The Kingmaker's Daughter

‘Shut up!’ Isabel says. ‘You are doing it again.’

‘I can’t believe it. I can’t understand it,’ I tell her. ‘I have to say it over and over again to make myself believe it.’

‘Well, in a little while you can mutter at your husband and see if he likes waking to a mad girl whispering away,’ she says brutally. ‘And I will be able to sleep in the mornings.’

That silences me, as she knew it would. I see my betrothed husband every day, when he comes to sit with his mother in the afternoon, and when we all go in to dinner in the evening. He takes her hand, I walk behind them. She takes the precedence of a queen, I am only a princess-to-be. He is three years older than me of course, so perhaps that is why he behaves as if he can hardly be troubled with me at all. He must have thought of my father with the same horror and hatred that we were taught to think of his mother; perhaps that is why he is so cold to me. Perhaps that is why I feel that we are still strangers, almost enemies.

He has his mother’s fair hair, fair almost copper. He has her round face and her little spoiled mouth. He is lithe and strong, he has been raised to ride and fight, he has courage I know, for people say he is a good jouster. He has been on battlefields since he was a child, perhaps he has become hardened and cannot be expected to feel affection for a girl, the daughter of his former enemy. There is a story about him, aged only seven, calling for the York knights who protected his father to be beheaded, though they had kept his father safe during the battle. Nobody tells me that it is untrue. But maybe this is my fault – I have never asked anyone of his mother’s court if such a young boy could do such a thing, if, in fact, it ever happened: if he blithely gave such a murderous order. I dare not ask his mother if it is true that she asked her seven-year-old son to name what death two honourable men should die. Actually, I never ask her anything.

His face is always guarded, his eyes veiled by his eyelashes, and he rarely looks at me, he always looks away. When someone speaks to him he looks downwards as if he does not trust himself to meet their gaze. Only with his mother does he ever exchange a glance, only she can make him smile. It is as if he trusts no-one but her.

‘He has spent his life knowing that people denied him the throne, some even denied he was his father’s son,’ Isabel says to me reasonably. ‘Everyone said he was the son of the Duke of Somerset, the favourite.’

‘It was our grandfather who said that,’ I remind her. ‘To dishonour her. She told me so herself. She said that was why she put his head on a spike on the walls of York. She says that to be queen is to face a life of constant slander and that you have no-one to defend you but yourself. She says . . .’

‘ “She says! She says!” Does nobody else say anything but her? You speak of her all the time and yet you used to have nightmares about her when you were a little girl,’ Isabel reminds me. ‘You used to wake up screaming that the she-wolf was coming, you thought she hid in the chest at the end of our bed. You used to ask me to wrap you tight and hold you tight so that she couldn’t get you. Funny that you should end up hanging on her every word and betrothed to her son, and forgetting all about me.’

‘I don’t believe he wants to be married to me at all,’ I say desperately.

She shrugs. Nothing interests Isabel these days. ‘He probably doesn’t. He probably has to do as he is ordered: like all of us. Perhaps it will turn out better for you two than the rest of us.’

Sometimes he watches me when I dance with the ladies, but he does not admire me, there is nothing warm in his look. He watches me as if he would judge me, as if he would understand me. He looks at me as if I were a puzzle that he wants to translate. The queen’s ladies in waiting tell me that I am beautiful: a little queen in miniature. They praise the natural curl of my auburn hair, the blue of my eyes, my lithe girl’s figure and the rosy colour of my skin; but he never says anything to make me think that he admires me.

Sometimes he comes riding with us. Then he rides alongside me and never speaks. He rides well, as well as Richard. I glance at him and think that he is handsome. I try to smile at him, I try to make conversation. I should be glad that my father has chosen a husband who is so near my age and looks so fine and princely on a horse. And he will be King of England; but his coldness is quite impenetrable.

We speak together every day, but we never say very much. We are always under the eye of his mother and if I say anything to him that she cannot hear, she calls out: ‘What are you whispering about, Lady Anne?’ and I have to repeat something that sounds utterly foolish, such as ‘I was asking His Grace if there were fish in the moat,’ or ‘I was telling His Grace that I like baked quinces.’

When I say something like this she smiles at him as if it is incredible that he is going to have to endure such a fool for the rest of his life. Her face is warm with humour and sometimes he laughs shortly. She always looks at her son like the wolf they call her, like a she-wolf looks at her cub, with fierce ownership. He is everything to her, she would do anything for him. Me, she has bought for him, through me she has bought the only commander who could defeat King Edward of York: his former guardian, the man who taught him how to fight. Prince Edward the wolf-cub has to be married to this tediously mortal girl so that they can get back to the throne. They endure me because I am the price exacted for the services of the great general, my father, and she dedicates herself to make me a fit wife for him, a fit queen for England.

She tells me about the battles that she fought for her husband’s throne: her son’s inheritance. She tells me that she learned to be hardened to suffering, to rejoice in the death of her enemies. She teaches me that to be a queen you have to see any obstacle in your way as your victim. Sometimes fate will command that only one person can survive, your enemy or you, or sometimes it might be your enemy’s child or your child. When you have to choose, of course you will choose your life, your future, your child – whatever the price.

Sometimes she looks at me with a smile and says, ‘Anne of Warwick, little Anne of Warwick! Who would ever have thought that you would be my daughter-in-law, and your father my ally?’ This is so close to my own puzzled mutterings that once I reply: ‘Isn’t it extraordinary? After all that has been?’

But her blue eyes snap at my impertinence, and she says at once: ‘You know nothing of what has been, you were a child shielded by a traitor when I was fighting for my life, trying to hold the throne against treason. I have seen fortune’s wheel rise and fall, I have been ground to dust beneath the wheel of fortune; you have seen nothing, and understand nothing.’

I drop my head at her harsh tone, and Isabel who sits beside me leans slightly forwards so that I can feel the support of her shoulder, and be less ashamed at being scolded in front of all the ladies, including my mother.

At other times she summons me to her privy chamber and teaches me the things she thinks I should know. Once I go there and there is a map of the kingdom spread out on the table. ‘This,’ she says, smoothing it with her hand, ‘this is a precious thing indeed.’

I look at it. Father has maps in his library at Warwick Castle, one of them of the kingdom of England; but it is smaller than this and only shows the midlands around our home. This is a map of the southern coast of England as it faces France. The southern ports are carefully drawn, though to the west and north it becomes vague and sketchy. Around the ports it is marked whether there is good farmland to feed troops or victual a fleet, at the entrance to the ports it shows the bed of the river or sandbanks. ‘Sir Richard Woodville, Lord Rivers, my friend, made this map,’ she says, putting her finger on his signature. ‘He made a survey of the southern ports to keep me safe when we feared that your father would invade. Jacquetta Woodville was my dearest friend and lady in waiting, and her husband was my great defender.’

I bow my head in embarrassment; but it is always like this. My father was her greatest enemy, everything she ever tells me is a story of warfare against him.

‘Lord Rivers was my dearest friend then, and Jacquetta his wife was like a sister to me.’ She looks wistful for a moment and I dare not say anything at all. Jacquetta changed sides like everyone else after this queen’s defeat and did well from it. Now she is the mother of the queen, her granddaughter a princess and she even has a prince as a grandson; her daughter Elizabeth has given birth to a son in sanctuary and named him Edward for his father, the exiled king. Jacquetta and this queen parted when my father won the final battle at Towton for Edward. The Rivers surrendered on the battlefield and turned their coats and joined York. Then Edward chose their widowed daughter for his bride. That was the moment he acted without my father’s advice, the first mistake he made; that was his first step towards defeat.

‘I will forgive Jacquetta,’ the queen promises. ‘When we enter London, I will see her again and forgive her. I shall have her at my side again, I will comfort her for the terrible loss of her husband.’ She looks resentfully at me. ‘Killed by your father,’ she reminds me. ‘And he accused her of witchcraft.’

‘He released her.’ I swallow.

‘Well, let’s hope she is grateful for that,’ she says sarcastically. ‘One of the greatest women in the kingdom and the dearest friend I ever had – and your father named her as a witch?’ She shakes her head. ‘It beggars belief.’

I say nothing. It beggars belief for me too.

‘D’you know the sign for fortune’s wheel?’ she asks abruptly.

I shake my head.

‘Jacquetta herself showed it to me. She said that I would know a life when I rose very high and fell very low. Now I am going to rise again.’ She extends her forefinger as if pointing and then she draws a circle in the air. ‘You rise and you fall,’ she says. ‘My advice to you is to guard yourself as you rise and destroy your enemies as you fall.’

Finally, after several applications, we receive the dispensation from the Pope, so that Edward and I, though we are distant kin, can marry, and there is a quiet ceremony with little celebration, and we are put to bed by my mother and his. I am so afraid of my mother-in-law the queen that I go to the room without protest, without really thinking of the prince or what is to come in the night, and sit up in bed and wait for him. I hardly see him when he comes in, as I am watching his mother’s avid face as she takes his cloak from his shoulders and whispers ‘goodnight’ to him, and goes from the room. It makes me shudder, the way she looks at him, as if she wishes she could stay and watch.

It is very quiet when everyone has gone. I remember Isabel telling me that it was horrible. I wait for him to tell me what to do. He says nothing. He gets into bed and the thick feather mattress sinks at his side and the ropes of the bed creak under his weight. Still, he says nothing.

‘I don’t know what to do,’ I say awkwardly. ‘I am sorry. Nobody has told me. I asked Isabel but she would say nothing. I couldn’t ask my mother . . .’

He sighs, as if this is yet another burden that has been put on him by this essential alliance of our parents. ‘You don’t do anything,’ he says. ‘You just lie there.’

‘But I . . .’

‘You lie there and you don’t say anything,’ he repeats loudly. ‘The best thing you can do for me, right now, is to say nothing. Most of all don’t remind me who you are, I can’t stand the thought of that . . .’ and then he heaves up in the bed and drops on me with his full weight, plunging into me as if he was stabbing me with a broadsword.

PARIS, CHRISTMAS 1470

The King of France, King Louis himself, is so delighted with our wedding that he bids us come to Paris before the Christmas season and celebrate with him. I open the dancing, I am seated on his right hand at dinner. I am the centre of attention for everyone: the kingmaker’s daughter who will be Queen of England.

Isabel comes behind me. Every time we walk into a room she follows me, and sometimes she bends and frees my train if it is caught in a doorway or sweeping up the scented rushes. She serves me without a smile; her resentment and envy is obvious to everyone. Queen Margaret, my Lady Mother, laughs at Isabel’s sulky face, pats my hand, and says: ‘Now you see it. If a woman rises to greatness she becomes every woman’s enemy. If she fights to keep greatness then everyone, men and women, simply hate her. In your sister’s green face you see your triumph.’

I glance sideways at Isabel’s sulky pallor. ‘She’s not green.’

‘Green with jealousy,’ the queen says, laughing. ‘But no matter. You will be rid of her tomorrow.’

‘Tomorrow?’ I ask. I turn to Isabel as she sits beside me in the window seat. ‘You are going tomorrow?’

She looks as stunned as I am. ‘Not that I know.’

‘Oh yes,’ the queen says smoothly. ‘You are going to London to join your husband. We will follow almost immediately, with the army.’

‘My mother has not told me,’ Isabel challenges the queen. ‘I am not ready to go.’

‘You can pack this evening,’ the queen says simply. ‘For you are going tomorrow.’

‘Excuse me,’ my sister says weakly, and rises to her feet and curtseys low to the queen, and briefly to me. I curtsey and scuttle out after her. She is tearing down the gallery to my rooms, I catch her in one of the beautiful oriel windows.

‘Iz!’

‘I can’t stand another storm at sea.’ Isabel rounds on me. ‘I would rather kill myself on the quayside than go to sea again.’

Despite my reassurance, I put my hand to my belly as if I fear that I too might be with child and my baby too would be put in a box and thrown into the dark heaving waters, just as they did to Isabel’s little son.

‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ Isabel says shortly. ‘You aren’t pregnant, and you aren’t just about to give birth. I should never have gone on board. I should have refused. You should have helped me. My life was ruined then . . . and you let it happen.’

I shake my head. ‘Iz, how could I refuse Father? How could either of us?’

‘And now? Now I have to go to England to join him and George, and just leave you here? With her?’

‘What can we do?’ I ask her. ‘What can we say?’

‘Nothing,’ she says furiously. She turns and walks away from me.

‘Where are you going?’ I call after her.

‘To tell them to pack,’ she throws over her shoulder. ‘To tell them to pack for me. They can put in a shroud for all I care. I don’t care if I drown this time.’

King Louis has provided an elegant little merchant ship, for Isabel to go with a couple of ladies to keep her company. My mother, Queen Margaret and I are on the quayside to see her leave.

‘Really, I can’t. I can’t go on my own,’ Isabel pleads.

‘Your father says he needs you to be with your husband,’ my mother rules. ‘He says you must go at once.’

‘I thought I was to sail with Annie. I should stay with Annie and tell her how to behave. I am her lady in waiting, she needs me.’

‘I do,’ I confirm.

‘Queen Margaret has the command of Anne now, and Anne keeps the queen faithful to our agreement. She does that just by being there, being married to Prince Edward. She doesn’t have to do anything more. She needs no advice, she just has to obey the queen. But you must go to do your work with George,’ my mother tells her. ‘Your task is to keep him faithful to our cause and keep him away from his family. Intercept any messages they send him, make sure he is true to your father. Remind him that he is sworn to your father and to you. We’ll be only a few days behind you, and your father is victorious in England.’

Isabel reaches for my hand. ‘Oh go on,’ Mother says irritably. ‘Stop clinging to your sister. It just means you will be in London, with your father, making merry at court while we are stuck with the army in Dorset, making our way slowly to London. You will be at Westminster Palace picking your clothes from the royal wardrobe, while we trudge up the Fosse Way.’

They take her chests of clothes and bags of things.

‘Don’t go,’ I say in an urgent whisper. ‘Don’t leave me with the bad queen and her son.’

‘How can I refuse?’ she asks. ‘Don’t anger her, or him, just do as you are told. I’ll see you in London. We’ll be together then.’ She finds a smile. ‘Think, Annie, you’ll be Princess of Wales.’

Her smile dies, and we look bleakly at one another. ‘I have to go,’ she says as Mother beckons her impatiently, and with our half-sister Margaret and two other ladies in waiting she walks along the dock to the little ship. She glances back as she goes up the gangplank, and raises her hand to me. I think that nobody but me cares that she will be seasick.

HARFLEUR, FRANCE, MARCH 1471

The winds are holding us in harbour though we said we would set sail more than two weeks ago. My mother-in-law, Queen Margaret, is desperately impatient, and every dawn finds her on the quayside arguing with the captains of her fleet. They assure her that since we are held in port by winds that blow so strongly onshore that we cannot get our ships out to sea, then the very same winds will be blowing the invasion fleet of King Edward further along the coast in Flanders, against his harbour walls, holding him powerlessly in port, like us.

For it turns out that he has not been wasting his time in exile. While my father has taken England under his command, released the king from the Tower and crowned him again, restored the lords of Lancaster to glory and announced that Prince Edward and I are married, the vanquished King Edward has scrounged for money, raised a fleet, recruited a ragtail army, and is waiting for good winds – just like us – to get back to England. Since his wife Elizabeth has given birth to a boy in sanctuary his friends and supporters claim this as a sign of their destiny, and urge him to attack my father’s peace. So now we have to get to England before him, so that we can support my father against the invasion of Edward of York. We have to get to England ahead of King Edward, his loyal brother Richard, his friends and his fleet. This is a necessity, not a matter of choice; it must be done, and yet the wind blows steadily and powerfully against us. For sixteen days it has held us here, on the quayside, while the queen rages at her captains, and clings white-faced to the clenched fists of her son, and looks at me as if I am a heavy burden to ship across a stormy sea.

She is regretting now that she waited in France for our wedding. She is thinking that we should have marched at once and invaded alongside my victorious father. If we had gone then, we would be in London now, receiving oaths of fealty. But she did not trust my father, and she did not trust me. She delayed to see me married to her son; she had to see my father pin me, like a pledge into her hat, without chance of retreat. Only our marriage and my bedding reassured her that neither he nor she could play false. And secretly, she wanted the delay. She wanted to see that my father could capture England before she wasted her precious son on me. Now, because she delayed to see Father win, because she had to wait to secure me, she is trapped on the wrong side of the narrow seas and an inexplicable wind blows against her every day.

HARFLEUR, FRANCE, 12 APRIL 1471

‘We sail tomorrow at dawn,’ the queen says as she walks past Mother and I, standing on the quayside as usual, as we do every day, looking out to sea. This is all any of us has done for the past two weeks – we look to the horizon and we wait for the wind to die down and the seas to quiet. ‘They think the wind will drop overnight. Even if it does not, we have to sail tomorrow. We cannot delay.’

I wait for my husband to tell his mother that we cannot risk sailing into a storm but he has her hard eyes and fixed mouth. He looks as if he would drown rather than stay any longer. ‘And then we will be waiting for him when he lands,’ he says. ‘As the false king Edward steps off his ship we will put him to the sword, and he will go face down into the shingle. We will see his head on a pike on London Bridge.’

‘We cannot sail against the wind,’ I suggest.

His eyes are quite blank. ‘We will.’

In the morning the wind has dropped but the waves are still capped with white, and outside the bar of the harbour we can see the sea is grey and heaving, as if ready for a storm. I have a sense of foreboding, but I can tell no-one, and anyway nobody cares how I feel.

‘When will we see my father?’ I ask Mother. It is only the thought that he is victorious on the other side of these seas that makes me feel I dare set sail. I so want to be with him, I want him to know that I have done my part in this great venture, I have wedded and bedded the prince he found for me, I did not shrink from the altar nor from the bed. My husband never speaks to me and does his duty on me as if I were a mare that must foal. But I have done all that my father asks, and when I call the bad queen ‘My Lady Mother’, and kneel for her blessing I do more than he asked of me. I am ready to take the throne that he has won for me. I am his daughter, I am his heir, I will cross the seas that are so fearsome and I will not fail him. I will become a queen like Margaret of Anjou with a will like a wolf. ‘Will he meet us when we land?’

‘We are to meet him in London,’ my mother says. ‘He has arranged a state entry for us into the city. They will throw down green boughs and flowers before you, there will be poets to sing your praises, your father will have the king greet you on the steps of Westminster Palace. There will be parades and pageants to celebrate your arrival, the fountains will run with wine. Don’t worry, he has everything planned for you. This is the pinnacle of his ambition. He has won what he has wanted for years. He has won for himself what he fought for – and first gave to others. When you have a son, your father will have put a boy of Warwick – a Neville – on the throne of England. He is the kingmaker indeed, and you will be the mother of a king.’

‘My son, my father’s grandson, will be King of England,’ I repeat. I still cannot believe it.

‘Guy of Warwick.’ My mother names the great founder of our house. ‘You will call him Guy Richard of Warwick and he will be Prince Guy of Warwick and Lancaster.’

A shrill whistle from the boatswain warns us that we must leave. My mother nods to the ladies of her household. ‘Get aboard,’ she says. ‘We are taking that ship.’ She turns to me: ‘You sail with the queen.’

‘Aren’t you coming with me?’ I am immediately frightened. ‘Surely you will come with me, Lady Mother?’

My mother laughs. ‘You can sail across the narrow seas on your own with her, I should think,’ she says. ‘She spends all her time telling you how to be queen. You spend all your time listening to her. The two of you will hardly miss me.’

