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.’
Richard’s gaze does not leave my eyes. ‘This is a grave allegation against a queen.’
‘I make it only to you, in private,’ I say. ‘I would never publicly accuse the queen. We all saw what happened to George who publicly accused her.’
‘George was guilty of treason against the king,’ Richard reminds me. ‘There was no doubt of his guilt. He spoke treason to me, I heard him, myself. He took money from France, he plotted a new rebellion.’
‘There is no doubt of his guilt but he had always been forgiven before,’ I say. ‘Edward on his own would never have taken George to trial. You know it was on the advice of the queen. When your own mother went to beg for clemency she said it was the queen who insisted that George be put to death. The queen saw George as a danger to her rule, she would not let him accuse her. He named her as a murderer and to silence him she had him killed. It was not about a rebellion against the king, it was about his enmity to Her.’
Richard cannot deny this. ‘And your fear?’ he asks quietly.
‘Isabel told me of the queen’s jewellery case, and two names written in blood, that she keeps inside an enamel box.’
He nods.
‘Isabel believed that it was our names: hers and mine. She believed that the queen would kill us both to avenge her father and her brother that were killed by our father.’ I take his hands. ‘Richard, I am sure that the queen will have me killed. I don’t know how she will do it, whether by poison or something that looks like an accident, or some passing violence on the street. But I am sure she will contrive my death, and I am very afraid.’
‘Isabel was poisoned at Warwick,’ he says. ‘She was far from London, and it didn’t save her.’
‘I know. But I think I would be safer at Middleham than right here, where she sees me at court, where you rival her in Edward’s affections, where I remind her of my father every time I walk into her rooms.’
He hesitates.
‘You yourself warned me not to eat the food that came from the queen’s kitchen,’ I remind him. ‘Before George was arrested. Before she pressed for his death. You warned me yourself.’
Richard’s face is very grave. ‘I did,’ he says. ‘I thought you were in danger then, and I think you are in danger now. I agree with you that we should go to Middleham and I think we should stay away from court. I have much to do in the North, Edward has given me all of George’s Yorkshire lands for my own. We will leave London and we will only come to court when we have to.’
‘And your mother?’ I ask, knowing that she too will never forgive the queen for the death of George.
He shakes his head. ‘She speaks treason, she says that Edward should never have taken the throne if he was going to make such a woman his queen. She calls Elizabeth a witch like her mother. She is going to leave London and live at Fotheringhay. She too dares not stay here.’
‘We will be northerners,’ I say, imagining the life we shall lead, far from the court, far from the constant fear, far from the edgy brittle amusement and entertainment that always now seems like a veneer over the manoeuvrings and plottings of the queen and her brothers and sisters. This court has lost its innocence; it is no longer joyful. This is a court of killers and I shall be glad to put miles and miles between them and me.
MIDDLEHAM CASTLE, YORKSHIRE, SUMMER 1482
We do not live at peace, as I hoped; for the king commands Richard to lead the armies of England against the Scots, and when the treaty between Scotland and England breaks down, and Anthony Woodville finds himself without his promised Scottish royal bride, it falls to Richard to lead the Rivers’ revenge: taking a small English force, mostly our northerners, to victory, winning the town of Berwick and entering Edinburgh itself. It is a great victory; but even this does not persuade the court that Richard is a great soldier and worthy heir to his father. Within the month we hear that the Rivers are complaining at court that he should have gone further, and won more.
I hear Elizabeth’s whispered counsel in this, and I grit my teeth. If she can persuade her husband to call this victory against the Scots a treasonous failure, then they will summon Richard to London to answer for it. The last royal brother accused of treason had a trial without a defence and choked away his life in a vat of the queen’s favourite wine.
To comfort myself, I go to the schoolroom and sit at the back while the children wade through their Latin grammars, reciting the verbs that were taught to Isabel and me so long ago in the schoolroom at Calais. I can almost hear Isabel’s voice, even now, and her triumphant crow when she gets through them without making a mistake. My boy Edward is nine years old, seated beside him is Isabel’s daughter, Margaret, nine this year, and beside her is her brother Edward, who we all call Teddy, just seven.
Their tutor breaks off and says they can stop work for a little while to greet me and the three of them gather round my chair. Margaret leans against me and I put my arm around her and look at the two handsome boys. I know that these may be all the children I ever have. I am only twenty-six years old, I should be ready to bear half a dozen more children, but they never seem to come, and nobody, not the physicians, the midwives nor the priest, can tell me why not. In the absence of any others, these three are my children, and Margaret, who is as pretty and as passionate as her mother, is my darling and the only daughter I expect to raise.
‘Are you all right, Lady Mother?’ she asks sweetly.
‘I am,’ I say, brushing her unruly brown hair out of her eyes.
‘Can we play at being at court?’ she asks. ‘Will you pretend to be queen and we can be presented to you?’