‘He keeps the lands, and the castles and the houses, the ships on the seas, and the contents of the treasure rooms, the mines and the quarries and the granaries and everything.’
‘He has provided for our divorce?’ I ask, stumbling on my speech.
‘How could such a thing happen? How should you divorce?’ she crows. ‘The marriage has been consummated, you are proven to be fertile, you have given him a son. There can be no grounds for a divorce, surely? But in this act of parliament, Richard makes provision for a divorce. Why should he do that, if no divorce could ever take place? Why would he provide for a thing which is impossible?’
My head is whirling. ‘Lady Mother, if you must speak to me at all, then speak plainly.’
She does. She beams at me as if she has good news. She is exultant that she understands this and I don’t. ‘He is providing for the denial of your marriage,’ she says. ‘He has prepared for his marriage to you to be set aside. If it was a true marriage it could not be set aside, there are no possible grounds. So my guess is this: you did not get a full dispensation from the Pope; but married without it. Am I right? Am I right, my turncoat daughter? You are cousins, you are brother- and sister-in-law, I am his godmother. Richard is even a kinsman to your first husband. Your marriage would need a full papal dispensation on many, many counts. But I don’t think you had time to get a full dispensation from the Pope. My guess is that Richard urged you to marry and said that you could get a dispensation later. Am I right? I think I am right for here, in this very act where he shows why he married you – for your fortune – he also gets a ruling that he will keep your lands if he puts you aside. He shows it is possible to put you aside. It all becomes wonderfully clear!’
‘It will be how the act is framed,’ I say wildly. ‘It will be the same for George and Isabel. There will be the same provision for George and Isabel.’
‘No it is not,’ she says. ‘You are right. If George and Isabel had the same terms you could be reassured. But it is not the same for them. There is no provision for the annulment of their marriage. George knows that he cannot annul his marriage to Isabel so he does not provide for it. George knows that they got a dispensation for their kinship and their marriage is valid. It cannot be set aside. But Richard knows that he did not get a full dispensation and his marriage is not fully valid. It can be set aside. He has that in his power. I read the deed very carefully, as any woman might carefully read her own death certificate. My guess is that if I were to send to the Pope and ask him to show the legal dispensation for your marriage he would reply that there was none, full dispensation was never requested. So you are not married, and your son is a bastard and you a harlot.’
I am so stunned that I just stare at her. At first I think that she is raving but then one after another the pieces of what she is saying fall into place. Our driving urgent haste to marry and Richard telling me that we would do so without a dispensation, but get it later. And then I just assumed, like a fool, that the marriage was valid. I just forgot, like a fool, like a fool in the honeymoon month, that being married by an archbishop with the blessing of the king was not as good as a dispensation from the Pope. When I was greeted by his mother, when I was received by the court, when we conceived our son and inherited my lands, I assumed that everything was as it should be and I forgot to question it at all. And now I know that my husband did not forget, did not assume, but has provided that he can keep his fortune if he ever decides to set me aside. If he wants to rid himself of me he has only to say that the marriage was never valid. My marriage to him is based on our vows before God – at least those cannot be denied. But they are not enough. Our marriage depends on his whim. We will be husband and wife as long as he wishes it. At any moment he could denounce our marriage as a sham, and he would be free and I would be utterly shamed.
I shake my head in wonderment. All this time I thought that I was playing myself, both the player and the pawn, and yet I have never been more powerless, never more of a piece in someone else’s game.
‘Richard,’ I say, and it is as if I am calling out to him to rescue me once more.
My mother regards me with silent satisfaction.
‘What shall I do?’ I whisper to myself. ‘What can I do now?’
‘Leave him.’ My mother’s voice is like a slap in the face. ‘Leave him at once and come with me to London and we will overthrow the act, deny the false marriage, and get my lands back.’
