The Kingmaker's Daughter (40 page)

‘She did. George says that we are not safe at court nor even in London. He says that the queen’s enmity is too great a danger. Annie, you should leave too. Get Richard to take you
home to Middleham. George says that she will turn Edward against both his brothers. He says she will strike against us this Christmas. She will bring the court together for the Christmas feast and
then accuse both brothers and have them arrested.’

I am so frightened that I can hardly speak. I take both her hands in mine. ‘Isabel, surely this is madness. George is making a war in his dreams, he constantly speaks against the king and
his right to the throne, he whispers against the queen. The dangers are all of his own making.’

She laughs without humour. ‘D’you think so?’

George’s master of horse brings up her litter, drawn by matched mules. Her ladies in waiting draw back the curtains and I help her seat herself on the soft cushions. The maids put hot
bricks beneath her feet and the kitchen boy comes with a brass tray of hot coals.

‘I do,’ I say. ‘I do.’ I am trying to suppress my fear for her, so near her time, travelling cross-country on muddy roads. I cannot forget that she had to travel near her
time once before and that ended in a death and heartbreak and the loss of a son. I lean into the litter and whisper: ‘The king and the queen are bent on pleasure this Christmas, and showing
off their new clothes and their endless children. They’re drunk on vanity and luxury. We’re not in danger, neither of us are in danger, nor our husbands. They’re the king’s
own brothers, they’re royal dukes. The king loves them. We are safe.’

Her face is white with the strain. ‘I have a dead lapdog who stole a piece of chicken from a dish meant for me,’ she says. ‘I tell you, the queen is set on my death, on yours
too.’

I am so horrified I cannot speak. I just hold her hand and warm it between my own. ‘Iz, don’t go like this.’

‘George knows, I tell you. He knows for certain. He’s had a warning from someone in her household. She is going to have both brothers arrested and executed.’

I kiss her hands and her cheeks. ‘Dearest Iz . . .’

She puts her arms around my neck and hugs me. ‘Go to Middleham,’ she whispers. ‘For me: because I ask it of you. For your own safety: because I am warning you. For your boy: to
keep him safe. For God’s sake go. Get away from here, Annie. I swear they will have us all killed. She will not stop until your husband and my husband and both of us are dead.’

All through the cold days which grow increasingly dark and wintry I look for news of Isabel’s confinement, and think of her in the guest rooms of Tewkesbury Abbey, waiting
for her baby to come. I know that George will have provided her with the best of midwives, there will be a physician nearby, and companions to cheer her, and a wet nurse waiting, and the rooms will
be warm and comfortable for her. But still I wish I could have been with her. The birth of another child to a royal duke is an important event, and George will have left nothing to chance. If it is
a boy then it establishes him as a man with two heirs – as good as his brother the king. Still, I wish I had been allowed to go to her. Still, I wish that he had allowed her to stay in
London.

I go to Richard as he sits at his table in his privy chamber to ask him if I may join Isabel in Tewkesbury, and he refuses me out of hand. ‘George’s household has become a centre of
treason,’ he says flatly. ‘I have seen some of the sermons and chapbooks which are being written under his patronage. They question my brother’s legitimacy, they name my mother as
a whore, and my father as a cuckold. They suggest his marriage to the queen is invalid and that his sons are bastards. It is shameful what George is saying. I cannot forgive it, Edward cannot
overlook it. Edward is going to have to act against him.’

‘Would he do anything to Isabel?’

‘Of course not,’ Richard says impatiently. ‘What has she to do with it?’

‘Then can’t I go to her?’

‘We can’t associate with them,’ Richard rules. ‘George is impossible. We cannot be seen near him.’

‘She is my sister! She has done nothing.’

‘Perhaps after Christmas. If Edward does not arrest him before then.’

I go to the door and put my hand on the brass ring. ‘Can we go home to Middleham?’

‘Not before the Christmas feast, it would be to insult the king and queen. George leaving the city so suddenly is insult enough. I won’t make matters worse.’ He hesitates, his
pen raised over a document for signing. ‘What is it? Are you missing Edward?’

