10

‘All I can say’, panted Anne Pratte, half-running along beside Isabel – who had nodded curtly when she'd seen the white-headed silkwoman hovering by the Ludgate jetty, but hadn't slowed down, because she was trying to avoid acknowledging that Anne Pratte was waiting specially for her even if no other explanation was likely; because she didn't want to get caught up with the Catte Street women now; because she wanted to get to Jane's as quickly as possible – ‘is thank the good Lord that Goffredo isn't going to be back for a while with his people. Because this is not the time. Not at all the time. Now, do slow down a bit, dear, would you? I'm all out of breath.’

Isabel sighed and stopped. Anne Pratte's little chest was heaving so much she'd put a frail claw of a hand to her throat. But it didn't make Isabel soften as much as she was meant to. She knew Anne Pratte was using her fluffiness as a weapon. Alice Claver must have sent her out to bring Isabel home. ‘I can't come home with you now,’ Isabel said firmly, though less firmly than she'd meant to. ‘I have to go to Jane.’

Her heart was pounding. She'd spent the entire trip back imagining Jane, alone in her room, listening to the bells; with her future gone, with no one to turn to, no one to talk to, no one to tell her what was happening. Imagining Jane's pain made her feel dizzy. Bereft.

She had to shout above all the other voices, and the bells. There were bells ringing everywhere, the same slow one-note lament being bashed out from every belfry, so loud and discordant and ominous you could go mad from it. No one had known the King was ill, but now everyone was whispering. He'd caught a cold fishing. He'd had a fit thinking about the King of France. His death brought utter shock. It was pandemonium everywhere you looked: markets closing hours ahead of time; shutters going up against the midday sun on the windows of houses; youths scurrying home under mounds of bolts and bags and bundles of goods; a crowd of citizens shouting at St Paul's Yard, some in their ill-fitting military harness, with straps hanging loose and bellies hanging out; and every church doorway up Ludgate Hill a smaller buzz of panic and people. No one able to see whether this news would rupture the delicate webs of agreements they'd made of their peaceable lives; everyone fearing the worst.

Anne Pratte's face fell. She looked piteous. ‘Have the apprentices closed down the shops?’ Isabel asked. Reluctantly, Anne Pratte nodded. ‘Is everything properly shuttered and boarded?’ Isabel asked. Anne Pratte nodded, even more reluctantly. ‘Are all the girls in and is there supper for everyone?’ Another woebegone nod. ‘Well, then, you'll be fine. You've got it all in hand. Go back. I'll come as soon as I can,’ Isabel said.

‘But, dear, you can't wander round on your own in all this,’ Anne Pratte quavered. ‘Alice would never forgive me if I let any harm come to you.’ She stopped as if struck by an idea. ‘I know!’ she exclaimed brightly. ‘I'll come with you.’

‘No,’ Isabel said.

Anne Pratte gave her a birdlike, considering stare. Isabel stared levelly back. The Catte Street women would, once they stopped panicking, probably want to know how Jane was faring, she thought. Isabel smiled down at Anne Pratte, but firmly. ‘Tell Alice I'll be back in an hour,’ she said.

They'd reached Old Jewry. Isabel banged on Jane's door, only half-listening to Anne Pratte's meek ‘All right, then, dear,’ and retreating footsteps. But, as she was let into the courtyard and turned to hand the boy her reins, she realised Anne Pratte was going no further than the Prattes' own home over the road, to wait out Isabel's visit.

Jane was sitting in her great hall, on a stool, up against the edge of the window, leaning her cheek on the leaded panes, still in bright skirts, watching the crowds.

She didn't get up when her eyes fell on Isabel. But she raised her head. The leading had imprinted her cheek with a red lattice of diamond marks. She must have been there for hours, ever since the bells began.

Jane smiled vaguely. ‘Just like that,’ she said. She clicked her fingers, then looked surprised at them for making their loud sharp sound. ‘Gone.’

It was unbearable. Isabel rushed to her, enfolding Jane's unresisting limpness in her own arms. They swayed together like that for a while; for long enough that Isabel noticed the first raindrops begin to batter against the glass; for long enough for her to realise Jane was still staring over her shoulder through the window; for long enough for her to realise Jane wasn't going to cry.