I round on her. ‘Don’t you see yet that you will never get your lands back? D’you think you can fight against the King of England himself? Do you imagine you can challenge the three sons of York acting together? Have you forgotten that these were my father’s enemies, Margaret of Anjou’s enemies? And we were fatally allied to Father and to Margaret of Anjou? Have you forgotten that we were defeated? All you want to do is to throw yourself into prison in the Tower, and me alongside you.’
‘You will never be safe as his wife,’ she predicts. ‘He can leave you whenever he wants. If your son dies, and you fail to get another, he can go to a more fertile woman and take your fortune with him.’
‘He loves me.’
‘He may do,’ she concedes. ‘But he wants the lands, this very castle, and an heir more than anything in the world. You have no safety.’
‘I have no safety as your daughter,’ I counter. ‘I know that at least. You married me to a claimant to the throne of England and abandoned me when we had to go into battle. Now you call me to commit treason again.’
‘Leave him!’ she whispers. ‘I will stand by you this time.’
‘And what about my son?’
She shrugs. ‘You will never see him again but as he is a bastard . . . does it matter?’
Fiercely, I take her by the arm and march her towards her rooms where the guard stands to one side to let us go in, and will then block the door so she cannot go out.
‘Don’t call him that,’ I say. ‘Don’t you dare ever call him that. I stand by my son, and I stand by my husband. And you can rot in here.’
She wrenches her arm from me. ‘I warn you, I will tell the world that you are not a wife but a harlot, and you will be ruined,’ she spits.
I push her through the door. ‘No you won’t!’ I say. ‘For you will have no pen and no paper, and no way to send messages. No messengers and no visits. You have taught me only that you are my enemy and I will keep you straitly. Go in, Lady Mother. You will not come out again, and no word you say will ever be repeated outside these walls. Go and be dead – for you are dead to the world and dead to me. Go and be dead!’
I slam the door on her and I round on the guard. ‘No-one to see her but her household,’ I say. ‘No messages passed, not even pedlars or tinkers to come to her door. Everyone coming or going to be searched. She sees no-one, she speaks to no-one. D’you understand?’
‘Yes, Your Grace,’ he says.
‘She is an enemy,’ I say. ‘She is a traitor and a liar. She is our enemy. She is enemy to the duke, to me and to our precious son. The duke is a hard man on his enemies. Make sure you are hard on her.’
MIDDLEHAM CASTLE, YORKSHIRE, SPRING 1475
I think I am becoming a slate-hearted woman. The girl that I was – who dreaded her mother’s disapproval, who clung to her big sister, who loved her father like her lord – is now an eighteen-year-old duchess who orders her household to guard her mother like an enemy, and writes with meticulous care to her sister. Richard warns me that his brother George is becoming a dangerously outspoken critic of the king, and that Isabel is known to agree with him; we cannot be seen to associate with them.
He does not have to convince me. I don’t want to associate with them if they are walking into danger. When Isabel writes to me that she is going into confinement again, and would like me to come to her, I refuse. Besides, I cannot face Isabel with our mother in my keeping, gaoled for the rest of her life. I cannot face Isabel with my mother’s terrible threats in my ears and in my dreams every night of my life. Isabe
l knows now, as I do, that we have declared our own mother a dead woman so that we could take her lands to give to our husbands. I feel that we are murderers, with blood on our hands. And what would I say if Isabel asked me if my mother is kept well? If she endures her imprisonment with patience? What could I say to her if she asked me to let our mother go?
I can never admit that my mother is kept in her tower so that she cannot speak about my marriage. I cannot tell Isabel that not only have our husbands declared our mother dead but that now even I wish her dead. Certainly I wish her silenced forever.
And now I am afraid of what Isabel thinks. I wonder if she has read the act that declares my mother dead with the care that my mother did. I wonder if Isabel has suspicions about my marriage, if one day George will tell everyone that I am the duke’s whore just as much as Elizabeth Woodville is the king’s whore: that there is only one son of York with an honest wife. I dare not see Isabel with these thoughts in my mind, so I write and say that I cannot come, the times are too difficult.
