If I were to turn my head just a little then his lips would touch my cheek. I sit very still, and will myself not to turn to him at all.
‘Why? What would you like to do?’ he asks me.
I think: I would like to do this, all day, this delicious play. I should like to have his eyes on me all day, I should like to know that he has moved at last from a nonchalant childhood acquaintance to lovemaking. ‘But how would this get my fortune restored to me?’
‘Oh yes, the fortune. For a moment I had quite forgotten the fortune. Well, first I must talk with you to make sure that I know exactly what you want.’ Again he draws close. ‘I would want to do exactly what you want. You must command me. I will be your cavalier, your chevalier-servant – isn’t that what girls want? Like out of a story?’
His lips are against my hair, I can feel the warmth of him.
‘Girls can be very silly,’ I say, trying to be adult.
‘It’s not silly to want a man devoted to your service,’ he points out. ‘If I could find a lady that would accept my service, who would give me her favour, a lady of my choice, I would pledge myself to her safety and happiness.’ He moves back a little so that he can study my face.
I cannot stop myself looking into his dark eyes. I can feel the colour rising in my cheeks but I cannot take my eyes from him.
‘And then I will speak to my brother for you,’ he says. ‘You cannot be held like this against your will, your mother cannot be held against her will.’
‘Would the king listen to you?’
‘Of course. Without a doubt. I have been at his side ever since I was strong enough to hold a sword in battle. I am his faithful brother. He loves me. I love him. We are brothers in arms as well as in blood.’
There is a tap at the door and Richard goes in one fluid motion to stand behind it so that when the serving man bangs it open and comes in, with another behind him, carrying half a dozen dishes and a pitcher of small ale, they don’t see him. They fuss at the table, putting out the plate and pouring the ale, and then they wait to serve me.
‘You can go,’ I say. ‘Close the door behind you.’
They bow and leave the room, as Richard steps out of the shadow and pulls up a stool to the table. ‘May I?’
We have the most delightful meal together, just the two of us. He shares the cup for the ale, he eats from my plate. The dinners I have endured in loneliness, eating for hunger with no pleasure, are forgotten. He picks little pieces of stewed beef from the dish and offers them to me, and mops up the gravy for himself with a piece of bread. He praises the venison and insists that I have some, and shares the pastries with me. There is no awkwardness between us, we could be children together again, with this constant bubble of laughter, and something beneath it – desire.
‘I had better go,’ he says. ‘Dinner will be over in the hall and they will be looking for me.’
‘They will think I have grown greedy,’ I remark, looking at the empty dishes on the table.
He gets up and I stand too, suddenly awkward. I want to ask when we will see each other again, how we are to meet? But I feel that I cannot ask him that.
‘I’ll see you tomorrow,’ he says easily. ‘Will you go to mass early?’
‘Yes.’
‘Stay behind after Isabel leaves and I will come to you.’
I am breathless. ‘All right.’
His hand is on the door, about to go. I put my hand on his sleeve, I cannot resist touching him. He turns with a little smile, and gently bends to kiss my hand where it rests on his arm. That’s all, that’s all. That one touch, not a kiss on my mouth, not a caress, but that one touch of his lips that makes my fingers burn. And then he slips from the room.
Wearing my widow’s gown of dark blue, I follow Isabel into chapel and glance towards the side of the church where the king and his brothers sit to hear mass. The royal box is empty, nobody is there. I feel a sickly lurch of disappointment and think that he has failed me. He said he would be here this morning and he is not. I kneel behind Isabel and try to keep my mind on the service but the Latin words roll on and I hear them as if they were meaningless, a patter of sounds which say: ‘I will see you tomorrow. Will you go to mass early?’