‘Look at them,’ Jane said. ‘Running about. Everyone so scared.’ She was still smiling. Her voice was hollow. ‘But no one knowing what to be scared of.’

Isabel didn't know how to be of comfort. After a pause, she pulled up a stool and sat down.

‘How can I help?’ she asked. But Jane only said, kindly, but as though from a great distance: ‘You mustn't worry about me, Isabel. I don't need anything. I've been lucky.’

‘But do you have money?’ Isabel asked. She knew the house was Jane's, and that Jane had an allowance, but she'd never thought about the mechanics of it. If the King was dead, would it stop?

Jane shook her head as if she didn't want to think of such things now. ‘I'm fine, honestly. I'm quite rich, I think. I have rents, shops, I don't even know what. Father administers it all; he set it up so I'd never have to worry; he pays my allowance.’ She laughed, plucking at her rings. ‘He's always said how bad Edward is with money,’ she added. She opened her eyes wide at what she'd said, but didn't stumble or sob as she corrected herself: ‘Was.’

‘What will you do?’ Isabel asked, trying to force Jane to acknowledge the reality of King Edward being gone; of being left alone here: to organise herself for an uncertain future in some new way. ‘Do you want to stay with me?’ But she knew as she said it that that was a bad idea. Alice Claver wouldn't be able to behave. Perhaps Jane should go for a while to their father's, in Somerset?

Jane only shook her head. ‘Why would I go away?’ she said blankly. ‘There are memories here, in everything I touch and see. This is my home. Where would I go?’

There was a bang at the door. Footsteps.

Jane was up off her stool and running across the room.

From the shadows out of sight, beyond the doorway, Isabel heard Jane's voice cry, ‘I thought you'd never come!’ and a deep voice she thought she knew from somewhere answer with a murmur of comfort.

She sat absolutely still on her stool, hardly daring to breathe.

When Jane came back into the room, Isabel noticed tears glistening on her face. Not enough to blotch her skin or make her ugly; just a couple of dewdrops on her cheeks and squeezing from her green eyes. But she looked relieved; less frozen. And behind her was Lord Hastings – razor-cheekboned, straight-nosed, bare-headed and tousled from the ride; with his dripping hat in his hand and his long, dark eyebrows making a single slash of a line across his forehead. He still looked young; unlike the King he'd stayed slim and fighting fit. It took Isabel a second or two to notice that the dead King's best friend had his arm around Jane's waist.

Hastings nodded at Isabel with a glimmer of acceptance that came close to a smile. She'd always liked his straightforwardness. ‘Mistress Claver,’ he said, by way of greeting.

She nodded back. Avoided Jane's eye. ‘My lord,’ she answered, with all the poise she could manage; then, neutrally, to Jane's shoulder, aware of Jane's hand settling on Will Hastings' arm on Jane's waist; of the moist, hungry look in her sister's eyes: ‘I should get back to Catte Street. My old ladies need me.’

She was astonished when Jane's lips began to twitch. ‘I think you'll find Anne Pratte outside,’ she said, not unkindly. ‘She's been sitting at her window watching us ever since you got here. Look at her. Eating us up. She's waiting for you. She's worried.’

Isabel glanced over at the window as she backed towards the door. It was true. There was a shadow in the window of the house opposite. Jane had guessed it was Anne Pratte; she was more observant than Isabel even now. Why had Isabel thought she'd need protecting?

She didn't have to turn round as she left the room to know Jane was already kissing Lord Hastings.

‘Oh there you are, dear,’ Anne Pratte said cosily, as Isabel trudged miserably out to the wet street. She looked supremely unconcerned by the coincidence of being there as Isabel emerged. She had a bundle in her hand and a piece of sacking over her head. ‘We can walk back together, then. I've just been picking up a few things from home …’

Isabel sighed and took the bundle. Her mind was churning with so many new thoughts that there was no space for annoyance. But she wasn't letting Anne Pratte have her own way in everything. When the older woman asked, casually, as they began to move forwards, side by side, both heads under the sacking, ‘Wasn't that Lord Hastings going into your sister's house?’ Isabel pretended not to hear.

