“I will work with Hastings for my son’s safety,” I say. “I will work with all of you and forget all wrongs, to put my son safely on the throne.”
“I too,” says Hastings, and then they all say, one after another. “And I.”
“And I’
“And I.”
“My brother Richard is to be his guardian,” Edward says. I flinch and would pull my hand away, but Hastings has it in a tight grip. “As you wish, Sire,” he says, looking hard at me. He knows that I resent Richard, and the power of the north that he can command.
“Anthony, my brother,” I say in a whisper, prompting the king.
“No,” Edward says stubbornly. “Richard, Duke of Gloucester, is to be his guardian and Protector of the Realm till Prince Edward takes his throne.”
“No,” I whisper. If I could only get the king alone, I could tell him that, with Anthony as protector, we Riverses could hold the country safe. I don’t want my power threatened by Richard. I want my son surrounded by my family. I don’t want any one of the York affinity in the new government that I will make around my son. I want this to be a Rivers boy on England’s throne.
“Do you so swear?” Edward says.
“I do,” they all say.
Hastings looks at me. “Do you swear?” he asks. “Do you swear that, just as we promise to put your son on the throne, you promise to accept Richard, Duke of Gloucester, as protector?”
Of course I do not. Richard is no friend of mine, and he commands half of England already. Why would I trust him to put my son on the throne, when he is a York prince himself? Why would he not take the chance to seize the throne for himself? And he has a son, a boy by little Anne Neville, a boy who could be Prince of Wales in place of my own prince. Why would Richard, who has fought half a dozen battles for Edward, not fight one more for himself?
Edward’s face is gray with fatigue. “Swear it, Elizabeth,” he whispers. “For my sake. For Edward’s sake.”
“Do you think it will make Edward safe?”
He nods. “It is the only way. He will be safe if you and the lords agree, if Richard agrees.”
I am trapped. “I swear it,” I say.
Edward releases his hard grip on our hands and falls back on his pillows. Hastings howls like a dog and puts his face down in the cover and Edward’s hand finds its way blindly to touch his old friend’s head as in a blessing. The others file out, Hastings and I are left on either side of the bed, and the king dying between us.
I have no time for grief, no time to measure my loss. Inside, my heart is breaking for the man I love, the only man whom I ever loved in all my life, the only man whom I will ever love. Edward, the boy who rode up to me when I waited for him. My beloved. I have no time to think about this when my son’s future and my family’s prospects depend on my being hard of will and dry-eyed. That night I write to my brother Anthony.
The king is dead. Bring the new King Edward to London at all possible speed. Bring as many men as you can command as a royal guard-we will need them. Edward foolishly named Richard, Duke of Gloucester, as protector. Richard hates you and me equally for the king’s love and our own power.We must crown Edward at once and defend against the duke, who will never give up the protectorate without a fight. Recruit men as you march, and collect the weapons that are stored in hiding on the way. Prepare yourself for battle, to defend our heir. I will delay announcing the death as long as I can, so Richard, who is still in the north, does not know what is happening yet. So hurry. Elizabeth
What I don’t know is that Hastings is writing to Richard, blotting the page with his tears, but legible enough, to say that the Rivers family are arming around their prince and that, if Richard wants to take up his role as protector, if he wants to guard the young Prince Edward against the boy’s own rapacious family, he had better come at once, with as many men from his heartlands of the north as he can muster, before the prince is kidnapped by his own kin. He writes:
The king left all under your protection-goods, heir, realm. Secure the person of our sovereign Lord Edward V and get you to London before the Riverses flood us out.
What I don’t know, and what I don’t allow myself to think, is that, having learned to fear the constant wars for the throne of England, I am just starting one on my own account, and that at stake this time is the inheritance and even the life of my beloved son.
He kidnaps him.
Richard moves faster and is better armed and more determined than any of us could have imagined. He moves as fast and as decisively as Edward would have done-and he is as ruthless. He waylays my son on his journey to London, dismisses the men from Wales who were loyal to him and to me, arrests my brother Anthony, my son Richard Grey, and our cousin Thomas Vaughan, and takes Edward into his so-called safekeeping. My boy is not quite thirteen, in God’s name. My boy is still a boy of only twelve. His voice is still fluting, his chin is smooth as a girl’s, he has the softest fair down on his upper lip that you can only see when his face is in profile, against the light. And when Richard sends his loyal servants away, his uncle whom he idolizes, the half brother he loves, he defends them with a little quaver in his voice. He says that he is certain that his father would have placed only good men about him, and that he wants to keep them in his service.
He is only a boy. He has to stand up to a battle-hardened man who is determined to do wrong. When Richard says that my own brother Anthony, who has been my boy’s friend and guardian and protector for all his life, and my youngest Grey son Richard, must leave his side, my little boy tries to defend them. He says that he is certain that his uncle Anthony is a good man and a fine guardian. He says his half brother Richard has been a kinsman and a comrade to him, that he knows that his uncle Anthony has never done anything but that suits the great knight, the chivalrous knight that he is. But Duke Richard tells him that all will be resolved and in the meantime he and the Duke of Buckingham, my former ward, whom I married against his will to my sister Katherine, and who now turns up in this surprising company, will be the prince’s companions to London.
He is only a little boy. He has always been gently guarded. He does not know how to stand up to his uncle Richard, dressed in black and with a face like thunder, two thousand men in his train and ready to fight. So he lets his uncle Anthony go; he lets his brother Richard go. How could he save them? He cries bitterly. They tell me that. He cries like a child when no one will obey him, but he lets them go.
MAY 1483
Elizabeth, my seventeen-year-old daughter, comes running through the shouting and the chaos of Westminster Palace. “Mother! Lady Mother! What’s happening?”
“We’re going into sanctuary,” I snap. “Hurry. Get everything you want and all the clothes for the children. And make sure they bring the carpets out of the royal rooms and the tapestries. Get all that taken into Westminster Abbey-we are going into sanctuary again. And your jewelry box, and your furs. And then go through the royal apartments and make sure they are stripping them of everything of value.”
“Why?” she asks, her pale mouth trembling. “What has happened now? What about Baby?”
“Your brother the king has been taken by his uncle the lord protector,” I say. My words are like knives and I see them strike her. She admires her uncle Richard; she always has done. She was hoping he would care for all of us-protect us in truth. “Your father’s will has put my enemy in charge of my son. We will see what kind of a lord protector he makes. But we had better see it from safety. We go into sanctuary today, right this minute.”