece and nephew.’

‘I agree,’ the king says. He nods at Richard. ‘I am glad to grant your wife a favour.’

‘Let me know how they go on,’ the queen says to me as she turns away. ‘What a sadness that her baby died. What was his name?’

‘Richard,’ I say softly.

‘Did she call him after your father?’ she asks, naming the murderer of her father, of her brother, the accuser of her mother, her lifelong enemy.

‘Yes,’ I say, not knowing what else I can say.

‘What a pity,’ she repeats.

BAYNARD’S CASTLE, LONDON, MARCH 1478

I think I have won. That evening and in the days after I silently celebrate my victory. I celebrate without words, without even a smile. I have lost my sister; but her children will be in my keeping and I will love them as my own. I will tell them that their mother was a beauty and their father was a hero, and that Isabel put them into my keeping.

I write to Warwick Castle and tell them that as soon as the roads are clear enough for the journey the two children shall go to Middleham. Weeks later, delayed by snow and storms, I get a reply from the castle to tell me that Margaret and Edward have set off, well-wrapped in two litters with their nursemaids. A week later I hear from Middleham that they have safely arrived. I have Isabel’s children behind the thick walls of our best castle, and I swear that I will keep them safe.

I go to my husband while he is hearing petitions in his presence chamber in Baynard’s Castle. I wait patiently while the dozens of people present their applications and their grievances and he listens carefully and deals justly with each one. Richard is a great lord. He understands, as my father did, that each man has to be allowed to have his say, that each one will give his fealty if he can be sure that a lord will repay him with protection. He knows that wealth is not in land but in the men and women who work the land. Our wealth and our power depend upon the love of the people who serve us. If they will do anything for Richard – as they would do anything for my father – then he has an army on call, for whatever need. This is true power, this is real wealth.

When the very last of them has finished and has bent the knee, thanked Richard for his care, and gone, my husband looks up from signing his papers and sees me. ‘Anne?’

‘I too wanted to see you and ask a favour.’

He smiles and steps down from his throne on the dais. ‘You can ask me anything, at any time. You don’t have to come here.’ He puts his arm around my waist and we walk to the window that overlooks the courtyard before the house. Beyond the great wall the trade and bustle of London goes on, beyond that is the Palace of Westminster and the queen sits behind those walls in her power and her mystery. Behind us, Richard’s clerks clear away the papers that the petitioners have brought, carry away the writing tables with the quills and ink and sealing wax. Nobody is eavesdropping on our conversation.

‘I have come to ask you if we can go home to Middleham.’

‘You want to be with your sister’s children?’

‘And with little Edward. But it is more than that.’

‘What is it?’

‘You know what.’

He glances around to make sure that no-one can hear us. I observe the king’s own loyal brother fearful of speaking in his own house. ‘The truth is that I think that George was right to accuse Ankarette of being in the queen’s pay, of poisoning Isabel,’ I say bluntly. ‘I think the queen set her spy to poison Isabel and perhaps even to kill the baby, because she hates Isabel and me and wanted her revenge for the murder of her father. It is a blood feud, and she is waging it against my father’s children, Isabel, and her son Richard. I am certain that I, and the children, will be next.’

Richard’s gaze does not leave my eyes. ‘This is a grave allegation against a queen.’

‘I make it only to you, in private,’ I say. ‘I would never publicly accuse the queen. We all saw what happened to George who publicly accused her.’

‘George was guilty of treason against the king,’ Richard reminds me. ‘There was no doubt of his guilt. He spoke treason to me, I heard him, myself. He took money from France, he plotted a new rebellion.’

‘There is no doubt of his guilt but he had always been forgiven before,’ I say. ‘Edward on his own would never have taken George to trial. You know it was on the advice of the queen. When your own mother went to beg for clemency she said it was the queen who insisted that George be put to death. The queen saw George as a danger to her rule, she would not let him accuse her. He named her as a murderer and to silence him she had him killed. It was not about a rebellion against the king, it was about his enmity to Her.’

Richard cannot deny this. ‘And your fear?’ he asks quietly.

‘Isabel told me of the queen’s jewellery case, and two names written in blood, that she keeps inside an enamel box.’

He nods.

‘Isabel believed that it was our names: hers and mine. She believed that the queen would kill us both to avenge her father and her brother that were killed by our father.’ I take his hands. ‘Richard, I am sure that the queen will have me killed. I don’t know how she will do it, whether by poison or something that looks like an accident, or some passing violence on the street. But I am sure she will contrive my death, and I am very afraid.’

‘Isabel was poisoned at Warwick,’ he says. ‘She was far from London, and it didn’t save her.’

‘I know. But I think I would be safer at Middleham than right here, where she sees me at court, where you rival her in Edward’s affections, where I remind her of my father every time I walk into her rooms.’

He hesitates.

‘You yourself warned me not to eat the food that came from the queen’s kitchen,’ I remind him. ‘Before George was arrested. Before she pressed for his death. You warned me yourself.’

Richard’s face is very grave. ‘I did,’ he says. ‘I thought you were in danger then, and I think you are in danger now. I agree with you that we should go to Middleham and I think we should stay away from court. I have much to do in the North, Edward has given me all of George’s Yorkshire lands for my own. We will leave London and we will only come to court when we have to.’

‘And your mother?’ I ask, knowing that she too will never forgive the queen for the death of George.

He shakes his head. ‘She speaks treason, she says that Edward should never have taken the throne if he was going to make such a woman his queen. She calls Elizabeth a witch like her mother. She is going to leave London and live at Fotheringhay. She too dares not stay here.’

‘We will be northerners,’ I say, imagining the life we shall lead, far from the court, far from the constant fear, far from the edgy brittle amusement and entertainment that always now seems like a veneer over the manoeuvrings and plottings of the queen and her brothers and sisters. This court has lost its innocence; it is no longer joyful. This is a court of killers and I shall be glad to put miles and miles between them and me.

MIDDLEHAM CASTLE, YORKSHIRE, SUMMER 1482

We do not live at peace, as I hoped; for the king commands Richard to lead the armies of England against the Scots, and when the treaty between Scotland and England breaks down, and Anthony Woodville finds himself without his promised Scottish royal bride, it falls to Richard to lead the Rivers’ revenge: taking a small English force, mostly our northerners, to victory, winning the town of Berwick and entering Edinburgh itself. It is a great victory; but even this does not persuade the court that Richard is a great soldier and worthy heir to his father. Within the month we hear that the Rivers are complaining at court that he should have gone further, and won more.

I hear Elizabeth’s whispered counsel in this, and I grit my teeth. If she can persuade her husband to call this victory against the Scots a treasonous failure, then they will summon Richard to London to answer for it. The last royal brother accused of treason had a trial without a defence and choked away his life in a vat of the queen’s favourite wine.

To comfort myself, I go to the schoolroom and sit at the back while the children wade through their Latin grammars, reciting the verbs that were taught to Isabel and me so long ago in the schoolroom at Calais. I can almost hear Isabel’s voice, even now, and her triumphant crow when she gets through them without making a mistake. My boy Edward is nine years old, seated beside him is Isabel’s daughter, Margaret, nine this year, and beside her is her brother Edward, who we all call Teddy, just seven.

Their tutor breaks off and says they can stop work for a little while to greet me and the three of them gather round my chair. Margaret leans against me and I put my arm around her and look at the two handsome boys. I know that these may be all the children I ever have. I am only twenty-six years old, I should be ready to bear half a dozen more children, but they never seem to come, and nobody, not the physicians, the midwives nor the priest, can tell me why not. In the absence of any others, these three are my children, and Margaret, who is as pretty and as passionate as her mother, is my darling and the only daughter I expect to raise.

‘Are you all right, Lady Mother?’ she asks sweetly.

‘I am,’ I say, brushing her unruly brown hair out of her eyes.

‘Can we play at being at court?’ she asks. ‘Will you pretend to be queen and we can be presented to you?’

The return of the game that I used to play with my sister is too poignant for me today. ‘Not this morning,’ I say. ‘And anyway, perhaps you don’t need to practise. Perhaps you children won’t go to court. Perhaps you will live like your father does: as a great lord on his lands, free of court and far from the queen.’

‘Won’t we have to go to court for Christmas?’ Edward asks me with a worried frown on his little face. ‘I thought that Father said that we would all three have to go to court for Christmas this year?’

‘No,’ I promise myself. ‘Your father and I will go if the king commands it; but you three will stay safe here, at Middleham.’

WESTMINSTER PALACE, LONDON, WINTER 1482–3

‘We had no choice,’ Richard says to me as we pause before the royal presence chamber. ‘We had to come for the Christmas feast. It is bad enough that you left the children behind. It looks like you don’t trust them in London.’

‘I don’t,’ I say bluntly. ‘I will never bring them while she is on the throne. I won’t put Isabel’s children into her keeping. Look at the Mowbray child – married to Prince Richard, her fortune signed over to the Rivers family, and dead before her ninth birthday.’

Richard scowls at me. ‘Not another word,’ is all he says.

The great doors before us are thrown open and a blast of trumpets heralds our arrival. Richard recoils slightly – the court becomes grander and more glamorous every time we visit. Now every honoured guest has to be announced with trumpets and a bawled introduction, as if we did not know already that half the wealthy people in England are her brothers and sisters.

I see that Edward is walking about among the courtiers, a head taller than everyone, broader now, he will run to fat, and the queen is seated on a throne of gold. The royal children, from the new baby Bridget who is toddling at her mother’s feet, to the oldest princess, Elizabeth, now a young woman of sixteen, are exquisitely dressed and seated around their mother. Prince Edward, fair-headed and handsome as his father, a boy of twelve, back from Wales for the Christmas feast, is playing at chess with his guardian Anthony Woodville, whose handsome profile is turned to the puzzle of the board.

No-one could deny that they are the most handsome family in England. Elizabeth’s famous face is sharper and more elegant as age wears her prettiness away to real beauty. She lost her fifteen-year-old daughter Princess Mary this year and her third son George a year after she won the execution of his namesake and uncle. I wonder if these losses have given her pause in her unending ambition and search for revenge. Sorrow has given her a single white streak in her golden hair, and grief has made her quieter and more thoughtful. She is still dressing like an empress, wearing a gown of cloth of gold, and gold chains are roped around her slim waist. As I enter, she whispers something to Anthony Woodville and he looks up and they both show me the same charming insincere smile. Inside the thick sleeves of my gown I can feel my hands tingle with cold as if her gaze is a chill wind.

‘Onward,’ Richard says, as he said once before, and we go in and bow to the king and queen and receive Edward’s joyous greeting to his beloved brother, and her tepid welcome to the man she has named in secret as a traitor.

For everyone else at court, the Christmas feast is an opportunity to get close to the royal family and try to establish friendships and flirtations that may pay well in the future. There is a constant swirl of interest around the king, who still has fortunes to give away and great patronage in his gift. But it is even more obvious that the queen and her family, her brothers and sisters, even her sons from her first marriage, control the court and control access to the king. She allows him to take his mistresses, he even brags about them; she allows him to favour strangers. But the great gifts in the royal household go only to her family and her affinity. Not that she ever asserts herself. She never speaks in any discussion, she never gets to her feet or raises her voice, but all the power of the court is at her fingertips and her brothers Anthony, Lionel and Edward survey the comings and goings of the court at play as if they were card cheats watching a table and waiting for a fool to come to play. Her sons from her first marriage, Thomas and Richard, ennobled by the king, enriched by the king, control the access to the royal chamber. Nothing happens without their observation, and nothing is allowed without her smiling permission.

The royal family is always beautifully dressed, the royal rooms glow with wealth. Edward, neglecting ships and castles, ports and sea walls, has lavished money on his family palaces, especially on the grand rooms for the queen that he has enlarged and beautified in every place that she declares is her new favourite. Leaving Richard to guard the nation against Scotland with a scratch force of his own mustering, Edward has spent a fortune on a new suit of jousting armour, which will never see a real sword. A perfect king in looks and charm, I think this is all he can do now: outward façade. He looks like a king and he speaks like a king, but he does not rule like a king. Power is in the hands of the queen and she looks and speaks as she has always done – a beautiful woman, married for love, devoted to her children, and charming to her friends. She is, as she has always been, quite irresistible. No-one could tell by looking at her that this is a most unscrupulous schemer, the daughter of a known witch, a woman with blood on her beautiful white hands, her slim white fingers stained at the nails.

The twelve days of the Christmas feast would have been the most celebrated that the court has ever known but just after Christmas Day the news comes from Burgundy that the queen’s kinsman Duke Maximilian has played her false. Seeking his own good, just as she always seeks hers, he has made peace with Louis of France, given his daughter to the king’s son in marriage, and given him Burgundy and Artois as her dowry.

Richard is beside himself with anger and worry – Burgundy has always been the great power that we use to balance against the might of France. The countries that have been given to France – Burgundy and Artois – are English by right, and this will be the end of the French pensions which have made Edward and his court so wealthy.

In this desperate moment I have to laugh in my sleeve at the queen whose daughter Elizabeth was betrothed to the French prince and now finds herself jilted – and a cousin on her mother’s side is preferred. Princess Elizabeth herself seems to be indifferent as she plays with her brothers and sisters in the frozen gardens, or goes hunting with the court in the cold marshes by the river; but I am sure that she must realise that she has been humiliated by France, since she has lost the chance to be Queen of France, and has failed to fulfil her father’s ambition. Surely, this is the worst thing of all: she has failed to play her part in her father’s plan.

In this crisis it is Richard who advises on policy – the queen has no idea what should be done – and he tells his brother that in the spring he will march again against the Scots. If they can be defeated and sworn to our cause then they can serve as our allies against France, and we can invade. It is Richard who takes this proposal to the houses of parliament. In return they give Richard a massive grant: the whole of the huge county of Cumberland. In addition, he is to keep any land he conquers in southwest Scotland. It is all to be his. It is a massive gift, it is the princedom that he deserves. For the first time Edward truly recognises what his brother has done for him and gives him great lands – in the North, where Richard is beloved and where we have made our home.

Edward announces this in council, but we hear of it in court when the brothers come back, arm in arm, to the queen’s rooms. The queen hears Edward declare that Richard must set up a council of the North to help him rule his great lands, and I see the shock on her face and her quick glance of consternation to her brother Anthony. It is clear to me that the king has not consulted her, and that her first thought is how can he be overruled, and her first ally is her brother Anthony. Anthony is more diplomatic than his sister; he comes forwards to congratulate Richard on his new wealth, smiles and embraces him, and then turns and kisses my hand and says I will be as a princess among the snows. I smile and murmur nothing, but I think that I have seen much, and understood more. I have seen that the king does not trust her with everything, I have seen that she would overrule him if she could, and that she counts on her brother as her ally, even when she wants to act against the king. But there is still more; from the quick exchange of glances between brother and sister I know that neither of them loves or trusts Richard any more than we trust her. Worse, they suspect and fear him.

The king knows well enough she does not like this. He takes her hand and says to her: ‘Richard will keep the North for me, and – please God – Richard’s young strength on my side will make this a greater kingdom even than it is now.’

Her smile is as sweet as ever. ‘Under your command,’ she reminds him. I see Anthony Woodville stir as if he would say something, but then he shakes his head slightly at his sister and falls silent.

‘He will be warden of the West Marches. And when my son comes to his throne, Richard will have guarded his borders for him, he will be his advisor and protector, and in heaven I shall be glad of that.’

‘Ah! My lord, don’t say it!’ she exclaims. ‘Your son will not sit on his throne for many years yet.’

I wonder if I am alone in feeling a prickle of unease, a shiver at her words.

That was his death sentence. I am sure of it, I would swear to it. She judged that his favour to Richard was growing, his dependence on Richard was greater than the dependence she had tried to create on her family. She might have made her brother Anthony the guardian to the prince and so ruler of Wales, but the gift of land to Richard was far greater than this. Richard was given the command of the armies, Richard was given almost all of the North of England. She knew that if the king were to write his will, Richard would be made regent. She thought that in giving Richard the North of the country the king was on the way to dividing the country: the Rivers family would rule Wales and the south, and Richard would rule the North. I believe that she saw her power slipping away, that she thought the king favoured his brother, that he knew Richard would keep the border with Scotland, would hold the North. I believe she thought that Richard was his true heir and would only grow in power and prestige in the northern lands. And as soon as she came to that conclusion, she poisoned the king, her own husband, so that he could not favour Richard any more, so that Richard could not develop his power and threaten her own.

