I am open-mouthed. ‘She is changing sides?’
He smiles wryly. ‘We can make peace, she and I,’ he says. ‘I have offered to release her to house arrest, somewhere of my choosing, and she has agreed to go. She can’t stay in sanctuary for the rest of her life. She wants to get out. And those girls are growing up as pale as little lilies in shade. They need to be out in the fields. The older girl is simply exquisite, like a statue in pearl. If we set her free she will bloom like a rose.’
I can taste jealousy in my mouth like the bile that rushes under my tongue when I am about to be sick. ‘And where is this rose to bloom?’ I ask acidly. ‘Not in one of my houses. I will not have her under my roof.’
He is looking at the fire but now he turns his beloved dark face to me. ‘I thought we might take the three oldest girls to court,’ he says. ‘I thought they might serve in your household, if you will agree. These are Edward’s daughters, York girls, they are your nieces. You should love them as you do little Margaret. I thought you might keep them under your eye and when the time comes we will find good husbands for them and see them settled.’
I lean back against the stone windowframe and feel the welcome coldness against my shoulders. ‘You want them to come and live with me?’ I ask him. ‘The Woodville daughters?’
He nods, as if I might find this an agreeable plan. ‘You couldn’t ask for a more beautiful maid in waiting than the Princess Elizabeth,’ he says.
‘Mistress Elizabeth,’ I correct him through my teeth. ‘You declared her mother a whore and her a bastard. She is Mistress Elizabeth Grey.’
He laughs shortly as if he had forgotten. ‘Oh yes.’
‘And the mother?’
‘I will settle her in the country. John Nesfield is as trustworthy as any of my men. I will put her and the younger girls in his house and he can watch them for me.’
‘They will be under arrest?’
‘They will be kept close enough.’
‘Kept in the house?’ I press. ‘Locked in?’
He shrugs. ‘As Nesfield sees fit, I suppose.’
I understand at once that Elizabeth Woodville is to be a lady of a fine country house once more and her daughters will live as maids in waiting at my court. They are to be as free as joyous birds in the air and Elizabeth Woodville is to triumph again.
‘When is all this going to happen?’ I ask, thinking he will say in the spring. ‘In April? May?’
‘I thought the girls might come to court at once,’ he says.
I round on him at that, I leap from my window seat and stand. ‘This is our first Christmas as king and queen,’ I say, my voice trembling with passion. ‘This is the court where we stamp ourselves on the kingdom, where people will see us in our crowns and tell of our clothes and entertainments and joy. This is when people start to make a legend about our court and say it is as beautiful and as joyous and as noble as Camelot. You want Elizabeth Woodville’s daughters to sit at the table and eat their Christmas dinner at this – our first Christmas? Why not tell everyone that nothing has really changed? It is you on the throne instead of Edward but the Rivers still hold court and the witch still holds sway, and the blood of my sister and your brother, and their little baby, is still on her hands, and nobody accuses her.’
He comes to me and takes me by the elbow, feeling me tremble with rage. ‘No,’ he says gently. ‘No. I hadn’t thought. I see it would not do. This is your court, not hers. I know that. You are queen, I know that, Anne. Be calm. Nobody will spoil your time. They can come after Christmas, later when all the agreements have been properly drawn up. We need not have them earlier, spoiling the feast.’
He soothes me, as he has always been able to do. ‘Spoiling it?’
‘They would spoil it.’ He lulls me with the sweetness of his voice. ‘I don’t want them there. I only want to be with you. They can stay in their cellar until after Christmas and only when you think the time is right will we release them.’
I am quietened by his touch like a gentled mare. ‘Very well,’ I breathe. ‘But not before.’
‘No,’ he says. ‘Not until you think the time is right. It shall be you who judges the right time, Anne. You are Queen of England and you shall have no-one in your household but those of your choice. You shall only have the women that you like around you. I would not force you to have women that you fear or dislike.’
‘I don’t fear them,’ I correct him. ‘I am not jealous of them.’
‘No indeed,’ he says. ‘And you have no cause at all. You shall invite them when you are ready and not before.’
