‘She was in the pay of the queen,’ he says. ‘God knows how long she has been spying on us. But when Isabel went into childbirth and was so happy and confident that it would be another boy – the queen ordered her servant to use the powders.’
‘Powders?’
‘Italian powders: poison.’
‘You are sure?’
‘I have the evidence, and the jury found her guilty and sentenced her to death.’
‘He has only proof that Ankarette named the queen as her employer,’ Richard intercedes. ‘We can’t be sure the queen ordered the murder.’
‘Who else would hurt Isabel?’ George says simply. ‘Was she not beloved, by everyone who knew her?’
I nod blindly, my eyes filling with tears. ‘And her little boy?’
‘Ankarette went to Somerset as soon as Isabel was dead and her household dismissed,’ George says. ‘But she left the powders with her friend John Thursby, a groom of the household at Warwick. He gave them to the baby. The jury found them both guilty, they were both executed.’
I give a shuddering sigh, and I look up at Richard.
‘You must guard yourself,’ George cautions me. ‘Eat nothing that comes from her kitchens, no wine but from your own cellars, have them open the bottles before you. Trust none of your servants. That’s all you can do. We cannot protect ourselves from her witchcraft except by hiring our own witch. If she uses dark forces against us, I don’t know what we can do.’
‘The queen’s guilt is not proven,’ Richard says doggedly.
George laughs shortly. ‘I have lost a wife, a blameless woman that the queen hated. I don’t need more proof than that.’
Richard shakes his head. ‘We cannot be divided,’ he insists. ‘We are the three sons of York. Edward had a sign, the three suns in the sky. We have come so far, we cannot be divided now.’
‘I am true to Edward and I am true to you,’ George swears. ‘But Edward’s wife is my enemy, and she is the enemy of your wife too. She has taken the best wife a man could have had from me, and a boy of my making. I shall make sure she does not hurt me again. I will employ food tasters, I will employ guards, and I will employ a sorcerer to protect me from her evil crafts.’
Richard turns away from the fireside and looks out of the window as if he could find an answer in the sleety rain.
‘I shall go to Edward and tell him of this,’ George says slowly. ‘I don’t see what else I can do.’
Richard bows his head to his duty as a son of York. ‘I’ll come with you.’
Richard never tells me in detail what passes between the three brothers in the meeting when Edward accuses George of taking the law into his own hands, packing a jury, inventing charges and executing two innocent people and George replies to his brother that Elizabeth Woodville set murderers on Isabel and her baby boy. Richard only tells me that the gulf between George and Edward is perhaps fatally wide, and that his loyalty to one brother is on the brink of destruction because of his love for the other, and that he fears where this will take us all.
‘Can we go home to Middleham?’ I ask.
‘We go to dine at court,’ he says grimly. ‘We have to. Edward has to see I stand by him, the queen cannot see that you are afraid of her.’
My hands start to shake, so I clasp them behind my back. ‘Please . . .’
‘We have to go.’
The queen comes to dinner white-faced and biting her lips; the look she shoots at George would fell a weaker man. He bows low to her, with ironic respect, a flowery court bow like a player might make as a joke. She turns her shoulder towards George’s table, speaks constantly to the king as if to prevent him even glancing at his brother, leans close to the king at dinner, sits at his side as they watch an entertainment, allowing no-one else near him; certainly not George, who stands leaning back against the wall and stares at her as if he would put her on trial too. The court is agog with the scandal and horrified at the accusations. Anthony Woodville goes everywhere with his thumbs in his sword belt, walking on the balls of his feet as if ready to spring up to defend his sister’s honour. Nobody is laughing at George any more, not even the careless Rivers family who have always taken everything so lightly. Matters have become serious: we all wait to see what the king will do, whether he will allow the murderous witch to guide him, yet again.
BAYNARD’S CASTLE, LONDON, MAY 1477
‘I am not afraid,’ George tells me. We are seated by the fireside in my privy chamber at Baynard’s Castle. Unseasonal rain is running down the windows, the skies are heavily grey. We are head to head not for warmth but for fear. Richard is at court, consulting with his brother Edward, trying to reconcile his brothers, trying to balance the unending drip of poisonous advice that is the counsel of the queen, trying to counteract the unending gossip that comes from L’Erber, where George’s household speaks of a bastard clinging to the throne, a king enchanted by a witch, and a poisoner at work in the royal family. Richard believes that the brothers can be reconciled. Richard believes that the House of York can stand with honour – despite the Rivers family, despite their death-dealing queen.
‘I am not afraid,’ says George. ‘I have my own powers.’
‘Powers?’
‘I have a sorcerer to protect me from her spells. I have hired a cunning man named Thomas Burdett, and two others, two astronomers from Oxford University. They are very skilled, very serious scholars, and they have foreseen the death of the king and the throwing down of the queen. Burdett has traced the influence of the queen, he can see her path through our lives like a silver slime. He tells me what is to be, and he assures me that the Rivers will fall by their own hand. The queen will hand over her sons to their murderer. She will end her own line.’
‘It’s against the law to forecast the death of the king,’ I whisper.
‘It’s against the law to poison a duchess, and the queen did that without reprisal. I should like to see her challenge me. I am armed against her now, I don’t fear her.’ He rises to go. ‘You always wear your crucifix?’ he asks. ‘You wear the amulet I gave you? You always carry your rosary in your pocket?’
‘Always.’
‘I will get Burdett to write a spell for you to carry, deep magic to hold her at bay.’
I shake my head. ‘I don’t believe in such things. I won’t believe in such things. We should not fight her with magic, it means we are no better than her. What are we to do? How far should we go? Invoke the devil? Call up Satan?’
‘I would have called up Satan himself to defend Isabel against her,’ he says bitterly. ‘For I have lost a wife I loved, to the queen’s poisoner, I have lost my baby to her accomplice, and before that a son, my first son, in a storm of a witch’s wind. She uses magic. She uses dark arts. We have to use them against her. We have to turn her own weapons against her.’
There is a knock at the door. ‘Message for the Duke of Clarence!’ someone shouts from outside.
‘Here!’ George shouts, and the messenger comes into the room and my husband Richard strolls in behind him.
‘I didn’t know you were here,’ he remarks to George, casting a frowning glance at me; he is determined that we must be neutral in the struggle between the two brothers. George does not reply, as he is reading the message over and over again. Then he looks up. ‘Did you know of this?’ he demands of Richard. ‘Or are you a part of it? Are you here to arrest me?’
‘Arrest you?’ Richard repeats. ‘Why would I arrest you? Unless endless gossiping and rudeness and glumness is a crime, in which case I should.’
George does not respond to this joke at all. ‘Richard, do you know of this: yes or no?’