The Kingmaker's Daughter (11 page)

‘I’m afraid,’ Isabel says. ‘I don’t want to sail.’

‘Izzy, the sea is as calm as a pond. We could practically swim home.’

‘Midnight knows there is something wrong.’

‘No he doesn’t. He’s always naughty. And anyway, he is on board now, he’s in his stall eating hay. Come on, Izzy, we can’t delay the ship.’

Still she won’t go forwards. She pulls me to one side as the ladies go on board and Mother too. They are raising the sails, shouting commands and replies. The royal cabin door stands open
for us. George goes past us, indifferent to Izzy’s fears, Father is giving his last orders to someone on the quayside and the sailors are starting to release the ropes from the great iron
rings on the quay.

‘I’m too near my time to sail.’

‘You’ll be fine,’ I say. ‘You can lie in the bunk on the ship just as you would lie in your bed at home.’

Still she hesitates. ‘What if she has whistled up a wind?’

‘What?’

‘The queen, and her mother the witch. Witches can whistle up a wind, can’t they? What if she has whistled up a wind and it’s out there, waiting for us?’

‘She can’t do a thing like that, Iz. She’s just an ordinary woman.’

‘She would, you know she would. She will never forgive us for the death of her father and her brother. Her mother said as much.’

‘Of course they were angry with us, but she can’t do it, she’s not a witch.’

Father is suddenly beside us. ‘Get on board,’ he says.

‘Izzy is frightened,’ I say to him.

He looks at her, his oldest, his chosen daughter; and though she has her hand on her swelling belly and her face is white, he looks at her with hard brown eyes, as if she were nothing to him but
an obstacle between him and his new plan. Then he glances back inland, as if he might see the billowing standards of the king’s army trotting down the road to the quayside. ‘Get on
board,’ is all he says and he leads the way up the gangplank without looking back, and gives the order to cast off as we scurry after him.

They cast off the ropes, and the barges come and take their lines on board to tow us out to sea. The rowers in the barges lean forwards and pull as the little drummer boy starts a steady beat to
keep them in time and they edge the ship away from the cobbled quayside and out into the river. The sails flap and start to fill with wind, and the boat rocks in the slapping waves. Father is
beloved in Devon, as in all the ports of England, for his protection of the narrow seas and there are many people waving, kissing their hands to him, and calling their blessing. George immediately
goes and stands beside him on the poop deck, raising his hand in a kingly salute, and my father calls Izzy to his side and puts his arm around her shoulders, turning her so that everyone can see
her big pregnant belly. Mother and I stand in the bow of the ship. Father does not call me to his side, he does not need me there. It is Isabel who is to be the new Queen of England, going into
exile now, but certain to return in triumph. It is Isabel who is carrying the child that they all hope will be the son who will be the King of England.

We reach the open sea and the sailors drop the ropes to the barges, and reef the sails. A little breeze comes up and the sails fill and then the timbers creak as the wind takes the boat and we
start to plough through the blue water with the waters singing along the prow. Izzy and I have always loved sailing and she forgets her fear and comes and stands with me at the side of the boat,
looking over the rail for dolphin in the clear water. There is a line of cloud on the horizon like a string of milky pearls.

In the evening, we heave to off the port of Southampton where the rest of Father’s fleet is at anchor, waiting for the command to join us. Father sends a little rowing boat to tell them to
come, and we wait, wallowing a little in the swirling currents of the Solent, looking towards land expecting to see, at any moment, a moving forest of sails, our wealth and pride and the source of
Father’s power – the command of the seas. But only two ships appear. They come alongside us and Father leans over the side of our ship as they bawl to him that we were expected, that
the Rivers’ son, Anthony Woodville, with his family’s cursed foresight rode like a madman with his troop to get here before us, and that he has commanded the crews, arrested some,
killed others; but at any rate he has all of Father’s ships, including our brand-new flagship the
Trinity
, in his grasping hands. Anthony Woodville has the command of Father’s
fleet. The Rivers have taken our ships from us, as they took our king from us, as they will take everything we own from us.

‘Go below!’ Father shouts furiously to me. ‘Tell your mother we will be at Calais in the morning and that I will come back for the
Trinity
and all my ships, and Anthony
Woodville will be sorry he stole them from me.’

