12

Friday 13th

Another shout woke Hastings into a hot morning. He'd ignored the sounds of servants about their business in the house, the wafts of fish stew, the sun streaming into the room through bed-curtains he'd forgotten to close. But he couldn't ignore the cheerful voice yelling from the street: ‘Hey! Slugabed! My Lord Hastings! Stir yourself! Hey!’

Jane groaned and tightened against him. ‘Is that the time?’ she whispered, but showed no sign of opening her eyes. He disentangled himself, stood up and stretched lazily, enjoying his freedom to look at her for as long as he wanted, disregarding the voice, which was still caterwauling away outside, for a moment longer.

He knew that voice. It was Howard's son, Thomas. He must want to walk to Council together.

Without bothering to hide his nakedness – if Thomas Howard knew to find him here, he'd know why, and Hastings was proud of that – he went to the window and waved. Young Howard was leaning against a tree trunk. There were green shadows in his hair.

‘All right,’ Hastings called, resigning himself to spending this glorious morning niggling over the details of the coronation next month. He wasn't in a mood for committee squabbles, personally. The boy could wear purple sacking as far as he was concerned, now he knew they'd be getting him to the church on time. But he was sure Morton and Dorset would have a long list of points they'd insist be discussed, just to show Gloucester – who, they'd voted yesterday, in a belated climb-down he'd had the restraint not to gloat about, could, after all, be sole Protector – how attentive they were to protocol. ‘That's enough yelling. I'll be down in a minute.’

He pulled on yesterday's linen. It would be fine. He should make proper arrangements soon, though; get some clothes sent here. He dipped his hands in the pitcher of water, sloshed a cold shock of it on his face. It was pure spring water. Jane didn't stint herself. He drank some from his cupped hands. Ran wet hands through his hair to smooth it down; leaned down to kiss Jane's shoulder, which glowed out of the nest of sheets like a ripe peach. Mine forever, he thought; and wondered if he'd dare marry her.

Well, he didn't have to decide now. He could just enjoy the golden summer's day. He was whistling as he got to the bottom of the stairs.

They sauntered companionably through the streets, side by side, Hastings still whistling, young Howard still grinning. Hastings could see the townsfolk in their flapping gowns smiling at the sight of them. And why not? These two noblemen without a care in the world were living, walking proof that London was safe.

‘Father Paul,’ he called merrily at the priest gliding towards him on Tower Street; Jane's confessor from St Thomas of Acre. The man's pudding of a face broke into a smile. He changed course; crossed the road towards them to greet them.

‘Come on,’ Hastings heard Howard say at his side, ‘you don't need a priest yet.’ And he threw back his head and roared with laughter.

Hastings laughed with the younger man, who this morning looked the spitting image of his father as Hastings had first known him – fresh cheeks, bright eyes, a hay-mop of hair. He let himself be led on.

But he did stop to greet his poursuivant. He liked the sight of his own black and silver livery on the man's back, against the glitter of silver on dark water at Tower Wharf. And he wanted to squint up at the Palace. In this light, today, even that great pile of threat didn't look as forbidding as usual. ‘Sir Thomas; my lord Hastings,’ the man said, turning away from the barrels he'd been inspecting on the quayside to sweep them a deep bow. Hastings hoped they were the extra supplies of wine he'd ordered for his household to celebrate the King's arrival with.

‘How are you this morning, Robert?’ Hastings asked affectionately, taking no notice of Howard fidgeting at his side. He could wait. They were early. And Hastings' brave fighting men deserved the best, always.

Robert grinned back: ‘All the better for seeing all this, sir. And you?’

Hastings drew in a deep lungful of glittering air, taking in the whiff of river dankness, the ropes like rat tails, the creaking of wood on water; thinking with grim pleasure of the Woodville prisoners at Pontefract, who were to be executed that day. ‘Me?’ he replied exultantly. ‘I've never been better.’

The others were already inside, scuffing their feet on the floor like schoolboys waiting for class. Not many of them; there was another coronation meeting for the other half of Council at Westminster, chaired by Bishop Russell. The Woodvilles were there; the only people here were Archbishop Rotherham, the disgusting slug Morton, the Duke of Buckingham, and Lord Stanley, who was embarrassed enough now by the foolish night message he'd sent to be avoiding Hastings' eye.

Well, it was understandable he might have panicked, Hastings thought forgivingly; after all, Stanley had more than most to worry about. It couldn't be easy being married to that object of perpetual suspicion, the last Lancastrian princess, however deep Margaret Beaufort chose to bury herself in the countryside. No wonder the man's nerve had broken.

He strode over to Stanley and clapped him on the back. ‘Thomas,’ he said; and, when the other man turned baggy, anxious eyes towards him, he winked. Then he bowed low to Buckingham, who wasn't a man to make an enemy of; who had been with Dickon on his dash across England to take the King from the Woodvilles; who, last year, had been the lord to pronounce Parliament's death sentence on the Duke of Clarence; a man whose hard eagle features never relaxed. Hastings even nodded at Morton.

Hastings was the first to rise to his feet when he heard footsteps in the corridor.

‘My Lord Protector,’ he said, bowing deep as Dickon walked in, taking pleasure at letting the title he'd fought for Dickon to get rolled off his tongue now; enjoying the tight smile he glimpsed on Morton's fat little face too.

Dickon stopped in front of Hastings. Held his gaze for a second, with that stillness he'd always had. Then the Lord Protector whom Hastings had helped to create lifted the corners of his mouth into a half-smile, and nodded. ‘My lord,’ he said lightly. Hastings read that as a careful acknowledgement of his loyalty.

Dickon nodded at Morton and Stanley too; keeping things even. He'd always been a diplomat. Then he said to the group, just as lightly: ‘Could you start without me? I'll be with you in an hour,’ and, without another word, left again. It was frustrating. No one wanted to spend longer on this than they needed. But, watching Morton's hand, with its list already out, ready to impress, fluttering disconsolately back down to his robe, Hastings couldn't help but smile inside.

Morton's enthusiasm for the task at hand had thoroughly annoyed them all by the time the footsteps came back. Hastings and Stanley were raising exasperated eyebrows at each other as the prelate made one long-winded proposal after another; as if he wanted to organise the whole event himself before Dickon got back to run the meeting. Rotherham had retreated into a series of patient nods of assent; Hastings thought from the man's occasional starts and blinks that he might be trying to fight the urge to doze off. Buckingham was sitting very still, looking impatiently out of the window; while young Howard, who kept glancing sideways at the Duke, was trying to do the same.

Hastings stood up with an easygoing smile of relief, ready to roll his eyes at Dickon too.

But the Protector who walked through the door this time was in no mood for laughing.

He was angry – breathing fast; walking fast; ready on his toes; full of fight. ‘What’, he barked out, staring round at them, one after the other, ‘should be the penalty for planning to destroy me?’ There was an astonished silence. ‘Me, so near in blood to the King?’ Another, sicker silence. ‘Me, the Protector of his realm?’

Dickon's jaw was out; he was bobbing forward with every question; he was ready to go on lashing them with words unless he was answered.

Hastings recognised from the shuffling and shifting around him that the others were waiting for him to head off this unexpected rage. He'd known the Protector best for longest. He was a head taller than Dickon; so he did what he could to make himself smaller, hunching down in the inoffensive way of servants or grooms gentling horses.

‘Why, my lord,’ he said soothingly, ‘of course they should be arrested as traitors.’

Before he could ask who had made the Protector so angry, Dickon started plucking frantically at his left arm with his right. When he couldn't roll the offending sleeve up, he ripped it. Underneath was the same scar from Scotland that Hastings had seen before – a thin white slash on dark skin, fully healed. But Dickon was staring at it with horror, as if it had changed. There was white all around the edges of his rolling eyes.

‘They've withered me.’ It was half-snarl, half-howl. ‘They've bewitched me.’

Hastings felt a sick black rush in his gut. This was how Clarence had got at the end: the ravings about pins and dolls and poisonings. He remembered how fastidiously Dickon had raised his eyebrows at his brother's behaviour then; the regretful way he'd shaken his head. It beggared belief that cool-headed Dickon could be going the same way now.

He was so worried that he stepped forward and put his hand on the Protector's clothed arm. He pleaded: ‘Dickon?’, not bothering with protocol, just wanting this stranger with the familiar face to turn back into his old friend.

Dickon whirled round to him as if seeing him for the first time. There was a cunning look on the Protector's face.

‘Ah,’ he said, ‘you don't ask who did it, do you? Ask me who. Go on,’ he said, sticking his face right up against Hastings'. ‘Ask me who.’

The others had gone as quiet as woodland animals frozen before a predator. It was as if there were only the two of them left in the room.

Obediently, Hastings asked: ‘Who?’

Dickon hissed back: ‘The secret forces behind Queen Elizabeth Woodville and Jane Shore, that's who.’

There was a tighter hush all around. That made no sense. Everyone knew the Queen hated Jane Shore. Out of the corner of his eye, Hastings saw Rotherham cross himself.

Eyeball to eyeball, Dickon went on, in the same uncanny hiss: ‘You.’

‘What, me?’ Hastings said. ‘What?’

And suddenly the hush was over. Dickon thumped his fist on the table. Men at arms ran in. They must have been waiting outside. The room filled with sound and sweat: thumps and grunts and punches and the scrape of overturning furniture. Stanley dived under the table, but they knocked it aside and grabbed his feet and pulled him up. They got him in an armlock that made him moan and sweat. They dragged him away, and the two grey-faced, unresisting priests behind him.

Around Hastings there was a blur of flailing limbs, then nothing. He opened his eyes to find himself on the floor with the solid legs of a billman on either side of his chest. They must have hit him on the head. He hadn't seen what they'd done to Buckingham and young Howard; but both had gone. When he looked up he could see the underside of Dickon's chin at the window, and a bristle of lances. He couldn't see Dickon's eyes.

He didn't need to. The voice was enough. ‘Make your peace with God, traitor,’ Dickon was taunting, the wild high cry of a man on the battlefield, kindling the frenzy in the blood of the men around him with words; the kind of words best forgotten once the red haze receded: ‘because I won't eat until I've seen your head off.’

Groggily he wondered if this was how he and the three Plantagenet brothers – Edward, Dickon and, back then, even George Clarence – had seemed to Henry VI's son after Tewkesbury, when they'd closed in on him for the kill. After Edward had hit the prisoner across his smooth boy-cheek with a gauntlet, and they'd backed him up against the canvas tent wall and knocked him down and cut and kicked him a few times; just playing. After Edward had pushed the rest of them away for a moment to lift the still resisting mess of flesh from the floor; to yell, ‘How dare you come and make war in England?’ into the ripped ear of the last Lancastrian prince. After he'd dropped him again and turned away; when they came back with their feet and fists and hot breath – a many-headed animal with eyes full of death.

There was no time now to think of Jane or the appalled knowledge in Stanley's eyes when the soldiers had come in; the mute accusation: we should have run. He had to ask God's forgiveness for all those battles; for the times his own eyes had been full of death. But when he felt the rough hands start hauling him over the flags to the green outside, and realised what they were going to do, he stopped thinking he had time to pray either. His soldier's instinct took over. He fought. Punched and kicked and jostled and bashed at them with his knees and elbows and head, with every ounce of strength in him, with grass and earth in his mouth and terror rising in his gorge, as they dragged him on to the tree stump that would do quite well as an executioner's block and yanked his head down. His chin bristled on wood. They kicked him to stop him struggling. But he was still flailing and thrashing his head from side to side as the blade flashed high above.

