I am so stunned that I just stare at her. At first I think that she is raving but then one after another the pieces of what she is saying fall into place. Our driving urgent haste to marry and Richard telling me that we would do so without a dispensation, but get it later. And then I just assumed, like a fool, that the marriage was valid. I just forgot, like a fool, like a fool in the honeymoon month, that being married by an archbishop with the blessing of the king was not as good as a dispensation from the Pope. When I was greeted by his mother, when I was received by the court, when we conceived our son and inherited my lands, I assumed that everything was as it should be and I forgot to question it at all. And now I know that my husband did not forget, did not assume, but has provided that he can keep his fortune if he ever decides to set me aside. If he wants to rid himself of me he has only to say that the marriage was never valid. My marriage to him is based on our vows before God – at least those cannot be denied. But they are not enough. Our marriage depends on his whim. We will be husband and wife as long as he wishes it. At any moment he could denounce our marriage as a sham, and he would be free and I would be utterly shamed.

I shake my head in wonderment. All this time I thought that I was playing myself, both the player and the pawn, and yet I have never been more powerless, never more of a piece in someone else’s game.

‘Richard,’ I say, and it is as if I am calling out to him to rescue me once more.

My mother regards me with silent satisfaction.

‘What shall I do?’ I whisper to myself. ‘What can I do now?’

‘Leave him.’ My mother’s voice is like a slap in the face. ‘Leave him at once and come with me to London and we will overthrow the act, deny the false marriage, and get my lands back.’

I round on her. ‘Don’t you see yet that you will never get your lands back? D’you think you can fight against the King of England himself? Do you imagine you can challenge the three sons of York acting together? Have you forgotten that these were my father’s enemies, Margaret of Anjou’s enemies? And we were fatally allied to Father and to Margaret of Anjou? Have you forgotten that we were defeated? All you want to do is to throw yourself into prison in the Tower, and me alongside you.’

‘You will never be safe as his wife,’ she predicts. ‘He can leave you whenever he wants. If your son dies, and you fail to get another, he can go to a more fertile woman and take your fortune with him.’

‘He loves me.’

‘He may do,’ she concedes. ‘But he wants the lands, this very castle, and an heir more than anything in the world. You have no safety.’

‘I have no safety as your daughter,’ I counter. ‘I know that at least. You married me to a claimant to the throne of England and abandoned me when we had to go into battle. Now you call me to commit treason again.’

‘Leave him!’ she whispers. ‘I will stand by you this time.’

‘And what about my son?’

She shrugs. ‘You will never see him again but as he is a bastard . . . does it matter?’

Fiercely, I take her by the arm and march her towards her rooms where the guard stands to one side to let us go in, and will then block the door so she cannot go out.

‘Don’t call him that,’ I say. ‘Don’t you dare ever call him that. I stand by my son, and I stand by my husband. And you can rot in here.’

She wrenches her arm from me. ‘I warn you, I will tell the world that you are not a wife but a harlot, and you will be ruined,’ she spits.

I push her through the door. ‘No you won’t!’ I say. ‘For you will have no pen and no paper, and no way to send messages. No messengers and no visits. You have taught me only that you are my enemy and I will keep you straitly. Go in, Lady Mother. You will not come out again, and no word you say will ever be repeated outside these walls. Go and be dead – for you are dead to the world and dead to me. Go and be dead!’

I slam the door on her and I round on the guard. ‘No-one to see her but her household,’ I say. ‘No messages passed, not even pedlars or tinkers to come to her door. Everyone coming or going to be searched. She sees no-one, she speaks to no-one. D’you understand?’

‘Yes, Your Grace,’ he says.

‘She is an enemy,’ I say. ‘She is a traitor and a liar. She is our enemy. She is enemy to the duke, to me and to our precious son. The duke is a hard man on his enemies. Make sure you are hard on her.’


MIDDLEHAM CASTLE, YORKSHIRE, SPRING 1475

He does not have to convince me. I don’t want to associate with them if they are walking into danger. When Isabel writes to me that she is going into confinement again, and would like me to come to her, I refuse. Besides, I cannot face Isabel with our mother in my keeping, gaoled for the rest of her life. I cannot face Isabel with my mother’s terrible threats in my ears and in my dreams every night of my life. Isabel knows now, as I do, that we have declared our own mother a dead woman so that we could take her lands to give to our husbands. I feel that we are murderers, with blood on our hands. And what would I say if Isabel asked me if my mother is kept well? If she endures her imprisonment with patience? What could I say to her if she asked me to let our mother go?

I can never admit that my mother is kept in her tower so that she cannot speak about my marriage. I cannot tell Isabel that not only have our husbands declared our mother dead but that now even I wish her dead. Certainly I wish her silenced forever.