She walked on, feeling her clothes get wetter, ignoring the rain funnelling down the frayed threads edging the sack and dripping into her eyes. But she was aware of Anne Pratte's sideways looks.

‘You look shocked,’ she heard the thin little voice say. She walked on. ‘Don't be.’ She kept walking. ‘She needs a new protector.’ Isabel carried on walking, as if she hadn't heard the voice, wondering why the raindrops on her face felt hot and salty.

‘Girls your age usually don't understand. You didn't grow up in the war; how can you? But she's no fool,’ Anne Pratte was saying, almost as if she were talking to herself. Gradually, without looking, Isabel found herself listening. ‘I understand her. I'm old; and all us old people grew up with fear. When the war was on you could be swallowed up by the unknown at any moment, and you never forgot it. I was a grown-up girl the year you were born; when King Henry's garrison in the Tower turned their guns on us to force London to be Lancastrian. Of course it turned us Yorkist instead. To a man. To a woman.

We'd had enough: ships not coming in; the courts full of bully boys; the roads full of robbers. So we all came out to fight for the Duke of York. My old father was one of the men blockading the Tower. And when the French Queen brought her army to the gates – they were northerners; people said they howled instead of talking, like the hounds of Hell – my father was one of the Londoners who went out and told them we weren't opening the gates to that woman. No one knew what would happen. It was terrifying; but not like giving in to the war had been before. We weren't just waiting for death any more; we were doing something. It was them who gave up in the end, not us: the North men and the French Queen. They went away. We won – the little people of London. That's how brave we were. And when the Duke of York came with his army at the end of the summer, we let him in. We chose him. That's how we ended up with good King Edward, God rest his soul, and all these years of peace and prosperity we've enjoyed till now.’ She crossed herself. ‘And it's how I know about being afraid unless you act to protect yourself.’

Isabel stole a glance at Anne Pratte. The little old woman's face was as calm as her voice; but her eyes were strangely full of fire. ‘I was never supposed to be a silk-woman, you know,’ Anne Pratte added unexpectedly. ‘My father had me down for a nunnery – the Minories. But then my sister died. Alice, she was called; she got hit by the wildfire they started pelting us with. The Lancastrians. It stuck to her arm, stuck and burned. You couldn't wash it off. We tried, but water only made it burn harder. I'll never forget the way she screamed. All night long. It was after she died, God rest her, that my father went out and started helping the men at the Tower. They got the garrison commander in the end: Lord Scales. Caught him trying to escape down the Thames disguised as a woman. The boatmen recognised him. They left his body at St Mary Overy. My father took us to see. Stab wounds everywhere. Flies. People spitting. My mother spat. I was the only child they had left. So he sent me to be an apprentice at John Large's instead of a bride of Christ. And I married William.’ She smiled, but there was sadness in her face. ‘And I've been happy with him.’

She added: ‘They say war is like the wind. It brings on the storm clouds, but it brings the silver linings too. You feel more alive in the shadow of death. You seize your chances; you don't think twice. And things change so fast that, even if everything you thought you had disappears just like that, other dreams come true. If you're quick on your feet.

‘Your Jane's quick on her feet,’ she finished, slipping an arm through Isabel's. ‘She's always had a kind heart. She's helped you with your dreams. All of us. Maybe this is her time to have her dreams come true.’

Isabel's head nodded rhythmically as she walked, eyes still fixed ahead; finding the warmth of Anne Pratte's arm a comfort. Thinking about dreams coming true.

William Hastings closed his eyes for a moment, shutting out everything but Jane's mouth gently on his chest and her long hair under his mouth, the astonishing sensation of skin on skin; his arms around her; the quiet that no one now had a right to break.

He'd galloped here all the way from Westminster, his men lost behind him. He was drenched in sweat when he walked through her door, pacing and flashing with the memories of the morning. He hadn't said a word as he'd carried her upstairs. But he hadn't needed to. It was the moment they'd both waited years for.

He opened his eyes. She was still there, soft as swan down.

Not a dream, then, he thought with a brief return of the humour that had deserted him earlier. But that meant the rest of what had happened wasn't just a nightmare either.

He sat bolt upright, abruptly, bringing her up with him so she was straddling him again, so one of his hands brushed her white-peach thigh, so her hair fell over his shoulders. She made a little sound; somewhere between indrawn breath and giggle. But the eyes she turned on him were serious.

