“I’m sorry,” she says awkwardly. “I didn’t mean to distress you . . .”

“It’s all right,” I say, as if to speak of the disappearance of my brothers is not pain on pain. “Do you fear that Henry Tudor will take your brother into the Tower as King Richard took both of mine? And that he won’t come out either?”

She twists her hand in her gown. “I don’t even know if I should be taking him to London,” she exclaims. “Should I try to get a ship and take him away to our aunt Margaret in Flanders? But I don’t know how. I don’t have any money to hire a ship. And I don’t know who to ask. D’you think we should do that? Get Teddy away? Aunt Margaret would guard and keep him for love of the House of York. Should we do that? Would you know how to do it?”

“King Henry won’t hurt him,” I say. “Not right now, at any rate. He might later on, when he’s established as king and secure on the throne, and people aren’t watching him and wondering how he’s going to act. But in the next few months he’ll be seeking to make friends everywhere. He’s won the battle, now he has to win the kingdom. It’s not enough to kill the previous king, he has to be acclaimed by the people and crowned. He won’t risk offending the House of York and everyone who loves us. Why, the poor man might even have to marry me to please them all!”

She smiles. “You’d make such a lovely queen! A really beautiful queen! And then I could be sure that Edward would be safe, for you could make him your ward, couldn’t you? You’d guard him, wouldn’t you? You know he’s no danger to anyone. We’d both be faithful to the Tudor line. We’d both be faithful to you.”

“If I’m ever made queen I will keep him safe,” I promise her, thinking how many lives depend on me to make Henry honor his betrothal. “But in the meantime, I think you can come to London with us and we will be safe with my mother. She’ll know what to do. She’ll have a plan ready.”

Maggie hesitates. There was bad blood between her mother Isabel and mine, and then she was raised by Richard’s wife Anne, who hated my mother as a mortal enemy. “Will she care for us?” she asks very quietly. “Will your mother be kind to Teddy? They always said she was my family’s enemy.”

“She has no quarrel with either you or with Edward,” I say reassuringly. “You are her niece and nephew. We’re all of the House of York. She will protect you as she does us.”

She is reassured, she trusts me, and I don’t remind her that my mother had two boys of her own, Edward and Richard, that she loved more than life itself; but she couldn’t keep them safe. And nobody knows where my little brothers are tonight.










WESTMINSTER PALACE, LONDON, AUTUMN 1485

“Hush,” my mother says firmly, and sends me indoors while she greets my sisters and my cousins. She comes in after me, with Bridget on one hip and Catherine holding her hand, Anne and Cecily dancing around her. She is laughing, and looks happy and far younger than her forty-eight years. She is wearing a gown of dark blue, a blue leather belt around her slim waist, and her hair tied back into a blue velvet cap. All the children are shouting with excitement as she draws us into her private rooms, and sits down with Bridget on her knee. “Now tell me everything!” she says. “Did you really ride all the way, Anne? That was very good indeed. Edward, my dear boy, are you tired? Was your pony good?”

Everyone speaks at once, Bridget and Catherine are jumping and trying to interrupt. Cecily and I wait for the noise to die down, and my mother smiles at the two of us as she offers the children sugared plums and small ale, and they sit before the fire to enjoy their treats.

“And how are my two big girls?” she asks. “Cecily, you have grown again, I swear you are going to be as tall as me. Elizabeth, dear, you are pale and far too thin. Are you sleeping all right? Not fasting, are you?”

“Elizabeth says she can’t be sure if Henry will marry her or not,” Cecily bursts out at once. “And if he does not, what will happen to us all? What’s going to happen to me?”

“Of course he will marry her,” my mother says calmly. “He most certainly will. His mother has spoken to me already. They realize that we have too many friends in Parliament and in the country for him to risk insulting the House of York. He has to marry Elizabeth. He promised it nearly a year ago and he’s not free to choose now. It was part of his plan of invasion and his agreement with his supporters from the very beginning.”

“But isn’t he angry about King Richard?” Cecily persists. “Richard and Elizabeth? And what she did?”

My mother turns a serene face to my spiteful sister. “I know nothing about the late usurper Richard,” she says, just as I knew she would. “And no more do you. And King Henry knows even less.”

Cecily opens her mouth as if she would argue, but one cool look from my mother silences her. “King Henry knows very little at all about his new kingdom as yet,” my mother continues smoothly. “He has spent almost all his life overseas. But we will help him and tell him all that he needs to know.”

“But Elizabeth and Richard . . .”

“That is one of the things he doesn’t need to know.”

“Oh, very well,” Cecily says crossly. “But this is about all of us, not just Elizabeth. Elizabeth isn’t the only one here, though she behaves as if nobody matters but her. And the Warwick children are always asking how they will be safe, and Maggie is afraid for Edward. And what about me? Am I married or not? What is going to happen to me?”

My mother frowns at this stream of demands. Cecily was married so quickly, just before the battle, and her bridegroom rode away before they were even bedded. Now, of course, he is missing, and the king who ordered the wedding is dead, and everything that everyone planned has failed. Cecily is perhaps a maid again, or perhaps a widow, or perhaps an abandoned wife. Nobody knows.