I break off to look at him. He cannot have thought that I would be pleased. His bland expression tells me that he knows that bringing my mother to me is to stir up a war inside our family that has been raging in furious letters and painful apologies and excuses for two long years. After her last letter when she named my son, her own grandson, a bastard and my husband a thief she has not written to me again. She told me that I had shamed my father and betrayed her. She told me that I was no daughter of hers. She cursed me with a mother’s curse and said that I would live without her blessing and she would go to her grave without saying my name. I did not reply – not so much as a single word. I decided when I married Richard that I had neither mother nor father. One had died on the battlefield, one had deserted me and sent me to a battle alone. Isabel and I call ourselves orphans.
Until now. ‘Richard, for the love of God, why have you brought her here?’
Finally, he decides to be honest. ‘George was going to take her,’ he says. ‘I am sure of it. George was going to kidnap her, appeal against the king’s decision to share her fortune between the two of us, demand justice for her. Reclaim it all for her as if he was her knight errant, and then, when she had all the Warwick lands back in her keeping, he was going to take them from her. He was going to keep her in his household like he took you – and he would have got everything that we have, Anne. I had to get her before he did.’
‘So to prevent George taking her – you have taken her,’ I say drily. ‘Doing the very crime that you suspect he would have done.’
He looks at me grimly. ‘When I married you, I said I would protect you. I am protecting your interests now.’
The mention of our courtship silences me. ‘I didn’t think it would mean this.’
‘Neither did I,’ he says. ‘But I promised to protect you and this is what it takes.’
‘Where is she going to live?’ My head is whirling. ‘She can’t go into sanctuary again, can she?’
‘Here.’
‘Here?’ I almost scream at him.
‘Yes.’
‘Richard, I am frightened to even see her. She said I was no daughter of hers. She said I would never have a mother’s blessing. She said I should not marry you. She called you things that you would never forgive! She said our son—’ I break off. ‘I won’t repeat it. I won’t think about it.’
‘I don’t need to hear it,’ he says cheerfully. ‘And I don’t need to forgive her. And you don’t need her blessing. She will live here as our guest. You need never see her if you don’t want to. She can dine in her rooms, she can pray in her own chapel. We have enough space here, God knows. We can give her a household of her own. She need not trouble you.’
‘How can she not trouble me? She is my mother! She is my mother who has set her face against me. She said that she would go to her grave without saying my name!’
‘Think of her as your prisoner.’
I sink into a chair, staring at him. ‘My mother is my prisoner?’
‘She was a prisoner at Beaulieu Abbey. Now she is a prisoner here. She is never going to regain her fortune, she lost that when she claimed sanctuary at the moment that she heard of your father’s death. She chose then to leave you to whatever danger the battle would bring. Now she has the life that she chose then. She can abide by her choice. She is a pauper, she is in prison. It just happens that she is a prisoner here rather than in Beaulieu. She might like that. She might prefer it here. This was her home, after all.’
‘She came here as a bride, it was her family home,’ I say quietly. ‘Every stone in every wall will speak to her of her rights.’
‘Well then . . .’
‘It’s still hers.’ I look at his young handsome determined face, and realise that nothing I say will make any difference. ‘We live here like thieves and now the true owner will be watching us collect her rents, claiming her dues, sheltered by her walls, living under her roof.’
He shrugs and I break off. I knew that he was a man of abrupt decision, a man who was capable – just like his brother – of powerful, rapid acts. The York boys spent their childhood in rebellion against the king, watching their father and then their brother risking everything at war. All the York brothers are capable of dauntless courage and stubborn endurance. I knew he was a man who would follow his own interests, without scruples. But I did not know that he was a man who could arrest his own mother-in-law and hold her, against her wishes, steal her lands from her as she sleeps under his roof. I knew that my husband was a hard man, but I did not know that he was granite.
‘How long will she live here?’
‘Till she dies,’ he says blandly.