‘What is it?’ Jane was murmuring now, giving his lips butterfly kisses. She smelt of flowers. ‘What are you thinking?’

It was all flooding back now: why he was here. He clenched jaw and fists; trying to keep down the tide of fury, or fear, it made no difference which, that was rising in his throat.

The King was dead – the King he'd shared so many battlefields and beds and mistresses and misfortunes with, the red hazes of war and lust, since long before Edward was a king or hoped to be, since Will Hastings, a not very rich distant cousin, had first been made his boyhood gentleman in waiting. His dearest friend.

Worse. Edward's death threatened the peace which had held for twelve years.

The Prince of Wales – the new King Edward V – was only twelve years old, not a good age for kingship at the best of times. The boy was at Ludlow, where his separate court on the Welsh border was headquartered. What with all the solemn Masses they'd have to get through in every town they passed, it would take them weeks to get here. And, until he reached London, the younger Edward would remain in the clutches of his tutor, Earl Rivers, that sly, prayerful, perfumed man of letters, with his almond eyes and suspiciously elegant turn of phrase: Queen Elizabeth's brother – and a Woodville.

Woodvilles had already insinuated themselves into every nook and cranny at court. They'd crept in behind their Queen, like spiders or scorpions. From now on, they'd be greedier still. They'd want complete control of the new King, who was young and weak and easily influenced; whose blood ran in their veins.

That could lead only to one thing: a deadly struggle between the relatives of the Queen and the relatives of the King – England's true nobility.

Hastings was the only one of the King's men in London. And the entire loathsome swarm of Woodvilles, led by his old enemy Dorset, was here, coming after him. He'd be as loyal to the new King as he'd been to the old; but what if the new King was in the sway of the Woodville Dorset, who wanted him dead? He thought: ‘I'm in danger,’ then realised he must have said it out loud. Jane was staring at him. He squeezed her shoulders, added, while trying to keep panic out of his voice: ‘Considerable danger.’

‘What do you mean?’ she whispered.

‘Woodvilles,’ he replied, getting up, squeezing his hands hard over his eyes as if that would stopper up his panic.

Hastings had only called the Council session that morning for administrative purposes: to organise how to bury one king and crown the next. But as soon as he'd seen the smug Woodville eyes at the table, glittering in the knowledge that they weren't just unwanted in-laws any more, but the new King's blood relatives, he'd sensed trouble. Dorset's were most openly full of fight. But even fat little Dr Morton, who these days was Dowager Queen Elizabeth Woodville's creature, had strutted to his seat with an impertinent grin. Morton hated Hastings and didn't bother to hide it. Morton would never forget that it would have been Hastings' job to find him guilty of treason after the Warwick rebellion, when Morton had been caught on the losing Lancastrian side. Luckily for Morton, he'd somehow escaped from the Tower and saved himself; and he'd remade himself since as a Woodville fancier. Hastings had thought, looking grimly at the blob of wobbling malice in priest's robes in front of him: I should have finished him faster. Another mistake.

Hastings had asked Council to name Richard, Duke of Gloucester as Protector of England until Edward turned fifteen and could rule in his own right. That would have been right. Dickon was the boy's uncle; the senior prince of the York blood.

But they'd said no. They'd voted instead for some sort of regency council – controlled by Woodvilles, naturally.

When Hastings kept his temper, Dorset, unnervingly, began to stare at him. Jutting his jaw out. Leaning forward over clenched hands. Trying to stare Hastings down; the stare of a man with death in mind; holding the eye-lock for so long Hastings had thought he might pull out a sword then and there.

All Dorset actually said was: ‘Now let's set a date for the coronation.’ Then, still eyeballing Hastings: ‘I propose midsummer. St John's Eve.’

‘We can't decide that,’ Hastings objected. ‘Not without Gloucester.’

But Dorset had only glittered malice back at him. Hastings thought the one-time country squire might actually have been pleased to be given the chance to sneer out his ill-bred impertinence. He'd curled his lips back and said, biting off each word: ‘We are quite important enough to take decisions without the King's uncle.’

