By September they are all home, richer than they dreamed, loaded with silver plate, jewels, crowns and promises of more to come. The king himself has seventy-five thousand crowns in his treasury as payment for his promise for a peace treaty to last for seven years, and the King of France will pay fifty thousand pounds a year, every year that Edward does not re-state his claim to English lands in France. George Duke of Clarence, who was always at his brother’s side during the haggling, at the ready when there was easy money to be made, is named as the trustworthy councillor to arbitrate on this dishonourable pension, and he too is being paid a fortune. The only dissenting voice comes from my husband – of all the men who rode to France and came back richer, only my husband Richard warns Edward that this is no way to defeat the French king, cautions him that the commons of England will think that their taxes have been wasted, swears that the citizens of London and the gentry in parliament will turn against him for this dishonour, and begs him not to sell England’s birthright for this pension. I think Richard is the only one in all of the great English army to speak against the treaty. Everyone else is too busy counting their own bribes.
‘He knew I advised against it, he knew I wanted war, and yet the French king still gave me half a dozen hunters and a fortune in silver plate!’ Richard exclaims in our private rooms, the door shut against eavesdroppers, his mother – thank God – at Fotheringhay and unable to add her voice to the complaints against the king.
‘Did you accept it?’
‘Of course. Everyone else has taken a fortune. William Hastings is taking two thousand crowns a year. And that’s not all – Edward has agreed to release Margaret of Anjou!’
‘Release the queen?’
‘She’s not to be called queen any more, she’s to renounce her title and her claim on the crown of England. But she is to be released.’
A terrible fear strikes me. ‘She wouldn’t come to us? Richard, I really could not have her at one of our houses.’
He laughs out loud for the first time since his return home. ‘God, no. She is going to France. Louis can take care of her if he wants her so much. They are well-suited. Both dishonourable, both greedy, both liars and both a disgrace to their thrones. If I had been Edward, I would have executed her and defeated him.’ He pauses. ‘But if I had been Edward I would never have stooped to this dishonourable truce.’
I put my hand on his shoulder. ‘You did your duty. You mustered your men and you rode out to fight.’
‘I feel as if my brother is Cain,’ he says miserably. ‘Both of them. Two Cains to sell their birthright for a mess of pottage. I am the only one that cares about honour. They laughed at me and called me a fool for chivalry, they said I dreamed of a better world that could never be; while they put their noses in the trough.’ He turns his head and kisses my wrist. ‘Anne,’ he says quietly.
I bow my head and kiss his neck, his hairline, and then as he draws me into his lap, his closed eyes, his frowning eyebrows and his mouth. As he lies me down on the bed and takes me I reach for him and I pray that we are making another boy.
MIDDLEHAM CASTLE, YORKSHIRE, SUMMER 1476
Edward my son is three years old and released from the nursery, out of his gowns and into proper clothes. I have Richard’s tailor make miniature copies of his father’s dark handsome suits and I dress him myself every morning, threading the laces through the holes at the sleeves, pulling his riding boots on his little feet and telling him to stamp down. Soon his hair will have to be cut, but every morning of this summer I brush his golden-brown curls over his white lace collar and twist them around my fingers. I pray every month that another child comes, to be a brother to him, I even pray for a girl if that is the will of God. But month after month goes by and still my courses come and I never feel sick in the morning, and I never feel that wonderful faintness that tells a woman that she is with child.
I visit a herbalist, I summon a physician. The herbalist gives me the most vile potions to drink and a sachet of herbs to wear around my neck, the physician tells me to eat meat even on Fridays, and warns me that I am cold and dry in disposition and must become hot and moist. My ladies in waiting whisper to me that they know of a wise woman, a woman who has powers not of this world; she can make a baby, she can melt one away, she can call up a storm, whistle up a wind – I stop them there. ‘I don’t believe in such things,’ I say stoutly. ‘I don’t think such things can be. And if they were, they would be against the will of God, and outside the knowledge of man, and I will have nothing to do with them.’