I don’t think this all at once. At first, I ride out of London with the sense of relief that I always have when we put the Bishop’s Gate behind us, and I go north to my boy and my little nephew and niece with my usual feeling of joy. I have an odd lingering sense that the queen’s swift glance to her brother meant no good for us, and no good for anyone outside that tight pair – but I think nothing more than this.

MIDDLEHAM CASTLE, YORKSHIRE, APRIL 1483

I am in the hay meadow outside the castle walls, watching the children practising their riding. They have three strong horses, bred from the rugged wild ponies that live here on the moors, and they are trotting them over a set of little jumps. The grooms set the jumps higher and higher as each rider gets successfully clear. My task is to rule when it is too high for Teddy, but Margaret and Edward can continue, and then to declare a winner. I have picked half a dozen stems of foxgloves and I am winding them into a crown for the winner. Margaret jumps clear and throws a triumphant beam at me; she is a brave little girl and will set her pony at anything. My son follows her over the jumps, riding with less style but even more determination. I think that soon we must give him a bigger horse and he will have to learn to joust in the adult tiltyard.

The bells from the chapel start to toll with a sudden jangle. The rooks pour out of the rafters of the castle with a harsh black cawing, and I turn in alarm. The children pull up their ponies and look at me.

‘I don’t know,’ I answer their puzzled faces. ‘Back to the castle at the trot, quickly now.’

It is not the tocsin that sounds the alarm but the steady knell, which means a death, a death in the family. But who could have died? For a moment I wonder if they have found my mother dead in her rooms and ordered the tolling of the bell as if to announce a death that was actually declared years ago. But surely they would have come to tell me first? I hold my gown bunched in my hands, free of my feet, so that I can run sure-footed down the stony path to the castle gate and follow the children into the inner garth.

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 knees and pray that Richard is strong against Elizabeth Woodville and against all her kinsmen and women and the mighty affinity she has put together. I pray that he acts decisively and powerfully, I pray that he uses whatever weapons come to his hand, for certainly she will stop at nothing to get her son on the throne and see us thrown down. I think of Margaret of Anjou teaching me that there are times when you have to be ready to do anything to defend yourself or the position you deserve, and I hope that my husband is ready for anything. I cannot know what is happening in London, but I fear the start of a new war, and this time it will be the king’s true brother against the false-hearted queen. And we must, we have to triumph.

I wait. I send one of our guard with a letter to Richard begging for news. I warn him against the ill-will of the queen.

You know she has powers, so guard yourself against them. Do whatever you have to do to protect your brother’s legacy and our safety.

On my own at Middleham Castle, I spend every afternoon with the children as if only by constantly watching can I prevent a hot plague wind blowing towards them from London, stop the flight of a mistimed arrow, ensure that the new horse is well-trained and that Edward can manage it. If I could hold my son in my arms like the baby he once was, I would never let him go. There is no doubt in my mind that the queen’s grey eyes are turned towards us, that her mind is set against my husband, that she will be plotting and conjuring our deaths, that it is finally, clearly, us against her.

MIDDLEHAM CASTLE, YORKSHIRE, JUNE 1483

Every morning after chapel I go and stand on the top of the south tower, looking south down the road to London. And then I see the plume of dust that blows from the rough road after the passage of half a dozen horsemen. I call to my maid: ‘Fetch the children to my room, and turn out the guard. Someone is coming.’

Her look of alarm and her sudden scurry down the steps tells me that I am not the only person to know that my husband, far from securing a safe succession for his nephew, is in danger, and that danger could come even to us, in this, our safest home.

I hear the portcullis rattle down and the drawbridge creak up, and the running footsteps of men dashing to man the walls of the castle. When I go to the great hall the children are waiting for me. Margaret has tight hold of her brother’s hand; Edward is wearing his short sword and his pale face is determined. They all three kneel for my blessing and when I put my hand on their warm heads I could weep for fear for the three of them.

‘There are horsemen coming to the castle,’ I say as calmly as I can. ‘Perhaps they are messengers from your father, but with the country so unsettled I dare take no risks. That is why I sent for you.’

Edward rises to his feet. ‘I did not know the country was unsettled?’

I shake my head. ‘I spoke wrongly. The country is at peace, waiting for your father’s righteous rule as regent,’ I say. ‘It is the court which is unsettled for I think the queen will try to rule in the place of her son. She may try to make herself regent. I am anxious for your father, who is bound by his promise to the king to take Prince Edward into his keeping and teach him how to rule, and bring him to his throne. If the prince’s mother is an enemy then your father will have to judge and to act swiftly and powerfully.’

‘But what would the queen do?’ little Margaret asks me. ‘What could she do against us, against my lord uncle?’

‘I don’t know,’ I say. ‘That is why we are prepared for an attack in case one were to come. But we are safe here, the soldiers are strong and well-trained and the castle is loyal to us. The whole of the North of England would support your father as if he were king himself.’ I try to smile at them. ‘I am probably being anxious. But my own father was always ready in his own defence. My father always raised the drawbridge if he did not know the visitor.’

We wait, listening. Then I hear the shouted challenge from the captain of the guard and the indistinct reply. I hear the drawbridge rattle on its chains as they let it down and the thud as it hits the far side of the moat. The portcullis screeches as they haul it up.

‘We are safe,’ I say to the children. ‘They will be friends bringing a message.’

I hear feet on the stone stairs that lead up to the hall, and then my guard opens the door and Sir Robert Brackenbury, Richard’s childhood friend, comes in with a smile. ‘I am sorry if I alarmed you, my lady,’ he says, kneeling and proffering a letter. ‘We came quickly. I should perhaps have sent someone ahead to tell you that it was my troop.’

‘I thought it right to be careful,’ I say. I take the letter, and gesture to my lady in waiting that she shall pour a glass of small ale for Sir Robert. ‘You can go,’ I say to the children and to my ladies. ‘I will talk with Sir Robert.’

Edward hesitates. ‘May I ask Sir Robert if my father is safe and well?’

Sir Robert turns to him and bends down so that the ten-year-old boy and he are at the same height. He speaks gently to all three children. ‘When I left London your father was well and doing the very best he could,’ he says. ‘He has Prince Edward in his safe-keeping and he will make sure that he comes to his throne when the time is right.’

The children bow to me and leave the room. I wait until the door is closed behind them and I open the letter. Richard is brief as usual.

The Rivers are conspiring against us and against all of the old lords of England. They plan to replace the Plantagenet line with themselves. I have found hidden weapons and believe they are planning an uprising and all our deaths. I will defend us and my country against them. Come to London now, I need you to be seen here at my side, and I want your company. Leave a strong guard with the children.

I fold the letter carefully and tuck it inside my gown. Sir Robert is standing, waiting for me to speak to him.

‘Tell me what is happening,’ I command.

‘The queen was mustering a troop and planning to put her son on the throne. She would have excluded our lord from the protectorate and there would have been no regency. She was going to put her son on the throne and she and her brother Anthony Woodville would have ruled England through the boy.’

I nod, hardly daring to breathe.

‘Our lord captured Prince Edward, while he was being taken to London from Ludlow by the queen’s kinsmen. Our lord arrested the queen’s brother Anthony Woodville, and her son by her first marriage Richard Grey, and took the boy into his own keeping. When we got to London we found the queen had fled into sanctuary.’

I gasp. ‘She has gone into sanctuary?’

‘A clear admission of her guilt. She took her children with her. Our lord has the prince in the royal apartment in the Tower, preparing him for his coronation, and the council has declared our lord as Lord Protector – according to the wishes of his brother the king. The queen refuses to attend the coronation or release the royal prince and princesses out of sanctuary so that they can attend their brother.’

‘What is she doing in there?’

Sir Robert grimaces. ‘Without a doubt she is plotting to overthrow the protectorate under the shield of sanctuary. Her brother has commanded the fleet to sail and they are on the high seas; we are preparing for an attack from the river.’ He glances at me. ‘It is my lord’s belief that she is practising witchcraft – hidden in sanctuary.’

I cross myself and feel in my pocket for the amulet that George gave me against her enchantments.

‘He says his sword arm is giving him pain, tingling and aching. He thinks she is trying to weaken him.’

I find I am clenching my hands together. ‘What can he do to defend himself?’

‘I don’t know,’ Sir Robert says unhappily. ‘I don’t know what he can do. And the young prince constantly asks for his mother and for his governor, Anthony Woodville. Clearly, as soon as he is crowned he will command their presence, and they will rule England through him. My own view is that my lord will have to hold the prince as his ward, without a coronation, until he can make an agreement with the family. His own safety demands it. If the queen’s son is on the throne then she takes power again. She is certain to act against our lord – and against you and your son. Once she seizes power through her son, my lord is as good as executed.’

At the thought of her secret silent malice against Richard and against me and the children my knees weaken and I lean against the stone of the chimney breast.

‘Be of good cheer,’ Sir Robert says encouragingly. ‘We know the danger, we are armed against her. Our lord is going to muster his faithful men from the North. He will summon them to London. He has the prince in his hands, and he is ready for anything she might do. He need not crown him until he has an agreement. He can hold him until she will make an agreement.’

‘He says I am to go to him.’

‘I am ordered to escort you,’ Sir Robert says. ‘Shall we leave tomorrow morning?’

‘Yes,’ I say. ‘At first light.’

The children come down to the stable yard to see me leave. I kiss each of them and they kneel for my blessing. Leaving them is the hardest thing to do, but to take them to London would be to lead them into unknown dangers. My son Edward stands straight and says to me: ‘I will take care of my cousins, Lady Mother. You needn’t fear for us. I will hold Middleham Castle for Father, come what may.’

I smile so that they can see I am proud of them but it is hard to turn away from them and get onto my horse. I brush the tears away with the back of my glove. ‘I shall send for you as soon as I can,’ I say. ‘I shall think of you all every day, and pray for you every night.’ Then Sir Robert gives the signal and our little company goes under the portcullis arch, over the drawbridge, and south down the road to London.

At every stop on the way we hear fresh confused rumours. At Pontefract the people are saying that the coronation has been delayed because the councillors were in a treasonous conspiracy with the queen. In Nottingham, when we spend the night at the castle, people say she was going to put her brother Anthony Woodville on the throne, and many more say that she was going to make him Lord Protector. Outside Northampton I hear someone swear that the queen has sent all her children overseas to our sister-in-law Margaret in Flanders, because she is afraid that Henry Tudor will come and seize the throne.

Outside St Albans a pedlar rides beside me for a few miles and tells me that he heard from one of his most respectable customers that the queen is no queen at all but a witch who enchanted the king, and their children are not true heirs but were got by magic. He has a new ballad in his pack: the story of Melusina, the water-witch who pretended to be mortal to get children from her lord and then was revealed as a nixie, a water-sprite. It is pointless to listen to him lustily singing the ballad, and foolish to listen to rumours which merely fuel my fear of the queen’s malice, but I cannot stop myself. What is worse is that everyone in the country is doing the same – we are all listening to rumours and wondering what the queen will do. We are all praying that Richard will be able to prevent her putting her son on the throne, allowing her brother to command him, taking the country into war again.

As we ride through Barnet, where my father is still remembered fighting against this queen and her family, I turn aside to the little chapel that they have built at the battlefield and light a candle for him. Somewhere out there, under the ripening corn, are the bodies of his men who were buried where they lay, and somewhere out there is Midnight, the horse that gave his life in our service. Now I know that we are facing another battle, and this time my father’s son-in-law is – must be – the kingmaker.

BAYNARD’S CASTLE, LONDON, JUNE 1483

I am off my horse and up the stairs and into our apartments at a run and in a moment Richard’s arms are tight around me and we are clinging to each other as if we have survived a shipwreck. We hold each other as we did when we were little more than children and had run away together to be married. Once again I remember him as the only man who could keep me safe, as he holds me as if I am the only woman he has ever wanted.

‘I am so glad you are here,’ he says in my ear.

‘I am so glad you are safe,’ I reply.

We step back to look at each other as if we cannot believe that we have got through these dangerous days. ‘What’s happening?’ I ask.

He glances to see that the door is closed. ‘I’ve uncovered part of a plot,’ he says. ‘I swear that it reaches throughout London, but I have it by the tail at least. Edward’s mistress Elizabeth Shore has been playing the part of go-between between Elizabeth Woodville and the king’s friend William Hastings.’

‘But I thought it was Hastings who sent for you?’ I interrupt. ‘I thought he wanted the prince to be taken from the Rivers’ keeping? I thought he warned you to come quickly?’

‘He did. When I first came to London, he told me that he feared the power of the Rivers. Now he has turned his coat. I don’t know how she has managed to get hold of him but she has enchanted him as she does everyone. At any rate, I know of it in time. She has created a ring of plotters against my brother’s last words and against me. They are Hastings, perhaps Archbishop Rotherham, certainly Bishop Morton and perhaps Thomas, Lord Stanley.’

‘Margaret Beaufort’s husband?’

He nods. This is bad news for us, since Lord Stanley is famous for always being on the winning side; if he is against us, then our chances are not good.

‘They don’t want me to crown the boy and serve as his chief councillor. They want him in their keeping – not mine. They want to get him away from me, restore the power of the Rivers, and arrest me for treason. Then they’ll crown him, or declare a regency with Anthony Woodville as Lord Protector. The boy has become a prize. The little prince has become a pawn.’

I shake my head. ‘What will you do?’

He smiles grimly. ‘Why, I shall arrest them for treason. Plotting against the Lord Protector is treason, just as if I were king. I am already holding Anthony Woodville and Richard Grey. I shall arrest Hastings and the bishops also, I shall arrest Thomas, Lord Stanley.’

There is a tap at the door and my ladies come in with my chests of clothes. ‘Not in here,’ my husband orders them. ‘Her Grace and I will sleep in the rooms at the back of the house.’

They curtsey and go out again. ‘Why are we not in our usual rooms?’ I ask. We normally have the beautiful rooms that overlook the river.

‘It’s safer at the back of the house,’ he says. ‘The queen’s brother has taken the fleet to sea. If he sails up the Thames and bombards us, we could take a direct hit. This house has never been fortified – but who would have thought that we would face an attack from the river by our own fleet?’

I look out of the wide windows at the view I love, of the river and the ships, the ferries, the little rowing boats, the barges and the scows all going by at peace. ‘The queen’s brother might bombard us? From our river, the Thames? In our own house?’

He nods. ‘This is a time of wonders,’ he says. ‘I wake every morning and try to puzzle out what new hell she is devising.’

‘Who is with us?’ It is the question that my father would always ask.

‘Buckingham has emerged as a true friend; he hates the wife that they forced on him and all the Rivers family. He commands a fortune and many men. I can also count on all of my men from the North of course; John Howard; my personal friends; my Lady Mother’s affinity; your side of the family, of course, so all the Nevilles . . .’

I am listening intently. ‘It’s not enough,’ I say. ‘And mostly based in the North. She can call out the royal household, and all her own family that she has put in such great positions. She can call on help from Burgundy, from her kinsmen in Europe. Perhaps she has made an alliance with the King of France already? France would back her rather than you, thinking they have a greater advantage to make trouble with a woman in power. And as soon as they know you are in London, the Scots will take the chance to rise.’

He nods. ‘I know. But I have the prince in my keeping,’ he says. ‘That is my master card. Remember how it was with the old king Henry? If you hold the king then there is really no argument. You have the power.’

‘Unless you simply crown another king,’ I remind him. ‘That’s what my father did with your brother. He held Henry; but he crowned Edward. What if she puts her other boy on the throne? Even though you hold the true heir?’

‘I know. I have to get her second son into my keeping too. I have to hold anyone who might claim to be king.’

Richard’s mother and I sit together for company in the back rooms of Baynard’s Castle. The nagging noise of the busy streets drifts through the open windows, the stink of London comes in on the hot air, but Richard has asked us to stay away from the cool gardens that lead down to the river, and never to go near the riverside windows. We may not go out into the streets without an armed guard. He does not know if the Rivers have hired assassins against us. The duchess is pale with anxiety; she has some sewing in her hands but she works at random, picking it up and putting it down again at the least noise from the streets outside the window.

‘I wish to God he would put her to death,’ she says suddenly. ‘Make an end of her. Her and all her ill-gotten children.’

I am silent. It is so near to my own thoughts that I hardly dare to agree.

‘We have not had one peaceful or happy day since she enchanted my son Edward,’ she says. ‘He lost the love of your father for her, he lost the chance of an honourable marriage that would have brought peace between us and France. He threw away the honour of his family by bringing her sturdy brood into our house, and now she will put one of her changeling sons on our throne. She told him to kill George – I know it, I was there as she advised him. Edward would never have decided on the death sentence on his own. It was her spy who killed your sister. And now she plots the death of my last living son, Richard. The day that he falls because of her enchantment she will have taken every single one of my sons.’

