Isabel can gurn all she wants, but I won’t be made to feel awkward. We have a better right to be seated at this table than anyone else, far better than the beautiful Rivers girls. We are the richest heiresses in England, and my father commands the narrow seas between Calais and the English coast. We are of the great Neville family, guardians of the North of England; we have royal blood in our veins. My father has been a guardian to Richard, and a mentor and advisor to the king himself, and we are as good as anybody in the hall, richer than anyone in this hall, richer even than the king and a great deal better born than the new queen. I can talk as an equal to any royal duke of the House of York because without my father, their house would have lost the wars, Lancaster would still rule, and George, handsome and princely as he is, would now be brother to a nobody, and the son of a traitor.
It is a long dinner, though the queen’s coronation dinner tomorrow will be even longer. Tonight they serve thirty-two courses, and the queen sends some special dishes to our table, to honour us with her attention. George stands up and bows his thanks to her, and then serves all of us from the silver dish. He sees me watching him and he gives me an extra spoonful of sauce with a wink. Now and then my mother glances over at me like a watch-tower beacon flaring out over a dark sea. Each time that I sense her hard gaze on me, I raise my head and smile at her. I am certain that she cannot fault me. I have one of the new forks in my hand and I have a napkin in my sleeve, as if I were a French lady, familiar with these new fashions. I have watered wine in the glass on my right, and I am eating as I have been taught: daintily and without haste. If George, a royal duke, chooses to single me out for his attention then I don’t see why he should not, nor why anyone should be surprised by it. Certainly, it comes as no surprise to me.
I share a bed with Isabel while we are guests of the king at the Tower on the night before the queen’s coronation as I do in our home at Calais, as I have done every night of my life. I am sent to bed an hour before her, though I am too excited to sleep. I say my prayers and then lie in my bed and listen to the music drifting up from the hall below. They are still dancing; the king and his wife love to dance. When he takes her hand you can see that he has to stop himself from drawing her closer. She glances down, and when she looks up he is still gazing at her with his hot look and she gives him a little smile that is full of promise.
I can’t help but wonder if the old king, the sleeping king, is awake tonight, somewhere in the wild lands of the North of England. It is rather horrible to think of him, fast asleep but knowing in his very dreams that they are dancing and that a new king and queen have crowned themselves and put themselves in his place, and tomorrow a new queen will wear his wife’s crown. Father says I have nothing to fear, the bad queen has run away to France and will get no help from her French friends. Father is meeting with the King of France himself to make sure that he becomes our friend and the bad queen will get no help from him. She is our enemy, she is the enemy of the peace of England. Father will make sure that there is no home for her in France, as there is no throne for her in England. Meanwhile, the sleeping king without his wife, without his son, will be wrapped up warm in some little castle, somewhere near Scotland, dozing his life away like a bee in a curtain all winter. My father says that he will sleep and she will burn with rage until they both grow old and die, and there is nothing for me to fear at all. It was my father who bravely drove the sleeping king off the throne and put his crown on the head of King Edward, so it must be right. It was my father who faced the terror that was the bad queen, a she-wolf worse than the wolves of France, and defeated her. But I don’t like to think of the old king Henry, with the moonlight shining on his closed eyelids while the men who drove him away are dancing in what was once his great hall. I don’t like to think of the bad queen, far away in France, swearing that she will have revenge on us, cursing our happiness and saying that she will come back here, calling it her home.
By the time that Isabel finally comes in I am kneeling up at the narrow window to look at the moonlight shining on the river, thinking of the king dreaming in its glow. ‘You should be asleep,’ she says bossily.
‘She can’t come for us, can she?’
‘The bad queen?’ Isabel knows at once the horror of Queen Margaret of Anjou, who has haunted both our childhoods. ‘No. She’s defeated, she was utterly defeated by Father at Towton. She ran away. She can’t come back.’
‘You’re sure?’
Isabel puts her arm around my thin shoulders. ‘You know I am sure. You know we are safe. The mad king is asleep and the bad queen is defeated. This is just an excuse for you to stay awake when you should be asleep.’
