Philippa Gregory - The Kingmaker's Daughter

I think of the horrors that this queen unleashed on the country with her court favourites and her ambition. I think of my father swearing that the king had flung himself into a sleep like death because he could not bear waking life with her. I think of the years when my father ruled England and this woman raged in Scotland, raising an army which came south like a band of brigands, half-naked, stealing, raping and murdering wherever they went until the country swore that they would have no more of this queen, and the citizens of London closed their gates to her and begged her best friend Jacquetta Woodville to tell her to take the army of the North back to their home.

Something of this shows in my face for she laughs shortly, and says to me: ‘It is easy to be squeamish when you are a girl. It is easy to be principled when you have nothing. But when you are a woman and you have a son destined for the throne, after years of waiting, and when you are a queen and you want to keep your crown, you will be ready to do anything; anything. You will be ready to kill for it: kill innocents if need be. And you will be glad then that I have taught you all that I know.’ She smiles at me. ‘When you can do anything – anything – to keep your throne and keep your crown and keep your husband where he should be, then you will know that you have learned from me. Then you will be my daughter indeed.’

She repels me, she absolutely terrifies me. I dare say nothing.

She turns to the high altar. I see a slight figure standing beside my father: Prince Edward. There is a bishop before him with his missal open at the page of the marriage service.

‘Come,’ the bad queen says. ‘This is your first step, I will guide all the others.’ She takes me by the hand and leads me towards him.

I am fourteen years old, the daughter of an arraigned traitor in exile with a price on his head. I am about to be betrothed to a boy nearly three years older than me, the son of the most terrifying woman England has ever known, and through this marriage my father will bring her back into England like the wolf that they call her. And from this moment I will have to call this monster my mother.

I glance back at Isabel, who seems a long way away. She tries to smile encouragingly at me but her face is strained and pale in the darkness of the cathedral. I remember her saying to me on her wedding night: ‘Don’t go.’ I mouth the words to her and then I turn and walk towards my father to do his bidding.

AMBOISE, FRANCE, WINTER 1470

I cannot believe the life that is unfolding before me. In the cold light of the winter mornings I wake beside Isabel and have to lie still and look around the stone walls of the room and the tapestries, dull-coloured in the early light, to remind myself of where I am, how far we have come, and my dazzling incredible future. Then I tell myself once more: I am Anne of Warwick; still me. I am betrothed to Prince Edward of Lancaster, I am Princess of Wales while the old king lives, and on his death I will be Queen Anne of England.

‘You’re muttering again,’ Isabel says crossly. ‘Muttering like a mad old woman. Shut up, you sound ridiculous.’

I press my lips together to silence myself. This has become my ritual, as regularly observed as Prime. I cannot start the day without running through the changes in my life. It is as if I cannot believe that I am here, without reciting my expectations, my unbelievable hopes. First I open my eyes and see again that I am in one of the best rooms of the beautiful chateau of Amboise. In this fairytale castle we are the guests of the man who was once our greatest enemy: Louis King of France, now our greatest friend. I am betrothed to marry the son of the bad queen and the sleeping king, only now I must always remember to call her Lady Mother, and him, my royal father: King Henry. Isabel is not to be Queen of England, George is not to be king. She will be my chief lady in waiting and I am to be queen. Most extraordinary of all, Father has already taken England by storm, marched on London, released the sleeping king – King Henry – from the Tower, taken him out before the people and had him loudly proclaimed as King of England, returned to his people, restored to his throne. The people welcome this. Incredulously, in France, we learn to celebrate the triumph of Lancaster, say ‘our house’ when we mean the red rose, reverse all the loyalties of my life.

Queen Elizabeth, in terror of the open enmity of my father, has fled into sanctuary and is in hiding with her mother and her daughters, pregnant with another child, abandoned by her husband. It does not matter now if she has a boy, a girl, or the miscarriage that George wished on her – her son will never sit on the throne of England, for the House of York is utterly thrown down. She is cowering in sanctuary, and her husband, the handsome and once-powerful King Edward, our friend, our former hero, has fled from England like a coward, accompanied only by his loyal brother Richard and half a dozen others, and they are kicking their heels and fearing for their futures somewhere in Flanders. Father will make war on them there, next year. He will hunt them down and kill them like the outlaws they now are.

The queen who was so beautiful in her triumph, who was so steely in her dislike, is back to where she started, a penniless widow with no prospects. I should be glad, this is my revenge for the thousands of slights that she paid to Isabel and me, but I cannot help but think of her, and wonder how she will survive childbirth in the dark rooms of sanctuary beneath Westminster Abbey, and how she will ever get out?

Father has won England – he has returned to his irresistible winning form. George was faithfully at his side throughout the campaign, despite the temptations to treachery from the House of York, and Father has done all that he said he would do. I am to join him, as soon as Prince Edward and I are married; we wait only for a dispensation from the Pope to confirm our betrothal. As a young husband and wife, we will join Father in England, and we will be proclaimed Prince and Princess of Wales. I will be at the side of Queen Margaret of Anjou; she is my mentor and my guide. They will send Queen Elizabeth’s ermines from the wardrobe once again, only this time they will stitch them on my gowns.

‘Shut up!’ Isabel says. ‘You are doing it again.’

‘I can’t believe it. I can’t understand it,’ I tell her. ‘I have to say it over and over again to make myself believe it.’

‘Well, in a little while you can mutter at your husband and see if he likes waking to a mad girl whispering away,’ she says brutally. ‘And I will be able to sleep in the mornings.’

That silences me, as she knew it would. I see my betrothed husband every day, when he comes to sit with his mother in the afternoon, and when we all go in to dinner in the evening. He takes her hand, I walk behind them. She takes the precedence of a queen, I am only a princess-to-be. He is three years older than me of course, so perhaps that is why he behaves as if he can hardly be troubled with me at all. He must have thought of my father with the same horror and hatred that we were taught to think of his mother; perhaps that is why he is so cold to me. Perhaps that is why I feel that we are still strangers, almost enemies.

He has his mother’s fair hair, fair almost copper. He has her round face and her little spoiled mouth. He is lithe and strong, he has been raised to ride and fight, he has courage I know, for people say he is a good jouster. He has been on battlefields since he was a child, perhaps he has become hardened and cannot be expected to feel affection for a girl, the daughter of his former enemy. There is a story about him, aged only seven, calling for the York knights who protected his father to be beheaded, though they had kept his father safe during the battle. Nobody tells me that it is untrue. But maybe this is my fault – I have never asked anyone of his mother’s court if such a young boy could do such a thing, if, in fact, it ever happened: if he blithely gave such a murderous order. I dare not ask his mother if it is true that she asked her seven-year-old son to name what death two honourable men should die. Actually, I never ask her anything.