When the service is finished and Isabel rises I don’t get up with her, but lower my head as if in prayer. She glances over at me impatiently, and then leaves me alone. Her ladies follow her from the chapel and I hear the door close behind them. The priest arranges his things on the altar behind the screen, his back to me, as I kneel devoutly, my hands together and my eyes closed, so I don’t see Richard as he slips into the pew and kneels beside me. Tantalisingly, I let myself sense him before I open my eyes to see him – the light scent of soap from his skin and the clean smell of new leather of his boots, the little noise as he kneels, the smell of lavender as he crushes a flower head beneath his knee, and then the warmth of his hand over my clasped fingers.
I open my eyes slowly, as if I am waking, and he is smiling at me. ‘What are you praying for?’
This moment, I think. You. Rescue. ‘Nothing, really.’
‘Then I will tell you that you should pray for your freedom and for the freedom of your mother. Shall I ask Edward for you?’
‘Would you ask for my mother to be freed?’
‘I could do. Would you want me to?’
‘Of course. But do you think she could go to Warwick Castle? What is there for her here? Or could she go to one of our other houses? Do you think she would still stay at Beaulieu even if she were free to leave?’
‘If she were to decide to stay in the abbey, in honourable retirement, then she might keep her fortune and you would still have nothing, and still have to live with your sister,’ he says quietly. ‘If Edward will forgive her and set her free then she will be a lady of great wealth, but never welcome at court: a wealthy recluse. You will have to live with her, and you will have nothing of your own until her death.’
The priest cleans the cup and puts it carefully in a case, turns the pages of the Bible and puts a silk marker on the page, then bows reverently to the cross and goes out of the door.
‘Iz will be furious with me if she doesn’t get my mother’s fortune.’
‘And how would you manage if you had nothing?’ he asks.
‘I could live with my mother.’
‘Would you really want to live in seclusion? And you would have no dowry. Only what she chooses to give you. If you wanted to marry in the future.’ He pauses, as if the idea has just occurred to him. ‘Do you want to marry?’
Limpidly I look at him. ‘I see no-one,’ I say. ‘They don’t allow me to be in company. I am a widow, in my first year of mourning. Who would I marry, since I meet no-one?’
His eyes are on my mouth. ‘You’re meeting me.’
I see his smile. ‘I am,’ I whisper. ‘But it is not as if we are courting or thinking of marriage.’
The door at the back of the chapel opens and someone comes in to pray.
‘Perhaps you need both your share of the fortune and your freedom,’ Richard says very quietly in my ear. ‘Perhaps your mother may stay where she is and her fortune be given equally to you and your sister. Then you could be free to live your own life, and make your own choice.’
‘I couldn’t live alone,’ I object. ‘I wouldn’t be allowed. I’m only fifteen.’
Again he smiles at me and moves a little so that his shoulder is against mine. I want to lean on him, I want his arm around me.
‘If you had your fortune you could marry any man of your choice,’ he says softly. ‘You would bring your husband an enormous estate and great wealth. Any man in England would be glad to marry you. Most of them would be desperate to marry you.’ He pauses to let me think about that.
He turns to me, his brown eyes honest. ‘You should be sure of this, Lady Anne. If I can get your fortune restored into your hands then any man in England would be glad to marry you. He would become one of the greatest landowners of the kingdom throu
gh your wealth and related to a great English family. You could take your pick of the very best of them.’
I wait.
‘But a good man wouldn’t marry you for your fortune, and perhaps you shouldn’t choose such a one as that.’
‘Shouldn’t I?’
‘A good man would marry you for love,’ he says simply.
The Christmas feast ends and the Duke of Clarence, my brother-in-law George, bids the fondest of goodbyes to his brother the king and especially to his young brother Richard. Iz kisses the queen, kisses the king, kisses Richard, kisses anyone who looks as if they might be important and might accept her kisses. She watches her husband as she does all this, his glance is a command to her. I see her behave like a good hunting dog that does not even need a whistle but watches for the master’s nod and the abrupt move of his hand. George has her well-trained. She has learned to be as devoted to him as she was to my father: he is her lord. She has been so frightened by the power of the House of York – on the battlefield, at sea, and in the hidden world of mysteries – that she is clinging to him as her only safety. When she left us in France to join him she chose to go wherever George took her, rather than fight to keep him faithful to us.
