"You will be surprised. Your father has always been such an ardent Yorkist. But things have changed. There has been too much perfidy. Your father has decided to support King Henry. After all, as the son of the late King Henry the Fifth, he is the rightful inheritor of the throne. He comes before Edward of York. Now Henry has a son "Henry's son! Prince Edward!"

"That is so. I heard he is a handsome boy, perhaps a year older than you ... which will be just right. You are really very fortunate."

I could not believe this. I had always heard that Henry was mad: Queen Margaret was a virago; their son Edward, a vapid youth of no importance. My father had changed sides ... so blatantly. How could he? We had been brought up to believe that the Lancastrians were our enemies ... and now they were planning to make me one of them.

"It cannot be true!" I gasped.

"My dear child, it is true. Your father is going to put Henry back on the throne and he wants you to be the wife of the Prince of Wales."

"Oh no ... please ..." She took me into her arms and I saw the tears on her cheeks.

She said: "We have to accept our fate, my dearest. It is what we are born for. It happens to all of us."

I said: "Isabel was happy in her marriage."

"Poor Isabel! That should never have been. You will be happy, my dearest child. It is just at first that it is a little shock, that is why your father wanted you to be prepared."

A little shock! I felt as though the world I had known was falling about me.

There was only Isabel to whom I could talk. She was resting on her bed. She looked beautiful with her long fair hair loose on the pillow; but she was pale and still very frail.

"What has happened?" she asked in alarm.

"I have just been told I am to marry."

To marry! I expect our father has made some arrangement with the King of France. Who is it?"

"The Prince of Wales."

"The Prince of Wales? He must be a baby."

"Not a son of Edward but King Henry's."

She looked at me in blank amazement.

I went on: "Our father is arranging it with the King of France."

"Why should it concern the King of France?"

"I think it must be that he is going to help our father put Henry on the throne."

"How can he?"

"With arms and money supplied by Louis, I suppose."

"He... he can't!"

"Then why should he want his daughter to marry Prince Edward?"

She lifted her head and, resting it on her elbow, stared at me.

"What of George?" she asked.

"The plans have evidently changed."

"How can they change?"

"Easily. If our father and the King of France decide to change them."

"I can't believe this. Our father has always been for York. How could he change like that?"

"Because he has quarrelled with York. He can no longer make York kings, so he will make a Lancastrian one. After all, as my mother says, Henry is the true king."

"It's nonsense."

I shook my head.

"How I wish it were."

"George is to be king."

I did not say so but I thought, that was never a wise plan and could not have succeeded. I could not imagine how my father had ever thought it could. How could he have controlled the volatile George whose only concern would be for his own glory?

I could see the reasoning behind all this. My father must make kings through whom he could rule, and Edward had shown that he would not allow that. But if he could succeed, proud Margaret and Henry could be malleable in his hands.

It made sense; and I had become a necessary part of my father's schemes.

Why had I been unhappy on those violent seas? I should have been more at peace there than I now was in this quiet convent.

My one hope was that it would not be yet. My mother had thought it best to warn me and I could not make up my mind whether it would have been better not to know, so that I could have enjoyed peace a little longer, or to be prepared for the blow which was to come.

Isabel tried to comfort me, but I think she was more concerned as to what it would mean to George. I myself wondered that, too, for if my father were supporting the House of Lancaster, where would George come into this? He would be our enemy. How could there be such conflict within the family, for his marriage to Isabel had made George one of us?

My hopes that the project must fail were short-lived. Once the bargain had been struck my father would be eager to proceed with it. I learned later that I owed the delay to the fact that there was difficulty in persuading Queen Margaret to accept my father as her friend. But I suppose his reputation and power, and the men he could command to serve him, made it difficult for her to refuse him as an ally; and eventually she gave way to what must have been very distasteful to her: accepting me, Warwick's daughter, as her daughter-in-law.

My mother, my sister and I were all in a very melancholy mood while we waited for developments. Within a few days of my mother's telling me of the plans for my future, my father arrived at the convent. He had come to take his family to Angers, where I was to be betrothed formally to the Prince of Wales.

My mother must have told him how worried I was at the prospect, for he sent for me.

I went apprehensively, expecting to be peremptorily told to hide my repugnance to the match: but it was not quite like that.

My father was not an unkind man and I believe that, as he studied me, he was thinking of the ordeal he was about to thrust on me. Ambition was the great force in his life and nothing could deter his following it wherever it led, but, at the same time, he could spare a thought for those whom he used to further his ends particularly if they were members of his family.

"I hear, daughter," he said, "that your mother has told you of the glorious future which awaits you."

"She has told me that I am to be betrothed to King Henry's son." That is so. Henry is to be returned to the throne and in due course his son will inherit it. It is a great opportunity for you."

"It is difficult for me to think of him as a husband."

"I'll swear it would be difficult for you to think of anyone as a husband, as one has never been proposed for you before."

"But we were always brought up to hate the Lancastrians." He waved his hand impatiently.

"This will be a great match for you. The best you could possibly hope for. You will see your son on the throne of England. Is that not enough?" I looked at him blankly and he smiled at me.

"Your betrothal will take place very soon." he went on.

"You should prepare to leave this place."

I wanted to plead with him. I wanted to explain what this prospect was like for a young girl who had not seen very much of the world until lately (when I had witnessed some of the less pleasant aspects of it), who had lived most of her life at Middleham and who had on those rare occasions when she had thought of marriage had one in mind who had always been her friend and who, she was sure, had some affection for her.

But how could I explain to this man? He was my father; he was fond of me in a way; but to him I was just an object to be moved around to whatever position could bring most gain to him. It was an unfair world. It terrified me. I did not want to marry yet. I wanted to go on being a child. I had seen what marriage had done to Isabel and she loved her husband.

I wanted to go back to Middleham, to live quietly there; and vaguely, in my dreams, I had thoughts of Richard's coming there and saying, "Marry me, Anne. I love you and you love me and we both love Middleham. Let us live there happily ever after."

What foolish dreams! How could I ever have thought I could make my father understand them? How could I expect him to abandon a plan that was important to him, for the sake of making me happy and allaying my fears?

I left him and made my preparations to leave.

My mother came to me just before we left. She looked as though she had good news to impart, and she had.

"The wedding cannot take place until there has been a dispensation from the Pope, and that, as you know, takes a little time to come by."

"Then why do I have to leave here now?"

"Because there must be a betrothal before plans go ahead. You see, the marriage is very important to your father, and Queen Margaret is not very eager for it. She has to be persuaded that it is her only chance of getting the throne."

"She does not want me." I said.

"And I suppose Edward does not either."

"They will want you when they realise what this marriage means."

"It is hateful. I am not like a real person. I am just tolerated because of a treaty."

"Marriages of people in high places are often like that, my child."

"I hate it. I hate it."

She put her arms round me.

"It will take a long time for the dispensation." she said, "and you cannot be married without it. Perhaps it will never come."

I looked at her wonderingly, and she tried to brush aside that last remark. But at length she said: "Well, King Edward would naturally try to stop it if he could, wouldn't he? And you know what popes are. They fear to offend people in high places. I am just saying that it may not be easy to get the dispensation." "But I shall have to go through with this betrothal."

"Yes, you must do that."

"Does that mean I am married to him?"

"In a way, but the marriage is not consummated until the ceremony takes place. That means that you will continue to live under my care until you are actually married."