The Kingmaker's Daughter (21 page)

Isabel receives me in her privy chamber with three ladies in waiting. I know none of them. It is like meeting a stranger in awkward circumstances. I walk in and curtsey; she inclines her
head.

‘Iz.’

She has gone deaf with greatness. She just looks at me.

‘Iz,’ I say more urgently.

‘How could you do it?’ she demands. ‘How could you come with her and invade us like that? How could you, Anne? You were bound to fail and face disgrace or death.’

For a moment I am aghast, and I stare at her as if she is speaking Flemish. Then I look at the avid ladies seated around her and realise we are speaking for the enjoyment of the House of York,
we are a tableau of remorse and loyalty. She is playing Loyalty; I am to play Remorse.

‘My Lady Sister, I had no choice,’ I say quietly. ‘My father ordered my marriage to the son of Margaret of Anjou, and she commanded that I go with them. You remember that I did
not seek the marriage, it was at my father’s command. As soon as we landed in England I asked at once to join my mother. There are witnesses to that.’

I thought that the mention of our mother, mourning in sanctuary, would soften Isabel but it turns out it is the wrong thing to say. Her face darkens at once. ‘Our mother is to be arraigned
for treason. She will lose her estates and fortune. She knew of the plot against King Edward and she did nothing to warn him. She is a traitor,’ Isabel rules.

If my mother loses her estates then Isabel and I will lose our inheritance. Everything my father owned was lost on the battlefield. All we have left is the fortune that stayed in my
mother’s name. Isabel cannot want to throw this away, it is to make herself a pauper. I shoot an anxious glance at her. ‘My mother was guilty of nothing but obedience to her
husband,’ I try.

Izzy scowls at me. ‘Our father was a traitor to his king and his friend. Our mother is guilty with him. We will throw ourselves on the mercy and wisdom of Edward. God save the
king!’

‘God save the king!’ I repeat.

Isabel waves the women to leave us and beckons me to come and sit beside her. I sink to a low stool and wait for her to tell me what I am to do, what she means by this. I am so weary and so
overwhelmed by defeat that I wish I could put my head in her lap, like I used to do, and let her rock me to sleep.

‘Iz,’ I say miserably. ‘I am so tired. What do we have to do now?’

‘We can do nothing for Mother,’ she says quietly. ‘She made her choice. She will be in the abbey for life now she has walled herself in there.’

‘Walled?’

‘Don’t be stupid. I don’t mean she’s really walled in. I mean she has chosen to live there and claimed sanctuary. She cannot just come out now that the fighting is over
and expect to carry on as normal.’

‘What about us?’

‘George is a favoured brother, a son of the House of York. He was on the right side in the last two battles. I’m going to be all right.’

‘What about me?’

‘You’re going to live with us. Quietly, to start off with, until the fuss about the Prince of Lancaster and the battle is over. You will be my lady in waiting.’

I observe that I am brought so low that I am relieved to be in service to my sister, and she in the House of York. ‘Oh, so now I am to serve you,’ I say.

‘Yes,’ she says shortly. ‘Of course.’

‘Did they tell you about the battle at Barnet? When Father was killed?’

She shrugs. ‘Not really. I didn’t ask. He’s dead, isn’t he? Does it matter how?’

‘How?’

She looks at me and her face softens as if beneath this battle-hardened young woman is the sister that loves me still. ‘You know what he did?’

I shake my head.

‘They say that he wanted the soldiers to know that he would not ride off and leave them. The soldiers, the common men, know that the lords have their horses held by their grooms behind the
battle lines, and if they are losing, the lords can call for their horses and get away. Everyone knows that. They leave foot soldiers to be killed and they ride away.’

I nod.

‘Father said he would face death with them. They could trust him to take the risk that they were taking. He called for his beautiful warhorse—’

‘Not Midnight?’

‘Yes, Midnight who was so handsome and brave, that he loved so much, that had carried him so often in so many battles. And before all the men, all the commoners who would never be able to
get away if they were defeated, he drew his great battle sword and he plunged it into Midnight’s loyal heart. The horse went down to its knees and Father held his head as he died. Midnight
died with his big black head in Father’s arms. Father stroked his nose as he closed his black eyes.’

I am horrified. ‘He did that?’

‘He loved Midnight. He did it to show them that this was a battle to the death – for all of them. He laid Midnight’s head on the ground and stood up and said to the men:
“Now I am like you, a foot soldier like you. I cannot gallop away like a false lord. I am here to fight to the death.” ’

‘And then?’

‘Then he fought to the death.’ The tears are pouring down her face, and she does not wipe them away. ‘They knew he would fight to the death. He didn’t want anyone to ride
away. He wanted this to be the last battle. He wanted it to be the last battle in the cousins’ wars for England.’

I put my face in my hands. ‘Iz – ever since that terrible day at sea everything has gone wrong for us.’

She does not touch me, she does not put her arm around my shoulders or reach for my tear-drenched fingers. ‘It’s over,’ she says. She takes a handkerchief from her sleeve, and
she dries her eyes, folds it, and puts it back. She is resigned to grief, to our defeat. ‘It’s over. We were fighting against the House of York and they were always certain to win. They
have Edward before them and they have witchcraft behind them, they are unbeatable. I am of the House of York now, and I will see them rule England forever. You, in my household, will be faithful to
York too.’

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.