Her ladies mount their horses, me among them. King Edward raises his hand to me. He does not forget who I was, though his court is engaged in a great effort of forgetting that there was ever a king and a queen before these, ever a Prince Edward before the baby that goes everywhere with the queen, that there was ever an invasion, a march and a battle. Elizabeth the queen looks at me levelly with her beautiful grey eyes like dark ice. She does not forget that my father killed her father, my father killed her brother. These are debts of blood that will have to be paid some day.
I get on my horse and I shake out my gown and gather the reins in my hands. I busy myself with my whip and I brush my horse’s mane to one side. I make myself delay the moment when I will look for Richard.
He is beside his brother. He is always beside his brother – I have learned that there is a love and a fidelity here that nothing will ever change. As he catches my eye he beams at me, his dark face bright with affection. Anyone can see it who cares to look at him, he is hopelessly indiscreet. He puts his hand to his heart as if swearing fidelity to me. I look to left and right, thank God no-one is looking, they are all getting on their horses and George the duke is shouting for the guard. Recklessly, Richard stands there, his hand on his heart, looking at me as if he wants the world to know that he loves me.
He loves me.
I shake my head as if reproving him, and I look down at my hands on the reins. I look up again and he is still fixing his gaze on me, his hand still on his heart. I know I should look away, I know I should pretend to feel nothing but disdain – this is how the ladies in the troubadour poems behave. But I am a girl, and I am lonely and alone, and this is a handsome young man who has asked how he may serve me and now stands before me with his hand on his heart and his eyes laughing at me.
One of the guard stumbled while mounting his horse and his horse shied, knocking the nearby horseman. Everyone is looking that way, and the king puts his arm around his wife. I snatch off my glove and, in one swift gesture, I throw it towards Richard. He catches it out of the air and tucks it in the breast of his jacket. Nobody has seen it. Nobody knows. The guardsman steadies his horse, mounts it, nods his apology to his captain, and the royal family turn and wave to us.
Richard looks at me, buttoning the front of his jacket, and smiles at me warmly, assuredly. He has my glove, my favour. It is a pledge that I have given in the full knowledge of what I am doing. Because I don’t want to be anybody’s pawn again. The next move that is made will be mine. I will choose my freedom and I will choose my husband.
L’ERBER, LONDON, FEBRUARY 1472
George the duke and Isabel his duchess keep great state in London, where their house is as grand as a palace, with hundreds of servants and George’s own guard in his livery. He prides himself on his generosity and copies my father’s rule that anyone who calls at the kitchen door at dinner time can spear his dagger with slices of meat. There is a constant stream of petitioners and tenants asking favours and needing help and the door to George’s presence chamber stands open, since he will be denied to no man, not even to the poorest tenant on his lands. Everyone is to know that if they give George their fealty they can trust him to be a good lord to them. So dozens of people, hundreds, who would otherwise be indifferent, think of George as a good lord to have, a true ally on their side, a friend they would like – and George’s power and influence widens like a flooding river.
Isabel shows herself as a grand lady, processing to her chapel, giving alms to the poor, interceding for George’s mercy whenever she may be observed to do good. I trail behind her, one of the many objects of her ostentatious charity, and from time to time someone remarks how good my sister and my brother-in-law are to me, that they took me in when I was disgraced, and that they keep me in their home though I am penniless.
I wait until I can speak to George, since I think Isabel has become nothing more than his mouthpiece, and one afternoon I happen to be passing the stable yard when he comes in and dismounts from his horse and for once there is not a great crowd around him.
‘Brother, may I speak with you?’
He starts, for I am standing in a shadowed doorway and he thought he was alone.
