The Kingmaker's Daughter

I give a little whimper of shock and bite my palm to silence myself.

‘Oh come on, we can’t talk here,’ Isabel says, jumping to her feet and bobbing a curtsey to our mother. Isabel drags me into an anteroom and up the winding stone stairs to the leads of the castle where we can look down at the frantic hurry on the quayside as the ships are loaded with weapons and the men carry their armour and tug their horses on board. I can see Midnight, my father’s great black horse, with a hood over his head so that he will walk up the gangplank. He goes with a great bound, frightened of the echo of the wood under his metal-shod hooves. If Midnight is anxious then I know there is danger.

‘He’s really doing it,’ I say disbelievingly. ‘He’s really setting sail for England. But what about the king’s mother? Duchess Cecily? She knew. She saw us all leave from Sandwich. Won’t she warn her son?’

‘She knows,’ Isabel says grimly. ‘She has known for ages. I should think just about everyone knows but the king . . . and me and you. Duchess Cecily has hated the queen from the moment they first told her that Edward was married in secret. Now she turns against queen and king together. They have had it planned for months. Father’s been paying men to rise up against the king in the North and the Midlands. My wedding was their signal to rise. Think of it – he told them the very day that I was going to take my vows, so they could rise at the right time. Now they are up, looking like a rebellion of their own making. They’ve fooled the king into thinking it is a local grievance – he is marching north out of London to settle what he thinks is a small uprising. He will be away from London when Father lands. He doesn’t know that my wedding was not a wedding but a muster. He doesn’t know that the wedding guests are sailing to march against him. Father has thrown my bridal veil over an invasion.’

‘The king? King Edward?’ I say stupidly, as if our old enemy the sleeping King Henry might have woken and risen up from his bed in the Tower.

‘Of course King Edward.’

‘But Father loves him.’

‘Loved,’ Isabel corrects me. ‘George told me this morning. It’s all changed. Father can’t forgive the king for favouring the Rivers. Nobody can earn a penny, nobody can get a yard of land, everything that can be taken, they have taken, and everything that is decided in England is done by them. Especially Her.’

‘She’s queen . . .’ I say tentatively. ‘She’s a most wonderful queen . . .’

‘She has no right to everything,’ Isabel says.

‘But to challenge the king?’ I lower my voice. ‘Isn’t that treason?’

‘Father won’t challenge the king directly. He’ll demand that he surrenders his bad advisors – he means Her family, the Rivers family. He will demand that the king restore the councillors who have guided him wisely – that’s us. He’ll get the chancellorship back for our uncle George Neville. He’ll make the king consult him on everything, Father will decide on foreign alliances again. We’ll get it all back again, we’ll be where we were before, the advisors and the rulers behind the king. But one thing I don’t know . . .’ Her voice quavers in the middle of these firm predictions, as if she has suddenly lost her nerve: ‘One thing I really don’t know . . .’ She takes a breath. ‘I don’t know . . .’

I watch as they swing a great cannon on a sling and lower it into the hold of a ship. ‘What? What don’t you know?’

Her face is aghast, like when we left her in her marriage bed last night, and she whispered: ‘Annie, don’t go.’

‘What if it’s a trick?’ she asks in a voice so quiet that I have to put my head against hers to hear her. ‘What if it is a trick like they played on the sleeping king and the bad queen? You’re too young to remember but King Edward’s father and our father never challenged the sleeping king. They were never open rebels against him. They always said only that he should be better advised. And they led out the armies of England against him, always saying that he should be better advised. It’s what Father always says.’

‘And when they beat him in battle . . .’

‘Then they put him in the Tower and said that they would hold him forever,’ she finishes. ‘They took his crown from him although they always said they just wanted to help him rule. What if Father and George are planning to do that to King Edward? Just as Father and Edward did it to the sleeping king? What if Father has turned traitor to Edward and is going to put him in the Tower along with Henry?’