He is beside his brother. He is always beside his brother – I have learned that there is a love and a fidelity here that nothing will ever change. As he catches my eye he beams at me, his dark face bright with affection. Anyone can see it who cares to look at him, he is hopelessly indiscreet. He puts his hand to his heart as if swearing fidelity to me. I look to left and right, thank God no-one is looking, they are all getting on their horses and George the duke is shouting for the guard. Recklessly, Richard stands there, his hand on his heart, looking at me as if he wants the world to know that he loves me.
He loves me.
I shake my head as if reproving him, and I look down at my hands on the reins. I look up again and he is still fixing his gaze on me, his hand still on his heart. I know I should look away, I know I should pretend to feel nothing but disdain – this is how the ladies in the troubadour poems behave. But I am a girl, and I am lonely and alone, and this is a handsome young man who has asked how he may serve me and now stands before me with his hand on his heart and his eyes laughing at me.
One of the guard stumbled while mounting his horse and his horse shied, knocking the nearby horseman. Everyone is looking that way, and the king puts his arm around his wife. I snatch off my glove and, in one swift gesture, I throw it towards Richard. He catches it out of the air and tucks it in the breast of his jacket. Nobody has seen it. Nobody knows. The guardsman steadies his horse, mounts it, nods his apology to his captain, and the royal family turn and wave to us.
Richard looks at me, buttoning the front of his jacket, and smiles at me warmly, assuredly. He has my glove, my favour. It is a pledge that I have given in the full knowledge of what I am doing. Because I don’t want to be anybody’s pawn again. The next move that is made will be mine. I will choose my freedom and I will choose my husband.
L’ERBER, LONDON, FEBRUARY 1472
George the duke and Isabel his duchess keep great state in London, where their house is as grand as a palace, with hundreds of servants and George’s own guard in his livery. He prides himself on his generosity and copies my father’s rule that anyone who calls at the kitchen door at dinner time can spear his dagger with slices of meat. There is a constant stream of petitioners and tenants asking favours and needing help and the door to George’s presence chamber stands open, since he will be denied to no man, not even to the poorest tenant on his lands. Everyone is to know that if they give George their fealty they can trust him to be a good lord to them. So dozens of people, hundreds, who would otherwise be indifferent, think of George as a good lord to have, a true ally on their side, a friend they would like – and George’s power and influence widens like a flooding river.
Isabel shows herself as a grand lady, processing to her chapel, giving alms to the poor, interceding for George’s mercy whenever she may be observed to do good. I trail behind her, one of the many objects of her ostentatious charity, and from time to time someone remarks how good my sister and my brother-in-law are to me, that they took me in when I was disgraced, and that they keep me in their home though I am penniless.
I wait until I can speak to George, since I think Isabel has become nothing more than his mouthpiece, and one afternoon I happen to be passing the stable yard when he comes in and dismounts from his horse and for once there is not a great crowd around him.
‘Brother, may I speak with you?’
He starts, for I am standing in a shadowed doorway and he thought he was alone.
‘Eh? Sister, of course, of course. It is always a pleasure to see you.’ He smiles at me, his confident handsome smile, and he runs his hand through his thick blond hair in his practised gesture. ‘How may I serve you?’
‘It is about my inheritance,’ I say boldly. ‘I understand that my mother is going to stay in the abbey and I wonder what is going to happen to her lands and fortune?’
He glances up at the windows of the house as if he wishes Isabel would see us in the stable below her, and hurry down. ‘Your mother chose to take sanctuary,’ he says. ‘And her husband was a warranted traitor. Their lands are forfeit to the crown.’
‘
He blinks. He did not know that I knew this. Again he glances around; but though the lads come to take his horse and his whip and his gloves there is no-one to interrupt me.
‘And, anyway, my mother’s lands are still in her keeping. She has not been declared a traitor.’
‘No.’
‘I understand that you propose to take her lands away from her and keep them for Isabel and for me?’
