The Kingmaker's Daughter (22 page)

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.’