Jane was sewing in the rose bower. The sun was hot. Every now and then she shivered with remembered pleasure as flashes of last night came back into her mind. She was wondering whether to have the boring boiled chicken for dinner or just pick a few of the strawberries she'd seen peeking out red and delicious from the tub by the stables.

A male voice interrupted her reverie.

‘Mistress Shoo-ore,’ it called flirtatiously from over the wall. She recognised it as the same playful voice that had woken her that morning; the man who'd taken Will away.

Perhaps Will had finished early at Council? The idea came to her that they could go and dine at the Tumbling Bear, where they did fast-day food so deliciously. She could ask the gentleman messenger too; why not? If only she knew his name.

She put down her work.

‘Do come in,’ she called back, politely.

But no one did. Perhaps they hadn't heard. She didn't like to shout. So she went to the courtyard door herself and opened it with her dewy sideways smile.

The man in the street was young. He had fresh cheeks, bright eyes, and a haystack of yellow hair. He'd taken his hat off. She liked the aristocratic respect of that gesture.

‘Mistress Shore,’ he began.

At the same moment she said, very sweetly: ‘Of course I know who you are – you came for Lord Hastings today – but I'm afraid I don't know your name.’

There was a muffled snort from somewhere behind. The young man lost his composure, looked sideways for a second. Jane looked the same way he was looking, over his shoulder. It took her a couple of seconds to make sense of what she was seeing. There were half a dozen soldiers with him, in sallets and jacks.

‘I'm Sir Thomas Howard,’ he replied. Automatically, he bowed; but he looked embarrassed. He went on, in a quite different voice: ‘Mistress Jane Shore, I am here with an order from the Lord Protector of England to arrest you.’

She stared. She almost laughed. It must be a joke, surely?

‘Whatever for?’ she breathed, not really scared yet. The calm of her garden was behind her. Will would be here any minute.

He blushed over the absurd words ‘witchcraft’ and ‘treason’, but he rushed them out as fiercely as if he were daring her to contradict him. There was another suppressed snort.

‘I see,’ she said in bewilderment. She stepped forward to look at the men: yes, they really were there. They stared insolently back. One of them grinned right into her face. Others were twitching lips; wiggling eyebrows; putting hands on hips. She saw with a sinking heart that they were the kind to enjoy a victim. It would be wiser to ignore them.

Turning back to the mortified youth who was, at least nominally, in charge of these thugs, she said, very politely and correctly: ‘Sir Thomas, perhaps you could wait and explain to Lord Hastings what's going on? He will be here shortly.’

There was a silence long enough for her to realise she'd said the wrong thing. Sir Thomas looked at his feet. His face was beetroot. His men were quivering; about to explode with their joke. It was the man with the hands on his hips who answered in the end. ‘Oh no he won't,’ he jeered. The others tittered and whistled.

Jane knew not to ask more. Not to think more. She could almost smell the danger now. They were looking at her, as Will liked to say, with the eyes of enemies. They wanted to hurt her. She needed to keep her wits about her; think only from moment to moment. Her body went still. Keeping her breathing shallow, she fixed her eyes on Sir Thomas. He looked up. ‘Very well,’ she said, more calmly than she felt, and, with a straight back and not even a glance at the garden behind, she stepped out into the street. But before she could even add, ‘I'm ready,’ she became aware of another commotion from behind. Scuffling. ‘Geddorf,’ she heard one of the men say. ‘Here. Stop it,’ said another, and: ‘Oi.’

Sir Thomas turned round. Jane turned with him. They both stared. The men-at-arms were no longer alone. They were being surrounded by women. Tough women with set, suspicious faces and arms on their hips. Women who'd been led out of the house opposite – the Prattes' house – by a solid figure with iron-grey hair and a stick. With a shock of joy she never expected to feel at this sight, Jane recognised Alice Claver.

‘What in the name of God do you think you're doing, young man?’ Alice Claver boomed, pushing past the suddenly quiet soldiers to Sir Thomas Howard and dealing his arm a smart thwack. ‘Let go of her at once. The impertinence.’

He jumped back, letting go of Jane as he clutched his arm; giving Alice the shocked, sick look of a child caught misbehaving by its nurse. ‘And don't you look at me like that either,’ the silkwoman continued forbiddingly, raising her voice further and putting her own arm protectively through Jane's. Her women – there must have been twelve or more of them by now, and there were more coming, both from Anne Pratte's house and the nearby Royal Wardrobe – were directing withering looks at the men-at-arms they'd surrounded. The soldiers were scuffing their feet and looking down. Alice Claver rapped out: ‘We were watching you from over the road. We could see exactly what you were up to, so don't bother denying it. I don't know what made you take it into your head that it would be all right to parade round the City of London with this gang of hoodlums, terrorising whoever takes your fancy, but let me tell you it's not. You're breaking the law.’

Jane felt almost sorry for him. ‘No,’ he whimpered, feeling for his purse. ‘You don't understand … I've got an order from the Lord Protector … here …’

Alice Claver folded her arms across her chest. ‘I don't want to see your piece of paper,’ she said sternly. ‘You know as well as I do that we don't allow bandit behaviour in the City of London. If you want to make an arrest here, you have to do it by the book. Go to the Guildhall. Ask them to send out a troop of the watch. They'll make your arrest for you if your papers are right. You can't just start walking our streets, picking people up and taking them off to God knows where. This good lady’, she gestured splendidly at Jane, ‘is a Freewoman of the City of London. Like us. She has her rights. We all do.’ She stuck her nose pugnaciously out. She was nearly as tall as him, and twice as broad. ‘And don't you forget it.’

Weakly, Sir Thomas nodded his head.

‘Now,’ Alice Claver finished up, scarcely drawing breath, keeping the initiative: ‘I think we'd better make sure you don't make any more mistakes. Come on,’ she jerked her finger towards the Guildhall. ‘We'll take you there. It's just round the corner.’

The women worried the men-at-arms forward, like dogs snapping at the heels of sheep, until it seemed to everyone that it was Sir Thomas Howard's troop that was under arrest rather than Jane. Jane, so stunned by now that all she could do was stare and watch events and feet move forward, found herself flanked by Alice Claver and small, white-haired Anne Pratte. Alice Claver kept waving her stick longingly in the direction of Thomas Howard, just in front of them, as if keen to whack him again on the arm or leg.

Anne Pratte, meanwhile, was whispering advice to Jane. ‘They'll have to shut you up if he's really got an order,’ she muttered. ‘But only in a proper city prison. And don't forget, as a Freewoman you get to choose which one.’ Jane nodded blankly. ‘Are you taking this in, dear?’ Anne Pratte said, more sharply, then took both Jane's hands in hers, squeezed them until Jane's eyes focused, and hissed: ‘Ask for Ludgate Prison!’

Which was how Jane came to be locked, not in a festering dungeon somewhere underground, but into a light, bare room over Ludgate, with the traffic that clattered in and out of the City through the western gate passing directly under her floor. Her cell was built into the stone City wall on one side but it had wooden walls on the other sides. It had a big window through which she could look down over the people coming in and walking up Ludgate Hill. She could see all the way to St Paul's. There was a thin rope attached to a hook by the window, which she could let down, so visitors who came and stood below and shouted to get her attention could reach for the swinging end and tie a bag of food onto it for her to haul up and eat, and she could let down her laundry for her friends to wash.

‘Don't you worry,’ Anne Pratte said encouragingly, a small figure below, after she'd made Jane winch up a bottle of beer and some bread in a bag. ‘We'll be back.’

Jane watched that purposeful little back disappear up the hill and into the crowd. She didn't open the bag. She didn't do anything. It was as if she'd forgotten how. She just went on sitting, stiller than she'd ever have thought possible, looking out but not noticing the sunlight on the cathedral tower turn a richer gold, then deep red.

Isabel clip-clopped along the road to Westminster alone, in a dream so sweet that she was only vaguely aware of the dozens of soldiers out this morning, pacing one arm-span apart through the fields of tall young corn as far as the eye could see, leaving trampled trails of bleeding green behind; of the dogs sniffing and barking on their leashes. All she really saw was her interior vision of the room where she'd spent yesterday afternoon, cool and empty of everything except Dickon and the rumpled bed. She could still smell him on her. Anything being done out here, in the reality of this hot summer's morning, might as well not be happening. But she had to go to the Princess. They'd have delivered the coronation robe to her in sanctuary now. The Princess had asked for a fitting.

It was only when she got to the Abbot's house that the trails of glory began to dissipate.

There were twice as many soldiers as usual on the door: cold, unfamiliar faces. The whispers she heard, from behind her back, were in the harsh language of the North. She thought she could hear weeping through the open windows. She strained her ears when she got inside, but there was none of the usual bustle of a big household; just whispers and an uncanny silence. When Lady Elizabeth Darcey was called to see Isabel in, she saw the noblewoman's long and usually controlled face was twitching and patchy with red; her eyes swollen. ‘You!’ she said in uncontrollable surprise at the sight of Isabel; which was odd because Isabel had been supposed to come at this time. Lady Darcey stammered: ‘I didn't think … well, I suppose there's no harm …’ but before leading Isabel into the sewing parlour she drew her aside and added, ‘but you should know: their Highnesses are … His Highness Prince Richard has gone …’ and, to Isabel's astonishment, the other woman's face twisted into the beginning of a sob.

Daringly, Isabel put a hand on Lady Elizabeth's arm and was rewarded with a sudden, grateful look as Lady Elizabeth swallowed and recomposed her face. They stood like that for a minute, as if the noblewoman was furtively drawing comfort from her warm hand. Then Lady Elizabeth moved just out of her reach. ‘Her Highness will be pleased to see you,’ she said, almost back to her brittle usual self, ‘Come’, and darted off down the corridor so fast that Isabel almost had to run to keep up.

The princesses had all been crying.

The eyes Elizabeth turned on Isabel were so red and puffy she could hardly see out. There wasn't even a trace of coldness in her today. She and her sisters pulled Isabel to the table and sat her down as if she were one of them. Elizabeth whispered the story.

The Duke of Buckingham had just been, with Lord Howard, Archbishop Bourchier of Canterbury and the Lord Chancellor, Bishop Russell. They'd scared Queen Elizabeth Woodville into giving up her younger son. They said little Richard, the Duke of York, should be with his brother Edward, who was moving into the state apartments in the Tower ahead of the coronation. Edward would be bored on his own. They gave Queen Elizabeth Woodville a moment to say her goodbyes. Then they took him away.

‘They had such frightening eyes,’ one of the little girls said numbly. It set the others off.

‘My mother says they hate us.’

‘My brother was crying. He tried not to but we heard him all the way down the corridor.’

‘He didn't even take his game.’

Helplessly, Isabel patted small hands and shoulders and looked at the polished knucklebones they were showing her, the game Richard had left behind. The lords who had come were all Dickon's men, and she knew them to be as loyal to him as Lord Hastings. They would mean the little boy no harm, any more than Dickon did. But she could so easily imagine how their intent faces and hurried demeanour would have terrified the children.

She murmured: ‘You poor things’, and, ‘I can see you were scared.’ They nodded earnestly; fixed eyes as round as red platters on her. Gently, she added, ‘But, you know, they're right. Edward would be lonely if he didn't have anyone to play with.’

They looked uncertain.

‘Why can't we see Edward here?’ one of the little redheads asked. ‘Why won't they let him come to us?’

‘My mother says our uncle Gloucester has taken him prisoner.’

‘And now Richard too.’

‘She says we'll never see either of them again.’

‘And our uncle Dorset has gone away too.’

‘He's our half-brother really; but we call him uncle.’

