Don’t we all snatch at our own desires out of the miseries of others? But…there’ll be some hard bargaining. I wager I’ll not like the result.’ He took a deep breath as he must, before he could tolerate his decision. I thought he might choke on the necessity of it. ‘Beggars can’t choose where to put their allegiance.’ I could sense his sour disgust in the salt wind that caused both of us to shiver. Suddenly age seemed to press heavily on him. His dark hair, almost black, and so like my own, might gleam in the sun, but flecks of grey told their own tale.
‘Will we be made welcome?’ I still wanted to know.
My father turned back to search my face with a quizzical stare. It was a strange look, full of careful calculation. ‘Yes, I think we will,’ he murmured, eyes widening as if a thought had struck home.’ You will be made welcome, my daughter, at all events.’
‘I? What does King Louis know of me?’
‘Nothing yet, other than that you are my daughter. But he will not turn you from his door.’
I did not know why, nor did I ask further, coward that I was on this occasion, subdued by the events of those moody past days. I was a younger daughter who had once been betrothed to Richard of Gloucester. And had rapidly become undesirable as a bride and so was promptly unbetrothed when my father had taken up arms against Richard’s brother, King Edward. Now I was a hopeless exile. I could not imagine why the French King would give me even a second look. But the skin on my arms prickled with an unpleasant anticipation.
Now, without words, I followed the direction of the Earl’s appraisal of the French coast, where the grey waters of the vast river-mouth opened up before us. The rain-spattered land was as bleak and almost as unfriendly as the shores we had just left. I tried to see it—and us, our present situation—through my father’s eyes, and failed. The Earl of Warwick, powerless and well-nigh destitute, his lands confiscated, his good name trampled in the bloodstained mud of treachery.
How had it all come to this?
Chapter Two
1462—Middleham Castle, North Yorkshire
DESPITE my lack of years, I knew that I was an important person. I had always known that I was important. I was told as much by my sister Isabel when I was six years old. Or at least she had informed me from her heady and condescending height of eleven years that I might be important, but not as important as she was. Which was a typical calumny by my sister. Stated with overwhelming conviction, but with imperfect knowledge and little truth.
Isabel was five years older than I. Five years is a long time at that age. So with all that wealth of experience and her acknowledged position as the elder child of the powerful Earl of Warwick, she lorded it over me. She was tall for her age with fine light hair that curled at the ends, fair skin and light blue eyes. She looked like our mother, and our mother’s father, Richard Beauchamp, so I was led to believe, whereas I favoured the Neville side, to my detriment as I considered the comparison between us. Slight and slimboned with dark hair—unfortunately straight—dark eyes and sallow skin that did me no favours in cold winter weather. It was generally accepted that I would not have my sister’s beauty when I was grown, nor would I grow very tall. I was small for my age and wary of Isabel’s sharp fingers that pinched and poked.
We had had an argument over the ownership of a linen poppet dressed in a fine Court gown fashioned from scraps of old damask. It had been stitched for us by Bessie, our nurse, with embroidered eyes, black as the fire grate, and a pout of berry-red lips. The hair had been fashioned of wool and was black and straight beneath her linen veil. Because of her resemblance, I claimed stridently that the poppet was mine, but the squabble ended as it usually did with Isabel snatching it from my hands and holding it out of reach.
‘You’re cruel, Isabel. It was given to me. It was made for me.’
‘It’s mine. I’m older than you.’
‘But that does not mean that you are cleverer. Or that the poppet is yours.’
‘It means I am more important.’
I glared, fearing that she might be right. ‘I don’t see why it should.’
Isabel tossed her head. ‘I am my father’s heir.’
‘But so am I.’ I did not yet understand the workings of the laws of inheritance. ‘My father is the Earl of Warwick, too.’
She sneered from her height. Isabel had a very fine sneer. ‘But I’m the elder. My hand will be sought in marriage as soon as I am of marriageable age. I can look as high as I please for a husband. Even as high as a Prince of the Blood.’
Which was true enough. She had been listening to our servants gossiping. The phrase had the smack of Margery at her most opinionated.
‘It’s not fair.’ A last resort. I pouted much like the disputed poppet.
‘Of course it is. No one will want you. You are the youngest and will have no inheritance.’
I hit her with the racquet for the shuttlecock. It was an answer to every difficulty between us. She retaliated with a sharp slap to my cheek. Our squawks echoing off the walls of the inner courtyard brought our mother on the scene as well as our governess, Lady Masham, and Bessie. The Countess waved the women aside with a sigh of long-suffering tolerance when she saw the tears and my reddened cheek and swept us away to her parlour. There she pushed us to sit on low stools before her. I remember being suitably subdued.
The Countess knew her daughters well. She preserved a stern face against the humour of our petty wilfulness as she sat in judgement.
‘What is it this time? Isabel? Did you strike your sister? Did you provoke her?’
Isabel looked aside, a sly gesture as I thought. ‘No, madam. I did not.’
I knew it! She thought I would be similarly reticent. We had been lectured often enough on the sin of pride and she would not wish to confess to the Countess the nature of our dispute. But the hurt to my self-esteem was as strong as the physical sting of the flat of Isabel’s hand and so I informed on her smartly enough. ‘She says that she’s more important. That no one will want me for a wife.’ The hot tears that sprang were not of hurt, but of rage.
‘Nor will they!’Isabel hissed like the snake she was. ‘If you can’t keep a still tongue—’
‘Isabel! Enough! It does not become you.’ The Countess’s frown silenced my sister as she leaned forwards to pull me, and the stool, closer. ‘Both of you are important to me.’ She blotted at the tears with the dagged edge of her over-sleeve.
I shook my head. That was not what I wanted to hear. ‘She says that she will get all our father’s land. That I will get nothing.’
‘Isabel is wrong. You are joint heiresses. You will both inherit equally.’
‘Even though I am not a boy?’ I knew enough to understand the pre-eminence of such beings in a household. There were none in ours apart from the young sons of noble families, the henchmen, who came to finish their education with us. And they did not count. My mother had not carried a son, but only two girls.
‘Well…’The Countess looked doubtfully from one to the other, then back to me. ‘Your father’s lands
