Philippa Gregory - The Kingmaker's Daughter

‘You can’t be loyal to her,’ George says flatly. ‘You can’t be.’

Again, I hear my young husband hesitate; it is true, he cannot be loyal to her.

‘We’ll talk,’ George says finally. ‘Not now; but later. When the Woodville boy wants to come to his throne. We’ll talk then. When the boy from Grafton, the base-blooded bastard, wants to step up to the throne of England, and take our brother’s crown which we won for him and for our house, not for them – we’ll talk again then. I know you are loyal to Edward – I am too. But only to my brother, to my house and to the blood of kings. Not to that base-born bastard.’

I hear him turn on his heel and walk across the room and I step back to a window bay. As they open the door, I look round with a little start as if I am surprised to find them there. George barely nods at me as he heads towards the door and Richard stands and watches him go.

MIDDLEHAM CASTLE, YORKSHIRE, JULY 1474

Richard keeps his word and although my mother and I live under the same roof I hardly ever see her. She has rooms in the northwest tower, near to the gatehouse for the convenience of the guards, overlooking the thatched roofs and stone gables of the little houses of Middleham, while our rooms are high in the central keep, with views all round like an eyrie. We come and go to London, to York, to Sheriff Hutton, Barnard Castle, accompanied by guards and our household of friends and companions, and she stays in the same rooms, watching the sun rise through the same windows every morning, and set on the opposite side, throwing shadows across her room in the same way every day.

I order that our son Edward shall never be taken along the walkway of the outer wall to see his grandmother. I don’t want her to have anything to do with him. He bears a royal name, he is the grandson my father longed for. He is many steps now from the throne but I am raising him with the education and the courage of a king – as my father would have wanted, as my mother should have done. But she has cursed me and she has cursed my marriage – so I will not give her as much as one glimpse of my beautiful son. She can be dead to him, as she said I was dead to her.

In midsummer she asks to see Richard and me together. The message comes from her chief lady in waiting and Richard glances at me as if asking me if I would like to refuse.

‘We have to see her,’ I say uncomfortably. ‘What if she is ill?’

‘Then she should send for a physician, not for you,’ he says. ‘She knows she can send for a physician, to London if she wishes. She knows I don’t stint on her household.’

I look at Lady Worth. ‘What does she want?’

She shakes her head. ‘She told me only that she wants to see you,’ she says. ‘Both of you.’

‘Bring her to us,’ Richard decides.

We are seated in matching chairs, almost thrones, in the great chamber of Middleham Castle and I don’t rise when my mother comes in the room though she pauses as if she expects me to kneel for her blessing. She looks about her as if to see what changes we have made to her home, and she raises an eyebrow as if she does not think much of our tapestries.

Richard snaps his finger at a manservant. ‘Set a chair for the countess,’ he says.

My mother sits before us and I see the stiffness of her movements. She is getting old; perhaps she is ill. Perhaps she wants to live with Isabel at Warwick Castle, and we can let her go. I wait for her to speak, and know that I am longing to hear her say that she has to go to London for her health and that she will live with Isabel.

‘It’s about the document,’ she says to Richard.

He nods. ‘I thought it would be.’

‘You must have known I would hear about it sooner or later.’

‘I assumed someone would tell you.’

‘What is this?’ I interrupt. I turn to Richard. ‘What document?’

‘I see you keep your wife in ignorance of your doings,’ my mother observes nastily. ‘Did you fear she would try to prevent you from wrongdoing? I am surprised at that. She is no champion of mine. Did you fear that this would be too much for even her to swallow?’

‘No,’ he says coldly. ‘I don’t fear her judgement.’ To me he says briefly: ‘This is the resolution to the problem of your mother’s lands that George and I could finally agree. Edward has confirmed it. We passed it as an act of parliament. It has taken long enough for the lawyers to agree and to formulate it as a law. It is the only solution that satisfied us all: we have declared her legally dead.’

‘Dead!’ I stare at my mother who stares haughtily back at me. ‘How can you call her dead?’

He taps his booted foot on the rushes. ‘It’s a legal term. It solves the problem of her lands. We could not get them any other way. Neither you nor Isabel could inherit them while she was still alive. So we have declared her dead and you and Isabel are her heirs and you inherit. Nobody steals anything from anyone. She is dead: you inherit. As your husbands, the lands are passed on to George and me.’

‘But what about her?’

He gestures at her and he almost laughs aloud. ‘As you see, here she is: living proof of the failure of ill-wishing. It would make a man disbelieve in magic. We called her dead and here she is, hale and hearty, and eating me out of house and home. Someone should preach a sermon on it.’

‘I am sorry if you find me costly,’ my mother says bitingly. ‘But then I remember you have taken all of my fortune to pay for my keep.’

‘Only half your fortune,’ Richard corrects her. ‘Your son-in-law and your other daughter have taken the other half. You need not blame Anne, Isabel has abandoned you too. But we have the cost of housing and guarding you. I don’t ask for gratitude.’

‘I don’t offer any.’

‘Would you prefer to be imprisoned in a nunnery?’ he asks. ‘For I could allow that. I can return you to confinement at Beaulieu if you wish.’

‘I would prefer to live on my own lands in freedom. I would prefer that you had not abused the law to make away with me. What is my life now? What can it be if I am declared dead? Am I in purgatory? Or is this hell?’

He shrugs. ‘You posed an awkward problem. That’s now resolved. I did not want to be seen to be stealing from my mother-in-law and the king’s honour was at stake. You were a defenceless woman in sanctuary and he could not be seen to rob you. We have resolved this very neatly. The act of parliament declares that you are dead and so you have no lands, no house and I suppose no freedom. It is here, or a nunnery, or the grave. You can choose.’

‘I’ll stay here,’ my mother says heavily. ‘But I shall never forgive you for doing this to me, Richard. I cared for you as a boy in this very castle, my husband taught you all that you know about warfare and business. We were your guardians and we were good and kind guardians to you and to your friend Francis Lovell. And this is how you repay me.’

‘Your husband taught me to march fast, kill without remorse, on and off the battlefield and sometimes outside the law, and take whatever I wanted. I am a good pupil to him. If he were in my shoes he would be doing just as I am doing now. In fact his ambition was greater. I have taken only half your lands but he would have taken all of England.’

She cannot disagree. ‘I am weary,’ she says. She gets to her feet. ‘Anne, give me your arm back to my rooms.’

‘Don’t think you can suborn her,’ Richard warns her. ‘Anne knows where her loyalties lie. You threw her away into defeat, I rescued her from your neglect and made her a great heiress and a duchess.’