We spend Christmas in London without the children. I had hoped up to the very last days of November that they would come. Edward is well enough but our physician advised that he is not strong enough for a long journey on bad roads. They said that he should stay at Middleham, where our physicians, who know his health, will take care of him. They say that such a long journey in such bad weather would be bound to strain his health. I think of little Prince Richard when I last saw him, just the age of my Edward, but a good head taller and rosy-cheeked and full of high spirits. Edward does not bubble with life, he does not always have to be up and doing. He will sit quietly with a book, and he goes to bed without arguing. In the morning he finds it hard to rise.
He eats well enough, but the cooks take great trouble to send up dainty dishes with tempting sauces. I have never once seen him go with Margaret and Teddy down to the kitchens to steal offcuts of pastry from the table, or beg the bakers for a bread roll, hot from the oven. He never filches cream from the dairy, he never loiters for trimmings from the roasting spit.
I try not to fear for him; he does his schoolwork with pleasure, he rides out on his horse with his cousins, he will play at tennis with them, or archery, or bowls, but he is always the first to stop the game, or turn away and sit for a few moments, or laugh and say that he has to catch his breath. He is not sturdy, he is not strong, he is in fact just as you would expect a boy to be if he had spent his life under a curse from a distant witch.
Of course I don’t know if she has ever cursed my son. But sometimes when he sits at my feet and leans his head against my knees and I touch his head, I think that since her ill-will has blighted my life, I would not be surprised to know that it has burdened my son. And now that Richard speaks of a new curse laid down by the witch Elizabeth and her apprentice-witch daughter, on the murderer of their princes, I fear even more that the Rivers’ malice is directed at me and my boy.
I command the physicians at Middleham to send me a letter every three days telling me how the children are. The letters get through the snowy weather in the North and the thickly bogged roads in the south and assure me that Edward is in good spirits, playing with his cousins, enjoying the wintry weather, sledging and skating on the ice. He is well. I can be of good heart. He is well.
Even without the children Richard is determined that we shall have a merry Christmas at court. We are a victorious court; everyone who comes to feast, to dance, or merely to watch knows that this first Christmas of our reign is made more joyful by knowing that when we were challenged – challenged in the first weeks of our reign by the former queen herself, and an untried boy who calls himself king – we were supported. England does not want Henry Tudor, England has forgotten the Rivers boys, is content to leave the Woodville queen in sanctuary. She is finished. That reign is over and this Christmas proclaims that ours is begun.
Every day we have entertainments, hunts, boating, contests, jousts, and dances. Richard commands the best musicians and playwrights to court, poets come and write songs for us and the chapel is filled with sacred music from the choir. Every day there is a new amusement for the court, and every day Richard gives me a little gift – a priceless pearl brooch or a pair of scented leather gloves, three new riding horses to take North for the children, or a great luxury – a barrel of preserved oranges from Spain. He showers me with gifts and at night comes to my grand apartments and spends the night with me, w
rapping me in his arms as if only by holding me tightly can he believe that he has indeed made me queen.
Sometimes in the night I wake, and look at the tapestry which is hung over the bed, woven with scenes of gods and goddesses victorious and lolling on clouds. I think that I too should feel victorious. I am where my father wanted me to be. I am the greatest lady in the land – never again need I fear treading on someone’s train – for now everyone follows me. But just as I am smiling at that thought, my mind goes to my son in the cold dales of Yorkshire, to his slight frame and the pallor of his skin. I think of the witch who still lives in sanctuary and will be celebrating her release this Christmas, and I take Richard in my embrace and feel for his sword arm, gently spanning it with my hand, as he is sleeping, to see if it is indeed wasting and withering as he thinks. I can’t tell. Is Elizabeth Woodville a defeated widow whom I can pity? Or is she the greatest enemy to my family and to my peace?
