I round on him at that, I leap from my window seat and stand. ‘This is our first Christmas as king and queen,’ I say, my voice trembling with passion. ‘This is the court where we stamp ourselves on the kingdom, where people will see us in our crowns and tell of our clothes and entertainments and joy. This is when people start to make a legend about our court and say it is as beautiful and as joyous and as noble as Camelot. You want Elizabeth Woodville’s daughters to sit at the table and eat their Christmas dinner at this – our first Christmas? Why not tell everyone that nothing has really changed? It is you on the throne instead of Edward but the Rivers still hold court and the witch still holds sway, and the blood of my sister and your brother, and their little baby, is still on her hands, and nobody accuses her.’
He comes to me and takes me by the elbow, feeling me tremble with rage. ‘No,’ he says gently. ‘No. I hadn’t thought. I see it would not do. This is your court, not hers. I know that. You are queen, I know that, Anne. Be calm. Nobody will spoil your time. They can come after Christmas, later when all the agreements have been properly drawn up. We need not have them earlier, spoiling the feast.’
He soothes me, as he has always been able to do. ‘Spoiling it?’
‘They would spoil it.’ He lulls me with the sweetness of his voice. ‘I don’t want them there. I only want to be with you. They can stay in their cellar until after Christmas and only when you think the time is right will we release them.’
I am quietened by his touch like a gentled mare. ‘Very well,’ I breathe. ‘But not before.’
‘No,’ he says. ‘Not until you think the time is right. It shall be you who judges the right time, Anne. You are Queen of England and you shall have no-one in your household but those of your choice. You shall only have the women that you like around you. I would not force you to have women that you fear or dislike.’
‘I don’t fear them,’ I correct him. ‘I am not jealous of them.’
‘No indeed,’ he says. ‘And you have no cause at all. You shall invite them when you are ready and not before.’
We spend Christmas in London without the children. I had hoped up to the very last days of November that they would come. Edward is well enough but our physician advised that he is not strong enough for a long journey on bad roads. They said that he should stay at Middleham, where our physicians, who know his health, will take care of him. They say that such a long journey in such bad weather would be bound to strain his health. I think of little Prince Richard when I last saw him, just the age of my Edward, but a good head taller and rosy-cheeked and full of high spirits. Edward does not bubble with life, he does not always have to be up and doing. He will sit quietly with a book, and he goes to bed without arguing. In the morning he finds it hard to rise.
He eats well enough, but the cooks take great trouble to send up dainty dishes with tempting sauces. I have never once seen him go with Margaret and Teddy down to the kitchens to steal offcuts of pastry from the table, or beg the bakers for a bread roll, hot from the oven. He never filches cream from the dairy, he never loiters for trimmings from the roasting spit.
I try not to fear for him; he does his schoolwork with pleasure, he rides out on his horse with his cousins, he will play at tennis with them, or archery, or bowls, but he is always the first to stop the game, or turn away and sit for a few moments, or laugh and say that he has to catch his breath. He is not sturdy, he is not strong, he is in fact just as you would expect a boy to be if he had spent his life under a curse from a distant witch.
Of course I don’t know if she has ever cursed my son. But sometimes when he sits at my feet and leans his head against my knees and I touch his head, I think that since her ill-will has blighted my life, I would not be surprised to know that it has burdened my son. And now that Richard speaks of a new curse laid down by the witch Elizabeth and her apprentice-witch daughter, on the murderer of their princes, I fear even more that the Rivers’ malice is directed at me and my boy.
I command the physicians at Middleham to send me a letter every three days telling me how the children are. The letters get through the snowy weather in the North and the thickly bogged roads in the south and assure me that Edward is in good spirits, playing with his cousins, enjoying the wintry weather, sledging and skating on the ice. He is well. I can be of good heart. He is well.