I nod. I dare not say anything out loud.

‘Richard is ill,’ she mutters. ‘I swear it is her doing. He says that his shoulder aches and he cannot sleep. What if she is tightening a rope around his heart? We should warn her that if she harms so much as one hair of his head we will kill her boy.’

‘She has two boys,’ I say. ‘She has two chances at the throne. All we would do by killing Prince Edward would be to give the throne to Prince Richard.’

She glances at me in surprise. She did not know I was so hardened. But she did not realise that I watched my sister scream in pain, trying to deliver a baby in a witch’s wind, and die from a witch’s poison. If I ever had a tender heart it has been broken and frightened too often. I too have a son to defend, I have his little cousins. I have a husband who walks up and down the bedroom at night, clutching his sword arm as the pain wakes him from sleep.

‘Richard will have to get the other boy into his keeping,’ she says. ‘We have to hold both the Rivers heirs.’

That evening Richard comes in and greets me and his mother abstractedly. We go through the great hall to dine at the high table and Richard nods grimly as his men cheer him to his place. Everyone knows we are in danger; we feel like a house under siege. When he leans on his right arm as he goes to sit at his place it gives way beneath him and he stumbles and clutches at his shoulder.

‘What is it?’ I whisper urgently.

‘My arm,’ he says. ‘I am losing the strength in it. She is working on me. I know it.’

I hide my fear and smile out over the hall. There will be people here who will report to the queen, hiding in the shadowy walls of sanctuary. They will tell her that her enemy is vulnerable. She is not far away, just down the river in the gloomy chambers below the Abbey of Westminster. I can almost feel her presence in the hall: like a cold diseased breath.

Richard dips his hands in the silver bowl that is presented to him and wipes his hands on the linen cloth. The servers bring out the food from the kitchen, and take the dishes round to all the tables.

‘A bad business today,’ Richard says quietly to me. From the other side his mother leans forwards to listen. ‘I had proof of the plot that I suspected, between Hastings and the queen. His whore was go-between. Morton was in it too. I accused them in council and arrested them.’

‘Well done,’ his mother says at once.

‘Will you have them tried?’ I ask.

He shakes his head. ‘No,’ he says shortly. ‘There was no time. These are the fortunes of war. I had Hastings beheaded at the Tower. Morton I have put in the care of Henry Stafford the Duke of Buckingham. Rotherham and Thomas, Lord Stanley I will hold under suspicion. I have had their homes searched for evidence, I will execute them if I find that they are plotting against me.’

I say not one word as a server offers us a fricassee of chicken. When he has moved on I whisper: ‘Beheaded? William Hastings? Without trial? Just like that?’

His mother flares at me. ‘Just like that!’ she repeats. ‘Why not just like that? You think that the queen demanded a fair trial for my son? You think that George had a fair trial when she called for his death?’

‘No,’ I say, acknowledging the truth of what she says.

‘Well, anyway, it’s done,’ Richard says, breaking into a loaf of white bread. ‘I could not put the prince on the throne with Hastings in league with the queen against me. As soon as he was crowned king and free to choose his advisors they would have taken him from me and put my death warrant before him. He would have signed it too. It is clear to me when I speak to him that he is utterly their boy, he is completely at their beck and call. I shall have to have Anthony Woodville, Richard Grey and Thomas Vaughan, their kinsman, executed too. They would all command the prince against me. When they are dead I will be safe.’ He looks at my aghast face. ‘This is the only way I can crown him,’ he says. ‘I have to destroy his mother’s affinity. I have to make him a king with only one councillor – myself. When they are dead I have to face only her – the plot is broken.’

‘You have to wade through the blood of innocent men,’ I say flatly.

He meets my eyes without wavering. ‘To get him on the throne,’ he says. ‘To make him a good king and not their cat’s-paw: yes, yes I do.’

In her dark sanctuary the queen makes her spells and whispers incantations against us. I know that she does. I can almost feel her ill-will pressing like river mist against the bolted windows of the back rooms of Baynard’s Castle. I hear from my ladies in waiting that the queen has surrendered her second son into the care of her friend and kinsman Cardinal Bourchier. The cardinal swore to her that the boy would be safe, and took the boy Richard from her to join his brother Edward in the royal rooms in the Tower to prepare for the coronation.

I cannot believe that it is going ahead. Even if we hold the boys in our keeping, even if we take them to Middleham Castle and treat them as our own children, the prince is not an ordinary child. He can never be treated as an ordinary ward. He is a boy of twelve years old raised to be a king. He adores his mother and will never betray her. He has been educated and schooled and advised by his uncle Anthony Woodville; he will never transfer his love and loyalty to us, we are strangers to him, they may have told him we are his enemies. They have held him in their thrall from his babyhood, he is absolutely the child of their making, nothing can change that now. She has won him from us, his true family, just as she won her husband from his brothers. Richard is going to crown a boy who will grow up to be his deadliest enemy – however kindly we treat him. Richard is going to make Elizabeth Woodville the mother to the King of England. She is going to take my father’s title of ‘the kingmaker’. There is no doubt in my mind that she will do just as my father would have done: bide her time and then slowly eliminate all rivals.

‘What else can I do?’ Richard demands of me. ‘What else can I do but crown the boy who has been raised to be my enemy? He is my brother’s son, he is my nephew. Even if I think he has been raised to be my enemy, what else, in honour, can I do?’

His mother at the fireside raises her head to listen. I feel her dark blue gaze on me. This is a woman who stood in the centre of Ludlow and waited for the riotous bad queen’s army to burst through the gates. This is not a woman who has much fear. She nods at me as if to give me permission to say the one thing, the obvious thing.

‘You had better take the throne,’ I say simply.

Richard looks at me. His mother smiles, and lays aside her sewing work. There has not been a good stitch put in it for days.

‘Do as your brother did,’ I say. ‘Not once but twice. He took the throne from Henry in battle not once but twice, and Henry had a far better right to it than the Rivers boy. The boy is not even crowned, not even ordained. He is nothing but one claimant to the throne and you are another. He may be the king’s son but he is a boy. He may not even be his legitimate son, but a bastard, one of many. You are the king’s brother, and a man, and ready to rule. Take the throne from him. It’s the safest thing for England, it’s the best thing for your family, it’s the best thing for you.’ I feel my heart suddenly pulse with ambition, my father’s ambition – that I should be Queen of England after all.

‘Edward appointed me as Lord Protector, not as his heir,’ Richard says drily.

‘He never knew the nature of the queen,’ I say passionately. ‘He went to his grave under her spell. He was her dupe.’

‘The boy is not even Edward’s heir,’ his mother suddenly interjects.

Richard holds up his hand to stop her. ‘Anne doesn’t know of this.’

‘Time she did,’ she says briskly. She turns to me. ‘Edward was married to a lady, a kinswoman of yours: Eleanor Butler. Did you know?’

‘I knew she was . . .’ I look for words. ‘A favourite.’

‘Not just his whore, they were married in secret,’ the duchess says bluntly. ‘Just the same trick as he played on Elizabeth Woodville. He promised marriage, went through a form of words with some hedge priest . . .’

‘Hardly a hedge priest,’ Richard interrupts from his place, glowering into the fire, one hand resting on the chimney breast. ‘He had Bishop Stillington perform the service with Eleanor Butler.’

His mother shrugs away the objection. ‘So that marriage was valid. It was a priest with no name and perhaps no calling with the Woodville woman. His marriage to Elizabeth Woodville was false. It was bigamy.’

‘What?’ I interrupt, grasping none of this. ‘Lady Mother, what are you saying?’

‘Ask your husband,’ she says. ‘Bishop Stillington told the story himself – didn’t he?’ she demands of Richard. ‘The bishop stood by and said nothing while Edward ignored Lady Eleanor and she went into a nunnery. Edward rewarded his silence. But when the bishop saw that the Rivers were putting their boy on the throne, and he a bastard, he went to your husband and told him all he knew: Edward was married when he made his secret agreement with Elizabeth Woodville. Even if it was a valid priest, even if it was a valid service, it still was nothing. Edward was already married. Those children, all those children, are bastards. There is no House of Rivers. There is no queen. She is a mistress and her bastard sons are pretenders. That is all.’

I turn in amazement to Richard. ‘Is this true?’

He shoots a swift beleaguered look at me. ‘I don’t know,’ he says shortly. ‘The bishop says he married Edward to Lady Eleanor in a valid ceremony. They are both dead. Edward claimed Elizabeth Woodville as his wife and her son as his heir. Don’t I have to honour my brother’s wishes?’

‘No,’ his mother says bluntly. ‘Not when he was wishing wrong. You don’t have to put a bastard on the throne in preference to yourself.’

Richard turns his back to the fire. His hand cups his shoulder. ‘Why did you never speak of this before? Why did I hear it first from Bishop Stillington?’

She takes up her sewing. ‘What was there to tell? Everyone knows that I hate her and that she hates me. While Edward was alive and prepared to call her his wife and own the children, what difference would it make what I said? What anyone said? He had Bishop Stillington silenced, why should I speak out?’

Richard shakes his head. ‘There have been scandals about Edward ever since he took the throne,’ he says.

‘And not one word against you,’ his mother reminds him. ‘Take the throne yourself. There is not one man in England who would defend Elizabeth Woodville unless he was one of her family or she had already bribed him into her service. Everyone else knows her for what she is: a seductress and a witch.’

‘She will be my enemy for life,’ Richard remarks.

‘Then keep her in sanctuary for life,’ she says, smiling, hag-like herself. ‘Keep her on holy ground, in the half-darkness, and her little coven of daughters with her. Arrest her. Keep her there, the troglodyte with her bastard breed.’

Richard turns to me. ‘What do you think?’

The room is silent, waiting for my decision. I think of my father who killed his great horse and then lost his own life fighting the battle to put me on the throne of England. I think of Elizabeth Woodville, who has been the bane of my days and the murderer of my sister. ‘I think that you have a greater claim to the throne than her son,’ I say out loud. And I think: ‘And I have a greater claim to the throne than her. I shall be, as I was supposed to be, Queen Anne of England.’

Still he hesitates. ‘It is a big step, to take the throne.’

I go to him and take his hand. It is as if we were handfasted, plighting our troth once more. I find I am smiling and I can feel my cheeks are warm. In this moment of decision I am indeed my father’s daughter. ‘This is your destiny,’ I tell him, and I can hear my own voice ringing with certainty. ‘By birth, by inclination, and by education, you are the best king that England could have in these times. Do it, Richard. Take your chance. It is my birthright as it is yours. Let us take it. Let us take it together.’

THE TOWER OF LONDON, JULY 1483

Once more I am in the royal apartments of the Tower, looking through the slit windows at the moon laying a silver path on the dark waters of the river. Once more I am conscious of the silence of the night and from far away the distant sound of music playing. It is the night before our coronation, and I have come away from the celebration feast to pray and look out at the swiftly flowing water as the river rushes down to the sea. I am to be Queen of England. Once more I whisper to myself the promise that was first made to me by my father. I am to be Queen Anne of England, and I will be crowned tomorrow.

I know that She will be at her little window, peering out at the darkness outside the sanctuary, her beautiful face twisted with grief as she prays for her sons, knowing that we have them both in our keeping, and that neither of them will ever be king. I know she will be cursing us, twisting some bloody rag in her hands, moulding some wax figure, pounding herbs and burning them on the fire. Her whole attention will be on the Tower just like the moon that tonight makes a silvery path on the water that points to their bedroom.

Their bedroom, the bedroom of her boys. For they are here, both boys, in the Tower with me, on the floor above. If I went up only one turn of the circular stone stairs and told their guard to step aside I could go into their rooms and see them sleeping, in one bed, the moon pale on their pale faces, their eyelashes dark on their cheeks, their warm little chests in white lace-trimmed linen, rising and falling, in the deep peace of infant sleep. The prince is only twelve years old, with the faintest of fair down on his upper lip, his legs sprawled on the bed as gangly as a colt. His brother Richard is ten years old next month; he was born in the same year as my son Edward. How can I ever look at her son without thinking of my own? He is a merry little boy, even lost in sleep he smiles at some amusing dream. These boys are in our keeping now, they will be our wards until they grow into men. We will have to hold them at Middleham Castle or Sheriff Hutton, one of our northern homes where we can trust the servants to keep them close. I foresee that we will have to hold them forever. They will grow from enchanting boys to prisoners. We can never let them go.

They will always be a danger to us. They will always be a focus of any discontent, for anyone who wants to question our rule. Elizabeth Woodville will spend her life trying to get them away from us, trying to restore them to the throne. We will be taking our gravest threat into our own home. Their father, King Edward, would never have tolerated such a danger. My father would have felt the same. My father held King Edward once and said that after Edward escaped and put himself back on the throne he knew that there was no choice next time but to capture and kill him. Edward learned this lesson from my father. When he held the old king, Henry, he kept him safe only as long as there was a Lancaster heir. My husband Prince Edward’s death was the death warrant for his father. When King Edward saw that he could end the House of Lancaster he did it that night: he killed King Henry and his brothers George and Richard aided the murder, the regicide. They realised that alive he would always be a focus of rebellion, a danger to them. Dead he could be mourned; but he was no threat. There is no doubt in my mind that the Woodville boy alive is a danger to us. Really, neither of these boys should be suffered to live. It is only my weak tenderness and Richard’s love of his brother that makes us decide that they should be spared. Neither my father nor Richard’s brother would ever have been such soft-hearted fools.

I wrap my fur cloak a little closer around me though the night is warm; the breeze through my open window has the chill of the deep river. I think how Isabel would laugh to see me now, in Elizabeth Woodville’s furs – the same priceless miniver that Isabel once put in her chest of gowns, and then had to give back. Isabel would laugh at our triumph. We have won tonight, in the end we have won, and the little girl that I was then, who played at being queen on the night of Elizabeth Woodville’s coronation, in this very tower, will wear the crown tomorrow.

And the doubts that my mother whispered to me matter not at all. Whether my marriage was valid or not, my coronation will be done by an archbishop with sacred oil. I shall be Queen of England and I shall be at peace. Richard made me his wife in the eyes of God; he makes me his queen before all the world. I need wonder no more if he loves me. He has given me his ring in private and the crown in public. I shall be Queen Anne as my father wanted me to be.

I put aside the fur, dropping it on a chair as if it were of little value. I have a wardrobe full of furs now, I have the finest jewels, and I will have a fortune paid to me every year to maintain the queen’s household as it should be. I shall live as grandly as the queen before me, I have all Elizabeth’s gowns and I will have them cut down to my size. I slide between the warmed silky sheets of the great bed, with the cloth-of-gold canopy and the red velvet-lined curtains. From now on, I shall only have the finest things around me. From now on I shall only have the best. I was born the daughter of the kingmaker, and tomorrow his plan for me comes to fruition and I shall be queen. And when my husband dies, our son Edward, the kingmaker’s grandson, will be king in his turn, and the House of Warwick will be the royal house of England.

A ROYAL PROGRESS, SUMMER 1483

The welcome that we get along the road, at every halt, tells us that we have done the right thing. The country is almost mad with relief that the danger of war has been averted, and that my husband has led us to peace. Richard has gathered around him men that he can trust. Henry Stafford the Duke of Buckingham left his Woodville wife at home to lead Richard into the cathedral as Lord Chamberlain of England. John Howard, who recaptured the fleet from the Rivers for us, becomes the new first Howard Duke of Norfolk and keeps the ships he won; he is Lord Admiral. My kinsman the Earl of Northumberland is given the warden-ship of the North to hold for a year. We travel without a guard, secure in the knowledge that there is no-one in England who does not welcome us. Our enemies are dead or cooped up in sanctuary, the Rivers boys are safely held in the Tower. And at every town where we stay, Reading, Oxford, Gloucester, they put on pageants and festivals to welcome us and to assure us of their loyalty.

The Rivers had made themselves so hated that the people would have taken almost any powerful ruler rather than a boy whose family would devour England. But better than this, the people have a Plantagenet on the throne again: my husband, who looks so like his namesake and well-loved father, whose brother rescued the country from the sleeping king and the bad queen, and who now rescues it once more from another ambitious woman.

Nobody even asks after the boys that we have left in the Tower in London. Nobody wants to remember them or their mother, who still skulks in the darkness of sanctuary. It is as if the whole country wants to forget that there were months of fear about what might happen, and weeks when nobody knew who would be king. Now we have a king crowned in the sight of the people and ordained by God, and he and I ride together through England at the very height of summertime, picnic under clumps of trees when the sun is hot, and enter the beautiful towns of England where they welcome us as their saviours.

