Virgin Widow. Anne O'Brien

for us a long and distressing voyage west along the coast from Calais. The winds and tides did us no favours and there was an uneasy pall of death over the ship. Isabel regained her strength, enough to sit in her chair or walk a few steps on deck, but not her spirits. Clarence did not endear himself. He remained brashly insensitive, rarely asking about her, rarely seeking her company, too concerned with the instability of his own future now that he was branded traitor to his brother. The Earl and Countess held discussions deep into the night. I knew it was about our future plans, where we would go now that Calais was barred to us. We could not return to England unless we had an army at our back—that much I understood. All my father’s wealth was not sufficient to fund such an enterprise. If we returned to cast ourselves on King Edward’s mercy, we would all be locked up. Without doubt heads would roll. The line between my father’s brows grew deeper as his options narrowed. Not yet knowing what they were, still I realised that they were distasteful to the Earl and to the Countess. As for Clarence, he did not care, as long as there was a golden crown for him at the end.

      I spent much time on deck, leaning on the side of the vessel to look back over the grey water that would separate me from all I had known, the security of my home at Middleham, my privileged life. And from Richard, who filled my thoughts even when I tried to banish him. Windblown and dishevelled, damp skirts clinging to my knees, I was as silent and sullen as the weather. Until the Countess took me to task and sent me off to keep my sister company.

      ‘Go and talk to Isabel. And if she wishes to talk to you about the child she has lost, do so. For her husband surely does not.’

      Her less-than-subtle criticism of despicable Clarence spurred me on. Without argument, I allowed Isabel to weep out her loss on my shoulder and told her that surely everything could be made right once we had found a landing. I hated my empty words, but Isabel seemed to find some solace there.

      Sometimes it seemed to me that we would never find a safe haven.

      The Earl made his decision. On the first day of May, when the sun actually broke through the clouds and shone down on our wretched vessel, we reached our goal and anchored off the port of Honfleur in the mouth of the great river that flowed before us into the depths of France. Standing at the Earl’s side, I watched as the land drew closer, as the sun glinted on the angled wings of the wheeling gulls. For the first time in days my spirits rose from the depths.

      ‘The Seine,’ my father explained, but I already knew.

      ‘Do we land here? Do we stay in Honfleur?’ I was fairly sure of the answer. There was really only one destination possible for our party.

      ‘No. We go on to Paris.’

      ‘Why?’

      ‘Why, indeed, my percipient daughter. It’s a question I ask myself in the dark hours.’ The Earl laughed softly, but it held an edge that grated on my nerves. ‘It has been an unpalatable decision to make.’

      So much I knew. Although I might anticipate the wealth and the luxury of the French Court—I had never been there, only heard of its sumptuous magnificence under the open-handed rule of King Louis XI—my father was not taking us there for the comforts of the feather beds and the culinary delight of roast peacock served on gold plate. We had all of that and more in our own home in London, Warwick Inn, where foreign ambassadors were sent to us to be impressed.

      ‘What choice do we have but to go to the French Court unless we wish to roam the seas for ever?’ he asked of no one, certainly not expecting an answer from me. ‘We are going to throw in our lot with Louis.’

      ‘Will he help us?’

      ‘I don’t know.’

      A brutally honest answer. But why wouldn’t he? I knew my father had worked tirelessly for an alliance between King Edward and Louis. That Louis had always had a strong regard for the Earl, addressing him as my dear cousin Warwick despite the lack of shared blood.

      ‘Can you not persuade him?’

      It caused the Earl to glance down at me, his preoccupation tinged with amusement. He smiled. ‘Yes, perhaps I can. I think he will help us, simply because it is in his French Majesty’s nature to find some personal gain for himself in doing so. I can accept that. Don’t we all snatch at our own desires out of the miseries of others? But…there’ll be some hard bargaining. I wager I’ll not like the result.’ He took a deep breath as he must, before he could tolerate his decision. I thought he might choke on the necessity of it. ‘Beggars can’t choose where to put their allegiance.’ I could sense his sour disgust in the salt wind that caused both of us to shiver. Suddenly age seemed to press heavily on him. His dark hair, almost black, and so like my own, might gleam in the sun, but flecks of grey told their own tale.

      ‘Will we be made welcome?’ I still wanted to know.

      My father turned back to search my face with a quizzical stare. It was a strange look, full of careful calculation. ‘Yes, I think we will,’ he murmured, eyes widening as if a thought had struck home.’ You will be made welcome, my daughter, at all events.’

      ‘I? What does King Louis know of me?’

      ‘Nothing yet, other than that you are my daughter. But he will not turn you from his door.’

      I did not know why, nor did I ask further, coward that I was on this occasion, subdued by the events of those moody past days. I was a younger daughter who had once been betrothed to Richard of Gloucester. And had rapidly become undesirable as a bride and so was promptly unbetrothed when my father had taken up arms against Richard’s brother, King Edward. Now I was a hopeless exile. I could not imagine why the French King would give me even a second look. But the skin on my arms prickled with an unpleasant anticipation.

      Now, without words, I followed the direction of the Earl’s appraisal of the French coast, where the grey waters of the vast river-mouth opened up before us. The rain-spattered land was as bleak and almost as unfriendly as the shores we had just left. I tried to see it—and us, our present situation—through my father’s eyes, and failed. The Earl of Warwick, powerless and well-nigh destitute, his lands confiscated, his good name trampled in the bloodstained mud of treachery.

      How had it all come to this?

      Chapter Two

      1462—Middleham Castle, North Yorkshire

      DESPITE my lack of years, I knew that I was an important person. I had always known that I was important. I was told as much by my sister Isabel when I was six years old. Or at least she had informed me from her heady and condescending height of eleven years that I might be important, but not as important as she was. Which was a typical calumny by my sister. Stated with overwhelming conviction, but with imperfect knowledge and little truth.

      Isabel was five years older than I. Five years is a long time at that age. So with all that wealth of experience and her acknowledged position as the elder child of the powerful Earl of Warwick, she lorded it over me. She was tall for her age with fine light hair that curled at the ends, fair skin and light blue eyes. She looked like our mother, and our mother’s father, Richard Beauchamp, so I was led to believe, whereas I favoured the Neville side, to my detriment as I considered the comparison between us. Slight and slimboned with dark hair—unfortunately straight—dark eyes and sallow skin that did me no favours in cold winter weather. It was generally accepted that I would not have my sister’s beauty when I was grown, nor would I grow very tall. I was small for my age and wary of Isabel’s sharp fingers that pinched and poked.

      We had had an argument over the ownership of a linen poppet dressed in a fine Court gown fashioned from scraps of old damask. It had been stitched for us by Bessie, our nurse, with embroidered eyes, black as the fire grate, and a pout of berry-red lips. The hair had been fashioned of wool and was black and straight beneath her linen veil. Because of her resemblance, I claimed stridently that the poppet was mine, but the squabble ended as it usually did with Isabel snatching it from my hands and holding it out of reach.

      ‘You’re