The Kingmaker's Daughter Read online

  My father is here to dispense justice, and while he sits in the great hall, settling quarrels and hearing petitions, Isabel and I and my father’s wards including Richard, the king’s brother, are allowed to go out riding every afternoon. We go hunting for pheasant and grouse with our falcons on the great moors that stretch for miles, all the way to Scotland. Richard and the other boys have to work with their tutors every morning but they are allowed to be with us after dinner. The boys are the sons of noblemen, like Francis Lovell, some the sons of great men of the North who are glad of a place in my father’s household, some cousins and kin to us who will stay with us for a year or two to learn how to rule and how to lead. Robert Brackenbury, our neighbour, is a constant companion to Richard, like a little squire to a knight. Richard is my favourite, of course, as he is now brother to the King of England. He is no taller than Isabel but furiously brave, and secretly I admire him. He is slight and dark-haired, utterly determined to become a great knight, and he knows all the stories of Camelot and chivalry which he sometimes reads to me as if they were accounts of real people.

  He says to me then, so seriously that I cannot doubt him: ‘Lady Anne, there is nothing more important in the world than a knight’s honour. I would rather die than be dishonoured.’

  He rides his moorland pony as if he were heading for a cavalry charge; he is desperate to be as big and strong as his two older brothers, desperate to be the best of my father’s wards. I understand this, as I know what it is like to always come last in a rivalrous family. But I never say that I understand – he has a fierce touchy northern pride and he would hate for me to say that I understand him, as much as I would hate it if he sympathised with me for being younger than Isabel, for being plain where she is pretty, and for being a girl when everyone needed a son and heir. Some things are better never spoken: Richard and I know that we dream of great things, and know also that nobody must ever know that we dream of greatness.

  We are with the boys in the schoolroom, listening to them taking their lessons in Greek, when Margaret comes with a message that we are to go to our father, at once. Isabel and I are alarmed. Father never sends for us.

  ‘Not me?’ Richard asks Margaret.

  ‘Not you, Your Grace,’ she replies.

  Richard grins at Isabel. ‘Just you then,’ he says, assuming, as we do, that we have been caught doing something wrong. ‘Perhaps you’ll be whipped.’

  Usually when we are in the North we are left alone, seeing Father and Mother only at dinner. My father has much to do. Until a year ago he had to fight for the remaining northern castles that held out for the sleeping king. My mother comes to her northern homes determined to put right everything that has gone wrong in her absence. If my Lord Father wants to see us, then we are likely to be in trouble; but I cannot think what we have done wrong.

  My father is seated before his table in his great chair, grand as a throne, when we come in. His clerk puts one paper after another in front of him and my father has a quill in his hand and marks each one W – for Warwick, the best of his many titles. Another clerk at his side leans forwards, with candle in one hand and sealing wax in another, and drips red wax in a neat puddle on the document and my father presses his ring to make a seal. It is like magic, turning his wishes into fact. We wait by the door for him to notice us and I think how wonderful it must be to be a man and put your initial on a command and know that at once, such a thing is done. I would send out commands all day just for the pleasure of it.

  He looks up and sees us as the clerk takes the papers away, and Father makes a little beckoning gesture. We go forwards and curtsey as we should, while my father raises his hand in blessing, and then he pushes back his chair and calls us around the table so that we can stand before him. He puts out his hand to me and I go close and he pats my head, like he pats Midnight, his horse. This is not a particularly nice feeling for he has a heavy hand, and I am wearing a cap of stiff golden net that he crushes down with each pat, but he does not summon Isabel any closer. She has to stand rather awkwardly, looking at the two of us, so I turn to her and smile because our father’s hand is on me, and it is me who is leaning against the arm of his chair as if I am comfortable to be here, rather than alarmed at these signs of his favour.

  ‘You are good girls, keeping up with your studies?’ he asks abruptly.

  We both nod. Undeniably we are good girls and we study every morning with our own tutor, learning Logic on Mondays, Grammar on Tuesdays, Rhetoric on Wednesdays, French and Latin on Thursdays, and Music and Dance on Fridays. Friday is the best day of the week, of course. The boys have their tutor for Greek, and work with a weapons master as well, jousting and learning how to handle a broadsword. Richard is a good student and works hard at weapon practice. Isabel is far ahead of me in her studies, and she will only have our tutor for another year until she is fifteen. She says that girls’ heads cannot take in Rhetoric and that when she is free of the schoolroom I will be left there all alone and they won’t let me out until I get to the end of the book of examples. The prospect of the schoolroom without her is so dreary that I wonder if I dare mention it to my father, and ask to be released, while his hand rests so heavily on my shoulder and he seems to be feeling kindly towards me. I look into his grave face and think: better not.

  ‘I sent for you to tell you that the queen has asked for you both to join her household,’ he says.

  Isabel lets out a little gasp of excitement and her round face goes pink as a ripe raspberry.

  ‘Us?’ I ask, amazed.

  ‘It is an honour due to you because of your place in the world as my daughters; but also because she has seen your behaviour at court. She said that you, Anne, were particularly charming at her coronation.’

  I hear the word ‘charming’, and for a moment I can think of nothing else. The Queen of England, even though she is Queen Elizabeth who was only Elizabeth Woodville, who was then little more than a nobody, thinks that I am charming. And she told my father that she thinks I am charming. I can feel myself swell with pride and I turn to my overwhelming father and give him what I hope is a charming smile.

  ‘She thinks, rightly, that you would be an ornament to her rooms,’ he says.

  I fix on the word ‘ornament’ and wonder exactly what the queen means. Does she mean that we would decorate her rooms, making them look pretty like tapestries hung over badly washed walls? Would we have to stand very still in the same place all the time? Am I to be some kind of vase? My father laughs at my bewildered face and nods to Isabel. ‘Tell your little sister what she is to do.’

  ‘She means a maid in waiting,’ she hisses at me.

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘What do you think?’ my father asks.

  He can see what Isabel thinks, since she is panting with excitement, her blue eyes sparkling. ‘I should be delighted,’ she says, fumbling for words. ‘It is an honour. An honour I had not looked for . . . I accept.’

  He looks at me. ‘And you, little one? My little mouse? Are you thrilled like your sister? Are you also rushing to serve the new queen? Do you want to dance around the new light?’

  Something in the way that he speaks warns me that this would be the wrong answer, though I remember the queen as a dazzled acolyte might remember the sight of a feast-day icon. I can think of nothing more wonderful than to serve this beauty as her maid in waiting. And she likes me. Her mother smiled at me, she herself thought I was charming. I could burst for pride that she likes me and joy that she has singled me out. But I am cautious. ‘Whatever you think best, Father,’ I say. I look down at my feet, and then up into his dark eyes. ‘Do we like her now?’

  He laughs shortly. ‘God save us! What gossip have you been hearing? Of course we love and honour her; she is our queen, the wife of our king. She is his first choice of all the princesses in the world. Just imagine! Of all the high-born ladies in Christendom that he could have married – and yet he chose her.’ There is something hard and mocking about his tone. I hear the loyal words