Only one person asks me about the Rivers boys, left behind in the quiet Tower of London, asking for their mother in sanctuary, just three miles upriver. Sir Robert Brackenbury, now made Keeper of the Exchange and Constable of the Tower, has responsibility for guarding them. He is the only person to say to me in his blunt Yorkshire way: ‘So what’s to happen to the Rivers bastards, Your Grace? Now that we have them and they are in my keeping?’

He is an honest man, and I would trust him with almost anything. I take his arm as we walk in the courtyard of the beautiful college at Oxford. ‘They have no future,’ I tell him. ‘They can be neither princes nor men. We will have to hold them forever. But my husband knows, as I do, that they will be a danger forever for us. They will be a danger just in their being. They will be a threat to us for as long as they live.’

He pauses and turns to me. His honest gaze meets mine. ‘God save you, would you wish them dead, Your Grace?’ he asks simply.

I shake my head in instant revulsion. ‘I can’t wish it,’ I say. ‘Not a couple of boys, not a pair of innocent boys.’

‘Ah, you’re too tender-hearted . . .’

‘I can’t wish it – but what life can they have? They will be prisoners forever. Even if they were to give up all claims to the throne there will always be someone who would claim it for them. And what safety can we have while they live?’

We are going to York where our son – Prince Edward as he now is – will be invested as Prince of Wales. It is a compliment to the city that has supported Richard from first to last and where he is loved better than in any other part of the country. We get a welcome into the walled city greater than anything we have yet seen. In the high-vaulted York Minster my boy Edward walks forwards, watched by his cousins Edward and Margaret, and takes the golden wand and little gold crown of the Prince of Wales. The cheers when he comes out on the steps of the Minster to greet the crowds send the birds whirling into the sky. I cross myself, and whisper, ‘Thank God.’ I know that my father is watching his grandson invested as Prince of Wales, and that in heaven he knows that his struggle has ended, at last, in victory. The kingmaker has made a prince of his grandson. There will be a Warwick boy on the throne of England.

We will stay in the North for some time, and this will always be our home, as we are happier here than anywhere else. We will rebuild the palace of Sheriff Hutton where the children will live, safely away from the diseases and plagues of London, safely distant, I think, from the brooding presence of the defeated queen in her damp holt under Westminster Abbey. We will make this a new palace in the North of England, a place to rival Windsor, or Greenwich, and the wealth from the court will spill out to our friends and neighbours, the northern affinity that we trust. We will make a golden kingdom of the North, great enough to rival the City of London itself. The heart of the country will be here, where the king and queen – northern by birth and inclination – live among the high green hills.

My son Edward and his cousins Margaret and Teddy and I go to Middleham, riding merrily together, as if we are out for pleasure. I will stay with them for the rest of the summer, Queen of England and mistress of my own time. In winter we will all go back to London and I shall have the children with me at Greenwich. Edward will have to have more tutors and more training in horse-riding; we have to build up his strength for he is still a slight boy. He has to be prepared to be king in his own turn. In a few years he will go to live at Ludlow and his council will rule Wales.

As we take the road north for Middleham, Richard leaves us and starts the journey southwards once more with a tiny escort around him, among them our longstanding friends Sir James Tyrrell, now made Master of Henchmen, Francis Lovell, Robert Brackenbury and the others. Richard kisses the children and blesses them. He holds me in his arms and whispers to me to come to him as soon as the weather turns. I feel my heart warm with love for him. We are at last victorious, we are at last blessed. He has made me Queen of England, as I was born to be, and I have given him a prince and an heir. Together we have fulfilled my father’s vision. This is victory indeed.

On the road going south, Richard writes me a hasty letter.

Anne,

The Rivers like a scotched snake are up and more dangerous than ever. They mounted an attack on the Tower to rescue their boys and were narrowly beaten off in a desperate battle. We can arrest no-one – they have melted away. Anne, I tell you, I had her so closely guarded that I thought that no-one could get in or out from her dark sanctuary but she somehow raised a small army up against us. Her army without livery or insignia came and went like ghosts, and now nobody can tell me where they are. Someone mustered troops and paid them – but who?

We still hold the boys, thank God. I have moved them into inner rooms in the Tower. But I am shocked at the extent of her hidden power. She will be biding her time and then she will flare up again. How many can she recruit? How many who cheered at our coronation sent men and weapons to her? I am betrayed and I don’t know who to trust. Burn this.

‘What is it, Your Grace?’ Little Margaret is at my side, her dark blue eyes puzzled at my aghast face. I put my arm around her and feel her warmth and softness and she leans into my side. ‘Not bad news?’ she asks. ‘Not the king, my uncle?’

‘He has worries,’ I say, thinking of the wickedness of the woman who hides in the darkness and made this little girl an orphan. ‘He has enemies. But he is strong and brave and he has good friends who will help him against the bad queen and her bastard so-called sons.’

MIDDLEHAM CASTLE, YORKSHIRE, OCTOBER 1483

I speak to Margaret with confidence but I am mistaken. My husband has fewer friends than I thought, than he thought.

A few days later comes a hurried scrawl:

The falsest of friends, the most wicked of turncoats – the Duke of Buckingham is the most untrue creature living.

I drop the page for a moment, and can hardly bear to read on.

He has joined with two evil women, each as bad as the other. Elizabeth Woodville has seduced him to her side, and she has made a hags’ alliance with Margaret Beaufort, who carried your train at our coronation, who was always so good and loving to you, the wife of my friend, the trusted Lord Thomas Stanley, whom I made Lord Chamberlain.

Falseness upon deceit.

Margaret has betrothed her son, Henry Tudor, to Elizabeth, the Rivers girl – and they are all up against us, mustering their affinity, sending for Henry Tudor to sail from Brittany. Henry Stafford Duke of Buckingham, the one man I would have trusted with my life, has turned his coat and is on their side. He is now raising his forces in Wales, and will march into England soon. I leave at once for Leicester.

Worst of all – even worse than all of this – Buckingham is telling everyone that the princes are dead and by my hand. This means the Rivers will fight to put Tudor and Princess Elizabeth on the throne. This means that the country – and history – names me a murderer, a killer of children, a tyrant who turns on his brother’s son and takes his own blood. I cannot bear this slur on my name and honour. This is a slander which will stick like pitch. Pray for me and for our cause – Richard.

I do as he bids me. I go straight to the chapel without a word to anyone and I go down on my knees, my eyes fixed on the crucifix above the rood screen. I gaze at it unblinking, as if I would burn away from my sight the letter which told me that the people we had counted as friends – the handsome and charming Duke of Buckingham, the winner Lord Thomas Stanley, his wife Margaret who was so kind and welcoming to me when I first came to London, who took me to the great wardrobe and helped me to pick out my coronation gown – all these are false. Bishop Morton, whom I have loved and admired for years – false too. But the one sentence that stays with me, that rings in my ears through my muttered Ave Maria, which I repeat over and over again as if to drown out the sound of the few words, is – Buckingham is telling everyone that the princes are dead and by my hand.

It is dark when I rise to my feet, the early dark of autumn, and I am cold and chilled as the priest brings in the candles and the household follows him in for Compline. I bow my head as he goes past but I stumble out of the chapel into the cold evening air. A white owl hoots and goes low overhead and I duck as if it is a spirit passing me by, a warning from the witch who is massing her forces against us.

Buckingham is telling everyone that the princes are dead and by my hand.

I had thought that if the princes were dead then there would be no other claimant to the throne, that my husband’s time on the throne would be untroubled, and my son would take his place when God saw fit to call us away. Now I see that every man is a kingmaker. A throne is not empty for a moment before someone is being measured for the crown. And fresh princes spring up like weeds in a crop as soon as the rumour goes out that those who wear the crown are dead:

Buckingham is telling everyone that the princes are dead and by my hand.

And now, another young man, calling himself heir, appears from nowhere. Henry Tudor, the son of Margaret Beaufort of the House of Lancaster and Edmund Tudor of the House of Tudor, should be out of mind as he has been out of sight. He has not set foot in this country for years, not since his mother hustled him abroad to keep him safe from the basilisk gaze of the House of York. When Edward was on the throne the boy was many steps from being an heir, yet even so Edward would have taken him to the Tower, would quietly have seen to his death. That is why Margaret Beaufort kept him far away, and negotiated very cautiously for his return. I even pitied her as she missed her son. She even sympathised with me when George was going to send his son away. I thought we had an understanding. I thought we were friends. But all the time she was waiting. Waiting and thinking when her son could return, an enemy to the King of England whether the king was Edward or my husband Richard.

Buckingham is telling everyone that the princes are dead and by my hand.

So Henry Tudor has a claim to the throne, through the House of Lancaster, and his mother is no longer my friend but throws off her cloak of obedient affection and becomes a war-maker. She will make war against us. She will tell everyone that the princes are dead, and my husband their murderer. She will tell everyone that the next heir is her son and that they should overthrow such a tyrant, a regicide.

I go up the dark stairs to the north tower, where I have walked so many times with Richard, in the evening sunlight at the end of the day, talking over the joys of the children, the land, the ruling of the North. Now it is dark and cold and the moon is coming up with a silvery glow on the far horizon.

Buckingham is telling everyone that the princes are dead and by my hand.

I do not believe that my husband gave the order for the murder of his nephews. I will never believe it. He was secure on his throne, he had declared them as bastards. Nobody on our progress even mentioned them. They were forgotten and we were accepted. It was only me, talking to the keeper of the Tower, who said that though I could not wish for their death, I knew that I must think of it. And it was the Constable of the Tower, their gaoler, who remarked that I was tender-hearted. Richard would not have given the order to kill the boys; of that I am sure. But I know I am not the only person who loves Richard and wants to keep him safe. I know I am not the only person to think that the boys will have to die.

Has one of our loyal friends stooped to such a dark sin as to kill a ten-year-old boy and his twelve-year-old brother while they were in our keeping? While they slept? And worse – has someone done it thinking to please us? Has someone done it thinking it was my wish? Thinking that I walked with him in the quadrangle of the Oxford college, and then and there actually asked him to do it?

MIDDLEHAM CASTLE, YORKSHIRE, WINTER 1483

We wait for news, and Richard writes to me almost daily, knowing how anxious I am. He tells me of the mustering of his forces; men are flocking to serve him, and the great nobles of the realm are turning out to support their king against the duke who was once at his side. His childhood friend Francis Lovell never leaves him, Thomas, Lord Stanley, though his own wife Margaret Beaufort plotted with Elizabeth Woodville, joins Richard and promises his loyalty. This shows, I think, how little the former queen can appeal to good men. She may have won over Margaret Beaufort – ambitious for her son and hoping for the throne – but she cannot win Thomas, Lord Stanley, who stays true to us. I don’t forget that Thomas Stanley is a bellwether, leading the flock where everyone follows. That he is on our side shows that he calculates we are likely to win. John Howard, our good friend, stays faithful too, and Richard writes to me that Howard is holding down rebels in Sussex and Kent to stop war breaking out against us.

And then God blesses us. It is as simple as that. God is on our side. He sends down the rain that washes the treason out of people’s minds, and the anger out of their hearts as day after day it pours with cold wintry water as hard as sleet, and the men who were mustering in Kent go home to dry fires, the men who thought they would march out of Sussex learn that the roads are impassable, and the citizens of London are flooded from their riverside homes and can spare no thought for anything but the rising waters that threaten the low-lying sanctuary where Elizabeth Woodville has to wait, without news of her rebellion, her messengers stuck where they are, on roads that have churned into mires, gradually losing hope.

God sends rain on Wales and all the little mountain streams that play so prettily through the meadows in midsummer get faster and rougher as the dark waters pour off the mountains into the bigger streams and then into the rivers. The torrents flood and break their banks and pour into the Severn river, which rises and rises until it breaches all the river walls, spreads for miles in the valley, maroons one town after another, drowns the riverside villages and – best of all – holds the false Duke of Buckingham in Wales, while his men melt away as if they were sugar men in the wet, and his hopes become sodden, and he himself runs away from the men that he said he would lead, and his own servant turns him in to us as a traitor for a small reward.

God sends the rain on the narrow seas so they are dark and menacing and Henry Tudor cannot set sail. I know what it is to look out from port and see dark moving water and white caps on the waves and I laugh, in the warmth and dryness of landlocked Middleham Castle, to think of Henry Tudor, standing on the quayside and praying for fine weather while it rains down unstoppably on his young auburn head, and not even the woman he hopes will be his mother-in-law, the witch Elizabeth, can hold back the storm.

There is a break in the weather and he sets sail bravely enough, crossing the rough seas, but his hopes have been chilled by the long wait and he does not even land. He takes a look at the coast that he plans to call his own and he cannot even find within himself the courage to set foot on the wet sand. He reefs his sodden sails and turns his boat for home and runs before a cold wind back to Brittany, where he should stay forever, if he would take my advice, and die like all pretenders, in exile. Richard writes to me from London.

It is over. It is over but for naming of the traitors and ordering their punishment. It is a joy to me that Wales was true to me, that the south coast offered no safe haven to Henry Tudor, not a single town opened its gates to a rebel force, not one baron or earl defied me. My kingdom is loyal to me and I shall punish lightly or not at all those who were drawn to this reckless last gasp of the Rivers and their new-found, ill-chosen ally, Henry Tudor. The boy’s mother, Margaret Beaufort, cannot be expected to deny the cause of her son but she will live the rest of her days under house arrest – in the charge of her husband, Thomas, Lord Stanley. I have put her fortune in his keeping, which for a grasping ambitious woman will – I think – be punishment enough. He will keep her close, she has been stripped of her servants and her friends, not even her confessor can attend her. I have broken her affinity as I have broken the alliances around the Rivers.

I am victorious without raising my sword. This is my vindication as well as an easy victory. The country does not seek to restore the Rivers, they certainly don’t want the stranger, Henry Tudor. Margaret Beaufort and Elizabeth Woodville are seen as foolish mothers conspiring together for their children, nothing more than that. The Duke of Buckingham is despised as a traitor and a false friend. I shall take care whom I befriend in future, but you can see this as an easy victory and – though a hard few weeks – part of our ascension to our throne. Please God we shall look back on this and be glad that we came to our royal estate so easily.

Come to London, we shall keep Christmas as royally as Edward and Elizabeth ever did, with true friends and loyal servants.

WESTMINSTER PALACE, LONDON, NOVEMBER 1483

Just as we are readying ourselves for the Christmas feast – a feast which Richard swears will be the grandest that London has ever seen – just as people start to arrive at court and are allocated their rooms, told their parts in the entertainments, and learn the new dances, Richard comes looking for me and finds me in the great rooms of the wardrobe, looking over the gowns that belonged to the other queens, and now belong to me. I am planning to take apart two beautiful old-fashioned gowns of cloth of gold and deep purple to make a new one, layered in a new pattern with purple sleeves slashed to show the gold beneath, gathered with a gold braid at the wrist. On either side of me are great bales of cloth for more new gowns, and furs and velvets for new capes and jackets for Richard himself. He looks ill at ease, but he always looks ill at ease, these days. The crown sits heavily on him, and he can trust no-one.

‘Can you leave this?’ Richard asks, looking doubtfully at the mountains of priceless cloth.

‘Oh yes,’ I say, lifting my gown and picking my way over the cuttings on the floor. ‘My lady wardrobe mistress knows far better than I what is to be done.’

He takes me by the arm and draws me to the little area off the main wardrobe room, where the wardrobe mistress usually sits to make her audit of the furs, gowns, robes and shoes in her keeping. There is a warm fire burning in the grate and Richard takes the seat by the table and I perch on the window seat and wait.

‘I have taken a decision,’ he says heavily. ‘I did not take it lightly, and still I want to talk it over with you.’

I wait. It will be about the Woodville woman, I know it. I can tell by the way he is holding his right arm, between the elbow and the shoulder. This is a constant pain for him now, and no physician can tell him what is wrong. I know, though I have no proof, that the pain is of her doing. I imagine her knotting a rag around her own arm, feeling it prickle and go numb, and then wishing the pain on him.

‘It’s about Henry Tudor,’ he says.

I stiffen in my seat. I did not expect this.

‘He is going to hold a betrothal ceremony in Rennes cathedral. He is going to declare himself King of England and betrothed to Elizabeth.’

For a moment I forget the daughter in thinking of the ill-will of the mother. ‘Elizabeth Woodville?’

‘Her daughter, Elizabeth Princess of York.’

