Me, he praises for my looks that he says are blooming in France – how is it that experiences which exhaust my sister make me so pretty? He pours the best wine into my glass, he places me between my mother and himself. He cuts slices of meat for me and the server puts them before me, serving me before Isabel, before my mother. I look at the food on my plate and I don’t dare to taste it. What does it mean when the best cut of meat is served to me before anyone else? Suddenly, having spent my life following Isabel and my mother into every room we ever enter, I am going first.

‘My Lord Father?’

He smiles and at the warmth in his face I find I am smiling back. ‘Ah, you are my clever girl,’ he says tenderly. ‘You always were the brightest cleverest girl. You are wondering what plans I have for you.’

I don’t dare to look at Isabel, who will have heard him call me the brightest cleverest girl. I don’t dare to look at George. I never dare to look at my mother. I know that George has met Lady Sutcliffe in secret, and I guess that he is afraid that Father knows. This sudden favour to me might be Father’s warning to George that he cannot play us false. I see Isabel’s hands are trembling and she puts them under the table out of sight.

‘I have arranged a marriage for you,’ my father says quietly.

‘What?’

This is the last thing I expected. I am so shocked that I turn to my mother. She looks back at me, perfectly serene; clearly she knows all about this.

‘A great marriage,’ he continues. I can hear the excitement under the level tones of his voice. ‘The greatest marriage that could be got for you. The only marriage for you now. I daresay you can guess who I mean?’

At my stunned silence he laughs merrily, laughs in our dumbstruck faces. ‘Guess!’ he says.

I look at Isabel. For a moment only I think perhaps we are going home, we will reconcile with the House of York and I will marry Richard. Then I see George’s sulky face and I am certain it cannot be that. ‘Father, I cannot guess,’ I say.

‘My daughter, you are going to marry Prince Edward of Lancaster, and you will be the next Queen of England.’

There is a clatter as George drops his knife to the floor. He and Isabel are frozen as if enchanted, staring at my father. I realise that George has been hoping – desperately hoping – that Lady Sutcliffe was reporting false rumours. Now it looks as if she was telling only part of the truth, and the whole of it is worse than any of us could have imagined.

‘The bad queen’s son?’ I ask childishly. In a rush, all the old stories and fears come back to me. I was brought up thinking of Margaret of Anjou as all but a beast, a she-wolf who rode out at the head of wild men, destroying everything in their path, in the grip of her terrible ambition, carrying with them a comatose king who slept through everything, as she tore England apart, murdered my grandfather, my uncle, tried to assassinate my own father in the kitchen with a roasting spit, in the court with swords; and was finally only defeated by him and Edward, our Edward, fighting uphill through snow in the most terrible battle that England has ever seen. Then like a blizzard herself, she blew away with the bloodstained snow into the cold North. They captured her husband and let him sleep in the Tower where he could do no harm; but she and the icy boy, who was inexplicably conceived by a wolf mother and sleeping father, were never seen again.

‘Prince Edward of Lancaster, the son of Queen Margaret of Anjou. They live in France now and are supported by her father René of Anjou, who is King of Hungary, Majorca, Sardinia and Jerusalem. She is kinswoman to King Louis of France.’ My father carefully ignores my exclamation. ‘He will help us put together an invasion of England. We will defeat the House of York, free King Henry from the Tower, and you will be crowned Princess of Wales. King Henry and I will rule England together until he dies – saints preserve him! – and then I will guide and advise you and Prince Edward of Lancaster who will be King and Queen of England. Your son, my grandson, will be the next King of England – and perhaps of Jerusalem too. Think of that.’

George is choking as if drowning on his wine. We all turn to him. He whoops and flails and cannot catch his breath. My father waits until his fit subsides, watching him without sympathy. ‘This is a setback for you, George,’ my father concedes fairly. ‘But you will be heir to the throne after Prince Edward, and you will be brother-in-law to the King of England. You will be as close to the throne as you have always been, and the Rivers will have been thrown down. Your influence will be clear, and your rewards great.’ My father nods at him kindly. He does not even look at Isabel who was going to be Queen of England but will now give precedence to me. ‘George, I shall see that you keep your title and all your lands. You are no worse off than you were before.’

‘I am worse off,’ Isabel remarks quietly. ‘I have lost my baby for nothing.’

Nobody answers her. It is as if she has become so unimportant that nobody needs to reply.

‘What if the king is still asleep?’ I ask. ‘When you get to London? What if you can’t wake him?’

My father shrugs. ‘It doesn’t matter. Whether he is sleeping or awake I shall command in his name until Prince Edward and –’ he smiles at me ‘– Princess Anne take their thrones and become King Edward and Queen Anne of England.’

‘The House of Lancaster restored!’ George leaps to his feet, malmsey wine staining his mouth, his face flushed with rage, his hands shaking. Isabel tentatively puts out her hand and rests it on his clenched fist. ‘Have we gone through all this to restore the House of Lancaster? Have we faced such dangers on land and sea in order to put Lancaster back on the throne? Have I betrayed my brother and deserted my House of York to put Lancaster on the throne?’

‘The House of Lancaster has a good claim,’ my father concedes, throwing away the alliance with York that his family forged and defended for two generations. ‘Your brother’s claim for York is a poor one if he is indeed, as you suggest, a bastard.’

‘I named him as a bastard to make me the next heir to the throne,’ George shouts. ‘We were fighting to put me on the throne. We discredited Edward to prove my claim. We never discredited my house, we never slandered York! We never said that anyone should be king but me!’

‘It couldn’t be done,’ my father says with mild regret as if speaking of a battle that was lost long, long ago, in a country far away, rather than England, and only this spring. ‘We tried it twice, George, you know. Edward was too strong for us, there were too many people on his side. But with Queen Margaret in alliance with us she will bring out half of England, all the old Lancaster lords will flock to us, the Lancaster gentry who have never taken to your brother. She has always been strong in the North and Midlands. Jasper Tudor will bring out Wales for her. Edward will never be able to defeat an alliance of you and me and Margaret of Anjou.’

It is so strange to me to hear her name no longer cursed but cited as an ally – I used to have nightmares about this woman, yet now she is to be our trusted friend.

‘Now,’ my father says. ‘You, Anne, have to go with your mother and meet the seamstresses. Isabel, you can go too, you are all to have new gowns for Anne’s betrothal.’

‘My betrothal?’

He smiles as if he thinks to give me the greatest joy. ‘Betrothed now, and then the wedding as soon as we have the permission from the Pope.’

‘I am to be betrothed straightaway?’

‘The day after tomorrow.’


ANGERS CATHEDRAL, 25 JULY 1470

It is those great enemies, my father and Margaret of Anjou, side by side. This is the great union; her son and I will merely enact with our bodies this plighting of our parents. First she puts her hand on a fragment of the True Cross – the real cross brought here from the kingdom of Jerusalem – and even from the back of the cathedral I can hear her clear voice reciting an oath of loyalty to my father. Then it is his turn. He puts his hand on the cross and she adjusts it, making sure that every part of his palm and his fingers are on the sacred wood as if, even now, in the very act of swearing their alliance, she doesn’t trust him. He recites his oath, then they turn to one another and give each other the kiss of reconciliation. They are allies, they will be allies till death, they have sworn a sacred oath, nothing can part them.