‘Oh yes, he would.’ She turns to Isabel. ‘I have come in friendship to warn your husband George Duke of Clarence. And to reassure him. He can return to England; his brother the king will receive him. His mother has arranged this and wants to welcome you too. You are both beloved of the House of York, now and always. George is next in line to the throne of England, he is still heir to the throne. If there is no son born to the king and queen then you could be queen one day. But – think of this – if your father puts the old king back on the throne you will be nothing, and all that you have suffered will be for nothing.’
‘We can’t join Lancaster,’ I say almost to myself. ‘Father cannot be thinking of it.’
‘No,’ she agrees shortly. ‘You cannot. The idea is ridiculous. We all know that; everyone knows it but your father. This is why I have come to warn you. I have come to you, not to him, and you must consult your husband and see where your best interests lie. Duchess Cecily – your mother-in-law – wants you to know that you are to come home and she will be as a mother to you, even if your father is the enemy of the House of York and all of England. She says come home and she will see that you are properly cared for. She is appalled – we were all appalled – to hear of your ordeal at sea. We were shocked that your father would take you into such danger. The duchess is grieved for you and heartbroken for the loss of her grandson. It would have been her first grandson. She went into her room and prayed all night for his little soul. You must come home and let us all take care of you.’
The tears start into Isabel’s eyes when she thinks of Duchess Cecily praying for the baby’s soul. ‘I want to come home,’ she whispers.
‘We can’t,’ I say at once. ‘We have to be with Father.’
‘Please tell Her Grace that I thank her,’ Isabel stammers. ‘I am glad of her prayers. But of course, I don’t know what . . . I shall have to do as my fa . . . I shall have to do as my husband commands me.’
‘We are afraid that you are grieving,’ the woman says tenderly. ‘Grieving and alone.’
Isabel blinks away the tears that come so quickly to her these days. ‘Of course I feel my loss,’ she says with dignity. ‘But I have the comfort of my sister.’
Lady Sutcliffe bows. ‘I shall go to your husband and warn him of what your father is planning. The duke must save himself, and he must save you from the Lancastrian Queen Margaret. Don’t mention my visit to your father. He would be angry to know that you received me and that now you know that he is faithless.’
I am about to declare stoutly that Father is not faithless, that he could never be faithless, and that we would never keep a secret from him. But then I realise that I don’t know where he is now in his new French clothes – nor what he is doing.
ANGERS, FRANCE, JULY 1470
Father orders us to join him at Angers and sends a handsome liveried guard for the long ride. He sends no explanation as to why we are to travel nor where we will stay, so when we arrive, after five long days on the dusty roads, we are surprised that he is waiting to meet us outside the town, looking handsome and proud, high on Midnight, with a mounted guard beside him, and he escorts us through the walled gates, through the streets where people doff their hats as we go by, into the courtyard of a great manor house on the wide main square, which he has requisitioned. Isabel is white with fatigue and yet he does not give her permission to go to her bedroom but says that we are to go straight into dinner.
In the great hall my mother is waiting for us before a square table laden with food; it is like a banquet. She greets me and Isabel with a kiss and her blessing and then looks to my father. He seats Isabel on one side of the table, while George comes in and takes his place beside her with a murmured greeting. We bow our heads for grace, and then Father smiles on us all and bids us eat. He does not thank Isabel for making the long journey, nor commend her courage to her husband.
Me, he praises for my looks that he says are blooming in France – how is it that experiences which exhaust my sister make me so pretty? He pours the best wine into my glass, he places me between my mother and himself. He cuts slices of meat for me and the server puts them before me, serving me before Isabel, before my mother. I look at the food on my plate and I don’t dare to taste it. What does it mean when the best cut of meat is served to me before anyone else? Suddenly, having spent my life following Isabel and my mother into every room we ever enter, I am going first.
‘My Lord Father?’
He smiles and at the warmth in his face I find I am smiling back. ‘Ah, you are my clever girl,’ he says tenderly. ‘You always were the brightest cleverest girl. You are wondering what plans I have for you.’
