I think of King Henry in the Tower, who died the very night that the York brothers came home victorious from Tewkesbury, determined to end his line. I think of him when the three of them quietly walked into his darkened room as he slept. I think of him sleeping under their protection and never waking again; and I open my mouth to ask him a question, and close it again, saying nothing. I realise that I am afraid to ask my young husband how long he thinks that my mother may live.
Reluctantly, sick in my belly, I go to the rooms that have been allocated to my mother, that evening, after dinner. They have served her the best dishes from the evening meal, and presented them to her on one knee, with all the respect that a countess should receive. She has eaten well; they are taking out the empty plates as I come in. Richard has ruled that she shall be housed in the northwest tower, as far away from us as it is possible to be. There is no bridge from her corner tower to the main keep; if she were allowed out of her rooms, she would have to go all the way down the stairs and through the door to get into the courtyard, cross the courtyard, and then go up the stairs to the keep to get to the great hall. There are guards at every doorway. She will never visit us without invitation. She will never leave the tower without permission. For the rest of her life she will have a blinkered view. From her windows she can see only the roofs of the little town, the wide grey skies, the empty landscape and down to the dark moat.
I go in and curtsey to her – she is my mother and I have to show her respect – but then I stand before her, my chin up. I fear that I look like a defiant child. But I am only just seventeen and I am terrified of my mother’s authority.
‘Your husband intends to hold me as a prisoner,’ she says coldly. ‘Are you, my own daughter, serving him as his gaoler?’
‘You know I cannot disobey him.’
‘You should not disobey me.’
‘You left me,’ I say, driven to speak out. ‘You left me with Margaret of Anjou and she led me to a terrible battle and to defeat, and to the death of my husband. I was little more than a child and you abandoned me on a battlefield.’
‘You paid the price of overweening ambition,’ she says. ‘Your father’s ambition, which destroyed us. Now you are following another ambitious man, like a dog, just as you followed your father. You wanted to be Queen of England. You would not know your place.’
‘My ambition didn’t take me very far,’ I protest. ‘Isabel imprisoned me, my own sister!’ I can feel my anger and my tears welling up together. ‘There was nobody to defend me. You let Isabel and George hold me against my will. You put yourself safely in sanctuary and you left me to be picked up from the battlefield! Anybody could have taken me, anything could have happened to me.’
‘You let your husband and Isabel’s husband steal my fortune from me.’
‘How could I stop them?’
‘Did you try?’
I am silent. I did not try.
‘Return my lands to me, and release me,’ my mother says. ‘Tell your husband he must do this. Tell the king.’
‘Lady Mother – I cannot,’ I say weakly.
‘Then tell Isabel.’
‘She can’t either. She is expecting a baby, she’s not even at court. And anyway – the king does not hear petitions from Isabel and me. He would never listen to us in preference to his brothers.’
‘I have to be free,’ my mother says, and for a moment her voice trembles. ‘I cannot die in prison. You have to set me free.’
I shake my head. ‘I can’t,’ I say. ‘There’s no point even asking me, Lady Mother. I am powerless. I can’t do anything for you.’
For a moment her eyes blaze at me; she can still frighten me. But this time, I hold her gaze and I shrug my shoulders. ‘We lost the battle,’ I say. ‘I am married to my saviour. I have no power, nor does Isabel, nor do you. There is nothing I can do for you if it goes against my husband’s will. You will have to reconcile yourself, as I do, as Isabel does, to being the defeated.’
FARLEIGH HUNGERFORD CASTLE, SOMERSET, 14 AUGUST 1473
It is a relief beyond measuring to leave my home with the silent brooding presence of my mother in the northwest tower, and go to Isabel for the birth of her baby in Norton St Philip, Somerset. Isabel is in confinement when I arrive and I join her in the shadowed rooms. The baby comes early and the two days of labour do not give her great pain, though by the end she is very tired. The midwife hands the baby to me. ‘A girl,’ she says.
‘A girl!’ I exclaim. ‘Look, Iz, you’ve got such a pretty girl!’
She barely glances at the perfect face of the baby, though her face is as smooth and as pale as a pearl, and her eyelashes are dark. ‘Oh, a girl,’ she says dully.
‘Better luck next time,’ says the midwife drily, as she bundles up the bloodstained linen and rubs her hands on her soiled apron, and looks around for a glass of ale.
‘But this is the best of luck already!’ I protest. ‘See how beautiful she is? Iz, do look at her – she’s not even crying!’
