‘You will have to work with the queen,’ I caution him.
He smiles at me. ‘I don’t fear her either. She will neither enchant nor poison me. She doesn’t matter any more. At her worst she can speak against me; but no-one of importance will listen. The loss of my brother is her loss too, though she will only understand that when she sees she is thrown down. She is a dowager queen, no longer principal advisor to the king. I will have to work with her son, but he is Edward’s boy as well as hers, and I will see that he knows my authority as his uncle. My task must be to take him in hand, guard his birthright, see him to the throne as my brother wanted. I am his regent. I am his guardian. I am his uncle. I am protector of the country and of him too. I shall take him into my keeping.’
‘Shall I come too?’
He shakes his head. ‘No, I will ride fast with my closest friends. Robert Brackenbury has already left to provide horses for us on the road. You wait here until I have Elizabeth Woodville and all the cursed Rivers family in quiet mourning at Windsor and out of the way. I will send for you when I have the seal of office and England is mine to command.’ He smiles. ‘This is my moment of greatness, as well as my moment of grief. For a little while – until the boy is old enough – I will rule England as a king. I will resolve the wars with Scotland and negotiate with France. I will see that justice runs through the land and that good men can get places – men who are not Rivers kinsmen. I shall take the Rivers out of their offices and out of their great estates. I shall set my stamp on England in these years and they will know that I was a good protector and a good brother. And I shall take the boy Edward and teach him what a great man his father was – and what a greater man he could have been if it had not been for that woman.’
‘I’ll come to London as soon as you send for me,’ I promise. ‘And here we will pray for the soul of Edward. He was a great sinner, but a loveable one.’
Richard shakes his head. ‘He was betrayed by the woman that he put in the very highest place in the land,’ he says. ‘He was a fool for love. But I shall see that the finest parts of his legacy are passed on to his boy. I shall make the boy a true grandson to my father.’ He pauses for a moment. ‘And as for Her, I shall send her back to the village she came from,’ he swears, in an unusual moment of bitterness. ‘She shall go to an abbey and live in retirement. We have all seen enough of her and her endless brothers and sisters. The Rivers are finished in England, I shall throw them down.’
Richard rides out that very day. He pauses at York and he and all the city make an oath of loyalty to his nephew. He tells the city that they will honour the late king by their loyalty to his son, and he rides on to London.
Then I hear nothing from him. I am not surprised at the silence, he is on the road to London – what should he write to me about but the slowness of the going and the mud in these spring days? I know that he is meeting the Duke of Buckingham, young Henry Stafford, who was married against his will to the Woodville sister Catherine when they were both children, who passed down the death sentence on George, against his conscience, to oblige his wife and her sister. I know that William Hastings, the king’s true friend, has written to Richard to come at once, and warned him of the enmity of the queen. The great lords will be gathering to protect the boy Edward, the heir to his father’s throne. I know that the Rivers will be wanting to surround and protect their heir from anyone else – but who can refuse Richard, the king’s brother, the named Protector of England?
MIDDLEHAM CASTLE, YORKSHIRE, MAY 1483
Then in the middle of May I get a letter from my husband, written in his own hand and sealed with his private seal. I take it to my chamber away from the noise of the household and I read it by the bright light of the clear glass window.
