‘Ah, Countess of Warwick,’ she says in a voice as light and cold as drifting snow.

‘Your Grace,’ my mother replies through gritted teeth.

The queen’s mother, her lovely face blank with grief, wearing white, the royal colour of mourning of her house, looks at the three of us as if she would cut us down where we stand. I do not dare to do more than snatch a glance at her before I drop my eyes to my feet. She smiled at me at the coronation dinner; now she looks as if she will never smile again. I have never seen heartbreak engraved on a woman’s face before; but I know that I am seeing it in the ravaged beauty of Jacquetta Woodville. My mother inclines her head. ‘Your Grace, I am sorry for your loss,’ she says quietly.

The widow says nothing, nothing at all. We all three stand as if we are frozen in the ice of her gaze. I think – well, she must say something, she will say something such as ‘fortunes of war’ or ‘thank you for your sympathy’ or ‘he is with God’ or any of the things that widows say when their husbands have been lost in battle. England has been at war with itself, on and off, for the last fourteen years. Many women have to meet each other and know that their husbands were enemies. We are all accustomed to new alliances. But it seems that Jacquetta, the widow of Richard Woodville, Lord Rivers, does not know these conventions, for she says nothing to make us any easier. She looks at us as if we are her enemies for life, as if she is cursing us in silence, as if this is the start of a blood feud that will never end, and I can feel myself start to tremble under the basilisk hatred of her gaze and I swallow, and wonder if I am going to faint.

‘He was a brave man,’ my mother volunteers again. In the face of Jacquetta’s stony grief the comment sounds frivolous.

At last the widow speaks. ‘He suffered the ignoble death of a traitor, beheaded by the Coventry blacksmith, and my beloved son John died too,’ the queen’s mother replies. ‘Both of them innocent of any crime, in all their lives. John was just twenty-four years old, obedient to his father and his king. My husband was defending his crowned and ordained king yet he was charged with treason, and then beheaded by your husband. It was not an honourable death on the battlefield. He had been on dozens of battlefields and always come home safe to me. It was a pledge he made to me: that he would always come home safe from war. He didn’t break it. God bless him that he didn’t break his promise to me. He died on the scaffold, not on the battlefield. I shall never forget this. I shall never forgive this.’

There is a truly terrible silence. Everyone in the room is looking at us, listening to the queen’s mother swear her enmity against us. I look up and find the queen’s icy gaze, filled with hatred, is resting on me. I look down again.

‘These are the fortunes of war,’ my mother says awkwardly, as if to excuse us.

Then Jacquetta does an odd, a terrible thing. She purses her lips together and she blows a long chilling whistle. Somewhere outside, a shutter bangs and a sudden chill flows through the room. The candles bob and flicker throughout the chamber as if a cold wind has nearly blown them out. Abruptly one candle in the stand beside Isabel winks and goes out. Isabel gives a little scream of fright. Jacquetta and her daughter the queen both look at us as if they would whistle us away, blow us away like dirty dust.

My formidable mother shrinks before this extraordinary inexplicable behaviour. I have never seen her turn from a challenge before but she flees from this, as she ducks her head and walks to the window bay. Nobody greets us, nobody breaks the silence that follows the unearthly whistle, nobody even smiles. There are people here who danced at the wedding at Calais Castle where this whole terrible plan was set in motion; but to look at them you would think they were utter strangers to us three. We stand in stony shame, quite alone, while the gust of air slowly dies down and the echo of Jacquetta’s long whistle goes silent.

The doors open and the king comes in, my father at his side, George his brother on the other side, Richard the younger York duke a little behind him, his dark head high and proud. He has every reason to be pleased with himself; this is the brother who did not betray the king, the brother whose loyalty was tested and stayed true. This is the brother who will have wealth and favour poured over him while we are in disgrace. I look towards him to see if he will acknowledge us and smile at me; but it seems that I am invisible to him, as we are to the rest of the court. Richard is a man now, his boyhood in our keeping far behind him. He was loyal to the king, when we were not.

George slowly comes over to our lonely little corner, looking away from us, as if he is ashamed to be with us, and Father follows him with his long loping stride. Father’s confidence is unshaken, his smile still bold, his brown eyes shining, his thick beard neatly trimmed, his authority untarnished by defeat. Isabel and I kneel for Father’s blessing and feel his hand lightly touch our heads. When we rise he is taking Mother’s hand as she smiles thinly at him, and then we all go into dinner, walking behind the king as if we were still his dearest friends and dedicated allies and not defeated traitors.

After dinner there is dancing and the king is cheerful, handsome and buoyant as always, like the lead actor in a masque, playing the role of the merry good king. He claps my father on the back, he puts his arm around his brother George’s shoulders. He, at least, will play his part as if nothing has gone wrong. My father, no less cunning than his former ally, is also at his ease, glancing around the court, greeting friends who all know that we are traitors and are only here on the king’s goodwill and because we own half of England. They smirk behind their hands at us, I can hear the laughter in their voices. I don’t look to see the hidden smiles; I keep my eyes down. I am so ashamed, I am so deeply ashamed of what we have done.

We failed, that was the worst of it. We took the king but we could not hold him. We won a little battle, but nobody supported us. It was not enough for my father to hold the king at Warwick, at Middleham; the king simply ruled from there and behaved as if he were an honoured guest, and then rode out and away when it suited him.

‘And Isabel must join the queen’s court,’ I hear the king say loudly, and my father replies without taking breath: ‘Yes, yes, of course, she will be honoured.’

Both Isabel and the queen hear this and look up at the same moment and their gazes meet. Isabel looks utterly shocked and afraid, her lips parting as if to ask Father to refuse. But the days when we could claim to be too good for royal service are long gone. Isabel will have to live in the queen’s rooms, wait on her every day. The queen turns her head with a little gesture of disdain, as if she cannot bear to see the two of us, as if we are something unclean, as if we are lepers. Father is not looking at us at all.

‘Come with me,’ Isabel whispers urgently to me. ‘You have to come with me if I have to serve her. Come and live in her household with me, Annie. I swear I can’t go on my own.’

‘Father won’t let me . . .’ I reply rapidly. ‘Don’t you remember Mother refusing us last time? You’ll have to go, because of being her sister-in-law, but I can’t come, Mother won’t let me, and I couldn’t bear it . . .’

‘And Lady Anne too,’ the king says easily.

‘Of course,’ Father says agreeably. ‘Whatever Her Grace desires.’


WESTMINSTER PALACE, LONDON, JANUARY 1470

The rules of precedence mean that we often have to walk immediately behind her, and then she is simply blind to us, speaking over our heads to her other ladies. If the two of us happen to be the only ones with her, she behaves as if she is quite alone. When we carry her train she walks at the same speed as if there were no-one behind her, and we have to scuttle along to keep up with her, looking foolish. When she hands her gloves to us she does not even look to see if one of us is ready to take them. When I drop one she does not demean herself to notice. It is as if she would let the priceless perfumed and embroidered leather lie in the mud rather than ask me to pick it up. When I have to hand something to her, a book of tales or a petition, she takes it as if it had come out of thin air. If I pass her a posy of flowers or a handkerchief she takes it so that she does not touch my fingers. She never asks me for her prayer book or her rosary, and I do not dare to offer them. I am afraid she would think them defiled by my bloody hands.