Philippa Gregory - The Kingmaker's Daughter

I take my mother’s arm and she leans on me. Unwillingly, I lead her out of the presence chamber, down the stairs and across the great hall, where the servants are pulling out the tables for dinner, to the bridge which leads to the outer walls and her rooms.

She pauses under the archway to the tower. ‘You know he will betray you and you will feel just like me, one day,’ she says suddenly. ‘You will be alone and lonely, you will be in purgatory, wondering if it is hell.’

I shudder and would pull away; but she has my arm in her grip and she is leaning heavily on me. ‘He will not betray me,’ I say. ‘He is my husband and our interests lie together. I love him, we married for love and we love each other still.’

‘Ah, you don’t know then,’ she says with quiet satisfaction. She sighs as if someone has given her a gift of great worth. ‘I thought you did not know.’

Clearly, she will not take another step and for a moment, I stand with her. Suddenly I realise that it is for this moment, alone with me, that she asked for my arm. She did not want a moment alone with her daughter, she was not hoping for a reconciliation. No, she wanted to tell me some awful thing that I don’t know, that I don’t want to know. ‘Come on,’ I say. But she does not move at all.

‘The wording of the law that makes me dead names you as his harlot.’

I am so shocked that I stop quite still and look at her. ‘What are you saying? What madness are you speaking now?’

‘It’s the law of the land,’ she laughs thinly, like a cackling witch. ‘A new law. And you didn’t know.’

‘Know what?’

‘The law that says that I am dead and you inherit goes on to say that if you and your husband divorce, then he keeps the lands.’

‘Divorce?’ I repeat the strange word.

‘He keeps the lands, and the castles and the houses, the ships on the seas, and the contents of the treasure rooms, the mines and the quarries and the granaries and everything.’

‘He has provided for our divorce?’ I ask, stumbling on my speech.

‘How could such a thing happen? How should you divorce?’ she crows. ‘The marriage has been consummated, you are proven to be fertile, you have given him a son. There can be no grounds for a divorce, surely? But in this act of parliament, Richard makes provision for a divorce. Why should he do that, if no divorce could ever take place? Why would he provide for a thing which is impossible?’

My head is whirling. ‘Lady Mother, if you must speak to me at all, then speak plainly.’

She does. She beams at me as if she has good news. She is exultant that she understands this and I don’t. ‘He is providing for the denial of your marriage,’ she says. ‘He has prepared for his marriage to you to be set aside. If it was a true marriage it could not be set aside, there are no possible grounds. So my guess is this: you did not get a full dispensation from the Pope; but married without it. Am I right? Am I right, my turncoat daughter? You are cousins, you are brother- and sister-in-law, I am his godmother. Richard is even a kinsman to your first husband. Your marriage would need a full papal dispensation on many, many counts. But I don’t think you had time to get a full dispensation from the Pope. My guess is that Richard urged you to marry and said that you could get a dispensation later. Am I right? I think I am right for here, in this very act where he shows why he married you – for your fortune – he also gets a ruling that he will keep your lands if he puts you aside. He shows it is possible to put you aside. It all becomes wonderfully clear!’

‘It will be how the act is framed,’ I say wildly. ‘It will be the same for George and Isabel. There will be the same provision for George and Isabel.’

‘No it is not,’ she says. ‘You are right. If George and Isabel had the same terms you could be reassured. But it is not the same for them. There is no provision for the annulment of their marriage. George knows that he cannot annul his marriage to Isabel so he does not provide for it. George knows that they got a dispensation for their kinship and their marriage is valid. It cannot be set aside. But Richard knows that he did not get a full dispensation and his marriage is not fully valid. It can be set aside. He has that in his power. I read the deed very carefully, as any woman might carefully read her own death certificate. My guess is that if I were to send to the Pope and ask him to show the legal dispensation for your marriage he would reply that there was none, full dispensation was never requested. So you are not married, and your son is a bastard and you a harlot.’

I am so stunned that I just stare at her. At first I think that she is raving but then one after another the pieces of what she is saying fall into place. Our driving urgent haste to marry and Richard telling me that we would do so without a dispensation, but get it later. And then I just assumed, like a fool, that the marriage was valid. I just forgot, like a fool, like a fool in the honeymoon month, that being married by an archbishop with the blessing of the king was not as good as a dispensation from the Pope. When I was greeted by his mother, when I was received by the court, when we conceived our son and inherited my lands, I assumed that everything was as it should be and I forgot to question it at all. And now I know that my husband did not forget, did not assume, but has provided that he can keep his fortune if he ever decides to set me aside. If he wants to rid himself of me he has only to say that the marriage was never valid. My marriage to him is based on our vows before God – at least those cannot be denied. But they are not enough. Our marriage depends on his whim. We will be husband and wife as long as he wishes it. At any moment he could denounce our marriage as a sham, and he would be free and I would be utterly shamed.

I shake my head in wonderment. All this time I thought that I was playing myself, both the player and the pawn, and yet I have never been more powerless, never more of a piece in someone else’s game.

‘Richard,’ I say, and it is as if I am calling out to him to rescue me once more.

My mother regards me with silent satisfaction.

‘What shall I do?’ I whisper to myself. ‘What can I do now?’

‘Leave him.’ My mother’s voice is like a slap in the face. ‘Leave him at once and come with me to London and we will overthrow the act, deny the false marriage, and get my lands back.’

I round on her. ‘Don’t you see yet that you will never get your lands back? D’you think you can fight against the King of England himself? Do you imagine you can challenge the three sons of York acting together? Have you forgotten that these were my father’s enemies, Margaret of Anjou’s enemies? And we were fatally allied to Father and to Margaret of Anjou? Have you forgotten that we were defeated? All you want to do is to throw yourself into prison in the Tower, and me alongside you.’

‘You will never be safe as his wife,’ she predicts. ‘He can leave you whenever he wants. If your son dies, and you fail to get another, he can go to a more fertile woman and take your fortune with him.’

‘He loves me.’

‘He may do,’ she concedes. ‘But he wants the lands, this very castle, and an heir more than anything in the world. You have no safety.’

‘I have no safety as your daughter,’ I counter. ‘I know that at least. You married me to a claimant to the throne of England and abandoned me when we had to go into battle. Now you call me to commit treason again.’

‘Leave him!’ she whispers. ‘I will stand by you this time.’

‘And what about my son?’

She shrugs. ‘You will never see him again but as he is a bastard . . . does it matter?’