‘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

I hear Elizabeth’s whispered counsel in this, and I grit my teeth. If she can persuade her husband to call this victory against the Scots a treasonous failure, then they will summon Richard to London to answer for it. The last royal brother accused of treason had a trial without a defence and choked away his life in a vat of the queen’s favourite wine.

To comfort myself, I go to the schoolroom and sit at the back while the children wade through their Latin grammars, reciting the verbs that were taught to Isabel and me so long ago in the schoolroom at Calais. I can almost hear Isabel’s voice, even now, and her triumphant crow when she gets through them without making a mistake. My boy Edward is nine years old, seated beside him is Isabel’s daughter, Margaret, nine this year, and beside her is her brother Edward, who we all call Teddy, just seven.

Their tutor breaks off and says they can stop work for a little while to greet me and the three of them gather round my chair. Margaret leans against me and I put my arm around her and look at the two handsome boys. I know that these may be all the children I ever have. I am only twenty-six years old, I should be ready to bear half a dozen more children, but they never seem to come, and nobody, not the physicians, the midwives nor the priest, can tell me why not. In the absence of any others, these three are my children, and Margaret, who is as pretty and as passionate as her mother, is my darling and the only daughter I expect to raise.

‘Are you all right, Lady Mother?’ she asks sweetly.

‘I am,’ I say, brushing her unruly brown hair out of her eyes.

‘Can we play at being at court?’ she asks. ‘Will you pretend to be queen and we can be presented to you?’

The return of the game that I used to play with my sister is too poignant for me today. ‘Not this morning,’ I say. ‘And anyway, perhaps you don’t need to practise. Perhaps you children won’t go to court. Perhaps you will live like your father does: as a great lord on his lands, free of court and far from the queen.’

‘Won’t we have to go to court for Christmas?’ Edward asks me with a worried frown on his little face. ‘I thought that Father said that we would all three have to go to court for Christmas this year?’

‘No,’ I promise myself. ‘Your father and I will go if the king commands it; but you three will stay safe here, at Middleham.’


WESTMINSTER PALACE, LONDON, WINTER 1482–3

‘I don’t,’ I say bluntly. ‘I will never bring them while she is on the throne. I won’t put Isabel’s children into her keeping. Look at the Mowbray child – married to Prince Richard, her fortune signed over to the Rivers family, and dead before her ninth birthday.’