‘I am afraid,’ I whisper to him. ‘I am afraid. Isabel told me something, warned me . . .’

He does not try to reassure me. He does not ask me what was Isabel’s warning. Later, when I think about it, that is the worst of it. He merely nods. ‘You have nothing to fear,’
he says. ‘I am guarding us. And besides, if we left it would show that we were fearful too.’

In November I receive a letter from Isabel, travel-stained and delayed on the flooded roads. It is one of Isabel’s exultant three-page scrawls.

And so on, and so on, over three crumpled pages, with afterthoughts in the margins. I put the letter to one side and place my hand on the softness of my belly as if the warmth
of my hand could hatch a new baby as if it were a chick in a shell. Isabel is right to be happy and proud in the safe delivery of another baby, and I am glad for her. But she might have thought how
her words would strike me: her younger sister, still only twenty years old, with only one little boy in the nursery, after four, nearly five years of marriage.

Her letter is not all boasting, for she writes one word at the end of the letter to show that she has not forgotten her fear of the queen.

The door of my presence chamber opens and Richard comes in with his half-dozen friends, to escort me and my ladies to dinner. I stand and smile at him.

‘Good news?’ Richard asks, looking at the letter on the table beside me.

‘Oh yes!’ I say, holding my smile. ‘Very.’

WESTMINSTER PALACE, LONDON, CHRISTMAS DAY 1476

It is the season of Christmas and the royal family will blaze in jewels and the bright colours of the new fabrics that they have bought in, at the price of a small fortune,
from Burgundy. Edward plays the part of a king in a swirl of cloth of gold and colour and the queen is always at his side as if she were born to the place – and not the lucky upstart she
truly is.

We wake early for mass in the king’s chapel on this most holy day of the year. I have a great wooden bath, lined with the finest linen, rolled into my bedroom before the fire and the maids
bring jugs of hot water and pour it around my shoulders as I wash my hair and my body with the rose-petal soap that Richard bought from the Moorish traders for me.

They wrap me in hot sheets while they lay out my gown for the day. I will wear deep red velvet trimmed with marten fur, a dark shiny pelt as good as anything the queen has. I have a new
headdress that sits snugly on my head with coils of gold wire over my ears. They comb my hair dry as I sit before the warmth of the fire and then plait it and twist it up under the headdress. I
have a new linen shift embroidered this summer by my ladies under my direction, and from the treasure room they bring my box and I pick out dark red rubies to match the gown.

When Richard comes to my presence chamber to accompany me to mass he is dressed in black, his preferred colour. He looks handsome and happy and as I greet him I feel the familiar pulse of
desire. Perhaps tonight he will come to my room and tonight we will make another child. What could be a better day than the day when the Christ-child was born, to make another heir for the dukedom
of Gloucester?

He offers me his arm and the knights of his household, all richly dressed, escort my ladies to the king’s chapel. We line up and wait, the king often keeps us waiting; but then there is a
rustle and a little gasp from some of the ladies as he comes in, dressed in white and silver, and leading Her. She is in silver and white like him and she gleams in the shadows of the royal chapel
as if she were lit by the moon. Her pale golden hair just shows beneath her crown, her neck is bare to the top of her gown, which is cut low and square and veiled with the finest lace. Behind them
come their children, first the young Prince of Wales, six years old now, taller every time he comes to court, dressed to match his father, and then the nursemaid holding the hand of the little
prince, still in his baby clothes of white and silver lace, then comes Princess Elizabeth dressed in white and silver like her parents, solemn with an ivory missal in her hand, smiling to one side
and the other, poised and precocious as always, and behind her the rest of them, beautiful, royal, richly dressed little girls, all three of them and the new baby. I cannot watch them without
envy.

I make sure that I am smiling, as the court smiles, to see this exquisite royal family walk by. The queen’s grey gaze flickers over me and I feel the chill of her regard, and the astute
measurement, as if she knows that I am envious, as if she knows that I am fearful; and then the priest comes in and I can kneel and close my eyes and spare myself the sight of them.