The familiar name of Edward’s favourite daughter falls into the cosy little room, and I think of the girl with skin like a warm pearl, and the smiling charm of her father. ‘He said she was his most precious child,’ Richard says quietly. ‘When we had to fight our way home from Flanders he said that he would do it for her, even if everyone else was dead. And that it would be worth any risk to see her smile again.’

‘She was always terribly spoiled,’ I say. ‘They took her everywhere, and she always put herself forwards.’

‘And now she is up to my shoulder and a beauty. I wish Edward could see her, I think she is even more beautiful than her mother was at that age. She is a woman grown – you would not know her.’

With a slow uncoiling of anger I realise that he is speaking of her as she is now. He has been to see her, he has been to see the Woodville woman and he has seen Elizabeth. While I have been here, preparing for the Christmas court that is to celebrate our coming to power, he has slipped away to the dark hovel that is her choice. ‘You have seen her?’

He shrugs as if it does not much matter. ‘I had to go and see the queen,’ he says.

I am the queen. It seems that he has made one visit to the Woodville woman and forgotten everything that we hold dear. Everything that we have fought to win.

‘I wanted to ask her about the boys.’

‘No!’ I cry out, and then I put my hand over my mouth so that no-one can hear my arguing with my husband, the king. ‘My lord, I beg you. How could you do such a thing? Why would you do such a thing?’

‘I had to know.’ He looks haunted. ‘They told me of Buckingham’s rebellion and his words at the same time. One was as bad as the other. I wrote to you at once.’

Buckingham is telling everyone that the princes are dead and by my hand.

I nod. ‘I remember. But . . .’

‘I sent at once to the Tower, as soon as I heard that everyone was saying they were dead. All they could tell me was that the boys were gone. As soon as I got to London, the first thing I did was go to the Tower. Robert was there—’

‘Robert?’ I ask, as if I have forgotten the name of the Constable of the Tower. Robert Brackenbury, who looked at me with his honest understanding and said, ‘Oh, you’re tenderhearted’ when I said that the boys should be killed, but that I could not bring myself to give the order in so many words.

‘Brackenbury,’ he says. ‘A true friend. He would be true to me. He would do anything for me.’

‘Oh yes,’ I say, and I can feel dread in my belly as if I have been drinking ice. ‘I know he would do anything for you.’

‘He doesn’t know what has happened to the boys. He is the Constable of the Tower and he did not know. All he could say was that when he got to the Tower the boys were gone. All the guards would say was that they put them to bed one night and guarded the door all night and in the morning they were gone.’

‘How could they just go?’

His old energy returns. ‘Well, someone must be lying. Someone must have bribed a guard.’

‘But who?’

‘I thought perhaps the queen had taken them. I was praying that she had taken them. That’s why I went to see her. I said to her, I won’t even pursue them, I won’t even try to find them. If you have smuggled them away somewhere, they can stay there in safety. But I have to know.’

‘What did she say? The Woodville woman?’

‘She went down on her knees and she wept like a woman who knows heartbreak. There is no doubt in my mind that she has lost her sons and she doesn’t know who has them. She asked me if I had taken them. She said she would put a curse on whoever has killed them, if they are dead, that her curse would take the murderer’s son and his line would die without issue. Her daughter joined with her in the curse – they were terrifying.’

‘She cursed us?’ I whisper through cold lips.

‘Not us! I didn’t order their deaths!’ he shouts at me in a sudden explosion of rage that echoes off the wooden panelling of the little room. ‘I didn’t order their deaths! Everybody thinks I did. Do you think so too? My own wife? You think I would do that? You think that I would murder my own nephews when they were in my keeping? You think I would do something as sinful, as criminal, as dishonourable as that? You call me a tyrant with blood on my hands? You? Of all the people in the world who know what I am? You who know that I have spent my life pledging my sword and my heart to honour? You too think me a killer?’

‘No, no, no, Richard.’ I catch his hands and shake my head and swear that I know he would not do such a thing. I stumble over my words before his furious face and the tears come, and I cannot tell him – dear God, I cannot tell him – no, it is not you but it might have been me who ordered their deaths. It might have been my careless speech, my thinking aloud which prompted this. And so it is my sin that will draw the curse of the Woodville woman onto the heads of my Edward so that our line is without a son like hers. In that one moment, when I thought I was protecting us, when I dropped a word into Robert Brackenbury’s ear, I destroyed my future and everything my father worked for. I have drawn on my beloved son’s head the righteous enmity of the most dangerous witch in England. If Robert Brackenbury thought he heard an order in my words, if he did what he thought was my bidding, if he did what he thought was best for Richard, then I have killed her sons and her revenge will be thorough. I have destroyed my own future.

‘There was no need for me to kill them,’ he says. To my ears, his voice is an exculpatory whine. ‘I had them safe. I had them declared bastards. The country supported my coronation, my progress was a success, we were accepted everywhere, acclaimed. I was going to send them to Sheriff Hutton and keep them there, safe. That’s why I wanted it rebuilt. In a few years’ time, when they were young men, I was going to release them and honour them as my nephews, command them to come to court to serve us. Keep them under my eye, treat them as royal kinsmen . . .’ He breaks off. ‘I was going to be a good uncle to them, as I am to George’s boy and his girl. I was going to care for them.’

‘It would never have worked!’ I cry out. ‘Not with her as their mother. George’s boy is one thing, Isabel was my beloved sister; but none of the Woodville woman’s children will ever be anything but our most deadly enemy!’

‘We’ll never know,’ he says simply. He gets to his feet, rubbing his upper arm as if it has gone numb. ‘Now, we’ll never know what men those two boys might have been.’

‘She is our enemy,’ I tell him again, amazed that he is such a fool he cannot remember this. ‘She has betrothed her daughter to Henry Tudor. He was all set to invade England and put the Woodville bastard girl on the throne as queen. She is our enemy and you should be dragging her out of sanctuary and imprisoning her in the Tower, not going in secret to visit her. Not going to her as if you were not the victor, the king. Not going and meeting her daughter – that spoiled ninny.’ I break off at the dark rage in his face. ‘Spoiled ninny,’ I repeat defiantly. ‘What will you tell me: that she is a princess beyond price?’

‘She is our enemy no more,’ he says briefly, as if all his rage has burned out. ‘She has turned her rage on Margaret Beaufort. She suspects her, not me, of kidnapping or killing the princes. Their deaths make Henry Tudor the next heir, after all. Who gains from the deaths of the boys? Only Henry Tudor, who is the next heir of the House of Lancaster. Once she acquitted me she had to blame Tudor and his mother. So she turned against the rebellion, and she will deny the betrothal to him. She will oppose his claim.’

I am open-mouthed. ‘She is changing sides?’

He smiles wryly. ‘We can make peace, she and I,’ he says. ‘I have offered to release her to house arrest, somewhere of my choosing, and she has agreed to go. She can’t stay in sanctuary for the rest of her life. She wants to get out. And those girls are growing up as pale as little lilies in shade. They need to be out in the fields. The older girl is simply exquisite, like a statue in pearl. If we set her free she will bloom like a rose.’

I can taste jealousy in my mouth like the bile that rushes under my tongue when I am about to be sick. ‘And where is this rose to bloom?’ I ask acidly. ‘Not in one of my houses. I will not have her under my roof.’

He is looking at the fire but now he turns his beloved dark face to me. ‘I thought we might take the three oldest girls to court,’ he says. ‘I thought they might serve in your household, if you will agree. These are Edward’s daughters, York girls, they are your nieces. You should love them as you do little Margaret. I thought you might keep them under your eye and when the time comes we will find good husbands for them and see them settled.’

I lean back against the stone windowframe and feel the welcome coldness against my shoulders. ‘You want them to come and live with me?’ I ask him. ‘The Woodville daughters?’

He nods, as if I might find this an agreeable plan. ‘You couldn’t ask for a more beautiful maid in waiting than the Princess Elizabeth,’ he says.

‘Mistress Elizabeth,’ I correct him through my teeth. ‘You declared her mother a whore and her a bastard. She is Mistress Elizabeth Grey.’

He laughs shortly as if he had forgotten. ‘Oh yes.’

‘And the mother?’

‘I will settle her in the country. John Nesfield is as trustworthy as any of my men. I will put her and the younger girls in his house and he can watch them for me.’

‘They will be under arrest?’

‘They will be kept close enough.’

‘Kept in the house?’ I press. ‘Locked in?’

He shrugs. ‘As Nesfield sees fit, I suppose.’

I understand at once that Elizabeth Woodville is to be a lady of a fine country house once more and her daughters will live as maids in waiting at my court. They are to be as free as joyous birds in the air and Elizabeth Woodville is to triumph again.

‘When is all this going to happen?’ I ask, thinking he will say in the spring. ‘In April? May?’

‘I thought the girls might come to court at once,’ he says.

I round on him at that, I leap from my window seat and stand. ‘This is our first Christmas as king and queen,’ I say, my voice trembling with passion. ‘This is the court where we stamp ourselves on the kingdom, where people will see us in our crowns and tell of our clothes and entertainments and joy. This is when people start to make a legend about our court and say it is as beautiful and as joyous and as noble as Camelot. You want Elizabeth Woodville’s daughters to sit at the table and eat their Christmas dinner at this – our first Christmas? Why not tell everyone that nothing has really changed? It is you on the throne instead of Edward but the Rivers still hold court and the witch still holds sway, and the blood of my sister and your brother, and their little baby, is still on her hands, and nobody accuses her.’

He comes to me and takes me by the elbow, feeling me tremble with rage. ‘No,’ he says gently. ‘No. I hadn’t thought. I see it would not do. This is your court, not hers. I know that. You are queen, I know that, Anne. Be calm. Nobody will spoil your time. They can come after Christmas, later when all the agreements have been properly drawn up. We need not have them earlier, spoiling the feast.’

He soothes me, as he has always been able to do. ‘Spoiling it?’

‘They would spoil it.’ He lulls me with the sweetness of his voice. ‘I don’t want them there. I only want to be with you. They can stay in their cellar until after Christmas and only when you think the time is right will we release them.’

I am quietened by his touch like a gentled mare. ‘Very well,’ I breathe. ‘But not before.’

‘No,’ he says. ‘Not until you think the time is right. It shall be you who judges the right time, Anne. You are Queen of England and you shall have no-one in your household but those of your choice. You shall only have the women that you like around you. I would not force you to have women that you fear or dislike.’

‘I don’t fear them,’ I correct him. ‘I am not jealous of them.’

‘No indeed,’ he says. ‘And you have no cause at all. You shall invite them when you are ready and not before.’

We spend Christmas in London without the children. I had hoped up to the very last days of November that they would come. Edward is well enough but our physician advised that he is not strong enough for a long journey on bad roads. They said that he should stay at Middleham, where our physicians, who know his health, will take care of him. They say that such a long journey in such bad weather would be bound to strain his health. I think of little Prince Richard when I last saw him, just the age of my Edward, but a good head taller and rosy-cheeked and full of high spirits. Edward does not bubble with life, he does not always have to be up and doing. He will sit quietly with a book, and he goes to bed without arguing. In the morning he finds it hard to rise.

He eats well enough, but the cooks take great trouble to send up dainty dishes with tempting sauces. I have never once seen him go with Margaret and Teddy down to the kitchens to steal offcuts of pastry from the table, or beg the bakers for a bread roll, hot from the oven. He never filches cream from the dairy, he never loiters for trimmings from the roasting spit.

I try not to fear for him; he does his schoolwork with pleasure, he rides out on his horse with his cousins, he will play at tennis with them, or archery, or bowls, but he is always the first to stop the game, or turn away and sit for a few moments, or laugh and say that he has to catch his breath. He is not sturdy, he is not strong, he is in fact just as you would expect a boy to be if he had spent his life under a curse from a distant witch.

Of course I don’t know if she has ever cursed my son. But sometimes when he sits at my feet and leans his head against my knees and I touch his head, I think that since her ill-will has blighted my life, I would not be surprised to know that it has burdened my son. And now that Richard speaks of a new curse laid down by the witch Elizabeth and her apprentice-witch daughter, on the murderer of their princes, I fear even more that the Rivers’ malice is directed at me and my boy.

I command the physicians at Middleham to send me a letter every three days telling me how the children are. The letters get through the snowy weather in the North and the thickly bogged roads in the south and assure me that Edward is in good spirits, playing with his cousins, enjoying the wintry weather, sledging and skating on the ice. He is well. I can be of good heart. He is well.

Even without the children Richard is determined that we shall have a merry Christmas at court. We are a victorious court; everyone who comes to feast, to dance, or merely to watch knows that this first Christmas of our reign is made more joyful by knowing that when we were challenged – challenged in the first weeks of our reign by the former queen herself, and an untried boy who calls himself king – we were supported. England does not want Henry Tudor, England has forgotten the Rivers boys, is content to leave the Woodville queen in sanctuary. She is finished. That reign is over and this Christmas proclaims that ours is begun.

Every day we have entertainments, hunts, boating, contests, jousts, and dances. Richard commands the best musicians and playwrights to court, poets come and write songs for us and the chapel is filled with sacred music from the choir. Every day there is a new amusement for the court, and every day Richard gives me a little gift – a priceless pearl brooch or a pair of scented leather gloves, three new riding horses to take North for the children, or a great luxury – a barrel of preserved oranges from Spain. He showers me with gifts and at night comes to my grand apartments and spends the night with me, wrapping me in his arms as if only by holding me tightly can he believe that he has indeed made me queen.

Sometimes in the night I wake, and look at the tapestry which is hung over the bed, woven with scenes of gods and goddesses victorious and lolling on clouds. I think that I too should feel victorious. I am where my father wanted me to be. I am the greatest lady in the land – never again need I fear treading on someone’s train – for now everyone follows me. But just as I am smiling at that thought, my mind goes to my son in the cold dales of Yorkshire, to his slight frame and the pallor of his skin. I think of the witch who still lives in sanctuary and will be celebrating her release this Christmas, and I take Richard in my embrace and feel for his sword arm, gently spanning it with my hand, as he is sleeping, to see if it is indeed wasting and withering as he thinks. I can’t tell. Is Elizabeth Woodville a defeated widow whom I can pity? Or is she the greatest enemy to my family and to my peace?

GREENWICH PALACE, LONDON, MARCH 1484

Spring comes early to London, weeks earlier than in our northern home, and when I wake in the morning I can hear the cocks crowing and the dairy cows lowing as they are driven through the streets to the meadows beside the river. With spring comes the parliament and they pass a law which recognises that Edward was married to another woman before his false wedding with the Woodville woman, and so all their children are bastards. It is law, the parliament has passed it, and it must be so. Elizabeth Woodville is Elizabeth Woodville once again, or she can call herself by the name of her first husband – her only true husband – and be Lady Elizabeth Grey, and her girls can cower under that name too. Richard presents his agreement with the Woodville woman, who is released into the care of Sir John Nesfield with her two youngest girls and they go off to live in his beautiful country house at Heytesbury, Wiltshire.

He sends Richard regular reports and I have sight of one which tells of the queen – in a slip of the pen he calls her the queen, as if I did not exist, as if the law had not been passed – riding and dancing, commanding a troop of local musicians, attending the local church, educating her girls, and interfering in the running of the home farm, changing the dairy and moving the beehives, advising him as to the furnishing, and planting a private garden with her favourite flowers. He sounds flustered and pleased. She sounds as if she is revelling in being a country lady once more. Her girls are running wild, Sir John has given them ponies and they are galloping all over Wiltshire. The tone of Sir John’s report is indulgent, as if he is enjoying having his house turned upside down by a beautiful woman and two energetic girls. Most importantly he reports that she attends chapel daily and that she receives no secret messages. I should be glad that she is neither plotting nor casting spells, but I cannot rid myself of the wish that she was still in sanctuary, or locked in the Tower like her sons, or disappeared altogether like them too. There is no doubt in my mind that I would be at peace, that England would be at peace, if she had died with her husband or disappeared with her boys.

The three oldest Rivers girls come to court with their heads held high, as if their mother were not guilty of treason against us. Richard tells me that they will pay their respects to me in the morning, after chapel and breakfast, and I am conscious of arranging myself in the beautiful rooms of Greenwich Palace with my back to the bright light from the windows, in a dark gown of red and a high headdress of deep ruby lace. My ladies sit around me and the faces that they turn to the slowly opening door are not friendly. No woman wants three pretty girls beside her for comparison, and these are Rivers girls looking for husbands, as Rivers girls always are. Besides, half the court has knelt to these girls, and the other half kissed their baby fists and swore they were the prettiest princesses that had ever been seen. Now they are maids in waiting to a new queen, and they will never wear a crown again. Everyone is anxious that they understand their dive from grandeur to pauperdom, and everyone secretly hopes that they will misunderstand, and make fools of themselves. It is a cruel court, as all courts are, and nobody in my rooms has any reason to love the daughters of Elizabeth Woodville who queened it over all of us.

