He nods. “It is the only way. He will be safe if you and the lords agree, if Richard agrees.”

I am trapped. “I swear it,” I say.

Edward releases his hard grip on our hands and falls back on his pillows. Hastings howls like a dog and puts his face down in the cover and Edward’s hand finds its way blindly to touch his old friend’s head as in a blessing. The others file out, Hastings and I are left on either side of the bed, and the king dying between us.


I have no time for grief, no time to measure my loss. Inside, my heart is breaking for the man I love, the only man whom I ever loved in all my life, the only man whom I will ever love. Edward, the boy who rode up to me when I waited for him. My beloved. I have no time to think about this when my son’s future and my family’s prospects depend on my being hard of will and dry-eyed. That night I write to my brother Anthony.

The king is dead. Bring the new King Edward to London at all possible speed. Bring as many men as you can command as a royal guard-we will need them. Edward foolishly named Richard, Duke of Gloucester, as protector. Richard hates you and me equally for the king’s love and our own power.We must crown Edward at once and defend against the duke, who will never give up the protectorate without a fight. Recruit men as you march, and collect the weapons that are stored in hiding on the way. Prepare yourself for battle, to defend our heir. I will delay announcing the death as long as I can, so Richard, who is still in the north, does not know what is happening yet. So hurry. Elizabeth

What I don’t know is that Hastings is writing to Richard, blotting the page with his tears, but legible enough, to say that the Rivers family are arming around their prince and that, if Richard wants to take up his role as protector, if he wants to guard the young Prince Edward against the boy’s own rapacious family, he had better come at once, with as many men from his heartlands of the north as he can muster, before the prince is kidnapped by his own kin. He writes:

The king left all under your protection-goods, heir, realm. Secure the person of our sovereign Lord Edward V and get you to London before the Riverses flood us out.

What I don’t know, and what I don’t allow myself to think, is that, having learned to fear the constant wars for the throne of England, I am just starting one on my own account, and that at stake this time is the inheritance and even the life of my beloved son.


He kidnaps him.

Richard moves faster and is better armed and more determined than any of us could have imagined. He moves as fast and as decisively as Edward would have done-and he is as ruthless. He waylays my son on his journey to London, dismisses the men from Wales who were loyal to him and to me, arrests my brother Anthony, my son Richard Grey, and our cousin Thomas Vaughan, and takes Edward into his so-called safekeeping. My boy is not quite thirteen, in God’s name. My boy is still a boy of only twelve. His voice is still fluting, his chin is smooth as a girl’s, he has the softest fair down on his upper lip that you can only see when his face is in profile, against the light. And when Richard sends his loyal servants away, his uncle whom he idolizes, the half brother he loves, he defends them with a little quaver in his voice. He says that he is certain that his father would have placed only good men about him, and that he wants to keep them in his service.

He is only a boy. He has to stand up to a battle-hardened man who is determined to do wrong. When Richard says that my own brother Anthony, who has been my boy’s friend and guardian and protector for all his life, and my youngest Grey son Richard, must leave his side, my little boy tries to defend them. He says that he is certain that his uncle Anthony is a good man and a fine guardian. He says his half brother Richard has been a kinsman and a comrade to him, that he knows that his uncle Anthony has never done anything but that suits the great knight, the chivalrous knight that he is. But Duke Richard tells him that all will be resolved and in the meantime he and the Duke of Buckingham, my former ward, whom I married against his will to my sister Katherine, and who now turns up in this surprising company, will be the prince’s companions to London.

He is only a little boy. He has always been gently guarded. He does not know how to stand up to his uncle Richard, dressed in black and with a face like thunder, two thousand men in his train and ready to fight. So he lets his uncle Anthony go; he lets his brother Richard go. How could he save them? He cries bitterly. They tell me that. He cries like a child when no one will obey him, but he lets them go.

MAY 1483

Elizabeth, my seventeen-year-old daughter, comes running through the shouting and the chaos of Westminster Palace. “Mother! Lady Mother! What’s happening?”