‘And Brigid's nurse says she's heard they're going to execute our other Woodville uncles today.’

‘In Pontefract.’

‘And then they'll come to get us.’

‘And murder us in our beds.’

Little Brigid, who'd been doing her best to follow the conversation, understood that perfectly. She burst into loud wails. The others just stared at her. They weren't used to looking after themselves or each other. Where was the nurse? Isabel wondered. Finally, reluctantly – what could she be expected to know about babies? – she picked the weeping child up herself and sat her on her knee. Brigid burrowed at her ribs, still sobbing.

‘Hush now,’ Isabel said, trying to sound soothing, but suddenly rattled herself. ‘Hush.’

She thought: It's all their mother's fault. Of course Queen Elizabeth Woodville would feel frightened and alone. But, she thought, it was still wrong for the self-made queen to make assumptions that everyone else was motivated by the same greedy thoughts she would probably have had herself if she'd been in Dickon's position. And it was wrong to terrify her children with these nightmarish expectations.

Blaming the Queen calmed Isabel down. Once the little girl's sobs had faded to sniffles, Isabel told her, kindly but firmly, ‘It's only because you're here that you can't see your brother. He's got to stay in London in the King's apartments now he's King. Your mother's been just as scared as you, and while we didn't know where he was she thought coming here was the best way to keep you safe. That was a wise thing for her to think. But it's all over now. We know Edward's safe. There's no reason for you to be scared any more. Your mother will see that soon enough. And then you'll be out too, and at the Palace again, and going with Richard to see Edward crowned King.’

She was talking to Brigid, but all the princesses were hanging on her words. She thought their panic was ebbing. She noticed Elizabeth look down for a second when she spoke of Edward's coronation. There was a flash of what Isabel thought might be envy in her eyes – but that was positive, too, she thought; a sign of normal feelings returning.

There was someone hiding in the silk house.

Isabel knew as soon as she let herself in, to check briefly on its state, brushing through the waist-high cow-parsley at her door. It was shut-up and cobwebby. Will Caxton's maid couldn't have been here since the unrest started. But there was a table inside already; two benches; buckets and brooms and bowls in the kitchen, ready for the new inhabitants; and, in the workroom, the half-assembled pieces of loom propped up all along the inner wall, covered in sacking. She knew there were piles of mattresses and blankets upstairs – the basics, ready for Goffredo's teams. All she could hear was the two flies buzzing peaceably backwards and forwards near the dark window. But she could feel the breathing.

‘Who's there?’ she called, with her heart thumping and flesh creeping. The quality of the silence changed. If there was someone there, they must be listening.

For a moment she wondered whether to run to Will's house and get back-up. Then she steeled herself. She wasn't going to let them know she was scared of shadows. She might be imagining it. Leaving the front door open, she walked very quickly into the kitchen.

The back door to the yard was open too. There was a man in the shadow behind it. He was tall but very quiet; sweating in a dark cloak; ready for flight if her voice meant enemies. He was so still.

It was Dorset.

She stopped dead.

He'd shoved his hands inside her gown once. Sneering and forcing his mouth on hers. She didn't want to be alone with him. She wouldn't easily forget the insult in his eyes.

But there was only fear in his eyes now.

‘Are you alone?’ he whispered, from the safety of his doorway. She nodded, from hers.

‘What are you doing here?’ she muttered. ‘In my house?’

He must have realised at last that she thought he might be going to try again to tumble her. He shut his eyes, snorted: ‘Ach. Not that.’ Then, cunningly, as if realising an attempt at charm would be politic in these circumstances, ‘I didn't mean to scare you.’

She waited, watching him carefully. Keeping her distance.

But she remembered now. One of the little princesses had said uncle Dorset had gone. She should have paid more attention. If he'd run away from sanctuary, he'd be fair game for anyone trying to arrest him. And Dickon's lords had been with the Queen today, taking the boy. They must have realised he'd gone. There'd been soldiers with Northern voices and dogs trampling through the cornfields round Westminster by mid-morning. She understood now. They were hunting the Woodville Marquess down. They wanted to kill him.

‘I'm in danger,’ he said. ‘You've got to help me.’

‘How did you find me?’ she countered suspiciously. ‘Here?’

No one knew about this house. Did they?

‘Jane said …’ Dorset replied, rumpling boyish hair, giving her his most appealing look.

Her eyes narrowed. Jane. How dare she?

‘… that if I ever needed to get a message to her urgently to give it to Will Caxton, for you to take back to London. She said you had a house nearby. I asked. And some German artisan said it was this one.’

She breathed out.

‘But why are you still here?’ she asked, still coldly but with calm returning. ‘Why didn't you just give Caxton your message and go?’

His handsome mouth curled briefly in a how-can-you-be-so-stupid sneer. Then, remembering where he was and why he was here, he blanked his face again.

‘Because I heard the crier,’ he said in a very patient voice. And he added, staring into her eyes as if trying to suck knowledge out of her: ‘Is Jane safe?’

‘Jane?’ she said stupidly.

‘You didn't hear the herald, did you,’ he said – not a question. He shook his head. She shook hers. There was a pause. She could see he didn't know how to frame whatever it was he needed to tell her.

There was a bugle blast from the Red Pale out in front of the house. He looked terrified again for a second, then his face cleared. ‘There,’ he said quietly. ‘He's come here. Listen for yourself.’

He took her by the arm – she hardly even shuddered at his touch any more; she recognised that something altogether different from her memory of this man was happening today – and led her towards the noise. They stood just inside the closed shutters, hidden from the listeners coming out of their houses all around.

The proclamation had begun; but it took Isabel a while to make sense of it. The man's voice seemed to be saying that Lord Hastings had plotted to kill the dukes of Gloucester and Buckingham and seize the king. It seemed to be saying that Lord Hastings had led the late King Edward IV into debauchery.

And it was saying, very clearly now, that Mistress Shore, with whom Lord Hastings lay by night, was of his secret counsel in heinous treason. The iron band was tightening on Isabel's gut. She could hardly breathe.

‘Ungracious living brought him to an unhappy end,’ the voice shouted. The horn blew another flamboyant fanfare. Hooves moved off. They could hear the uncertain ripple of conversation from the listeners.

Dorset whispered: ‘You see. They must have killed him. So what have they done to her?’

She bowed her head. She couldn't think. She couldn't believe this. ‘I don't understand,’ she whispered. But when he said, impatiently, ‘Gloucester is seizing power,’ she only nodded. She knew that too, really. Dickon had raised his game. Nothing else made sense.

There was nothing for it but to help Dorset get to London. She couldn't leave him.

Her mind was racing now, uselessly, since she knew she had to stifle all thoughts but a list of her most immediate needs. She borrowed a stained work smock and half a dozen copies of Earl Rivers' curial from Will Caxton's workshop – the foreign foreman didn't seem to mind, just nodded when she smiled and waved and said, slowly enough for him to understand, that she'd return everything tomorrow. She dirtied the Woodville Marquess's handsome face and made him grime up his clean fingernails. Luckily he too had the wordless urgency of a man who will do whatever is needed, at once, to save himself. She put his expensive cloak and his sword in a big rough sack on her saddle; put herself up on her horse and tried not to heed her pounding heartbeat as they set out. She got Dorset to bow his head and put the books under one arm. ‘You're a German printer; you don't speak English,’ was all she said to him, and he nodded obediently. She got him to lead her, on foot, out of the gate, past the sweating soldiers in the fields, past the dogs, along the riverside strand, past the bishops' fortresses, along the caked mud of Fleet Street, to London. She tried to think of nothing more alarming than the birds fluttering up from the battered fields, the white fleece scudding along overhead. A part of her felt safe enough; after all, she'd spent a year walking the familiar streets of the Mercery unrecognised by all the grand mercers she'd grown up among, just because she'd started wearing the humble drab of the district's poor throwsters and shepsters. Dorset's disguise was working just as well now. No one looked at them, even Davey at the Westminster gate, who'd averted his eyes as studiously as if she'd become the vilest of lepers. No one was interested in the dirty, broken silhouette that Dorset had become. Still, she'd never been so happy to see the Fleet Bridge and Ludgate looming up ahead. Every jolt of horseflesh under her, every breath she'd taken, had reminded her of how tight her jaw was clenched; how tense her arms and back.

There was a knot of silkwomen standing around inside the safety of the London wall. Familiar faces: Joan Woulbarowe and Agnes Brundyssch and Isabel Fremely. Isabel was momentarily startled to see even Joan Woulbarowe's former mistress, the throwster Katherine Dore – who hated her ex-apprentice and had spent years trying to get the courts of London to punish Joan for leaving her service – standing lean and tall and intimidating in the whispering group.

‘Look,’ Joan Woulbarowe said, seeing Isabel, running up, taking her arm. Not, for once, displaying her black teeth in her doggy smile; instead looking purposeful and urgent. She didn't even waste a glance on the shabby man leading Isabel's horse, but the moment of contact set Isabel's heart racing with terror.

‘Not now,’ she said coldly, hardening her face, and rode on.

Joan stood aside. ‘But Mistress Claver said,’ Isabel heard her wail, with defeat in her voice. Well, Alice Claver could wait. Joan would give up; she had no more fight in her than a whipped dog. But the voice behind went on calling. Instead of trailing forlornly away it rose in volume. ‘Jane's up there!’ it cried.

Isabel turned in the saddle. Dorset, head down, was still urging the horse forward.

It wasn't just Joan. All the silkwomen were staring at her with anxious eyes, and pointing up at the wall; to where the cells of Ludgate jail were built in, above the gate. And they were all calling, contorting their faces in their need for her to understand, as loudly as they dared, hissing in what they must think were whispers: ‘Jane!’

Isabel squinted up at the wall. She couldn't see anyone at a cell window. The fingers on her reins were slippery. She could feel her breath and heart. She nodded back at them. ‘An hour,’ she called, as the horse and Dorset carried on walking.

They turned without speaking into the courtyard at Catte Street. He shut the gate and looked up at her. There was a glitter of satisfaction in his eyes. She felt it too.

It was good to be behind a wall and off the street. But they both knew it was only the first step.

Isabel already had the first glimmer of an idea of what to do with him next. But she needed Alice Claver's approval.

‘Come on,’ she said. ‘Behind me.’ And she strode through the house with her follower, looking into the great hall, the parlours, the storeroom, the herb garden, and even upstairs into the bedchambers, looking for Alice; suddenly wanting to see those broad shoulders and that down-to-earth face, with its ready scowl and its rare bursts of jollity, more than she'd ever thought she could.

The relief of seeing Alice's and Anne Pratte's heads bent over a bag in one of the larders was almost more than she could bear. She let out a breath, feeling the emotion she'd been keeping at bay wash through her; wondering if she was going to cry.

‘Alice,’ she said, and her voice was strangely small and unsteady. ‘Anne.’

They looked up; and she saw in their hungry eyes that they felt the same tumult, even before they both dropped what they were doing and rushed to her with their arms open. It only lasted a second, the wobbly embrace that followed. Alice Claver caught herself swaying in it and pulled away, leaving Anne Pratte holding Isabel's hand as if she'd never let go and staring up at her in soft delight. But Alice Claver couldn't quite stop; she went on awkwardly patting Isabel's back as she growled, ‘We were worried’. Isabel even thought she saw a gleam of wet on that lined cheek.

There was a cough behind her. ‘We have a guest,’ Isabel said, gathering her wits, surprised she could have forgotten Dorset. He was standing awkwardly in the doorway, clearly not sure whether to go on hunching over his books like an old man but doing it anyway, to be on the safe side.