‘I . . .’ I cannot tell my mother that without her and without Isabel I feel quite abandoned. Being Princess of Wales is no compensation, being coached by a woman of mad ambition is no substitute for being cared for by my mother. I am only fourteen, I am afraid of the heaving sea, and afraid of my husband, and afraid of his fierce mother. ‘Surely you will travel with me, Lady Mother?’

‘Go on with you,’ my mother says briskly, ‘go to the queen and sit at her feet like her lapdog, like you always do.’ She goes up the gangplank of her ship, and does not look back at me, as if she has half-forgotten me already. She is in a hurry to join her husband, she is eager to get back to our London house; she wants to see him where he was born to be, at the right hand of the throne of England. I look around for my new husband, who is arm in arm with his mother, and they are laughing together. He waves for me to go on board our ship and I grip the rope and go up the gangplank, feeling my shoes slip on the damp timbers. The ship is small and poorly appointed; it is not one of my father’s great flagships. It has been supplied by King Louis for his kinswoman Margaret, and he has equipped it to transport soldiers and horses, not for our comfort. The queen’s ladies and I go into the master cabin and sit awkwardly on stools in the cramped space, leaving the best chair vacant for the queen. We sit in silence. I can smell the scent of my fear on my rich gown.

We hear the shouts of the sailors as they cast off the ropes then the door of the cabin bangs open and the queen comes in, her face alight with excitement. ‘We are sailing,’ she says. ‘We will be there before Edward.’ She laughs nervously. ‘We must get there before Edward and raise our troops to face him. He will be racing to catch this wind, just like us, but we must outsail him. It is a race now; we must get there before him.’

CERNE ABBEY, WEYMOUTH, 15 APRIL 1471

The queen sits in state in the great hall of the Cerne Abbey, her son standing behind her chair as if he is her personal guard, his hand on her shoulder, his handsome face grave. I am seated beside her on a lower chair – really, a stool – as if I were a little mascot, to remind everyone that the Warwick name and fortune is attached to this venture. We are waiting for the Lancaster lords to welcome us to the kingdom. Seated like this we present them with a tableau of unity. Only my mother is missing, as her ship and a few others of our fleet made landfall further up the coast at Southampton. She will be riding to join us now.

The double doors at the end of the hall swing open and the brothers of the House of Beaufort come in together. The queen rises to her feet and first gives her hands and then her cheek to Edmund Duke of Somerset, the son of the man that people said was her only love, then she greets his brother: John the Marquis of Dorset. John Courtenay the Earl of Devon kneels to her. These are men who were her loyal favourites when she was queen, who stayed faithful to her when she was in exile, and who rallied to my father for her sake.

I had expected them to come in shouting greetings, filled with excitement, but they look grim, and their entourage and the other lords behind them are not beaming either. I look from one dark face to another and I know already that something has gone wrong. I glance at the queen and see that her face has lost its rosy colour. The excitement of greeting is draining away, leaving her pale and stony. So she knows it too, though she greets one man after another, often by name, often asking after friends and family. Too often they shake their head, as if they cannot bear to say that a man is dead. I start to wonder if these are new deaths, if there has been some sort of attack in London, an ambush on the road? They look like men with new fears, with fresh grief. What has happened while we waited at the quayside in France? What disaster happened while we were at sea?

She makes up her mind to know the worst and turns, sweeping the train of her gown, to her throne, and seats herself. She clasps her hands in her lap, she grits her teeth. I see her screw up her courage. ‘Tell us,’ she says shortly. She indicates her son and even me. ‘Tell us.’

‘The York claimant, the impostor Edward, landed in the North a month ago,’ Edmund Beaufort says bluntly.

‘A month ago? He can’t have done. The seas must have held him in port . . .’

‘He set sail into the very teeth of the storm and he was all but wrecked, he lost his fleet at sea, but they found each other again and marched on York and then London. As always, he has a witch’s luck: his fleet scattered and then found each other again.’

Her son looks at her as though she has failed him. She says again, ‘The seas must surely have held him in port as they did us.’

‘Not him.’

She makes a small gesture with her hand as if to push away the bad news. ‘And my lord Warwick?’

‘Stayed true to you. Mustered his army and marched out against Edward. But he was betrayed.’

‘Who?’ The one word is like a cat’s spit.

Somerset throws a quick sideways glance at me. ‘George Duke of Clarence turned his coat and joined with his brother, Edward. The younger son Richard brought them together. They were, all three, reconciled. It was the three sons of York together again and George’s army and wealth was thrown onto the side of Edward. All George’s affinity stood behind him, the Yorks were reunited.’

She turns a burning glance on me as if I am to blame. ‘Your sister Isabel! We sent her ahead to keep him faithful! She was there to hold him to his word!’

‘Your Grace . . .’ I shrug. What could she do? What could she make George do, if he chose to change his mind?

‘They met near the village of Barnet, on the Great North Road.’

We wait. There is something terrible about the slow unfolding of this story. I clench my hands in my lap to prevent myself shouting out: ‘But who won?’

‘There was a mist like a low cloud that rolled in through the night, which they said was a witch’s mist. All night it grew thicker and darker, you couldn’t see your hand in front of your face. One army couldn’t see the other. At any rate – we couldn’t see them.’

We wait, as they waited.

‘They could see us though. At dawn when they came at us out of the mist, they were far closer than we thought – they were on top of us. They had been hiding in the mist, as close as a stone’s throw, all night. They had known where we were when we were like blind men. We had been shooting cannon all night far over their heads. We parried the charge, we took them on, then through the day the battle lines shifted and though we locked forces with Edward and held him, the Earl of Oxford, our faithful ally, broke through them and then came back to the battle through the mist and our men thought the earl had turned traitor and was coming against them. Some thought it was reinforcements for Edward, coming at them again from behind, Edward often keeps a battle in reserve . . . at any rate, they broke and fled.’

‘They fled?’ She repeats the word as if she does not understand it. ‘Fled?’

‘Many of our men were killed, thousands. But the rest fled back to London. Edward won.’

‘Edward won?’

He goes down on one knee. ‘Your Grace, I am sorry to say that in this first battle he was victorious. He defeated your commander the Earl of Warwick; but I am confident we can defeat him now. We have mustered the army again, they are on their way.’

I wait. I expect her to ask where my father is, when he will arrive with those of his army who managed to get away.

She turns to me. ‘So Isabel did nothing for us, though we sent her ahead to be with her husband. She didn’t keep George to our alliance,’ she says spitefully. ‘I will remember this. You had better remember this. She failed to keep him faithful to you, to me, to your father. She is a poor daughter and a poor wife, a wretched sister. I think she will regret this. I will make sure that she regrets the day her husband betrayed us.’

‘My father?’ I whisper. ‘Is my father coming now?’

I see the Duke of Somerset wince and look at the queen for permission to speak.

‘My father?’ I ask more loudly. ‘What of my father?’

‘He died in the battle,’ he says quietly. ‘I am sorry, my lady.’

‘Died?’ she demands baldly. ‘Warwick is dead?’

‘Yes.’

She starts to smile, as if it is funny. ‘Killed by Edward?’

He bows in assent.

She cannot help herself. She lets out a peal of laughter, clapping her hand over her mouth, trying to silence herself but not able to cease laughing. ‘Who would have thought it?’ she gasps. ‘Who would ever have thought such a thing? My God! The wheel of fortune – Warwick killed by his own beloved protégé! Warwick against his own wards and they kill him. And Edward with his two brothers at his side again – after all we have done and sworn . . .’ Slowly she subsides. ‘And my husband, the king?’ She moves onto the next question as if there is nothing more to be said about the death of my father.

‘How did he die?’ I ask, but nobody answers me.

‘The king?’ she repeats impatiently.

‘Safe in London, back in the Tower. They picked him up after the battle and took him as their prisoner.’

‘He was well?’ she asks quickly.

Somerset shifts uncomfortably. ‘Singing,’ he says shortly. ‘In his tent.’ The mad king’s son and his wife exchange one brief look.

‘Did my father die in battle?’ I ask.

‘The York brothers went back to London victorious, but they will rest and arm and come on here,’ Beaufort warns her. ‘They will have heard that you have landed, just as we did. They will be marching after us as fast as they can come.’

She shakes her head. ‘Ah, dear God! If we had only come sooner!’

‘George Duke of Clarence might still have proved untrue. The Earl of Warwick might still have been killed,’ the duke says steadily. ‘As it is, your coming now brings us a fresh army, newly landed, and people gathering to support you as a new cause. Edward has marched, and fought, and is now marching again. He has drawn on all his credit, he has been joined by all his friends, there is no-one left to recruit and they have fought a heavy battle and suffered losses, and they are all tired. It was a hard battle and a long march. Everything is in our favour.’

‘He’ll be coming here?’

They all nod; there is no doubt that the House of York is coming to the table for a final throw of the dice.

‘For us?’

‘Yes, Your Grace – we have to move out.’

For a moment she draws a breath, then she makes a small gesture with her hand, drawing a circle in the air. ‘The wheel of fortune,’ she says almost dreamily. ‘Just as Jacquetta said. Now her son-in-law is coming to attack me, having killed my ally; and her daughter and my son are rivals for the throne and she and I are far apart. I suppose we are enemies.’

‘My father . . .’ I say.

‘They took his body to London, Your Grace,’ the duke says quietly to me. ‘Edward captured his body, and also that of your uncle Lord Montagu. I am sorry, Your Grace. He will show the bodies to the people of London, so that everyone knows he is dead and his cause lost.’

I close my eyes. I think of my grandfather’s head on the spike on the walls of York, put there by this queen. Now my father’s dead body will be put on show to the people of London by the boy who loved him like a brother. ‘I want my mother,’ I say. I clear my throat and say it again: ‘I want my mother.’

The queen hardly hears me. ‘What do you advise?’ she asks Edmund Beaufort.

I turn to my husband, the young prince. ‘I want to be with my mother,’ I say. ‘I have to tell her. I have to tell her of the death of her husband. I must go to her. I must find her.’

He is listening to the duke; he barely glances at me.

‘We have to march north and west, join up with Jasper Tudor in Wales,’ the duke replies to the queen. ‘We have to go at once, get ahead of Edward. Once we join with Tudor’s forces in Wales, we can come back into England in strength and attack Edward at a place of our own choosing. But we have to recruit men.’

‘We should go now?’

‘As soon as you are ready to travel. We need to start the march. Edward always travels fast, and so we need to be ahead and stay ahead of him. We have to get to Wales before he can cut us off.’

I see her change at once, from a woman receiving a warning into the commander who will drive the march. She has ridden at the head of an army before now, she has taken an army into battle. She responds to the call to action, she is quite without fear. ‘We are ready! Order the men. They have disembarked and eaten and drunk, they are ready to march. Tell them to fall in.’

‘I need to see my mother,’ I say again. ‘Your Grace, I need to see my mother, she may not even know of the death of her husband. And I need to be with her.’ Like a child my voice quavers. ‘I have to go to my Lady Mother! My father is dead, I have to go to my mother.’

At last she hears me. She glances at Edmund Beaufort. ‘What of Her Grace the Countess of Warwick?’

One of his men comes in and whispers to him and he turns to me. ‘Your mother has been told of the death of her husband. Her ship made landfall down the coast, and the men who were on board are just joining us now. They say they had the news in Southampton of the battle. She was told.’

I get to my feet. ‘I must see her. Excuse me.’

‘She did not come with the men.’

Queen Margaret clicks her tongue in irritation. ‘Oh, for God’s sake! Where is she?’

The messenger speaks to the duke again. ‘She has retired to Beaulieu Abbey. She has sent word to say that she will not ride with you. She says she has taken sanctuary.’

‘My mother?’ I cannot understand what they are saying. ‘Beaulieu Abbey?’ I look from the duke to the queen and then to my young husband. ‘What am I to do? Will you take me to Beaulieu Abbey?’

Prince Edward shakes his head. ‘I can’t take you. There’s no time.’

‘Your mother has abandoned you,’ the queen says flatly. ‘Don’t you understand? She is in hiding in fear of her life. Clearly she thinks that Edward is going to win and we will be defeated and she doesn’t want to be with us. You will have to come with us.’

‘I don’t . . .’

She rounds on me, her face white with fury. ‘Understand this, girl! Your father has been defeated, his army all but destroyed. He is dead. Your sister cannot keep her husband on our side. Your mother has hidden herself away in an abbey. Your influence is worthless, your name means next to nothing. Your family do not stand by you. I have bound my son in marriage to you thinking that your father would defeat Edward but it is Edward who has defeated him. I thought your father was the man to destroy the House of York – the kingmaker as they call him! – but his protégé turns out to be the better man. Your father’s promises are empty, your father is dead. Your sister is a turncoat and your mother has tucked herself up safely in sanctuary, while we fight for our lives. I don’t need you, you can do nothing for me. I don’t want you particularly. If you want to go to Beaulieu Abbey you can go. You mean nothing to me. Go to Beaulieu Abbey and wait to be arrested as a traitor. Wait for Edward’s army to come in, and rape you with the rest of the nuns. Or ride with us with the chance of victory.’

I am trembling at her sudden rage.

‘You can decide,’ her son says indifferently, as if I am not his wife, bound to be with him. ‘We can send a couple of men to ride with you. Later, we can get the marriage annulled. What do you want to do?’

I think of my father, dying to put me on the throne, fighting against an army that came out of the mist. I think of his burning constant ambition that a Neville girl should take the throne of England, that we should make a king. He did that for me. He died for me. I can do this for him. ‘I’ll come,’ I say. ‘I’ll come with you.’

We set off on a punishing march, men flocking to our standards every time we halt. The queen is beloved in the western counties and her friends and allies have long promised that she would land on their shores and lead an army against the House of York. We go north and west. The city of Bristol supports us with money and cannon, and the citizens pile out into the narrow streets with their caps filled with gold coins for us. Behind us, Edward has to recruit soldiers on the run, in a country that has no love for the House of York. We hear that he finds it hard going and is lacking the support he needs; his army is tired, and every day the gap between our forces widens as we get away from him. Our spies tell us that he is falling behind, delayed by the need to get more men, incapable of catching us. Margaret laughs and jumps down from the saddle at the end of the day like a girl. I climb down wearily, aching all over, my knees and my buttocks red and sore.

We rest for a few hours only. I fall asleep lying on the ground wrapped in my riding cloak and I dream that my father comes, stepping carefully around the sleeping guard, and tells me that I can come home to Calais, that the bad queen and the sleeping king are defeated and I can be safe at home once more behind the high castle walls, guarded by the seas. I wake smiling and look around for him. It is raining slightly and I am chilled, and my gown is damp. I have to get up and mount on a wet saddle on a wet horse and go on with nothing to eat. We dare not wait and light fires for breakfast.

We are marching up the broad valley of the Severn, and as the sun comes up it is hot and weary; there are no trees and no shade. The wide green fields seem to stretch forever, and there are no roads, just tracks of dried mud, and so the riders stir up a cloud of dust which chokes everyone who comes behind them. The horses droop their heads and stumble through the dried ruts and stones. When we come to a stream the men fling themselves down on their bellies and try to drink before the horses go in and foul the river. When my guard brings me a cup of water it tastes dirty, and in the afternoon the flies come out and swarm around my face and eyes. My horse shakes his head all the time against the biting of the insects and I brush my face and rub my nose, and feel myself flushed and sweaty and so weary that I wish I could fall out, like some of the men do, and fling themselves on the side of the road and let the march go past them, beyond caring.

‘We’ll cross the river at Gloucester,’ the queen says. ‘Then Edward will drop back – he won’t dare to attack us in Wales. Once we are over the river we are safe.’ She gives a little excited laugh. ‘Once we are over the river we are halfway to victory. Jasper Tudor will raise men for me, we will come into England like a broadsword to the throat.’ She is jubilant, beaming at me. ‘This is what it is to be a queen militant,’ she tells me. ‘Remember this march. You have to fight for what you own by right, sometimes. You have to be ready to fight, to do anything.’

‘I am so tired,’ I say.

She laughs. ‘Remember how it feels. If we win you will never have to march again. Let the tiredness, let the pain come into your soul. Swear to yourself you will never fight for your throne again. You will win once and forever.’

We come to the city of Gloucester from the south and as we approach we can see the great gates of the city swing to shut in our faces. I remember my father telling me that London once locked its gates to this queen and begged her to take her wild army of northern men away. This mayor comes out on the wall of Southgate himself and calls down his apologies, but he has an order from Edward – he calls him King Edward – and he will not disobey. Even while marching, even while recruiting, even while chasing after us, thirsty in the hot sun, Edward thought to send scouts ahead and round us to get to Gloucester and hold them to their loyalty to him. Perversely, I want to smile. It was my father who taught Edward to think ahead, to see an army in the field like a game of chess. My father will have told Edward not just to secure your own river crossing, but block your enemy.

The duke goes forwards to argue but the city’s cannon look down on him with the mayor who just repeats that he is commanded by the king. The bridge across the great River Severn is the western gate out of the city; there is no other way to get to it but through the city. There is no way across the Severn but their bridge. We have to get inside the city walls to get to the bridge. The duke offers money, favour, the gratitude of the woman who was once queen and will be again. We can see the mayor shake his head. The city commands the crossing of the river, and if they won’t let us in we cannot get across the River Severn here. Clearly, they won’t let us in. The queen bites her lip. ‘We’ll go on,’ is all she says, and we ride on.

I start to count the paces of my horse. I lean forwards in the saddle trying to ease the pain in my thighs and buttocks. I wrap my hands in the horse’s mane and grit my teeth. Before me, I see the queen riding straight-backed, indomitable. I fall into a daze of fatigue as it gets darker and then, as the stars are coming out, and the horse’s pace is slower and slower, I hear her say: ‘Tewkesbury. We’ll cross the river here. There’s a ford.’

The horse halts, and I stretch out of the saddle to lean along its neck. I am so weary I cannot care where we are. I hear a scout come and speak urgently to her and to the Duke of Somerset and to the prince. He says that Edward is behind, close behind, closer than a mortal man could have marched. He has the speed of the devil and he is on our heels.

I raise my head. ‘How can he have gone so fast?’ I ask. Nobody answers me.

We cannot rest, there can be no time for rest. But we cannot cross the river in the dark – you have to go from sandbank to sandbank, carefully staying in the shallows. We can’t go into the cold deep water without lights. So we cannot escape him. He has caught us on the wrong side of the river and we will have to fight him here, as soon as it is light tomorrow. We must remember that he can turn his army in a moment, prepare them in darkness, conquer in mist, in snow. He has a wife who can whistle up a wind for him, who can breathe out a mist, whose icy hatred can make snow. We have to get into battle lines now, we must prepare for battle at dawn. No matter how tired and thirsty and hungry, the men must make ready to fight. The duke rides off and starts to order where the troops are to be deployed. Most of them are so weary that they drop down their packs and sleep where they are ordered to make their stand, in the shelter of the ruins of the old castle.

‘This way,’ the queen says and a scout takes her horse and leads us downhill, a little way out of the town, to a small nunnery where we can sleep for the night, and we ride into the stable yard and someone at last helps me from my horse and when my legs buckle beneath me, the almoner guides me into the guest house to the oblivion of a little truckle bed made up with coarse clean sheets.

TEWKESBURY, GLOUCESTERSHIRE, 4 MAY 1471

As soon as it grows light reports come to us almost hourly, but it is hard to tell what is happening, just a few miles away. The queen paces up and down the little hall of the priory where we have taken up our quarters. They say that Edward’s army is fighting uphill, against our force that is well-positioned behind the half-ruined walls of the old Tewkesbury castle. Then they come and say that the York armies are advancing, Richard Duke of Gloucester on one wing, Edward in the centre fighting side by side with his brother George, and his great friend William Hastings bringing up the rear, protecting them from ambush.