I don’t dare to look at Isabel, who will have heard him call me the brightest cleverest girl. I don’t dare to look at George. I never dare to look at my mother. I know that George has met Lady Sutcliffe in secret, and I guess that he is afraid that Father knows. This sudden favour to me might be Father’s warning to George that he cannot play us false. I see Isabel’s hands are trembling and she puts them under the table out of sight.
‘I have arranged a marriage for you,’ my father says quietly.
‘What?’
This is the last thing I expected. I am so shocked that I turn to my mother. She looks back at me, perfectly serene; clearly she knows all about this.
‘A great marriage,’ he continues. I can hear the excitement under the level tones of his voice. ‘The greatest marriage that could be got for you. The only marriage for you now. I daresay you can guess who I mean?’
At my stunned silence he laughs merrily, laughs in our dumbstruck faces. ‘Guess!’ he says.
I look at Isabel. For a moment only I think perhaps we are going home, we will reconcile with the House of York and I will marry Richard. Then I see George’s sulky face and I am certain it cannot be that. ‘Father, I cannot guess,’ I say.
‘My daughter, you are going to marry Prince Edward of Lancaster, and you will be the next Queen of England.’
There is a clatter as George drops his knife to the floor. He and Isabel are frozen as if enchanted, staring at my father. I realise that George has been hoping – desperately hoping – that Lady Sutcliffe was reporting false rumours. Now it looks as if she was telling only part of the truth, and the whole of it is worse than any of us could have imagined.
‘The bad queen’s son?’ I ask childishly. In a rush, all the old stories and fears come back to me. I was brought up thinking of Margaret of Anjou as all but a beast, a she-wolf who rode out at the head of wild men, destroying everything in their path, in the grip of her terrible ambition, carrying with them a comatose king who slept through everything, as she tore England apart, murdered my grandfather, my uncle, tried to assassinate my own father in the kitchen with a roasting spit, in the court with swords; and was finally only defeated by him and Edward, our Edward, fighting uphill through snow in the most terrible battle that England has ever seen. Then like a blizzard herself, she blew away with the bloodstained snow into the cold North. They captured her husband and let him sleep in the Tower where he could do no harm; but she and the icy boy, who was inexplicably conceived by a wolf mother and sleeping father, were never seen again.
‘Prince Edward of Lancaster, the son of Queen Margaret of Anjou. They live in France now and are supported by her father René of Anjou, who is King of Hungary, Majorca, Sardinia and Jerusalem. She is kinswoman to King Louis of France.’ My father carefully ignores my exclamation. ‘He will help us put together an invasion of England. We will defeat the House of York, free King Henry from the Tower, and you will be crowned Princess of Wales. King Henry and I will rule England together until he dies – saints preserve him! – and then I will guide and advise you and Prince Edward of Lancaster who will be King and Queen of England. Your son, my grandson, will be the next King of England – and perhaps of Jerusalem too. Think of that.’
George is choking as if drowning on his wine. We all turn to him. He whoops and flails and cannot catch his b
reath. My father waits until his fit subsides, watching him without sympathy. ‘This is a setback for you, George,’ my father concedes fairly. ‘But you will be heir to the throne after Prince Edward, and you will be brother-in-law to the King of England. You will be as close to the throne as you have always been, and the Rivers will have been thrown down. Your influence will be clear, and your rewards great.’ My father nods at him kindly. He does not even look at Isabel who was going to be Queen of England but will now give precedence to me. ‘George, I shall see that you keep your title and all your lands. You are no worse off than you were before.’
‘I am worse off,’ Isabel remarks quietly. ‘I have lost my baby for nothing.’
Nobody answers her. It is as if she has become so unimportant that nobody needs to reply.
‘What if the king is still asleep?’ I ask. ‘When you get to London? What if you can’t wake him?’
