‘Yes,’ I say simply. ‘You will be her aunt, and I hope you will love her and care for her. And . . .’ I hesitate – of course Isabel of all the people in the world knows that I am bound to be afraid of childbirth. ‘If anything should ever happen to me, then I hope you will raise her as your own child, and . . . and tell her about our father, Iz . . . and about everything that happened. About us . . . and how things went wrong . . .’

Isabel’s face twists for a moment trying to hold back her tears, and then she opens her arms and we cling to each other, crying and laughing at the same time. ‘Oh Iz,’ I whisper. ‘I have hated being at war with you.’

‘I am sorry, I am so sorry, Annie. I should not have acted as I did – I didn’t know what to do – and everything happened so fast. We had to get the fortune . . . and George said . . . and then you ran away . . .’

‘I’m sorry too,’ I say. ‘I know you couldn’t go against your husband. I understand better now.’

She nods, she doesn’t want to say anything about George. A wife owes obedience to her husband, she promises it on her wedding day before God; and husbands exact their full due, supported by the priest and by the world. Isabel is as much George’s possession as if she was his servant or his horse. I too have promised fealty to Richard as if he were a lord and I was indeed a kitchen maid. A woman must obey her husband as a serf obeys his lord – it is the way of the world and the law of God. Even if she thinks he is wrong. Even if she knows he is wrong.

Isabel tentatively puts out her hand to where my belly is hard and swelling beneath the gathered folds of my gown. I take it and let her feel my broadening girth. ‘Annie, you are so big already. Do you feel well?’

‘I was sick at the start but I am well now.’

‘I can’t believe that you didn’t tell me at once!’

‘I wanted to,’ I confess. ‘I really wanted to. I didn’t know how to begin.’

We turn away from the court together. ‘Are you afraid?’ she asks quietly.

‘A little,’ I say. I see the darkness of her glance. ‘A lot,’ I admit. We are both silent, both thinking of the rocking cabin on the storm-tossed ship with my mother screaming at me that I must pull the baby from her, the horror as the little body yielded inside her. The vision is so strong I am almost unsteady on my feet, as if the seas were throwing us around once more. She takes my hands in hers and it is as if we had just made landfall and I am telling her about the little coffin, and Mother letting it go into the sea.

‘Annie, there’s no reason that it should not be all right for you,’ she says earnestly. ‘There is no reason that it should go wrong for you as it did for me. My pains were so much worse for being at sea, and the storm, and the danger. You will be safe, and your husband . . .’

‘He loves me,’ I say certainly. ‘He says he will take me to Middleham Castle and have the best midwives and physicians in the land.’ I hesitate. ‘Would you . . . I know that perhaps you . . .’

She waits. She must know that I want her to be with me for my confinement. ‘I have no-one else,’ I say simply. ‘And neither do you. Whatever has passed between us, Iz, we have nobody but each other now.’

Neither of us mentions our mother, still imprisoned in Beaulieu Abbey, and her lands stolen from her by our husbands working together to rob her, and then competing to rob each other. She writes to us both, letters filled with threats, and complaints, swearing that she will write no more if we don’t promise to obey her and get her set free. She knows, as we do, that both of us let this happen, powerless to do anything but our husbands’ bidding. ‘We are orphans,’ I say bleakly. ‘We have let ourselves be orphans. We have made orphans out of ourselves. And we have no-one else to turn to but each other.’

‘I’ll come,’ she says.


MIDDLEHAM CASTLE, YORKSHIRE, SPRING 1473

‘It will mean that the Rivers run Wales in everything but name,’ Isabel whispers to me. ‘The king has handed his only heir into their keeping and Anthony Woodville is head of the prince’s council and the queen rules everything. This is not the House of York, this is the House of Rivers. D’you think Wales will stand for it? They have always been for the House of Lancaster and the Tudors.’

I shrug. I am lapped in the serenity of the last weeks of pregnancy. I look out over the green fields nearby and beyond them the rough pasture with the lapwings wheeling and crying up to the moorland. London seems a long way away, Ludlow a lifetime. ‘Who should rule her son but the queen?’ I ask. ‘And he couldn’t have a better governor than his uncle Anthony. Whatever you think of the queen, Anthony Woodville is one of the finest men in Europe. They are a close family. Anthony Woodville will guard his nephew with his life.’

‘You wait,’ Isabel predicts. ‘There will be many who fear to see the Rivers become over-mighty. There will be many who warn the king against trusting one family with everything. George is against them, even your husband Richard does not like to see all of Wales in their keeping.’ She pauses. ‘Father said they were bad advisors,’ she reminds me.

I nod. ‘He did,’ I concede. ‘The king was very wrong to prefer them to our father.’

‘And She hates us still,’ Isabel says flatly.

I nod. ‘Yes, I suppose she always will; but she can’t do anything. While George and Richard are in the favour of the king all she can do is be as cold as the fish-woman on her family’s flag. She can’t even change the order of precedence. She can’t ignore us like she used to do. And anyway, when my baby is born I don’t plan to go back to court.’ I touch the thick wall beside the glazed window with satisfaction. ‘Nobody can hurt me here.’

‘I shall stay away from court too,’ she says. She smiles at me. ‘I shall have good reason to stay away. Do you notice anything about me?’

I raise my head and look at her more closely. ‘You look—’ I hunt for a phrase that is not impolite: ‘Bonny.’

She laughs. ‘You mean I am fat,’ she says joyfully. ‘I am getting good and fat. And I shall call on you to come to stay with me in August.’ She beams at me. ‘I shall want you to return the favour I am doing here.’

‘Iz—’ In a moment I understand what she means and then I take her hands. ‘Iz – you are expecting a baby?’

She laughs. ‘Yes, at last. I was starting to fear . . .’

‘Of course, of course. But you must rest now.’ At once I drag her to the fireside and pull her into a seat, put a stool under her feet, and smilingly regard her. ‘How wonderful! And you must not pick up things for me any more, and when you leave here, you must have a litter, and not go by horseback.’

‘I am well,’ she says. ‘I feel far better than last time. I am not afraid. At any rate I am not very afraid . . . and – oh, just think, Annie! – they will be cousins, my baby and yours, they will be cousins, born in the same year.’

There is a silence as we both think of the grandfather of our babies who will never see them, who would have regarded them as the fulfilment of his plans, who would at once have started new and ambitious plans for them, the minute that their little heads were in the cradle.

‘Father would have had their marriages laid out, and their heraldry drawn up already,’ Isabel says with a little laugh.

‘He would have got a dispensation and married them to each other,’ I say. ‘To keep their fortunes in the family.’ I pause. ‘Will you write and tell Mother?’ I ask tentatively.

She shrugs, her face closed and cold. ‘What’s the use?’ she asks. ‘She’ll never see her grandchild. She’ll never get out, and she has told me that if I cannot get her released then I am no daughter of hers. What’s the use in even thinking of her?’

The pains start at midnight, just when I am going to sleep with Isabel in the big bed beside me. I give a little cry and within moments she is up, throwing a gown over her shoulders, lighting candles from the fire, sending the maid for the midwives.