Obediently, I turn around and sit up in bed, pulling the sheets up to my chin. ‘I’m going to sleep. Wasn’t it wonderful?’
‘Not particularly.’
‘Don’t you think she is beautiful?’
‘Who?’ she says; as if she really doesn’t know, as if it is not blindingly obvious who is the most beautiful woman in England tonight.
‘The new queen, Queen Elizabeth.’
‘Well, I don’t think she’s very queenly,’ she says, trying to sound like our mother at her most disdainful. ‘I don’t know how she will manage at her coronation and at the joust and the tournament – she was just the wife of a country squire, and the daughter of a nobody. How will she ever know how to behave?’
‘Why? How would you behave?’ I ask, trying to prolong the conversation. Isabel always knows so much more than me, she is five years older than me, our parents’ favourite, a brilliant marriage ahead of her, almost a woman while I am still nothing but a child. She even looks down on the queen!
‘I would carry myself with much more dignity than her. I wouldn’t whisper with the king and demean myself as she did. I wouldn’t send out dishes and wave to people like she did. I wouldn’t trail all my brothers and sisters into court like she did. I would be much more reserved and cold. I wouldn’t smile at anyone, I wouldn’t bow to anyone. I would be a true queen, a queen of ice, without family or friends.’
I am so attracted by this picture that I am halfway out of my bed again. I pull off the fur cover from our bed and hold it up to her. ‘Like what? How would you be? Show me, Izzy!’
She arranges it like a cape around her shoulders, throws her head back, draws herself up to her four feet six inches and strides around the little chamber with her head very high, nodding distantly to imaginary courtiers. ‘Like this,’ she says. ‘Comme ça, elegant, and unfriendly.’
I jump out of bed and snatch up a shawl, throw it over my head, and follow her, mirroring her nod to right and left, looking as regal as Isabel. ‘How do you do?’ I say to an empty chair. I pause as if listening to a request for some favour. ‘No, not at all. I won’t be able to help you, I am so sorry, I have already given that post to my sister.’
‘To my father, Lord Rivers,’ Izzy adds.
‘To my brother Anthony – he’s so handsome.’
‘To my brother John, and a fortune to my sisters. There is nothing left for you at all. I have a large family,’ Isabel says, being the new queen in her haughty drawl. ‘And they all must be accommodated. Richly accommodated.’
‘All of them,’ I supplement. ‘Dozens of them. Did you see how many of them came into the great hall behind me? Where am I to find titles and land for all of them?’
We walk in grand circles, and pass each other as we go by, inclining our heads with magnificent indifference. ‘And who are you?’ I inquire coldly.
‘I am the Queen of England,’ Isabel says, changing the game without warning. ‘I am Queen Isabel of England and France, newly married to King Edward. He fell in love with me for my beauty. He is mad for me. He has run completely mad for me and forgotten his friends and his duty. We married in secret, and now I am to be crowned queen.’
‘No, no, I was being the Queen of England,’ I say, dropping the shawl and turning on her. ‘I am Queen Anne of England. I am the Queen of England. King Edwa
rd chose me.’
‘He never would, you’re the youngest.’
‘He did! He did!’ I can feel the rise of my temper, and I know that I will spoil our play but I cannot bear to give her precedence once again, even in a game in our own chamber.
‘We can’t both be Queen of England,’ she says reasonably enough. ‘You be the Queen of France, you can be the Queen of France. France is nice enough.’
‘England! I am the Queen of England. I hate France!’
‘Well you can’t be,’ she says flatly. ‘I am the oldest. I chose first, I am the Queen of England and Edward is in love with me.’
I am wordless with rage at her claiming of everything, her sudden enforcing of seniority, our sudden plunge from happy play to rivalry. I stamp my foot, my face flushes with temper, and I can feel hot tears in my eyes. ‘England! I am queen!’
‘You always spoil everything because you are such a baby,’ she declares, turning away as the door behind us opens and Margaret comes into the room and says: ‘Time you were both asleep, my ladies. Gracious! What have you done to your bedspread?’
