I drop my work. ‘Your Grace . . .’ I am terrified of what she is going to say next. Is this the old scandal that my father circulated when he wanted to drive Edward from the throne? Is the duchess about to accuse herself of wanton adultery? And how much trouble will I be in if I know this enormous, this terrible state secret?
She laughs at my aghast face. ‘Oh, you’re such a child!’ she says unkindly. ‘Who would trust you with anything? Who would bother telling you anything? Remind me, how old are you?’
‘I am sixteen,’ I say with all the dignity I can muster.
‘A child,’ she mocks. ‘I’ll say no more. But you remember that George is not my favourite because I am a doting fool. George is my favourite for good reason, very good reason. He was born to be a king, that boy. That boy – and no other.’
WINDSOR CASTLE, CHRISTMAS 1472
The season of the Christmas feast is always a great one for Edward and this is the year he celebrates his greatest triumph. Back at court Richard and I find we are caught up in the excitement of the twelve days. Every day there is a new theme and a new masque. Every dinner there are new songs, or actors or jugglers or players of one sort or another. There is a bear-baiting, and hunting in the cold riverside marshes every day. They go hawking, there is a three-day joust where every nobleman presents his standard. The queen’s brother Anthony Woodville holds a battle of poets and everyone has to present a couplet, one after another, standing in a circle, and the first person to stumble over his rhyme bows and steps back, until there are only two men left, one of them Anthony Woodville – and then he wins. I see the gleam of his smile to his sister: he always wins. There is a mock sea battle in one of the courtyards, flooded for the occasion, and one night a dance of torches in the woods.
Richard, my husband, is always at his brother’s side. He is one of the inner circle: comrades who fled with Edward from England and returned in triumph. He, William Hastings, and Anthony Woodville the queen’s brother are the king’s friends and blood brothers – together for life; they will never forget the wild ride when they thought that my father would catch them, they will never forget the voyage when they looked anxiously back over the stern of their little fishing boat for the lights of my father’s ships following them. When they speak of riding through the dark lanes, desperate to find Lynn and not knowing whether there would be a boat there that they could hire or steal, when they roar with laughter remembering that their pockets were empty and the king had to give the boatman his furred gown by way of payment, and then they had to walk penniless in their riding boots to the nearest town, George shuffles his feet and looks around, and hopes that the conversation will take another turn. For George was the enemy that night, though they are all supposed to be friends now. I think that the men who thundered along the night roads in darkness, pulling up in a sweat of fear to listen for hoofbeats coming behind them, will never forget that George was their enemy that night, and that he sold his own brother and his own family, and betrayed his house in the hopes of putting himself on the throne. For all their smiling friendship now, for all the appearance of having forgotten old battles, they know that they were the hunted that night, and that if George had caught them he would have killed them. They know that this is the way of this world: you have to kill or be killed, even if it is your brother, or your king, or your friend.
For me, every time they speak of this time, I remember that it was my father who was their enemy, and their comradeship was forged in fear of him, their good guardian and mentor who suddenly, overnight, became their deadly enemy. They had to win back the throne from him – he had utterly defeated them and thrown them out of the kingdom. Sometimes, when I think of his triumph and then his defeat, I feel as alien in this court as my first mother-in-law, Margaret of Anjou, their prisoner in the Tower of London.
I know for sure that the queen never forgets her enemies. Indeed, I suspect that she thinks of us as her enemies now. Under instruction from her husband she greets me and Isabel with cool civility, and she offers us places in her household. But her little smile when she sees the two of us seated in stony silence, or when Edward calls George to bear witness to a battle and then breaks off realising that this was one where George was on the other side – those moments show me that this is a queen who does not forget her enemies, and will never forgive them.
