‘Margaret of Anjou’s army beheaded him, and my brother Edmund, and put their heads on stakes above Micklegate Bar at York,’ Richard says grimly. ‘That’s the sort of woman she was, your first mother-in-law.’
‘You know I had no choice in my marriage,’ I say, speaking steadily though I am irritated by the fact that he cannot forget or forgive that part of my life. ‘And I was a child in Calais when that happened, and my father was fighting for York, fighting alongside your brother.’
He gestures with his hand. ‘Yes, well, that doesn’t matter now. What does matter is that I am going to have my father and brother honourably reburied. What d’you think?’
‘I think it would be a very good thing to do,’ I say. ‘They lie at Pontefract now, don’t they?’
‘Yes. My mother would like them buried together in the family vault at Fotheringhay Castle. I should like him to be honoured properly. Edward has trusted me to arrange it all, he prefers me to George for this.’
‘There could be no-one who would do it better,’ I say warmly.
He smiles. ‘Thank you. I know you are right. Edward is too careless and George has no love of chivalry and honour. But I shall take pride in doing it well. I shall be glad to see my father and brother properly buried.’
For a moment only I think of my own father’s body dragged off the battlefield at Barnet, the blood pouring from his helmet, his head lolling, his great black horse lying down in the field, as if he were asleep. But Edward was a good enemy; he never abused the bodies of his foe. He showed them in public so that the people would know that they were dead, and then he allowed them to be buried. My father’s corpse lies in Bisham Abbey, in the family vault, buried in honour but without ceremony. Isabel and I have never gone to pay our respects. My mother has never visited his grave, and now she never will. Bisham Abbey will not see her, till I bury her there, beside him: a better wife than she was a mother. ‘What can I do to help?’ is all I say.
He thinks. ‘You can help me plan the route, and the ceremonies at each place. And you can advise me as to what people should wear and the ceremonies we should order. Nothing like this has ever been done before. I want it to go off perfectly.’
Richard, his Master of Horse and I plan the journey together, while our priest at Middleham advises as to the ceremonies of walking with the body and the prayers that should be said at each halt. Richard commissions a carved model of his father, to lie on top of his coffin, so that everyone can see the great man that he was, and adds a silver statue of an angel holding a golden crown over the effigy’s head. This symbolises that the duke was a king by right, dying in his fight for his throne. It shows also how wise Edward was, to trust only Richard with this ceremony and not his brother George. When George joined my father he denied that the duke was a king by right, and that his son Edward was legitimate. Only Richard and I know that George still says this, but now he speaks in secret.
Richard makes a beautiful procession to bring the body of his father and his brother from Pontefract to their home. The cortege travels south from York for seven days and at every stop it goes into great churches on the way to lie in state. Thousands of people file silently past it to pay their respects to the king who was never crowned, and are reminded of the glorious history of the House of York.
Six horses draped in black pull the carriages, and ahead of them rides a knight, quite alone, carrying the duke’s banner as if he were going into battle. Behind him rides Richard, his head bowed, and behind him come the great men of the realm, all honouring our house, all honouring our fallen father.
For Richard this is more than a proper reburial of his father; this is a re-stating of his father’s right to be King of England, King of France. His father was a great soldier who fought for his country, a greater commander, a greater strategist even than his son Edward. In this lengthy procession Richard honours his father, claims his kingship, reminds the country of the greatness and nobility of the House of York. We are everything the Rivers are not, and Richard shows this in the wealth and grace of this remembrance service.
Richard keeps watch by the coffins every night that they are on the road, rides before them every day on a black horse with dark blue trappings, his standard lowered before him. It is as if for the first time in his life he allows himself to grieve for the father he lost and for the world of nobility and honour that went with him.
