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?’
Fiercely, I take her by the arm and march her towards her rooms where the guard stands to one side to let us go in, and will then block the door so she cannot go out.
‘Don’t call him that,’ I say. ‘Don’t you dare ever call him that. I stand by my son, and I stand by my husband. And you can rot in here.’
She wrenches her arm from me. ‘I warn you, I will tell the world that you are not a wife but a harlot, and you will be ruined,’ she spits.
I push her through the door. ‘No you won’t!’ I say. ‘For you will have no pen and no paper, and no way to send messages. No messengers and no visits. You have taught me only that you are my enemy and I will keep you straitly. Go in, Lady Mother. You will not come out again, and no word you say will ever be repeated outside these walls. Go and be dead – for you are dead to the world and dead to me. Go and be dead!’
I slam the door on her and I round on the guard. ‘No-one to see her but her household,’ I say. ‘No messages passed, not even pedlars or tinkers to come to her door. Everyone coming or going to be searched. She sees no-one, she speaks to no-one. D’you understand?’
‘Yes, Your Grace,’ he says.
‘She is an enemy,’ I say. ‘She is a traitor and a liar. She is our enemy. She is enemy to the duke, to me and to our precious son. The duke is a hard man on his enemies. Make sure you are hard on her.’
MIDDLEHAM CASTLE, YORKSHIRE, SPRING 1475
I think I am becoming a slate-hearted woman. The girl that I was – who dreaded her mother’s disapproval, who clung to her big sister, who loved her father like her lord – is now an eighteen-year-old duchess who orders her household to guard her mother like an enemy, and writes with meticulous care to her sister. Richard warns me that his brother George is becoming a dangerously outspoken critic of the king, and that Isabel is known to agree with him; we cannot be seen to associate with them.
He does not have to convince me. I don’t want to associate with them if they are walking into danger. When Isabel writes to me that she is going into confinement again, and would like me to come to her, I refuse. Besides, I cannot face Isabel with our mother in my keeping, gaoled for the rest of her life. I cannot face Isabel with my mother’s terrible threats in my ears and in my dreams every night of my life. Isabel knows now, as I do, that we have declared our own mother a dead woman so that we could take her lands to give to our husbands. I feel that we are murderers, with blood on our hands. And what would I say if Isabel asked me if my mother is kept well? If she endures her imprisonment with patience? What could I say to her if she asked me to let our mother go?
I can never admit that my mother is kept in her tower so that she cannot speak about my marriage. I cannot tell Isabel that not only have our husbands declared our mother dead but that now even I wish her dead. Certainly I wish her silenced forever.
And now I am afraid of what Isabel thinks. I wonder if she has read the act that declares my mother dead with the care that my mother did. I wonder if Isabel has suspicions about my marriage, if one day George will tell everyone that I am the duke’s whore just as much as Elizabeth Woodville is the king’s whore: that there is only one son of York with an honest wife. I dare not see Isabel with these thoughts in my mind, so I write and say that I cannot come, the times are too difficult.
Isabel replies in March that she is sorry I could not come to her but that she has good news. At last she has a boy, a son and heir. He too is to be called Edward, but this boy will be named after the place of his birth and after his grandfather’s earldom. He will be Edward of Warwick, and she asks me be happy for her. I try, but all I think is that if George makes an attempt on the throne he can offer any traitors who might join with him an alternative royal family: a claimant and now an heir. I write to Isabel that I am glad for her and for her son, and that I wish her well. But I don’t send gifts, and I don’t ask to be godmother. I am afraid of what George may be planning for this little boy, this new Warwick, the grandson of Warwick the kingmaker.
Besides, while I have been troubled by my mother’s words, by my fears for my son, the country has been building up to war with France at a breakneck pace, and everything that was done in peace has been forgotten as taxes have to be raised, soldiers recruited, weapons forged, shoes cobbled, liveries sewn. Richard can think of nothing but mustering his army from our estates, drawing on tenants, retainers, household staff and everyone who has offered him their loyalty. Gentlemen have to bring their own tenants from their farms, towns have to raise funds and send apprentices. Richard hurries to recruit his men and join his brothers – both his brothers – as they go to invade France, with the whole of the kingdom for the re-taking, laid out like a rich feast before them.
The three sons of York are to march out in splendour again. Edward has declared himself determined to return to the glory of Henry V. He will be King of France again and the shame of England’s failure under the bad queen and the sleeping king will be forgotten. Richard is cool with me as he prepares to leave. He remembers that the King of France, Louis, proposed and organised my first wedding, called me his pretty cousin and promised me his friendship when I would be Queen of England. Richard checks and double-checks the wagons which will carry everything to France, has his armourer pack two sets of armour, and mounts his horse in the stable yard at the head of about a thousand men. Even more will join him on the march south.