And so on, and so on, over three crumpled pages, with afterthoughts in the margins. I put the letter to one side and place my hand on the softness of my belly as if the warmth of my hand could hatch a new baby as if it were a chick in a shell. Isabel is right to be happy and proud in the safe delivery of another baby, and I am glad for her. But she might have thought how her words would strike me: her younger sister, still only twenty years old, with only one little boy in the nursery, after four, nearly five years of marriage.
Her letter is not all boasting, for she writes one word at the end of the letter to show that she has not forgotten her fear of the queen.
The door of my presence chamber opens and Richard comes in with his half-dozen friends, to escort me and my ladies to dinner. I stand and smile at him.
‘Good news?’ Richard asks, looking at the letter on the table beside me.
‘Oh yes!’ I say, holding my smile. ‘Very.’
WESTMINSTER PALACE, LONDON, CHRISTMAS DAY 1476
It is the season of Christmas and the royal family will blaze in jewels and the bright colours of the new fabrics that they have bought in, at the price of a small fortune, from Burgundy. Edward plays the part of a king in a swirl of cloth of gold and colour and the queen is always at his side as if she were born to the place – and not the lucky upstart she truly is.
We wake early for mass in the king’s chapel on this most holy day of the year. I have a great wooden bath, lined with the finest linen, rolled into my bedroom before the fire and the maids bring jugs of hot water and pour it around my shoulders as I wash my hair and my body with the rose-petal soap that Richard bought from the Moorish traders for me.
They wrap me in hot sheets while they lay out my gown for the day. I will wear deep red velvet trimmed with marten fur, a dark shiny pelt as good as anything the queen has. I have a new headdress that sits snugly on my head with coils of gold wire over my ears. They comb my hair dry as I sit before the warmth of the fire and then plait it and twist it up under the headdress. I have a new linen shift embroidered this summer by my ladies under my direction, and from the treasure room they bring my box and I pick out dark red rubies to match the gown.
When Richard comes to my presence chamber to accompany me to mass he is dressed in black, his preferred colour. He looks handsome and happy and as I greet him I feel the familiar pulse of desire. Perhaps tonight he will come to my room and tonight we will make another child. What could be a better day than the day when the Christ-child was born, to make another heir for the dukedom of Gloucester?
He offers me his arm and the knights of his household, all richly dressed, escort my ladies to the king’s chapel. We line up and wait, the king often keeps us waiting; but then there is a rustle and a little gasp from some of the ladies as he comes in, dressed in white and silver, and leading Her. She is in silver and white like him and she gleams in the shadows of the royal chapel as if she were lit by the moon. Her pale golden hair just shows beneath her crown, her neck is bare to the top of her gown, which is cut low and square and veiled with the finest lace. Behind them come their children, first the young Prince of Wales, six years old now, taller every time he comes to court, dressed to match his father, and then the nursemaid holding the hand of the little prince, still in his baby clothes of white and silver lace, then comes Princess Elizabeth dressed in white and silver like her parents, solemn with an ivory missal in her hand, smiling to one side and the other, poised and precocious as always, and behind her the rest of them, beautiful, royal, richly dressed little girls, all three of them and the new baby. I cannot watch them without envy.
I make sure that I am smiling, as the court smiles, to see this exquisite royal family walk by. The queen’s grey gaze flickers over me and I feel the chill of her regard, and the astute measurement, as if she knows that I am envious, as if she knows that I am fearful; and then the priest comes in and I can kneel and close my eyes and spare myself the sight of them.
When we get back to our own presence chamber there is a man waiting outside the closed double doors, travel-stained with his wet and muddy cape thrown on the stone windowsill. Our household guard bars the door to him, waiting for our return.
‘What’s this?’ Richard asks.
He drops to one knee, and holds out a letter. I see a red wax seal. Richard breaks it, and reads the few lines on the one page. I see his face darken and then he glances at me and back down at the page.