GREENWICH PALACE, LONDON, MARCH 1484
Spring comes early to London, weeks earlier than in our northern home, and when I wake in the morning I can hear the cocks crowing and the dairy cows lowing as they are driven through the streets to the meadows beside the river. With spring comes the parliament and they pass a law which recognises that Edward was married to another woman before his false wedding with the Woodville woman, and so all their children are bastards. It is law, the parliament has passed it, and it must be so. Elizabeth Woodville is Elizabeth Woodville once again, or she can call herself by the name of her first husband – her only true husband – and be Lady Elizabeth Grey, and her girls can cower under that name too. Richard presents his agreement with the Woodville woman, who is released into the care of Sir John Nesfield with her two youngest girls and they go off to live in his beautiful country house at Heytesbury, Wiltshire.
He sends Richard regular reports and I have sight of one which tells of the queen – in a slip of the pen he calls her the queen, as if I did not exist, as if the law had not been passed – riding and dancing, commanding a troop of local musicians, attending the local church, educating her girls, and interfering in the running of the home farm, changing the dairy and moving the beehives, advising him as to the furnishing, and planting a private garden with her favourite flowers. He sounds flustered and pleased. She sounds as if she is revelling in being a country lady once more. Her girls are running wild, Sir John has given them ponies and they are galloping all over Wiltshire. The tone of Sir John’s report is indulgent, as if he is enjoying having his house turned upside down by a beautiful woman and two energetic girls. Most importantly he reports that she attends chapel daily and that she receives no secret messages. I should be glad that she is neither plotting nor casting spells, but I cannot rid myself of the wish that she was still in sanctuary, or locked in the Tower like her sons, or disappeared altogether like them too. There is no doubt in my mind that I would be at peace, that England would be at peace, if she had died with her husband or disappeared with her boys.
The three oldest Rivers girls come to court with their heads held high, as if their mother were not guilty of treason against us. Richard tells me that they will pay their respects to me in the morning, after chapel and breakfast, and I am conscious of arranging myself in the beautiful rooms of Greenwich Palace with my back to the bright light from the windows, in a dark gown of red and a high headdress of deep ruby lace. My ladies sit around me and the faces that they turn to the slowly opening door are not friendly. No woman wants three pretty girls beside her for comparison, and these are Rivers girls looking for husbands, as Rivers girls always are. Besides, half the court has knelt to these girls, and the other half kissed their baby fists and swore they were the prettiest princesses that had ever been seen. Now they are maids in waiting to a new queen, and they will never wear a crown again. Everyone is anxious that they understand their dive from grandeur to pauperdom, and everyone secretly hopes that they will misunderstand, and make fools of themselves. It is a cruel court, as all courts are, and nobody in my rooms has any reason to love the daughters of Elizabeth Woodville who queened it over all of us.
The door opens and the three of them come in. At once I understand why Richard forgave the mother and ordered the girls to court. It was for love of his brother. The oldest, Elizabeth, now eighteen years old, is the most complete combination of her mother’s exquisite beauty and her father’s warmth. I would know her anywhere for Edward’s daughter. She has his easy grace: she smiles around the room as if she thinks she is greeting friends. She has his height: she is tall and slender like a sapling from the oak tree where he was bewitched. She has his colouring: her mother was so fair that her hair is almost silvery, but this Elizabeth is darker like her father, with hair like a wheatfield, gold and bronze, one curl escaping from her headdress and coiling in a ringlet falling to her shoulder. I imagine that when she lets down her hair it is a tumble of honey curls.
She is wearing a gown of green as if she is spring herself, coming into this court of world-worn adults. It is a simple gown with long deep sleeves, and instead of a gold chain she has a green leather belt knotted around her slim hips. I imagine there was no money left to buy the girls gold or jewels for them to come to court. Elizabeth Woodville may have robbed half the treasury, but rebellions are expensive affairs and she will have spent all her money arming men against us. Her daughter, Princess Elizabeth – or, as I must remember to say, Mistress Elizabeth Grey – wears a neat cap on her head, nothing ostentatious, nothing like the little coronet she used to wear as the favoured oldest princess of indulgent parents, and the promised bride of the heir of France. Behind her come her sisters. Cecily is another beauty, only this Rivers girl is dark-haired and dark-eyed. She flaunts a merry smile, full of confidence, and wears a dark red that suits her. Behind her comes little Anne, the youngest, in palest blue like the edges of a sea, fair like her eldest sister; but quiet with none of the strutting confidence of the other two.