I wonder if Isabel has come with her husband and is nearby, waiting for news as I am waiting for news. She will be wondering about me; I can almost sense her nearby, anxious as I am. I look out of the window of the priory, almost as if I expect to see her, riding up the road to me. It seems impossible that we should be close to each other and not together. The queen looks coldly at me when we hear that George is at the very centre of the army that is coming against us. ‘Traitor,’ she says quietly. I don’t reply. It is meaningless to me that my sister is now a traitor’s wife, she is my enemy, her husband is trying to kill my husband, she has abandoned the cause that my father gave his life for. None of this makes any sense to me. I cannot believe that my father is dead, I cannot believe that my mother has abandoned me, I cannot believe that my sister is married to a traitor to our cause, has become a traitor herself. Most of all I cannot believe that I am alone without Izzy, though she is just a few miles away.

Then the messengers fail to arrive, and nobody comes to tell us what is happening. We go out to the little physic garden of the priory and we can hear the terrible noise of the cannon, which sounds just like summer-day thunder; but there is no way of knowing whether it is our gunners, getting the white rose in their sights, mowing them down, or whether Edward has managed to bring his own artillery, even on a forced march, even at that speed, and they are shooting uphill at us.

‘The duke is an experienced soldier,’ the queen says. ‘He will know what to do.’

Neither of us remark that my father was far more experienced, and won almost all his battles, but his pupil Edward defeated him. Suddenly we hear the rattle of a galloping horse and a rider with the Beaufort colours approaches the stable yard. We run to the open gate. He does not even dismount, he does not even enter the yard, but his horse wheels and rears on the road, sweat-stained and labouring for breath. ‘My lord said I was to tell you, if ever I thought the battle lost. So I have come. You should get away.’

Margaret runs forwards and would grab his reins but he puts his whip-hand down to prevent her from touching him. ‘I won’t stay. I promised him I would warn you and this I have done. I’m off.’

‘The duke?’

‘Run away!’

The shock makes her shrill. ‘The Duke of Somerset!’

‘That’s him. Run like a deer.’

‘Where is Edward?’

‘Coming!’ is all he shouts, and he wheels his horse and gallops off down the road, the sparks flying from the horseshoes.

‘We must go,’ Margaret says flatly.

I am overwhelmed by the sudden defeat. ‘Are you sure? Shouldn’t we wait for Prince Edward? What if that man was mistaken?’

‘Oh yes,’ she says bitterly. ‘I am sure. This is not the first time I have run from a battlefield and perhaps it will not be the last. Get them to bring our horses. I will get my things.’

She dashes into the house and I run to the stable and shake the old groom and tell him to bring my horse and the queen’s horse at once.

‘What’s the matter?’ His gummy old smile breaks his wrinkled face into a thousand cracks. ‘Battle too hot for you, little lady? Want to get away now? I thought you were waiting to ride out in triumph?’

‘Get the horses out,’ is all I say.

I hammer on the door of the hayloft for the two men who are supposed to guard us and order them to get ready to leave at once. I run inside to fetch my cloak and my riding gloves. I hop on the wooden floor as I cram my feet into my riding boots. Then I scramble out into the yard, one glove on, one in my hand, but as I get to the yard and shout for them to bring my horse to the mounting block, there is a thunder of hooves outside and the gate to the yard is suddenly filled with fifty horses and I can see, amid them all, the black curly head of Richard Duke of Gloucester, my childhood friend, the ward of my father, and the brother of Edward of York. Beside him, I recognise at once, is Robert Brackenbury, his childhood friend, still faithful. Our two men have handed over their pikes, they are stripping off their jackets as if they are glad to be rid of the insignia of the red rose and my husband, Prince Edward’s, badge of the swan.

Richard rides his great grey horse right up to me, as I stand, like a martyr, on the mounting block, as if he thinks I might mount behind him and ride pillion. His young face is grim. ‘Lady Anne,’ he says.

‘Princess,’ I say weakly. ‘I am Princess Anne.’

He takes off his hat to me. ‘Dowager princess,’ he corrects me.

For a moment his meaning does not sink in. Then I sway and he puts out a hand to steady me so that I do not fall. ‘My husband is dead?’

He nods.

I look around for his mother. She is inside the priory still. She does not know. The horror of this is quite beyond me. I think she will die when she hears this news. I don’t know how I am going to tell her.

‘At whose hands?’

‘He died during the battle. He had a soldier’s death: honourable. Now I am taking you into safe-keeping, according to the orders of my brother King Edward.’

I draw close to his horse, I put one pleading hand on his horse’s mane and I look into his kind brown eyes. ‘Richard, for the love of God, for my father’s love for you, let me go to my mother. I think she is in an abbey somewhere called Beaulieu. And my father is dead. Let me go to my mother. There is my horse, let me mount it and go.’

His young face is stern; it is as if we are strangers, as if he had never seen me in his life before. ‘I am sorry, Dowager Princess. My orders are clear. To take you and Her Grace Margaret of Anjou into my keeping.’

‘And what of my husband?’

‘He’ll be buried here. With the hundreds, thousands of others.’

‘I will have to tell his mother,’ I say. ‘Can I tell her how he died?’

His sideways glance, as if he is too afraid to meet my eyes, confirms my suspicions. That was how he used to look when he was caught out in some misdemeanour in the schoolroom. ‘Richard!’ I accuse him.

‘He died during the battle,’ he says.

‘Did you kill him? Or Edward? Or George?’

The York boys stick together once more. ‘He died in battle,’ Richard repeats. ‘A soldier’s death. His mother may be proud of his courage. You too. And now I must bid you get on your horse and come with me.’

The door of the priory opens and he looks up and sees her as she comes slowly down the steps in the sunshine. She has her travelling cape over her arm and a little satchel on her back; they caught us only by moments, we had nearly got away. She sees the fifty cavalrymen, and looks from Richard’s grim face to my shocked one, and she knows at once the news that he brings. Her hand goes out to the stone doorway to steady herself, and she holds the arch at the height where she used to hold her son’s little hand when she was Queen of England and he was her precious only boy.

‘My son, His Grace the Prince of Wales?’ she asks, clinging to the title now that she will never hold the young man again.

‘I regret to tell you that Edward of Westminster died in the battle,’ Richard says. ‘My brother, the King of England, King Edward, has won. Your commanders are dead, or surrendering, or fled. I am here to take you to London.’

I jump down from the mounting block and go towards her with my hands out to hold her; but she does not even see me. Her pale blue eyes are stony. ‘I refuse to come with you, this is hallowed ground, I am in sanctuary. I am a Princess of France, and Queen of England, you cannot lay hands on me. My person is sacred. The dowager princess is in my keeping. We will stay here until Edward comes to parley, and I will speak to none other but him.’

Richard is eighteen years old, born nothing more than the youngest son of a duke. She was born a princess and has fought half her life as a queen. She faces him down, and he drops his gaze. She turns from him and snaps her fingers at me to follow her inside the nunnery. I obey, jumping down from the mounting block and falling in behind her, aware of his eyes on my back, wondering if we will get away with this magnificent gamble of prestige against power.

‘Your Grace, you will get on your horse and ride with us to London or I will have you bound and gagged and thrown in a litter,’ he says quietly.

She rounds on him. ‘I claim sanctuary! You heard me! I am safe here.’

His face is grim. ‘We are dragging them out of the sanctuary of Tewkesbury Abbey and slitting their throats in the churchyard,’ he says without raising his voice, without a trace of shame in his voice. ‘We don’t recognise sanctuary for traitors. We have changed the rules. You should thank God that Edward wants to show you as part of his triumph in London or you would be down in the dirt with them with your head staved in by an axe.’

In a second she has changed her tactics and she is off the steps and at his side, her hand on his rein. The face she turns up to him is warm and inviting. ‘You are young,’ she says gently. ‘You are a good soldier, a good general. You will be nothing while Edward lives, you will always be a younger son, after Edward, after George. Come to me and I will name you as my heir, get us away from here and you shall marry Her Grace Anne, the princess dowager, I shall name you Prince of Wales, my heir, and you can have Anne. Put me back on the throne and I will give you the Neville fortune and then make you the next king after my husband.’

He laughs out loud, his laugh warm and genuine, the only healthy noise in the stable yard today. He shakes his young curly head in amusement at her persistence, at her refusal to give up. ‘Your Grace, I am a boy of York. My motto is loyauté me lie. I am faithful to my brother as to my own self. I love nothing in the world more than honour. And I would as soon put a wolf on the throne of England as you.’

She is still for a moment. In his proud young voice she hears her defeat. Now, she knows she is beaten. She drops her hands from his rein, she turns away. I see her put her hand to her heart and know that she is thinking of the son she adored, whose inheritance she just threw on the ground for a final last desperate cast.

Richard looks over her head to me. ‘And the princess dowager and I will make our own arrangements,’ he says surprisingly.

She takes hours to pack her things. I know she has been kneeling before her crucifix in speechless weeping for her son; she begs the nuns to say mass for him, to get hold of his body if they can and bathe it and wrap it and bury him with the honours of a prince. She orders me to ask Richard for his body, but he says that the prince will be buried in Tewkesbury Abbey when the soldiers have scrubbed the blood from the chancel steps and the church has been re-consecrated. The Yorks have fouled a holy place with the blood of Lancastrian martyrs and my young husband will lie beneath bloodstained stones. Oddly, this is one of my family churches, endowed by the Nevilles for generations, our family resting place. So, as it happens, my young husband will lie near my ancestors, in a place of honour below our chancel steps, and his memorial stone will be bright with sun shining through the stained glass of our windows.

The queen has the priory turned upside down until we can find two gowns of white – the colour of royal mourning in France. She wears a bleached wimple and coif that drains her stricken face of any colour so that she looks indeed like the queen of ice that they once called her. Three times Richard sends to the door of her chamber to demand that she come now, and three times she sends him away saying she is preparing for the journey. Finally, she can delay no longer.

‘Follow me,’ she says. ‘We will ride, but if they want to bind us to our horses we will refuse. Do as I do, obey me in everything. And don’t speak unless I say you can.’

‘I have asked him if I could go to my mother,’ I say.

She turns on me a face like stone. ‘Don’t be a fool,’ she says. ‘My son is dead, his widow will have to pay the price too. He is dead and you are dishonoured.’

‘You could ask for me to be released to my mother.’

‘Why would I do anything for you? My son is dead, my army defeated, the struggle of my life is overthrown. Better for me to bring you into London at my side. Edward is more likely to pardon us as two women in mourning.’

I follow her out to the stable yard. I cannot deny her bleak logic, and there is nowhere else for me to go. The guard is drawn up, and Richard sits on his grey horse to one side. He is red-faced and trembling with anger at the delay, his hand clenched on the hilt of his sword.

She looks at him indifferently, as if he were a moody pageboy, whose temper is of no interest to her. ‘I am ready now. You may lead the way; the princess dowager will ride beside me. Your guard will come behind us. I will not be crowded.’

He nods shortly. She gets onto her horse and they bring mine to the mounting block. I get on and one of the elderly nuns straightens my borrowed white gown so that it falls either side of the horse, covering my worn boots. She looks up at me: ‘Good luck, Princess,’ she says. ‘God speed and a safe ending to your journey. God bless you, poor thing – little more than a child in a hard world.’ Her kindness is so sudden, and so surprising, that the tears flood into my eyes and I have to blink them away to see.

‘Ride out!’ Richard of Gloucester says sharply. The guards fall in before, behind, and on either side of the queen, and when she is about to protest Robert Brackenbury leans over, pulls the reins out of her hands and leads her horse. They clatter out through the arch. I gather my reins and kick my horse forwards to join her but Richard wheels his big battle horse between the queen’s cavalcade and me, and he leans over and puts his gauntleted hand on my reins.

‘What?’

‘You’re not going with her.’

She turns to look back. The guard has closed up around her and I cannot hear her voice but I see that she is calling my name. I pull my reins from Richard and say: ‘Let go, Richard. Don’t be stupid, I have to go with her. She ordered me.’

‘No you don’t,’ he contradicts me. ‘You’re not arrested, though she is. You’re not going to the Tower of London, though she is. Your husband is dead; you’re not of the House of Lancaster any more. You are a Neville once more. You can choose.’

‘Anne!’ I hear her shout to me. ‘Come now!’

I wave at her, gesturing to show her Richard, holding my reins. She tries to pull up her horse but the guard close around her and force her onward, a cloud of dust billowing up from the hooves of their horses as they drive her onward like a herded swan, down the road to London, away from me.

‘I have to go, I am her daughter-in- law,’ I say urgently. ‘I swore fealty to her, she commands me.’

‘She is going to the Tower,’ he says simply. ‘To join her sleeping husband. Her life is over, her cause is lost, her son and heir is dead.’

I shake my head. Too much has happened, too quickly. ‘How did he die?’

‘That doesn’t matter. What matters is what happens to you next.’

I look at him; I am simply bereft of all will. ‘Richard, I am lost.’

He doesn’t even answer. He has seen such horrors today that my tears count for nothing. ‘You say I cannot go with the queen?’

‘No.’

‘Can I go to my mother?’

‘No. And anyway, she will be tried for treason.’

‘Can I stay here?’

‘No.’

‘Then what can I do?’

He smiles as if at last I have realised that I have to consult with him, I am not free. I am the pawn in possession of another player. A new game has started and he is going to make a move. ‘I am going to take you to your sister, Isabel.’

WORCESTER, MAY 1471

Of course, Isabel is now the victor. Isabel is of the House of York, a faithful wife to the most handsome York brother. Isabel is the wife of the victor of Barnet, of Tewkesbury. Isabel’s husband is next in line to the throne after Edward’s baby son, only two heartbeats away from greatness. If Edward were to die, mopping up the fighting, if Edward’s son were to die – and even now the queen and the royal nursery are besieged in the Tower by Lancaster loyalists – then George will be King of England and Isabel would fulfil my father’s ambition and her own destiny. Then, I suppose, my father would not have died in vain. He would have a daughter on the throne of England. It would not be me; it would be Isabel. But he would not have minded that. He never minded which one of us achieved the throne as long as it was a girl from the House of Warwick.

Isabel receives me in her privy chamber with three ladies in waiting. I know none of them. It is like meeting a stranger in awkward circumstances. I walk in and curtsey; she inclines her head.

‘Iz.’

She has gone deaf with greatness. She just looks at me.

‘Iz,’ I say more urgently.

‘How could you do it?’ she demands. ‘How could you come with her and invade us like that? How could you, Anne? You were bound to fail and face disgrace or death.’

For a moment I am aghast, and I stare at her as if she is speaking Flemish. Then I look at the avid ladies seated around her and realise we are speaking for the enjoyment of the House of York, we are a tableau of remorse and loyalty. She is playing Loyalty; I am to play Remorse.

‘My Lady Sister, I had no choice,’ I say quietly. ‘My father ordered my marriage to the son of Margaret of Anjou, and she commanded that I go with them. You remember that I did not seek the marriage, it was at my father’s command. As soon as we landed in England I asked at once to join my mother. There are witnesses to that.’

I thought that the mention of our mother, mourning in sanctuary, would soften Isabel but it turns out it is the wrong thing to say. Her face darkens at once. ‘Our mother is to be arraigned for treason. She will lose her estates and fortune. She knew of the plot against King Edward and she did nothing to warn him. She is a traitor,’ Isabel rules.

If my mother loses her estates then Isabel and I will lose our inheritance. Everything my father owned was lost on the battlefield. All we have left is the fortune that stayed in my mother’s name. Isabel cannot want to throw this away, it is to make herself a pauper. I shoot an anxious glance at her. ‘My mother was guilty of nothing but obedience to her husband,’ I try.

Izzy scowls at me. ‘Our father was a traitor to his king and his friend. Our mother is guilty with him. We will throw ourselves on the mercy and wisdom of Edward. God save the king!’

‘God save the king!’ I repeat.

Isabel waves the women to leave us and beckons me to come and sit beside her. I sink to a low stool and wait for her to tell me what I am to do, what she means by this. I am so weary and so overwhelmed by defeat that I wish I could put my head in her lap, like I used to do, and let her rock me to sleep.

‘Iz,’ I say miserably. ‘I am so tired. What do we have to do now?’

‘We can do nothing for Mother,’ she says quietly. ‘She made her choice. She will be in the abbey for life now she has walled herself in there.’

‘Walled?’

‘Don’t be stupid. I don’t mean she’s really walled in. I mean she has chosen to live there and claimed sanctuary. She cannot just come out now that the fighting is over and expect to carry on as normal.’

‘What about us?’

‘George is a favoured brother, a son of the House of York. He was on the right side in the last two battles. I’m going to be all right.’

‘What about me?’

‘You’re going to live with us. Quietly, to start off with, until the fuss about the Prince of Lancaster and the battle is over. You will be my lady in waiting.’

I observe that I am brought so low that I am relieved to be in service to my sister, and she in the House of York. ‘Oh, so now I am to serve you,’ I say.

‘Yes,’ she says shortly. ‘Of course.’

‘Did they tell you about the battle at Barnet? When Father was killed?’

She shrugs. ‘Not really. I didn’t ask. He’s dead, isn’t he? Does it matter how?’

‘How?’

She looks at me and her face softens as if beneath this battle-hardened young woman is the sister that loves me still. ‘You know what he did?’

I shake my head.

‘They say that he wanted the soldiers to know that he would not ride off and leave them. The soldiers, the common men, know that the lords have their horses held by their grooms behind the battle lines, and if they are losing, the lords can call for their horses and get away. Everyone knows that. They leave foot soldiers to be killed and they ride away.’

I nod.

‘Father said he would face death with them. They could trust him to take the risk that they were taking. He called for his beautiful warhorse—’

‘Not Midnight?’

‘Yes, Midnight who was so handsome and brave, that he loved so much, that had carried him so often in so many battles. And before all the men, all the commoners who would never be able to get away if they were defeated, he drew his great battle sword and he plunged it into Midnight’s loyal heart. The horse went down to its knees and Father held his head as he died. Midnight died with his big black head in Father’s arms. Father stroked his nose as he closed his black eyes.’

I am horrified. ‘He did that?’

‘He loved Midnight. He did it to show them that this was a battle to the death – for all of them. He laid Midnight’s head on the ground and stood up and said to the men: “Now I am like you, a foot soldier like you. I cannot gallop away like a false lord. I am here to fight to the death.” ’

‘And then?’

‘Then he fought to the death.’ The tears are pouring down her face, and she does not wipe them away. ‘They knew he would fight to the death. He didn’t want anyone to ride away. He wanted this to be the last battle. He wanted it to be the last battle in the cousins’ wars for England.’

I put my face in my hands. ‘Iz – ever since that terrible day at sea everything has gone wrong for us.’

She does not touch me, she does not put her arm around my shoulders or reach for my tear-drenched fingers. ‘It’s over,’ she says. She takes a handkerchief from her sleeve, and she dries her eyes, folds it, and puts it back. She is resigned to grief, to our defeat. ‘It’s over. We were fighting against the House of York and they were always certain to win. They have Edward before them and they have witchcraft behind them, they are unbeatable. I am of the House of York now, and I will see them rule England forever. You, in my household, will be faithful to York too.’

I keep my hands over my mouth and I direct my frightened whisper to her ears only. ‘Do you know for sure that they won by witchcraft?’

