Our son Edward greets us with joy, and has much to show us with the bursting pride of a four-year-old. He has learned to ride his little pony and tilt at the quintain; his pony is a skilled steady little animal that knows its business and rides at a bright trot at exactly the right angle for Edward’s little lance to hit the target. His tutor laughs and praises him and glances at me to see me alight with pride. He is progressing in his studies and is starting to read Latin and Greek. ‘So hard!’ I protest to his tutor.
‘The earlier he starts, the easier it is for him to learn,’ he assures me. ‘And already he says his prayers and follows the mass in Latin. It is just to build on that knowledge.’
His tutor allows him days at liberty so that he and I can ride out together and I buy him a little merlin falcon so that he can come hunting with us with his own bird. He is like a little nobleman in miniature, astride his stocky pony with the pretty falcon on his wrist, and he rides all day and denies that he is tired, though twice he falls asleep on the ride home and Richard, astride his big hunter, carries his little son in his arms, while I lead the pony.
At night he dines with us in the great hall, sitting between us at the top table, looking down over the beautiful hall crowded with our soldiers, guards and manservants. The people come in from Middleham to see us dine, and to carry away the scraps from the dinners and I hear them comment on the bearing and charm of the little lord: my Edward. After dinner, when Richard withdraws to his privy chamber and sits by the fire to read, I go with Edward to the nursery tower and see him undressed and put to bed. It is then, when he is newly washed and smelling sweet, when his face is as smooth and as pale as the linen of his pillow, that I kiss him and know what it is to love someone more than life itself.
He prays before he sleeps, little Latin prayers that his nurse has taught him to recite, hardly understanding their meaning. But he is earnest over the prayer that names me and his father, and once he is in bed and his dark lashes are softly lying on his little cheek, I get to my knees beside his bed and pray that he grows well and strong, that we can keep him safe. For surely there never was a more precious boy in all of Yorkshire – no, not in all of the world.
I spend every summer day with my little son, listening to him read in the sun-drenched nursery, riding out with him over the moor, fishing with him in the river, and playing catch, and bat and ball in the inner courtyard, until he is so tired that he goes to sleep on my lap as I read him his night-time story. These are easy days for me, I eat well, and sleep deeply in my richly canopied bed with Richard wrapped around me, as if we were lovers still in our first year of marriage; and I wake in the morning to hear the lapwing calling over the moorland, and the ceaseless chatter and twitter of the nesting swallows and martlets that have made their nests in cups of mud under every corbel.
But no baby comes to us. I revel in my son but I long for another baby, I am yearning for another child. The wooden cradle stands below the stairs in the nursery tower. Edward should have a brother or a sister to play with – but no child comes. I am allowed to eat meat on fast days, a special letter from the Pope himself gives me permission to eat meat during Lent or any day of fasting. At dinner Richard carves for me the best cuts of the spring lamb, the fat of the meat, the skin of the roast chicken, but still no little body is made from the flesh. In our long passionate nights we cling together with a sort of desperate desire but we do not make a child; no baby grows inside me.
I had thought we would spend all the summer and autumn in our northern lands, perhaps going over to Barnard Castle, or looking at the rebuilding work at Sheriff Hutton, but Richard gets an urgent message from his brother Edward, summoning him back to London.
‘I have to go, Edward needs me.’
‘Is he ill?’ I have a pang of fear for the king, and for a moment I think the unthinkable: can She have poisoned her own husband?
Richard is white with shock. ‘Edward is well enough; but he’s gone too far. He says he is putting a stop to George and his unending accusations. He has decided to charge George with treason.’
I put my hand to my throat where I can feel my heart hammer. ‘He will never . . . he could not . . . he would not have him executed?’
‘No, no, just charge him, and then hold him. Certainly, I shall insist that he holds him with honour, in his usual rooms in the Tower, where George can be well-served by his own servants and kept quiet until we find an agreement. I know that Edward has to silence him. George is completely out of control. Apparently he was trying to marry Mary of Burgundy only so that he could mount an invasion against Edward from Flanders. Edward has evidence now. George was taking money from the French, as we suspected. He was plotting against his own country, with France.’
‘This is not true, I would swear that he did not plan to marry her,’ I say earnestly. ‘Isabel was hardly buried, George was beside himself. Remember how he was when he first came to court and told us! He told me himself that it was a plan of Edward’s to get him out of the country, and only forbidden by the queen, who wanted Mary for her own brother Anthony.’
Richard’s young face is a mask of worry. ‘I don’t know! I can’t tell the truth of it any more. It’s the word of one brother against another. I wish to God that the queen and her family would stay out of the business of ruling the country. If she would only stick to having children and leave Edward to rule as he sees fit, then none of this would ever happen.’
‘But you will have to go . . .’ I say plaintively.
He nods. ‘I have to go to make sure that George is not harmed,’ he says. ‘If the queen is speaking against my brother, who will defend him but me?’
He turns and goes into our bedroom where his servants are packing his riding clothes into a bag. ‘When will you come back?’ I ask.
‘As soon as I can.’ His face is dark with worry. ‘I have to make sure that this goes no further. I have to save George from the queen’s rage.’
MIDDLEHAM CASTLE, YORKSHIRE, AUTUMN 1477
The summer days with my son turn to autumn, and I send for the tailor from York to come and fit him for his winter clothes. He has grown during the summer, and there is much exclaiming at the new length of his riding trousers. The cobbler comes with new boots, and I agree, despite my own fears, that he shall go on to a bigger pony, and the little fell pony that has served him so well will be turned out to grass.
It is like a sentence of imprisonment when Richard rides home and tells me that we have to return to London to be at court for Christmas. Elizabeth the queen has come out of her confinement, mother to a new boy, her third; and as if to add lustre to her triumph, she has arranged for the betrothal of her younger royal son Richard to a magnificent heiress, the richest little girl in the kingdom, Anne Mowbray, a cousin of mine, and the heiress to the mighty Norfolk estate. Little Anne would have been a great match for my Edward. Their lands would have tallied, they would have made a powerful alliance, we are kinswomen, I have an interest in her. But I did not even bother to ask the family if they might consider Edward. I knew Elizabeth the queen would not let a little heiress like Anne into the world. I knew that she would secure her fortune for the Rivers family, for her precious son, Richard. They will be married as infants to satisfy the queen’s greed.
‘Richard, can we not stay here?’ I ask. ‘Can we not spend Christmas here for once?’