The Kingmaker's Daughter

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 Edward 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 . . .’