‘Isabel won’t let me . . .’ I start. ‘She is being mean . . .’
‘Never mind that,’ Margaret says briskly. ‘Into bed. You can share whatever it is tomorrow.’
‘She won’t share!’ I gulp down salt tears. ‘She never does. We were playing but then . . .’
Isabel laughs shortly as if my grief is comical and she exchanges a look with Margaret as if to say that the baby is having a temper tantrum again. This is too much for me. I let out a wail and I throw myself face down on the bed. No-one cares for me, no-one will see that we were playing together, as equals, as sisters, until Isabel claimed something that was not hers to take. She should know that she should share. It is not right that I should come last, that I always come last. ‘It’s not right!’ I say brokenly. ‘It’s not fair on me!’
Isabel turns her back to Margaret, who unlaces the fastening of her gown and holds it low so that she can step out of it, disdainfully, like the queen she was pretending to be. Margaret spreads the gown over a chair, ready for powdering and brushing tomorrow, and Isabel pulls a nightgown over her head and lets Margaret brush her hair and plait it up.
I lift my flushed face from the pillow to watch the two of them and Isabel glances across at my big tragic eyes and says shortly: ‘You should be asleep anyway. You always cry when you’re tired. You’re such a baby. You shouldn’t have been allowed to come to dinner.’ She looks at Margaret, a grown woman of twenty, and says: ‘Margaret, tell her.’
‘Go to sleep, Lady Anne,’ Margaret says gently. ‘There’s nothing to carry on about,’ and I roll on my side and turn my face to the wall. Margaret should not speak to me like this, she is my mother’s lady in waiting and our half-sister, and she should treat me more kindly. But nobody treats me with any respect, and my own sister hates me. I hear the ropes of the bed creak as Isabel gets in beside me. Nobody makes her say her prayers, though she will certainly go to hell. Margaret says: ‘Goodnight, sleep well, God bless,’ and then blows out the candles and goes out of the room.
We are alone together in the firelight. I feel Isabel heave the covers over to her side, and I lie still. She whispers, sharp with malice: ‘You can cry all night if you want, but I shall still be Queen of England and you will not.’
‘I am a Neville!’ I squeak.
‘Margaret is a Neville.’ Isabel proves her point. ‘But illegitimate, Father’s acknowledged bastard. So she serves as our lady in waiting, and she will marry some respectable man while I will marry a wealthy duke at the very least. And now I come to think of it, you are probably illegitimate too, and you will have to be my lady in waiting.’
I feel a sob rising up in my throat, but I put both my hands over my mouth. I will not give her the satisfaction of hearing me cry. I will stifle my sobs. If I could stop my own breath I would; and then they would write to my father and say that I was quite cold and dead, and then she would be sorry that I was suffocated because of her unkindness, and my father – far away tonight – would blame her for the loss of his little girl that he loved above any other. At any rate, he ought to love me above any other. At any rate, I wish he did.
L’ERBER, LONDON, JULY 1465
I know that something extraordinary is going to happen for Father, back in England in our great house in London, is mustering his guard in the yard and his standard bearer and the gentlemen of his household are bringing their horses out from the stables and lining up. Our home is as grand as any royal palace; my father keeps more than three hundred men at arms in his livery and we have more servants under our command than anyone but the king. There are many who say that our men are better drilled and better disciplined than the king’s own; they are certainly better fed and better equipped.
I am waiting by the door to the yard, for Father will come out this way, and perhaps he will see me and tell me what is happening. Isabel is in the upstairs room where she takes her lessons, and I am not going to go and find her. Isabel can miss all the excitement for once. I hear my father’s riding boots ring on the stone stairs and I turn and sink down into my curtsey for his blessing but see, to my annoyance, that my mother is with him and her ladies behind her, and Isabel with them. She sticks out her tongue at me and grins.
