The Kingmaker's Daughter

‘The king refused our father,’ she says grimly, as I catch her in our bedroom, watching the maid sliding a warming pan in the cold bed, and the groom of the bedchamber thrusting a sword between the mattresses for our safety. ‘Shame on him. He has forgotten all that he owes, he has forgotten where he has come from and who helped him to the throne. They say that the king told your father to his face that he would never allow his brothers to marry the two of you.’

‘For what reason? Father will be so angry.’

‘He said he wanted other matches for them, alliances perhaps in France or the Low Countries, Flanders again, or Germany. Who knows? He wants princesses for them. But the queen will be looking out for her kinswomen in Burgundy, no doubt she will have some suggestions, and your father feels himself to be insulted.’

‘We are insulted,’ I assert. Then I am uncertain: ‘Aren’t we?’

Emphatically she nods, waving the servants from the room. ‘We are. They won’t find two more beautiful girls for the royal dukes, not if they go to Jerusalem itself. The king, God bless him, is ill-advised. Ill-advised to look elsewhere than the Neville girls. Ill-advised to slight your father who put him where he is today.’

‘Who tells him to look elsewhere?’ I ask, though I know the answer. ‘Who advises him ill?’

She turns her head and spits in the fire. ‘She does,’ she replies. We all know who ‘She’ is.

When I go back to the hall I see Richard, the king’s brother, in close conversation with his tutor, and I guess he is asking him for the news, just as I spoke to Margaret. He glances over to me and I am certain that they are speaking of me and that his tutor has told him that we will not be betrothed, that the queen, though she herself married the man of her choice, will make loveless matches for the rest of us. For Richard there will be a princess or a foreign duchess. I see with a little surge of irritation that he does not look in the least upset. He looks as if he does not mind at all that he will not be commanded to marry a short, brown-haired, fair-skinned thin girl who has neither height nor blonde hair and no sign whatsoever of breasts, being persistently as lean as a lathe. I toss my head as if I don’t care either. I would not have married him, even if they had all begged me. And if I suddenly grow into beauty, he will be sorry that he lost me.

‘Have you heard?’ he asks, walking over to me with his diffident smile. ‘My brother the king has said that we are not to marry. He has other plans for me.’

‘I never wanted to marry you,’ I say, instantly offended. ‘So don’t think that I did.’

‘Your father proposed it himself,’ he replies.

‘Well, the king will have someone in mind for you,’ I say crossly. ‘One of the queen’s sisters, without a doubt. Or one of her cousins, or perhaps a great-aunt, some old lady with a hook nose and no teeth. She married her little brother John to my great-aunt, you take care she doesn’t match you with some noble old crone. They called it the diabolical match – you’ll probably have one too.’

He shakes his head. ‘My brother will have a princess picked out for me,’ he says confidently. ‘He is a good brother to me, and he knows I am loyal heart and soul to him. Besides, I am of an age to marry and you are still only a little girl.’

‘I am eleven,’ I say with dignity. ‘But you York boys all think you’re so wonderful. You think you were born grown-up, and high as lords. You’d better remember that you would be nowhere without my father.’

‘I do remember it,’ he says. He puts his hand on his heart as if he was a knight in a fairytale and he does an odd little bow to me as if I was a grown-up lady. ‘And I am sorry that we won’t be married, little Anne, I am sure you would have made an excellent duchess. I hope you get a great prince, or some king from somewhere.’

‘All right,’ I say, suddenly awkward. ‘I hope you don’t get an old lady then.’

That night Isabel comes to bed shaking with excitement. She kneels to pray at the foot of the bed and I hear her whisper: ‘Let it be, lord. Oh lord, let it happen.’ I wait in silence as she sheds her gown and creeps under the sheets and lies first one way, and then another, too restless to sleep.

‘What’s happening?’ I whisper.

‘I’m going to marry him.’

‘No!’

‘Yes. My Lord Father told me. We are to go to Calais and the duke will join us secretly there.’

‘The king has changed his mind?’

‘The king won’t even know.’

I gasp. ‘You’ll never marry the king’s brother without his permission?’

She gives a little gasping giggle and we lie silent.

‘I shall have such gowns,’ she says. ‘And furs. And jewels.’

‘And does Richard come too?’ I ask in a very small voice. ‘Because he thinks he is to marry someone else.’

In the darkness, she puts her arm around my shoulder and draws me to her. ‘No,’ she says. ‘He’s not coming. They will find someone else for you. But not Richard.’

‘It’s not that I like him especially . . .’