We will sail all evening and all night, running before the wind in the narrow seas to our home port of Calais. Father knows these waters well, and his crew have sailed and fought over every inch
of these deeps. The ship is newly commissioned, fitted out as a fighting vessel but with quarters worthy of a king. We are sailing east before the prevailing wind and the skies are clear. Isabel
will rest in the royal cabin on the main deck, I will stay with her. Mother and Father will have the large cabin beneath the poop deck. George has the first officer’s cabin. In a little while
they will serve dinner and then we will play cards in candlelight which flickers and moves with the roll of the ship, then we will go to bed and I will sleep, rocked by the rise and fall of the
waves, listening to the creaking of the timbers and smelling the salt of the sea. I realise that I am free: my time in service to the queen is over, completely over. I will never see Elizabeth
Woodville again. I will never serve her again. She will never forgive me, she will never hear my name; but equally I will never again have to bear her silent contempt.

‘The wind’s getting up,’ Izzy remarks as we are taking a stroll around the main deck before dinner.

I raise my head. The standard at the top of the sails is flapping wildly, and the seagulls that were following the wake of the ship have wheeled away and gone back towards England. The little
pearly clouds strung out along the horizon have massed and now lie grey and thick, like feathers.

‘It’s nothing,’ I say. ‘Come on, Iz, we can go into the cabin. We’ve never had the best cabin before.’

We go to the door that opens onto the main deck but as she puts her hand on the brass lock the ship dips and she staggers and falls against the door, which yields suddenly, making her tumble
into the cabin. She falls against the bed and I scramble in behind her and get hold of her. ‘Are you all right?’

Another big heave of a wave sends us tottering to the other side of the little room and Izzy falls against me and knocks me against the wall.

‘Get to the bed,’ I say.

The floor rises up again as we struggle towards the bed and Isabel grabs the raised edge. I cling to the side. I try to laugh at the sudden swell that made us stagger like fools, but Iz is
crying: ‘It’s a storm, a storm like I said!’ Her eyes are huge in the sudden gloom of the cabin.

‘It can’t be, it’s just a couple of big waves.’ I look towards the window. The clouds that were so light and pale on the horizon have darkened, and lie in black and
yellow stripes across the sun, which is itself growing red and dark though it is still the afternoon.

‘Just clouding up,’ I say, trying to sound cheerful though I have never seen a sky like this in my life before. ‘Shall you get into bed for a rest? You might as
well.’

I help her into the swaying bed but then the sudden drop of the boat into the trough of a wave, and the smack of the impact as it hits the bottom, throws me to my knees on the floor.

‘You come in too,’ Izzy insists. ‘Come in with me. It’s getting cold, I’m so cold.’

I heel off my shoes and then I hesitate. I wait and it feels as if everything is waiting. Suddenly, everything goes still as if the world has suddenly paused, as if the sky is silently waiting.
The ship falls quiet, becalmed on an oily sea, and the wind that was blowing us homeward, steadily east, sighs as if exhausted and ceases. In the calm we hear the sails flap and then hang still.
Everything is ominously horribly quiet.

I look out of the window. The seas are flat, as flat as if they were an inland marsh and the ship wallowing on silt. There is not a breath of wind. The clouds are pressing on the mast of the
boat, pressing down on the sea. Nothing is moving, the seagulls are gone, someone seated on the crosstrees of the main mast says ‘Dear Jesus, save us’ and starts to scramble down the
ropes to the deck. His voice echoes strangely as if we were all trapped under a glass bowl. ‘Dear Jesus, save us,’ I repeat.

‘Take down sail!’ the captain bellows, breaking the silence. ‘Reef in!’ and we hear the bare feet of the crew thundering on the decks to get the sails taken in. The sea
is glassy, reflecting the sky, and as I watch it turns from dark blue to black and starts to stir, and starts to move.

‘She is taking a breath,’ Izzy says. Her face is haunted, her eyes dark in her pallor.

‘What?’

‘She is taking a breath.’

‘Oh no,’ I say, trying to sound confident but the stillness of the air and Isabel’s premonition are frightening me. ‘It’s nothing, just a lull.’

‘She is taking her breath and then she will whistle,’ Izzy says. She turns away from me and lies on her back, her big belly rounded and full. Her hands come out and grip either side
of the beautifully carved wooden bed, while she stretches her feet down to the bottom of the bedframe, as if she were bracing herself for danger. ‘In a moment now, she will
whistle.’