‘It was a witch’s wind that nearly drowned me and killed my baby,’ she says, her voice so low that I have to lean against her cheek to hear her words. ‘The same witch’s wind raged all spring and kept us in port but blew Edward to England. At the battle of Barnet, Edward’s armies were hidden by a mist that swirled around them, only them, as they crept forwards. Father’s army was on a ridge in plain view, it was Her magic that hid the York troops. It is not possible to defeat Edward as long as he has Her at his side.’

I hesitate. ‘Our father died fighting them. He sacrificed Midnight to fight them.’

‘I can’t think about him now,’ she says. ‘I have to forget him.’

‘I won’t,’ I say, almost to myself. ‘I won’t ever forget him. Not him or Midnight.’

She shrugs, as if it does not matter very much, gets to her feet and smooths her gown over her slim hips, arranging her golden belt. ‘You have to come to the king,’ she says.

‘I do?’ I am frightened at once.

‘Yes. I am to take you. Make sure you don’t say anything wrong. Don’t do anything stupid.’ She looks me over with a hard critical glare. ‘Don’t cry. Don’t talk back. Try and act like a princess though you are not.’

Before I can say another word she beckons her ladies and leads the way out of her rooms. I follow her and the three ladies in waiting fall in behind me. I watch very carefully that I don’t step on her gown as she leads the way through the castle to the king’s apartments. Her train slips down the stairs, trails through the sweet-scented rushes across the great hall. I follow it like a kitten follows a skein of wool: blindly, like a fool.

We are expected. The doors swing open and Edward is there, tall, fair and handsome, seated behind a table that is spread with papers. He does not look like a man who has just fought a bloody battle, killed his guardian, and then led a desperate forced march to another battle to the death. He looks full of life, tireless. As the doors open he looks up and sees us, and he smiles his open-hearted beam as if we were still all friends, as if we were still the little daughters of his greatest friend and mentor. As if we adored him as the most glamorous older brother a girl could ever have.

‘Ah, Lady Anne,’ he says, and he rises from his seat and comes round the table and gives me his hand. I sink down into a deep curtsey and he raises me up and kisses me on both cheeks, first one then the other.

‘My sister begs for your pardon,’ Isabel says, her voice tremulous with sincerity. ‘She is only young, she is not yet fifteen, Your Grace, and she has been obedient to my mother who judged ill, and she had to obey her father who betrayed you. But I will take her into my keeping and she will be faithful to you and yours.’

He looks at me. He is as handsome as a knight in a storybook. ‘You know that Margaret of Anjou is defeated and will never ride out against me again?’

I nod.

‘And that her cause was without merit?’

I can sense that Isabel is flinching with fear without looking at her.

‘I know that now,’ I say carefully.

He gives a short laugh. ‘That’s good enough for me,’ he says easily. ‘Do you swear to accept me as your king and liege lord and support the inheritance of my son and heir, Prince Edward?’

I close my eyes briefly at the name of my husband, in the place of my husband. ‘I do,’ I say. I don’t know what else I can say.

‘Swear fealty,’ he says quietly.

Isabel pushes me on the shoulder and I go down to my knees to him, who has been like a brother to me, then a king, then an enemy. I watch him to see if he will gesture that I have to kiss his boot. I wonder how low I am going to have to go. I put up my hands together in a gesture of prayer and Edward puts his hands on either side of them. His hands are warm. ‘I forgive you, and I pardon you,’ Edward says cheerfully. ‘You will live with your sister and she and I will arrange for your marriage when your year of widowhood is over.’

‘My mother . . .’ I start.

Isabel makes a little movement as if to stop me. But Edward holds up his hand for silence, his face stern. ‘Your mother has betrayed her position and her obedience to her king,’ he says. ‘It is as if she were dead to me.’

‘And to me,’ says Isabel hastily, the turncoat.

THE TOWER OF LONDON, 21 MAY 1471

It is another tableau, played out by the House of York for the benefit of the citizens of London. The Queen of England, Elizabeth Woodville, stands on a great wooden stage that they have built before the door of the White Tower, her three daughters beside her, her baby son in a gown of cloth of gold, held lovingly in the arms of his grandmother: the named witch Jacquetta. Isabel stands beside the queen, I stand beside Isabel. The queen’s brother Anthony Woodville, who now inherits his father’s title and is Lord Rivers, who rescued his sister when she was besieged in the Tower and defeated the remnants of the Lancaster forces, is at the head of his personal guards, drawn up at the foot of the steps. The queen’s own guards are on the other side. Behind railings of blue and murrey, York colours, the people of London wait for the show as if they had come to see a joust and are cheerfully impatient for it to begin.

The great gates in the Tower wall creak open, the drawbridge goes down over the moat with a heavy thud, and in rides Edward, gloriously dressed in enamelled armour with a gold circlet around his helmet, on a beautiful chestnut warhorse, at the head of his lords, his brothers on either side of him, his guards behind him. The trumpets sound, the York banners ripple in the wind that blows off the river, showing the embroidered white rose of York and their insignia of the sun in splendour: the three suns together, which signify the three reunited sons of York. Behind the victorious York boys comes a litter hung with cloth of silver, drawn by white mules, the curtains tied back so that everyone can see, seated inside, the former queen, my mother-in-law, Margaret of Anjou, in a white gown, her face utterly devoid of any emotion.

I look at my feet, at the rippling standards of the sun in splendour, anywhere but at her, for fear of meeting her blank furious eyes. Edward dismounts, hands his warhorse to his squire, and comes up the steps of the Tower. Elizabeth the queen comes towards him and he takes both her hands and kisses her on her smiling mouth. Jacquetta steps forwards and then there is a great bellow of applause as he takes his little son and heir and turns to the crowd and presents him. This will be Edward, Prince of Wales, the next King of England, Prince Edward of Wales, a baby to take the place of the dead Lancaster prince that neither his mother nor I saw buried. This baby will be king, his wife will be queen. Not me, not Isabel.

‘Smile,’ Isabel prompts me softly and at once I smile and clasp my hands together as if I too am applauding the triumph of York, so thrilled I can barely speak.

Edward hands his baby to his wife and goes down the steps to where the litter has halted. I see the oldest princess, little Elizabeth, aged only five years old, press close to her mother and clutch a handful of her gown for safety. The queen puts a gentle hand on her daughter’s shoulder. The little girl will have been haunted from the cradle by tales of Margaret of Anjou, just as I was; and now the woman we so feared is imprisoned, and enslaved. Edward the victor takes her by the hand to help her from her litter, and leads her up the broad wooden steps to the stage where he turns her, as if she were a captured animal brought to join the collection of wild beasts at the Tower. She faces the crowd and they yell in triumph to see the she-wolf finally brought in.

Her face is quite impassive as she looks over their heads at the blue May sky, as if she cannot hear them, as if nothing that they can shout could ever make any difference to her. She is every inch a queen before them. I cannot help but admire her. She taught me that to fight for the throne may cost you everything, may cost your enemy everything. But it is worth it. Even now, I imagine she regrets only losing; she will never regret fighting and going on fighting. She smiles slightly at her defeat. Her hand, held firmly by Edward, does not shake, not even the veil from her high headdress trembles in the wind. She is a queen of graven ice.

He keeps her there, to make sure that everyone can see that he has her captive, while every boy in the crowd is raised in his father’s arms to see that the House of Lancaster is reduced to this: one powerless woman on the steps of the Tower and hidden inside like an old bat, in his rooms, a sleeping king. Then Edward bows his head slightly, chivalrously, and turns Margaret of Anjou towards the entrance door to the White Tower and gestures that she shall go in to join her husband in prison.

She takes one step towards the door and then she pauses. She looks us over, and then, as if inspired, she walks slowly past us, looking at each one. She inspects the queen and her daughters and her ladies as if we were her guard of honour. It is a magnificent long-drawn-out insult from the utterly defeated to her victors. The little Princess Elizabeth shrinks back behind her mother’s skirts to hide her face from the unswerving gaze of the white-faced prisoner. Margaret looks from me to Isabel and gives a slight nod as if she understands that I am now to be played in a new game, by a new player. She narrows her eyes at the thought of me being bought and sold all over again. She almost smiles as she realises that her defeat has knocked all the value off me; I am spoiled goods, destroyed goods. She cannot hide her amusement at that thought.

And then slowly, terribly, she turns her gaze to Jacquetta, the queen’s mother, the witch whose wind destroyed our hopes by keeping us in port for all those long days, the sorceress whose mist hid the York army at Barnet, the wise woman who delivered her grandson when they were hiding in sanctuary and came out to victory.

I am holding my breath, straining to hear what Margaret will say to the dearest friend she ever had, who abandoned her at the battle of Towton and has never seen her again till this, the moment of her utter defeat; whose daughter married the enemy and changed sides, and who is now Margaret’s enemy and is witnessing her shame.

The two women look at each other and in both faces there is a glimpse of the girls that they were. A little smile warms Margaret’s face and Jacquetta’s eyes are filled with love. It is as if the years are no more than the mists of Barnet or the snows at Towton: they are gone, it is hard to believe they were ever there. Margaret puts out her hand, not to touch her friend but to make a gesture, a secret shared gesture, and, as we watch, Jacquetta mirrors the movement. Eyes fixed on each other they both raise their index finger and trace a circle in the air – that’s all they do. Then they smile to each other as if life itself is a joke, a jest that means nothing and a wise woman can laugh at it; then, without a word, Margaret passes silently into the darkness of the tower.

‘What was that?’ Isabel exclaims.

‘It was the sign for the wheel of fortune,’ I whisper. ‘The wheel of fortune which put Margaret of Anjou on the throne of England, heiress to the kingdoms of Europe, and then threw her down to this. Jacquetta warned her of this long ago – they knew. The two of them knew long ago that fortune throws you up to greatness and down to disaster and all you can do is endure.’

That night the York brothers, working together as one dark assassin, go to the room of the sleeping king and hold a pillow over his face, ending the line of the House of Lancaster and bringing into their own home the treacherous death that they practise on the battlefield. With his wife and his innocent son sleeping under the same roof Edward commissioned the death of a King of England in a nearby room. We none of us knew that he had done it until the morning when we woke to the announcement that poor King Henry was dead – dead of sorrow, Edward said.

I don’t need to be a soothsayer to predict that no-one will ever sleep safe in the king’s keeping after that night. This is the new nature of making war for the crown of England. It is a battle to the death, as my father knew when Midnight fell to his knees and put his black head down on the field of Barnet. The House of York is ruthless and deadly, no respecter of place or person; and Isabel and I will do well to remember it.

L’ERBER, LONDON, AUTUMN 1471

I serve as my sister’s lady in waiting in the house that belonged to my father and has now come, with all his fortune, to my brother-in-law George. I am given all the honours due to my kinship to her in her household. I am not yet expected to serve the Queen of England as I am still in mourning, but when we get past this dark autumn into Christmas and spring, then I will have to go to court, serve both the queen and my sister, and the king will arrange for my marriage. My late husband’s title has been given to the son, born to the queen when she was hiding in sanctuary. He is Edward, Prince of Wales, just like my Edward, Prince of Wales. I have lost my husband and my name.

I remember being a little girl when my father told me that the queen had asked for Isabel and me as maids in waiting, and that he had refused her, for we were too good for her court; and I hug his pride to me, like a burning coal in a warming pan.

I have little cause for pride. I feel that I am falling very low and I have no protector. I have neither fortune, nor affinity, nor great name. My father died as a traitor, my mother is all but imprisoned. No man will want me as a wife to further his line. Nobody can be certain that I could give him sons, for my mother had only two girls, and I conceived nothing during my brief marriage to the prince. As soon as I am out of mourning I think that King Edward will grant some low knight a tiny share of my father’s lands and my hand with it, as a reward for some shameful deed on the battlefield, and I shall be sent off to the country to raise hens, keep sheep and breed children if I can do it.

I know that my father would not have wanted this for me. He and my mother put a fortune together for the two of us, their treasured daughters. Isabel and I were the richest heiresses in England, and now I have nothing. My father’s fortune is to be given to George, and my mother’s fortune is to be taken from us without a word of protest. Isabel lets them call my mother a traitor and confiscate her fortune so that we are both paupers.

Finally I ask her why.

She laughs in my face. She is standing before a great tapestry tied tight on a loom, weaving the final gold threads herself, and her ladies are admiring the design. The weavers will come in later to finish the work and cut the threads, Isabel is playing at work with priceless gold thread on her shuttle. Now, a duchess of the famously cultured House of York, she has become a connoisseur.

‘It’s obvious,’ she says. ‘Obvious.’

‘Not to me,’ I reply steadily. ‘It’s not obvious to me.’

Carefully she threads the shuttle through the tapestry and one of the ladies cards it for her. They all step back and admire the result. I grit my teeth on my irritation.

‘It’s not obvious to me why you leave my mother in Beaulieu Abbey and let her fortune be seized by the king. Why do you not ask him to share it between the two of us if it has to be taken from her? Why don’t you petition the king to return us at least some of Father’s lands? How can it be that we don’t at least keep Warwick Castle, our home? There have been Nevilles at Warwick Castle since the beginning of time. Why do you let everything go to George? If you will not petition the king, then I will. We cannot be left with nothing.’

She hands the shuttle and thread to one of her ladies and takes me by the arm and leads me away, so that nobody can hear her quiet words. ‘You will not petition the king for everything; it has all been arranged. Mother keeps writing to him, and to all the royal ladies, but it makes no difference. It has all been arranged.’

‘What has been arranged?’

She hesitates. ‘Father’s fortune goes to the king as he was attainted of treason.’

I open my mouth to protest: ‘He wasn’t attainted . . .’

But she pinches my arm. ‘He would have been. He fell as a traitor, it doesn’t make any difference. The king has granted it all to George. And Mother’s fortune is taken from her.’

‘Why? She’s not been tried for treason. She’s not even been accused.’

‘Her fortune will be passed on to her heir. To me.’

I take a moment to understand. ‘But what about me? I am joint heir with you. We have to share everything.’

‘I will give you a dower on your marriage, from my fortune.’

I look at Isabel, who turns her gaze from the window and looks nervously back at me. ‘You have to remember that you were the wife of a pretender to the throne. You are bound to be punished.’

‘But it is you that are punishing me!’

She shakes her head. ‘It is the House of York. I am just a duchess of the house.’ Her sly little smile reminds me that she is on the winning side while I was married to the losers.

‘You cannot take everything and leave me with nothing!’

She shrugs. Clearly, she can.

I pull away from her. ‘Isabel, if you do this, you are no sister to me!’

She takes my arm again. ‘I am, and I am going to make sure that you make a wonderful marriage.’

‘I don’t want a wonderful marriage, I want my own inheritance. I want the lands that my father would have given me. I want the fortune that my mother intended for me.’

‘If you don’t want to marry then there is another way . . .’ She hesitates.

I wait.

‘George says that he can get permission for you to join a convent. You could join our mother if you like, at Beaulieu Abbey.’

I stare at her. ‘You would have our mother imprisoned for life and then lock me up with her as well?’

‘George says . . .’

‘I don’t want to know what George says. George says whatever the king tells him to say, and the king says whatever Elizabeth Woodville tells him to say! The House of York are our enemies and you have sided with them, as bad as any of them!’

In an instant she pulls me closer and puts her fingers firmly across my mouth. ‘Shut up! Don’t speak like that of them! Ever!’

Without thinking I nip her hand, and she gives a yowl of pain and rears back to slap me hard across the face. I scream at the blow and push her back. She rocks against the wall and we both glare at each other. Suddenly I am aware of the stunned silence in the room and the delighted gaze of the audience of ladies. Isabel stares at me, her cheeks red with rage. I feel my own temper drain away. Sheepishly, I pick up her ornate headdress from the floor and offer it to her. Isabel smooths her gown and takes her headdress. She does not look at me at all. ‘Go to your room,’ she hisses.

‘Iz—’

‘Go to your room and pray to Our Lady for guidance. I think you must have run mad, biting like a rabid dog. You are not fit to be in my company, you are not fit for the company of ladies. You are a stupid child, a wicked child, you may not come into my company.’

I go to my room but I don’t pray. I pull out my clothes and I put them in a bundle. I go to my chest and I count out my money. I am going to run away from Isabel and her stupid husband and neither of them will ever tell me what I shall or shall not do, ever again. I pack in a feverish haste. I have been a princess, I have been the daughter-in-law of the she-wolf queen. Am I going to allow my sister to make me into a poor girl, depending on her and her husband for my dowry, depending on my new husband for a roof over my head? I am a Neville of the House of Warwick – shall I become a nothing?

I have my bundle in my hand and my travelling cloak around my shoulders, I creep to the door and listen. There is the usual bustle in the great hall as they prepare the room for dinner. I can hear the fire-boy bringing in the logs and carrying out the ashes, and the clatter as they slam down the trestles and bang the table-tops on them, then the squeak of wooden feet on floorboards, as they drag the benches from the sides of the room. I can slip through everyone and be out of the door before anyone notices that I am gone.

For a moment I stand, poised on the threshold, my heart hammering, ready to run. And then I pause. I don’t go anywhere. The resolve and the excitement drain from me. I close the door and go back into my room. I sit on the edge of my bed. I don’t have anywhere to go. If I go to my mother it is a long journey, across half of England, and I don’t know the way, and I have no guard, and then at the end of it is a nunnery and the certainty of imprisonment. King Edward for all his handsome smile and easy pardons will just lock me up with her and consider it a little problem well solved. If I go to Warwick Castle I might be greeted with love and loyalty by my father’s old servants but for all I know George has already put a new tenant in my father’s place, and he will simply hold me under arrest and return me to Isabel and George, or worse, hold a pillow over my face as I sleep.

I realise that although I am not imprisoned like my mother-in-law Margaret of Anjou in the Tower, nor like my mother in Beaulieu Abbey, equally I am not free. Without money to hire guards and without a great name to command respect I cannot go out into the world. If I want to get away I have to find someone who will give me guards and fight for my money. I need an ally, someone with money and a retinue of fighting men.

I drop my bundle and sit cross-legged on the bed and sink my chin into my hands. I hate Isabel for allowing this – for colluding with this. She has brought me down very low – this is worse than the defeat at Tewkesbury. There it was a battle on an open field, and I was among the many defeated. Here I am alone. It is my own sister against me, and only I am suffering. She has let them reduce me to a nothing and I will never forgive her.

WESTMINSTER PALACE, LONDON, CHRISTMAS 1471

Isabel and George attend the king and his queen at their triumphant Christmas feast, restored to their beautiful palace, at ease among their friends and allies, a byword for beauty, for chivalry, for royal grace. The country has never seen anything like it, ever before. The citizens of London can speak of nothing but the elegance and extravagance of this restored court. The king spends his newly won fortune on beautiful clothes for the queen and her pretty princesses; every new fashion from Burgundy graces the royal family from the turned-up toes of their shoes, to the rich colours of their capes. Elizabeth the queen is a blaze of precious stones at every great dinner, and they are served from trenchers of gold. Every day sees a new celebration of their power. There is music, and dancing, jousts and boating on the cold river. There is masquing and entertainments.

The queen’s brother Anthony Woodville, Lord Rivers, holds a crusade of scholars in which theologians of the Bible argue with the translators of Arabic texts. The king comes disguised into the ladies’ chamber and amid much screaming and pretend terror holds them up like a pirate and steals their jewels from their arms and necks and replaces them with finer gifts. The queen, with her son in her arms, her mother at her side, and her daughters in her train, laughs with relief every day of the Christmas feast.

Not that I see any of this. I am in Isabel and George’s household living in the rambling village that is Westminster Palace, but I am not bidden to dinner, not as the daughter of a formerly great man, nor as a dowager princess. I am kept out of sight as the widow of a failed pretender, the daughter of a traitor. I have rooms in the palace overlooking the river, near to the gardens, and at mealtimes my food is brought privately to me. I go to the royal chapel twice a day and sit behind Isabel, my head penitently bowed, but I do not speak with the queen nor with the king. When they go past me I sink into a curtsey and neither of them see me at all.