The silkwomen rose to the occasion with aplomb. No exaggerated respect, no bobs and bows; that wasn't their way, and wouldn't have been even if they'd been admirers of the Woodvilles. But, once Isabel had explained, they willingly set out bread and cold pork and the leftover dish of greens they hadn't touched at dinner and a couple of tankards of weak ale, and, while Dorset fell on the food like a starving man and Isabel picked at it without really eating, and talked, in a voice higher and faster than usual, they listened.

Alice looked at Dorset with no particular warmth. He was an extra problem she had no relish for solving. ‘So what do you plan to do next, young man?’ she asked, and noted his bewildered shrug with a pursing of her own lips. But she'd already thought of the answer, and, to Isabel's private joy, it was the same answer she herself had thought of earlier.

‘You'd better’, Alice Claver pronounced briskly, ‘join William's travelling party.’

William Pratte was going to Bruges for the fair. As well as representing English merchants – an official mission for the Guildhall – he was going to unofficially stand in for Alice and do some of the buying she'd normally do there herself at this time of year. She'd decided not to this year in case Goffredo returned early.

Anne Pratte's eyes sparkled. Isabel sometimes thought she didn't understand fear. ‘You could be his Flemish secretary,’ she said, playing with the idea. ‘William can lend you a set of clothes.’ She stressed the word ‘lend’ – you didn't want to let noblemen make the mistake they were so prone to, of thinking you wanted to just give your possessions to them. ‘We'll sort that out; make you look right. But you'd better wear that smock you've got on to come home with me now. We don't want any nosy questions.’

Gratitude swept through Isabel. They were taking charge of him. She was suddenly bone tired. She wanted nothing more than to go to sleep. Thinking could wait.

Alice Claver was addressing the Marquess sternly as she ushered him to the door, practically pushing him forward. ‘Now you take that bag please … you're younger and stronger than Mistress Pratte here … who is doing you a great service today, as you'll appreciate … and for God's sake when you get outside don't forget at any time that you're supposed to be a foreigner. Don't start talking to people, whatever you do. Just look humble and say nothing. Look humble. Can you remember that?’

Yawning, drooping on her bench, Isabel thought: Well, she's always liked taking people down a peg or two. Isabel couldn't find it in her to feel too sorry for Dorset. He hadn't even bothered to thank her for getting him out of Westminster and into safe hands. And he hadn't stopped to spare a thought for Jane, either, even though he'd spent all those years publicly sighing for love of her – almost as long as Lord Hastings had.

Isabel jolted upright. Lord Hastings, she thought. And, with fear flooding into her: Jane. Before she knew it, she was on her feet again, flying towards the door to find Alice.

They went to Jane's house first. ‘Before we know where we are they'll be helping themselves to her things,’ Alice Claver said sagely. ‘We might as well safeguard what we can.’

The empty house was a treasure trove of beautiful trinkets and pictures and textiles. Isabel looked round as if to memorise it all, realising she might never see it again. But they took only jewels and linen and a book of hours and two skirts in modest colours, slipping their armfuls of booty over the road to the back stable at Anne Pratte's house which had been empty since a horse that had gone lame had been sold. They made Jane a food bag from her own kitchen. Isabel could see some of the early strawberries her sister loved peeping out of a tub by the stable; she picked a few and put them in a pewter mug, topped with leaves to keep them in. Alice – grimly cutting cheese and cured meat into big coarse slabs that Jane would never eat, and taking half of the great loaf the cook had left on the table before he'd vanished to the safety of Anne Pratte's – laughed, not very sympathetically, at Isabel's whimsy. ‘You'd be better off checking what other valuables there are,’ she said. ‘Hasn't she got a money box?’

She did have one: a lovely carved oakwood casket, which Isabel saw, when she opened it, was painted inside with pictures of a knight and his lady who had the faces of Jane and Lord Hastings. She'd thought it was heavy, and now she saw why. It was stuffed to the brim with gold coins. ‘There, you see,’ Alice Claver said, materialising behind her, with hands on hips, ‘she'll thank you more for getting that out of the way than for picking her strawberries. There must be hundreds of pounds in there.’

They lugged it over the road together, panting with the weight of it. They'd been going to come back for the food, but at the last minute Isabel had slung the bag over her shoulder. It was just as well. Before they'd even settled the casket in a dark corner and covered it with mouldy hay, they heard the horses clopping quietly up to stop outside Jane's gate, the jangle of harness and the creak of leather masking the whispers. ‘You see?’ Alice Claver muttered triumphantly. ‘They'll have stripped it bare by morning.’

The two of them walked onto the street, looking straight ahead, acting, like everyone else on Old Jewry, as though the men in leather jackets and metal helmets swarming into Jane's house didn't exist. Alice Claver held her head very high and kept a pointed look of disgust on her face until they'd swept round the corner into Cheapside. Isabel's food bag was too heavy and lopsided for her to maintain the same hauteur. Also, she was too curious; she couldn't resist sneaking a sideways look. She didn't know the young gentleman issuing soldiers with sacks before they went in, but she recognised him at once as the villain from Alice's story. He was tall, fresh-faced and innocent-looking, with freckles and a shock of straw-coloured hair, and he was smiling.

She didn't expect them to, but the men at Ludgate let Isabel upstairs with her bag of food and clothes. They were family men, with tired, kindly faces, and they looked sorry for her. ‘We're looking after her, don't you worry,’ the bald one said when he first saw Isabel's provisions. But then he glanced round, saw his mate nod, and quietly opened the door to the stairs. ‘Come on,’ he said, jerking a thumb upwards. ‘Quick.’

Jane was sitting on the bench staring at the reddish light on St Paul's. She didn't turn round when the door opened. Isabel was touched to see a little posy of flowers on the window. ‘It's me,’ she whispered, not wanting to shock her sister. The man shut the door behind her as Jane raised haggard, empty eyes, then stumbled up and into an embrace – the kind of incredulous embrace in which every move and breath and slope of the other person's shoulder is proof that your worst nightmares haven't, after all, yet come true.

When they partly disentangled themselves and sat down side by side, with their knees brushing against each other and their hands clasped together and their eyes fastened on each other's faces, Isabel couldn't begin to think what needed to be said. Then she looked down and saw the knot of silkwomen still standing there, grinning soppily at the two heads reunited in the window. That might be enough for now.

‘Look,’ she whispered; and Jane stared down at them, not understanding.

‘Are they … ?’ she murmured eventually, with a glimmer of something like hope.

‘They've been there all day,’ Isabel said gently. ‘Ever since they stopped the soldiers taking you away.’

Jane went on staring then raised a tentative hand. There was a murmur, then a few hands waving back from the shadows. Jane managed a melancholy smile. ‘My army,’ she said in a small voice, before the tears came.

She'd heard the heralds. She knew Hastings was dead. After a while, when her tears had settled into a steady flow down a wet face, but when she could listen again, Isabel told her what little more Alice and Anne had gleaned on the streets: about how the Council meeting had turned into a blood-letting; about how Sir Thomas Howard had slipped away from the melee to arrest Jane, while the Duke of Buckingham had gone to Westminster to take little Prince Richard, the Duke of York, from the Woodvilles in sanctuary there. Jane's expression was passive, her head bowed into a supporting hand. From time to time she nodded. Every now and then she flinched.

She only looked down and shrugged helplessly at the idea of the charges against her. Witchcraft – what was there to say?

‘We all know it's absurd,’ Isabel babbled; trying to shut out her picture of Dickon yesterday, naked, with his head thrown back laughing, ‘everyone knows that … it must be a mistake … the Guildhall is going to raise it with Council, William Pratte says; they're going to insist that City Freemen and Freewomen can't be treated like this … it's not as bad as it looks … You'll be out of here very soon … We'll find a way.’ She knew these were faint hopes. Jane had been imprisoned because of something Hastings had been thought guilty enough of to die for. Jane smiled sadly and sighed and said nothing.

Yet she livened up at the news that Dorset was free and on the run – though only enough to look anxious at the idea of him trying to leave the country. ‘Make sure he has money,’ she said, with her eyes darting around the walls as if trying to work out how to make that happen. She squeezed Isabel's hands. ‘I've got money. In my box at home. Give him fifty pounds if he needs it. You will, won't you?’

The door was already opening. The time was up. ‘I promise,’ Isabel said, and threw herself into her sister's arms and clung to that fugitive smell of rosewater and sunshine. The man behind was shuffling in an embarrassed way. He was too polite to interrupt.

‘I don't want to get you into trouble,’ Jane said, breaking away, turning to her jailer. Even in this cell, in this bad light, she was beautiful. ‘Thank you for letting my sister in.’ And Isabel saw his lines soften in response into an adoring, black-toothed smile.

‘It's not right,’ he muttered to Isabel on the stairwell, ‘and no one thinks it is. A lovely, sweet-natured lady like that. A witch, indeed. The only reason she's in here is politics. It's Them Up There fighting for the gubbins, like pigs at a trough, isn't it? Not her.’ Defiantly, he banged open the door and let Isabel out, gesturing at the silk-women on the cobbles. ‘I don't care who hears me, either. We all know what's really going on.’

The yawning pit in Isabel's stomach didn't stop her flinging herself on her bed and sleeping the sleep of the dead as soon as she got home. But she woke up in the middle of the night to find herself sitting up, with her teeth grinding and her eyes staring through the darkness.

It wasn't just the thought of Jane in her prison cell that had woken her in this panic. It wasn't just the crazed scurrying of the day that had finished; rushing from one catastrophe to the next, dealing with each one as it arose, with no time to think. It was what Dorset had said in the morning, the words she'd been refusing ever since to let her mind dwell on. Dickon was seizing power. It was the only explanation that made any sense. He must be going to try and make himself king. Lord Hastings was dead. The little King and Prince Richard were in his control. There'd be no one to stop him.

She thought: Queen Elizabeth Woodville might have been right after all not to leave sanctuary. She almost started worrying about the royal children. But there was too much else to worry about. She kept that door in her mind shut.

She couldn't believe it. She went through every moment of her time with Dickon yesterday. There had been no sign, no sign. He'd laughed at the idea of Jane and Hastings together. He'd laughed at the idea of Dorset being disappointed. Something must have come up since he'd seen her; something that changed everything. She'd have known if he had something like this on his mind, wouldn't she? He'd have told her. He'd have hinted. He'd have spared Jane, at least. What did Jane have to do with any of this?

Then she thought, remembering his rush to go, remembering the jerky, excited way he'd been moving and talking, his lack of attention: Would he?

And, with a shame that made her cheeks burn and her stomach clutch, she thought: Why would he think I cared about sparing Jane, when I've always said such hard things about her? When he might easily think I hate her?

The more she agonised the less she understood, until her mind filled with a jumble of bright still images that didn't fit together. Dickon laughing. Dorset's terrified breathing when the herald's horn blew. Jane, smelling of innocent rosewater, sighing in her cell. Jane's house being emptied by a young, smiling blond man with soldiers.

And, gradually, a small, sick, hateful thought came to the surface. She might easily not have known. What did she really know about Dickon, after all? A smell; the taste of his skin; a set of gestures; a glint of eyes. She'd thought it was a meeting of minds. But she knew nothing that would let her be sure how he might behave in his public life, while he did whatever he considered necessary to protect himself and his kin. Nothing except the street talk everyone knew. That he was a good ruler of the North and a good soldier. The rumours that he'd done various small cruel acts to the widows and mothers of Lancastrians who couldn't fight back (but nothing worse than other lords did). The foolish street talk, what she'd always thought foolish street talk, about him murdering his brother and old King Henry in the Tower. She'd thought she knew the man within; thought they were kindred spirits. But if this was the reality, the Dickon she knew was a distorted shadow, unknowably, unguessably unlike the prince the world was seeing.