My father shrugs. ‘It doesn’t matter. Whether he is sleeping or awake I shall command in his name until Prince Edward and –’ he smiles at me ‘– Princess Anne take their thrones and become King Edward and Queen Anne of England.’
‘The House of Lancaster restored!’ George leaps to his feet, malmsey wine staining his mouth, his face flushed with rage, his hands shaking. Isabel tentatively puts out her hand and rests it on his clenched fist. ‘Have we gone through all this to restore the House of Lancaster? Have we faced such dangers on land and sea in order to put Lancaster back on the throne? Have I betrayed my brother and deserted my House of York to put Lancaster on the throne?’
‘The House of Lancaster has a good claim,’ my father concedes, throwing away the alliance with York that his family forged and defended for two generations. ‘Your brother’s claim for York is a poor one if he is indeed, as you suggest, a bastard.’
‘I named him as a bastard to make me the next heir to the throne,’ George shouts. ‘We were fighting to put me on the throne. We discredited Edward to prove my claim. We never discredited my house, we never slandered York! We never said that anyone should be king but me!’
‘It couldn’t be done,’ my father says with mild regret as if speaking of a battle that was lost long, long ago, in a country far away, rather than England, and only this spring. ‘We tried it twice, George, you know. Edward was too strong for us, there were too many people on his side. But with Queen Margaret in alliance with us she will bring out half of England, all the old Lancaster lords will flock to us, the Lancaster gentry who have never taken to your brother. She has always been strong in the North and Midlands. Jasper Tudor will bring out Wales for her. Edward will never be able to defeat an alliance of you and me and Margaret of Anjou.’
It is so strange to me to hear her name no longer cursed but cited as an ally – I used to have nightmares about this woman, yet now she is to be our trusted friend.
‘Now,’ my father says. ‘You, Anne, have to go with your mother and meet the seamstresses. Isabel, you can go too, you are all to have new gowns for Anne’s betrothal.’
‘My betrothal?’
He smiles as if he thinks to give me the greatest joy. ‘Betrothed now, and then the wedding as soon as we have the permission from the Pope.’
‘I am to be betrothed straightaway?’
‘The day after tomorrow.’
ANGERS CATHEDRAL, 25 JULY 1470
There are two silent figures at the high altar in the cathedral, handfast, plighting their troth. A light from the great window behind them illuminates their grave faces. They incline towards each other as if they are promising love as well as loyalty to death. They hold each other close, as if to be certain of each other. Someone watching might think this a love match from the intensity of their gaze and the closeness of their pose.
It is those great enemies, my father and Margaret of Anjou, side by side. This is the great union; her son and I will merely enact with our bodies this plighting of our parents. First she puts her hand on a fragment of the True Cross – the real cross brought here from the kingdom of Jerusalem – and even from the back of the cathedral I can hear her clear voice reciting an oath of loyalty to my father. Then it is his turn. He puts his hand on the cross and she adjusts it, making sure that every part of his palm and his fingers are on the sacred wood as if, even now, in the very act of swearing their alliance, she doesn’t trust him. He recites his oath, then they turn to one another and give each other the kiss of reconciliation. They are allies, they will be allies till death, they have sworn a sacred oath, nothing can part them.
‘I can’t do it,’ I whisper to Isabel. ‘I can’t marry her son, I can’t be a daughter to the bad queen, to the sleeping king. What if their son is as mad as everyone says? What if he murders me, orders me beheaded as he did to the two York lords who guarded his father? They say he is a monster, with blood on his hands from childhood. They say he kills men for sport. What if they cut off my head as they did our grandfather’s?’
‘Hush,’ she says, taking my cold hands in hers and rubbing them gently. ‘You’re talking like a child. You have to be brave. You’re going to be a princess.’
‘I can’t be in the House of Lancaster!’
‘You can,’ she says. ‘You have to be.’
‘You once said that you were afraid that our father used you as a pawn.’
She shrugs. ‘Did I?’
‘Used you as a pawn and might let you fall.’
