The last time I saw the court walking behind the king and carefully judging their paces was when Edward was walking arm in arm with his new lover Elizabeth Shore, and Elizabeth his queen was in confinement. The moment she came out the Shore whore disappeared from court and was never seen again by us – I smile at the memory of the king’s bashful apologetic tenderness to his wife and her grey-eyed level gaze at him. Odd now for me to see the court taking slow strides once more; but this time it is my husband who is being given privacy, as he walks alone with his niece.
Why would they do that? I think idly, my forehead against the cold glass of the thick window. Why would the courtiers step back so courteously unless they think that she is to be his mistress? Unless they think that my husband is seducing his niece, on these evening strolls by the river, that he has forgotten everything he owes to his name, to his marriage vows, to the respect he owes to me as his wife, and the bereaved mother of his dead son.
Can it be that the court has seen so much more clearly than I that Richard has recovered from grief, recovered from heartbreak, can live again, can breathe again, can look about him and see the world again – and in this world sees a pretty girl who is all too ready to take his hand and listen to his words and laugh as if delighted at his speech? Does the court think that Richard is going to bed his brother’s daughter? Does it really think he is so far gone in wickedness to deflower his niece?
I approach this thought, whispering the words ‘deflower’ and ‘niece’, but I really cannot make myself care about this, any more than I can make myself care about the hunting trip tomorrow or the dishes for tonight’s dinner. Elizabeth’s virginity and Elizabeth’s happiness are alike of no interest to me at all. Everything seems as if it is happening a long way away, feels as if it is happening to someone else. I would not call myself unhappy, the word does not approach my state of mind; I would call myself dead to the world. I cannot find it in me to care whether Richard is seducing his niece or she is seducing him. I see, at any rate, that Elizabeth Woodville, having taken my son from me by a curse, will now take my husband from me by her daughter’s seduction. But I see that there is nothing I can do to stop this. She will do – as she always does – as she wishes. All I can do is lean my hot forehead against the cold glass and wish that I did not see this. Or anything. Anything at all.
The court is not solely devoted to the hypocrisy of flirting with the king and mourning with me. Richard spends every morning with his councillors, appointing commissioners to raise the shires if there is an invasion from Henry Tudor in Brittany, preparing the fleet to make war with Scotland, harrying French shipping in the narrow seas. He speaks to me of this work and sometimes I can advise him, having spent my childhood at Calais, and since it is my father’s policy of peace with the Scots and armed peace against the French that Richard follows.
He leaves for York in July to establish the Council of the North, the recognition that the North of England is a country in many ways quite different from the southern parts, and Richard is, and will always be, a good lord to them. Before he leaves he comes to my room and sends my ladies away. Elizabeth goes out with a backward smile at him and for once he does not notice. He takes a stool so that he is seated at my feet.
‘What is it?’ I ask without a great deal of interest.
‘I wanted to speak to you about your mother,’ he says.
I am surprised but nothing can catch my interest. I complete the sewing I have in my hands, pierce the needle through the embroidery silks, and put it to one side. ‘Yes?’
‘I think she can be released from our care,’ he says. ‘We won’t go back to Middleham—’
‘No, never,’ I say quickly.
‘And so we could close the place down. She could have her own house, we could pay her an allowance. We don’t need to keep a great castle to house her.’
‘You don’t think she might speak against us?’ Never am I going to refer to the question of our marriage. He can think me now, as I was then, utterly trusting. Now I cannot bring myself to care.
He shrugs. ‘We are King and Queen of England. There are laws against speaking against us. She knows that.’
‘And you don’t fear she will try to take her lands back?’
Again he smiles. ‘I am King of England, she is unlikely to win a case against me. And if she were to get some estates back into her own keeping, I can afford to lose them. You will have them back again when she dies.’
I nod. And anyway, now there is no-one to inherit from me.
‘I just wanted to make sure that you had no objection to her being freed. If you had a preference as to where she should live?’