My mother is still imprisoned in Beaulieu Abbey. There is no pretence any longer that she is in sanctuary, that she has sought a life of retreat. Everyone is absolutely clear that she is held as a prisoner and that the king will never release her. My mother-in-law is held in the Tower, in the rooms that belonged to her dead husband. They say she prays for him daily, and constantly for the soul of her son. I know how bereft she feels, and I did not even love him. And I – the last woman standing after the attempt to throw Edward from the throne – I am held in this twilight world by my own sister: I am her prisoner and her ward. The agreeable fiction is that George and Isabel are caring for me, have rescued me from the battlefield, they serve as my guardians, and I am living with my family at peace and in comfort. They are helping me recover from the terror of battle, from the ordeal of my forced marriage and widowhood. The truth, as everyone secretly knows, is that they are my gaolers just as the guards in the Tower hold my mother-in-law, and the lay brothers at Beaulieu secure my mother. We are all three imprisoned women, we are all three without friends, money, or hope. My mother writes to me and demands that I speak with my sister, with George, with the king himself. I answer her briefly that nobody ever speaks to me but to give me orders and that she will have to free herself, that she should never have locked herself away.

But I am fifteen years old – I cannot help but hope. Some afternoons I lie on my bed and dream that the prince my husband was not killed but escaped from the battle and will come for me right now – climb through the window and laugh at my astounded face, and tell me that there is a wonderful plan, an army outside waiting to overthrow Edward, and I will be Queen of England as my father wanted. Sometimes I imagine that his death was wrongly reported, that Father still lives and that the two of them are mustering an army in our lands in the North and will come to rescue me, my father high on Midnight, his eyes bright under his helmet.

Sometimes I pretend that none of it ever happened, and when I wake in the morning I keep my eyes closed so that I cannot see the small bedroom and the lady in waiting who sleeps in the bed with me, and I can pretend that Iz and I are at Calais, and that soon Father will come home and say that he has defeated the bad queen and the sleeping king and that we are to come with him to England and be the greatest ladies in the land and marry the York dukes.

I am a girl, I cannot help but hope. My heart lifts at the crackle of the fire in the grate. I open the shutters and see the milky clouds of the early morning, and sniff the air and wonder if it will snow. I cannot believe that my life is over, that I have made my great gamble and lost. My mother may be on her knees at Beaulieu, my mother-in-law may pray for the soul of her son, but I am only fifteen and I cannot help but think every day – perhaps today something will change. Perhaps today a chance will come for me. Surely, I cannot be held here, without a name, without a fortune, forever?

I am on my way back from chapel with Isabel’s ladies when I realise I have left my rosary on the floor where I was kneeling. I say a brief word to my companions and go back. It is a mistake, the king is coming out of the chapel as I am coming in, his arm linked with his great friend William Hastings, his brother Richard behind him, a long stream of friends and hangers-on behind them.

I do as I have been commanded, I shrink back, I sink down, I look down. I do everything to indicate my penitence and my lack of worthiness to tread the same rushes as this king, who walks here in pomp only because he killed my father and my husband on the battlefield and my father-in-law by treachery. He goes past me with a pleasant smile: ‘Good day, Lady Anne.’

‘Dowager princess,’ I say to the rushes under my knees, but I make sure that no-one can hear me.

I keep my head down as the many pairs of beautifully embossed boots dawdle past and then I get up. Richard, the king’s nineteen-year-old brother, has not gone. He is leaning against the stone frame of a doorway and smiling at me, as if he has finally remembered that once we were friends, that he was my father’s ward and every night he used to kneel for my mother’s kiss as if he were her son.

‘Anne,’ he says simply.

‘Richard,’ I reply, giving him no title if he gives me none, though he is the Duke of Gloucester, and a royal duke, and I am a girl with no name.

‘I’ll be quick,’ he says, glancing along the corridor where his brother and his friends are strolling away speaking of hunting and a new dog that someone has brought from Hainault. ‘If you are happy living with your sister, with your inheritance robbed from you and your mother imprisoned, then I will not say another word.’

‘I’m not happy,’ I say rapidly.

‘If you see them as your gaolers, I could rescue you from them.’

‘I see them as my gaolers and my enemies and I hate them both.’

‘You hate your sister?’

‘I hate her even worse than I hate him.’

He nods, as if this is not shocking, but utterly reasonable. ‘Can you get out of your rooms at all?’

‘I walk in the privy garden in the afternoon most days.’

‘Alone?’

‘Since I have no friends.’

‘Come to the yew arbour this afternoon after dinner. I’ll be waiting.’

He turns without another word and runs after his brother’s court. I walk swiftly to my sister’s rooms.

In the afternoon my sister and all her ladies are preparing for a masque, and they are going to try their costumes in the wardrobe rooms. There is no part for me to learn, there is no ornate costume for me to try. They forget all about me in the excitement of the gowns and I take my chance and slip away, down a winding stone stair that leads directly to the garden, and from there to the yew arbour.

I see his slight form, seated on a stone bench, his hound beside him. The dog turns his head and pricks his ears at the sound of my shoes on the gravel. Richard rises to his feet as he sees me.

‘Does anybody know you are here?’

I feel my heart thud at this, a conspirator’s question. ‘No.’

He smiles. ‘How long do you have?’

‘Perhaps an hour.’

He draws me into the shade of the arbour, where it is cold and dark but the thick green branches hide us from view. Anyone would have to come to the very entrance of the circular planting of trees and peer inside to see us. We are hidden as if enclosed in a little green room. I draw my cloak around me and sit on the stone bench and look up at him, expectantly.

He laughs at my excited face. ‘I have to know what you want, before I can suggest anything.’

‘Why would you suggest anything at all for me?’

He shrugs. ‘Your father was a good man, he was a good guardian to me when I was his ward. I remember you with affection from childhood. I was happy in your house.’

‘And for this you would rescue me?’

‘I think you should be free to make your own choices.’

I look at him sceptically. He must think I am a fool. He was not thinking of my freedom when he led my horse to Worcester and handed me over to George and Isabel. ‘Then why didn’t you let me go to my mother, when you came for Margaret of Anjou?’

‘I didn’t know then that they would hold you as a prisoner. I thought I was taking you to your family, to safety.’

‘It’s because of the money,’ I tell him. ‘While they hold me, Isabel can claim all the inheritance from my mother.’

‘And while your sister does not protest they can hold your mother forever. George gets all your father’s lands, and if Isabel gets your mother’s lands that great inheritance is made one again, but inherited by only one of the Warwick girls: by Isabel, and her wealth is in George’s keeping.’

‘I am not allowed to even speak to the king, so how can I put my case?’

‘I could be your champion,’ Richard suggests slowly. ‘If you wanted me to serve you. I could speak to him for you.’

‘Why would you do this?’

He smiles at me. There is a world of invitation in his dark eyes. ‘Why d’you think?’ he says quietly.

‘Why d’you think?’ The question haunts me like a love song, as I hurry from the chilly garden and go up to Isabel’s rooms. My hands are freezing and my nose is red from the cold but nobody notices as I slip off my cloak and sit by the fire, pretending to listen to them talk about the gowns for the masque, though all I hear in my head is his question: ‘Why d’you think?’

It is time to dress before dinner. I have to wait on Isabel as her maids lace her gown. I have to hand her little flask of perfume to her, open her jewel box. For once I serve her without resentment; I hardly even notice that she asks for a collar of pearls and then changes her mind, and then changes back again. I just take the things from the box and put them back and then get them out again. It does not matter to me if she wears pearls that her husband has stolen from someone else. She is not going to steal anything from me, ever again, for I have someone on my side.

I have someone on my side now and he is a king’s brother just as George is a king’s brother. He is of the House of York and my father loved him and taught him like a son. And, as it happens, he is heir to the throne after George, but more beloved than George, and more steadfast and loyal than George. If you were going to pick one of the York boys it would be George for looks, Edward for charm, but it would be Richard for loyalty.

‘Why d’you think?’ When he asked me he gave me a naughty smile, his dark eyes were so bright; he almost winked at me as if it were a private joke, as if it were a delightful secret. I thought I was being clever and guarded to ask him why he would help me – and then he looked at me as if I knew the answer. And there was something about the question, about the gleam of his smile, that made me want to giggle, that even now, as my sister moves to her hand-beaten silver mirror and nods for me to tie the pearls around her neck, makes me want to blush.

‘What’s the matter with you?’ she says coldly, her eyes meeting mine in the silvered looking glass.

I steady myself at once. ‘Nothing.’

Isabel rises from the table and goes to the door. Her ladies gather around her, the door opens and George and his household are waiting to join her. This is my signal to go to my room. It is generally agreed that I am in mourning so deep that I cannot be present in mixed company. Only George and Isabel and I know that it is they who have made this rule: they don’t allow me to see anyone or speak to anyone, they keep me like a mewed hawk that should be flying free. Only George and Isabel and I know this – but Richard knows it too. Richard guessed it because he knows what I am like, what Isabel is like. He was like a son to my father, he understands the House of Warwick. And Richard cared enough to think about me, to wonder how I was faring in Isabel’s household, to see through the façade of guardianship to the truth: that I am their prisoner.

I curtsey to George and keep my eyes down so he cannot see that I am smiling. In my head I hear again my question: ‘Why would you do this?’ and his answer: ‘Why d’you think?’

When there is a knock at the door of the privy chamber I open it myself, expecting it to be one of the grooms of the servery with dishes for my dinner, but the presence chamber is empty except for Richard, standing there, magnificently dressed in red velvet doublet and breeches, his cape trimmed with sables slung around his shoulder as if it were nothing.

I gasp. ‘You?’

‘I thought I would come and see you while they are serving dinner,’ he says, strolling into the privy chamber and seating himself in Isabel’s chair under the cloth of estate by the fireside.

‘The servers will come with my dinner at any moment,’ I warn him.

He makes a careless gesture with his hand. ‘Have you thought about our talk?’

Every moment of this afternoon. ‘Yes.’

‘Would you like me to be your champion in this matter?’ Again he smiles at me as if he is proposing the most delicious game, as if asking me to conspire against my guardian and my sister is like inviting me to dance.

‘What would we do?’ I try to be serious but I am smiling in reply.

‘Oh,’ he whispers. ‘We would have to meet often, I am sure.’

‘Would we?’

‘Once a day at least. For a proper conspiracy I should want to see you once a day, probably twice. I don’t know that I wouldn’t need to see you all the time.’

‘And what would we do?’

He pulls a stool towards the chair with the toe of his boot and gestures that I should sit near him. I obey: he is mastering me as he would pet a hawk. He leans towards me as if to whisper, his breath warm on my bare neck. ‘We would talk, Lady Anne, what else?’

If I were to turn my head just a little then his lips would touch my cheek. I sit very still, and will myself not to turn to him at all.

‘Why? What would you like to do?’ he asks me.

I think: I would like to do this, all day, this delicious play. I should like to have his eyes on me all day, I should like to know that he has moved at last from a nonchalant childhood acquaintance to lovemaking. ‘But how would this get my fortune restored to me?’

‘Oh yes, the fortune. For a moment I had quite forgotten the fortune. Well, first I must talk with you to make sure that I know exactly what you want.’ Again he draws close. ‘I would want to do exactly what you want. You must command me. I will be your cavalier, your chevalier-servant – isn’t that what girls want? Like out of a story?’

His lips are against my hair, I can feel the warmth of him.

‘Girls can be very silly,’ I say, trying to be adult.

‘It’s not silly to want a man devoted to your service,’ he points out. ‘If I could find a lady that would accept my service, who would give me her favour, a lady of my choice, I would pledge myself to her safety and happiness.’ He moves back a little so that he can study my face.

I cannot stop myself looking into his dark eyes. I can feel the colour rising in my cheeks but I cannot take my eyes from him.

‘And then I will speak to my brother for you,’ he says. ‘You cannot be held like this against your will, your mother cannot be held against her will.’

‘Would the king listen to you?’

‘Of course. Without a doubt. I have been at his side ever since I was strong enough to hold a sword in battle. I am his faithful brother. He loves me. I love him. We are brothers in arms as well as in blood.’

There is a tap at the door and Richard goes in one fluid motion to stand behind it so that when the serving man bangs it open and comes in, with another behind him, carrying half a dozen dishes and a pitcher of small ale, they don’t see him. They fuss at the table, putting out the plate and pouring the ale, and then they wait to serve me.

‘You can go,’ I say. ‘Close the door behind you.’

They bow and leave the room, as Richard steps out of the shadow and pulls up a stool to the table. ‘May I?’

We have the most delightful meal together, just the two of us. He shares the cup for the ale, he eats from my plate. The dinners I have endured in loneliness, eating for hunger with no pleasure, are forgotten. He picks little pieces of stewed beef from the dish and offers them to me, and mops up the gravy for himself with a piece of bread. He praises the venison and insists that I have some, and shares the pastries with me. There is no awkwardness between us, we could be children together again, with this constant bubble of laughter, and something beneath it – desire.

‘I had better go,’ he says. ‘Dinner will be over in the hall and they will be looking for me.’

‘They will think I have grown greedy,’ I remark, looking at the empty dishes on the table.

He gets up and I stand too, suddenly awkward. I want to ask when we will see each other again, how we are to meet? But I feel that I cannot ask him that.

‘I’ll see you tomorrow,’ he says easily. ‘Will you go to mass early?’

‘Yes.’

‘Stay behind after Isabel leaves and I will come to you.’

I am breathless. ‘All right.’

His hand is on the door, about to go. I put my hand on his sleeve, I cannot resist touching him. He turns with a little smile, and gently bends to kiss my hand where it rests on his arm. That’s all, that’s all. That one touch, not a kiss on my mouth, not a caress, but that one touch of his lips that makes my fingers burn. And then he slips from the room.

Wearing my widow’s gown of dark blue, I follow Isabel into chapel and glance towards the side of the church where the king and his brothers sit to hear mass. The royal box is empty, nobody is there. I feel a sickly lurch of disappointment and think that he has failed me. He said he would be here this morning and he is not. I kneel behind Isabel and try to keep my mind on the service but the Latin words roll on and I hear them as if they were meaningless, a patter of sounds which say: ‘I will see you tomorrow. Will you go to mass early?’

When the service is finished and Isabel rises I don’t get up with her, but lower my head as if in prayer. She glances over at me impatiently, and then leaves me alone. Her ladies follow her from the chapel and I hear the door close behind them. The priest arranges his things on the altar behind the screen, his back to me, as I kneel devoutly, my hands together and my eyes closed, so I don’t see Richard as he slips into the pew and kneels beside me. Tantalisingly, I let myself sense him before I open my eyes to see him – the light scent of soap from his skin and the clean smell of new leather of his boots, the little noise as he kneels, the smell of lavender as he crushes a flower head beneath his knee, and then the warmth of his hand over my clasped fingers.

I open my eyes slowly, as if I am waking, and he is smiling at me. ‘What are you praying for?’

This moment, I think. You. Rescue. ‘Nothing, really.’

‘Then I will tell you that you should pray for your freedom and for the freedom of your mother. Shall I ask Edward for you?’

‘Would you ask for my mother to be freed?’

‘I could do. Would you want me to?’

‘Of course. But do you think she could go to Warwick Castle? What is there for her here? Or could she go to one of our other houses? Do you think she would still stay at Beaulieu even if she were free to leave?’

‘If she were to decide to stay in the abbey, in honourable retirement, then she might keep her fortune and you would still have nothing, and still have to live with your sister,’ he says quietly. ‘If Edward will forgive her and set her free then she will be a lady of great wealth, but never welcome at court: a wealthy recluse. You will have to live with her, and you will have nothing of your own until her death.’

The priest cleans the cup and puts it carefully in a case, turns the pages of the Bible and puts a silk marker on the page, then bows reverently to the cross and goes out of the door.

‘Iz will be furious with me if she doesn’t get my mother’s fortune.’

‘And how would you manage if you had nothing?’ he asks.

‘I could live with my mother.’

‘Would you really want to live in seclusion? And you would have no dowry. Only what she chooses to give you. If you wanted to marry in the future.’ He pauses, as if the idea has just occurred to him. ‘Do you want to marry?’

Limpidly I look at him. ‘I see no-one,’ I say. ‘They don’t allow me to be in company. I am a widow, in my first year of mourning. Who would I marry, since I meet no-one?’

His eyes are on my mouth. ‘You’re meeting me.’

I see his smile. ‘I am,’ I whisper. ‘But it is not as if we are courting or thinking of marriage.’

The door at the back of the chapel opens and someone comes in to pray.

‘Perhaps you need both your share of the fortune and your freedom,’ Richard says very quietly in my ear. ‘Perhaps your mother may stay where she is and her fortune be given equally to you and your sister. Then you could be free to live your own life, and make your own choice.’

‘I couldn’t live alone,’ I object. ‘I wouldn’t be allowed. I’m only fifteen.’

Again he smiles at me and moves a little so that his shoulder is against mine. I want to lean on him, I want his arm around me.

‘If you had your fortune you could marry any man of your choice,’ he says softly. ‘You would bring your husband an enormous estate and great wealth. Any man in England would be glad to marry you. Most of them would be desperate to marry you.’ He pauses to let me think about that.

He turns to me, his brown eyes honest. ‘You should be sure of this, Lady Anne. If I can get your fortune restored into your hands then any man in England would be glad to marry you. He would become one of the greatest landowners of the kingdom through your wealth and related to a great English family. You could take your pick of the very best of them.’

I wait.

‘But a good man wouldn’t marry you for your fortune, and perhaps you shouldn’t choose such a one as that.’

‘Shouldn’t I?’

‘A good man would marry you for love,’ he says simply.

The Christmas feast ends and the Duke of Clarence, my brother-in-law George, bids the fondest of goodbyes to his brother the king and especially to his young brother Richard. Iz kisses the queen, kisses the king, kisses Richard, kisses anyone who looks as if they might be important and might accept her kisses. She watches her husband as she does all this, his glance is a command to her. I see her behave like a good hunting dog that does not even need a whistle but watches for the master’s nod and the abrupt move of his hand. George has her well-trained. She has learned to be as devoted to him as she was to my father: he is her lord. She has been so frightened by the power of the House of York – on the battlefield, at sea, and in the hidden world of mysteries – that she is clinging to him as her only safety. When she left us in France to join him she chose to go wherever George took her, rather than fight to keep him faithful to us.

Her ladies mount their horses, me among them. King Edward raises his hand to me. He does not forget who I was, though his court is engaged in a great effort of forgetting that there was ever a king and a queen before these, ever a Prince Edward before the baby that goes everywhere with the queen, that there was ever an invasion, a march and a battle. Elizabeth the queen looks at me levelly with her beautiful grey eyes like dark ice. She does not forget that my father killed her father, my father killed her brother. These are debts of blood that will have to be paid some day.

I get on my horse and I shake out my gown and gather the reins in my hands. I busy myself with my whip and I brush my horse’s mane to one side. I make myself delay the moment when I will look for Richard.

He is beside his brother. He is always beside his brother – I have learned that there is a love and a fidelity here that nothing will ever change. As he catches my eye he beams at me, his dark face bright with affection. Anyone can see it who cares to look at him, he is hopelessly indiscreet. He puts his hand to his heart as if swearing fidelity to me. I look to left and right, thank God no-one is looking, they are all getting on their horses and George the duke is shouting for the guard. Recklessly, Richard stands there, his hand on his heart, looking at me as if he wants the world to know that he loves me.