‘If you are going to be Queen of England he won’t let you fall,’ she observes shrewdly. ‘If you are going to be Queen of England he will love you and serve you every moment of the day. You’ve always been his pet – you should be glad that now you are the centre of his ambition.’
‘Izzy,’ I say quietly. ‘You were the centre of his ambition when he nearly drowned you at sea.’
Her face is almost greenish in the dim light of the church. ‘I know,’ she says bleakly.
I hesitate at this, and our mother comes up and says briskly, ‘I am to present you to Her Grace the queen.’
I follow her up the long aisle of the cathedral, the dazzling stained-glass window making a carpet of colour beneath my feet, as if I were walking over the sun in splendour. It strikes me it is the second time that my mother has presented me to a Queen of England. The first time I saw the most beautiful woman I have ever known. This time: the most ferocious. The queen sees me coming, turns towards us and waits, with a killer’s patience, for me to reach the chancel steps. My mother sinks into a deep curtsey and I go down too. When I come up I see a short plump woman, magnificently gowned in cloth-of-gold brocade, a towering headdress on her head draped in gold lace, a gold belt slung low around her broad hips.
Her round face is stern, her rosebud mouth unsmiling. ‘You are Lady Anne,’ she says in French.
I bow my head. ‘Yes, Your Grace.’
‘You are to marry my son, and you will be my daughter.’
I bow again. Clearly, this is not an inquiry as to my happiness. When I look at her again her face is bright as gold with triumph. ‘Lady Anne, you are only a young woman now, a nobody; but I am going to make you Queen of England and you will sit on my throne and wear my crown.’
‘Lady Anne has been prepared for such a position,’ my mother says.
The queen ignores her. She steps forwards and takes both my hands between hers, as if I am swearing fealty to her. ‘I will teach you to be a queen,’ she says quietly. ‘I will teach you what I know of courage, of leadership. My son will be king but you will stand beside him, ready to defend the throne with your life, you will be a queen as I have been – a queen who can command, who can rule, who can make alliances and hold to them. I was just a girl, not much older than you, when I first came to England and I learned quickly enough that to hold the throne of England you have to cleave to your husband and fight for his throne, night and day, Anne. Night and day. I will hammer you into a sword for England, just as I was hammered into a blade. I will teach you to be a dagger at the throat of treason.’
I think of
the horrors that this queen unleashed on the country with her court favourites and her ambition. I think of my father swearing that the king had flung himself into a sleep like death because he could not bear waking life with her. I think of the years when my father ruled England and this woman raged in Scotland, raising an army which came south like a band of brigands, half-naked, stealing, raping and murdering wherever they went until the country swore that they would have no more of this queen, and the citizens of London closed their gates to her and begged her best friend Jacquetta Woodville to tell her to take the army of the North back to their home.
Something of this shows in my face for she laughs shortly, and says to me: ‘It is easy to be squeamish when you are a girl. It is easy to be principled when you have nothing. But when you are a woman and you have a son destined for the throne, after years of waiting, and when you are a queen and you want to keep your crown, you will be ready to do anything; anything. You will be ready to kill for it: kill innocents if need be. And you will be glad then that I have taught you all that I know.’ She smiles at me. ‘When you can do anything – anything – to keep your throne and keep your crown and keep your husband where he should be, then you will know that you have learned from me. Then you will be my daughter indeed.’
She repels me, she absolutely terrifies me. I dare say nothing.
She turns to the high altar. I see a slight figure standing beside my father: Prince Edward. There is a bishop before him with his missal open at the page of the marriage service.
‘Come,’ the bad queen says. ‘This is your first step, I will guide all the others.’ She takes me by the hand and leads me towards him.
I am fourteen years old, the daughter of an arraigned traitor in exile with a price on his head. I am about to be betrothed to a boy nearly three years older than me, the son of the most terrifying woman England has ever known, and through this marriage my father will bring her back into England like the wolf that they call her. And from this moment I will have to call this monster my mother.