“We’re going into sanctuary,” I snap. “Hurry. Get everything you want and all the clothes for the children. And make sure they bring the carpets out of the royal rooms and the tapestries. Get all that taken into Westminster Abbey-we are going into sanctuary again. And your jewelry box, and your furs. And then go through the royal apartments and make sure they are stripping them of everything of value.”

“Why?” she asks, her pale mouth trembling. “What has happened now? What about Baby?”

“Your brother the king has been taken by his uncle the lord protector,” I say. My words are like knives and I see them strike her. She admires her uncle Richard; she always has done. She was hoping he would care for all of us-protect us in truth. “Your father’s will has put my enemy in charge of my son. We will see what kind of a lord protector he makes. But we had better see it from safety. We go into sanctuary today, right this minute.”

“Mother.” She dances on the spot with fear. “Should we not wait, should we not consult the Privy Council? Should we not wait here for Baby? What if Duke Richard is just bringing Baby safely to us? What if he is doing as he should, as lord protector? Protecting Baby?”

“He is King Edward to you, not Baby anymore,” I say fiercely. “And even to me. And let me tell you, child, that only fools wait when their enemies are coming, to see if they may prove to be friends. We will be as safe as I can make us. In sanctuary. And we will take your brother Prince Richard and keep him safe too. And when the lord protector comes to London with his private army, he can persuade me that it is safe to come out.”


I speak bravely to my brave girl, now a young woman with her own life blighted by this sudden fall from being a princess of England to a girl in hiding; but in truth we are at a very low ebb when we barricade the door of St. Margaret’s crypt at Westminster and we are alone-my brother Lionel, Bishop of Salisbury, my grown son Thomas Grey, my little son Richard, and my girls: Elizabeth, Cecily, Anne, Catherine, and Bridget. When we were last here I was big with my first boy, with every reason to hope that he would lay claim to the throne of England one day. My mother was alive, and was my companion and my greatest friend. And nobody could be afraid for long when my mother was scheming for them, and making her spells and laughing at her own ambition. My husband was alive in exile, planning his return. I never doubted that he would come. I never doubted that he would be victorious. I always knew that he never lost a battle. I knew he would come, I knew he would win, I knew he would rescue us. I knew they were bad days but I hoped for better.

Now we are here again, but this time it is hard to hope. In this season of early summer, which has always before been my favorite, filled with picnics and jousts and parties. The shade of the crypt is oppressive. It is like being buried alive. In truth, there is not much cause for hope. My boy is in enemy hands, my mother is long gone, and my husband is dead. No handsome tall man is going to hammer on the door and block the light as he comes in, calling my name. My son who was a baby then is a young boy of twelve now, and in the hands of our enemy. My girl Elizabeth, who played then so sweetly with her sisters when we were last confined, is now seventeen. She turns her pale face to me and asks what we are going to do. Last time we waited secure in the knowledge that, if we could just survive, we would be rescued. This time there are no certainties.

For nearly a week I listen at the tiny window set into the front door. From dawn till dusk I am peering through the grille, straining my ears to hear what people are doing, for the sound of the streets. When I turn from the door, I go to the river and look out on the boats passing by, watching for the royal barge, listening for Melusina.

Every day I send out messengers for news of my brother and my son, and to speak to the lords who should be rising to defend us, whose liveries should be arming for us. And on the fifth day I hear it: a rising swell of noise, the cheering of the apprentice lads, and another sound beneath it, a deeper sound, a booing. I can hear the rattle of harness and the sound of many horses’ hooves. It is the army of Richard, Duke of Gloucester, my husband’s brother, the man he trusted with our safety, entering my husband’s capital city to a mixed reception. When I look out of the window at the river, there is a chain of his boats around Westminster Palace: a floating barricade, holding us captive. Nobody can come in or out.

I hear the clatter of a cavalry charge and some shouting. I start to wonder: If I had armed the city against him, declared war in the first moment, could I have stood against him now? But then I think: And what about my boy Edward in his uncle’s train? What about my brother Anthony and my son Richard Grey, held hostage for my good behavior? And yet again: perhaps I have nothing to fear. I simply don’t know. My boy is either a young king, processing in high honor to his coronation, or a kidnapped child. I don’t even know which for sure.