‘And here is my little girl. Are you waiting to see me ride out?’ My father puts his hand gently on my head in blessing and then bends down to look into my face. He is as grand and as big as always; when I was a little girl I thought his chest was made of metal, because I always saw him in armour. Now he smiles at me with dark brown eyes shining from beneath his brightly polished helmet, his thick brown beard neatly trimmed, like a picture of a bold soldier, a military god.
‘Yes, my lord,’ I say. ‘Are you going away again?’
‘I have great work to do today,’ he says solemnly. ‘Do you know what it is?’
I shake my head.
‘Who is our greatest enemy?’
This is easy. ‘The bad queen.’
‘You are right, and I wish I had her in my power. But who is our next worst enemy, and her husband?’
‘The sleeping king,’ I say.
He laughs. ‘Is that what you call them? The bad queen and the sleeping king? Well enough. You are a young lady of great wit.’ I glance at Isabel to see how she – who calls me stupid – likes this? My father goes on: ‘And who do you think has been betrayed to us, caught, just as I said he would be, and brought as a prisoner to London?’
‘Is it the sleeping king?’
‘It is,’ he says. ‘And I am riding out with my men to bring him through the streets of London to the Tower and he will stay there, our prisoner forever.’
I look up at him as he looms above me, but I dare not speak.
‘What is it?’
‘Can I come too?’
He laughs. ‘You are as brave as a little squire, you should have been a boy. No, you can’t come too. But when I have him captive in the Tower you can look through the doorway sometime and then you will see that there is nothing for you to fear from him any more. I have the king in my keeping, and without him the queen his wife can do nothing.’
‘But there will be two kings in London.’ Isabel comes forwards, trying to be interesting, with her intelligent face on.
He shakes his head. ‘No. Just one. Just Edward. Just the king that I put on the throne. He has the true right, and anyway, we won the victory.’
‘How will you bring him in?’ my mother asks. ‘There will be many wanting to see him go by.’
‘Tied,’ my father says shortly. ‘Sitting on his horse but with his feet tied by the ankles under its belly. He is a criminal against the new King of England and against me. They can see him like that.’
My mother gives a little gasp at the disrespect. This makes my father laugh. ‘He has been sleeping rough in the hills of the north,’ he says. ‘He’s not going to look kingly. He has not been living like a great lord, h
e has been living like an outlaw. This is the end of his shame.’
‘And they will see that it is you, bringing him in, as grand as a king yourself,’ my mother observes.
My father laughs again, looks towards the yard where his men are as smartly dressed and as powerfully armed as a royal guard, and nods in approval at the unfurling of his standard of the bear and ragged staff. I look up at him, dazzled by his size and his aura of utter power.
‘Yes, it is me that brings the King of England into prison,’ he acknowledges. He taps me on the cheek, smiles at my mother, and strides out into the yard. His horse, his favourite horse called Midnight for its dark shiny flanks, is held by his groom at the mounting block. My father swings into the saddle and turns to look at his men, raising his hand to give the order to march out. Midnight paws the ground as if he is eager to go; my father has him on a tight rein and his other hand strokes his neck. ‘Good boy,’ he says. ‘This is great work that we do today, this finishes the work that we left half-done at Towton, and that was a great day for you and me, for sure.’
And then he shouts, ‘March!’ and leads his men out of the yard under the stone arch and into the streets of London to ride to Islington to meet the guard that has the sleepy king under arrest, so that he will never trouble the country with his bad dreams ever again.
BARNARD CASTLE, COUNTY DURHAM, AUTUMN 1465
We are both summoned, Isabel and me, to my father’s private rooms in one of our houses in the north: Barnard Castle. This is one of my favourite homes, perched on cliffs over the River Tees, and from my bedroom window I can drop a stone into the foaming water a long, long way below. It is a little high-walled castle, surrounded by a moat and beyond that a grey stone outer wall, and behind that, clustered around the wall for safety, is the little town of Barnard Castle where they fall to their knees when we ride by. Mother says that our family, the Nevilles, are like gods to the people of the North, bound to them by oaths which go back to the very beginning of time when there were devils and sea serpents, and a great worm, and we swore to protect the people from all of these and the Scots as well.