They stand in a row before me as if they were sentries presenting their arms, and I wish to God that I could send them back to the guardroom. But they are here, and they are to be greeted not as nieces but as wards. I rise from my throne and my ladies rise too, though the rustle of a dozen costly gowns does not trouble Elizabeth. She looks from one to another as if she would price the material. I can feel myself flush. She was raised at court by a queen who was a famous beauty, and I don’t need to see her scornful smile to know that she finds us drab. Even I, in my ruby gown, am a pale queen beside her memory of her mother. I know that for her, I will never be anything but a shadow.
‘I welcome you three, Mistress Elizabeth, Cecily and Anne Grey, to my court,’ I say. I see Elizabeth’s eyes flash as I give her the name of her mother’s first husband. She will have to get used to this. Parliament itself has declared her a bastard, and her parents’ marriage a bigamous sham. She will have to get used to being called ‘Mistress Grey’ and not ‘Your Grace’.
‘You will find me an easy queen to serve,’ I say pleasantly, as if we have never met before, as if I have not kissed their cool cheeks a dozen times. ‘And this a happy court.’ I sit down and extend my hand and the three of them, one after another, curtsey and kiss my cold fingers.
I think the welcome has been done well enough and is over as the door opens and my husband Richard chooses this moment to come in. Of course he knows that the girls are being presented this morning. So he has come to make sure that everything goes well. I conceal my irritation in my smile of welcome.
‘And here is the king . . .’
Nobody is listening to me. As the doors opened Elizabeth turned and when she sees my husband she rises from her curtsey and goes light-footed towards him.
‘Your Grace, my lord uncle!’ she says.
Her sisters, quick as weasels, snake after her: ‘My lord uncle,’ they chorus.
He beams at them, draws Elizabeth to him and kisses her on both cheeks. ‘Looking beautiful as I knew you would,’ he assures her. The other two get a kiss on
the forehead. ‘And how is your mother?’ he asks Elizabeth conversationally, as if he inquires after the health of a witch and a traitor every morning. ‘Does she like Heytesbury?’
She simpers. ‘She likes it well, my lord uncle!’ she says. ‘She writes to me that she is changing all the furniture and digging up the gardens. Sir John may find he has a difficult tenant.’
‘Sir John may find his house improved beyond measure,’ he assures her, as if bold-faced impertinence needs reassurance. He turns to me: ‘You must be glad to have your nieces in your rooms,’ he says, a tone in his voice that reminds me that I must agree.
‘I am delighted,’ I say coolly. ‘I am so delighted.’
I cannot deny that they are pretty girls. Cecily is a ninny and a gossip, Anne barely out of the schoolroom, and I see that she has lessons in Greek and Latin every day in the morning. Elizabeth is a perfect piece of work. If you were to draw up the qualities of a Princess of England she would match the pattern. She is well read – her uncle Anthony Woodville and her mother took care of that, she had the new printed books made by their bookmaker Caxton dedicated to her when she was barely out of the cradle. She speaks three languages fluently and can read four. She plays musical instruments and sings with a sweet low voice of surprising quality. She can sew exquisite fine work and I believe she can turn out a shirt or hem a fine linen shift with confidence. I have not seen her in the kitchen since I – as the daughter of the greatest earl in England, and now queen of my country – never have much cause to go into the kitchen. But she, having been cooped up in sanctuary, and the daughter of a countrywoman, tells me that she can cook roasted meats and stewed cuts, and dainty dishes of fricassees and sweetmeats. When she dances no-one can take their eyes off her; she moves to the music as if it is inspiring her, half-closing her eyes and letting her body respond to the notes. Everyone always wants to dance with her because she makes any partner look graceful. When she is given a part in a play she throws herself into it and learns her lines and delivers them as if she believed them herself. She is a good sister to the two in her care, and sends little gifts to the ones who are in Wiltshire. She is a good daughter, writing weekly to her mother. Her service to me as a lady in waiting is immaculate; I cannot fault her.
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