The darkness that came over her then was so bleak, so overwhelming, that she drew into a tight crouch of agony, arms squeezing knees, eyes squeezing shut, feeling her face contort with the dryness of the pain. Trying to push away each memory of his body as the agony broke over her in another tidal wave of blackness: each low laugh in her ear; each slippery feel of skin on skin; the deep touch that turned a hand on her elbow or a touch on the back of her neck into a caress; the way he'd roll his body up onto one elbow to look at her and run a gentle hand through her hair, afterwards, while they talked.

She knew already what it meant to have realised this. There would be no more of it. No more winks at the door of the Red Pale; no more sly doffings of hats through windows. No more intoxicating expectation; no more giggles as they flew up the stairs to be reunited. No more joy.

The sense of loss made her breathless. But what made her more breathless still was the thought that, if he'd been planning all this yesterday, which he almost certainly must have been, he must have known it would mean the end of Isabel's trust. He must have thought it would be their last time together. He must have decided it didn't matter.

No one in the Claver household paid any attention to Isabel's ravaged face or silence in the morning. She was grateful, if not altogether surprised. There was so much else going on that there was no time for talk. Alice Claver only nodded absentmindedly when Isabel said, in a controlled voice, ‘There's no point in my going to Westminster for a while, is there?’ She couldn't bear the idea of facing Princess Elizabeth and her sisters, and seeing the mute accusation in their eyes – you were wrong – and there'd be no question of sewing coronation gowns now. And Dickon wasn't there.

‘You'll want to go and see your sister today,’ Alice said. ‘She'll need new linen. And you tell her I'm going to the Mayor about her, with William; I want this sorted out before William leaves.’

By noon, when she went to the Guildhall with the bag of fifty gold coins she'd counted out for Dorset, Alice and William had already made their petition to the Mayor, asking him to negotiate Jane's release. They were standing in the street waiting for her. It clearly hadn't gone well. Alice was fuming. She said they'd been interrupted by a gentleman from the Duke of Buckingham's household with advance word of what the Duke planned to tell the Guildhall at the beginning of next week about the events of the previous day. So, squashed into a corner of the Mayor's table by the Duke's delegation, they'd heard the whole speech. ‘And you'd be hard put to imagine a more disgraceful set of slanders,’ Alice snorted. ‘When I think how we all went out into the streets and fought for the Yorks, all those years ago; endangering life and limb. The whole of London: Yorkist to a man. When I think of my son …’ She stopped for a moment; crossed herself; then, in a smaller voice, added, ‘and your husband’, and, almost apologetically, met Isabel's eye. Taking a deep breath, and getting back to her strident form, she finished: ‘All I can say is: it wasn't for this.’

‘What does the speech say?’ Isabel asked, strangely warmed by that reluctant aside.

Alice went so red Isabel thought she might have a fit. It was William Pratte who began hesitantly to paraphrase. The speech accused the late King Edward of being a womaniser, he said. It was such a strange accusation that despite herself Isabel almost laughed. ‘Well, that's true enough,’ she said. ‘But what does it have to do with any of this?’

Alice snapped, ‘For no woman was there anywhere, young or old, poor or rich, whom he set eye on, but that he would importunately pursue his appetite and have her, to the great destruction of many a good woman.’

Isabel stared; not because of the older woman's fluency in quotation, but because of the malice of the thought behind it. ‘They're trying to blacken King Edward's memory,’ William Pratte said, shaking his head. Like most people, he was too cautious to name whomever he thought responsible: the words ‘the Duke of Gloucester’ had not passed his lips. But he added: ‘His own blood. Edward was the only good King we've ever known.’

‘And then it went’, Alice stormed on, in her own stream of thought, ‘something to the effect that he “paid more attention to Shore's wife, a vile and abominable strumpet, than to all the lords in England, except those who made her their protector”.’

‘Hastings?’ Isabel queried.

‘And Dorset,’ William Pratte reminded her quietly.

After that, Alice and William had given up and slunk out. There was no point in staying near the Mayor. They weren't going to get anywhere for now. ‘I wouldn't altogether give up hope, though,’ William Pratte said thoughtfully. They looked quickly up; William was their statesman. He went on: ‘I'd say they're realising they won't get anywhere with this idea they've been floating – accusing Jane and Lord Hastings of plotting to cast spells on Richard. It's already obvious no one's going to believe it. Not here; where people know her. It's too stupid. So they'll have to let it drop. But they'll look fools if they just let her walk free. So they'll have to keep her in jail for a bit; and I'd guess they'll go on denouncing her as a whore for a while too. It's an easy enough way to tell the people that whoever becomes king next will be less prone to vicious living than the King we've just buried – to make them look good.’ He paused; said defiantly: ‘God rest King Edward's soul. I'd say the Mayor will be minded to help Jane, once things quieten down,’ he added, more practically. ‘I could see the look in his eyes. I know him. He won't willingly let a Freewoman be dragged into all this.’

In his eyes, Isabel could see the doggedness of every merchant forced to live cheek by jowl with his lords, men who lived by the sword and didn't fear dying by the sword in pursuit of their ambitions. She sensed the resentment of every Londoner who knew that his peaceable markets and streets and churches just filled up the spaces between the looming city fortresses the lords maintained among all that merchant industry; who was able to do nothing but shrug and lock up his house whenever those lords felt the urge to march through the gates of the City with their armies of horsemen, alien beings in armour and weapons, who might, at any moment, take it into their heads to turn violent. Seeing the stubborn frown lines between his eyes, she could believe the Mayor would share these Londoners' feelings enough to do his best to keep Jane safe.

‘I'm still going to have to go to Bruges,’ William Pratte said. ‘Especially now, with Dorset to get rid of. You and Jane are going to have to see this through without me. But my advice is: wait a week or so; get my lawyer involved; then go back to the Mayor.’

The coup gathered pace. The merchants' delegation setting off for Bruges delayed their departure until Sunday afternoon, on the strong advice of the Mayor, who thought it would be politic for them to hear the sermon to be preached at Paul's Cross outside the Cathedral.

It was a blustery day under curdled yellow skies. There was a vast crowd, muttering and anxious; sullen-looking people waiting to hear the excuses of the powerful for an upheaval they suspected could only damage them, looking for clues as to how their own lives would get worse. Isabel, Alice and Anne Pratte walked there with the merchant delegation William Pratte would be taking to Bruges later. Knowing there would be many eyes on Isabel, Anne Pratte prudently took it upon herself to link arms with the handsome young Flemish clerk in sombre tunic and leggings, whose face was cast down; whose shoulders were nervously hunched. But he couldn't stop raising his eyes at his first sight of Isabel and smiling slightly; and she had to make a conscious effort not to bow her head in acknowledgement and mutter, ‘my lord'.

She waited until the bodies were so densely packed around the pulpit that no one could possibly see, then wedged herself next to him and said, into his ear, ‘from Jane, for your travels’, and slipped the money bag into his hand. She could see from Dorset's face that he was feeling the bag with his fingers; realising it contained coins; realising too that Jane had been thinking about providing for his needs even while she was locked up at Ludgate. His eyes widened.

‘Thank you,’ he mouthed. Then: ‘Thank her for me.’

She eased; after all, perhaps he wasn't quite as selfish and ungrateful as she'd thought. Then, after a long internal reflection, which she could see had reached its conclusion from the new resolve dawning in his beautiful eyes: ‘Or can you help me thank her myself?’

She shook her head in alarm. Then, feeling she'd been hasty – he was well-disguised now, after all – slowly nodded. ‘What time do you set off?’ she asked. The delegation was to take ship for Coventry later that day. ‘We could walk you down to her window after this. You could wave. She'd see you. She'd like that. Would you have time?’

There was no time for more than a nod; the crowd was stirring. Isabel could hardly see the preacher climbing into the pulpit; at first she could only half-hear the shouted words that began to emanate from it. Then, as the gasps and murmurs all around her got louder, she could hardly hear at all.

But she heard enough.

The preacher was saying that England was ruled by a bastard. Most of the rest of the royal family were illegitimate too. Years of vicious living had so corrupted the blood royal that there was scarcely a man standing worthy of wearing the crown of England.

‘Bastard slips shall take no root!’ he yelled, and the wind carried that shout to Isabel.

It was too stupefying to take in at once. How had they all so suddenly come to be bastards? Some people as bewildered as she was began obediently yelling the slogan back. Others angrily shushed them. They wanted to hear the reasoning behind this extraordinary claim.

Now the voice was explaining. King Edward's already scandalous secret marriage to Queen Elizabeth Woodville had been invalid, it said. The grossly promiscuous old King had been secretly betrothed even before that, to Lady Eleanor Butler; and that first betrothal had been binding enough to make any later marriages null and void. It meant that Queen Elizabeth Woodville had never truly been Queen of England, and her children were not fit to be known as princes and princesses. Little King Edward, in the state apartments at the Tower awaiting his coronation, was no more King Edward V than his brother was worthy of the title Prince Richard. They were Edward Bastard and Richard Bastard.

‘Edward Bastard!’ a few voices cried back. But not many.

Hundreds of indrawn breaths made a new hush as the preacher swept on to still more shocking claims. It wasn't just the new king who was a bastard, he said. Old King Edward had been one too. So had his brother, the Duke of Clarence. Their mother, the old Duchess of York, had been unfaithful to their father while he was off campaigning in France. Her first two sons – tall, strapping, golden men – had not been the blood of the small, spare, sharp-featured, black-haired Duke, even if they'd called him father.

‘I can see what's coming next,’ Alice Claver's voice muttered disgustedly, behind Isabel.

So could the rest of the crowd. When the preacher yelled his triumphant finale into the wind – ‘Only Richard, Duke of Gloucester, is the rightful son of his father!’ – there were no more gasps or shudders, just a sense of anticlimax. Just a few voices calling out, ‘Richard Gloucester!’ and ‘God Save King Richard!’ almost experimentally, over the cautious talk between friends and family members and neighbours, while the rest of the assembly began to eddy away home. There were glum faces everywhere.

So Isabel was surprised when she glanced up at Dorset, to see him grinning. He straightened his face hastily. But his eyes glinted at her with a furtive shadow of the same amusement and explained his thought. ‘I wouldn't like to be in Richard Gloucester's shoes when his mother gets hold of him,’ he whispered, shaking his head. ‘Casting aspersions on her honour. She's the fiercest woman in Christendom. It's her Neville blood. She makes even my aunt look timid. It wouldn't be worth being king if Proud Cis wanted your blood.’

Unwillingly, Isabel found herself starting to like Dorset.

‘Ssh,’ she said reprovingly, but she let her eyes laugh with him. Then she whispered: ‘After Bruges, where are you going to go?’ She could tell Jane later.

‘Britanny,’ he said. He'd obviously thought this out. ‘To Henry Tudor.’

She stared.

She'd heard of Henry Tudor; but only just. He was the Earl of Richmond, and a Lancastrian of sorts; he and his Tudor uncle Jasper had raised Wales for mad old King Henry VI thirteen years earlier, during the Earl of Warwick's brief restoration of the Lancastrian king. She knew Henry Tudor was the son, from an early marriage, of Lady Margaret Beaufort, the last Lancastrian princess, who was now the wife of Thomas, Lord Stanley, who in turn had been old King Edward's Lord Steward. She knew all about them, because they were the kind of lords you had to know about in business. She knew Lady Margaret Beaufort had often been at King Edward's court and sometimes carried Queen Elizabeth Woodville's train, though she was still viewed with suspicion as the last of the rival royal line. She knew Lord Stanley's son had married a Woodville niece. But all she knew about Henry Tudor was that he'd escaped to Britanny after Warwick's attempt at king-making had failed years ago, and stayed there; some people said almost as a prisoner of the Duke of Britanny. He was no one. Why go to him?