Now Jane was in front of him, peeling his hands off his eyes. He was surprised to find how tight his muscles were clamped.

He told Jane: ‘Dorset wants to control the King; and he wants my blood.’

She murmured, uneasily. But she'd chosen him, not Dorset; he could trust her.

He went on: ‘I shouted at him in Council. I told him he was insolent and vicious. I said the Woodvilles' blood was too base to rule England. And I walked out.’

Her eyes opened wide.

Hastings didn't even tell her the worst. He'd been full of rage when he'd slammed the door on the Council meeting. But he'd only felt the prickle of real danger when, in the antechamber, a scrivener quietly showed him the order Dorset had wanted a fair copy of. The document – which Dorset planned to sign, ‘half-brother to the King’ – authorised Sir Edward Woodville to take the royal fleet to sea. If a Woodville seized control of the fleet, Hastings would be cut off from his power base at Calais. He'd be lost. ‘Thank you,’ he said to the sweating scribe. He tore up Dorset's page and dictated his own counter-order to the fleet – Don't leave port. The man scuttled back to his desk with Hastings' coin in his hand and a mixture of relief and fear in his eyes. Hastings waited, fiddling with his sword. He signed. Then he took the fastest horse he could, at a gallop, to London to be near the port.

He'd come here because Jane was here; but he also knew, if he were honest, that he hadn't wanted to go to his own house on Paul's Wharf. Even the idea of it made him feel trapped; made his flesh creep. He'd sent his retinue there. He was safer with Jane.

But those weren't thoughts to share. All he said was: ‘I can't fight all of them. I'm alone. I need to send word to Dickon.’

She must feel as alone against enemies without Edward as he did; as willing to jump at shadows. He gazed at her, wishing he could shut the world out and stay here with her forever. The sight of her made him feel suddenly old: tired of office, tired of soldiering, tired of caring, tired of the treachery that seemed to shadow anyone born to bear arms. They said there was no good to be found in the service classes; but he'd found the merchants of the staple at Calais to be honest and congenial sorts. And there was no one like Jane. Hastings' wife, long dead now, had been just a marriage: a girl with good bloodlines and £400 a year, the fifth sister of the Earl of Warwick – a way for him to become Edward's first cousin by marriage. He hardly remembered her. She hadn't had hair that shimmered like spun gold, or looked at him with happy emerald eyes. She'd never sung like an angel. Made jokes that amused without hurting. Laughed like a goddess; danced like a lark on the wing. Nor had the other women. Just Jane, his second spring. He wouldn't have been unhappy if Fate had made him the humblest of merchants, he thought, if that had meant he could have married her and been free, for good, of the shadow of the sword.

Softly, Jane said: ‘I'll find you paper and pen.’ Her voice was steady. He took strength from it. She handed him his linen; slipped hers on too. ‘You can write your letter now.’

Isabel woke in the night.

The dread that had woken her wouldn't go away.

She got up. Lit a candle from the embers of her fire. Her fear took shape.

With the King dead, what would happen to the silk-weaving contract? And the house?

Her mind flew north, to wherever Dickon was. If only he were here. If only he could advise her.

Biting her lip, she dropped to her knees.

Isabel went to see Jane early in the morning. Anne Pratte told her to – ‘She'll want to see you,’ she said, without a hint of the leer that would have made Isabel refuse – and walked with Isabel to Old Jewry again.

Once they were out of the house, Isabel asked, as plainly as she could: ‘Is our contract with the King still valid now he's dead?’

Anne Pratte reacted equally calmly. ‘We don't know,’ she replied, looking ahead. ‘Alice thinks not.’

So they'd talked about it already, Isabel thought, with unwilling admiration. There were still things she could learn from them; they had the experience she didn't of living in turmoil.

She felt Anne Pratte's claw of a hand on her arm. ‘But no one will stop paying yet,’ the soft little voice went on. ‘Everything will just go on as it is, out of inertia. And once things get settled the new way, if they don't go our way, you've got your relation with Princess Elizabeth now. You can ask her to help. She's the King's sister: that's got to count for something.’

Isabel persisted: ‘What if Goffredo's already on his way?’