He loves me.

I shake my head as if reproving him, and I look down at my hands on the reins. I look up again and he is still fixing his gaze on me, his hand still on his heart. I know I should look away, I know I should pretend to feel nothing but disdain – this is how the ladies in the troubadour poems behave. But I am a girl, and I am lonely and alone, and this is a handsome young man who has asked how he may serve me and now stands before me with his hand on his heart and his eyes laughing at me.

One of the guard stumbled while mounting his horse and his horse shied, knocking the nearby horseman. Everyone is looking that way, and the king puts his arm around his wife. I snatch off my glove and, in one swift gesture, I throw it towards Richard. He catches it out of the air and tucks it in the breast of his jacket. Nobody has seen it. Nobody knows. The guardsman steadies his horse, mounts it, nods his apology to his captain, and the royal family turn and wave to us.

Richard looks at me, buttoning the front of his jacket, and smiles at me warmly, assuredly. He has my glove, my favour. It is a pledge that I have given in the full knowledge of what I am doing. Because I don’t want to be anybody’s pawn again. The next move that is made will be mine. I will choose my freedom and I will choose my husband.

L’ERBER, LONDON, FEBRUARY 1472

George the duke and Isabel his duchess keep great state in London, where their house is as grand as a palace, with hundreds of servants and George’s own guard in his livery. He prides himself on his generosity and copies my father’s rule that anyone who calls at the kitchen door at dinner time can spear his dagger with slices of meat. There is a constant stream of petitioners and tenants asking favours and needing help and the door to George’s presence chamber stands open, since he will be denied to no man, not even to the poorest tenant on his lands. Everyone is to know that if they give George their fealty they can trust him to be a good lord to them. So dozens of people, hundreds, who would otherwise be indifferent, think of George as a good lord to have, a true ally on their side, a friend they would like – and George’s power and influence widens like a flooding river.

Isabel shows herself as a grand lady, processing to her chapel, giving alms to the poor, interceding for George’s mercy whenever she may be observed to do good. I trail behind her, one of the many objects of her ostentatious charity, and from time to time someone remarks how good my sister and my brother-in-law are to me, that they took me in when I was disgraced, and that they keep me in their home though I am penniless.

I wait until I can speak to George, since I think Isabel has become nothing more than his mouthpiece, and one afternoon I happen to be passing the stable yard when he comes in and dismounts from his horse and for once there is not a great crowd around him.

‘Brother, may I speak with you?’

He starts, for I am standing in a shadowed doorway and he thought he was alone.

‘Eh? Sister, of course, of course. It is always a pleasure to see you.’ He smiles at me, his confident handsome smile, and he runs his hand through his thick blond hair in his practised gesture. ‘How may I serve you?’

‘It is about my inheritance,’ I say boldly. ‘I understand that my mother is going to stay in the abbey and I wonder what is going to happen to her lands and fortune?’

He glances up at the windows of the house as if he wishes Isabel would see us in the stable below her, and hurry down. ‘Your mother chose to take sanctuary,’ he says. ‘And her husband was a warranted traitor. Their lands are forfeit to the crown.’

‘His lands would be forfeit, if he was an arraigned traitor,’ I correct him. ‘But he was not arraigned. And his lands were not lawfully confiscated, I don’t think. I believe the king simply gave them all to you, did he not? You are holding my father’s lands as a gift from the king without the rule of law.’

He blinks. He did not know that I knew this. Again he glances around; but though the lads come to take his horse and his whip and his gloves there is no-one to interrupt me.

‘And, anyway, my mother’s lands are still in her keeping. She has not been declared a traitor.’

‘No.’

‘I understand that you propose to take her lands away from her and keep them for Isabel and for me?’

‘This is business,’ he starts to say. ‘No need . . .’

‘So when will I get my share of the lands?’

He smiles at me, he takes my hand, he draws it through his arm and he leads me from the stable yard, through the arched door into the house. ‘Now, you should not be troubling yourself with this,’ he says, patting my hand. ‘I am your brother and your guardian, I will take care of these things for you.’

‘I am a widow,’ I say. ‘I don’t have a guardian. I have the right to own my own lands in my own right: as a widow.’

‘The widow of a traitor,’ he corrects me gently, as if he is sorry to say such things. ‘Defeated.’

‘The prince, being a prince, could not be a traitor in his own country,’ I correct him. ‘And I, though married to him, was not arraigned as a traitor. So I have a right to my lands.’

Together we walk into the great hall and, to his relief, Isabel is there with her ladies. She sees the two of us together and comes forwards. ‘What’s this?’

‘Lady Anne met me in the stable yard. I am afraid she is grieving,’ he says tenderly. ‘And worrying about things that need not concern her.’

‘Go to your room,’ Isabel says abruptly to me.

‘Not until I know when I will receive my inheritance,’ I insist. I stand still. Clearly there is not going to be a graceful curtsey and withdrawal.

Isabel looks at her husband, unsure as to what she can do to make me go. She is afraid I may start brawling again and she can hardly ask the men of the household to take hold of me and drag me away.

‘Ah, child,’ George says gently. ‘Leave this all to me, as I have told you.’

‘When? When will I receive my inheritance?’ Deliberately, I speak loudly. People are staring, the many hundreds of people that George and Isabel have as their court can hear.

‘Tell her,’ she says under her breath to him. ‘She’ll make a scene if you don’t tell her. All her life she has been the centre of attention, she will throw a tantrum . . .’

‘I am your guardian,’ he says quietly. ‘Appointed by the king. You know this? You are a widow but you are also a child, you need to have someone to house you and care for you.’

I nod. ‘I know that is what is said but—’

‘Your fortune is in my keeping,’ he interrupts. ‘Your mother’s estate will be transferred to you and Isabel. I will manage the estate for both of you until you are married, and then I will hand over your share to your husband.’

‘And if I don’t marry?’

‘Then you will always have a home with us.’

‘And you will always keep my lands?’

The swift guilty flicker across his handsome face tells me this is his plan.

‘Then surely you will never permit my marriage?’ I ask shrewdly; but he simply bows to me with great respect, kisses his hand to his wife and walks from the hall. People uncover their heads as he goes by, the women curtsey, he is a most handsome and beloved lord. He is quite deaf to me as I say again, loudly: ‘I don’t . . . I won’t . . .’

Isabel is icy. ‘Let this be the last we hear of this,’ she says. ‘Or I will have you locked in your room.’

‘You have no rights over me, Isabel!’

‘I am your guardian’s wife,’ she says. ‘And he will lock you in your room if I tell him you are slandering us. You lost at Tewkesbury, Anne, you were on the wrong side and your husband is dead. You will have to get used to being defeated.’

There are always people coming and going through the great hall of L’Erber. The duke orders that the gates to the street are open during the day, that there are braziers burning before the doors at night. I go to the hall and look for a lad, any sort of lad – not a beggar and not a thief, but a lad that might run an errand for a groat. There are dozens of them, come to work for the day, mucking out the stables or carting away the ash, bringing little things from the market to sell to the maids of the wardrobe. I crook my finger at one of them, a tow-headed urchin with a leather jerkin, and wait for him to come to me and bow.

‘D’you know the Palace of Westminster?’

‘’Course I do.’

‘Take this, and give it to someone in the household of the Duke of Gloucester. Tell them to give it to the duke. Can you remember that?’

‘’Course I can.’

‘And don’t give it to anyone else, and don’t say anything about it.’

I give him a twist of paper. Inside I have written:

I should like to see you, A

‘If you get it to the duke himself he will give you a second groat,’ I say and give him the coin. He takes it, nips it with his black tooth to check that it is good, and puts his knuckle to his forehead by way of a bow.

‘Is it a love letter?’ he asks impertinently.

‘It’s a secret,’ I say. ‘You shall have a groat from him if you will keep the secret.’

Then I have to wait.

Isabel makes an effort to be kind to me. She allows me to dine in the hall with her ladies and she sits me at her right-hand side. She calls me ‘Sister’ and one day she takes me to her wardrobe room and says that I must have my pick of her clothes. She is tired of seeing me in blue all the time.

She puts her arm around my shoulders. ‘And you shall come to court with us,’ she says. ‘When your year of mourning is finished. And this summer we can go travelling with the court, and perhaps we can go to Warwick. It would be lovely to be home again, wouldn’t it? You would like that? We might go to Middleham, and Barnard Castle. You will like to go to our old homes.’

I say nothing.

‘We are sisters,’ she says. ‘I don’t forget it. Anne, don’t be so hard on me, don’t be so hard on yourself. We have lost so much but we are still sisters. Let’s be friends again. I want to live in sisterhood with you.’

I don’t know how Richard will come to me, but I trust that he will come. As the days go on I start to think what I will do if he does not come. I think I am trapped.

In the cold dark days of February I hardly leave the house at all. George goes almost every day to the Palace of Westminster or out into the city. Sometimes men come to see him who enter by a side door and go straight to his room, as if they were meeting in secret. He maintains a great outward show as grand as a king. I wonder if he is planning to create a court to rival his brother’s, if he hopes to amass such great lands and such a great affinity that he can set himself up as a prince in England. Isabel is always at his side, exquisitely dressed, as gracious as a queen. She goes with him when there are feasts or parties at Westminster, or when she is bidden to dine with the queen and her ladies. But I am neither invited nor allowed to go.

One day they are ordered to a special royal dinner. Isabel dresses in a blaze of emeralds, a green gown, a green veil and a belt of gold set with green emeralds. I help her dress, lacing the green ribbons with the gold points through the holes of her sleeves, and I know my face is sulky in her candlelit looking glass. All her ladies are buzzing with the visit to Westminster Palace; only I am to be left at L’Erber alone.

I watch from my bedroom window as they mount their horses in the yard before the great doors. Isabel has a white horse and a new saddle of green leather with green velvet trappings. George beside her is bareheaded, his blond hair shining in the sunlight as golden as a crown. He smiles and waves at the people who gather either side of the gate to shout their blessings. It is like a royal progress, and Isabel amid it all is like the queen that our father promised she would be. I step back from the narrow window to the deserted rooms. A manservant comes in behind me with a basket of wood. ‘Shall I build up the fire, Lady Anne?’

‘Leave it,’ I say over my shoulder. They are through the gate and going at a jingling trot down Elbow Lane, the winter sun bright on George’s pennants. He nods from left to right, raising his gloved hand in response to a cheer.

‘But the fire’s going down,’ the man says. ‘I’ll put some wood on for you.’

‘Just leave it,’ I say impatiently. I turn around from the window and for the first time I see him. He has pulled off his hat and dropped the fustian cloak which was hiding his rich jacket and beautiful linen, his riding breeches and soft leather boots. It is Richard, smiling at my surprise.

I run to him, without thinking what I am doing. I run to the first friendly face that I have seen since Christmas, and in a moment I am in his arms and he is holding me tightly and kissing my face, my closed eyes, my smiling mouth, kissing me till I am breathless and have to pull away from him. ‘Richard! Oh, Richard!’

‘I have come to take you.’

‘Take me?’

‘Rescue you. They will keep you more and more close until they get your mother’s fortune and then they will put you in a nunnery.’

‘I knew it! He says he is my guardian, and will give me my share of the fortune when I am married; but I don’t believe him.’

‘They will never let you be married. Edward has put you in George’s keeping, they will hold you forever. You will have to run away if you want to get out of this.’

‘I’ll go,’ I say with sudden decision. ‘I’m ready to go.’

He hesitates as if he doubts me. ‘Just like that?’

‘I’m not the little girl that you knew,’ I say. ‘I’ve grown up. Margaret of Anjou taught me not to hesitate, that there would be times when I have to see the best thing for myself and take that course without fear, without considering others. I have lost my father – there is no-one who can command me. I certainly won’t be commanded by Isabel and George.’

‘Good,’ he says. ‘I’ll take you into sanctuary – it’s the only thing we can do.’

‘Will I be safe there?’ I go into my little bedroom, just off the presence chamber, and he follows me without embarrassment and stands in the doorway, as I open my box and take out my jewellery case.

‘They won’t break sanctuary in London. I have a place for you at the college of St Martin’s le Grand. They will keep you safe there.’ He takes the box from my hands. ‘Anything else?’

‘My winter cloak,’ I say. ‘And I’ll wear my riding boots.’

I sit on the bed and kick off my shoes, and he kneels before me and takes the riding boots, holding one open for my bare foot. I hesitate; it is such an intimate gesture between a young woman and a man. His smiling upward glance tells me that he understands my hesitation but is ignoring it. I point my toe and he holds the boot, I slide my foot in and he pulls the boot over my calf. He takes the soft leather ties and fastens the boot, at my ankle, then at my calf, and then just below my knee. He looks up at me, his hand gently on my toe. I can feel the warmth of his hand through the soft leather. I imagine my toes curling in pleasure at his touch.

‘Anne, will you marry me?’ he asks simply, as he kneels before me.

‘Marry you?’

He nods. ‘I will take you to sanctuary and then find a priest. We can marry in secret. Then I can care for you and protect you. You will be my wife and Edward will welcome you as his sister-in-law. Edward will grant your share of your mother’s inheritance when you are in my keeping. He won’t refuse my wife.’

He holds out the other boot, not even waiting for my reply. I point my toe and slide my foot in. Again he gently ties the laces at ankle, calf and knee. There is something very sensual about his careful tightening of the laces, working his way slowly up my leg. I close my eyes, I am longing for the sensation of his fingers brushing gently on the inside of my thigh. Then he takes the hem of my skirt and pulls it down to my ankles, as if he will defend my modesty, as if I can trust him. He puts his hands on the bed either side of me, still kneeling before me, looking up at me, his face filled with desire.

‘Say yes,’ he whispers. ‘Marry me.’

I hesitate. I open my eyes. ‘You will get my fortune,’ I remark. ‘When I marry you, everything I have becomes yours. Just as George has everything that belongs to Isabel.’

‘That’s why you can trust me to win it for you,’ he says simply. ‘When your interests and mine are the same, you can be certain that I will care for you as for myself. You will be my own. You will find that I care for my own.’

‘You will be true to me?’

‘Loyalty is my motto. When I give my word, you can trust me.’

I hesitate for a moment. ‘Oh Richard, ever since my father turned against your brother, nothing has gone right for me. Since his death I have not had one day without grief.’

He takes both of my hands in a warm grip. ‘I know. I cannot bring your father back, but I can put you back in his world: at the court, in the palaces, in line for the throne, where he wanted you to be. I can win his lands back for you, you can be landlord to his tenants, you can fulfil his plans.’

I shake my head, smiling though there are tears in my eyes. ‘We can never do that. He had very grand plans. He promised me that I would be Queen of England.’

‘Who knows?’ he says. ‘If anything should happen to Edward and his son, and George – which God forbid – then I would be king.’

‘It’s not likely,’ I say, my father’s ambition prompting me like a whisper in my ear.

‘No,’ he says. ‘It’s not likely. But you and I of all people know that you cannot foresee the future; none of us knows what may happen. But think of what you might be right now. I can make you a royal duchess. You can make me a wealthy man. I can make you the equal of your sister and defend you from her husband. I will be a true husband to you. And – I think you know, don’t you? – that I love you, Anne.’

I feel as if I have been living in a loveless world for too long. The last tender face I saw was my father’s when he sailed for England. ‘You do? Truly?’

‘I do.’ He rises to his feet and pulls me up to stand beside him. My chin comes to his shoulder, we are both dainty, long-limbed, coltish: well-matched. I turn my face into his jacket. ‘Will you marry me?’ he whispers.

‘Yes,’ I say.

My belongings go into one bundle, and he has a kitchen maid’s cloak for me with a hood that I can pull forwards to hide my face.

I protest as he puts it round me. ‘It stinks of fat!’

He laughs. ‘All the better. We are walking out of here as a manservant and a kitchen maid and nobody will look twice at either of us.’

The great gates are open, the people are coming and going as they always do, and we slip out with some dairymaids driving their cows before them. Nobody sees us go, and nobody will notice that I have gone. The house servants will assume that I went to court with my sister and her ladies, and only when she comes home in a few days will they realise that I have escaped them. I laugh out loud at the thought and Richard, holding my hand as we go through the busy streets, turns and smiles at me and suddenly laughs too, as if we are embarking on an adventure, as if we are children running away and laughing as we go.

It is growing dark when we get to the college, which stands in the lee of St Paul’s Cathedral, and the side door is open to the chancel and there are many people pushing their way in and out. There is a market inside, and stalls for people to sell all sorts of goods, money-changers and some secret business taking place in the corners. The people are hooded and shrouded against the cold mist that is rolling off the river, and they keep their heads down and look about them.

I hesitate; it feels unsafe. Richard glances down at me.

‘I have a room prepared for you, you won’t be with the common people,’ he says reassuringly. ‘They give sanctuary to all sorts of people here: criminals, coiners, and forgers, common thieves. But you will be safe. The college is proud of its power of sanctuary – they never give up anyone who claims the safety of the church. Even if George finds where you are and demands that they surrender you, they won’t let him take you away. This college has a great reputation for being unhelpful.’ He smiles. ‘They would even defy my brother the king if they had to.’

He tucks my cold hand under his arm and leads me through the door. The curfew bell starts to sound in the tower above us, as one of the monks steps forwards, recognises Richard, and without a word leads the way to the abbey’s guest house.

I tighten my grip on Richard’s hand. ‘You’ll be safe here,’ he repeats.

The monk stands to one side at the doorway and Richard takes me through into a small room, like a cell. Beyond that is another even smaller room like an alcove, and a narrow bed with a crucifix nailed to the wall at the head. A maid rises up from a stool at the fireside and bobs a curtsey to me.

‘I’m Megan,’ she says, her words almost incomprehensible because of her strong northern accent. ‘My lord has asked me to make sure you are comfortable here.’

‘Megan will stay with you, and if there is any trouble she will send for me, or come to me herself,’ Richard says. His hands are on the ties of my cloak, under my chin. As he takes the cloak from my shoulders his fingers brush my chin in a gentle caress. ‘You will be safe here and I will come tomorrow.’

‘They will miss me when they get home to L’Erber,’ I warn him.

He smiles in genuine amusement. ‘They will go as mad as dogs,’ he says. ‘But there is nothing they can do; the bird has flown and soon she will find another nest.’

He bends his dark head and kisses me gently on the mouth. At his touch I feel a longing for more, I want him to kiss me as he did when I ran to him, when he came to me disguised, like a knight might come to a captured lady in a story. At the thought of this as a rescue, I take a breath and step closer to him. His arms come around me and he holds me for a moment.

‘I shall come tomorrow at midday,’ he says, and then he goes from the rooms and leaves me for my first night of freedom. I look from the little arched window into the busy streets outside, darkened by the shadow of St Paul’s. I am free but I am barred from leaving the precinct of the church, and I may not speak to anyone. Megan is my servant but she is also here to guard me. I am free, but imprisoned in sanctuary, just like my mother. If Richard were not to come tomorrow I would be a prisoner, just like Queen Margaret in the Tower, just like my mother at Beaulieu.

ST MARTIN’S, LONDON, FEBRUARY 1472

He comes as he promised, his young face stern. He kisses my hands but he does not take me in his arms, though I stand beside him and long for his touch. This is an ache like hunger. I had no idea that this was what desire feels like.

‘What’s the matter?’ I hear my voice is plaintive.

He gives me a swift, reassuring grin, and he sits at the little table beside the window, gesturing to me to take the opposite chair. ‘Troubles,’ he says shortly. ‘George has discovered that you have run away, he has spoken to Edward about you, and is demanding your return. As a concession he says that I may marry you but we cannot have your inheritance.’

