I wrap my fur cloak a little closer around me though the night is warm; the breeze through my open window has the chill of the deep river. I think how Isabel would laugh to see me now, in Elizabeth Woodville’s furs – the same priceless miniver that Isabel once put in her chest of gowns, and then had to give back. Isabel would laugh at our triumph. We have won tonight, in the end we have won, and the little girl that I was then, who played at being queen on the night of Elizabeth Woodville’s coronation, in this very tower, will wear the crown tomorrow.
And the doubts that my mother whispered to me matter not at all. Whether my marriage was valid or not, my coronation will be done by an archbishop with sacred oil. I shall be Queen of England and I shall be at peace. Richard made me his wife in the eyes of God; he makes me his queen before all the world. I need wonder no more if he loves me. He has given me his ring in private and the crown in public. I shall be Queen Anne as my father wanted me to be.
I put aside the fur, dropping it on a chair as if it were of little value. I have a wardrobe full of furs now, I have the finest jewels, and I will have a fortune paid to me every year to maintain the queen’s household as it should be. I shall live as grandly as the queen before me, I have all Elizabeth’s gowns and I will have them cut down to my size. I slide between the warmed silky sheets of the great bed, with the cloth-of-gold canopy and the red velvet-lined curtains. From now on, I shall only have the finest things around me. From now on I shall only have the best. I was born the daughter of the kingmaker, and tomorrow his plan for me comes to fruition and I shall be queen. And when my husband dies, our son Edward, the kingmaker’s grandson, will be king in his turn, and the House of Warwick will be the royal house of England.
A ROYAL PROGRESS, SUMMER 1483
The welcome that we get along the road, at every halt, tells us that we have done the right thing. The country is almost mad with relief that the danger of war has been averted, and that my husband has led us to peace. Richard has gathered around him men that he can trust. Henry Stafford the Duke of Buckingham left his Woodville wife at home to lead Richard into the cathedral as Lord Chamberlain of England. John Howard, who recaptured the fleet from the Rivers for us, becomes the new first Howard Duke of Norfolk and keeps the ships he won; he is Lord Admiral. My kinsman the Earl of Northumberland is given the warden-ship of the North to hold for a year. We travel without a guard, secure in the knowledge that there is no-one in England who does not welcome us. Our enemies are dead or cooped up in sanctuary, the Rivers boys are safely held in the Tower. And at every town where we stay, Reading, Oxford, Gloucester, they put on pageants and festivals to welcome us and to assure us of their loyalty.
The Rivers had made themselves so hated that the people would have taken almost any powerful ruler rather than a boy whose family would devour England. But better than this, the people have a Plantagenet on the throne again: my husband, who looks so like his namesake and well-loved father, whose brother rescued the country from the sleeping king and the bad queen, and who now rescues it once more from another ambitious woman.
Nobody even asks after the boys that we have left in the Tower in London. Nobody wants to remember them or their mother, who still skulks in the darkness of sanctuary. It is as if the whole country wants to forget that there were months of fear about what might happen, and weeks when nobody knew who would be king. Now we have a king crowned in the sight of the people and ordained by God, and he and I ride together through England at the very height of summertime, picnic under clumps of trees when the sun is hot, and enter the beautiful towns of England where they welcome us as their saviours.
Only one person asks me about the Rivers boys, left behind in the quiet Tower of London, asking for their mother in sanctuary, just three miles upriver. Sir Robert Brackenbury, now made Keeper of the Exchange and Constable of the Tower, has responsibility for guarding them. He is the only person to say to me in his blunt Yorkshire way: ‘So what’s to happen to the Rivers bastards, Your Grace? Now that we have them and they are in my keeping?’
He is an honest man, and I would trust him with almost anything. I take his arm as we walk in the courtyard of the beautiful college at Oxford. ‘They have no future,’ I tell him. ‘They can be neither princes nor men. We will have to hold them forever. But my husband knows, as I do, that they will be a danger forever for us. They will be a danger just in their being. They will be a threat to us for as long as they live.’
He pauses and turns to me. His honest gaze meets mine. ‘God save you, would you wish them dead, Your Grace?’ he asks simply.
I shake my head in instant revulsion. ‘I can’t wish it,’ I say. ‘Not a couple of boys, not a pair of innocent boys.’
‘Ah, you’re too tender-hearted . . .’
‘I can’t wish it – but what life can they have? They will be prisoners forever. Even if they were to give up all claims to the throne there will always be someone who would claim it for them. And what safety can we have while they live?’
We are going to York where our son – Prince Edward as he now is – will be invested as Prince of Wales. It is a compliment to the city that has supported Richard from first to last and where he is loved better than in any other part of the country. We get a welcome into the walled city greater than anything we have yet seen. In the high-vaulted York Minster my boy Edward walks forwards, watched by his cousins Edward and Margaret, and takes the golden wand and little gold crown of the Prince of Wales. The cheers when he comes out on the steps of the Minster to greet the crowds send the birds whirling into the sky. I cross myself, and whisper, ‘Thank God.’ I know that my father is watching his grandson invested as Prince of Wales, and that in heaven he knows that his struggle has ended, at last, in victory. The kingmaker has made a prince of his grandson. There will be a Warwick boy on the throne of England.
We will stay in the North for some time, and this will always be our home, as we are happier here than anywhere else. We will rebuild the palace of Sheriff Hutton where the children will live, safely away from the diseases and plagues of London, safely distant, I think, from the brooding presence of the defeated queen in her damp holt under Westminster Abbey. We will make this a new palace in the North of England, a place to rival Windsor, or Greenwich, and the wealth from the court will spill out to our friends and neighbours, the northern affinity that we trust. We will make a golden kingdom of the North, great enough to rival the City of London itself. The heart of the country will be here, where the king and queen – northern by birth and inclination – live among the high green hills.
My son Edward and his cousins Margaret and Teddy and I go to Middleham, riding merrily together, as if we are out for pleasure. I will stay with them for the rest of the summer, Queen of England and mistress of my own time. In winter we will all go back to London and I shall have the children with me at Greenwich. Edward will have to have more tutors and more training in horse-riding; we have to build up his strength for he is still a slight boy. He has to be prepared to be king in his own turn. In a few years he will go to live at Ludlow and his council will rule Wales.
As we take the road north for Middleham, Richard leaves us and starts the journey southwards once more with a tiny escort around him, among them our longstanding friends Sir James Tyrrell, now made Master of Henchmen, Francis Lovell, Robert Brackenbury and the others. Richard kisses the children and blesses them. He holds me in his arms and whispers to me to come to him as soon as the weather turns. I feel my heart warm with love for him. We are at last victorious, we are at last blessed. He has made me Queen of England, as I was born to be, and I have given him a prince and an heir. Together we have fulfilled my father’s vision. This is victory indeed.