Page 74 of The Forgotten Boy

“I’ll admit,” Warwick said, “I’d rather lost track of you this last decade. A silly girl who’d failed to seize any advantage from her connections with my family—what did I care what she might be up to? But George, well, George had a very interesting story about the pretty Ismay whom he had been quite attached to as a boy and how she’d shut herself away up north after bearing a bastard child. George seemed to think Edward responsible.”

He did smile at her now. “And yet, in ten years I had never heard your name so much as cross Edward’s lips. If there’s one thing Edward likes to talk about, it’s his women and his children. The Woodville witch has shouted about it often enough. And then I remembered the last time I saw you, the night before Ludlow fell. You were clinging to my cousin, all right, all red eyes and trembling lips. But it wasn’t Edward you clung to—it was Edmund.”

Since he seemed content to hear himself speak, Ismay didn’t try to stop him.

“And Edmund was never as cavalier as his brother. He had a romantic streak a mile wide and I considered it highly likely that your bedding came only after marriage.”

“Why do you care?” she asked. “Married or not, Edmund has been dead for ten years.”

“You were raised among Yorkists; you understand the intricacies of inheritance. Since the moment Edward became king, George has been his heir.”

“I understood the queen has at last given birth to a son.”

“In sanctuary at Westminster. I’m not worried about an infant. And George is conveniently on my side, being married to my eldest daughter.”

“And?”

She would make him say it, a realization he seemed to have reached.

“You want me to spell it out? Royal succession depends both on legitimacy and the order of birth. Edmund was the next eldest brother in his family, George coming third. If Edmund left a legitimate son, that son replaces George.”

“None of this matters though, as you’ve managed to drive Edward out of England and returned Margaret of Anjou’s son to England. Conveniently married to your younger daughter.”

“I think you know better than that, Ismay. I needed money and men, and she could give me both. Edward turned out to be disappointingly stubborn, in ways George is not.”

“The kingmaker wants to rule,” Ismay said. “You will use Margaret of Anjou and her son, then rid yourself of them when no longer convenient. And you think George will be more pliable in your hands, especially as your son-in-law.”

“Quite. My job is to ensure there are no other Yorkist claimants. At some point Edward will return with young Richard, and they will fall on the field like their father did. Edward’s detestable queen cannot stay in sanctuary forever—and infants are notoriously fragile. That leaves only your son, and Edmund’s.”

“How fortunate for you that my son is dead. He died of a fever this winter.”

“I don’t believe you.”

“Believe what you like. Search where you will. There is no child here.”

She had known he would not take her at her word. She had known how hard it would be to lie to Warwick’s face, which was why she had sent her servants away. But Ismay realized that she was no longer afraid of Warwick, so long as Edmund was out of his reach.

His men tore the house apart, from cellar to solar, ripping down tapestries and emptying barrels as though she’d hidden a nine-year-old in a cask of flour. Everywhere in her beautiful house was the sound of footsteps, many heavy-booted feet tramping through the corridors, men’s voices, the pounding of steel dagger hilts on closed doors and caskets, reverberating through her head and bones until she thought she’d go mad.

It was fully dark by the time they’d cleared the house and the outbuildings. Ismay had been a silent spectator to all of it, kept within arm’s reach of Warwick at every turn.

The two were now in the kitchen garden courtyard, the outline of the old chapel against his back. Most of the men she’d ever known gave signs of a slipping temper. Warwick simply struck her with the flat of his hand without warning, hard enough to snap her head to the side.

“Where is he?” he demanded.

“There is no child here.” It was the only thing she’d said for hours.

“Do you think I don’t know how to make people talk?”

“I think you can make people say what you want to hear, which isn’t the same as telling the truth.”

“We’ll see.”

Maybe, she thought, staring at his cold face, I should still be afraid of him.

But the man he directed to hold her had barely laid his hands on her when one of the guards he’d left at the gate strode rapidly around the corner with a sweat-soaked, panting courier at his heels.

“What?” Warwick barked.

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