‘Alice wrote to him yesterday; told him not to hurry until things are more settled,’ Anne said, with none of the despair Isabel was feeling showing in her voice. ‘We'll know better once everyone stops running round like a bunch of headless chickens.’ She squeezed Isabel's arm. ‘Have faith,’ she said. ‘I'm always telling you that. And don't think about it now; there's too much else to worry about.’

Isabel nodded, partly reassured by Anne's confidence, more by the private faith she was placing in Dickon. Anyway, Anne was right: she could do nothing about it now.

Making an effort to put it out of her mind, she looked around. There were too many people in the streets. Even if the markets were open, a lot of people were, like herself and Anne, not at work; instead they were sorting things out so they could face some event they hadn't foreseen if it came suddenly upon them. There was an air of purpose in the wet streets: the concentration of minds of householders thinking what they could eat if there was no fresh food for sale; how many pickled eggs were left from Lent; how much dried fish; how much firewood; how much flour?

Joan Woulbarowe, humping a bag of kindling back to her room, stopped for long enough to hiss at them: ‘Can you believe it? They say the Woodvilles went into the King's bedchamber while he was still lying dead on the bed and stole all his money and jewels. The Marquess of Dorset. Filthy carrion.’

‘All I can say is let's hope the Duke of Gloucester gets here before there's any more of that,’ Anne Pratte said sententiously. ‘He's our best hope now. He's straight, at least. And properly royal. It's high time someone banged all their heads together and set things straight.’ But Joan had already dived off down a dank alley with her load. Only Isabel – whose night-time prayers had been for news that Dickon was on his way south – was left to hear. And she said nothing. She just looked hastily away, in case Anne Pratte's sharp eyes saw the hope that Dickon's name awoke in her heart.

Jane's door opened before Isabel even had time to knock. Jane, dressed but with her head bare, looking pale, drew her sister quickly inside. ‘I'm so happy to see you,’ she murmured, and Isabel saw her eyes were full of honey before Jane put her arms around her sister in a tight embrace. ‘Thank you for coming back.’

Jane clung to her. ‘Don't think badly of me,’ her voice said, from Isabel's shoulder, through a hot cloud of hair. ‘I've always loved him. It's mad; but I'm so happy.’

Isabel kissed the messy beauty of that hair. ‘I understand,’ she whispered.

Jane looked up through it, shyly. ‘Do you?’ she said. She must have seen forgiveness. Then, ‘Come in,’ she added in a more ordinary voice. ‘Will Hastings is here.’

He was eating bread and cheese in the great hall. His buckler was propped up against the bench. He put his food aside, got up and bowed when he saw Isabel. He was thinner than she remembered, with a silvering at the temples she hadn't noticed yesterday. But he didn't have the look of anger on him that she'd seen yesterday; the look that might also have been fear.

‘Mistress Claver,’ he said formally.

‘My lord,’ she said formally back; but her eyes were signalling her acceptance of the sight of him at her sister's table. ‘Please – eat.’

Then he grinned at her; a return to the straight-forwardness she'd liked in him before. Still standing, he picked up his hunk of bread and bit into it again.

Jane had woken Hastings up when she slid back into bed at dawn. ‘Your man's been,’ she said. ‘I gave him your letter. He had this for you.’

It was the letter he'd hoped for from Dickon, promising loyal support for Edward's son and back-up for himself. It calmed him; banished his terror; made him himself again.

Now, looking at Jane's sister – that oddity, the girl who looked almost as pretty as his love but whose mind was a merchant's counting-house – he found he was able to smile.

‘I've just had word from His Grace of Gloucester,’ he told her, his words muffled by his mouthful. ‘He's holding a memorial Mass for His Majesty at York now. He'll be on the road again this afternoon. He's moving south.’

He was pleased to see her put a hand to the table, as if to steady herself; to see the sharpness of relief on her face. She'd tell people. She'd spread the word in the City.

He said, faster now: ‘It will take him a while to get to London; there are a lot of cities to pass through and a lot of Masses to say. But he's sworn loyalty to the new King. He's written to Council to say he'd swear loyalty, if God forbid it should ever be needed, even to a girl ruler. That should calm the crowds here.’

