‘What about the dispensation?’ I ask him lazily, one morning, as he is kissing me carefully, counting as he goes, his ambition being to get to five hundred.

‘You have interrupted me,’ he complains. ‘What dispensation?’

‘For our wedding. From the Pope.’

‘Oh, that – it’s on the way. These things can take months, you know that. I have applied in writing and they will reply. I will tell you when they reply. Where was I?’

‘Three hundred and two,’ I volunteer.

Softly, his mouth comes down on my ribcage. ‘Three hundred and three,’ he says.

We spend every night together. When he has to visit the court, on its summer progress in Kent, he rides out at dawn with a group of his friends – Brackenbury, Lovell, Tyrrell, half a dozen others – and back at dusk so that he can see the king and come home to me. He swears we shall never be parted, not even for a night. I wait for him in the great guest chamber at Lambeth Palace with a supper laid ready for him and he comes in, dusty from the road, and eats and talks and drinks all at the same time. He tells me that the queen’s new baby has died and the queen is quiet and sad. Jacquetta, her mother, is said to have died the very same afternoon as the baby; some people heard a lament sung around the towers of the castle. He crosses himself at that rumour and laughs at himself for being a superstitious fool. Under the table I clench my fist in the sign against witchcraft.

‘Lady Rivers was a remarkable woman,’ he concedes. ‘When I first met her and I was just a boy I thought she was the most terrifying and the most beautiful woman I had ever seen. But when she acknowledged me as her kinsman, when Elizabeth married Edward, I came to love and admire her. She was always so warm with her children – and not just them, with all the children of the royal household – and loyal to Edward; she would have done anything for him.’

‘She was my enemy in the end,’ I say shortly. ‘But I remember that when I first saw her I thought she was wonderful. And her daughter the queen too.’

‘You would pity the queen now,’ he says. ‘She’s very bereft without her mother, and she is lost without her baby.’

‘Yes, but she has four other children,’ I say hard-heartedly. ‘And one of them a son.’

‘We Yorks like to make a big family,’ he says, with a smile at me.

‘And so?’

‘And so I thought we might go to bed and see if we can make a little marquess?’

I feel my colour rise, and I acknowledge my desire with a smile. ‘Perhaps,’ I say. He knows that I mean ‘yes’.


WINDSOR CASTLE, SEPTEMBER 1472

I need not fear Isabel’s hard words for now I am her equal. I too am a royal duchess of the House of York. We have been forced to share our inheritance, our husbands now enjoy equal shares of our wealth. We have shared the boys of the House of York – she has George, the handsome older brother, but I have Richard, the loyal and beloved younger brother. He is at my side, and he gives me a warm smile. He knows I am nervous and he knows I am determined to walk into the great royal court and have them acknowledge me for what I now am: a royal duchess of York, and one of the greatest ladies of the kingdom.

I am wearing a gown of deep red. I bribed one of the ladies of the wardrobe to discover what Isabel is wearing tonight and she told me that my sister has ordered a gown of pale violet, that she will wear with her amethysts. My choice will make her colour fade into insignificance. I am wearing rubies around my throat and in my ears and my skin is creamy against the darkness of the gown and the fiery sparkle of the stones. I am wearing a headdress so tall that it rises like a church spire above both me and my husband, and the veil is scarlet. The hem of my gown is embroidered with dark red silk and the sleeves are cut daringly high to show my wrists. I know that I look beautiful. I am sixteen and my skin is like the petal of a rose. The Queen of England herself, Edward’s adored wife, is going to look old and tired beside me. I am at the very peak of my beauty and in the moment of my triumph.

The big doors before us swing open and Richard takes my hand, glances sideways at me and says ‘forward march!’ as if we were mustering on a battlefield, and we step into the blaze of light and warmth of the queen’s presence chamber at Windsor Castle.

As always with Queen Elizabeth, her rooms are shining with the brilliant light of the very best candles, and her women beautifully dressed. She is playing bowls, and from the laughter and round of applause as we come in I guess that she is winning. At the far end of the room there are musicians, and the ladies are dancing a circle dance where they hold hands and form lines, and look around and smile at their favourite courtiers who lounge against the walls and inspect the ladies as if they were high-bred hunters, trotting out. The king is seated in the middle of the chamber talking to Louis de Gruthuyse, who was his only friend when my father drove him from the throne of England, and looked certain to be the victor. Louis was Edward’s friend then, taking him into his court in Flanders, protecting him, and supporting him while he recruited men, raised ships and funds and came back to England like a storm. Now Louis has been made Earl of Winchester, and there are to be days of celebration to welcome him into his earldom. The king pays his debts, and always rewards his favourites. Luckily for me, he sometimes forgives his enemies.

King Edward looks up as we come in – his beloved brother and his pretty new wife – exclaims in pleasure and comes forwards to greet us himself. He is always informal and charming to those he loves and who amuse him, and now he takes my hand and kisses me on the mouth as if he had no recollection that the last time we met was when I was in such disgrace that I was not allowed to speak to him, but had to silently curtsey when he went by.

‘Look who’s here!’ he calls delightedly to the queen. She comes to receive our bows and lets Richard kiss her cheeks and then turns to me. Clearly she and the king have decided that I am to be greeted as a kinswoman and a sister. Only the tiniest flicker of malice in her grey eyes shows me that she is amused to find me here – at the greatest feast of the year to welcome her husband’s ally – rising up now having been down so very low. ‘Ah, Lady Anne,’ she says drily. ‘I wish you joy. What a surprise. What a triumph for true love!’

She turns and gestures to the ladies behind her and my courage fails me as my sister Isabel stalks forwards. I cannot stop myself shrinking back against the comforting shoulder of Richard, my husband, who stands beside me as Isabel, pale and contemptuous, sweeps us both the most shallow curtsey.

‘And here you are, Warwick’s daughters, and yet both royal duchesses and both my sisters,’ the queen says, her voice lilting with laughter. ‘Who would ever have thought it? Your father gets his first choice of sons-in-law from the grave. How happy you must be!’

Her brother Anthony glances at her as if they are sharing a joke about us. ‘Clearly, a joyous reunion of the Neville sisters,’ he observes.

Isabel steps forwards as if she is embracing me and holds me close so that she can whisper fiercely in my ear. ‘You have shamed yourself and embarrassed me. We didn’t even know where you were. Running off like a kitchen slut! I can’t imagine what Father would have said!’