Dorset smiled a little sadly at her bafflement. ‘There's no one else left,’ he said.

She nodded. How helpless they all were. They stood for a long moment under the bilious sky, blown by the wind, jostled by the thinning crowd. His hand was on her arm; for a moment she could imagine the strength he seemed to have gained flowing into her now the worst had happened and he'd survived. ‘God speed,’ she said. ‘Be safe.’

And she cut off his muttered thanks to put him into the care of Anne Pratte, and arrange with her that the traveller would walk down to Ludgate to say his hurried goodbyes to Jane. There was no time for more.

On the next afternoon, Isabel met the lawyer that William Pratte sent. When the man walked into Alice's storeroom, stooping to get through the door – he was taller than most of the people who came into this place of women – she found herself staring. Hadn't this happened before?

‘Don't I know you?’ she asked, suddenly uncertain.

He smiled and bowed. ‘Of course,’ he answered. ‘I drew up your apprenticeship agreement.’ And at the cheerful glitter in his hazel eyes all the memories of her girlhood came flooding back: Elizabeth Marchpane giggling and calling the colour of those eyes topaz; Anne Hagour calling them manticore. Later, Alice Claver snarling at him to hurry up and cross out part of the agreement he'd drawn up; his even-tempered acquiescence. He was one of the Lynom boys. Grown up now, more solidly muscled, with the angelic blond hair that the girls had all sighed over now darker and less fine, but with the same amused look she remembered from before. It was reassuring to think Jane's fate would be in the hands of Robert Lynom.

He didn't waste time on small talk. He expressed regret for Jane's imprisonment. ‘You must be very worried. But,’ he added straightforwardly, ‘I think there's a reasonable chance we can make a deal with the new administration – and get her out of jail altogether. After the coronation. I've spoken to the Mayor about it. He's quite clear that this is what we should work for. And we don't think it will be impossible to get all the charges dropped. We already have an informal agreement that the witchcraft allegation won't be pursued. This case has become an embarrassment to the authorities. Even’, he paused delicately; no one knew these days quite how to refer to Dickon, ‘to his Majesty.’

‘You've talked to the Mayor?’ she asked, impressed by his clear, direct way of talking. Listening to him felt like seeing sunlight break through clouds. ‘Already?’

He grinned. ‘No point in wasting time,’ he answered, ‘when we know what we want.’

The change of power was inevitable now. Everyone did what they had to do.

On Monday, the Duke of Buckingham denounced old King Edward's morals to the Guildhall, saying that he had ruled England for years by oppression and self-will.

Members of a parliament that would not meet for another year also gathered to write a petition. The petition echoed the Duke of Buckingham's speech. The parliamentarians denounced the dead king as a satyr whose depravity had made every good woman and maiden dread being ravished and defouled. They said Edward IV's marriage to Elizabeth Woodville had been secret and illegal – and sorcerous to boot. They said any children born from that marriage were bastards. Like the Duke, they begged Richard of Gloucester to take the throne.

On Tuesday, the Duke of Buckingham, Lord Howard, the Mayor and aldermen formed a delegation and visited the Duke of Gloucester to ask him to become king.

On Wednesday, Richard of Gloucester was proclaimed King of England. Isabel wasn't at Paul's Cross when the proclamation was read out, but Anne Pratte relayed every detail. The coronation was set for 6 July.

A boy came into the seld stall where Anne was telling her story. He muttered at Isabel, touched his hat and left.

‘What was that?’ Anne Pratte asked.

‘Oh, nothing,’ Isabel said; she knew she must look sullen, ‘just a firewood delivery at the silk house. I can't go.’

‘Well, you'll have to start going to Westminster again soon, you know. I can't imagine Queen Elizabeth Woodville not finding a way through this and getting herself back to court; she's too ambitious not to try, at least; and you don't want to lose the Princess,’ Anne Pratte urged.

‘Elizabeth Bastard,’ Isabel said emptily. She shook her head. Then, seeing the silkwoman's reproving look: ‘All right. Tomorrow.’

‘You lied to me,’ she grated, shuddering backwards against the bolted door. She pushed Dickon away. But she was uncomfortably aware that she'd let him bundle her up the rough stairs and start to kiss her as soon as they were inside the door. She'd never see Dickon again. She'd known that before she came; she was trying to cling to the knowledge now. But she'd wanted to feel the touch of his body against hers, just for a moment, just one more time.

He laughed. Took a few paces back and sat down on the bed. Patted the place beside him; delaying tactics. Then, when she didn't come to him, he raised his arms in a parody of innocence. ‘I did not lie,’ he said, very definitely. But she could see he was uneasy.

She wouldn't get caught up in Jesuitry. Her eyes bored into his. ‘You should have said.’

‘Said what?’ he hedged. There was a half-smile on his lips. She couldn't tell whether it signified anxiety or indifference, or even triumph, but whichever it was it was enough to make her lose her temper. She had her father's blood in her, all right.

Her hands were on her hips, and suddenly she was hissing, as if cursing him: ‘That you were getting up from this bed to arrest my sister and kill her lover and hunt down my lord Dorset and steal Prince Richard from his mother to God knows where. What do you think?’

To her horror, Isabel felt her voice thicken and break. ‘She's my sister, Dickon,’ she muttered, looking hastily down to hide the hot tears coming to her eyes.

There was a silence.

When she finally dared peep up through hot, wet, angry eyes, she saw, with dread, that he was angry too. He was standing up, like her. Staring back. His jaw was out.

‘Pull yourself together,’ he said coldly. ‘This isn't about your sister, for God's sake.’

He took a breath. She felt him consciously loosen his muscles.

‘This is an affair of state,’ he began, in a more emollient tone. ‘We all have to submit …’

But she couldn't listen. She broke in, with furious passion: ‘It is about my sister! How can you say it's not? You've shut her up in Ludgate jail! I've been there; I've seen her!’

‘What do you care?’ he snapped back. ‘You've always hated her. Suddenly you're her protector?’

She fell silent; twisted her fingers. She didn't know what to say.

Then, ignoring his last words, she summoned up her last flickers of righteous anger. ‘You're calling her a whore and your brother a womaniser – but you're here, meeting me. Aren't I a whore, too, then? And aren't you a womaniser, too – and a hypocrite into the bargain?’

‘Look,’ he said quietly, ‘Isabel. Let's start again.’

Unwillingly, she looked up. ‘I'm not a hypocrite,’ he said with rough calm; holding her eyes with his. ‘If you're talking about my being in this room with you, it's you who always said that what happened in this room was separate from ordinary life. You can't change the rules now, just because you feel like it.’

It stung her. He was right, about that at least. ‘And if you're talking about …’ he gave her a look that was aggressive and wary in equal measures as he thought of the right word, ‘outside, what's been happening outside, then for God's sake stop being a fool. It doesn't suit you.’

He stood up, with the vague threat that was part of his every movement. ‘This is just reality, Isabel,’ he said. ‘You have to do everything you can for your blood. It's what I've always said; what I've always done. You've known me for long enough to know that.’

‘But you …’ She stuttered, so wrong-footed now she couldn't get her words out.

He swept on. ‘You've been doing it too; protecting your blood. Hiding traitors for Jane Shore's sake.’ She went still. ‘Don't think I don't hear talk from the City, too,’ he said, an aside, nodding at her shock with a chilly smile. Then he went on: ‘So you should understand. I'm just doing what I have to do to secure my dynasty.’

She stammered something, but even she couldn't say what. He ignored it; kept his eyes boring into hers. He was talking more persuasively now, carrying her along with his argument.

‘You must see how important this is. Those children are illegitimate. There's no doubt about that. The Bishop of Bath and Wells says so; and he was the priest before whom Edward promised to marry Eleanor Butler. He's kept his peace for years – maybe because of the allowance Edward paid him, who can say? – but now both Edward and the hush money are gone, and his conscience has finally made him speak out. There's nothing for me to do but to deal with the consequences. God knows I didn't ask for this.’

She took a step into the room. Still mistrustful, but at least willing to hear him out.

‘You can't have a child bastard on the throne of England. It would be a blasphemy in the eyes of God and a crime in the eyes of man,’ he went on, drawing her closer; visibly growing in confidence as she went on listening. ‘It's bad enough having a child King, with every great lord in the land eyeing him and wondering whether his own blood isn't bluer and his own army bigger and if it mightn't be worth trying to seize power. But once the child's known to be a bastard, it would be anarchy. You'd have civil war again before you could blink. You'd have Lancastrians creeping back from overseas; enemies crawling in from everywhere. And hasn't enough English blood been shed already, in enough wars no one wanted? For the sake of my country … for the sake of my family honour … I had no choice.’

Isabel wanted to be convinced. But this wasn't enough.

Flatly, she said: ‘But you called your brother a bastard too. You shamed his memory. There was no need for that.’

Flatly, he replied: ‘There was. It's true.’

She looked as sceptical as she dared.

But he went on, in the same flat, everyday voice: ‘We've always known it in the family. My father was away fighting in France for a year before Edward was born.’

She was still taunting him with her hard eyes; but he didn't seem to care.

‘Work it out,’ he added harshly. ‘It only takes nine months.’

In the uneasy silence that followed, Isabel thought: He seems so sure.

She didn't even ask him why he'd never accused Edward of being a bastard while he was still alive. Why would he, back then, when Edward was King, and the best, safest King in living memory into the bargain; and when Edward was happy to make over to his brother the entire North of England for himself? If he was telling the truth now, the lie would have been in the past; but she could see why he'd have been tempted to keep quiet until now.‘Once I'd started truth-telling, there was no reason not to tell all the truths,’ Dickon went on, as if agreeing with her unspoken judgement. ‘It makes things clearer.’

Then he sighed, and bleakness shivered over his face like the North wind.

‘But I knew Hastings would never accept the truth about Edward,’ he added. ‘He'd spent his life serving him. I knew he'd fight me to get Edward's boy the crown.’ He looked sadder still. ‘So I did what I had to … He was my friend, but I had no choice …’

The distance between them had diminished; had she gone on creeping towards him? He took a last step forward to stand before her, head bowed, eyes on hers. She could feel his breath on her cheek. She meant to ask about Rivers, or Grey; people were saying he'd had the princesses' Woodville uncles executed this week too. But somehow she didn't.

‘I want you to understand,’ he said, very softly. ‘I don't harm the innocent. You know me. You know that. The boys are safe; my nephews. So is your sister, if it comes to that.’ She caught her breath. ‘I'd never hurt a woman. She'll come to no harm, I promise.’

‘But you accused her of witchcraft,’ she muttered faintly, trying to fight the longing to fall into his arms. ‘Jane. She could burn for that. And you can't possibly think it's true.’

He shook his head. ‘It's just what the crowd needed to hear, to know it's serious. She won't be tried as a witch,’ he whispered. ‘Trust me.’ But his eyes shifted away. As if aware that he'd shown weakness by admitting to a lie, he added irritably: ‘Look, it's the same thing you did when you stole your father's apprentices – you were showing you meant business. Don't be so prissy. You know exactly why I did it.’