I meet him at Fotheringhay and find him thoughtful and tender with me. He remembers that his dead father and mine were allies, kinsmen. His father died before my father’s disastrous alliance with the bad queen, died even before he saw his son come to the throne, died before Richard had fought his first battle. That night, before Richard goes out for his last vigil by his father’s coffin, we kneel in prayer together, side by side in the beautiful family church. ‘He would have been glad of our marriage,’ Richard says quietly as he rises to his feet. ‘He would have been glad to know that we were married, despite everything else.’
For a moment, as he stands and I look up to him, the question And is our marriage valid? is on the tip of my tongue. But I see the grave sadness in his face, and then he turns and takes his place as one of the four knightly watchers who will stand all night around the coffin until dawn releases them from their vigil.
George and Isabel come to the funeral at Fotheringhay and she and I stand next to each other, both wearing beautiful gowns of the royal mourning colour of dark blue as the king and the queen and their family receive the two coffins at the cemetery at Fotheringhay church. Edward kisses the effigy’s hand and I see George and then Richard follow suit. George is especially tender and pious in this scene, but nobody takes the eye more than the little princesses. The ten-year-old Princess Elizabeth, exquisitely beautiful, is in the forefront; she leads her sister Princess Mary by the hand, and behind them come ambassadors from all the countries in Christendom to honour the head of the royal family of York.
It is a masque – a performance rich in symbols as well as an act of mourning. Nobody can see the royal family burying their forebear as if he were a king without reflecting how kingly is Edward, and his brothers, how reverent is the little prince, and how enchanting and queenly are Elizabeth and her daughters. I cannot help but think that they are more like actors than real kings and queens. Elizabeth the queen is so poised and beautiful, and her girls – especially the Princess Elizabeth – so conscious of themselves and their place in the procession. At her age I was frightened that I might step on my mother’s train, but little Princess Elizabeth walks with her head up, looking neither to left nor right, a little queen in the making.
I should admire her – everyone else seems to adore her, and perhaps if I had a daughter I would point to the princess and tell my little girl that she must learn the poise of her cousin. But since I don’t have a little girl, though I pray for one, I cannot look at the Princess Elizabeth without irritation, and think her spoiled and artificial – a precocious pet who would be better confined to the schoolroom rather than walking through a serious ceremonial as if she were taking the steps of a dance, revelling in all the eyes on her.
‘Minx,’ my sister says briefly in my ear, and I have to lower my eyes and suppress my smile.
As ever, with anything that Edward does, there has to be a banquet and a great show. Richard sits beside his brother and drinks little and eats less, as more than a thousand guests dine in the castle, and thousands more in beautifully dressed tented pavilions outside. Throughout the dinner there is music playing and good wines poured, between each course there is a choir singing solemn beautiful anthems and fruit served. Elizabeth the queen sits on the right hand of her husband as if she were a fellow ruler of the kingdom and not merely a wife, a crown on her head, dark blue lace covering her hair, and she looks around her with the serene beauty of a woman who knows that her place is safe, and her life beyond challenge.
She catches me staring at her, and she gives me the glacial smile that she always shows me and Isabel, and I
wonder if she is thinking, at this ceremonial reburial of her father-in-law, of her own father who died a hasty criminal death at the hands of my father. My father hauled hers into the town square at Chepstow, accused him of treason, and beheaded him – without trial, without rule of law – in public. His beloved son John died beside him, his last sight would have been his son’s severed head.
Isabel, seated next to me, shivers as if someone had stepped on her grave. ‘D’you see how she looks at us?’ she whispers.
‘Oh, Iz,’ I reproach her. ‘What can she do to hurt us now? When the king loves George so much? When Richard is so honoured by them? When we two are royal duchesses? They went to France as allies, and they came home as good friends. I don’t think she wastes much love on us but there is nothing she can do to us.’
‘She can put us under an enchantment,’ she says very softly. ‘She can blow up a storm that nearly drowns us, you know that yourself. And every time my little Edward runs a fever, or is sleepless while he is cutting a tooth, I wonder if she has turned her evil gaze on us, and she is heating up his image, or putting a pin into his portrait.’ Her hand covers the swell of her belly beneath her gown. ‘I wear a specially blessed girdle,’ she says. ‘George got it from his advisor. It is specially blessed to ward off the evil eye, to protect me from Her.’
