He shakes his head. ‘Edward needs me,’ he says. ‘Now that George is imprisoned Edward needs his true friends even more, and I am the only brother he has left. He has William Hastings as his right-hand man, but apart from William – who can he talk to but her kinsmen? She has him surrounded. And they are a choir of harmony – they all advise him to send George into exile and forbid him ever to come again to England. He is confiscating George’s goods, he is dividing up his lands. He has made up his mind.’
‘But their children!’ I exclaim, thinking of little Margaret and Edward his son. ‘Who will care for them if their father is exiled?’
‘They would be as orphans,’ Richard says grimly. ‘We have to go to court this Christmas to defend them as well as George.’ He hesitates. ‘Besides, I have to see George, I have to stand by him. I don’t want to leave him on his own. He is much alone in the Tower, nobody dares to visit him, and he has become fearful of what might happen. I am certain that She can never persuade Edward to harm his brother, but I am afraid . . .’ He breaks off.
‘Afraid?’ I repeat in a whisper, even though we are safe behind the thick walls of Middleham Castle.
He shrugs. ‘I don’t know. Sometimes I think I am as fearful as a woman, or as superstitious as George has become with his talk of necromancy and sorcery and God knows what darkness. But . . . I find I am afraid for George.’
‘Afraid of what?’ I ask again.
Richard shakes his head; he can hardly bear to name his fears. ‘An accident?’ he asks me. ‘An illness? That he eats something that turns out to be bad? That he drinks to excess? I don’t even want to think about it. That she works on his sorrow and on his fears so that he longs to end his own life and someone brings him a knife?’
I am horrified. ‘He would never hurt himself,’ I say. ‘That’s a sin so deep . . .’
‘He’s not like George any more,’ Richard tells me miserably. ‘His confidence, his charm, you know what he is like – it’s all gone from him. I am afraid she is giving him dreams, I am afraid she is draining his courage. He says that he wakes in a terror and sees her leaving his bedroom, he says he knows she comes to him in the night and pours ice water into his heart. He says he has a pain which no doctor can cure, in his heart, under his ribs, in his very belly.’
I shake my head. ‘It can’t be done,’ I maintain stoutly. ‘She cannot work on someone else’s mind. George is grieving, well so am I, and he is under arrest which would be enough to make any man fearful.’
‘At any rate, I have to see him.’
‘I don’t like to leave Edward,’ I say.
‘I know. But he has the best childhood a boy could have here – I know it. This was my own childhood. He won’t be lonely; he has his tutor and his lady of the household. I know he misses you and loves you but it is better for him to stay here than be dragged down to London.’ He hesitates again. ‘Anne, you have to agree to this: I don’t want him at court . . .’
He needs to say nothing more than that. I shudder at the thought of the queen’s cold gaze on my boy. ‘No, no, we won’t take him to London,’ I say hastily. ‘We’ll leave him here.’
WESTMINSTER PALACE, LONDON, CHRISTMAS 1477
The Christmas feast is as grand as ever, the queen exultant, out of the birthing chamber, her new baby with the wet nurse, her new boy paraded around the court and mentioned in every conversation. I can almost taste the bitterness in my mouth when I see her boy, carried everywhere behind her, and her six other children.
‘She’s naming him George,’ Richard tells me.
I gasp. ‘George? Are you sure?’
His face is grim. ‘I am sure. She told me herself. She told me and smiled as if I might be pleased.’
The poisonous humour of this appals me. She has had this innocent child’s uncle arrested for speaking ill of her, threatened him with a charge that carries a death sentence, and she names her son for him? It is a sort of malicious madness, if it is nothing worse.
‘What could be worse?’ Richard asks.
‘If she thought she were replacing one George with another,’ I say very low, and I turn from his aghast face.
All her children are gathered here at court for Christmas. She flaunts them everywhere she goes, and they follow behind her, dancing in her footsteps. The oldest daughter, Princess Elizabeth, is eleven years old now, up to her tall mother’s shoulder, long and lean as a Lenten lily, the darling of the court, and her father’s particular favourite. Edward the Prince of Wales is here for the Christmas feast, taller and stronger every time he comes back to London, kind to his brother Richard, who is just a little boy but a stronger and sturdier little boy than my own son. I watch them go by with the wet nurse bringing up the rear with the new baby George, and I have to remind myself to smile in admiration.
The queen at least knows the smile is as real and as warm as her cool nod to me, and the offer of her smooth cheek to kiss. When I greet her I wonder if she can smell fear on my breath, in the cold sweat under my arms, if she knows that my thoughts are always with my brother-in-law, trapped by her in the Tower; if she knows that I can’t see her happiness and her fertility and not fear for my own solitary son, and remember my own lost sister.
At the end of the Christmas feast there is the shameful charade of the betrothal of little Prince Richard, aged only four, to the six-year-old heiress Anne Mowbray. The little girl will inherit all the fortunes of the Dukes of Norfolk: she is their only heir. Or rather she was their only heir. But now Prince Richard will get this fortune, for the queen writes a marriage contract for them that ensures that he will have the little girl’s wealth even if she dies as a child before they are old enough to be married, before she reaches adulthood. When my ladies tell me of this I have to make sure I don’t shudder. I cannot help but think that the Norfolks have signed her death warrant. If the queen gets a great fortune on Anne’s death, how long will the little girl live, after the contract has been signed?
There is a great celebration of the betrothal, which we all must attend. The little girl and the little prince are carried by their nursemaids in procession and are stood side by side on the high table in the great hall like a pair of little dolls. Nobody seeing this tableau of greed could doubt for a moment that the queen is in the heyday of her power, doing exactly what is her will.
The Rivers of course are delighted with the match and celebrate with feasting and dancing and masquing and a wonderful joust. Anthony Woodville, the queen’s beloved brother, fights in the joust in the disguise of a hermit in a white gown with his horse caparisoned in black velvet. Richard and I attend the betrothal in our finest clothes and try to appear happy; but the table where George and Isabel used to sit with their household is empty. My sister is dead and her husband imprisoned without trial. When the queen looks down the hall at me I smile back at her, and under the table I cross my fingers in the sign against witchcraft.
‘We don’t need to attend the joust if you don’t wish to,’ Richard says to me that night. He has joined me in my bedchamber in the palace, sitting before the fireplace in his gown. I climb into bed and pull the covers around my shoulders.
‘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.