The King deferred to the Countess and Elizabeth must defer to the King. She was not sure whether she loved her husband. He was not what she had imagined him to be. When the marriage had been suggested she had thought of him as a hero of romance. He was coming to protect her from her Uncle Richard—not that she had ever been greatly in fear of her uncle. She remembered his visiting her father when he was alive and what affection there had been between the two of them, though Uncle Richard had been quite different from her big jovial exuberant father. Quiet, retiring, speaking very little, being intensely serious—that was Uncle Richard. Yet Anne Neville had loved him; and Anne had been a good friend to her.

The truth was that she was in awe of her husband. He had shown her affection and stressed that he was delighted with his marriage, but there was something she did not understand about him, something withdrawn . . . aloof. Behind those eyes were secrets she would never discover. Perhaps, she thought, it was better that she did not.

She was overanxious that she should produce a healthy boy because that was her duty. It seemed, looking back on her life, that it was what she had been born for. All her life she had been buffeted, it seemed, from this one to that. . . . First one marriage was important . . . then another. At one time she had been offered to the son of Margaret of Anjou. That came to nothing because he was affianced to Anne Neville when Anne’s father, the Kingmaker Earl of Warwick, turned his coat and went over to Margaret of Anjou, deserting his old friend and ally Elizabeth’s father. Later she was destined for the Dauphin of France. What a grand opinion she had had of herself then. So had her mother, who had insisted that she be called Madame La Dauphine throughout the Court.

Then of course the King of France had decided to give his son to another bride and that, it was said, so shattered Edward the Fourth that it was one of the causes of his death. And eventually here she was . . . Queen of England.

At least that side of her life was settled. She would like to live quietly now . . . at peace . . . with many children to occupy her days. That was what she wanted and for once it coincided with most other people’s wishes for her, so perhaps there was a chance of its coming to pass.

Perhaps she was wrong to be afraid of her cold-eyed husband. Perhaps she felt so because having lived close to a father like Edward the Fourth, she had expected to have a husband like him—full of good humor, full of laughter, handsome, dressed extravagantly, charming everyone with his smiles and well-chosen words. She remembered an occasion when the Lord of Grauthuse visited the Court and her father wished to do honor to him. There had been a great many entertainments and at one of the balls her father had led her out onto the floor and danced with her. She must have looked tiny beside his great bulk, but how exalted she had felt—particularly when the dance was over and he had lifted her up before them all and kissed her. That must have been one of the happiest moments in her life. She remembered her mother, so beautiful that she seemed like a being from another world, looking on at the scene and smiling benignly—oh yes indeed, the happiest little girl in all the Court . . . in all the world perhaps. But one quickly learned that happiness was a fleeting moment . . . here . . . and gone . . . but it did leave something behind . . . a memory to bring out now and then and glory in.

Now, lying in her bed in this darkened room with so many people about her, listening to the whispering voices, waiting for the next bout of pain, events from the past would keep coming into her mind.

She was thinking of her young brother Edward’s birth, which had taken place on a dark November day in the Sanctuary at Westminster where she with her mother and her sisters were sheltering from their enemies. She would never forget the exultation when it was learned that the new baby was a boy. Her mother had said: “This is the best news the King could have. Now he will regain his throne.” She remembered the little boy’s baptism in that grim place. There was no royal ceremony then, and yet that little boy was the King’s son, the heir to the throne.

Little Edward, she thought. Where are you now? Where is my brother Richard? Little Edward, true King of England, what happened to you?

One must not think of the boys, her mother had said. They must have died. . . . It is the only explanation.

Of course it was the only explanation, for if they lived and were not illegitimate as her Uncle Richard had proclaimed them to be, then Henry had no right to the throne and she was not the true Queen. And he must declare them legitimate for how could the King of England marry a bastard, for she must be one if her brothers were.

One certainly must not think of such things, particularly when one was about to bring a child into the world.

But the thoughts would keep intruding . . . terrible thoughts. There had been a rumor when her aunt, Queen Anne, wife of Uncle Richard was near to death that she, Elizabeth, and the King had conspired together to poison her. It was monstrous. It was absurd. Her Uncle Richard had never shown anything but devotion toward his wife and never never had she, Elizabeth, considered marriage to him. Her own uncle! It was criminal. And all for the sake of being Queen of England!

He must have felt the same horror for when the Queen died he sent her away from Court, and she had been more or less a prisoner at his castle of Sheriff Hutton in the North because he knew that there had been a secret betrothal to Henry Tudor.

That was her life—buffeted from one situation to another. Never was she consulted as to her wishes. They would do with her as best suited them. Received at Court one day, petted and pampered; and the next, banished to exile in what was more or less a prison.

At Sheriff Hutton she had been very much in the company of her cousin Edward, Earl of Warwick, who was the son of the Duke of Clarence—that brother of her father’s who had died in the Tower of London by drowning in a butt of malmsey. Poor Edward, his lot had been very sad. He had been only three years old when his father had died; his mother was already dead and poor little orphan that he was he was happy for a while in the care of his aunt Anne, then Duchess of Gloucester soon to be Queen of England. There had been a time, after the death of King Richard’s son, when Richard had thought to make young Edward his heir but the boy had continued at Sheriff Hutton, so that when Elizabeth had come there, she had found him already installed and a friendship grew up between them.

There they had been together at the time of the fateful battle of Bosworth, which was to change the lives of so many, among them the two who were virtually prisoners at Sheriff Hutton.

Elizabeth had come to Court to marry the new King; and the young Earl of Warwick for no other reason than he was a threat to the new King’s position was brought to London and lodged in the Tower.

Elizabeth was concerned for him; she would have liked to visit him, to ask her husband—or her husband’s mother—for what reason her young cousin Edward was confined in the Tower. What had he done—apart from being the son of the Duke of Clarence who might be said to have claim to the throne?

When she had broached the subject with Henry, that cold veiled look, which she was beginning to know so well, had come into his eyes.

“He is best there,” he had said with a note of finality in his voice.

As the Countess of Richmond had said: “The King will know how best to act.”

But it is wrong . . . wrong . . . she thought . . . to imprison him just because . . .

She tried not to think beyond that, but the thoughts would persist: Just because he has a greater claim to the throne than Henry Tudor. . . . After the sons of Edward the Fourth there is the son of his brother George Duke of Clarence. . . . But where are the sons of Edward the Fourth? Where are my little brothers Edward and Richard?

It was amazing how her thoughts came back and back to that question.

But the pains were starting again, and there was nothing else she could think of.

The King was out hunting when he heard the disturbing news that the child was on the point of being born. He was alarmed. It was too soon. Not only must this child be a boy, he must live. He was sure that if this could come about he would be secure upon the throne.