I curtsey to the queen and then when she offers me her cool cheek, I kiss her as my sister-in-law, I kiss all three York girls, and curtsey to the five-year-old prince, and the toddler his brother. Only then, when I have worked my way through this extensive family, can I turn to my sister. I had been afraid that she would be angry with me for failing to be with her in her confinement but she hugs me at once. ‘Annie! I am so glad you are here. I have only just arrived or I would have come to your house.’
‘I couldn’t come, Richard wouldn’t let me come to your confinement,’ I say in a sudden rush of joy as I first hold her and then lean back to take in her smiling face. ‘I wanted to; but Richard wouldn’t allow it.’
‘I know,’ she says. ‘George didn’t want me to ask you. Have they quarrelled?’
I shake my head. ‘Not here,’ is all I say. The slightest tip of my head warns Isabel that Queen Elizabeth, who is apparently leaning down to speak to her son, is almost certainly listening to every word we say.
She slides her arm around my waist and we go as if to admire the new royal baby: another girl. The nursemaid shows her to us and then takes her to the nursery.
‘I think my Edward is a stronger child,’ Isabel remarks. ‘But She always has such beautiful babies, doesn’t she? How does she do it, do you think?’
I shake my head. I am not going to discuss the dangerous topics of the queen’s remarkable fertility or the success of her child-rearing.
Isabel follows my lead. ‘So – d’you know what is wrong between your husband and mine? Have they quarrelled?’
‘I overheard them,’ I confess. ‘I listened at the door. It’s not the money, Iz, not mother’s inheritance. It’s worse.’ I lower my voice. ‘I am very afraid that George may be preparing to challenge the king.’
She glances behind her at once, but in the noisy court we are alone and cannot be overheard. ‘Did he say so to Richard? Are you sure?’
‘Didn’t you know?’
‘He has men coming to him all the time, he is building up his affinity, he is taking advice from astrologers. But I thought it was for this invasion of France. He has brought more than a thousand men into the field. He and Richard have the greatest of the armies, they outnumber the king’s men. But I thought that George was mustering his men for his brother Edward, for this invasion of France. He surely cannot be thinking of claiming the throne when he has just put an army together to support Edward?’
‘Does he really think that Edward has no true claim to the throne?’ I ask curiously. ‘That’s what he said to Richard.’
Isabel shrugs. ‘We all know what is said,’ she answers shortly. ‘Edward looks nothing like his father, and he was born out of the country, during a time when his father was away fighting the French. There have always been rumours about him.’ She glances over to the royal family, at the queen among her beautiful children, laughing at something her daughter Elizabeth is saying. ‘And come to that, nobody witnessed their wedding. How do we know it was properly done, with a proper priest?’
I can’t bear to speak of invalid weddings with Isabel. ‘My husband won’t hear a word of it,’ I say. ‘I can’t speak of it.’
‘Is your sister telling you all about her new baby?’ the queen interrupts, calling across the room. ‘We have a richness of Edwards, do we not? We all have an Edward now.’
‘Many Edwards, but only one prince,’ my sister replies gracefully. ‘And you and His Grace the king are blessed with a fine nursery of many children.’
Queen Elizabeth looks complacently at the girls who are playing with their brother the Prince of Wales. ‘Well, God bless them all,’ she says pleasantly. ‘I hope to have as many as my mother did, and she gave her husband fourteen children. Let us all hope to be as fertile as our mothers!’
Isabel freezes, the smile vanishing from her face. The queen turns away to speak to someone else, and I say urgently: ‘What’s the matter? What’s the matter, Iz?’
‘She cursed us,’ she whispers to me, her voice a thread. ‘Did you hear her? She cursed us to have children like our mother. Two girls.’
‘She didn’t,’ I say. ‘She was just talking about her mother’s fourteen children.’
Isabel shakes her head. ‘She knows that George would inherit the throne if her sons were to die,’ she says. ‘And she doesn’t want my boy to succeed. I think she just cursed us. She cursed my son, in front of everyone. She wished that I would have the issue that my mother had: two girls. She cursed you too: two girls. She has just ill-wished our boys. She has just wished them dead.’
Isabel is so shaken that I take her out of sight of the queen, behind some people who are learning a new dance. They are making a lot of noise and practising the steps over and over. Nobody pays any attention to us at all.
