The Kingmaker's Daughter Read online

  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