Philippa Gregory - The Kingmaker's Daughter

‘Richard,’ I say softly.

‘Did she call him after your father?’ she asks, naming the murderer of her father, of her brother, the accuser of her mother, her lifelong enemy.

‘Yes,’ I say, not knowing what else I can say.

‘What a pity,’ she repeats.

BAYNARD’S CASTLE, LONDON, MARCH 1478

I think I have won. That evening and in the days after I silently celebrate my victory. I celebrate without words, without even a smile. I have lost my sister; but her children will be in my keeping and I will love them as my own. I will tell them that their mother was a beauty and their father was a hero, and that Isabel put them into my keeping.

I write to Warwick Castle and tell them that as soon as the roads are clear enough for the journey the two children shall go to Middleham. Weeks later, delayed by snow and storms, I get a reply from the castle to tell me that Margaret and Edward have set off, well-wrapped in two litters with their nursemaids. A week later I hear from Middleham that they have safely arrived. I have Isabel’s children behind the thick walls of our best castle, and I swear that I will keep them safe.

I go to my husband while he is hearing petitions in his presence chamber in Baynard’s Castle. I wait patiently while the dozens of people present their applications and their grievances and he listens carefully and deals justly with each one. Richard is a great lord. He understands, as my father did, that each man has to be allowed to have his say, that each one will give his fealty if he can be sure that a lord will repay him with protection. He knows that wealth is not in land but in the men and women who work the land. Our wealth and our power depend upon the love of the people who serve us. If they will do anything for Richard – as they would do anything for my father – then he has an army on call, for whatever need. This is true power, this is real wealth.

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.