Isabel didn't want to be distracted into defending herself over that. It was true, she'd felt triumphant at gaining the ascendancy, as well as guilty, after hiring away John Lambert's staff and seeing her father leave London, bewildered and beaten. Perhaps Dickon had been striving for the same effect when he'd had Jane denounced as a sorceress. Perhaps he felt guilty too.

All she said, looking imploringly at him, was: ‘But why Jane? Why mix her up in all this at all? You said it yourself. She's got nothing to do with it. It's not about her.’

He shrugged. She thought he might be surprised she kept coming back to Jane.

His voice got lighter. It made her cheeks burn again to see he couldn't take Jane Shore's plight seriously; she didn't want to think about why. He said: ‘Because people need a clear idea of who's ruling them. They know Edward was a lady's man; now they can see that wasn't such a good thing. Jane Shore behind bars has been an illustration everyone can understand. It shows them: from now on, we live by the rules.’

His voice was still quiet; but determined. ‘My rules,’ he said. She blinked.

‘People like to complicate things, but I'm a very simple man,’ he said, and he looked at her as straightforwardly as he ever had. ‘These are just the things you have to do to make sure the things you need to happen do happen. Not always nice, but necessary. You can't be a king and a parfit gentil knight at the same time.’

His face was inches away; looming over hers. His hand brushed her shoulder. She couldn't live in a world where his hand would never touch her shoulder again. Her body seemed to be drawing towards his. There was nothing her mind could do about it.

She felt her body strain towards him. Held it in check. He murmured: ‘No one wants more war. I had to stop the factions … the plots. I want to be King of a land at peace.’

There was a terrible sincerity on his face. He was looking intently into her eyes. She could see how import ant it was to him that she should believe him; and a part of her was, unwillingly, grateful that he so wanted her approval. But by then she was so full of contradictory desires – with the urges to shout and slap giving way again to the longing to fall into his arms and do without words altogether – that the only phrase he'd spoken that she remembered was, ‘I want to be King.’

‘Trust me,’ he breathed.

She didn't. However familiar his face, and her feelings, she knew she was looking into the eyes of someone who'd become a stranger. Yet that didn't stop her wanting him.

They stood very close, arms by their sides, not touching.

When she went on not moving, he muttered, and she thought she detected a note of pleading: ‘You know I'm the only safety this land can hope for; and I've been doing the best I can to keep the peace. You must know that; from your own perspective if nothing else. Think about it. Your Goffredo's coming back; you know your weaving venture will be safe if I'm on the throne. Every other entrepreneur in London will be making the same calculation.’ He gave her a bright stare; a challenge. ‘Without me, who knows?’

If Goffredo ever does come, Isabel thought hopelessly. There had been no word from the Venetian since all this started. What Dickon was saying now was true enough. But it still sounded like a bargain with the devil – a bribe. Accept me, or go under.

Still, she could make bargains too, she thought, glimpsing a way to regain her peace of mind. Stepping back, but gently, she said: ‘All right, but let Jane go.’ Every fibre of her being wanted to stay; she was astonished at the iron willpower pulling her away. ‘She's served the purpose you wanted, hasn't she?’

There was surprise on his face; but reluctant admiration too. His head began nodding – a tiny movement. That half-smile came back to his lips. She stopped in the doorway. ‘I'll come back here next week, at the same time,’ she added, more calmly than she felt. ‘But only if Jane's free.’

Isabel didn't want to visit Will Caxton at the Red Pale today; she didn't dare look in his eyes after telling him that she was Dickon's lover. He'd be frantic with worry that Dickon had imprisoned Jane. He might even, unbearably, want her to admit her judgement had been as addled by love as she privately knew it to be. So she kept away.

Still, she felt more self-possessed as she walked to the Abbot's house. Making her demand that Jane be set free had given her at least a frail hope to cling to. If there'd been any truth in Dickon's litany of self-justification and excuses, he'd surely see sense and get Jane released from prison. That would be something.

Her hope wasn't enough to help her face the five pairs of eyes in the princesses' parlour.

She could see at once they'd learned new facts that frightened them. Perhaps they'd found out that their Woodville uncles, Earl Rivers and Sir Thomas Grey, were dead. Perhaps they'd heard that Lord Hastings' servants had tried to visit princes Edward and Richard at the Tower, but had been turned away.

It didn't take long for her to understand how they'd started to find out more, either. It was Elizabeth who was putting the questions this time, not the little girls with their lisping voices and terrified pink-rimmed rabbit eyes. Elizabeth had stopped being reluctant to be seen to beg for information. In her dangerous position, she must have realised she needed to know everything she could – just to survive. She must have started asking every servant and passing priest what was happening. Princess Elizabeth had got thinner in the past week. She was very pale, too, but it suited her; her cheekbones were becoming as elegant as her mother's. And she was wheedling rumours out of Isabel this morning with all the expert cunning of a market woman.

‘They have killed my mother's brothers,’ she said quietly, drawing Isabel in and sitting her down on the bench; making a flattering point of paying attention to the silk-woman's comfort. There was no sign of the coronation dress. It must have been shut away in a chest somewhere. ‘My mother's confessor told us.’

Isabel nodded. She crossed herself. ‘God rest their souls,’ she said carefully; not knowing, in the confusion of these times, what would constitute treason; worried even that banality might. ‘I'd heard too. I'm sorry for your grief.’

The Princess paused; then, very softly, while Isabel was still full of pity, she asked: ‘Perhaps you know – is there any news in London of our brothers?’

Isabel glanced up to the window ledge, where little Richard's game of knucklebones was still waiting for his return, gathering dust. Isabel didn't want to deceive Princess Elizabeth. She and her sisters must be afraid men would come for them too. It was natural for the princesses to try to find out all they could, and plan their defences accordingly. So, haltingly, Isabel told them that the Princes hadn't been seen playing outside the royal apartments at the Tower in the past few days, and that Lord Hastings' men had been turned away when they'd tried to pay a visit. There was tavern talk about rescuing them. She told Elizabeth that too. She kept quiet about the other piece of tavern gossip doing the rounds: that the boys had been murdered.

‘I'm sorry not to have better news,’ she finished, to the girls' quietly bowed heads. ‘They've probably just been moved to a different apartment.’

They must know that was a false hope. But the younger girls nodded earnestly as if they really wanted to believe it; and even Elizabeth looked grateful to Isabel for trying.

It wrung Isabel's heart. There had to be something she could say that would represent genuinely good news for them. Then she realised what. ‘I've heard’, she found herself saying, ‘that your uncle Dorset is safe.’

She thought, as she spoke: Why am I doing this? I'd do better to keep quiet. Then, defiantly: If Dickon's heard that Dorset's got away abroad from listening to City talk, why shouldn't I know? ‘Overseas,’ she added. ‘No one knows how.’ Five pairs of eyes, blazing with hope, begged for more. ‘I don't know if it's true, of course,’ she continued, ‘it's just what they're saying in the markets. But they're saying he's gone to Britanny. To Henry Tudor.’

They sat very quietly, hardly daring to breathe, taking that in. But Isabel was briefly aware of a gleam of satisfaction in Princess Elizabeth's eyes – the same satisfaction she'd have felt herself, digging out a nugget of street knowledge that could be of value soon.

She sat on the boat, painfully remembering the quiet room she'd walked out of, repeating to herself: If Dickon lets Jane out, it will prove he's telling the truth. And if he tells the truth about that, why would I doubt everything else? If Dickon lets Jane out, I'll be able to go back next week.

Hope was so cruel. It brought wisps of more innocent moments with Dickon back into her mind. Stories she knew half of, through him; whose endings she still longed to hear.

Only a few weeks ago they'd been on a boat like this, together, wondering whether Dickon would have to go to France to fight Edward's war. That story had been broken off forever, she thought, and relief mixed itself up in her agonising nostalgia. There'd be no French war for a while now. Thank God. She let her mind meander on. There'd been the story of the dying nephew, too. What had happened to him? In that other life just a few weeks ago, Dickon had been hiring doctors to go north to treat little George Neville. He'd been so worried about the boy's health. If George Neville died, Dickon's land-holdings would be compromised. His son wouldn't inherit. He'd have to beg the King for help.

What had happened after that? Had the boy died? Perhaps he had. How worried Dickon would have been when King Edward died too, right at the same time, Isabel thought, with sudden compassion – if the King's death had come just when Dickon most needed his brother's help to keep his lands together. He must have felt as panicked as she had about her silk-weaving house. He'd been far away in the North; he'd been only the uncle of the new King-to-be, whom he hardly knew; and the boy had seemed so safely in the hands of his other uncles, the Woodvilles, whom he loved; and they hated Dickon … Dickon couldn't have had faith that the boy-king Edward would have helped him.

She reined herself in. Why was she fretting about this? The likeliest outcome was that the Neville child had recovered weeks ago, she thought briskly. Dickon probably hadn't given that illness another moment's thought. If the boy had got better, Dickon certainly wouldn't have gone on panicking over how to hold together his estates when King Edward died. She was just indulging in a fantasy that would suggest she and Dickon had been in the same vulnerable position, between kings. She should stop daydreaming.

Sternly, she told herself: It's just another story that's stopped mattering. Dickon is King now; what does he care about the Duke of Gloucester's estates in the North? Leaving some Godforsaken moors to his son? His son will inherit something better: a crown.

She sat up straighter in the boat. She was trying not to start thinking about Dickon in a boat like this, last time – unlacing her under the cloak and laughing.

She stopped herself. She couldn't, yet. Everything was still too uncertain. He'd have to release Jane before she could even begin to hope.

Isabel couldn't think what the racket was as she walked into the Claver house at Catte Street. The voices sounded too deep for the silkwomen, the footsteps too sturdy.

It was only when she got into the great hall that she saw. A dozen strangers were crammed in, staring round in frank curiosity at Alice and Anne and the hangings, and helping themselves hungrily from the platters the kitchen boy was hurriedly handing round. Men and women both, all with black curls and lustrous eyes; all indescribably filthy. She couldn't catch a word they were saying.

There were trunks and bags everywhere.

It was only when she saw the bowl of pomegranates that she began to guess. She looked round. He had more grey hair than before but his dark-brown eyes, liquid and long-lashed as ever, were on her with just the same playful devotion she remembered. He was unfurling his cloak with a flourish. ‘What a fool I am to have arrrrived on a Friday; no meat!’ he was saying, in his flamboyant way – the cheerful, carefree way that had been hers, all of theirs, before Friday 13th. It seemed another life. His warmth was infectious. She flung herself into his arms in front of all of them, grinned over his shoulder at Alice with a cheekiness she'd almost forgotten, and cried: ‘Goffredo!’

If Goffredo's return was a good omen, there was better to come. They let Jane out on the Sunday night, but first they made her publicly repent of her sins. She had to walk barefoot through the City, carrying a lighted taper. And she was allowed to wear nothing more than a kirtle.

If the crowds that gathered to watch her pass, praying in her circle of light, were supposed to jeer and snicker and jostle and try to pull up her skirt and peer down her shift and hurl rotten fruit and dog turds and cobblestones at the whore in nothing but her linen, to enjoy the sight of her delicate white coverings and skin turning mottled and discoloured, to have fun watching her flinch and cry out in pain, they were a disappointment.

Instead, the audience fell silent and stared at her beauty. She was one of them; a Londoner. Some even prayed with her.

Perhaps they'd had their fill of blood at the executions the day before, when four ordinary London citizens – strangers who'd got talking in a tavern, like everyone else was doing, about where the two princes, last seen in the Tower, could have disappeared to, and then, somehow, found themselves plotting a rescue – had been beheaded on Tower Hill. All that William Davy, Robert Russe, John Smith and Stephen Ireland actually seemed to have done was set fires in different parts of London. People said that must have been just the first step in the plan; while the garrison was away putting out the fires, they said, the men would have crept in and snatched the princes. No one quite knew. But no one really believed in such a cack-handed plan. No one escaped from the Tower, especially not in a rescue organised by four drunken tavern bruisers.