The door opens and the three of them come in. At once I understand why Richard forgave the mother and ordered the girls to court. It was for love of his brother. The oldest, Elizabeth, now eighteen years old, is the most complete combination of her mother’s exquisite beauty and her father’s warmth. I would know her anywhere for Edward’s daughter. She has his easy grace: she smiles around the room as if she thinks she is greeting friends. She has his height: she is tall and slender like a sapling from the oak tree where he was bewitched. She has his colouring: her mother was so fair that her hair is almost silvery, but this Elizabeth is darker like her father, with hair like a wheatfield, gold and bronze, one curl escaping from her headdress and coiling in a ringlet falling to her shoulder. I imagine that when she lets down her hair it is a tumble of honey curls.

She is wearing a gown of green as if she is spring herself, coming into this court of world-worn adults. It is a simple gown with long deep sleeves, and instead of a gold chain she has a green leather belt knotted around her slim hips. I imagine there was no money left to buy the girls gold or jewels for them to come to court. Elizabeth Woodville may have robbed half the treasury, but rebellions are expensive affairs and she will have spent all her money arming men against us. Her daughter, Princess Elizabeth – or, as I must remember to say, Mistress Elizabeth Grey – wears a neat cap on her head, nothing ostentatious, nothing like the little coronet she used to wear as the favoured oldest princess of indulgent parents, and the promised bride of the heir of France. Behind her come her sisters. Cecily is another beauty, only this Rivers girl is dark-haired and dark-eyed. She flaunts a merry smile, full of confidence, and wears a dark red that suits her. Behind her comes little Anne, the youngest, in palest blue like the edges of a sea, fair like her eldest sister; but quiet with none of the strutting confidence of the other two.

They stand in a row before me as if they were sentries presenting their arms, and I wish to God that I could send them back to the guardroom. But they are here, and they are to be greeted not as nieces but as wards. I rise from my throne and my ladies rise too, though the rustle of a dozen costly gowns does not trouble Elizabeth. She looks from one to another as if she would price the material. I can feel myself flush. She was raised at court by a queen who was a famous beauty, and I don’t need to see her scornful smile to know that she finds us drab. Even I, in my ruby gown, am a pale queen beside her memory of her mother. I know that for her, I will never be anything but a shadow.

‘I welcome you three, Mistress Elizabeth, Cecily and Anne Grey, to my court,’ I say. I see Elizabeth’s eyes flash as I give her the name of her mother’s first husband. She will have to get used to this. Parliament itself has declared her a bastard, and her parents’ marriage a bigamous sham. She will have to get used to being called ‘Mistress Grey’ and not ‘Your Grace’.

‘You will find me an easy queen to serve,’ I say pleasantly, as if we have never met before, as if I have not kissed their cool cheeks a dozen times. ‘And this a happy court.’ I sit down and extend my hand and the three of them, one after another, curtsey and kiss my cold fingers.

I think the welcome has been done well enough and is over as the door opens and my husband Richard chooses this moment to come in. Of course he knows that the girls are being presented this morning. So he has come to make sure that everything goes well. I conceal my irritation in my smile of welcome.

‘And here is the king . . .’

Nobody is listening to me. As the doors opened Elizabeth turned and when she sees my husband she rises from her curtsey and goes light-footed towards him.

‘Your Grace, my lord uncle!’ she says.

Her sisters, quick as weasels, snake after her: ‘My lord uncle,’ they chorus.

He beams at them, draws Elizabeth to him and kisses her on both cheeks. ‘Looking beautiful as I knew you would,’ he assures her. The other two get a kiss on the forehead. ‘And how is your mother?’ he asks Elizabeth conversationally, as if he inquires after the health of a witch and a traitor every morning. ‘Does she like Heytesbury?’

She simpers. ‘She likes it well, my lord uncle!’ she says. ‘She writes to me that she is changing all the furniture and digging up the gardens. Sir John may find he has a difficult tenant.’

‘Sir John may find his house improved beyond measure,’ he assures her, as if bold-faced impertinence needs reassurance. He turns to me: ‘You must be glad to have your nieces in your rooms,’ he says, a tone in his voice that reminds me that I must agree.

‘I am delighted,’ I say coolly. ‘I am so delighted.’

I cannot deny that they are pretty girls. Cecily is a ninny and a gossip, Anne barely out of the schoolroom, and I see that she has lessons in Greek and Latin every day in the morning. Elizabeth is a perfect piece of work. If you were to draw up the qualities of a Princess of England she would match the pattern. She is well read – her uncle Anthony Woodville and her mother took care of that, she had the new printed books made by their bookmaker Caxton dedicated to her when she was barely out of the cradle. She speaks three languages fluently and can read four. She plays musical instruments and sings with a sweet low voice of surprising quality. She can sew exquisite fine work and I believe she can turn out a shirt or hem a fine linen shift with confidence. I have not seen her in the kitchen since I – as the daughter of the greatest earl in England, and now queen of my country – never have much cause to go into the kitchen. But she, having been cooped up in sanctuary, and the daughter of a countrywoman, tells me that she can cook roasted meats and stewed cuts, and dainty dishes of fricassees and sweetmeats. When she dances no-one can take their eyes off her; she moves to the music as if it is inspiring her, half-closing her eyes and letting her body respond to the notes. Everyone always wants to dance with her because she makes any partner look graceful. When she is given a part in a play she throws herself into it and learns her lines and delivers them as if she believed them herself. She is a good sister to the two in her care, and sends little gifts to the ones who are in Wiltshire. She is a good daughter, writing weekly to her mother. Her service to me as a lady in waiting is immaculate; I cannot fault her.

Why then, given all these remarkable virtues, do I loathe her?

I can answer this. Firstly, because I am foolishly, sinfully, jealous of her. Of course I see how Richard watches her, as if she were his brother returned to him only as a young, hopeful, merry, beautiful girl. He never says a word that I could criticise, he never speaks of her except as his niece. But he looks at her – indeed the whole court looks at her – as if she were a delight to the eye that makes the heart glad.

Secondly, I think she has had an easy life, a life which makes it easy for her to laugh half a dozen times a day as if the day-to-day round is constantly amusing. A life which makes her pretty, for what has she experienced that could make her frown? What has ever happened to her, to draw lines of disappointment on her face and lay grief in her bones? I know, I know: she has lost a father and a beloved uncle, they have been driven from the throne, and she has lost two beloved young brothers. But I cannot remember this when I see her playing cat’s cradle with a skein of wool, or running beside the river, or weaving daffodils into a crown for Anne as if these girls should not fear the very thought of a crown. Then she seems to me utterly carefree, and I am jealous of her joy in life that comes so easy to her.

And lastly, I would never love a daughter of Elizabeth Woodville. I never ever will. The woman has loomed like a baleful comet on my horizon for all my life, from the moment I first saw her, and thought her the most beautiful woman in the world at her coronation dinner, to the time that I realised that she was my inveterate enemy and the murderer of my sister and my brother-in-law. Whatever smiling means Elizabeth took, in order to get her daughters entry to our court, nothing has charmed me, nothing will ever charm me into forgetting that they are the daughters of our enemy; and – in the case of the Princess Elizabeth – they are the enemy themselves.

There is no doubt in my mind that she is here as a spy and a distraction. She is betrothed to Henry Tudor (her mother’s widely announced change of heart means nothing to me, and nothing – I suspect – to him or to her). She is the daughter of our enemy and the betrothed of our enemy. Why would I not think of her as my enemy?

And so I do.

When the snow melts off the hills of the North and we can travel home again we leave London. I am so glad to go that I have to pretend reluctance for fear of offending the London merchants and the citizens who come to court to bid farewell and the people who line the streets to cheer as we go by. I think of London as a city that loves the Rivers, and I can hear the roar of applause as the three Woodville girls ride side by side behind me. London loves a beauty and Elizabeth’s warm prettiness makes them cheer for the House of York. I smile and wave to take the compliment for myself but I know that for me there is the deference for a queen, but not the affection that a pretty princess can create.

On the road I set a brisk pace so my ladies in waiting are all left behind, so that I don’t have to hear her and her sisters chattering. Her voice, which is musical and sweet, sets my teeth on edge. I ride ahead and my guards ride behind me and I don’t have to hear her or see her.

When Richard comes back from the head of the procession he puts his horse beside mine and we ride companionably together as if she were not smiling and chattering behind us. I glance sideways at his stern profile and wonder if he is listening for her, if he will hold his horse steady and drop back to ride beside her. But then he speaks, and I realise that my jealousy is making me fearful and suspicious when I should be enjoying his company.

‘We will stay at Nottingham Castle for the month,’ he says. ‘I plan to rebuild your rooms there, make them more comfortable for you. I shall continue Edward’s building programme. And then you can go on to Middleham if you like. I will follow you. I know you will be in a hurry to see the children.’

‘It has seemed such a long time,’ I agree. ‘But I heard only today from the physician that they are all well.’ I speak of the health of all three children. We never like to admit that Teddy is as strong as a hound puppy – and with as much sense – and Margaret is never ill. Our son, our Edward, makes slow progress to manhood, small for his age, easily wearied.

‘That’s good,’ Richard says. ‘And after this summer we can bring them all to court and keep them with us. Queen Elizabeth always had her children with her, and the princess tells me that she had the happiest childhood at court.’

‘Mistress Grey,’ I correct him, smiling.

NOTTINGHAM CASTLE, MARCH 1484

We arrive at Nottingham Castle in the evening just as the setting sun is making the towers black against a sky of peach and gold. There is a fanfare from the walls of the castle as we approach and the guard spills out of the guardhouse to line the path to the drawbridge. Richard and I ride side by side, acknowledging the cheers of the soldiers and the applause of the people.

I am happy as I dismount from my horse and make my way to the new queen’s apartments. I can hear my ladies in waiting chattering as they follow me, but I cannot distinguish the voices of the Rivers girls. I think, not for the first time, that I must learn not to look for them, I must work to diminish their effect on me. If I could teach myself to care nothing about them, one way or another, then I would not look to see if Richard is noticing them, or if the oldest girl, Elizabeth, is smiling at him.

We have been at Nottingham for several days, hunting in the wonderful forests, eating the venison we kill, when a messenger comes to my rooms one evening. He looks so exhausted from his ride and so grave that I know that something terrible has happened. His hand, as he holds out the letter, trembles.

‘What is it?’ I ask him, but he shakes his head as if he cannot tell me in words. I glance around and find Elizabeth looking steadily at me, and for a cold moment I think of her and her mother cursing the line of whoever killed the princes in the tower. I try to smile at her, but I can feel my lips stretch over my teeth and know that I am grimacing.

At once she steps forwards, and I see that her young face is filled with pity. ‘Can I help you?’ is all she says.

‘No, no, just a message from my home,’ I say. I think, perhaps my mother has died and they have written to me. Perhaps one of the other children, Margaret or Teddy, has taken a tumble from their pony and broken an arm. I realise I am holding the letter and not opening it. The young woman is looking at me, waiting for me to do so. I have an odd fancy that she knows, she knows already what it is going to say, and I look round at the circle of my ladies who have one by one realised that I am clutching a letter from home, too afraid to open it, and they fall silent, and gather round.

‘Probably nothing,’ I say into the quietness of the room. The messenger lifts his head and looks at me as if he would say something, and then puts his hand over his eyes as if the spring sunshine is too bright, and drops his head again.

I can delay no longer. I put my finger under the sealing wax and it comes easily from the paper. I unfold it and see that it is signed by the physician. He has written only four lines.

Your Grace,

I deeply regret to tell you that your son, Prince Edward, has died this night of a fever, which we could not cool. We did everything we could do, and we are all deeply grieved. I will pray for you and His Grace the king in your sorrow.

Charles Rhymner

I look up but I can see nothing. I realise my eyes are filled with tears and I blink them away but am still blinded. ‘Send for the king,’ I say. Someone touches my hand as I grip the letter and I feel the warmth of Elizabeth’s fingers. I cannot stop myself thinking that the heir to the throne now is Teddy, Isabel’s funny little boy. And after him, this girl. I take my hand from hers so she cannot touch me.

In moments Richard is there before me, kneeling to me so that he can look into my face. ‘What is it?’ he whispers. ‘They said you had a letter.’

‘It is Edward,’ I say. I can hear my grief about to burst out, but I take a breath and tell him the worst news in the world. ‘He is dead of a fever. We have lost our son.’

The days go by but I cannot speak. I go to the chapel but I cannot pray. The court is dressed in blue so dark that it is almost black and nobody plays games, or goes hunting, or plays music, or laughs. We are a court that has fallen under an enchantment of grief, we are struck dumb. Richard appears ten years older; I have not looked in my own mirror to see the marks of sorrow on my face. I can’t care. I can’t find it in me to care how I look. They dress me in the morning as if I were a doll, and at night they drag the gowns off me so that I can go to bed and lie in silence and feel the tears seeping out from my closed eyelids to wet the linen pillow.

I feel so ashamed that I let him die, as if it were my fault or that I could have done something. I feel ashamed that I did not breed a strong boy, like Isabel did, or like the handsome Woodville boys who vanished from the Tower. I feel ashamed that I had only one boy, only one precious heir, only one to carry the great weight of Richard’s triumph. We had only one prince, not two, and now he has gone.

We leave Nottingham for Middleham Castle in a rush, at once, as if by getting to our home we will find our son as we left him. When we get there we find the little body in the coffin in the chapel, and the two other children kneeling beside it, lost without their cousin, lost without the routine of the household. Margaret comes into my arms and whispers: ‘I am so sorry, I am so sorry,’ as if she, a little ten-year-old girl, should have saved him.

I cannot reassure her that I don’t blame her. I have no reassurance for anyone. I have no words for anyone. Richard rules that the children shall now go to live at Sheriff Hutton. Neither of us will ever want to come to Middleham, ever again. We have a small funeral and see the coffin go into the darkness of the vault. I feel no peace after we have prayed for his soul, and paid the priest to pray for him twice daily. We shall create a chantry for his little innocent soul. I feel no peace, I feel nothing. I think I will feel nothing forever.

We leave Middleham as soon as we can, and go to Durham, where I pray for my son in the great cathedral. It makes no difference. We go to Scarborough and I look at the great waves on a stormy sea and think of Isabel losing her first baby and how losing a baby in childbirth is nothing – nothing – to losing a son grown. We go back to York. I don’t care where we are. Everywhere people look at me as if they are puzzling about what they can say. They need not trouble. There is nothing to say. I have lost my father in battle, my sister to Elizabeth Woodville’s spy, my brother-in-law to Elizabeth Woodville’s executioner, my nephew to her poisoner, and now my son to her curse.

The days grow brighter and warmer and when they throw the gown over my head in the morning it is made of silk rather than wool. When they walk me into dinner and sit me like a puppet at the high table they bring me spring lamb and fresh fruits. It grows noisier at dinner, and one day the musicians play again, for the first time since the letter came. I see Richard glance sideways at me to see if I mind, and I see him recoil from the blankness of my face. I don’t mind. I don’t mind anything. They can play a hornpipe if they like; nothing matters to me any more.

That night he comes to my room. He does not speak to me, but folds me in his arms and holds me tightly to him, as if the pain of two people can be lessened by putting two broken hearts close to one another. It does not help. Now I feel that my bedroom is the centre of grief, as we lie side by side in our pain, instead of at either ends of the castle.

Early in the morning I wake as he tries to make love to me. I lie like a stone beneath him and say nothing and do nothing. I know he will be thinking that we have to conceive another child; but I cannot believe that such a blessing could be given. After ten years of barrenness? How should a son come to me now that I feel I am dead, when a second son did not come when I was filled with hope and love? No, we were given one son and now he has gone.

The Rivers girls have tactfully left court to visit their mother and I am glad that I don’t have to see them – three of her five beautiful daughters. I cannot think about anything but the curse that Richard heard them make, mother and daughter, when they swore that whoever had taken their son and heir would lose his own. I wonder if this is proof that Robert Brackenbury took the hint I gave him, and crushed those two handsome healthy boys in their bedding, to give their title to my poor lost son. I wonder if this is proof that my husband has looked me in the face and lied to me with utter conviction and without shame. Can he have had them killed without telling me? Can he have had them killed and denied it to me? Would he have told such a lie to their mother? Can her power have seen through his lie and taken my son in revenge? Is not a witch’s curse the only explanation for Edward’s death – dead in springtime, dead just as he came through the dangerous years of childhood?