I gasp. ‘He knows I am gone already? What does Isabel say? What about the king?’

‘Edward will be fair to us. But he has to keep George his friend and keep him close. George has too much power and too great an affinity to risk his enmity. He is growing mighty. He may even now be plotting with your kinsmen the Nevilles, for another try at the throne. Certainly he has a lot of friends coming and going at L’Erber. Edward doesn’t trust him, but he has got to show him favour to keep him at court.’

For only a moment do I fear that he will give me up. ‘What will we do? What can we do?’

He takes my hand and kisses it. ‘You will stay here, safe as you should be, and not worry. I will offer my office of Chamberlain of England to George.’

‘Chamberlain?’

He grimaces. ‘I know. It’s a high price for me. I was proud to take up the office, it’s the greatest post in England – and the most profitable – but this is worth more to me.’ He corrects himself. ‘You are worth more to me.’ He pauses. ‘You are worth more than anything. And we have another difficulty: your mother is writing to everyone and saying that she is wrongly imprisoned and her lands are being stolen from her. She is demanding to be released. It looks bad. Edward has promised to be a just king. He can’t be seen to rob a widow in sanctuary.’

I look at this young man who has promised to rescue me, and who now finds himself against the two most powerful men of the kingdom, his own brothers. It is going to cost him dear to stand by me. ‘I won’t go back,’ I say. ‘I’ll do anything you want; but I won’t go back to George and Isabel. I can’t. I’ll go away on my own if I have to, but I won’t go back to that prison.’

Quickly he shakes his head. ‘No, that won’t happen,’ he reassures me. ‘We had better get married at once. At least then nobody can take you back. If we are married there is nothing they can do to you, and I can fight for your inheritance as your husband.’

‘We’ll need a dispensation from the Pope,’ I remind him. ‘Father had to apply twice for George and Isabel and they are related just as we are, but now, because of their marriage, we are even more closely connected. We are brother- and sister-in-law as well as cousins.’

He scowls, tapping at the table with his fingers. ‘I know, I know. I have been thinking about it, and I will send an envoy to Rome. But it will take months.’ He looks at me as if to measure my resolve. ‘Will you wait for me? Will you wait here where you are safe but confined, till we hear from the Holy Father and have our dispensation?’

‘I’ll wait for you,’ I promise him. I speak like a young woman in love for the first time, but in the back of my mind is the knowledge that I have nowhere else to go, and nobody else has the power or the wealth to protect me from George and Isabel.

ST MARTIN’S, LONDON, APRIL 1472

As the mornings grow brighter and warmer I have to wait in sanctuary and grow more and more impatient to be free. I attend the services at St Martin’s, and in the mornings I read in their library. Richard has loaned me his lute and in the afternoons I play, or sew. I feel like a prisoner, I am terribly bored and terribly anxious at the same time. I am utterly dependent on Richard for my safety, for visits, even for my keep. I am like a girl under a spell in an enchanted castle and he is the knight who comes to rescue me, and now I find that this is a most uncomfortable position to be in – utterly powerless and unable even to complain.

He visits me every day, sometimes bringing sprigs of trees with uncurling leaves, or a handful of Lenten lilies to show me the coming of the spring, the season of courtship, when I will be a bride again. He sends a seamstress to me to make me something new for my wedding day and I spend a morning being fitted with a gown of pale gold velvet with an underskirt of yellow silk. The tirewoman comes too and makes me a tall henin headdress with a veil of gold lace. I look in the dressmaker’s mirror and see my reflection, a slim tall girl with a grave face and dark blue eyes. I smile at my reflection but I will never look merry like the queen, I will never have the warm easy loveliness of her mother Jacquetta, and all the women of that family. They were not raised in warfare as I was, they were always confident in their power – I have always been afraid of it, of them. The tirewoman gathers handfuls of my red-brown hair and piles it on top of my head. ‘You’ll be a beautiful bride,’ she assures me.

One morning Richard comes, his face grave. ‘I went to see Edward to tell him of our marriage plans as soon as the papal dispensation arrives, but the queen’s baby is coming early,’ he says. ‘I couldn’t see him, he’s gone to Windsor to be near her.’

At once, my mind goes to Isabel’s ordeal in childbirth: a nightmare because of the queen’s witch’s wind which threw the boat round like a peapod on a river and meant that we lost the baby, a boy, a grandson for my father. I have no sympathy for the queen at all, but I cannot show this to Richard who is loyal to his brother and tender to his wife and child. ‘Oh, I am sorry,’ I say insincerely. ‘But does she not have her mother with her?’

‘The dowager duchess is ill,’ he says. ‘They say it is her heart.’ He glances at me with embarrassment. ‘They say her heart is broken.’

He does not need to say any more. Jacquetta’s heart was broken when my father executed her husband and her beloved young son. But she has taken her time in dying – more than two years. And she is not the only woman who has ever lost a loved one. My husband died in these wars and my father too – who has ever considered my grief?

‘I am so sorry,’ I say.

‘Fortunes of war.’ Richard repeats the usual comforting phrase. ‘But it means that I couldn’t see Edward before he left. Now he will be absorbed by the queen and her new baby.’

‘What will we do?’ Yet again, it seems that I can do nothing without the knowledge and permission of the queen, and she is hardly likely to bless my marriage to her brother-in-law when they all believe that her mother is dying of grief because of my father. ‘Richard, I can’t wait for the queen to advise the king in our favour. I don’t think she will ever forgive my father.’

He slaps his hand on the table in sudden decision. ‘I know! I know what we’ll do. We’ll marry now, and tell them, and get the Pope’s dispensation later.’

I gasp. ‘Can we do that?’

‘Why not?’

‘Because the marriage won’t be legal?’

‘It will be legal in the sight of God, and then the Pope’s dispensation will come, and it will be legal in the sight of man too.’

‘But my father—’

‘If your father had married you to Prince Edward, without waiting for that dispensation, you could all have sailed together and he would have won at Barnet.’

Regret stabs me like a sword. ‘Really?’

He nods. ‘You know it. The dispensation came anyway, it didn’t come any faster for you waiting in France for it. But if Margaret of Anjou and the prince and you had sailed together with your father then he would have had his full forces at Barnet. He would have defeated us with the Lancaster forces that she would have commanded. Waiting for the dispensation was a great mistake. Delay is always fatal. We’ll marry and the dispensation will come and make the marriage safe in law. It is safe before God if we say our vows before a priest anyway.’

I hesitate.

‘You do want to marry me?’ He looks at me, his smile knowing. He is well aware that I want to marry him and that my heart goes faster when his hand touches mine, as it does now. When he leans forwards, as he is doing now, when his face comes towards me and he comes to kiss me.

‘I do.’ It is true, I am desperate to marry him, and desperate to be out of this half-life of sanctuary. Besides, there is nothing else that I can do.

ST MARTIN’S, LONDON, MAY 1472

For the second time in my life I am a bride, walking up the aisle towards the high altar, a young and handsome husband waiting for me at the chancel steps. I can’t help but think of Prince Edward, waiting for me there, not knowing that our alliance would take him to his death, that we would be wedded and bedded for only twenty weeks before he had to ride out to defend his claim to the throne, and that he would never ride back again.

I tell myself that this is different – that this time I am marrying and it is my own choice, I am not dominated by a terrifying mother-in-law, I am not mindlessly obeying my father. This time I am making my own destiny – for the first time in my life I have been able to take matters into my own hands. I am fifteen, I have been married and widowed, the daughter-in-law of a Queen of England and then the ward of a royal duke. I have been a pawn for one player after another; but now I am making my own decision and playing my own cards.

Richard is waiting at the chancel steps; his kinsman and mine, Archbishop Bourchier, stands before him, with his missal open at the marriage service. I look around the chapel. It is as empty as for a pauper’s funeral. Who would have thought this was the marriage of a dowager princess and a royal duke? No sister – she is now my enemy. No mother – she is still imprisoned. No father – I will never see him again. He died trying to put me on the throne of England and he and his hopes are finished. I feel very alone as I walk up the aisle, my leather shoes tapping on the memorial stones beneath my feet as if to remind me that here, lying in unending darkness, are all the other people who thought that they too would play their own cards.

We have nowhere to go. That is the great irony of our situation. I am the greatest heiress in England with an inheritance, if we can win it, of hundreds of houses and several castles and I have brought them all to my husband, himself a wealthy young man with revenues from some of the greatest counties in England – and we have nowhere to go. He cannot take me back to his London home – Baynard’s Castle – for his mother lives there and the formidable Duchess Cecily frightened me enough as my sister’s hard-faced mother-in-law; she will terrify me as my own. I dare not face her at all after making a secret wedding to one of her sons, against the wishes of the other two.

Obviously we cannot go to George and Isabel, who will be beside themselves with anger when they learn of this day’s doings, and I absolutely refuse to return to the guest house of St Martin’s in my kitchen maid’s cloak. In the end, our kinsman the archbishop, Thomas Bourchier, invites us to his palace for as long as we want to stay. It identifies him even more closely with this secret marriage, but Richard whispers to me that the archbishop would never have opened the marriage service before us if he had not had Edward’s private permission to perform it. Not much happens in England now without the knowledge of the York king and the assent of his queen. So though I had thought we were rebellious lovers, acting in secret, marrying for love and hiding for our honeymoon, it was not so. It was never so. I had thought I was planning my own life, without the knowledge of others; but it turns out that the king and my enemy, his grey-eyed queen, knew of it all, all the time.

LAMBETH PALACE, LONDON, SUMMER 1472

This is our summer, this is our season. Every morning I wake to find golden sunshine streaming through the oriel window that looks out over the river, and the warm tumbled presence of Richard in my bed, sleeping like a child. The sheets are in a tangled knot from our lovemaking, the beautifully embroidered counterpane is in a heap half on the bed and half on the floor, the fire in the fireplace has fallen to ashes as he will allow no-one to come into the chamber until we call them: this is my summer.

Now I understand Isabel’s slavish loyalty to George. Now I understand the passionate bond between the king and the queen. Now I even understand the queen’s mother Jacquetta dying of heartbreak at the loss of the man she married for love. I learn that to love a man whose interests are mine, whose passion is given freely and openly to me, and whose battle-hardened young lithe body lies beside me every night as his only joy, is to utterly change my life. I was married before; but I was never shaken and touched and puzzled and adored before. I was a wife but I was no lover. With Richard I become wife and lover, counsellor and friend, partner in all things, comrade in arms, fellow-traveller. With Richard I become a woman, not a girl, I become a wife.

‘What about the dispensation?’ I ask him lazily, one morning, as he is kissing me carefully, counting as he goes, his ambition being to get to five hundred.

‘You have interrupted me,’ he complains. ‘What dispensation?’

‘For our wedding. From the Pope.’

‘Oh, that – it’s on the way. These things can take months, you know that. I have applied in writing and they will reply. I will tell you when they reply. Where was I?’

‘Three hundred and two,’ I volunteer.

Softly, his mouth comes down on my ribcage. ‘Three hundred and three,’ he says.

We spend every night together. When he has to visit the court, on its summer progress in Kent, he rides out at dawn with a group of his friends – Brackenbury, Lovell, Tyrrell, half a dozen others – and back at dusk so that he can see the king and come home to me. He swears we shall never be parted, not even for a night. I wait for him in the great guest chamber at Lambeth Palace with a supper laid ready for him and he comes in, dusty from the road, and eats and talks and drinks all at the same time. He tells me that the queen’s new baby has died and the queen is quiet and sad. Jacquetta, her mother, is said to have died the very same afternoon as the baby; some people heard a lament sung around the towers of the castle. He crosses himself at that rumour and laughs at himself for being a superstitious fool. Under the table I clench my fist in the sign against witchcraft.

‘Lady Rivers was a remarkable woman,’ he concedes. ‘When I first met her and I was just a boy I thought she was the most terrifying and the most beautiful woman I had ever seen. But when she acknowledged me as her kinsman, when Elizabeth married Edward, I came to love and admire her. She was always so warm with her children – and not just them, with all the children of the royal household – and loyal to Edward; she would have done anything for him.’

‘She was my enemy in the end,’ I say shortly. ‘But I remember that when I first saw her I thought she was wonderful. And her daughter the queen too.’

‘You would pity the queen now,’ he says. ‘She’s very bereft without her mother, and she is lost without her baby.’

‘Yes, but she has four other children,’ I say hard-heartedly. ‘And one of them a son.’

‘We Yorks like to make a big family,’ he says, with a smile at me.

‘And so?’

‘And so I thought we might go to bed and see if we can make a little marquess?’

I feel my colour rise, and I acknowledge my desire with a smile. ‘Perhaps,’ I say. He knows that I mean ‘yes’.

WINDSOR CASTLE, SEPTEMBER 1472

Once again, I am waiting to go into the presence of the King and Queen of England, once again I am fearful and excited. This time there is no-one to precede me, no-one ready to scold me. I need not fear stepping on the train of my mother’s gown for she is still held at Beaulieu and even if she were free she would not walk before me, for now I outrank her. I am a royal duchess. There are very few women whose train I will follow.

I need not fear Isabel’s hard words for now I am her equal. I too am a royal duchess of the House of York. We have been forced to share our inheritance, our husbands now enjoy equal shares of our wealth. We have shared the boys of the House of York – she has George, the handsome older brother, but I have Richard, the loyal and beloved younger brother. He is at my side, and he gives me a warm smile. He knows I am nervous and he knows I am determined to walk into the great royal court and have them acknowledge me for what I now am: a royal duchess of York, and one of the greatest ladies of the kingdom.

I am wearing a gown of deep red. I bribed one of the ladies of the wardrobe to discover what Isabel is wearing tonight and she told me that my sister has ordered a gown of pale violet, that she will wear with her amethysts. My choice will make her colour fade into insignificance. I am wearing rubies around my throat and in my ears and my skin is creamy against the darkness of the gown and the fiery sparkle of the stones. I am wearing a headdress so tall that it rises like a church spire above both me and my husband, and the veil is scarlet. The hem of my gown is embroidered with dark red silk and the sleeves are cut daringly high to show my wrists. I know that I look beautiful. I am sixteen and my skin is like the petal of a rose. The Queen of England herself, Edward’s adored wife, is going to look old and tired beside me. I am at the very peak of my beauty and in the moment of my triumph.

The big doors before us swing open and Richard takes my hand, glances sideways at me and says ‘forward march!’ as if we were mustering on a battlefield, and we step into the blaze of light and warmth of the queen’s presence chamber at Windsor Castle.

As always with Queen Elizabeth, her rooms are shining with the brilliant light of the very best candles, and her women beautifully dressed. She is playing bowls, and from the laughter and round of applause as we come in I guess that she is winning. At the far end of the room there are musicians, and the ladies are dancing a circle dance where they hold hands and form lines, and look around and smile at their favourite courtiers who lounge against the walls and inspect the ladies as if they were high-bred hunters, trotting out. The king is seated in the middle of the chamber talking to Louis de Gruthuyse, who was his only friend when my father drove him from the throne of England, and looked certain to be the victor. Louis was Edward’s friend then, taking him into his court in Flanders, protecting him, and supporting him while he recruited men, raised ships and funds and came back to England like a storm. Now Louis has been made Earl of Winchester, and there are to be days of celebration to welcome him into his earldom. The king pays his debts, and always rewards his favourites. Luckily for me, he sometimes forgives his enemies.

King Edward looks up as we come in – his beloved brother and his pretty new wife – exclaims in pleasure and comes forwards to greet us himself. He is always informal and charming to those he loves and who amuse him, and now he takes my hand and kisses me on the mouth as if he had no recollection that the last time we met was when I was in such disgrace that I was not allowed to speak to him, but had to silently curtsey when he went by.

‘Look who’s here!’ he calls delightedly to the queen. She comes to receive our bows and lets Richard kiss her cheeks and then turns to me. Clearly she and the king have decided that I am to be greeted as a kinswoman and a sister. Only the tiniest flicker of malice in her grey eyes shows me that she is amused to find me here – at the greatest feast of the year to welcome her husband’s ally – rising up now having been down so very low. ‘Ah, Lady Anne,’ she says drily. ‘I wish you joy. What a surprise. What a triumph for true love!’

She turns and gestures to the ladies behind her and my courage fails me as my sister Isabel stalks forwards. I cannot stop myself shrinking back against the comforting shoulder of Richard, my husband, who stands beside me as Isabel, pale and contemptuous, sweeps us both the most shallow curtsey.

‘And here you are, Warwick’s daughters, and yet both royal duchesses and both my sisters,’ the queen says, her voice lilting with laughter. ‘Who would ever have thought it? Your father gets his first choice of sons-in-law from the grave. How happy you must be!’

Her brother Anthony glances at her as if they are sharing a joke about us. ‘Clearly, a joyous reunion of the Neville sisters,’ he observes.

Isabel steps forwards as if she is embracing me and holds me close so that she can whisper fiercely in my ear. ‘You have shamed yourself and embarrassed me. We didn’t even know where you were. Running off like a kitchen slut! I can’t imagine what Father would have said!’

I twist out of her grip and face her. ‘You had me as your prisoner and you were stealing my inheritance,’ I say hotly. ‘What would he have thought of that? What did you think I would do? Bow down and worship George just because you do? Or did you wish me dead like you wish our own mother?’

In a quick gesture she raises her hand, and then instantly snatches it down again. But she has showed everyone that she longs to slap my face. The queen laughs out loud, Isabel turns her back on me, Richard shrugs, bows to the queen, and draws me away.

Across the room, someone tells George that there has been a quarrel and he comes quickly to stand beside Isabel and glare angrily at Richard and me. For a moment Isabel and I are open enemies, staring across the great hall at each other, neither of us ready to back down, Isabel standing beside her husband, me with mine. Then Richard touches my arm and we go to be introduced to the new earl. I greet him pleasantly and we talk for a few moments and then there is a lull. I turn, I cannot help but look back, as if I hope that she would call me over to her, as if I hope that we might make friends again. She is laughing and talking with one of the queen’s ladies. ‘Iz . . .’ I say quietly. But she does not hear me, and only as Richard leads me away do I think I hear, like a tiny whisper, her call to me: ‘Annie.’

This is not the last family greeting I undertake this autumn season, for I have to meet with Richard’s formidable mother, the Duchess Cecily. We go to Fotheringhay, riding up the Great North Road in bright sunny weather to her home. She is in all but exile from the court, her hatred of her daughter-in-law the queen meant that she did not attend most of the major court festivities, and when she joined with George against his brother for the rebellion, she lost the remnants of love she had been able to exact from her son Edward. They all keep up appearances when they can; she still has a London house and visits court from time to time, but the queen’s influence is clear. Duchess Cecily is not a welcomed guest; Fotheringhay is partly repaired and equipped, and given to her as her home. I am cheerful, riding beside Richard, until he says with a sideways glance at me: ‘You know we go through Barnet? The battle was fought along the road.’

Of course I knew it; but I had not thought that we would ride along the actual road where my father died, where Richard, fighting with his brother, uphill against terrible odds, was able to come out of the mist, surprise my father’s forces and kill him. It is the battlefield where Midnight did his last great task for his master: putting down his black head and taking a sword into his great heart to show the men that there would be no retreat, no running away and no surrender.

‘We’ll skirt round,’ Richard says, seeing my face.

He orders his guard and they open a gate for us, so we leave the road to circle the battlefield by riding through the pastures and over the stubble of oat crops, and then rejoin the Great North Road on the northern side of the little town. Every step my horse takes I flinch, thinking that he is treading on bones, and I think of my betrayal, riding alongside my husband, the enemy who killed my father.

