‘Why don’t we have to?’
‘Edward said we could be excused.’
I ask the question that matters more and more at the court in these days. ‘What about Her? Will She mind?’
‘I don’t think so. Her son Thomas Grey is to be one challenger, her brother is the first knight. The Rivers are in full flood. She won’t much care whether we are there or not.’
‘Why did Edward say you could be excused?’ I hear the caution in my own voice. We are all afraid of everything at court now.
Richard rises and takes off his robe, pulls back the covers and gets into bed beside me. ‘Because he sees that I am sick to my heart at George’s imprisonment, and sick with fear at what might come next,’ he says. ‘He has no stomach for merrymaking either when our brother is in the Tower of London and the Queen of England is pressing for his death. Hold me, Anne. I am cold to my bones.’
WESTMINSTER PALACE, LONDON, JANUARY 1478
They keep George in the Tower without trial, without visitors, in comfortable rooms – but he is imprisoned as a traitor for the rest of the year. Not until January does the queen finally get her way and persuade the king to bring him before the court and charge him with treason. The Rivers adherents have got hold of the jurors at the trial of Ankarette the poisoner, and persuaded them to say that they thought her innocent all along, even while they sent her to the gallows. My sister, they now declare, died quite naturally of the consequences of childbirth. Suddenly, Isabel had childbed fever, though when they were last consulted, they swore she was poisoned. They now say that George exceeded his authority in charging Ankarette and acted like a king himself, in having her executed, they say that he presumed on the royal state, they make him a traitor for punishing the murderer of his own wife. In one brilliant move they have hidden the murder, hidden the murderer the queen, exonerated her instrument, and shifted the blame for everything onto George.
The queen is everywhere in this matter, advising the king, warning of danger, complaining very sweetly that George cannot serve as a judge and an executioner in his town of Warwick, suggesting that this is practically a usurpation. If he will order a jury, if he will command an execution, where will he stop? Should he not be stopped? And finally?
Finally the king is driven into agreement with her and he himself undertakes the work of prosecuting his brother, and nobody – not one single man – speaks in George’s defence. Richard comes home after the last day of the hearing with his shoulders bowed and his face dark. His mother and I meet him in the great hall and he takes us into his privy chamber and closes the door on the interested faces of our household.
‘Edward has accused him of trying to destroy the royal family and their claim to the throne.’ Richard glances at his mother. ‘It’s proven that George told everyone that the king was base-born – a bastard. I am sorry, Lady Mother.’
She waves it away. ‘This is an old slander.’ She looks at me. ‘This is Warwick’s old lie. Blame him, if anybody.’
‘And they have proof that George’s men were paid to go round the country saying that Thomas Burdett was innocent, and was murdered by the king for foretelling his death. Edward heard the evidence for that and it was good. George certainly hired people to speak against the king. George says that the king is using black arts – everyone supposes this is to accuse the queen of witchcraft. Finally, and almost worst of all: George has been taking money from Louis of France to create a rebellion against Edward. He was going to mount a rebellion and take the throne.’
‘He would not,’ his mother says simply.
‘They had letters from Louis of France addressed to him.’
‘Forgeries,’ she says,
Richard sighs. ‘Who knows? Not I. I am afraid, Lady Mother, that some of it – actually, most of it – is true. George hired a tenant’s son and put him in the place of his own son, Edward of Warwick. He was sending young Edward to Flanders for safekeeping.’
I draw a breath. This is Isabel’s son, my nephew, sent to Flanders to keep him safe. ‘Why didn’t he send him to us?’
‘He says he did not dare to let the boy stay in England, and the queen’s malice would be his death. They cited this as evidence of his plotting.’
‘Where is Edward now?’ I ask.
‘The child is in danger from the queen,’ his grandmother says. ‘That’s not proof of George’s guilt, it is proof of the queen’s guilt.’
Richard answers me: ‘Edward’s spies arrested the boy at the port as he was about to take ship, and took him back to Warwick Castle.’
‘Where is he now?’ I repeat.
‘At Warwick, with Margaret, his sister.’
‘You must speak with your brother the king,’ Duchess Cecily tells Richard. ‘You must tell him that Elizabeth Woodville is the destruction of this family. There is no doubt in my mind that she poisoned Isabel, and that she will destroy George too. You have to make Edward see that. You have to save George, you have to safeguard his children. Edward is your nephew. If he is not safe in England you have to protect him.’
