Virgin Widow. Anne O'Brien

not mean that you are cleverer. Or that the poppet is yours.’

      ‘It means I am more important.’

      I glared, fearing that she might be right. ‘I don’t see why it should.’

      Isabel tossed her head. ‘I am my father’s heir.’

      ‘But so am I.’ I did not yet understand the workings of the laws of inheritance. ‘My father is the Earl of Warwick, too.’

      She sneered from her height. Isabel had a very fine sneer. ‘But I’m the elder. My hand will be sought in marriage as soon as I am of marriageable age. I can look as high as I please for a husband. Even as high as a Prince of the Blood.’

      Which was true enough. She had been listening to our servants gossiping. The phrase had the smack of Margery at her most opinionated.

      ‘It’s not fair.’ A last resort. I pouted much like the disputed poppet.

      ‘Of course it is. No one will want you. You are the youngest and will have no inheritance.’

      I hit her with the racquet for the shuttlecock. It was an answer to every difficulty between us. She retaliated with a sharp slap to my cheek. Our squawks echoing off the walls of the inner courtyard brought our mother on the scene as well as our governess, Lady Masham, and Bessie. The Countess waved the women aside with a sigh of long-suffering tolerance when she saw the tears and my reddened cheek and swept us away to her parlour. There she pushed us to sit on low stools before her. I remember being suitably subdued.

      The Countess knew her daughters well. She preserved a stern face against the humour of our petty wilfulness as she sat in judgement.

      ‘What is it this time? Isabel? Did you strike your sister? Did you provoke her?’

      Isabel looked aside, a sly gesture as I thought. ‘No, madam. I did not.’

      I knew it! She thought I would be similarly reticent. We had been lectured often enough on the sin of pride and she would not wish to confess to the Countess the nature of our dispute. But the hurt to my self-esteem was as strong as the physical sting of the flat of Isabel’s hand and so I informed on her smartly enough. ‘She says that she’s more important. That no one will want me for a wife.’ The hot tears that sprang were not of hurt, but of rage.

      ‘Nor will they!’Isabel hissed like the snake she was. ‘If you can’t keep a still tongue—’

      ‘Isabel! Enough! It does not become you.’ The Countess’s frown silenced my sister as she leaned forwards to pull me, and the stool, closer. ‘Both of you are important to me.’ She blotted at the tears with the dagged edge of her over-sleeve.

      I shook my head. That was not what I wanted to hear. ‘She says that she will get all our father’s land. That I will get nothing.’

      ‘Isabel is wrong. You are joint heiresses. You will both inherit equally.’

      ‘Even though I am not a boy?’ I knew enough to understand the pre-eminence of such beings in a household. There were none in ours apart from the young sons of noble families, the henchmen, who came to finish their education with us. And they did not count. My mother had not carried a son, but only two girls.

      ‘Well…’The Countess looked doubtfully from one to the other, then back to me. ‘Your father’s lands and the title—the Neville inheritance—are entailed in the male line. That means that they will pass on to the son of your Uncle John and his wife Isabella. But the lands I brought to this marriage with your father belonged to my father and my mother, Richard Beauchamp and Isobel Despenser. It is a vast inheritance—land and castles and religious houses the length and breadth of England. And it will be split equally between the two of you.’

      ‘But she is too young.’ Isabel sprang to her feet so that she could stare down at me with all the hostility of being thwarted. ‘It should all be mine.’

      ‘You are greedy, Isabel. Sit down.’ Our mother waited until she did with bad grace. ‘Anne will not always be so young. She will grow into a great lady as you will. The land will be split equally. So there—you are both equally important.’

      ‘But I look like you.’ Isabel smiled winningly.

      The Countess laughed, although I did not understand why. ‘So you do. And I think you will be very beautiful, Isabel. But Anne has the look of her father.’ She touched the veil on my braided hair, still neat since it was early in the day. ‘She will become more comely as she grows. Looks mean nothing.’

      I expect my answering smile was disgracefully smug. When we were dismissed, Isabel stalked off, chin raised in disdain, but I stayed and leaned close, struck by the appallingly adult consequence of this conversation.

      ‘Mother—will you have to be dead before we have the land?’

      ‘Yes.’

      ‘Then I don’t want it.’

      She smiled, then hugged me. ‘It is a long way in the future, God willing, for both of us.’

      So the course of my life was to be underpinned by the Countess’s inheritance, half of which would pass to me. More importantly, my existence was to be turned on its head by Richard Plantagenet. Richard came into my life when I was eight years old and I was not overly impressed. We were living at Middleham, far in the north of the country at the time, the Earl and Countess’s favourite residence of all our castles. There were always young boys of good birth living in our household, from the most pre-eminent of families since the Earl was the King’s chief counsellor. They came to learn what they would need to know for a life in the highest circles. I had little to do with them, being a girl about her lessons, whilst the arts of warfare exercised most of their time. I was still in the company of Bessie and Lady Masham, an impoverished widow from the Countess’s wide-flung family employed to instruct me in the skills as chatelaine of a great household. The boys with their rough games and combative sports, an endless succession of clouts to the head, scrapes and bruises, did not interest me. Nor did they have any time for me. Except for Francis Lovell, my father’s ward, who was a permanent presence in the household and was not averse to spending time to talk to me although he was more my sister’s age. Francis was kind, above and beyond the demands of chivalry, towards a nuisance of a child such as I was.

      Then Richard arrived.

      I first noticed him, I think, because he reminded me of myself—we both suffered similar deficiencies. Shorter rather than taller. Slightly built rather than robust. A lot of dark hair as black as the wing of one of the ravens that nested in the crags beyond Middleham, although a lot more untidy than their sleek feathers. With the cruelty of youth I decided that because of his unimpressive stature and build he would make heavy weather of the training. What he would make of me I did not care. He was just another boy come to eat at our table and improve his manners.

      My father was away, sent by the King on an embassy to the French Court, so the Countess welcomed the newcomer in the main courtyard when he arrived with his escort, his body servant and train of baggage wagons. An imposing entourage for so young a person.

      ‘Welcome to Middleham, your Grace,’ the Countess received him.

      He bowed with surprising deftness. Even I could see that he had been well taught in the demands of courtly behaviour. Some of the lads almost fell over in the effort, flushing the colour of a beetroot at so gracious a reception by so great lady as my mother, before being taken in hand.

      ‘My lady.’ His reply was low, but not unconfident. ‘My lady mother the Duchess sends her kind regards and thanks you for your hospitality.’

      My mother smiled. ‘You are right welcome. The Master of Henchmen will show you where you will sleep and where to put your belongings. You will answer to him for all your training.’ She indicated Master Ellerby at her side. ‘Then my daughter Isabel will show you to my parlour where I will receive you.’

      She pushed Isabel forwards. The unloading began, horses led off to the stabling,