Of course my mind goes at once to Middleham and my own son, who could fall from his pony, or cut himself while practising jousting, catch a chill or take a fever, eat something bad, breathe a miasma, drink foul water. I shake my head to dismiss my fears. ‘I doubt she even thinks about us,’ I say stoutly. ‘I bet she thinks of nothing but her own family, her two precious sons, and her brothers and sisters. We are nothing to her.’
Isabel shakes her head. ‘She has a spy in every household in the land,’ she says. ‘She thinks about us, believe it. My lady in waiting told me that she prays every day that she never has to run into sanctuary again, that her husband holds his throne unchallenged. She prays for the destruction of her enemies. And she does more than pray. There are men who follow George everywhere he goes. She watches me in my household, I know she has a spy on me. She will have someone placed to watch you in yours.’
‘Oh really, Iz, you sound like George!’
‘Because he’s right,’ she says earnestly. ‘He is right to watch the king and fear the queen. You’ll see. One day you’ll hear that I have died suddenly, without good reason, and it will be because she has ill-wished me.’
I cross myself. ‘Don’t say it!’ I glance at the high table. The queen is dipping her fingers in a golden bowl of rosewater and wiping them on a linen towel held out to her by a kneeling manservant. She does not look like a woman who keeps herself safe by putting spies in the households of her sisters-in-law, and sticking pins in images. She looks like a woman who has nothing at all to fear.
‘Iz,’ I say gently. ‘We fear her because we know what our father did to hers, and we know how wrong it was. His sin is on our conscience and we fear his victims. We fear her because she knows that we both hoped to steal her throne – one after the other – and we both were married to men who raised their standards against hers. She knows that both George and the prince, my first husband, would have killed Edward and put her in the Tower. But when we were defeated she received us. She didn’t have us locked up. She didn’t have us accused of treason and imprisoned. She has never shown anything but courtesy to us.’
‘That’s right,’ she says. ‘She has never shown anything but courtesy. No anger, no desire for revenge, no kindness, no warmth, no human feeling of any sort at all. Has she ever said to you that she can’t forget what our father did to hers? After that first time? That terrible time when the witch her mother whistled up a cold wind that blew out all the candles?’
‘One candle,’ I correct her.
‘Has she ever said she still feels rage? Has she ever said she forgives you? Has she ever said anything as a sister-in-law, as one woman to another, anything at all?’
Unwillingly, I shake my head.
‘Nor to me. Not one word of anger, not one word of her revenge. Don’t you think that proves that her malice is stored coldly inside her like ice in an ice house? She looks at us as if she is Melusina, the emblem of her house, half woman, half fish. She is as cold as a fish to me, and I swear to you that she is planning my death.’
I shake my head at the server who is offering us a dish.
‘Take it,’ Isabel prompts anxiously. ‘She sent it from the high table to us. Don’t refuse her.’
I take a spoonful of the potted hare. ‘You don’t fear it is poisoned?’ I say, trying to laugh her out of her fears.
‘You can laugh if you like; but one of her ladies told me that she had a secret enamel box, and in the box a scrap of paper with two names written on it. Two names written in blood, and that she swore the two named would not live.’
‘What names?’ I whisper, dropping the spoon in the dish, all appetite gone. I cannot go on pretending that I don’t believe Isabel, that I am not afraid of the queen. ‘What names does she have in secret?’
‘I don’t know,’ she says. ‘The lady in waiting didn’t know. She only saw the paper, not the words. But what if they are our names? Yours and mine? What if she has a scrap of paper and the words written in blood are Anne and Isabel?’