Richard turns to his mother. ‘Forgive me,’ he says. ‘I have tried. But the queen has Edward in thrall, he won’t listen to me any more. I cannot advise him. I cannot advise him against Her.’
The duchess walks the length of the room, her head bowed. For the first time she looks like an old woman, exhausted by sorrow. ‘Will Edward pass the death sentence on his own brother?’ she asks. ‘Am I to lose George as I lost your brother Edmund? To a dishonourable death? Will She have his head set on a spike? Is England ruled by another she-wolf as bad as Margaret of Anjou? Does Edward forget who his friends are, his brothers?’
Richard shakes his head. ‘I don’t know. He has removed me from my place as Steward of England, so that I don’t have to rule on the death sentence.’
She is alert at once. ‘Who is the new steward?’
‘The Duke of Buckingham. He will do as his Rivers wife tells him. Will you go to Edward? Will you appeal to him?’
‘Of course,’ she says. ‘I will go to one beloved son to beg for the life of another. I shouldn’t have to do this. This is the consequence of a wicked woman, an evil wife, a witch on the throne.’
‘Hush,’ Richard says wearily.
‘I will not hush. I will stand between her, and my son George. I will save him.’
BAYNARD’S CASTLE, LONDON, FEBRUARY 1478
We have to wait. We wait and wait from January to February. The members of both houses of parliament send delegations to beg the king to pass a sentence and finish the case against his brother one way or the other. Finally, the sentence is passed and George is found guilty of treason. The punishment for treason is death but still the king hesitates to order his brother’s execution. Nobody is allowed to see George, who appeals from his prison for the right to be tried by single combat – a chivalric resolution to a dishonourable charge. It is the final defence of an innocent man. The king, who claims to be the very flower of English chivalry, refuses. This seems to be a matter outside of honour, as well as outside of justice.
Duchess Cecily goes as she promised to see Edward, certain that she can make him commute the death sentence into exile. When she returns to Baynard’s Castle from court, they have to help her out of her litter. She is as white as her lace collar and she can barely stand.
‘What happened?’ I ask her.
She clings to my hands on the steps of her great London home. She has never reached out to me before. ‘Anne,’ is all she can say. ‘Anne.’
I call for my ladies and between us we help her into my rooms, seat her in my chair before the fire, and give her a glass of malmsey wine. With a sudden gesture she strikes the glass away and it shatters on the stone hearth. ‘No! No!’ she screams with sudden energy. ‘Don’t bring it near me!’
The bouquet of the sweet wine fills the room as I kneel at her feet and take her hands. I think she is raving as she shudders and cries: ‘Not the wine! Not the wine!’
‘La
dy Mother, what is it? Duchess Cecily? Compose yourself!’
This is a woman who stayed at court while her husband plotted the greatest rebellion against a king that England has ever seen. This is the woman who stood at the market cross in Ludlow when her husband ran away and the Lancaster soldiers sacked the town. This is not a woman who cries easily, this is not a woman who has ever acknowledged defeat. But now she looks at me as if she can see nothing, she is blinded by tears. Then she lets out a great shaking sob. ‘Edward said that all I could do was offer George his choice of death. He said that he must die. That woman was there all the time, she never let me say a thing in George’s favour. All I could win for him was a private death in his room in the Tower, and he can choose the means.’
She buries her face in her hands and weeps as if she could never stop. I glance at my ladies. We are so shocked to see the duchess like this that we all stand in a helpless circle around the grieving mother.
‘My favourite son, my own darling,’ she whispers to herself. ‘And he has to die.’
I don’t know what to do. I put my hand gently on her shoulder. ‘Will you not take a glass of something, Your Grace?’
She looks up at me, her beautiful old face ravaged with grief. ‘He has chosen to be drowned in malmsey wine,’ she says.
‘What?’
She nods. ‘That’s why I didn’t want to drink it. I will never touch it again as long as I live. I won’t have it in my house. They will clear the cellar of it today.’
I am horrified. ‘Why would he do such a thing?’
She laughs, a bitter dry sound that peals like a carillon of misery in the stone-walled room. ‘It is his last gesture: to make Edward treat him, to make Edward pay for his drink. To make a mockery of the king’s justice, to drink deep of the queen’s favourite wine. He shows it is her doing, this is her poison for him, as it was her poison that killed Isabel. He makes a mockery of the trial, he makes a mockery of his death sentence. He makes a mockery of his death.’
I turn to the window and look out. ‘My sister’s children will be orphans,’ I say. ‘Edward, and Margaret.’
‘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.’