I never go to her room; I inquire after her health once a week from her lady in waiting. I ensure that she has the best dishes from the kitchen, the best wine from the cellar. She can walk in the courtyard before her tower, which is walled all round, and I keep a guard on the door. She can command musicians as long as I know who they are and they are searched when they arrive and leave. She goes to the chapel and takes mass, she goes to confession only with our priest, and he would tell me if she made any accusations. She has no cause to complain of her circumstances, and no-one can hear her complaint. But I make sure that I am never in the chapel when she comes in, I never walk in her garden. If I look down from the high window in the privy chamber and see her dully circling on the stony paths, I turn my head away. She is indeed as a dead woman, she is almost buried alive. She is – as I once feared she was – walled up.
I never tell Richard what she said about him, I never ask him is our marriage valid, is our son legitimate? And I never ask her if she is certain, or was she just speaking from spite to frighten me? I am never going to hear her say again that she thinks my marriage is invalid and that my husband tricked me into a false service and that I live with him now balanced on his goodwill, that he married me only for my fortune to him, and has made cold-hearted preparations to keep my fortune and lose me. To avoid her repeating this I am prepared to never hear her speak again. I will never let her say that to me – or to anyone else – as long as she lives.
I wish she had never said it, or that I had never heard it, or that having heard it I could simply forget it. I am sickened that she should say such a thing to me and I am unable to refute it. I am sickened that I should know, in my heart of hearts, that it is true. It eats away at my love for Richard. Not that he should marry me without a papal dispensation in the first place – I don’t forget that we were so much in love and so steeped in desire that we could not wait. But that he should not apply for dispensation after our wedding, that he should keep that decision from me, and that – most chillingly and worst of all, far and away the worst thing – he should secure his rights to my inheritance even if he were to put me aside and deny his marriage to me.
I am bound to him, by my love, by my submission to his will, by my first passion, and since he is the father of my son and he is my lord. But what am I to him? That is what I want to know and what I can now – thanks to my mother – never confidently ask him.
In May Richard comes to me and says that he wants us to leave Edward at Middleham with his tutor and the lady of his household, and go to York to start the procession to Fotheringhay, for a solemn service: the reburial of his father.
‘Margaret of Anjou’s army beheaded him, and my brother Edmund, and put their heads on stakes above Micklegate Bar at York,’ Richard says grimly. ‘That’s the sort of woman she was, your first mother-in-law.’
‘You know I had no choice in my marriage,’ I say, speaking steadily though I am irritated by the fact that he cannot forget or forgive that part of my life. ‘And I was a child in Calais when that happened, and my father was fighting for York, fighting alongside your brother.’
He gestures with his hand. ‘Yes, well, that doesn’t matter now. What does matter is that I am going to have my father and brother honourably reburied. What d’you think?’
‘I think it would be a very good thing to do,’ I say. ‘They lie at Pontefract now, don’t they?’
‘Yes. My mother would like them buried together in the family vault at Fotheringhay Castle. I should like him to be honoured properly. Edward has trusted me to arrange it all, he prefers me to George for this.’
‘There could be no-one who would do it better,’ I say warmly.
He smiles. ‘Thank you. I know you are right. Edward is too careless and George has no love of chivalry and honour. But I shall take pride in doing it well. I shall be glad to see my father and brother properly buried.’
For a moment only I think of my own father’s body dragged off the battlefield at Barnet, the blood pouring from his helmet, his head lolling, his great black horse lying down in the field, as if he were asleep. But Edward was a good enemy; he never abused the bodies of his foe. He showed them in public so that the people would know that they were dead, and then he allowed them to be buried. My father’s corpse lies in Bisham Abbey, in the family vault, buried in honour but without ceremony. Isabel and I have never gone to pay our respects. My mother has never visited his grave, and now she never will. Bisham Abbey will not see her, till I bury her there, beside him: a better wife than she was a mother. ‘What can I do to help?’ is all I say.
