‘There was no need for me to kill them,’ he says. To my ears, his voice is an exculpatory whine. ‘I had them safe. I had them declared bastards. The country supported my coronation, my progress was a success, we were accepted everywhere, acclaimed. I was going to send them to Sheriff Hutton and keep them there, safe. That’s why I wanted it rebuilt. In a few years’ time, when they were young men, I was going to release them and honour them as my nephews, command them to come to court to serve us. Keep them under my eye, treat them as royal kinsmen . . .’ He breaks off. ‘I was going to be a good uncle to them, as I am to George’s boy and his girl. I was going to care for them.’
‘It would never have worked!’ I cry out. ‘Not with her as their mother. George’s boy is one thing, Isabel was my beloved sister; but none of the Woodville woman’s children will ever be anything but our most deadly enemy!’
‘We’ll never know,’ he says simply. He gets to his feet, rubbing his upper arm as if it has gone numb. ‘Now, we’ll never know what men those two boys might have been.’
‘She is our enemy,’ I tell him again, amazed that he is such a fool he cannot remember this. ‘She has betrothed her daughter to Henry Tudor. He was all set to invade England and put the Woodville bastard girl on the throne as queen. She is our enemy and you should be dragging her out of sanctuary and imprisoning her in the Tower, not going in secret to visit her. Not going to her as if you were not the victor, the king. Not going and meeting her daughter – that spoiled ninny.’ I break off at the dark rage in his face. ‘Spoiled ninny,’ I repeat defiantly. ‘What will you tell me: that she is a princess beyond price?’
‘She is our enemy no more,’ he says briefly, as if all his rage has burned out. ‘She has turned her rage on Margaret Beaufort. She suspects her, not me, of kidnapping or killing the princes. Their deaths make Henry Tudor the next heir, after all. Who gains from the deaths of the boys? Only Henry Tudor, who is the next heir of the House of Lancaster. Once she acquitted me she had to blame Tudor and his mother. So she turned against the rebellion, and she will deny the betrothal to him. She will oppose his claim.’
I am open-mouthed. ‘She is changing sides?’
He smiles wryly. ‘We can make peace, she and I,’ he says. ‘I have offered to release her to house arrest, somewhere of my choosing, and she has agreed to go. She can’t stay in sanctuary for the rest of her life. She wants to get out. And those girls are growing up as pale as little lilies in shade. They need to be out in the fields. The older girl is simply exquisite, like a statue in pearl. If we set her free she will bloom like a rose.’
I can taste jealousy in my mouth like the bile that rushes under my tongue when I am about to be sick. ‘And where is this rose to bloom?’ I ask acidly. ‘Not in one of my houses. I will not have her under my roof.’
He is looking at the fire but now he turns his beloved dark face to me. ‘I thought we might take the three oldest girls to court,’ he says. ‘I thought they might serve in your household, if you will agree. These are Edward’s daughters, York girls, they are your nieces. You should love them as you do little Margaret. I thought you might keep them under your eye and when the time comes we will find good husbands for them and see them settled.’
I lean back against the stone windowframe and feel the welcome coldness against my shoulders. ‘You want them to come and live with me?’ I ask him. ‘The Woodville daughters?’
He nods, as if I might find this an agreeable plan. ‘You couldn’t ask for a more beautiful maid in waiting than the Princess Elizabeth,’ he says.
‘Mistress Elizabeth,’ I correct him through my teeth. ‘You declared her mother a whore and her a bastard. She is Mistress Elizabeth Grey.’
He laughs shortly as if he had forgotten. ‘Oh yes.’
‘And the mother?’
‘I will settle her in the country. John Nesfield is as trustworthy as any of my men. I will put her and the younger girls in his house and he can watch them for me.’
‘They will be under arrest?’
‘They will be kept close enough.’
‘Kept in the house?’ I press. ‘Locked in?’
He shrugs. ‘As Nesfield sees fit, I suppose.’
I understand at once that Elizabeth Woodville is to be a lady of a fine country house once more and her daughters will live as maids in waiting at my court. They are to be as free as joyous birds in the air and Elizabeth Woodville is to triumph again.
‘When is all this going to happen?’ I ask, thinking he will say in the spring. ‘In April? May?’
‘I thought the girls might come to court at once,’ he says.