Isabel and I have a week together at Fotheringhay before we go with the court to London. Isabel is going to give birth to this baby at their London home of L’Erber, and this time I will be allowed to share her confinement. Richard has no objection to me staying with Isabel in the London palace, as long as I visit court from time to time with him to keep on the best terms with the queen, and make sure to never hear one word against the royal family.
‘It will be so nice to be together for a long time again,’ Isabel says. ‘And I like it best when you are there with me.’
‘Richard says I can only stay for the last weeks,’ I warn her. ‘He does not want me under George’s protection for too long. He says that George is talking against the king again and he doesn’t want me to come under suspicion.’
‘What does the king suspect? What does She suspect?’
I shrug. ‘I don’t know. But George is openly rude to her, Iz. And he has been far worse since the funerals.’
‘It should have been him to organise the reburial of his father but the king did not trust him with it,’ she says resentfully. ‘It should be him at the side of the king but he is never invited. Do you think he does not notice that he is slighted? Slighted every day?’
‘They do wrong to slight him,’ I grant her. ‘But it is more and more awkward. He looks sideways at the queen and whispers about her behind his hand, and he is so disrespectful of the king and careless with the king’s friends.’
‘Because She is always beside the king before anyone else can get there, or if not her then the king is with her Grey sons, or with William Hastings!’ Isabel flares up. ‘The king should cleave to his brothers, both his brothers. The truth is that though he says he has forgiven and forgotten George for following Father, he will never forgive and forget. And if he did ever forget, for even one minute, then She would remind him.’
I say nothing. The queen, though pointedly cool with Isabel and me, is icy with George. And her great confidant, her brother Anthony Woodville, smiles when George goes by as if he finds my brother-in-law’s tinderbox temper amusing, and worthy of very little respect.
‘Well, at any rate, I can come for the last three weeks,’ I say. ‘But send for me if you are ill. I will come at once if you are ill, whatever anyone says, and at least I shall be there for his birth.’
‘You are calling the baby “him”!’ she says gleefully. ‘You think it will be a boy too.’
‘How can I not, when you call it a boy all the time? What name will you give him?’
She smiles. ‘We are calling him Richard for his grandfather, of course,’ she says. ‘And we hope your husband will stand as his godfather.’<
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I smile. ‘Then you will have an Edward and a Richard, just like the royal princes,’ I observe.
‘That’s what George says!’ she crows. ‘He says that if the king and the queen and her family were to disappear off the face of the earth then there would still be a Prince Edward Plantagenet to take the throne and a Prince Richard Plantagenet to come after him.’
‘Yes, but it’s hard to imagine what disaster could wipe the king and the queen off the face of the earth,’ I say, lowering my voice cautiously.
Isabel giggles. ‘I think my husband imagines it every day.’
‘Then who is doing the ill-wishing?’ I ask, thinking to score a point. ‘Not Her!’
At once she looks grave and turns away. ‘George is not ill-wishing the king,’ she says quietly. ‘That would be treason. I was speaking in jest.’
WESTMINSTER PALACE, LONDON, AUTUMN 1476
I should have taken a warning from that, but when we get back to London I am amazed at how George behaves around the court while Isabel rarely comes out of their private rooms to join everyone, as if to snub the queen and her household. George walks surrounded by his own particular friends; he is never seen without men of his choosing, and they stand guard around him, almost as if he feared attack within the high walls of Westminster Palace.
He comes to dinner in the great hall, as we all do, but once he is seated, in full view of everyone, he makes no pretence at eating. They set dishes before him and he glowers, as if he has been insulted, and does not even pick up his knife or spoon. He looks at the servers as if he fears the dish has been poisoned, and he lets everyone know that he eats only what his own cooks prepare, in his private rooms.
Any time of the day you can be certain to find the doors to the Clarence apartments bolted shut with a double guard on the door as if he thinks someone might storm the rooms and kidnap Isabel. When I visit her, I have to wait outside the double doors for someone to call my name, then a shouted order comes from behind the closed door, and the guards lower their pikes and let me in.