The Kingmaker's Daughter (25 page)

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.