‘There’s a little chapel,’ Richard volunteers. ‘It’s not a forgotten battle. He’s not forgotten. Edward and I pay for masses to be said for his soul.’

‘Do you?’ I say. ‘I didn’t know.’ I can hardly speak, I am so torn by guilt that I should be married into the house which my father named as his enemy.

‘I loved him too, you know,’ Richard says quietly. ‘He raised me, like he raised all of his wards, as if we were more to him than boys for whom he would get a fee. He was a good guardian to all of us. Edward and I thought of him as our leader, as our older brother. We couldn’t have done without him.’

I nod. I don’t say that my father only turned against Edward because of the queen, because of her grasping family and her wicked advice. If Edward had not married her . . . if Edward had never met her . . . if Edward had not been enchanted by her and her mother and their potent brew of sensuality and spells . . . but this is just to open a lifetime of regret. ‘He loved you,’ is all I say. ‘And Edward.’

Richard shakes his head, knowing as I do where the fault lay, where it still lies: with Edward’s wife: ‘It’s a tragedy,’ he says.

I nod, and we ride on to Fotheringhay in silence.

FOTHERINGHAY CASTLE, NORTHAMPTONSHIRE, AUTUMN 1472

The castle, Richard’s birthplace and his family’s house, is in disrepair, and has been ever since the wars started and the Yorks could only spend money fortifying the castles that they needed as bases for rebellion against the sleeping king and the bad queen. Richard frowns as he looks at the outer wall that is bowing dangerously over the moat, and scrutinises the roof of the castle where the rooks are making bundles of twiggy nests on the leads.

The duchess greets me warmly, though I am the third secret bride in her family. ‘But I always wanted Richard to marry you,’ she assured me. ‘I must have discussed it with your mother a dozen times. That was why I was so pleased that Richard was made your father’s ward, I wanted you to know each other. I always hoped you would be my daughter-in-law.’

She welcomes us into the smaller hall of the castle, a wood-panelled room with a great fire built at either end, and three huge tables laid for dinner: one for the menservants, one for the women servants and one table for the nobility. The duchess, Richard and I and a few of her kinswomen take the top table and oversee the hall. ‘We live very simply,’ she says, though she has hundreds of servants and a dozen guests. ‘We don’t try to compete with Her and Her court. Burgundian fashions,’ she says darkly. ‘And every sort of extravagance.’

‘My brother the king sends you his good wishes,’ Richard says formally. He kneels to his mother and she puts her hand on his head in blessing. ‘And how is George?’ she asks at once, naming her favourite. Richard winks at me. The overt favouritism of the duchess was an open joke in the family until the moment when it led her to favour George’s claim to the throne. That was too far, even for the indulgent affection of the king.

‘He is well, though we are still trying to settle the inheritance of our wives,’ Richard says.

‘A bad business.’ She shakes her head. ‘A good estate should never be broken up. You should make an agreement with him, Richard. You are the younger son after all. You should give way to your brother George.’

This favouritism is less amusing. ‘I follow my own counsel,’ Richard says stiffly. ‘George and I will agree to share the Warwick fortune. I would be a poor husband to Anne if I let her inheritance be thrown away.’

‘Better to be a poor husband than a poor brother,’ she says smartly. ‘Look at your brother Edward, under the cat’s-paw and betraying his family every moment of the day.’

‘Edward has been a good friend to me in this,’ Richard reminds her. ‘And he has always been a good brother to me.’

‘It’s not his judgement I fear,’ she says darkly. ‘It’s Hers. You wait till your ambitions run counter to hers and then see whose advice Edward will take. She will be his ruin.’

‘Indeed, I pray not,’ Richard says. ‘Shall we dine, Lady Mother?’

Her theme, the ruination of the family by the scheming of Elizabeth Woodville, is a constant one throughout our visit, and though Richard silences her as frequently and as politely as he can, it is impossible to deny the many cases she cites. It is apparent to everyone that the queen gets her way and Edward allows her to put her friends and family into places that belong to other men, she exploits her royal fees more than any queen has done before, and favours her brothers and sisters. Richard will not hear a word said against his brother the king; but at Fotheringhay nobody loves Elizabeth Woodville and the radiant young woman that I first saw on the great night of her triumph is quite forgotten in the picture of the grasping ill-wisher that the duchess describes.

‘She should never have been crowned queen,’ she whispers to me one day when we are sitting in her solar, carefully embroidering the cuffs of a shirt which the duchess will send to her favourite, George, for Christmas.

‘Should she not?’ I ask. ‘I remember her coronation so well, I was only a little girl and I thought her the most beautiful woman I had ever seen in my life.’

A scornful shrug shows what this ageing beauty now thinks about good looks. ‘She should never have been crowned queen because the wedding was never valid,’ she whispers behind her hand. ‘We all knew that Edward was secretly married before he even met her. He was not free to marry her. We all said nothing while your father planned the match with Princess Bona of Savoy because such a secret marriage could be denied – must be denied when such a great chance presents itself. But the oaths Edward swore with Elizabeth were just another secret marriage, actually a bigamous marriage – and it should have been denied too.’

‘Her mother was witness . . .’

‘That witch would have sworn to anything for her children.’

‘But Edward made her queen,’ I point out. ‘And their children are royal.’

She shakes her head and nips off the thread with her sharp little teeth. ‘Edward has no right to be king,’ she says, speaking very softly.

I drop my work. ‘Your Grace . . .’ I am terrified of what she is going to say next. Is this the old scandal that my father circulated when he wanted to drive Edward from the throne? Is the duchess about to accuse herself of wanton adultery? And how much trouble will I be in if I know this enormous, this terrible state secret?

She laughs at my aghast face. ‘Oh, you’re such a child!’ she says unkindly. ‘Who would trust you with anything? Who would bother telling you anything? Remind me, how old are you?’

‘I am sixteen,’ I say with all the dignity I can muster.

‘A child,’ she mocks. ‘I’ll say no more. But you remember that George is not my favourite because I am a doting fool. George is my favourite for good reason, very good reason. He was born to be a king, that boy. That boy – and no other.’

WINDSOR CASTLE, CHRISTMAS 1472

The season of the Christmas feast is always a great one for Edward and this is the year he celebrates his greatest triumph. Back at court Richard and I find we are caught up in the excitement of the twelve days. Every day there is a new theme and a new masque. Every dinner there are new songs, or actors or jugglers or players of one sort or another. There is a bear-baiting, and hunting in the cold riverside marshes every day. They go hawking, there is a three-day joust where every nobleman presents his standard. The queen’s brother Anthony Woodville holds a battle of poets and everyone has to present a couplet, one after another, standing in a circle, and the first person to stumble over his rhyme bows and steps back, until there are only two men left, one of them Anthony Woodville – and then he wins. I see the gleam of his smile to his sister: he always wins. There is a mock sea battle in one of the courtyards, flooded for the occasion, and one night a dance of torches in the woods.

Richard, my husband, is always at his brother’s side. He is one of the inner circle: comrades who fled with Edward from England and returned in triumph. He, William Hastings, and Anthony Woodville the queen’s brother are the king’s friends and blood brothers – together for life; they will never forget the wild ride when they thought that my father would catch them, they will never forget the voyage when they looked anxiously back over the stern of their little fishing boat for the lights of my father’s ships following them. When they speak of riding through the dark lanes, desperate to find Lynn and not knowing whether there would be a boat there that they could hire or steal, when they roar with laughter remembering that their pockets were empty and the king had to give the boatman his furred gown by way of payment, and then they had to walk penniless in their riding boots to the nearest town, George shuffles his feet and looks around, and hopes that the conversation will take another turn. For George was the enemy that night, though they are all supposed to be friends now. I think that the men who thundered along the night roads in darkness, pulling up in a sweat of fear to listen for hoofbeats coming behind them, will never forget that George was their enemy that night, and that he sold his own brother and his own family, and betrayed his house in the hopes of putting himself on the throne. For all their smiling friendship now, for all the appearance of having forgotten old battles, they know that they were the hunted that night, and that if George had caught them he would have killed them. They know that this is the way of this world: you have to kill or be killed, even if it is your brother, or your king, or your friend.

For me, every time they speak of this time, I remember that it was my father who was their enemy, and their comradeship was forged in fear of him, their good guardian and mentor who suddenly, overnight, became their deadly enemy. They had to win back the throne from him – he had utterly defeated them and thrown them out of the kingdom. Sometimes, when I think of his triumph and then his defeat, I feel as alien in this court as my first mother-in-law, Margaret of Anjou, their prisoner in the Tower of London.

I know for sure that the queen never forgets her enemies. Indeed, I suspect that she thinks of us as her enemies now. Under instruction from her husband she greets me and Isabel with cool civility, and she offers us places in her household. But her little smile when she sees the two of us seated in stony silence, or when Edward calls George to bear witness to a battle and then breaks off realising that this was one where George was on the other side – those moments show me that this is a queen who does not forget her enemies, and will never forgive them.

I am allowed to decline a place in the queen’s household as Richard tells me that we will live in the North for much of the time. At last, my share of the inheritance has been given to him. George takes the other half, and all Richard wants is to take up the great northern lands that he has won and rule them himself. He wants to take my father’s place in the North and befriend the Neville affinity. They will be predisposed to him because of my name, and the love they had for my father. If he treats the northerners well, openly and honestly as they like to be treated, he will be as grand as a king in the North of England and we will make a palace at Sheriff Hutton, and at Middleham Castle, our houses in Yorkshire. I have brought him the beautiful Barnard Castle in Durham too, and he says that we will live behind the mighty walls that look down to the River Tees and up to the Pennine hills. The city of York – which has always loved the house that shares its name – will be our capital city. We will bring grandeur and wealth to the North of England, to a people who are ready to love Richard because he is of the House of York, and who love me already, for I am a Neville.

Edward encourages this. He needs someone to keep the North at peace, and to defend England’s borders against the Scots, and there is no-one he trusts more than his youngest brother.

But I have another reason to refuse to stay at court, a reason even better than this. I curtsey to the queen and say: ‘Your Grace must excuse me. I am . . .’

She nods coolly. ‘Of course, I know.’

‘You do?’ At once I think that she has foreseen this conversation with her witch’s gaze, and I cannot restrain my shiver.

‘Lady Anne, I am no fool,’ she says simply. ‘I have had seven babies myself, I can see when a woman cannot eat her breakfast but still grows fatter. I was wondering when you were going to tell us all. Have you told your husband?’

I find I am still breathless with the fear that she knows everything. ‘Yes.’

‘And was he very pleased?’

‘Yes, Your Grace.’

‘He will be hoping for a boy, an earl for such a great inheritance,’ she says with satisfaction. ‘It is a blessing for you both.’

‘If it is a girl I hope you will be godmother?’ I have to ask her; she is the queen and my sister-in-law, and she has to assent. I don’t feel any warmth or love for her and I don’t think for one moment this means she will really bless me or my baby. But I am surprised by the kindness in her face as she nods. ‘I shall be pleased.’

I turn so that her ladies can hear me. My sister, her head bent down to her sewing, is among them. Isabel is trying to look as if she has heard none of this conversation; but I have to believe that she is yearning to speak to me. I can’t believe that Isabel would be indifferent to me, pregnant with my first child. ‘If I have a girl I am going to call her Elizabeth Isabel,’ I say clearly, pitching my voice for her ears.

My sister’s head is turned away; she is looking out of the window at the swirling snow outside, pretending to be indifferent. But when she hears her own name, she looks around. ‘Elizabeth Isabel?’ she repeats. It is the first time she has spoken to me since she scolded me when I came to court as a runaway bride.

‘Yes,’ I say boldly.

She half-rises from her seat, and then sits down again. ‘You will call a daughter: Isabel?’

‘Yes.’

I see her flush and at last she gets up from her seat and comes towards me, away from the queen and her ladies. ‘You would name her for me?’

‘Yes,’ I say simply. ‘You will be her aunt, and I hope you will love her and care for her. And . . .’ I hesitate – of course Isabel of all the people in the world knows that I am bound to be afraid of childbirth. ‘If anything should ever happen to me, then I hope you will raise her as your own child, and . . . and tell her about our father, Iz . . . and about everything that happened. About us . . . and how things went wrong . . .’

Isabel’s face twists for a moment trying to hold back her tears, and then she opens her arms and we cling to each other, crying and laughing at the same time. ‘Oh Iz,’ I whisper. ‘I have hated being at war with you.’

‘I am sorry, I am so sorry, Annie. I should not have acted as I did – I didn’t know what to do – and everything happened so fast. We had to get the fortune . . . and George said . . . and then you ran away . . .’

‘I’m sorry too,’ I say. ‘I know you couldn’t go against your husband. I understand better now.’

She nods, she doesn’t want to say anything about George. A wife owes obedience to her husband, she promises it on her wedding day before God; and husbands exact their full due, supported by the priest and by the world. Isabel is as much George’s possession as if she was his servant or his horse. I too have promised fealty to Richard as if he were a lord and I was indeed a kitchen maid. A woman must obey her husband as a serf obeys his lord – it is the way of the world and the law of God. Even if she thinks he is wrong. Even if she knows he is wrong.

Isabel tentatively puts out her hand to where my belly is hard and swelling beneath the gathered folds of my gown. I take it and let her feel my broadening girth. ‘Annie, you are so big already. Do you feel well?’

‘I was sick at the start but I am well now.’

‘I can’t believe that you didn’t tell me at once!’

‘I wanted to,’ I confess. ‘I really wanted to. I didn’t know how to begin.’

We turn away from the court together. ‘Are you afraid?’ she asks quietly.

‘A little,’ I say. I see the darkness of her glance. ‘A lot,’ I admit. We are both silent, both thinking of the rocking cabin on the storm-tossed ship with my mother screaming at me that I must pull the baby from her, the horror as the little body yielded inside her. The vision is so strong I am almost unsteady on my feet, as if the seas were throwing us around once more. She takes my hands in hers and it is as if we had just made landfall and I am telling her about the little coffin, and Mother letting it go into the sea.

‘Annie, there’s no reason that it should not be all right for you,’ she says earnestly. ‘There is no reason that it should go wrong for you as it did for me. My pains were so much worse for being at sea, and the storm, and the danger. You will be safe, and your husband . . .’

‘He loves me,’ I say certainly. ‘He says he will take me to Middleham Castle and have the best midwives and physicians in the land.’ I hesitate. ‘Would you . . . I know that perhaps you . . .’

She waits. She must know that I want her to be with me for my confinement. ‘I have no-one else,’ I say simply. ‘And neither do you. Whatever has passed between us, Iz, we have nobody but each other now.’

Neither of us mentions our mother, still imprisoned in Beaulieu Abbey, and her lands stolen from her by our husbands working together to rob her, and then competing to rob each other. She writes to us both, letters filled with threats, and complaints, swearing that she will write no more if we don’t promise to obey her and get her set free. She knows, as we do, that both of us let this happen, powerless to do anything but our husbands’ bidding. ‘We are orphans,’ I say bleakly. ‘We have let ourselves be orphans. We have made orphans out of ourselves. And we have no-one else to turn to but each other.’

‘I’ll come,’ she says.

MIDDLEHAM CASTLE, YORKSHIRE, SPRING 1473

Being in confinement with Isabel for six weeks in the Lady’s Tower at Middleham Castle is like re-living the long days of our childhood again. Men are not allowed inside the confinement chamber, and so the wood for the banked-in fires, the platters for our dinner, everything that we want has to be handed over at the foot of the tower to one of the women attending me. The priest comes across the wooden bridge from the main keep of the castle and stands at the door behind a screen to read the mass, and gives me the Host through a metal grille, without looking at me. We hear almost no news. Isabel walks across to the great hall to dine with Richard once or twice and comes back to tell us that the little Prince of Wales is to take up his residence in Ludlow. For a moment I think of my first husband; the title of Prince of Wales was his, the beautiful castle of Ludlow would have been ours, Margaret of Anjou planned that we should live there for some months after our victory to impose our will on the people of Wales – but then I remember that all that is gone now, and I am of the House of York, and I should be glad that their prince has grown old enough to have his own household in Wales, even if it is under the management of his uncle, Anthony Woodville, the widower who now rises, through no skill of his own, to his dead wife’s title of Baron Scales.

‘It will mean that the Rivers run Wales in everything but name,’ Isabel whispers to me. ‘The king has handed his only heir into their keeping and Anthony Woodville is head of the prince’s council and the queen rules everything. This is not the House of York, this is the House of Rivers. D’you think Wales will stand for it? They have always been for the House of Lancaster and the Tudors.’

I shrug. I am lapped in the serenity of the last weeks of pregnancy. I look out over the green fields nearby and beyond them the rough pasture with the lapwings wheeling and crying up to the moorland. London seems a long way away, Ludlow a lifetime. ‘Who should rule her son but the queen?’ I ask. ‘And he couldn’t have a better governor than his uncle Anthony. Whatever you think of the queen, Anthony Woodville is one of the finest men in Europe. They are a close family. Anthony Woodville will guard his nephew with his life.’

‘You wait,’ Isabel predicts. ‘There will be many who fear to see the Rivers become over-mighty. There will be many who warn the king against trusting one family with everything. George is against them, even your husband Richard does not like to see all of Wales in their keeping.’ She pauses. ‘Father said they were bad advisors,’ she reminds me.

I nod. ‘He did,’ I concede. ‘The king was very wrong to prefer them to our father.’

‘And She hates us still,’ Isabel says flatly.

I nod. ‘Yes, I suppose she always will; but she can’t do anything. While George and Richard are in the favour of the king all she can do is be as cold as the fish-woman on her family’s flag. She can’t even change the order of precedence. She can’t ignore us like she used to do. And anyway, when my baby is born I don’t plan to go back to court.’ I touch the thick wall beside the glazed window with satisfaction. ‘Nobody can hurt me here.’

‘I shall stay away from court too,’ she says. She smiles at me. ‘I shall have good reason to stay away. Do you notice anything about me?’

I raise my head and look at her more closely. ‘You look—’ I hunt for a phrase that is not impolite: ‘Bonny.’

She laughs. ‘You mean I am fat,’ she says joyfully. ‘I am getting good and fat. And I shall call on you to come to stay with me in August.’ She beams at me. ‘I shall want you to return the favour I am doing here.’

‘Iz—’ In a moment I understand what she means and then I take her hands. ‘Iz – you are expecting a baby?’

She laughs. ‘Yes, at last. I was starting to fear . . .’

‘Of course, of course. But you must rest now.’ At once I drag her to the fireside and pull her into a seat, put a stool under her feet, and smilingly regard her. ‘How wonderful! And you must not pick up things for me any more, and when you leave here, you must have a litter, and not go by horseback.’

‘I am well,’ she says. ‘I feel far better than last time. I am not afraid. At any rate I am not very afraid . . . and – oh, just think, Annie! – they will be cousins, my baby and yours, they will be cousins, born in the same year.’

There is a silence as we both think of the grandfather of our babies who will never see them, who would have regarded them as the fulfilment of his plans, who would at once have started new and ambitious plans for them, the minute that their little heads were in the cradle.

‘Father would have had their marriages laid out, and their heraldry drawn up already,’ Isabel says with a little laugh.

‘He would have got a dispensation and married them to each other,’ I say. ‘To keep their fortunes in the family.’ I pause. ‘Will you write and tell Mother?’ I ask tentatively.

She shrugs, her face closed and cold. ‘What’s the use?’ she asks. ‘She’ll never see her grandchild. She’ll never get out, and she has told me that if I cannot get her released then I am no daughter of hers. What’s the use in even thinking of her?’