“What change?”

“If the king does not recover, then we will be ruled by Richard of York in place of the king, and he and his family will enjoy a long regency while the queen’s baby grows to be a man. They will have years to put themselves into the best positions in the church, in France, and in the best places in England.” She bustles ahead of me to the great hall, spurred on by her own irritation. “I can expect to have them coming to me, to have your betrothal overturned. They won’t let you be betrothed to a Tudor of Lancaster. They will want you married into their house, so your son is their heir, and I will have to defy them if the House of Lancaster is to continue through you. And that will bring Richard of York down on me, and years of trouble.”

“But why does it matter so much?” I ask, half running to keep up with her down the long passageway. “We are all royal. Why do we have to be rivals? We are all Plantagenets, we are all descended from Edward III. We are all cousins. Richard, Duke of York, is cousin to the king just as I am.”

She rounds on me, her gown releasing the scent of lavender as it sweeps the strewing herbs on the floor. “We may be of the same family, but that is the very reason why we are not friends, for we are rivals for the throne. What quarrels are worse than family quarrels? We may all be cousins, but they are of the House of York and we are of the House of Lancaster. Never forget it. We of Lancaster are the direct line of descent from Edward III by his son, John of Gaunt. The direct line! But the Yorks can only trace their line back to John of Gaunt’s younger brother Edmund. They are a junior line: they are not descended from Edward’s heir; they descend from a younger brother. They can only inherit the throne of England if there is no Lancaster boy left. So-think, Margaret! – what do you think they are hoping for when the King of England falls into a trance, and his child is yet unborn? What d’you think they dream, when you are a Lancaster heir but only a girl, and not even married yet? Let alone brought to bed of a son?”

“They would want to marry me into their house?” I ask, bewildered at the thought of yet another betrothal.

She laughs shortly. “That-or, to tell the truth, they would rather see you dead.”

I am silenced by this. That a whole family, a great house like York, would wish for my death is a frightening thought. “But surely, the king will wake up? And then everything will be all right. And his baby could be a son. And then he will be the Lancaster heir, and everything will be all right.”

“Pray God the king wakes soon,” she says. “But you should pray that there is no baby to supplant you. And pray God we get you wedded and bedded without delay. For no one is safe from the ambitions of the House of York.”

OCTOBER 1453

The king dreams on, smiling in his waking sleep. In my room, alone, I try sitting, as they say he does, and staring at the floorboards, in case God will come to me as He has come to the king. I try to be deaf to the noises of the stable yard outside my window and to the loud singing from the laundry room where someone is thumping cloths on a washboard. I try to let my soul drift to God, and feel the absorbing peace that must wash the soul of the king so that he does not see the worried faces of his counsellors, and is even blind to his wife when she puts his newborn baby son in his arms and tells him to wake up and greet the little Prince Edward, heir to the throne of England. Even when, in temper, she shouts into his face that he must wake up or the House of Lancaster will be destroyed.

I try to be entranced by God, as the king is, but someone always comes and bangs on my door or shouts down the hall for me to come and do some chores, and I am dragged back to the ordinary world of sin again, and I wake. The great mystery for England is that the king does not wake, and while he sits, hearing only the words of angels, the man who has made himself Regent of England, Richard, Duke of York, takes the reins of government into his own hands, starts to act like a king himself, and so Margaret, the queen, has to recruit her friends and warn them that she may need their help to defend her baby son. The warning alone is enough to generate unease. Up and down England men start to muster their forces and consider whether they would do better under a hated French queen with a true-born baby prince in her arms, or to follow the handsome and beloved Englishman, Richard of York, to wherever his ambition may take him.

SUMMER 1455

It is my wedding day-come at last. I stand at the door of the church in my best gown, the belt high and tight around my rib cage and the absurdly wide sleeves drowning my thin arms and little hands. My headdress is so heavy on my head that I droop beneath the wire support and the tall, conical height. The sweep of the scarf from the apex veils my pale resentment. My mother is beside me to escort me to my guardian Edmund Tudor, who has decided-as any wise guardian would, no doubt-that my best interests will be served by marriage to him: he is his own best choice as caretaker of my interests.