I think so. I think so. After long sleepless nights of puzzling away at it, I think so. Edward was frail, small-boned, delicate, but he was not prone to fever. I think her ill-will sought him out and enflamed his veins, his lungs, his poor, poor heart. I think Elizabeth Woodville and her daughter Elizabeth killed my boy to avenge themselves for the loss of theirs.

Richard comes to my rooms before dinner to escort us to the great hall, as if the world were still the same. I only have to look at him to see that everything is changed. His face, always strong, is now stern, even grim. From his nose to either side of his mouth are grooved two deep lines and his forehead has two hard lines at each eyebrow. He never smiles. When his grim face looks into my pale one, I think that neither of us will ever smile again.

NOTTINGHAM CASTLE, SUMMER 1484

In the heat of summer the Rivers girls come riding back to court, like a little cavalcade of confident beauty, and are greeted with joy by all the handsome young men of the king’s service. Apparently they have been sadly missed. The three of them walk into my rooms and curtsey low to me and smile as if they think I can greet them kindly. I manage to ask after their journey and for the health of their mother, but even I can hear how thin and quiet is my voice. I don’t care about their journey, or the health of their mother. I know that Elizabeth will write to her mother and tell her that I am pale and nearly dumb. I expect she will remark that her sorcery that killed my son has nearly stopped my own heart. And I no longer care. The Elizabeths, mother and daughter, can do no more against me. Everyone whom I have loved has been taken from me by the two of them; the only person left to me in the world is my husband, Richard. Will they take him too? For I am so swaddled in sorrow that I no longer care.

It seems that they will take him. Elizabeth walks with Richard in the garden in the cool of the evening. He likes to have her at his side and the courtiers, who always follow a favourite, are quick to praise the quiet wisdom of her conversation, and the grace of her walk.

I watch them from my chamber windows set high in the castle wall so that they are far below, walking to the river, like a painting of a knight and his lady in a romance. She is tall, almost as tall as he, and they walk together head to head. I wonder idly what they talk about with such animation, what makes her laugh and stop and put her hand to her throat, and then makes her take his arm to walk on. At this distance, from my high window, they are a handsome couple: well-matched. They are not far from each other in age, after all. She is eighteen and he is only thirty-one. They both have the York charm that is now turned fully on each other. She is golden-haired like his brother and he is dark as his handsome father. I see Richard take her hand and draw her a little closer as he whispers in her ear. She turns her head with a little laugh, she is a coquette as most beauties of eighteen are bound to be. They walk away from the court and people follow them, at a little distance so that they can imagine themselves to be alone.

The last time I saw the court walking behind the king and carefully judging their paces was when Edward was walking arm in arm with his new lover Elizabeth Shore, and Elizabeth his queen was in confinement. The moment she came out the Shore whore disappeared from court and was never seen again by us – I smile at the memory of the king’s bashful apologetic tenderness to his wife and her grey-eyed level gaze at him. Odd now for me to see the court taking slow strides once more; but this time it is my husband who is being given privacy, as he walks alone with his niece.

Why would they do that? I think idly, my forehead against the cold glass of the thick window. Why would the courtiers step back so courteously unless they think that she is to be his mistress? Unless they think that my husband is seducing his niece, on these evening strolls by the river, that he has forgotten everything he owes to his name, to his marriage vows, to the respect he owes to me as his wife, and the bereaved mother of his dead son.

Can it be that the court has seen so much more clearly than I that Richard has recovered from grief, recovered from heartbreak, can live again, can breathe again, can look about him and see the world again – and in this world sees a pretty girl who is all too ready to take his hand and listen to his words and laugh as if delighted at his speech? Does the court think that Richard is going to bed his brother’s daughter? Does it really think he is so far gone in wickedness to deflower his niece?

I approach this thought, whispering the words ‘deflower’ and ‘niece’, but I really cannot make myself care about this, any more than I can make myself care about the hunting trip tomorrow or the dishes for tonight’s dinner. Elizabeth’s virginity and Elizabeth’s happiness are alike of no interest to me at all. Everything seems as if it is happening a long way away, feels as if it is happening to someone else. I would not call myself unhappy, the word does not approach my state of mind; I would call myself dead to the world. I cannot find it in me to care whether Richard is seducing his niece or she is seducing him. I see, at any rate, that Elizabeth Woodville, having taken my son from me by a curse, will now take my husband from me by her daughter’s seduction. But I see that there is nothing I can do to stop this. She will do – as she always does – as she wishes. All I can do is lean my hot forehead against the cold glass and wish that I did not see this. Or anything. Anything at all.

The court is not solely devoted to the hypocrisy of flirting with the king and mourning with me. Richard spends every morning with his councillors, appointing commissioners to raise the shires if there is an invasion from Henry Tudor in Brittany, preparing the fleet to make war with Scotland, harrying French shipping in the narrow seas. He speaks to me of this work and sometimes I can advise him, having spent my childhood at Calais, and since it is my father’s policy of peace with the Scots and armed peace against the French that Richard follows.

He leaves for York in July to establish the Council of the North, the recognition that the North of England is a country in many ways quite different from the southern parts, and Richard is, and will always be, a good lord to them. Before he leaves he comes to my room and sends my ladies away. Elizabeth goes out with a backward smile at him and for once he does not notice. He takes a stool so that he is seated at my feet.

‘What is it?’ I ask without a great deal of interest.

‘I wanted to speak to you about your mother,’ he says.

I am surprised but nothing can catch my interest. I complete the sewing I have in my hands, pierce the needle through the embroidery silks, and put it to one side. ‘Yes?’

‘I think she can be released from our care,’ he says. ‘We won’t go back to Middleham—’

‘No, never,’ I say quickly.

‘And so we could close the place down. She could have her own house, we could pay her an allowance. We don’t need to keep a great castle to house her.’

‘You don’t think she might speak against us?’ Never am I going to refer to the question of our marriage. He can think me now, as I was then, utterly trusting. Now I cannot bring myself to care.

He shrugs. ‘We are King and Queen of England. There are laws against speaking against us. She knows that.’

‘And you don’t fear she will try to take her lands back?’

Again he smiles. ‘I am King of England, she is unlikely to win a case against me. And if she were to get some estates back into her own keeping, I can afford to lose them. You will have them back again when she dies.’

I nod. And anyway, now there is no-one to inherit from me.

‘I just wanted to make sure that you had no objection to her being freed. If you had a preference as to where she should live?’

I shrug. There were four of them at Middleham that winter, Margaret and her brother Teddy, my son Edward and her, my mother, their grandmother. How is it possible that death should have taken her grandson and not taken her? ‘I have lost a son,’ I say. ‘How can I care about a mother?’

He turns his head away, so that I cannot see his grimace of pain. ‘I know,’ he says. ‘The ways of God are mysterious to us.’

He rises to his feet and puts his hand out for me. I get up and stand beside him, smoothing the exquisite silk of my gown.

‘That’s a pretty colour,’ he says, noticing it for the first time. ‘Do you have more of that silk?’

‘I think so,’ I say, surprised. ‘They bought a bolt of it from France, I believe. Do you want a jacket made from it?’

‘It would suit our niece Elizabeth,’ he says lightly.

‘What?’

He smiles at my aghast face. ‘It would suit Elizabeth’s colouring, don’t you think?’

‘You want her to wear a matching gown to mine?’

‘Now and then – if you agree that the colour is good on her too.’

The ridiculous concept stirs me from my lethargy. ‘What are you thinking of? The whole court will think that she is your mistress if you dress her in silks as fine as mine. They will say worse. They will call her your whore. And they will call you a lecher.’

He nods, utterly unshocked by the hard words. ‘Just so.’

‘You want this? You want to shame her, and shame yourself, and dishonour me?’

He takes my hand. ‘Anne, my dearest Anne. We are king and queen now, we have to put aside private preferences. We have to remember we are constantly observed, our acts have meanings that people try to read. We have to put on a show.’

‘I don’t understand,’ I say flatly. ‘What are we showing?’

‘Is the girl not supposed to be betrothed?’

‘Yes, to Henry Tudor, you know as well as I do that he publicly declared himself last Christmas.’

‘And so who is the fool, when she is known to the world as my mistress?’

Slowly I understand. ‘Why, he is.’

‘And so all the people who would support this unknown Welshman, Margaret Beaufort’s Welsh-born boy, because he is betrothed to marry the Princess Elizabeth – the beloved daughter of England’s greatest king – think again. They say, if we rally for Tudor we are not putting the Princess of York on the throne. For the Princess of York is at her uncle’s court, admiring him, supporting him, an ornament to his reign as she was an ornament to her father’s reign.’

‘But some people will say she is little better than a whore. She will be shamed.’

He shrugs. ‘They said the same of her mother. We passed a law that said just that of her mother. And anyway, I would not have thought that would trouble you.’

He is right. Nothing troubles me. Certainly not the humiliation of the Rivers girl.

WESTMINSTER PALACE, LONDON, WINTER 1484

The threat from Henry Tudor in Brittany absorbs the whole court. He is only a young man, and any king less jealous than a York one might have disregarded his distant claim to the throne of England through his mother’s line. But it is a York king on the throne and Richard knows that Tudor is planning an invasion, seeking support in Brittany from the duke who has protected him for so long, approaching France, the old inveterate enemy of England, for help.

Margaret Beaufort, his mother, my one-time friend, sulks in her country house, gaoled by her husband at Richard’s instruction, and his bride-to-be Elizabeth of York is now all but the first lady of court, dancing every night in the palace which was her childhood home, her wrists bright with bracelets, her hair sparkling under a gold net. She seems to have gifts that arrive every morning as we sit in the chambers that overlook the grey wintry river. Every morning there is a knock at the door and a pageboy bringing something for the girl whom everyone now calls Princess Elizabeth, as if Richard had not passed a law to declare her a bastard and to give her the name of her mother’s first husband. She giggles when she opens it, and she gives a quick guilty glance at me. Always, the gifts come without a note but we all know who is sending her priceless fairings. I remember last year when Richard gave me a present every day for the twelve days of Christmas. But I remember with indifference. I don’t care for jewels now.

The Christmas feast is the pinnacle of her joy. Last year she was a disgraced object of our charity, named as a bastard and claimed as a bride by a traitor, but this year she has bobbed unstoppably upwards, like a cheap light cork in stormy water. We now go for dress fittings together as if we were mother and daughter, as if we were sisters. We stand in the great room of the wardrobe while they pin silks and cloth of gold and furs on us, and I look at the great silvered mirror and see my tired face and fading hair in the same bright colours as the smiling beauty beside me. She is ten years younger than me and it is never more obvious than when we are standing side by side and dressed alike.

Richard openly gives her jewels to match mine, she wears a headdress like a little gold coronet, she wears diamonds in her little ears and sapphires at her throat. The court is gorgeous for Christmas, everyone dressed in their best, and entertainments, sports and games every day. Elizabeth dances through it all, the queen of the revels, the champion of the games, the mistress of the feast. I sit on my great chair, the cloth of estate above me, the crown heavy on my forehead, and fix an indulgent smile on my face as my husband gets up to dance with the most beautiful girl in the palace, takes her hand and leads her away to talk, and then brings her back into the room flushed and tumbled. She glances towards me as if she would apologise – as if she hopes I don’t mind that everyone in the court, and increasingly everyone in England, thinks that they are lovers and I have been set aside. She has the grace to be shame-faced, but I can see she is driven too hard by desire to step back. She cannot say no to him, she cannot deny herself. Perhaps she is in love.

I dance too. When it is a slow and stately dance I let Richard lead me out and the dancers follow us round the floor in the smooth paces. Richard keeps my steps in time; I can hardly be troubled with the beat of the music. It was only last Christmas when the court was in its pomp – a new king come to the throne, new wealth to disperse, new treasures to buy, new gowns to show – and then my son took a little fever and died of nothing more than a little fever, and I was not by his bed. I was not in the castle. I was celebrating our success, hunting in the forests of Nottingham. I cannot think now what there was to celebrate.

Christmas Day we keep as a holy day, attending church several times. Elizabeth is prettily devout, a scarf of green gauze over her fair hair, her eyes downcast. Richard walks back from chapel with me, my hand in his.

‘You are tired,’ he says.

I am tired of life itself. ‘No,’ I say. ‘I am looking forward to the rest of the days of Christmas.’

‘There are some unpleasant rumours. I don’t want you to listen to them, there is nothing in them.’

I pause and the court halts behind us. ‘Leave us,’ I say over my shoulder to them all. They melt away, Elizabeth glancing at me as if she thinks she might disobey. Richard shakes his head at her and she drops a little curtsey in my direction, and goes.

‘What rumours?’

‘I said, I don’t want you to listen to them.’

‘Then I had better hear them from you so I don’t listen to anyone else.’

He shrugs. ‘There are those who say that I am planning to put you aside and marry Princess Elizabeth.’

‘Your courtship charade has succeeded then,’ I remark. ‘Was it a courtship? Or was it a charade?’

‘Both,’ he says grimly. ‘I had to discredit the betrothal between her and Tudor. He is certain to invade this spring. I had to cut away the York affinity from him.’

‘You take care you don’t cut away the Neville affinity,’ I observe shrewdly. ‘I am the kingmaker’s daughter. There are many in the North who follow you only for love of me. Even now my name counts for more than anything there. They won’t be loyal to you if they think you slight me.’

He kisses my hand. ‘I don’t forget it. I won’t forget it. And I would never slight you. You are my heart. Even if you are a broken heart.’

‘Is that the worst of it?’

He hesitates. ‘There is talk of poison.’

At the mention of Elizabeth Woodville’s weapon I freeze where I stand. ‘Who is speaking of poison?’

‘Some gossip from the kitchen. A dog died after a dish was spilled and he lapped it up. You know how much is made from little at court.’

‘Whose was the dish?’

‘Yours.’

I say nothing. I feel nothing. Not even surprise. For years Elizabeth Woodville has been my enemy and even now, with her released and living at peace in Wiltshire, I can feel her grey gaze on the nape of my neck. She will see me still as the daughter of the man who killed her beloved father and brother. Now she sees me also as the woman who stands in the way of her daughter. If I were dead then Richard would get a dispensation from the Pope and marry his niece Elizabeth. The House of York would be reunited, the Woodville woman would be dowager queen once more and grandmother to the next King of England.

‘She never stops,’ I say quietly to myself.

‘Who?’ Richard seems taken aback.

‘Elizabeth Woodville. I take it that it is she who is suspected of trying to poison me?’

He laughs out loud, his former impulsive crack of laughter that I have not heard for so long. He takes my hand and kisses my fingers. ‘No, they don’t suspect her,’ he says. ‘But it doesn’t matter. I will guard you. I shall make sure that you are safe. But you must rest, my dear. Everyone says you look tired.’

‘I am well enough,’ I say grimly, and to myself I promise: ‘I am well enough to keep her daughter from my throne.’

WESTMINSTER PALACE, LONDON, JANUARY 1485

It is the twelfth night, the feast of the epiphany, the last day of the long feast of Christmas, which this year seemed to last forever. I dress with particular care in my red and gold gown, and Elizabeth, matching in every detail in her red and gold gown, follows me into the throne room and stands beside my chair, as if to show the world the contrast between the old queen and the young mistress. There is a masquing, telling of the story of the Christmas feast and the epiphany, there is music and dancing. Richard and Elizabeth dance together, so practised now that their steps match. She has all the grace of her mother; nobody can keep their eyes off her. I see Richard’s warmth towards her and I wonder again, what is courting and what is charade?

Twelfth night, of all the nights of the year, is one where shapes shift and identities flicker. Once I was the kingmaker’s daughter, raised in the knowledge that I would be one of the great ladies of the kingdom. Now I am queen. This should satisfy my father and satisfy me, but when I think of the price we have paid, I think that we have been cheated by fate itself. I smile down the room so that everyone can know I am happy with my husband dancing hand-in-hand with his niece, his eyes on her blushing face. I have to show everyone that I am well and that the insidious drip of Elizabeth Woodville’s poison in my food, in my wine, perhaps even in the perfume that scents my gloves, is not slowly killing me.

The dance ends and Richard comes back to sit beside me. Elizabeth goes to chatter with her sisters. Richard and I are wearing our crowns at this final feast of the season, to show everyone that we are King and Queen of England, to send the message out to the most distant shires that we are in our pomp. A door opens beside us and a messenger comes in and hands Richard a single sheet of paper. He reads it briefly and nods to me as if a gamble he has made has been confirmed.

‘What is it?’

