The Kingmaker's Daughter Read online

  I keep my hands over my mouth and I direct my frightened whisper to her ears only. ‘Do you know for sure that they won by witchcraft?’

  ‘It was a witch’s wind that nearly drowned me and killed my baby,’ she says, her voice so low that I have to lean against her cheek to hear her words. ‘The same witch’s wind raged all spring and kept us in port but blew Edward to England. At the battle of Barnet, Edward’s armies were hidden by a mist that swirled around them, only them, as they crept forwards. Father’s army was on a ridge in plain view, it was Her magic that hid the York troops. It is not possible to defeat Edward as long as he has Her at his side.’

  I hesitate. ‘Our father died fighting them. He sacrificed Midnight to fight them.’

  ‘I can’t think about him now,’ she says. ‘I have to forget him.’

  ‘I won’t,’ I say, almost to myself. ‘I won’t ever forget him. Not him or Midnight.’

  She shrugs, as if it does not matter very much, gets to her feet and smooths her gown over her slim hips, arranging her golden belt. ‘You have to come to the king,’ she says.

  ‘I do?’ I am frightened at once.

  ‘Yes. I am to take you. Make sure you don’t say anything wrong. Don’t do anything stupid.’ She looks me over with a hard critical glare. ‘Don’t cry. Don’t talk back. Try and act like a princess though you are not.’

  Before I can say another word she beckons her ladies and leads the way out of her rooms. I follow her and the three ladies in waiting fall in behind me. I watch very carefully that I don’t step on her gown as she leads the way through the castle to the king’s apartments. Her train slips down the stairs, trails through the sweet-scented rushes across the great hall. I follow it like a kitten follows a skein of wool: blindly, like a fool.

  We are expected. The doors swing open and Edward is there, tall, fair and handsome, seated behind a table that is spread with papers. He does not look like a man who has just fought a bloody battle, killed his guardian, and then led a desperate forced march to another battle to the death. He looks full of life, tireless. As the doors open he looks up and sees us, and he smiles his open-hearted beam as if we were still all friends, as if we were still the little daughters of his greatest friend and mentor. As if we adored him as the most glamorous older brother a girl could ever have.

  ‘Ah, Lady Anne,’ he says, and he rises from his seat and comes round the table and gives me his hand. I sink down into a deep curtsey and he raises me up and kisses me on both cheeks, first one then the other.

  ‘My sister begs for your pardon,’ Isabel says, her voice tremulous with sincerity. ‘She is only young, she is not yet fifteen, Your Grace, and she has been obedient to my mother who judged ill, and she had to obey her father who betrayed you. But I will take her into my keeping and she will be faithful to you and yours.’

  He looks at me. He is as handsome as a knight in a storybook. ‘You know that Margaret of Anjou is defeated and will never ride out against me again?’

  I nod.

  ‘And that her cause was without merit?’

  I can sense that Isabel is flinching with fear without looking at her.

  ‘I know that now,’ I say carefully.

  He gives a short laugh. ‘That’s good enough for me,’ he says easily. ‘Do you swear to accept me as your king and liege lord and support the inheritance of my son and heir, Prince Edward?’

  I close my eyes briefly at the name of my husband, in the place of my husband. ‘I do,’ I say. I don’t know what else I can say.

  ‘Swear fealty,’ he says quietly.

  Isabel pushes me on the shoulder and I go down to my knees to him, who has been like a brother to me, then a king, then an enemy. I watch him to see if he will gesture that I have to kiss his boot. I wonder how low I am going to have to go. I put up my hands together in a gesture of prayer and Edward puts his hands on either side of them. His hands are warm. ‘I forgive you, and I pardon you,’ Edward says cheerfully. ‘You will live with your sister and she and I will arrange for your marriage when your year of widowhood is over.’

  ‘My mother . . .’ I start.

  Isabel makes a little movement as if to stop me. But Edward holds up his hand for silence, his face stern. ‘Your mother has betrayed her position and her obedience to her king,’ he says. ‘It is as if she were dead to me.’

  ‘And to me,’ says Isabel hastily, the turncoat.

  THE TOWER OF LONDON, 21 MAY 1471

  It is another tableau, played out by the House of York for the benefit of the citizens of London. The Queen of England, Elizabeth Woodville, stands on a great wooden stage that they have built before the door of the White Tower, her three daughters beside her, her baby son in a gown of cloth of gold, held lovingly in the arms of his grandmother: the named witch Jacquetta. Isabel stands beside the queen, I stand beside Isabel. The queen’s brother Anthony Woodville, who now inherits his father’s title and is Lord Rivers, who rescued his sister when she was besieged in the Tower and defeated the remnants of the Lancaster forces, is at the head of his personal guards, drawn up at the foot of the steps. The queen’s own guards are on the other side. Behind railings of blue and murrey, York colours, the people of London wait for the show as if they had come to see a joust and are cheerfully impatient for it to begin.

  The great gates in the Tower wall creak open, the drawbridge goes down over the moat with a heavy thud, and in rides Edward, gloriously dressed in enamelled armour with a gold circlet around his helmet, on a beautiful chestnut warhorse, at the head of his lords, his brothers on either side of him, his guards behind him. The trumpets sound, the York banners ripple in the wind that blows off the river, showing the embroidered white rose of York and their insignia of the sun in splendour: the three suns together, which signify the three reunited sons of York. Behind the victorious York boys comes a litter hung with cloth of silver, drawn by white mules, the curtains tied back so that everyone can see, seated inside, the former queen, my mother-in-law, Margaret of Anjou, in a white gown, her face utterly devoid of any emotion.

  I look at my feet, at the rippling standards of the sun in splendour, anywhere but at her, for fear of meeting her blank furious eyes. Edward dismounts, hands his warhorse to his squire, and comes up the steps of the Tower. Elizabeth the queen comes towards him and he takes both her hands and kisses her on her smiling mouth. Jacquetta steps forwards and then there is a great bellow of applause as he takes his little son and heir and turns to the crowd and presents him. This will be Edward, Prince of Wales, the next King of England, Prince Edward of Wales, a baby to take the place of the dead Lancaster prince that neither his mother nor I saw buried. This baby will be king, his wife will be queen. Not me, not Isabel.

  ‘Smile,’ Isabel prompts me softly and at once I smile and clasp my hands together as if I too am applauding the triumph of York, so thrilled I can barely speak.

  Edward hands his baby to his wife and goes down the steps to where the litter has halted. I see the oldest princess, little Elizabeth, aged only five years old, press close to her mother and clutch a handful of her gown for safety. The queen puts a gentle hand on her daughter’s shoulder. The little girl will have been haunted from the cradle by tales of Margaret of Anjou, just as I was; and now the woman we so feared is imprisoned, and enslaved. Edward the victor takes her by the hand to help her from her litter, and leads her up the broad wooden steps to the stage where he turns her, as if she were a captured animal brought to join the collection of wild beasts at the Tower. She faces the crowd and they yell in triumph to see the she-wolf finally brought in.

  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