I try to say cheerfully: ‘No, no, Izzy . . .’ when there is a scream of wind that takes my breath away. Howling like a whistle, like a banshee, the wind pours out of the darkened
sky, the boat heels over and the sea beneath us suddenly bows up and throws us up towards the clouds that split with sickly yellow lightning.

‘Close the door! Shut her out!’ Izzy screams as the boat rolls and the double doors to the cabin fly open. I reach for them and then stand amazed. Before the cabin is the prow of the
ship and beyond that should be the waves of the sea. But I can see nothing before me but the prow, rising up and up and up as if the ship is standing on its stern and the prow is vertical in the
sky above me. Then I see why. Beyond the prow is a mighty wave, towering as high as a castle wall, and our little ship is trying to climb its side. In a moment the crest of the wave, icy white
against the black sky, is going to turn and crash down on us, as a storm of hail pours down with a rattle that makes the deck white as a snowfield in a second, and stings my face and bare arms, and
crunches beneath my bare feet like broken glass.

‘Close the door!’ Izzy screams again and I fling myself against it as the wave breaks on us, a wall of water crashes down on the deck, and the ship shudders and staggers. Another
wave rears above us and the door bursts open to admit a waist-high wall of water which pours in. The door is banging, Isabel is screaming, the ship is shuddering, struggling under the extra weight
of water, the sailors are fighting for control of the sails, clinging to the spars, hanging like puppets with flailing legs, thinking of nothing but their own fragile lives, as the ship rears, the
captain screaming commands and trying to hold the prow into the towering seas, while the wind veers against us, whipping up enemy waves that come towards us like a succession of glassy black
mountains.

The ship reels and the door bangs open again, and Father comes in with a cascade of water, his sea cape streaming, his shoulders white with hail. He slams the door behind him, and steadies
himself against the frame. ‘All right?’ he asks shortly, his eyes on Isabel.

Isabel is holding her belly. ‘I have a pain, I have a pain!’ she shouts. ‘Father! Get us into port!’

He looks at me. I shrug. ‘She always has pains,’ I say shortly. ‘The ship?’

‘We’ll run for the French shore,’ he says. ‘We’ll get in the shelter of the coast. Help her. Keep her warm. The fires are all out, but when they are lit again
I’ll send you some mulled ale.’

The ship gives a huge heave and the two of us fall across the cabin. Isabel screams from the bunk. ‘Father!’

We struggle to our feet, clinging to the side of the cabin, hauling ourselves up on the side of the bunk. As I pull myself forwards I blink, thinking I must be blinded by the flashes of
lightning outside the cabin window, because it looks as if Izzy’s sheets are black. I rub my eyes with my wet hands, tasting the salt of the waves on my knuckles and on my cheeks. Then I see
her sheets are not black, I am not dazzled by the lightning. Her sheets are red. Her waters have broken.

‘The baby!’ she sobs.

‘I’ll send your mother,’ Father says hastily and plunges through the door, fastening it behind him. He disappears at once into the hail. Now and then the lightning shows the
hail as a wall of white, smashing against us, and then it is black again. The black nothingness is worst.

I grab Isabel’s hands.

‘I have a pain,’ she says pitifully. ‘Annie, I have a pain. I do have a pain.’ Her face suddenly contorts and she clings to me, groaning. ‘I am not making a fuss.
Annie, I am not trying to be important. I do have a pain, a terrible pain. Annie, I do have a pain.’

‘I think the baby is coming,’ I say.

‘Not yet! Not yet! It’s too early. It’s too early. It can’t come here! Not on a ship!’

Desperately I look towards the door. Surely my mother will come? Surely Margaret will not fail us, surely the ladies will come? It cannot be that Isabel and I are clinging to each other in a
thunderstorm as she gives birth without anyone to help us.

‘I have a girdle,’ she says desperately. ‘A blessed girdle for help in childbirth.’

Our chests of things have all been loaded into the hold. There is nothing for Isabel in the cabin but a little box with a change of linen.

‘An icon, and some pilgrim badges,’ she continues. ‘In my carved box. I need them, Annie. Get them for me. They will protect me . . .’