The Princess was frozen inside the cloth-of-silver gown her mother had decided she should wear for her brother's coronation. She hadn't said a word since Isabel arrived. She wasn't even looking at Isabel, who was kneeling before her setting her hem. But Isabel knew her ways better now, and didn't feel humiliated by being ignored. The Princess was staring through the window, to where her mother, thin and tense in black velvet, was conferring, soundlessly, with the Marquess of Dorset. Isabel sneaked a look at him too. He was still as honey-blond as Jane, but he looked as anxious and angry as Hastings had last night.

They're not in grief. They're terrified, Isabel thought. Looking up at the Princess, she also thought, no wonder she's so quiet; those two are enough to give anyone nightmares.

‘Your Highness,’ she said, ‘they're saying in London that the Duke of Gloucester has sworn loyalty to His Majesty your brother.’

She wanted to reassure the troubled little soul she guessed at behind those blank eyes.

She went on: ‘They say he's even pledged that, if God forbid His Majesty your brother were to die, he would swear loyalty to you if you were to inherit the throne.’

She held her breath.

Slowly, Elizabeth looked down. For a moment, Isabel was appalled by the utter coldness she saw in that young face. She'd been mad to open her mouth. She'd be asked to leave, just when she might really need the Princess. She'd spoiled everything.

Then she realised the Princess was crying. Her face wasn't moving. But there were gleaming trails running down her cheeks.

In a choking voice, the Princess said: ‘But Her Majesty my mother hates the Duke of Gloucester. She says he wants to destroy her and all her blood. Her brothers. My brothers. Me.’

Isabel didn't know how to answer, she was so astonished. Was that really what the child was so scared of? Dickon? She took hold of the limp little royal hand in front of her eyes and muttered, ‘There, there’, and, ‘Nothing bad will happen’, and, after a while, when nothing terrible had happened to her, ‘What people are saying is that the Duke will set everything straight.’

Eventually her confidence transmitted itself. She felt an answering pressure from the hand she was holding. Elizabeth swallowed, and sought her eyes. ‘Is that really what they're saying?’ the Princess asked in a whisper. Then: ‘Is that what you believe?’

Isabel nodded, with relief prickling and bubbling through her. She hadn't spoiled everything, after all; the Princess was actually opening up to her. Elizabeth began shaking her head, though Isabel couldn't tell whether she was indicating disbelief or was just unsure how to remove the tears from her face. Quietly, Isabel passed her a rag. The new King's sister wiped her face and blew her nose. Gradually, the tears stopped.

Isabel had one more task in Westminster. On her way home, she slipped into St Stephen's chapel and joined the rest of the muddy worshippers queuing up to prostrate themselves before the embalmed King's coffin. They were still muttering about how Dorset had stolen his jewels and money on his deathbed. Perhaps it was true. She looked into Edward's upturned face, wiped of its lazy charm, with the handsome features now as meaningless as a statue's. She wondered at its uncanny stillness. Thank you, she thought, kissing the ground; not thanking the slab of flesh here but the live King she remembered – the man whose grace towards merchants had been translated, in her particular case, into almost unimaginable generosity. Praying that Edward's generous contract with her would be honoured by his son. Praying for Dickon to get here quickly and make her silk dream safe for the future. Then, just praying for Dickon to get here.

In the days that followed, Isabel's confidence that Dickon would come and make everything all right seemed to spread to other people.

The King was buried quickly (his body wasn't well enough preserved to wait until the new King, or the Duke of Gloucester, made their separate entrances to London). The markets went back to work as usual. Apart from an early rumour that the Woodvilles had tried to seize the navy, it seemed even the courtiers were suspending their feud, while waiting for normality to return in the shape of a new King.

The only tears Isabel still saw for the dead King after that were the surreptitious ones shed by the Princess at later fittings, while her coronation gown was adjusted. Isabel was gentle with Elizabeth; she might need her soon. ‘Get your grief out, you'll feel better,’ she'd murmur, while the Princess stood, ramrod-straight, as salt water flowed from her eyes.

There was summer in the air. Londoners were reassured enough to dance at the maypole on May Day. Isabel and Alice and the Prattes walked through the crowded streets, licking pork fat off their fingers, watching the dancers, and listening to the hopeful talk. The King will be here any day now. The Duke will be here any day. We'll have a coronation before the month is out. Have faith.