Isabel replies in March that she is sorry I could not come to her but that she has good news. At last she has a boy, a son and heir. He too is to be called Edward, but this boy will be named after the place of his birth and after his grandfather’s earldom. He will be Edward of Warwick, and she asks me be happy for her. I try, but all I think is that if George makes an attempt on the throne he can offer any traitors who might join with him an alternative royal family: a claimant and now an heir. I write to Isabel that I am glad for her and for her son, and that I wish her well. But I don’t send gifts, and I don’t ask to be godmother. I am afraid of what George may be planning for this little boy, this new Warwick, the grandson of Warwick the kingmaker.
Besides, while I have been troubled by my mother’s words, by my fears for my son, the country has been building up to war with France at a breakneck pace, and everything that was done in peace has been forgotten as taxes have to be raised, soldiers recruited, weapons forged, shoes cobbled, liveries sewn. Richard can think of nothing but mustering his army from our estates, drawing on tenants, retainers, household staff and everyone who has offered him their loyalty. Gentlemen have to bring their own tenants from their farms, towns have to raise funds and send apprentices. Richard hurries to recruit his men and join his brothers – both his brothers – as they go to invade France, with the whole of the kingdom for the re-taking, laid out like a rich feast before them.
The three sons of York are to march out in splendour again. Edward has declared himself determined to return to the glory of Henry V. He will be King of France again and the shame of England’s failure under the bad queen and the sleeping king will be forgotten. Richard is cool with me as he prepares to leave. He remembers that the King of France, Louis, proposed and organised my first wedding, called me his pretty cousin and promised me his friendship when I would be Queen of England. Richard checks and double-checks the wagons which will carry everything to France, has his armourer pack two sets of armour, and mounts his horse in the stable yard at the head of about a thousand men. Even more will join him on the march south.
I go to say goodbye. ‘Keep safe, my husband.’ There are tears in my eyes and I try to blink them away.
‘I am going to war.’ His smile is distant; already his mind is on the work he must do. ‘I doubt that I’ll be able to keep safe.’
I shake my head. I so much want to tell him how afraid I am for him, that I cannot help but think of my father who barely said goodbye in his rush to get to his ships and go to war. I cannot help but think of my first husband whose life was cut so short on a battlefield so bloody that, even now, nobody talks about his death. ‘I mean only that I hope you will come home to me and to your son Edward,’ I say quietly. I go up to the side of his horse and put my hand on his knee. ‘I am your wife, and I give you a wife’s blessing. My heart will be with you every step of the way, I will pray for you every day.’
‘I will come home safe,’ he says reassuringly. ‘I fight at the side of my brother Edward and he has never been defeated on the battlefield, only ever by treachery. And if we can reconquer the English lands in France it will be the most glorious victory in generations.’
‘Yes,’ I say.
He bends low in his saddle and kisses me on the lips. ‘Be brave,’ he says. ‘You are the wife of a commander of England. Perhaps I will come home to you with castles and great lands in France. Keep my lands and keep my son and I will come home to you.’
I step back and he wheels his horse and his standard bearer lifts his pennant that unfurls in the breeze. The sign of the boar, Richard’s badge, raises a cheer from his men, and he gives the signal for them to follow him. He loosens the reins and his horse eagerly starts forwards, and they go, under the broad stone archway where the tramped feet echo over the drawbridge which spans the moat, as the ducks scutter away in fright, and then down the road past Middleham, and south, south to meet the king, south over the narrow seas, south to France to restore England to the days when the English kings ruled France and English farmers grew olives and grapes.
LONDON, SUMMER 1475
I move from Middleham Castle to our family house in London, Baynard’s Castle, so that I can be close to the court and learn what is happening while my husband and his brothers are at war in France.