He speaks very quietly. ‘News of Tudor. No Christmas announcement of his betrothal this year. I have won this round. He has lost the York princess and he has lost the support of the Rivers affinity.’ He smiles at me. ‘He knows he cannot claim her as his wife, everyone believes she is in my keeping, my whore. I have stolen her and her followers from him.’

I look down the long room to where Elizabeth is practising her steps with her sisters, impatiently waiting for the music to start again. A circle of young men stand around, hoping that she will dance with them.

‘You have ruined her if she is known throughout the country as broken meats, the king’s hackney.’

He shrugs. ‘There is a price to pay if you venture near the throne. She knows that. Her mother, of all people, knows that. But there is more—’

‘What more?’

‘I have the date for the Tudor invasion. He is coming this year.’

‘You know this? When is he coming?’

‘This very summer.’

‘How do you know?’ I whisper.

Richard smiles. ‘I have a spy at his ramshackle court.’

‘Who?’

‘Elizabeth Woodville’s oldest son, Thomas Grey. He is in my keeping too. She is proving a very good friend to me.’

WESTMINSTER PALACE, LONDON, MARCH 1485

Richard prepares for invasion. I prepare for death. Elizabeth prepares for a wedding and a coronation, though there is nothing in her quiet respectful service that would reveal this to anyone but me. My senses are extreme, on the alert. Only I see the glow in her cheek when she comes back from walking in the garden, the way she pats her hair as if someone has pulled her towards him and knocked her headdress askew, only I see that the ribbons of her cloak are untied as if she has opened them to allow him to put his hands on her warm waist and pull her close.

I have someone to taste my wine, I have someone to test my food, but still I weaken steadily though the days grow lighter and the sun is warmer and outside my window a blackbird is building a nest in the apple tree and sings for joy every dawn. I cannot sleep, not at night nor in the day. I think of my girlhood when Richard came and saved me from poverty and humiliation, I think of my childhood when Isabel and I were little girls and played at being queens. It is incredible to me that I am twenty-eight years old, and there is no Isabel, and I no longer have any desire to be queen.

I watch Princess Elizabeth with a sort of shrewd sympathy. She thinks I am dying – I give her the credit to believe that it is not her hand that is sprinkling poison on my pillow – but she thinks I am dying of some wasting sickness and that when I have wasted quite away then Richard will make her queen for love, and every day will be a feast day, and every day she will have a new gown, and every day will be a celebration of her return to the palaces and castles of her childhood as her mother’s heir: the next Queen of England.

She thinks that he does not love me, she probably thinks that he never loved me. She thinks that she is the first woman whom he has ever loved and that now he will love her forever and she will dance through her days, always adored, always beautiful, a queen of hearts just as her mother was.

This is so far from the reality of being Queen of England that it makes me laugh till I cough and have to hold my aching sides. In any case, I know Richard. He may be taken by her now, he may even have seduced her, he may have bedded her and enjoyed her gasping pleasure in his arms; but he is not such a fool as to risk his kingdom for her. He has taken her away from Henry Tudor – that was his ambition and he has succeeded. He would never be such a fool as to risk offending my kinsmen, my tenants and my people. He will not set me aside to marry her. He will not put the Rivers girl in my place. I doubt even her mother can bring that conclusion about.

I find I must prepare for my death. I don’t fear it. Ever since I lost my son I have been weary to my soul, and I think, when it finally comes, it will be a lying down to sleep without fear of dreams, without fear of waking. I am ready to lie down to sleep. I am tired.

But first there is something I must do. I send for Sir Robert Brackenbury, Richard’s good friend, and he comes to my rooms in the morning, while the court is out hunting. My maid in waiting lets him in and goes when I wave her away.

‘I have to ask you something,’ I say.

He is shocked at my appearance. ‘Anything, Your Grace,’ he says. I see from the quick flicker of doubt in his face that he will not tell me everything.

‘You asked me once about the princes,’ I say. I am too weary to mince my words. I want to know the truth. ‘The Rivers boys who were in the Tower. I knew then that they should be put to death to make my husband safe on the throne. You said I was too kind-hearted to give the order.’

He kneels before me and takes my thin hands in his big ones. ‘I remember.’

‘I am dying, Sir Robert,’ I say frankly. ‘And I would know what I have to confess when I receive the last rites. You can tell me the truth. Did you act on my wishes? Did you act to save Richard from danger, as I know you will always do? Did you take my words for an order?’

There is a long moment of silence. Then he shakes his big head. ‘I couldn’t do it,’ he says quietly. ‘I wouldn’t do it.’

I release him and sit back in my chair. He sits back on his heels. ‘Are they alive or dead?’ I ask.

He moves his big shoulders in a shrug. ‘Your Grace, I don’t know. But if I was looking for them I would not start in the Tower. They’re not there.’

‘Where would you start looking?’

His eyes are on the floor beneath his knees. ‘I would start looking somewhere in Flanders,’ he says. ‘Somewhere near their aunt Margaret of York’s houses. Somewhere that your husband’s family always send their children when they fear for them. Richard and George were sent to Flanders when they were boys. George Duke of Clarence was sending his son overseas. It’s what the Plantagenets always do when their children are in danger.’

‘You think they got away?’ I whisper.

‘I know they’re not in the Tower, and I know they were not killed on my watch.’

I put my hand to my throat where I can feel my pulse hammering. The poison is thick in my veins, filling my lungs so I can hardly breathe. If I could catch my breath I would laugh at the thought that Edward’s sons live, though mine is dead. That perhaps when Richard looks for an heir, it will not be Elizabeth the princess but one of the Rivers boys who steps forwards.

‘You are sure of it?’

‘They are not buried in the Tower,’ he says. ‘I am sure of that. And I did not put them to death. I did not think it was your command, and anyway, I would not have obeyed such an order.’

I give a shuddering sigh. ‘So, my conscience is clear?’

He bows. ‘And mine too.’

I go to my bedchamber as I hear the hunting party return; I cannot bear the noise of their talking and seeing their bright faces. My maids help me into bed and then the door opens and Princess Elizabeth slips in quietly. ‘I came to see if there is anything you want,’ she says.

I shake my head on the richly embroidered pillow. ‘Nothing,’ I say. ‘Nothing.’

She hesitates. ‘Shall I leave you? Or shall I sit with you?’

‘You can stay,’ I say. ‘I have something I should tell you.’

She waits, standing near the bed, her hands clasped, her young face alert but patient.

‘It is about your brothers . . .’

At once her face lights up. ‘Yes?’ she breathes.

Nobody could think for a moment that this is the face of grief. She knows something, I know that she does. Her mother has done something or managed something or saved them somehow. She may once have thought them dead, and cursed the man that killed them. But this is a girl who expects to hear good news of her brothers. This is not a girl crushed by loss, she knows they are safe.

‘I think I know nothing more than you,’ I say shrewdly. ‘But I have been assured that they were not killed in the Tower, and they are not held in the Tower.’

She does not dare to do more than nod.

‘I take it you are sworn to secrecy?’

Again, that infinitesimal movement of the head.

‘Then perhaps you will see your Edward again in this life. And I will see mine in heaven.’

She sinks to her knees by my bed. ‘Your Grace, I pray that you get well,’ she says earnestly.

‘At any rate, you can tell your mother that I had no part in the loss of her sons,’ I say. ‘You can tell her that our feud is over. My father killed hers, my sister is dead, her son and mine are buried, and I am going too.’

‘I will give her this message, if you wish. But she has no enmity for you. I know that she does not.’

‘She had an enamel box,’ I say quietly. ‘And in it a scrap of paper? And on that scrap of paper two names written in her blood?’

The girl meets my eyes. ‘I don’t know,’ she says steadily.

‘Were those names Isabel and Anne?’ I ask. ‘Has she been my enemy and the enemy of my sister? Have I rightly feared her for all these years?’

‘George and Warwick were the names,’ she says simply. ‘The paper was from my grandfather’s last letter. Her father wrote to her mother the night before he was beheaded. My mother swore she would be revenged upon George and your father who caused his death. Those were the names. None other. And she was revenged.’

I lean back on my pillow and I smile. Isabel did not die of the Woodville woman’s curse. My father died on the battlefield, George she had executed. She does not hold me in thrall. She has probably known for years that her sons were safe. So perhaps my son did not die under her curse. I did not bring her curse down on him. I am free of that fear too. Perhaps I am not dying of her poison.

‘These are mysteries,’ I say to Princess Elizabeth. ‘I was taught to be queen by Margaret of Anjou, and perhaps I have taught you how to be queen in turn. This is fortune’s wheel indeed.’ With my forefinger I draw a circle in the air, the sign of fortune’s wheel. ‘You can go very high and you can sink very low, but you can rarely turn the wheel at your own bidding.’

The room starts to grow very dark. I wonder where the time has gone. ‘Try and be a good queen,’ I say to her, though the words are meaningless to me now. ‘Is it night already?’

She gets up and goes to the window. ‘No. It’s not night. But something very strange is happening.’

‘Tell me what you can see?’

‘Shall I help you to the window?’

‘No, no, I am too tired. Just tell me what you can see.’

‘I can see the sun is being blotted out, as if someone were sliding a plate across it.’ She shades her eyes. ‘It is bright as ever but this dark sphere is moving across it.’ She looks at the bed, blinking as she is dazzled. ‘What can it mean?’

‘A movement of the planets?’ I suggest.

‘The river has gone very still. The fishing boats are rowing for shore and the men are pulling up the boats as if they fear a high tide. It’s very quiet.’ She listens for a moment. ‘All the birds have stopped singing, even the seagulls aren’t crying. It is as if night has come in a moment.’

She looks down into the garden. ‘The lads have come from the stables and the kitchens, they are all looking up at the sky, trying to see it. Is it a comet, do you think?’

‘What is it like?’

‘The sun is like a ring of gold, and the black plate hides it except for the rim which is blazing like a fire, too bright to look at. But everything else is black.’

She steps back from the window and I can see the small diamond-shaped panes are as black as night.

‘I’ll light the candles,’ she says hastily. ‘It’s so dark. It could be midnight.’

She takes a taper from the fireplace and lights candles in the sconces either side of the fire and at the table beside my bed. Her face in the candlelight is pale. ‘What can it mean?’ she asks. ‘Is it a sign that Henry Tudor is coming? Or that my lord will have victory? It cannot be – can it? – the end of days?’

I wonder if she is right and this is the end of the world, if Richard will be the last Plantagenet king that England ever has, and I will see my son Edward this very night.

‘I don’t know,’ I say.

She goes back to her station at the window. ‘It’s so dark,’ she says. ‘As dark as it has ever been. The river is dark and all the fishermen are lighting their torches on the riverbank, and all of the ships have pulled in. The kitchen boys have gone back inside. It is as if everyone is afraid of the darkness.’

She pauses. ‘I think it is getting a little lighter. I think it is growing light. It’s not like dawn, it is a terrible light, a cold yellow light, like nothing I have seen before. As if yellow and grey were one.’ She pauses. ‘As if the sun were freezing cold. It’s getting brighter, it’s getting lighter, the sun is coming out from behind the darkness. I can see the trees and the other side of the river now.’ She pauses to listen. ‘And the birds are starting to sing.’

Outside my window the blackbird makes its penetrating questioning call.

‘It is as if the world is reborn,’ Elizabeth says wonderingly. ‘How strange it has been. The disc is moving from the sun, the sun is blazing in the sky again and everything is warm and sunny and like spring once more.’

She comes back to the bed. ‘Renewed,’ she says. ‘As if we can start all over again.’

I smile at her optimism, the hopefulness of the young and foolish. ‘I think I will sleep now,’ I say.

I dream. I dream that I am on the battlefield at Barnet, and my father is speaking to his men. He is high on his black horse, his helmet under his arm so everyone can see his bold brave face and his confidence. He is telling them that he will lead them to victory, that the true prince of England is waiting to set sail across the narrow seas, and that he will bring with him Anne, the new Queen of England, and that their reign will be a time of peace and prosperity, blessed by God, for the true prince and the true princess will come to their thrones. He says my name ‘Anne’ with such love and pride in his voice. He says that his daughter Anne will be Queen of England, and that she will be the best Queen of England that the world has ever seen.

I see him, as bright as life, laugh in his confidence and his power, as he promises them that the good times are coming, that they need only stand fast, be true, and they will win.

He swings his leg over his horse and he drops to the ground. He pats his horse’s neck and the big dark head turns with trust as his hand goes up to pull gently the black moving ears that flicker forwards to listen to him. ‘Other commanders will ask that you stand and fight, will ask that you fight to the death,’ he tells them. ‘I know that. I’ve heard that too. I have been in battles where commanders have asked their men to fight to the death but then ridden away and left them.’

There is a ripple of agreement from the men. They have known battles where their commanders have betrayed them, just like this.

‘Other commanders will ask you to stand and fight to the death but when the battle goes against them they will send their pages for their horses and you will see them ride away. You will face the charge alone, you will go down, your comrades will go down, but they will be spurring their horses and riding away. I know that. I have seen it as well as you.’

There is a mutter of agreement from men who have been able to run away, who remember comrades who could not get away in time.

‘Let this be my pledge to you.’ He takes his great broadsword and carefully, feeling for the horse’s ribs, puts the point of the sharp blade between the ribs, aimed at the heart. There is a low murmur of refusal from the men and in the dream I cry out, ‘No, Father! No!’

‘This is my pledge to you,’ he says steadily. ‘I will not ride away and leave you in danger for I shall have no horse,’ and he thrusts the blade deep into the ribcage, and Midnight goes down on his forelegs and down on his backlegs. He turns and looks at my father with his dark beautiful eyes as if he understands, as if he knows, that this is a sacrifice my father has to make. That he is a pledge that my father will fight and die with his men.

Of course he died with them, that day on the battlefield of Barnet, he died with them to make me queen, and I had to learn alone later what a hollow crown it is. As I turn in my bed and close my eyes once more, I think that tonight I will see my beloved father, Warwick the kingmaker, and the prince who is my little boy, Edward, and perhaps, in fields greener than I can imagine, Midnight the horse is turned out to graze.

AUTHOR’S NOTE

This is an historical novel based on a character whose own biographer predicted that the life would be impossible to write because of the lack of information. Luckily for all of us, historian Michael Hicks found much valuable material about Anne Neville despite being hampered by the usual silences that surround women in history.

What we know from Hicks and from other historians is that she was related to most of the great players of the Cousins’ War (only called the Wars of the Roses centuries later in the 1800s). What I suggest in this novel is that perhaps she was a player in her own right.

She was the daughter of the Earl of Warwick, known in his lifetime as ‘the kingmaker’ because of his extraordinary role as puppeteer to the claimants of royal power in England. First he supported Richard Duke of York, then his son and heir Edward, then the second son George, then their enemy Henry VI. Warwick died fighting for the House of Lancaster, having lived his life as the great supporter of the House of York.

Anne, although a young woman, moved with her father through these twists and turns of loyalty. She attended the coronation dinner of the new queen of the House of York and witnessed her father’s gradual exclusion from the court, which became dominated by the Rivers family and adherents. As the novel describes, Anne fled with her father into exile in France, returning to England as his new candidate for queen, at the head of a Lancaster army, married to their Prince of Wales, and in little more than a year was married into the house of her enemy: York. It is at this point that I suggest that the young woman, who had lost her father and her husband, and whose mother had abandoned her, took her life into her own hands. Nobody knows the true story of how Anne escaped from the protection or imprisonment of her sister and brother-in-law. We have no reliable account – but some wonderful versions – of her courtship and marriage to Richard. My version of these stories is to put Anne at the heart of things.

It was fascinating to me as a novelist to portray the York court as a centre of intrigue and a source of fear for the Warwick girls. Part of the joy of writing this series based on rivals and enemies is turning the page upside down (as it were) and seeing a totally different picture. As an historian the known facts looked very different when I changed my viewpoint from my favourite, Elizabeth Woodville, to my new heroine, Anne Neville. The confused conspiracy around the death of Isabel and the judicial murder of George suddenly becomes a far darker story with Elizabeth as the villain.

Another reputation which I have had to address in this story is that of Richard III. As I suggest here and in The White Queen, I don’t subscribe to the Shakespearean parody that has blackened his reputation for centuries. But also I don’t acquit him of usurpation. He might not have killed the princes but they would not have been in the Tower without the protection of their mother except for his actions. What I think might have happened to the two royal boys is the subject of my next book, the story of their sister and Richard’s secret lover, Princess Elizabeth of York: The White Princess.

I list here the books which have been most useful to me in writing The Kingmaker’s Daughters.

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