I think so. I think so. After long sleepless nights of puzzling away at it, I think so. Edward was frail, small-boned, delicate, but he was not prone to fever. I think her ill-will sought him out and enflamed his veins, his lungs, his poor, poor heart. I think Elizabeth Woodville and her daughter Elizabeth killed my boy to avenge themselves for the loss of theirs.
Richard comes to my rooms before dinner to escort us to the great hall, as if the world were still the same. I only have to look at him to see that everything is changed. His face, always strong, is now stern, even grim. From his nose to either side of his mouth are grooved two deep lines and his forehead has two hard lines at each eyebrow. He never smiles. When his grim face looks into my pale one, I think that neither of us will ever smile again.
NOTTINGHAM CASTLE, SUMMER 1484
In the heat of summer the Rivers girls come riding back to court, like a little cavalcade of confident beauty, and are greeted with joy by all the handsome young men of the king’s service. Apparently they have been sadly missed. The three of them walk into my rooms and curtsey low to me and smile as if they think I can greet them kindly. I manage to ask after their journey and for the health of their mother, but even I can hear how thin and quiet is my voice. I don’t care about their journey, or the health of their mother. I know that Elizabeth will write to her mother and tell her that I am pale and nearly dumb. I expect she will remark that her sorcery that killed my son has nearly stopped my own heart. And I no longer care. The Elizabeths, mother and daughter, can do no more against me. Everyone whom I have loved has been taken from me by the two of them; the only person left to me in the world is my husband, Richard. Will they take him too? For I am so swaddled in sorrow that I no longer care.
It seems that they will take him. Elizabeth walks with Richard in the garden in the cool of the evening. He likes to have her at his side and the courtiers, who always follow a favourite, are quick to praise the quiet wisdom of her conversation, and the grace of her walk.
I watch them from my chamber windows set high in the castle wall so that they are far below, walking to the river, like a painting of a knight and his lady in a romance. She is tall, almost as tall as he, and they walk together head to head. I wonder idly what they talk about with such animation, what makes her laugh and stop and put her hand to her throat, and then makes her take his arm to walk on. At this distance, from my high window, they are a handsome couple: well-matched. They are not far from each other in age, after all. She is eighteen and he is only thirty-one. They both have the York charm that is now turned fully on each other. She is golden-haired like his brother and he is dark as his handsome father. I see Richard take her hand and draw her a little closer as he whispers in her ear. She turns her head with a little laugh, she is a coquette as most beauties of eighteen are bound to be. They walk away from the court and people follow them, at a little distance so that they can imagine themselves to be alone.
The last time I saw the court walking behind the king and carefully judging their paces was when Edward was walking arm in arm with his new lover Elizabeth Shore, and Elizabeth his queen was in confinement. The moment she came out the Shore whore disappeared from court and was never seen again by us – I smile at the memory of the king’s bashful apologetic tenderness to his wife and her grey-eyed level gaze at him. Odd now for me to see the court taking slow strides once more; but this time it is my husband who is being given privacy, as he walks alone with his niece.
Why would they do that? I think idly, my forehead against the cold glass of the thick window. Why would the courtiers step back so courteously unless they think that she is to be his mistress? Unless they think that my husband is seducing his niece, on these evening strolls by the river, that he has forgotten everything he owes to his name, to his marriage vows, to the respect he owes to me as his wife, and the bereaved mother of his dead son.
Can it be that the court has seen so much more clearly than I that Richard has recovered from grief, recovered from heartbreak, can live again, can breathe again, can look about him and see the world again – and in this world sees a pretty girl who is all too ready to take his hand and listen to his words and laugh as if delighted at his speech? Does the court think that Richard is going to bed his brother’s daughter? Does it really think he is so far gone in wickedness to deflower his niece?
I approach this thought, whispering the words ‘deflower’ and ‘niece’, but I really cannot make myself care about this, any more than I can make myself care about the hunting trip tomorrow or the dishes for tonight’s dinner. Elizabeth’s virginity and Elizabeth’s happiness are alike of no interest to me at all. Everything seems as if it is happening a long way away, feels as if it is happening to someone else. I would not call myself unhappy, the word does not approach my state of mind; I would call myself dead to the world. I cannot find it in me to care whether Richard is seducing his niece or she is seducing him. I see, at any rate, that Elizabeth Woodville, having taken my son from me by a curse, will now take my husband from me by her daughter’s seduction. But I see that there is nothing I can do to stop this. She will do – as she always does – as she wishes. All I can do is lean my hot forehead against the cold glass and wish that I did not see this. Or anything. Anything at all.
The court is not solely devoted to the hypocrisy of flirting with the king and mourning with me. Richard spends every morning with his councillors, appointing commissioners to raise the shires if there is an invasion from Henry Tudor in Brittany, preparing the fleet to make war with Scotland, harrying French shipping in the narrow seas. He speaks to me of this work and sometimes I can advise him, having spent my childhood at Calais, and since it is my father’s policy of peace with the Scots and armed peace against the French that Richard follows.
He leaves for York in July to establish the Council of the North, the recognition that the North of England is a country in many ways quite different from the southern parts, and Richard is, and will always be, a good lord to them. Before he leaves he comes to my room and sends my ladies away. Elizabeth goes out with a backward smile at him and for once he does not notice. He takes a stool so that he is seated at my feet.
‘What is it?’ I ask without a great deal of interest.
‘I wanted to speak to you about your mother,’ he says.
I am surprised but nothing can catch my interest. I complete the sewing I have in my hands, pierce the needle through the embroidery silks, and put it to one side. ‘Yes?’
‘I think she can be released from our care,’ he says. ‘We won’t go back to Middleham—’
‘No, never,’ I say quickly.
‘And so we could close the place down. She could have her own house, we could pay her an allowance. We don’t need to keep a great castle to house her.’