‘Really, I can’t. I can’t go on my own,’ Isabel pleads.
‘Your father says he needs you to be with your husband,’ my mother rules. ‘He says you must go at once.’
‘I thought I was to sail with Annie. I should stay with Annie and tell her how to behave. I am her lady in waiting, she needs me.’
‘I do,’ I confirm.
‘Queen Margaret has the command of Anne now, and Anne keeps the queen faithful to our agreement. She does that just by being there, being married to Prince Edward. She doesn’t have to do anything more. She needs no advice, she just has to obey the queen. But you must go to do your work with George,’ my mother tells her. ‘Your task is to keep him faithful to our cause and keep him away from his family. Intercept any messages they send him, make sure he is true to your father. Remind him that he is sworn to your father and to you. We’ll be only a few days behind you, and your father is victorious in England.’
Isabel reaches for my hand. ‘Oh go on,’ Mother says irritably. ‘Stop clinging to your sister. It just means you will be in London, with your father, making merry at court while we are stuck with the army in Dorset, making our way slowly to London. You will be at Westminster Palace picking your clothes from the royal wardrobe, while we trudge up the Fosse Way.’
They take her chests of clothes and bags of things.
‘Don’t go,’ I say in an urgent whisper. ‘Don’t leave me with the bad queen and her son.’
‘How can I refuse?’ she asks. ‘Don’t anger her, or him, just do as you are told. I’ll see you in London. We’ll be together then.’ She finds a smile. ‘Think, Annie, you’ll be Princess of Wales.’
Her smile dies, and we look bleakly at one another. ‘I have to go,’ she says as Mother beckons her impatiently, and with our half-sister Margaret and two other ladies in waiting she walks along the dock to the little ship. She glances back as she goes up the gangplank, and raises her hand to me. I think that nobody but me cares that she will be seasick.
HARFLEUR, FRANCE, MARCH 1471
The winds are holding us in harbour though we said we would set sail more than two weeks ago. My mother-in-law, Queen Margaret, is desperately impatient, and every dawn finds her on the quayside arguing with the captains of her fleet. They assure her that since we are held in port by winds that blow so strongly onshore that we cannot get our ships out to sea, then the very same winds will be blowing the invasion fleet of King Edward further along the coast in Flanders, against his harbour walls, holding him powerlessly in port, like us.
For it turns out that he has not been wasting his time in exile. While my father has taken England under his command, released the king from the Tower and crowned him again, restored the lords of Lancaster to glory and announced that Prince Edward and I are married, the vanquished King Edward has scrounged for money, raised a fleet, recruited a ragtail army, and is waiting for good winds – just like us – to get back to England. Since his wife Elizabeth has given birth to a boy in sanctuary his friends and supporters claim this as a sign of their destiny, and urge him to attack my father’s peace. So now we have to get to England before him, so that we can support my father against the invasion of Edward of York. We have to get to England ahead of King Edward, his loyal brother Richard, his friends and his fleet. This is a necessity, not a matter of choice; it must be done, and yet the wind blows steadily and powerfully against us. For sixteen days it has held us here, on the quayside, while the queen rages at her captains, and clings white-faced to the clenched fists of her son, and looks at me as if I am a heavy burden to ship across a stormy sea.
She is regretting now that she waited in France for our wedding. She is thinking that we should have marched at once and invaded alongside my victorious father. If we had gone then, we would be in London now, receiving oaths of fealty. But she did not trust my father, and she did not trust me. She delayed to see me married to her son; she had to see my father pin me, like a pledge into her hat, without chance of retreat. Only our marriage and my bedding reassured her that neither he nor she could play false. And secretly, she wanted the delay. She wanted to see that my father could capture England before she wasted her precious son on me. Now, because she delayed to see Father win, because she had to wait to secure me, she is trapped on the wrong side of the narrow seas and an inexplicable wind blows against her every day.
HARFLEUR, FRANCE, 12 APRIL 1471
‘We sail tomorrow at dawn,’ the queen says as she walks past Mother and I, standing on the quayside as usual, as we do every day, looking out to sea. This is all any of us has done for the past two weeks – we look to the horizon and we wait for the wind to die down and the seas to quiet. ‘They think the wind will drop overnight. Even if it does not, we have to sail tomorrow. We cannot delay.’
