I have little cause for pride. I feel that I am falling very low and I have no protector. I have neither fortune, nor affinity, nor great name. My father died as a traitor, my mother is all but imprisoned. No man will want me as a wife to further his line. Nobody can be certain that I could give him sons, for my mother had only two girls, and I conceived nothing during my brief marriage to the prince. As soon as I am out of mourning I think that King Edward will grant some low knight a tiny share of my father’s lands and my hand with it, as a reward for some shameful deed on the battlefield, and I shall be sent off to the country to raise hens, keep sheep and breed children if I can do it.
I know that my father would not have wanted this for me. He and my mother put a fortune together for the two of us, their treasured daughters. Isabel and I were the richest heiresses in England, and now I have nothing. My father’s fortune is to be given to George, and my mother’s fortune is to be taken from us without a word of protest. Isabel lets them call my mother a traitor and confiscate her fortune so that we are both paupers.
Finally I ask her why.
She laughs in my face. She is standing before a great tapestry tied tight on a loom, weaving the final gold threads herself, and her ladies are admiring the design. The weavers will come in later to finish the work and cut the threads, Isabel is playing at work with priceless gold thread on her shuttle. Now, a duchess of the famously cultured House of York, she has become a connoisseur.
‘It’s obvious,’ she says. ‘Obvious.’
‘Not to me,’ I reply steadily. ‘It’s not obvious to me.’
Carefully she threads the shuttle through the tapestry and one of the ladies cards it for her. They all step back and admire the result. I grit my teeth on my irritation.
‘It’s not obvious to me why you leave my mother in Beaulieu Abbey and let her fortune be seized by the king. Why do you not ask him to share it between the two of us if it has to be taken from her? Why don’t you petition the king to return us at least some of Father’s lands? How can it be that we don’t at least keep Warwick Castle, our home? There have been Nevilles at Warwick Castle since the beginning of time. Why do you let everything go to George? If you will not petition the king, then I will. We cannot be left with nothing.’
She hands the shuttle and thread to one of her ladies and takes me by the arm and leads me away, so that nobody can hear her quiet words. ‘You will not petition the king for everything; it has all been arranged. Mother keeps writing to him, and to all the royal ladies, but it makes no difference. It has all been arranged.’
‘What has been arranged?’
She hesitates. ‘Father’s fortune goes to the king as he was attainted of treason.’
I open my mouth to protest: ‘He wasn’t attainted . . .’
But she pinches my arm. ‘He would have been. He fell as a traitor, it doesn’t make any difference. The king has granted it all to George. And Mother’s fortune is taken from her.’
‘Why? She’s not been tried for treason. She’s not even been accused.’
‘Her fortune will be passed on to her heir. To me.’
I take a moment to understand. ‘But what about me? I am joint heir with you. We have to share everything.’
‘I will give you a dower on your marriage, from my fortune.’
I look at Isabel, who turns her gaze from the window and looks nervously back at me. ‘You have to remember that you were the wife of a pretender to the throne. You are bound to be punished.’
‘But it is you that are punishing me!’
She shakes her head. ‘It is the House of York. I am just a duchess of the house.’ Her sly little smile reminds me that she is on the winning side while I was married to the losers.
‘You cannot take everything and leave me with nothing!’
She shrugs. Clearly, she can.
I pull away from her. ‘Isabel, if you do this, you are no sister to me!’
She takes my arm again. ‘I am, and I am going to make sure that you make a wonderful marriage.’
‘I don’t want a wonderful marriage, I want my own inheritance. I want the lands that my father would have given me. I want the fortune that my mother intended for me.’
‘If you don’t want to marry then there is another way . . .’ She hesitates.
I wait.
‘George says that he can get permission for you to join a convent. You could join our mother if you like, at Beaulieu Abbey.’
I stare at her. ‘You would have our mother imprisoned for life and then lock me up with her as well?’
‘George says . . .’
‘I don’t want to know what George says. George says whatever the king tells him to say, and the king says whatever Elizabeth Woodville tells him to say! The House of York are our enemies and you have sided with them, as bad as any of them!’
In an instant she pulls me closer and puts her fingers firmly across my mouth. ‘Shut up! Don’t speak like that of them! Ever!’
