I do as I have been commanded, I shrink back, I sink down, I look down. I do everything to indicate my penitence and my lack of worthiness to tread the same rushes as this king, who walks here in pomp only because he killed my father and my husband on the battlefield and my father-in-law by treachery. He goes past me with a pleasant smile: ‘Good day, Lady Anne.’
‘Dowager princess,’ I say to the rushes under my knees, but I make sure that no-one can hear me.
I keep my head down as the many pairs of beautifully embossed boots dawdle past and then I get up. Richard, the king’s nineteen-year-old brother, has not gone. He is leaning against the stone frame of a doorway and smiling at me, as if he has finally remembered that once we were friends, that he was my father’s ward and every night he used to kneel for my mother’s kiss as if he were her son.
‘Anne,’ he says simply.
‘Richard,’ I reply, giving him no title if he gives me none, though he is the Duke of Gloucester, and a royal duke, and I am a girl with no name.
‘I’ll be quick,’ he says, glancing along the corridor where his brother and his friends are strolling away speaking of hunting and a new dog that someone has brought from Hainault. ‘If you are happy living with your sister, with your inheritance robbed from you and your mother imprisoned, then I will not say another word.’
‘I’m not happy,’ I say rapidly.
‘If you see them as your gaolers, I could rescue you from them.’
‘I see them as my gaolers and my enemies and I hate them both.’
‘You hate your sister?’
‘I hate her even worse than I hate him.’
He nods, as if this is not shocking, but utterly reasonable. ‘Can you get out of your rooms at all?’
‘I walk in the privy garden in the afternoon most days.’
‘Alone?’
‘Since I have no friends.’
‘Come to the yew arbour this afternoon after dinner. I’ll be waiting.’
He turns without another word and runs after his brother’s court. I walk swiftly to my sister’s rooms.
In the afternoon my sister and all her ladies are preparing for a masque, and they are going to try their costumes in the wardrobe rooms. There is no part for me to learn, there is no ornate costume for me to try. They forget all about me in the excitement of the gowns and I take my chance and slip away, down a winding stone stair that leads directly to the garden, and from there to the yew arbour.
I see his slight form, seated on a stone bench, his hound beside him. The dog turns his head and pricks his ears at the sound of my shoes on the gravel. Richard rises to his feet as he sees me.
‘Does anybody know you are here?’
I feel my heart thud at this, a conspirator’s question. ‘No.’
He smiles. ‘How long do you have?’
‘Perhaps an hour.’
He draws me into the shade of the arbour, where it is cold and dark but the thick green branches hide us from view. Anyone would have to come to the very entrance of the circular planting of trees and peer inside to see us. We are hidden as if enclosed in a little green room. I draw my cloak around me and sit on the stone bench and look up at him, expectantly.
He laughs at my excited face. ‘I have to know what you want, before I can suggest anything.’
‘Why would you suggest anything at all for me?’
He shrugs. ‘Your father was a good man, he was a good guardian to me when I was his ward. I remember you with affection from childhood. I was happy in your house.’
‘And for this you would rescue me?’
‘I think you should be free to make your own choices.’
I look at him sceptically. He must think I am a fool. He was not thinking of my freedom when he led my horse to Worcester and handed me over to George and Isabel. ‘Then why didn’t you let me go to my mother, when you came for Margaret of Anjou?’
‘I didn’t know then that they would hold you as a prisoner. I thought I was taking you to your family, to safety.’
‘It’s because of the money,’ I tell him. ‘While they hold me, Isabel can claim all the inheritance from my mother.’
‘And while your sister does not protest they can hold your mother forever. George gets all your father’s lands, and if Isabel gets your mother’s lands that great inheritance is made one again, but inherited by only one of the Warwick girls: by Isabel, and her wealth is in George’s keeping.’
‘I am not allowed to even speak to the king, so how can I put my case?’
‘I could be your champion,’ Richard suggests slowly. ‘If you wanted me to serve you. I could speak to him for you.’
‘Why would you do this?’
He smiles at me. There is a world of invitation in his dark eyes. ‘Why d’you think?’ he says quietly.
‘Why d’you think?’ The question haunts me like a love song, as I hurry from the chilly garden and go up to Isabel’s rooms. My hands are freezing and my nose is red from the cold but nobody notices as I slip off my cloak and sit by the fire, pretending to listen to them talk about the gowns for the masque, though all I hear in my head is his question: ‘Why d’you think?’