Then again, according to another rumour in the taverns, Bishop Morton, who'd been arrested when Hastings had been killed, had just escaped from the Tower a second time, fat and short and red-faced though he was. So perhaps it was possible. Or perhaps any small act of disloyalty became possible – even turning a blind eye to a plump prisoner waddling out of the world's stoutest fortress – when you didn't believe in your King.

Jane's jailors at Ludgate were certainly happy enough when Isabel and Alice Claver and Anne Pratte, flanked by a quietly triumphant crowd of silkwomen, picked up their prisoner. It was just after nightfall. Jane was waiting for them, in a quiet dove-grey gown over the kirtle she'd walked through London in. It was still as snowy white as they'd delivered it the previous day. She was praying when they came for her; she'd prayed more in her days at Ludgate than Isabel remembered her ever having done before. She was calm as she got up to go. She gave the three men in the gate lodge gifts of all the sweetmeats she'd been brought, divided evenly; she shook each one's hand and thanked them for their patience with her visitors, in a huskier, more tired voice than usual, but with loving looks.

Isabel gave the head gateman a little bag of coins as they left. ‘A thank-you to all of you for all your kindness,’ she murmured; and she was touched to see his rheumy eyes fill.

He said gruffly: ‘Glad to see her out of here. It wasn't right. But it'll be lonely without her. We were just getting used to the crowds.’ He was still harrumphing sentimentally and blowing his nose as the procession of women set off.

Isabel thought John Lambert should have come to London for his daughter's release. She'd noticed, with scorn, that although her father had written to Jane at Ludgate prison, he'd cautiously sent the letters to Catte Street rather than to the jail; he wasn't the type to want to be too closely associated, in public, with an enemy of the King. She'd even suggested Jane ask him to come and show support. But Jane had just laughed forgivingly whenever Isabel complained about their father's cowardice: ‘But he's right, Isabel; he has to be careful.’

Jane wasn't laughing now. She was looking ahead, not meeting any eyes. ‘I so want to get home,’ she said. ‘Away from people staring.’

‘We're staying tonight at Catte Street,’ Isabel reminded her gently. Perhaps Jane hadn't understood before that her own house had been shut up, ransacked and confiscated?

Jane paused, as if thinking; then nodded. ‘Catte Street,’ she acquiesced, with blank eyes.

They put her to bed in Isabel's room. She was pliant, yielding, and remote. She said nothing except a faint ‘good night’ to Alice and Anne. But when Isabel, the last to leave, was about to draw the bedcurtains and slip away with her candle, Jane pleaded, ‘Stay with me a while’, and Isabel, happy to see a flicker of life in her sister's eyes at last, not wanting to leave her alone in a strange place with her disturbing memories, put down her candle and sat down on the blankets, taking Jane's hands.

‘They haven't finished with me, have they?’ Jane said faintly. ‘They told me … there … That there was word I'd have to be interrogated again. By the King's Solicitor.’

She was clinging to Isabel's hands, and there was anguish in her eyes.

Isabel didn't like the way her sister's eyes made her feel.

She'd been saving her news to tell Jane once she'd slept, but perhaps now would be the right time to reassure her. This was the best thing Robert Lynom had done yet. ‘Yes, but,’ she said cheerfully, ‘can you guess who the new King's Solicitor is?’

Jane shook her head. ‘I don't know anyone now,’ she whispered; and Isabel felt guiltier still for having tried to play guessing games with her.

‘Thomas Lynom,’ she replied gently. ‘Robert's twin. A friend.’ And she watched the slow answering smile spread across Jane's face; and sat with her until she fell asleep.

She would see Dickon again.

Jane was changed – wounded, quiet, prayerful – but at least she was free. Dickon had kept his word. She could see him. The thought filled her with joy; it was all she could do to keep it from her sister, who spent her days dozing in the bed they were sharing again, like children.

Isabel even managed to meet Will Caxton's eyes when the wiry printer came to call. He'd brought a little posy for Jane. He'd scrubbed most of the blue stains off his hands. His bony, freckled face was a study in anxious solicitousness. ‘She's got so thin,’ he kept saying, after she'd come downstairs for a few minutes to thank him. ‘So pale.’ Alice and Anne fed him and wouldn't leave his side, so there was no real danger of unwanted confidences. But Isabel was grateful for his delicacy anyway; in the one moment she had been left alone with him, and he'd raised frank eyes to hers, he'd just patted her hand and said, ‘You must have been so worried,’ and then, with great kindness, ‘you couldn't possibly have thought this would happen. You mustn't blame yourself.’

There were five days till Friday.

On Monday the contracts were given out for the vestments for King Richard III's forthcoming coronation. After an hour of frantic pushing and shoving at Old Jewry, waiting for news of who would be assigned which task, peace descended on the markets. The mercers who'd got contracts retired to their workshops with satisfied looks on their faces to sew and cut and embroider round the clock. The others vanished indoors to hide their disappointment. The House of Claver, represented in the crush by Isabel, did well. There was one commission to supply cloth for the Queen's train. And Anne Pratte was asked, personally, to make three mantle laces of purple silk with tassels and buttons of the same stuff, mixed with Venetian gold thread, and another set of white rather than purple – one for the King and one for the Queen.

Walking home, letting herself take pleasure in the moment, feeling proud of her business's well-deserved reputation, Isabel happened upon one of the London Italians walking out of St Thomas of Acre. It was Dr Gigli, portly and quivering in black velvet.

‘Ah, it is Mistress Claver,’ he said suavely. ‘I see from your face you have done well with the contracts.’

She smiled and bowed, remembering that Dr Gigli was the physician who'd gone north with Dickon to treat his sickly nephew.

‘Yes, we've been honoured twice over,’ she replied, with carefully measured professional boastfulness. ‘What a compliment to our silkwomen.’

He nodded and beamed back, asking with great charm for details.

Once the Claver commissions had been discussed to their mutual satisfaction, she turned to go. Then, as if suddenly remembering something, she added casually: ‘You've been travelling, I understand? You must be just back from Middleham?’

Dr Gigli bowed. He was too much of a politician to look surprised at her knowledge. But he looked regretful as he raised his head. ‘A while ago now,’ he said. ‘Two weeks.’

‘I hope your patient is restored to good health?’ she asked solicitously. ‘Young George Neville …’

Dr Gigli lowered his head again. ‘Regrettably …’ he murmured. He crossed himself.

So the boy had died. Isabel listened carefully. Dr Gigli had thought his patient had nothing worse than an ague. He'd cupped him and prescribed a special diet, and young George Neville's condition had seemed to improve. Until the evening when George Neville's fever came back with a vengeance. He'd passed away by dawn.

‘My lord Gloucester must have been distressed,’ Isabel said sympathetically.

‘Ah … but he did not hear at once … he was already on his way to London by the time it happened,’ Dr Gigli replied, like her, not quite calling Dickon ‘His Majesty’. There were no agreed names yet for the turmoil of the past few weeks. ‘I had to break the news to him here, myself, at Crosby's Place, once I'd reached London. And that was only last Thursday … the day before …’ He hesitated; felt for the right phrase to describe the day of the change of power. Then he gave up, said helplessly, ‘all that', and waved his fat ringed hands instead. ‘He was distressed, of course. The boy was his blood, after all. But he had pressing affairs of state to consider too. When I heard, the next day …’ he gestured again, ‘about … all that … I understood why he'd been in such haste.’

There was the beginning of a frown on Dr Gigli's well-padded brow. Something must have worried him about the way Dickon had received the news he'd have broken so diplomatically. But he composed himself. Smoothed down his black velvet over his paunch and smiled a full, superb smile in Isabel's direction. ‘It was a long journey,’ he added, then yawned magnificently, ‘and I am still a little travel-weary. Forgive me.’

With all the smiles and ceremoniousness she could muster, Isabel bowed him on his way.

But the doubt he hadn't wanted to discuss dragged at her fragile new happiness. Like Dr Gigli, she didn't want to think about what the story might mean. She hurried home, not giving herself time to wonder.

On Tuesday morning a merry Goffredo took his Italian teams to Westminster, on foot. Their trunks and bags were going by river, but so many foreigners would attract attention on the wherries. It was safer to walk. Isabel was to join them at the silk house on Friday night. ‘We will cook you a magnificent dinner, cara,’ Goffredo promised.

For the rest of Tuesday and through Wednesday and Thursday, Isabel worked with Anne Pratte on the royal mantle laces for the coronation. ‘It will do you good to do something normal,’ Anne Pratte said, firmly, giving her the white set for the Queen. Isabel would rather have made the purple set Dickon was to wear. But she submitted. It was something to do, to keep her from her thoughts. And Friday was almost here.

There was a palfrey tethered outside the Red Pale. She only really believed he'd be in the room once she'd seen it. She tiptoed upstairs, suddenly as quiet and shy as an innocent. He was sitting on the bed, reading his Book of Hours. He hadn't seen her. She looked at him for a moment without moving. She didn't deserve this much happiness.

A floorboard creaked. He looked up. She could see in the lightening of his eyes that he'd doubted she'd come. Hesitantly, she said: ‘I'm here.’

He opened his arms. She ran to him.

She lost herself for what seemed like hours in the beauty of their lovemaking. She didn't want to stop. There was too much sadness in her heart. She didn't want to let it out.

‘What are you thinking?’ he murmured into her ear, when it was over, putting an arm over her chest. He was smiling, lazily. He didn't have to go yet. There was time for more.

She kissed him very tenderly on the mouth. She knew she had to ask. But a dreamy melancholy was settling on her even before she did. She knew the answer he'd give, too.

‘When did you find out George Neville was dead?’ she whispered.

She could imagine it so well. Dr Gigli mournfully bowing and scraping as he made his announcement. Dickon's mind, razor-sharp, racing ahead to how his own Northern lands were compromised by the child's death. So full of the troubles facing him that he could hardly bring himself to acknowledge the fat Italian. Then realising he had another young nephew in his hands, right here and now. Realising there might be a quicker, more effective way of shoring up his position than struggling through layers of Woodvilles to beg for his royal nephew's help. Thinking: Wouldn't it be easier just to grab the big prize and stop bothering about the details?

Dickon's eyes flickered. He knew she knew. Without moving, he said: ‘The day before …’ Even he didn't know what to call the day he'd seized power. He hesitated. She nodded. It was just as she'd thought.

He added hastily, ‘but that's not why.’

But his eyes told a different story. They both knew it.

They went on staring at each other. Aeons passed. I should go, she thought. Everything he's told me has been a lie. Everything I suspected was true. He murdered Hastings deliberately, so he could steal power. Disgraced Jane. Maybe murdered his nephews too.

But she knew she wouldn't go. And he knew too.

So there was no point in recriminations. The sadness in her eyes, and his, wasn't farewell. It was an acknowledgement, on his part, of crimes he'd committed for power; and, on her part, that she didn't care what he'd done as long as he was there. They were grieving, together, for the one victim of his coup on her heart: their lost innocence.

When she did, finally, get up and begin dressing, he watched from the bed.

‘Will you come back?’ he said, and his voice was humble.

Gently, she nodded. She'd looked into the depths of his soul. She hadn't found it in her to recoil. How could she say no now?

Instead, hating the terrible joy she could feel crackling through her, she just muttered ‘Friday’, and slipped out into the burning summer afternoon.