Philippa Gregory - The Kingmaker's Daughter

He kneels before me and takes my thin hands in his big ones. ‘I remember.’

‘I am dying, Sir Robert,’ I say frankly. ‘And I would know what I have to confess when I receive the last rites. You can tell me the truth. Did you act on my wishes? Did you act to save Richard from danger, as I know you will always do? Did you take my words for an order?’

There is a long moment of silence. Then he shakes his big head. ‘I couldn’t do it,’ he says quietly. ‘I wouldn’t do it.’

I release him and sit back in my chair. He sits back on his heels. ‘Are they alive or dead?’ I ask.

He moves his big shoulders in a shrug. ‘Your Grace, I don’t know. But if I was looking for them I would not start in the Tower. They’re not there.’

‘Where would you start looking?’

His eyes are on the floor beneath his knees. ‘I would start looking somewhere in Flanders,’ he says. ‘Somewhere near their aunt Margaret of York’s houses. Somewhere that your husband’s family always send their children when they fear for them. Richard and George were sent to Flanders when they were boys. George Duke of Clarence was sending his son overseas. It’s what the Plantagenets always do when their children are in danger.’

‘You think they got away?’ I whisper.

‘I know they’re not in the Tower, and I know they were not killed on my watch.’

I put my hand to my throat where I can feel my pulse hammering. The poison is thick in my veins, filling my lungs so I can hardly breathe. If I could catch my breath I would laugh at the thought that Edward’s sons live, though mine is dead. That perhaps when Richard looks for an heir, it will not be Elizabeth the princess but one of the Rivers boys who steps forwards.

‘You are sure of it?’

‘They are not buried in the Tower,’ he says. ‘I am sure of that. And I did not put them to death. I did not think it was your command, and anyway, I would not have obeyed such an order.’

I give a shuddering sigh. ‘So, my conscience is clear?’

He bows. ‘And mine too.’

I go to my bedchamber as I hear the hunting party return; I cannot bear the noise of their talking and seeing their bright faces. My maids help me into bed and then the door opens and Princess Elizabeth slips in quietly. ‘I came to see if there is anything you want,’ she says.

I shake my head on the richly embroidered pillow. ‘Nothing,’ I say. ‘Nothing.’

She hesitates. ‘Shall I leave you? Or shall I sit with you?’

‘You can stay,’ I say. ‘I have something I should tell you.’

She waits, standing near the bed, her hands clasped, her young face alert but patient.

‘It is about your brothers . . .’

At once her face lights up. ‘Yes?’ she breathes.

Nobody could think for a moment that this is the face of grief. She knows something, I know that she does. Her mother has done something or managed something or saved them somehow. She may once have thought them dead, and cursed the man that killed them. But this is a girl who expects to hear good news of her brothers. This is not a girl crushed by loss, she knows they are safe.

‘I think I know nothing more than you,’ I say shrewdly. ‘But I have been assured that they were not killed in the Tower, and they are not held in the Tower.’

She does not dare to do more than nod.

‘I take it you are sworn to secrecy?’

Again, that infinitesimal movement of the head.

‘Then perhaps you will see your Edward again in this life. And I will see mine in heaven.’

She sinks to her knees by my bed. ‘Your Grace, I pray that you get well,’ she says earnestly.

‘At any rate, you can tell your mother that I had no part in the loss of her sons,’ I say. ‘You can tell her that our feud is over. My father killed hers, my sister is dead, her son and mine are buried, and I am going too.’

‘I will give her this message, if you wish. But she has no enmity for you. I know that she does not.’

‘She had an enamel box,’ I say quietly. ‘And in it a scrap of paper? And on that scrap of paper two names written in her blood?’

The girl meets my eyes. ‘I don’t know,’ she says steadily.

‘Were those names Isabel and Anne?’ I ask. ‘Has she been my enemy and the enemy of my sister? Have I rightly feared her for all these years?’

‘George and Warwick were the names,’ she says simply. ‘The paper was from my grandfather’s last letter. Her father wrote to her mother the night before he was beheaded. My mother swore she would be revenged upon George and your father who caused his death. Those were the names. None other. And she was revenged.’

I lean back on my pillow and I smile. Isabel did not die of the Woodville woman’s curse. My father died on the battlefield, George she had executed. She does not hold me in thrall. She has probably known for years that her sons were safe. So perhaps my son did not die under her curse. I did not bring her curse down on him. I am free of that fear too. Perhaps I am not dying of her poison.

‘These are mysteries,’ I say to Princess Elizabeth. ‘I was taught to be queen by Margaret of Anjou, and perhaps I have taught you how to be queen in turn. This is fortune’s wheel indeed.’ With my forefinger I draw a circle in the air, the sign of fortune’s wheel. ‘You can go very high and you can sink very low, but you can rarely turn the wheel at your own bidding.’

The room starts to grow very dark. I wonder where the time has gone. ‘Try and be a good queen,’ I say to her, though the words are meaningless to me now. ‘Is it night already?’

She gets up and goes to the window. ‘No. It’s not night. But something very strange is happening.’

‘Tell me what you can see?’

‘Shall I help you to the window?’

‘No, no, I am too tired. Just tell me what you can see.’

‘I can see the sun is being blotted out, as if someone were sliding a plate across it.’ She shades her eyes. ‘It is bright as ever but this dark sphere is moving across it.’ She looks at the bed, blinking as she is dazzled. ‘What can it mean?’

‘A movement of the planets?’ I suggest.

‘The river has gone very still. The fishing boats are rowing for shore and the men are pulling up the boats as if they fear a high tide. It’s very quiet.’ She listens for a moment. ‘All the birds have stopped singing, even the seagulls aren’t crying. It is as if night has come in a moment.’

She looks down into the garden. ‘The lads have come from the stables and the kitchens, they are all looking up at the sky, trying to see it. Is it a comet, do you think?’

‘What is it like?’

‘The sun is like a ring of gold, and the black plate hides it except for the rim which is blazing like a fire, too bright to look at. But everything else is black.’

She steps back from the window and I can see the small diamond-shaped panes are as black as night.

‘I’ll light the candles,’ she says hastily. ‘It’s so dark. It could be midnight.’

She takes a taper from the fireplace and lights candles in the sconces either side of the fire and at the table beside my bed. Her face in the candlelight is pale. ‘What can it mean?’ she asks. ‘Is it a sign that Henry Tudor is coming? Or that my lord will have victory? It cannot be – can it? – the end of days?’

I wonder if she is right and this is the end of the world, if Richard will be the last Plantagenet king that England ever has, and I will see my son Edward this very night.

‘I don’t know,’ I say.

She goes back to her station at the window. ‘It’s so dark,’ she says. ‘As dark as it has ever been. The river is dark and all the fishermen are lighting their torches on the riverbank, and all of the ships have pulled in. The kitchen boys have gone back inside. It is as if everyone is afraid of the darkness.’