I bow my head in embarrassment; but it is always like this. My father was her greatest enemy, everything she ever tells me is a story of warfare against him.

‘Lord Rivers was my dearest friend then, and Jacquetta his wife was like a sister to me.’ She looks wistful for a moment and I dare not say anything at all. Jacquetta changed sides like everyone else after this queen’s defeat and did well from it. Now she is the mother of the queen, her granddaughter a princess and she even has a prince as a grandson; her daughter Elizabeth has given birth to a son in sanctuary and named him Edward for his father, the exiled king. Jacquetta and this queen parted when my father won the final battle at Towton for Edward. The Rivers surrendered on the battlefield and turned their coats and joined York. Then Edward chose their widowed daughter for his bride. That was the moment he acted without my father’s advice, the first mistake he made; that was his first step towards defeat.

‘I will forgive Jacquetta,’ the queen promises. ‘When we enter London, I will see her again and forgive her. I shall have her at my side again, I will comfort her for the terrible loss of her husband.’ She looks resentfully at me. ‘Killed by your father,’ she reminds me. ‘And he accused her of witchcraft.’

‘He released her.’ I swallow.

‘Well, let’s hope she is grateful for that,’ she says sarcastically. ‘One of the greatest women in the kingdom and the dearest friend I ever had – and your father named her as a witch?’ She shakes her head. ‘It beggars belief.’

I say nothing. It beggars belief for me too.

‘D’you know the sign for fortune’s wheel?’ she asks abruptly.

I shake my head.

‘Jacquetta herself showed it to me. She said that I would know a life when I rose very high and fell very low. Now I am going to rise again.’ She extends her forefinger as if pointing and then she draws a circle in the air. ‘You rise and you fall,’ she says. ‘My advice to you is to guard yourself as you rise and destroy your enemies as you fall.’

Finally, after several applications, we receive the dispensation from the Pope, so that Edward and I, though we are distant kin, can marry, and there is a quiet ceremony with little celebration, and we are put to bed by my mother and his. I am so afraid of my mother-in-law the queen that I go to the room without protest, without really thinking of the prince or what is to come in the night, and sit up in bed and wait for him. I hardly see him when he comes in, as I am watching his mother’s avid face as she takes his cloak from his shoulders and whispers ‘goodnight’ to him, and goes from the room. It makes me shudder, the way she looks at him, as if she wishes she could stay and watch.

It is very quiet when everyone has gone. I remember Isabel telling me that it was horrible. I wait for him to tell me what to do. He says nothing. He gets into bed and the thick feather mattress sinks at his side and the ropes of the bed creak under his weight. Still, he says nothing.

‘I don’t know what to do,’ I say awkwardly. ‘I am sorry. Nobody has told me. I asked Isabel but she would say nothing. I couldn’t ask my mother . . .’

He sighs, as if this is yet another burden that has been put on him by this essential alliance of our parents. ‘You don’t do anything,’ he says. ‘You just lie there.’

‘But I . . .’

‘You lie there and you don’t say anything,’ he repeats loudly. ‘The best thing you can do for me, right now, is to say nothing. Most of all don’t remind me who you are, I can’t stand the thought of that . . .’ and then he heaves up in the bed and drops on me with his full weight, plunging into me as if he was stabbing me with a broadsword.


PARIS, CHRISTMAS 1470

Isabel comes behind me. Every time we walk into a room she follows me, and sometimes she bends and frees my train if it is caught in a doorway or sweeping up the scented rushes. She serves me without a smile; her resentment and envy is obvious to everyone. Queen Margaret, my Lady Mother, laughs at Isabel’s sulky face, pats my hand, and says: ‘Now you see it. If a woman rises to greatness she becomes every woman’s enemy. If she fights to keep greatness then everyone, men and women, simply hate her. In your sister’s green face you see your triumph.’