The Kingmaker's Daughter полностью

He has joined with two evil women, each as bad as the other. Elizabeth Woodville has seduced him to her side, and she has made a hags’ alliance with Margaret Beaufort, who carried your train at our coronation, who was always so good and loving to you, the wife of my friend, the trusted Lord Thomas Stanley, whom I made Lord Chamberlain.

Falseness upon deceit.

Margaret has betrothed her son, Henry Tudor, to Elizabeth, the Rivers girl – and they are all up against us, mustering their affinity, sending for Henry Tudor to sail from Brittany. Henry Stafford Duke of Buckingham, the one man I would have trusted with my life, has turned his coat and is on their side. He is now raising his forces in Wales, and will march into England soon. I leave at once for Leicester.

Worst of all – even worse than all of this – Buckingham is telling everyone that the princes are dead and by my hand. This means the Rivers will fight to put Tudor and Princess Elizabeth on the throne. This means that the country – and history – names me a murderer, a killer of children, a tyrant who turns on his brother’s son and takes his own blood. I cannot bear this slur on my name and honour. This is a slander which will stick like pitch. Pray for me and for our cause – Richard.

I do as he bids me. I go straight to the chapel without a word to anyone and I go down on my knees, my eyes fixed on the crucifix above the rood screen. I gaze at it unblinking, as if I would burn away from my sight the letter which told me that the people we had counted as friends – the handsome and charming Duke of Buckingham, the winner Lord Thomas Stanley, his wife Margaret who was so kind and welcoming to me when I first came to London, who took me to the great wardrobe and helped me to pick out my coronation gown – all these are false. Bishop Morton, whom I have loved and admired for years – false too. But the one sentence that stays with me, that rings in my ears through my muttered Ave Maria, which I repeat over and over again as if to drown out the sound of the few words, is – Buckingham is telling everyone that the princes are dead and by my hand.

It is dark when I rise to my feet, the early dark of autumn, and I am cold and chilled as the priest brings in the candles and the household follows him in for Compline. I bow my head as he goes past but I stumble out of the chapel into the cold evening air. A white owl hoots and goes low overhead and I duck as if it is a spirit passing me by, a warning from the witch who is massing her forces against us.

Buckingham is telling everyone that the princes are dead and by my hand.

I had thought that if the princes were dead then there would be no other claimant to the throne, that my husband’s time on the throne would be untroubled, and my son would take his place when God saw fit to call us away. Now I see that every man is a kingmaker. A throne is not empty for a moment before someone is being measured for the crown. And fresh princes spring up like weeds in a crop as soon as the rumour goes out that those who wear the crown are dead:

Buckingham is telling everyone that the princes are dead and by my hand.