Queen Elizabeth keeps her court at Westminster. Her son, the little Prince Edward, is named as ruler of England in his father’s absence, and she is glorying in her importance as the wife of a king on campaign, and as the mother of the prince. Her brother Anthony Woodville, the prince’s guardian, has gone with the king to France, so her son is in her sole keeping. She is the leader of his council and his advisors and tutors are all chosen by her. The power of the kingdom is supposed to be vested in a council, but this is led by the newly appointed Cardinal Bourchier, and since he owes his red hat entirely to the king, he is at her beck and call. In the absence of anyone else, Elizabeth Woodville is leader of the House of York. She is all but regent, she is all but ruling. She is a self-made woman and has grown grand indeed: from squire’s wife to all but queen regnant.
Like half of England, I cannot imagine the disaster that would overtake the country if our king were to die in France and the throne be inherited by this little boy. Like half of the country I suddenly realise what extraordinary power has been vested in this family from Northamptonshire. If the king were to die on this campaign, just as Henry V died on his campaign in France, it would put all of England into the hands of the Rivers family forever. They completely dominate the Prince of Wales and increase their power step by step across the country, as they appoint their friends or their kin into every place that becomes vacant. The prince’s mentor and guardian is the queen’s beloved brother Anthony Woodville Lord Rivers, the prince’s council is headed by her and managed by him. The prince is richly endowed with Woodville brothers and sisters, as well as aunts and uncles for both Elizabeth Woodville and her mother, the witch Jacquetta, have been unnaturally – suspiciously – fertile. Those of us who are royal kin to the king hardly know the little princes – they are forever surrounded by the Rivers and their friends or their servants. The little boy is my husband’s blood nephew and yet we never see him. He lives alone at Ludlow with Anthony Lord Rivers, and when he does come to court for Christmas or Easter he is dominated by his mother and his sisters who fall on him with joy and never let him out of their sight for the entire visit.
We have destroyed the House of Lancaster but in its place, as I now understand, we have allowed a new rival house, the House of Rivers, the Woodvilles who have their friends, their favourites or themselves in every position of power in the kingdom and the heir is a boy of their making.
If the king were to die in France it would be to make the Rivers the new royal family of England. Neither George nor Richard would be welcomed at court. And then, almost certainly, there would be war all over again. There is no doubt in my mind that George would oppose the usurpation of the Rivers, and he would be
right to do so. They have no royal blood, they have not been chosen to rule. What Richard would do, I can hardly guess. His love and loyalty to his brother Edward runs very deep; but like everyone else who sees the queen’s grasping ways, he cannot endure the power of his brother’s wife and her family. I think it almost certain that the two brothers of York would turn on the Rivers and England would be torn apart by a war of rival houses once again.
She invites me to a dinner to celebrate the good news that they have landed safely and started to march in France, and as I go in to the noise and bright lights of the queen’s presence chamber I am surprised and delighted to see my sister Isabel at her side.
I curtsey to the queen and then when she offers me her cool cheek, I kiss her as my sister-in-law, I kiss all three York girls, and curtsey to the five-year-old prince, and the toddler his brother. Only then, when I have worked my way through this extensive family, can I turn to my sister. I had been afraid that she would be angry with me for failing to be with her in her confinement but she hugs me at once. ‘Annie! I am so glad you are here. I have only just arrived or I would have come to your house.’
‘I couldn’t come, Richard wouldn’t let me come to your confinement,’ I say in a sudden rush of joy as I first hold her and then lean back to take in her smiling face. ‘I wanted to; but Richard wouldn’t allow it.’
‘I know,’ she says. ‘George didn’t want me to ask you. Have they quarrelled?’
I shake my head. ‘Not here,’ is all I say. The slightest tip of my head warns Isabel that Queen Elizabeth, who is apparently leaning down to speak to her son, is almost certainly listening to every word we say.
She slides her arm around my waist and we go as if to admire the new royal baby: another girl. The nursemaid shows her to us and then takes her to the nursery.
‘I think my Edward is a stronger child,’ Isabel remarks. ‘But She always has such beautiful babies, doesn’t she? How does she do it, do you think?’