I say nothing. The queen, though pointedly cool with Isabel and me, is icy with George. And her great confidant, her brother Anthony Woodville, smiles when George goes by as if he finds my brother-in-law’s tinderbox temper amusing, and worthy of very little respect.
‘Well, at any rate, I can come for the last three weeks,’ I say. ‘But send for me if you are ill. I will come at once if you are ill, whatever anyone says, and at least I shall be there for his birth.’
‘You are calling the baby “him”!’ she says gleefully. ‘You think it will be a boy too.’
‘How can I not, when you call it a boy all the time? What name will you give him?’
She smiles. ‘We are calling him Richard for his grandfather, of course,’ she says. ‘And we hope your husband will stand as his godfather.’
I smile. ‘Then you will have an Edward and a Richard, just like the royal princes,’ I observe.
‘That’s what George says!’ she crows. ‘He says that if the king and the queen and her family were to disappear off the face of the earth then there would still be a Prince Edward Plantagenet to take the throne and a Prince Richard Plantagenet to come after him.’
‘Yes, but it’s hard to imagine what disaster could wipe the king and the queen off the face of the earth,’ I say, lowering my voice cautiously.
Isabel giggles. ‘I think my husband imagines it every day.’
‘Then who is doing the ill-wishing?’ I ask, thinking to score a point. ‘Not Her!’
At once she looks grave and turns away. ‘George is not ill-wishing the king,’ she says quietly. ‘That would be treason. I was speaking in jest.’
WESTMINSTER PALACE, LONDON, AUTUMN 1476
I should have taken a warning from that, but when we get back to London I am amazed at how George behaves around the court while Isabel rarely comes out of their private rooms to join everyone, as if to snub the queen and her household. George walks surrounded by his own particular friends; he is never seen without men of his choosing, and they stand guard around him, almost as if he feared attack within the high walls of Westminster Palace.
He comes to dinner in the great hall, as we all do, but once he is seated, in full view of everyone, he makes no pretence at eating. They set dishes before him and he glowers, as if he has been insulted, and does not even pick up his knife or spoon. He looks at the servers as if he fears the dish has been poisoned, and he lets everyone know that he eats only what his own cooks prepare, in his private rooms.
Any time of the day you can be certain to find the doors to the Clarence apartments bolted shut with a double guard on the door as if he thinks someone might storm the rooms and kidnap Isabel. When I visit her, I have to wait outside the double doors for someone to call my name, then a shouted order comes from behind the closed door, and the guards lower their pikes and let me in.
‘He is behaving like a fool,’ my husband rules. ‘It is a performance of suspicion like a masque, and if Edward stands for it because he is lazy and indulgent with George, he can be very sure that the queen will not.’
‘He cannot really think that he is endangered?’
Richard scowls. ‘Anne, I really don’t know what he thinks. He has not spoken to me about Edward since I told him that I took his warnings to be treason. But he speaks to many others. He speaks ill of the queen—’
‘What does he say of her?’
‘He constantly speaks ill of the king.’
‘Yes, but what does he say?’
Richard turns and stares out of the mullioned window. ‘I can hardly repeat it,’ he says. ‘I wouldn’t stoop to repeat it. Let me leave it that he says the worst thing one can say of a man, and the worst thing one can say of a woman.’
I don’t press him, as I have learned that his sense of honour is always alert. Besides, I don’t need to ask, I can guess. George will have been saying that his brother Edward is a bastard – slandering and dishonouring his own mother in the attempt to show that he should be king. And he will be saying that Elizabeth got into the king’s bed by witchcraft and that their marriage is not holy or valid, and that their children are bastards too.
‘And I am afraid that George is taking money from Louis of France.’
‘Everyone is taking money from Louis of France.’
Richard laughs shortly. ‘None more than the king. No – I don’t mean the pensions, I mean that Louis is paying George secretly to behave like this, mustering men and reciting his claims to the throne. I am afraid Louis will pay George to make an attempt on the throne. It would suit him to have the country at war again. God knows what George is thinking.’
I don’t say that George will be thinking what George is always thinking – how he can get the most advantage from any situation. ‘What is the king thinking?’
‘He laughs,’ Richard says. ‘He laughs and says that George is a faithless dog, and that our mother will speak to him, and that after all, there is little that George can do except curse and glower.’