‘Eh? Sister, of course, of course. It is always a pleasure to see you.’ He smiles at me, his confident handsome smile, and he runs his hand through his thick blond hair in his practised gesture. ‘How may I serve you?’
‘It is about my inheritance,’ I say boldly. ‘I understand that my mother is going to stay in the abbey and I wonder what is going to happen to her lands and fortune?’
He glances up at the windows of the house as if he wishes Isabel would see us in the stable below her, and hurry down. ‘Your mother chose to take sanctuary,’ he says. ‘And her husband was a warranted traitor. Their lands are forfeit to the crown.’
‘His lands would be forfeit, if he was an arraigned traitor,’ I correct him. ‘But he was not arraigned. And his lands were not lawfully confiscated, I don’t think. I believe the king simply gave them all to you, did he not? You are holding my father’s lands as a gift from the king without the rule of law.’
He blinks. He did not know that I knew this. Again he glances around; but though the lads come to take his horse and his whip and his gloves there is no-one to interrupt me.
‘And, anyway, my mother’s lands are still in her keeping. She has not been declared a traitor.’
‘No.’
‘I understand that you propose to take her lands away from her and keep them for Isabel and for me?’
‘This is business,’ he starts to say. ‘No need . . .’
‘So when will I get my share of the lands?’
He smiles at me, he takes my hand, he draws it through his arm and he leads me from the stable yard, through the arched door into the house. ‘Now, you should not be troubling yourself with this,’ he says, patting my hand. ‘I am your brother and your guardian, I will take care of these things for you.’
‘I am a widow,’ I say. ‘I don’t have a guardian. I have the right to own my own lands in my own right: as a widow.’
‘The widow of a traitor,’ he corrects me gently, as if he is sorry to say such things. ‘Defeated.’
‘The prince, being a prince, could not be a traitor in his own country,’ I correct him. ‘And I, though married to him, was not arraigned as a traitor. So I have a right to my lands.’
Together we walk into the great hall and, to his relief, Isabel is there with her ladies. She sees the two of us together and comes forwards. ‘What’s this?’
‘Lady Anne met me in the stable yard. I am afraid she is grieving,’ he says tenderly. ‘And worrying about things that need not concern her.’
‘Go to your room,’ Isabel says abruptly to me.
‘Not until
I know when I will receive my inheritance,’ I insist. I stand still. Clearly there is not going to be a graceful curtsey and withdrawal.
Isabel looks at her husband, unsure as to what she can do to make me go. She is afraid I may start brawling again and she can hardly ask the men of the household to take hold of me and drag me away.
‘Ah, child,’ George says gently. ‘Leave this all to me, as I have told you.’
‘When? When will I receive my inheritance?’ Deliberately, I speak loudly. People are staring, the many hundreds of people that George and Isabel have as their court can hear.
‘Tell her,’ she says under her breath to him. ‘She’ll make a scene if you don’t tell her. All her life she has been the centre of attention, she will throw a tantrum . . .’
‘I am your guardian,’ he says quietly. ‘Appointed by the king. You know this? You are a widow but you are also a child, you need to have someone to house you and care for you.’
I nod. ‘I know that is what is said but—’
‘Your fortune is in my keeping,’ he interrupts. ‘Your mother’s estate will be transferred to you and Isabel. I will manage the estate for both of you until you are married, and then I will hand over your share to your husband.’
‘And if I don’t marry?’
‘Then you will always have a home with us.’
‘And you will always keep my lands?’
The swift guilty flicker across his handsome face tells me this is his plan.
‘Then surely you will never permit my marriage?’ I ask shrewdly; but he simply bows to me with great respect, kisses his hand to his wife and walks from the hall. People uncover their heads as he goes by, the women curtsey, he is a most handsome and beloved lord. He is quite deaf to me as I say again, loudly: ‘I don’t . . . I won’t . . .’
Isabel is icy. ‘Let this be the last we hear of this,’ she says. ‘Or I will have you locked in your room.’