We are seated in matching chairs, almost thrones, in the great chamber of Middleham Castle and I don’t rise when my mother comes in the room though she pauses as if she expects me to kneel for her blessing. She looks about her as if to see what changes we have made to her home, and she raises an eyebrow as if she does not think much of our tapestries.
Richard snaps his finger at a manservant. ‘Set a chair for the countess,’ he says.
My mother sits before us and I see the stiffness of her movements. She is getting old; perhaps she is ill. Perhaps she wants to live with Isabel at Warwick Castle, and we can let her go. I wait for her to speak, and know that I am longing to hear her say that she has to go to London for her health and that she will live with Isabel.
‘It’s about the document,’ she says to Richard.
He nods. ‘I thought it would be.’
‘You must have known I would hear about it sooner or later.’
‘I assumed someone would tell you.’
‘What is this?’ I interrupt. I turn to Richard. ‘What document?’
‘I see you keep your wife in ignorance of your doings,’ my mother observes nastily. ‘Did you fear she would try to prevent you from wrongdoing? I am surprised at that. She is no champion of mine. Did you fear that this would be too much for even her to swallow?’
‘No,’ he says coldly. ‘I don’t fear her judgement.’ To me he says briefly: ‘This is the resolution to the problem of your mother’s lands that George and I could finally agree. Edward has confirmed it. We passed it as an act of parliament. It has taken long enough for the lawyers to agree and to formulate it as a law. It is the only solution that satisfied us all: we have declared her legally dead.’
‘Dead!’ I stare at my mother who stares haughtily back at me. ‘How can you call her dead?’
He taps his booted foot on the rushes. ‘It’s a legal term. It solves the problem of her lands. We could not get them any other way. Neither you nor Isabel could inherit them while she was still alive. So we have declared her dead and you and Isabel are her heirs and you inherit. Nobody steals anything from anyone. She is dead: you inherit. As your husbands, the lands are passed on to George and me.’
‘But what about her?’
He gestures at her and he almost laughs aloud. ‘As you see, here she is: living proof of the failure of ill-wishing. It would make a man disbelieve in magic. We called her dead and here she is, hale and hearty, and eating me out of house and home. Someone should preach a sermon on it.’
‘I am sorry if you find me costly,’ my mother says bitingly. ‘But then I remember you have taken all of my fortune to pay for my keep.’
‘Only half your fortune,’ Richard corrects her. ‘Your son-in-law and your other daughter have taken the other half. You need not blame Anne, Isabel has abandoned you too. But we have the cost of housing and guarding you. I don’t ask for gratitude.’
‘I don’t offer any.’
‘Would you prefer to be imprisoned in a nunnery?’ he asks. ‘For I could allow that. I can return you to confinement at Beaulieu if you wish.’
‘I would prefer to live on my own lands in freedom. I would prefer that you had not abused the law to make away with me. What is my life now? What can it be if I am declared dead? Am I in purgatory? Or is this hell?’
He shrugs. ‘You posed an awkward problem. That’s now resolved. I did not want to be seen to be stealing from my mother-in-law and the king’s honour was at stake. You were a defenceless woman in sanctuary and he could not be seen to rob you. We have resolved this very neatly. The act of parliament declares that you are dead and so you have no lands, no house and I suppose no freedom. It is here, or a nunnery, or the grave. You can choose.’
‘I’ll stay here,’ my mother says heavily. ‘But I shall never forgive you for doing this to me, Richard. I cared for you as a boy in this very castle, my husband taught you all that you know about warfare and business. We were your guardians and we were good and kind guardians to you and to your friend Francis Lovell. And this is how you repay me.’
‘Your husband taught me to march fast, kill without remorse, on and off the battlefield and sometimes outside the law, and take whatever I wanted. I am a good pupil to him. If he were in my shoes he would be doing just as I am doing now. In fact his ambition was greater. I have taken only half your lands but he would have taken all of England.’
She cannot disagree. ‘I am weary,’ she says. She gets to her feet. ‘Anne, give me your arm back to my rooms.’
‘Don’t think you can suborn her,’ Richard warns her. ‘Anne knows where her loyalties lie. You threw her away into defeat, I rescued her from your neglect and made her a great heiress and a duchess.’
I take my mother’s arm and she leans on me. Unwillingly, I lead her out of the presence chamber, down the stairs and across the great hall, where the servants are pulling out the tables for dinner, to the bridge which leads to the outer walls and her rooms.
