14

The Princess's peaky white face, which could be as still as marble, was full of life today. Isabel hadn't seen her so excited in the whole five months since Queen Elizabeth Woodville's daughters had shut themselves up in their voluntary prison.

Elizabeth's eyebrows were lifted high and alert. She clearly couldn't wait for Lady Elizabeth Darcey to leave them alone. Isabel found it mildly alarming.

One of the choices Isabel had had to make while making her peace with Dickon was to refine her attitude to the disinherited children of King Edward. She couldn't allow herself any more of the pity that she'd felt so strongly at the start. Once she'd understood that Dickon must have stolen the royal status that was rightfully theirs, she'd necessarily become complicit. She'd had to harden her heart to the princesses.

So now, although she knew it was selfish to hope that Princess Elizabeth's expression wasn't the first sign of more upheaval that might spread into her own life – just when things were getting back into a routine – that was what she found herself hoping anyway.

She went to the sewing box in the corner. They'd stopped trying to get her to alter dresses. There was so little point in sanctuary. All you could do while you were hiding from the world was to try not to look too frowsty and hope for better times when you got outside. So, for three hours every Friday morning, Isabel and the Princess had started turning an unwanted French wedding gown of figured white damask with pearls into two sets of white cloths for the altar of the Virgin in the Abbey – a thank-you to the Abbot for keeping the Woodville females safe. Isabel had designed the embroidery: trees of red roses and red lilies on each set, along with a far more complex embroidery for the Princess, who had so much more time on her hands: an image of the Assumption of the Virgin.

Elizabeth felt at ease with Isabel; they'd spent so many hours together, quietly sewing. But the younger princesses no longer joined them. They'd sensed the change in Isabel, and found something else to do with their time. They'd stopped hoping she might bring news. No one had had any news of the Princes since the summer. Isabel had told them what Dickon had told her to tell them: that the word in the markets was that they'd been quietly moved out of London, for their own safety. Perhaps they hadn't believed that, any more than Isabel did. (‘They're in East Anglia,’ Dickon had told Isabel, ‘though you needn't tell Elizabeth that; with a man of mine who has sons their ages. Practising their archery.’ And he'd laughed; but he hadn't met her eyes.) Isabel didn't even ask about what people really thought had become of the boys when she was in London these days. She didn't like to think of them. She tried not to look at the knucklebones, still on the window ledge, waiting for Richard's return.

Isabel picked up her piece of white damask. She threaded a needle. She sat under the window, facing the fire, and turned her back on the falling leaves and the rain. No more storms, she prayed.

Elizabeth sat down next to her and picked up her own cloth. She began to sew as if nothing had changed. But Isabel noticed that Lady Darcey gave her charge a slightly longer look than usual before closing the door on them, leaving the guards outside.

The two needles flashed quietly. Then Princess Elizabeth put her sewing down. ‘I know I can trust you,’ she said.

Isabel nodded without committing herself.

She waited.

Elizabeth said, enigmatically: ‘My mother is discussing a marriage for me.’

Isabel didn't think there would be many marriage prospects open to a girl now known, officially, as Elizabeth Bastard. She lifted one eyebrow a fraction on her humbly lowered face.

‘With the mother of the Earl of Richmond,’ Elizabeth whispered.

Isabel was aware of the Princess's slightly protruding eyes fixed on her at the same time as realising she had no idea of how to react. The Earl of Richmond was Henry Tudor, the new Lancastrian leader; the exile in Brittany. Surely Princess Elizabeth could never marry Henry Tudor unless the present King of England, who would never allow such a match, were dead? No one had ever before confessed to her that they were contemplating an act of treason.

She kept her face tilted down; raised the second eyebrow. As slowly and coolly as she could manage, she raised just her eyes, too, to Elizabeth's face.

Why are you telling me this? Isabel's eyes silently beseeched her. But the Princess didn't notice. She'd had no hope for so long. Now she was full of this possible escape.

The more Isabel heard the less she liked it. It was a full-blown plot.

Queen Elizabeth Woodville had been approached with the idea of the marriage by the Duke of Buckingham, who'd sent a messenger; and he in turn had been approached by Henry Tudor's mother on the road to Shrewsbury (Lady Margaret Beaufort was, as she innocently explained, going to pray at the shrine of the virgin at Worcester).

The idea, at the beginning, had been to resuscitate a marriage plan for Elizabeth and Henry of Richmond that had first been vaguely raised a year earlier, with old King Edward, after Elizabeth's French marriage had fallen through: a harmless plan that would allow Henry Tudor back to England, return some of his forfeit estates, and let him live quietly in Wales, on his father's ancestral lands, with his Plantagenet bride.

But it hadn't taken long for the Dowager Queen, Lady Margaret and the Duke of Buckingham to realise that the new King Richard was even less likely than his brother to welcome the last Lancastrian imp home. If they hadn't realised that themselves, it was soon borne in on them once they admitted a fourth person to their counsels: Dr Morton, the Bishop of Ely, the wiliest man in England: a man to spot and iron out the shortcomings in any plot, a man to go for the jugular.

Isabel had heard plenty of talk about Dr Morton. Lord Hastings had loathed him. Morton had been arrested when Hastings was beheaded. People had said in the summer that he'd somehow escaped from the Tower. But that turned out to be wrong. His friends at Oxford University had lobbied so hard for him to be set free that Dickon had released him into the personal care of the Duke of Buckingham – a dear friend; the man who'd helped Dickon stop the Woodvilles and take control of Edward Bastard.

At the time, Isabel had thought Dickon's idea of quietly giving the prisoner to Buckingham to lock up in the depths of Wales was foolproof enough. But now, as the Princess talked, she realised what a dangerous mistake it had been.

Dickon hadn't thought the rotund little Bishop of Ely would be any trouble at all for the tall, terrifying Duke, especially if the two of them were holed up together in remote Brecknock Castle. But he hadn't thought enough about Morton's bright little eyes, burning out of his red slab of a face; about his knack for a well-turned joke and a bark of laughter; about the energy and cynicism with which the Bishop would turn his talent for talking to saving himself. It hadn't occurred to him that Harry Buckingham, who had only ever known other tall, tight tornadoes of aristocratic power like himself and was scarcely ever seen off a horse's back or unarmed, might be so surprised and fascinated by the prelate's steady stream of sly conversation that, for the first time in his life, he would feel he almost understood what it was to fall in love. That was the miracle Dr Morton seemed to have achieved. He'd talked his jailer round – making him change sides, and turn to the Woodvilles and Lancastrians.

Now Morton was involved, the nature of the plan had changed. He opened the two mothers' eyes to bigger opportunities. There was no more talk of persuading King Richard to allow Princess Elizabeth to marry Henry Tudor. King Richard only figured in the current version of the plan as a corpse. Morton's idea was that Henry would invade England, seize the throne, kill King Richard, rescue Elizabeth and marry her.

‘Easy,’ Isabel said expressionlessly.

The Princess paused and gave her the slightly worried look of a raconteur who fears the audience is not getting the point of the story.

Isabel smiled, to put the Princess's mind at rest. But behind her smile she was thinking: I don't want a new King. I don't want any more unrest. I don't want to hide inside my house for weeks, behind bars and shutters, drinking rainwater, listening for footsteps; I don't want my old folk terrified half to death by Kentish looters. And I certainly don't want to have to beg for a new licence for the silk house from a new King – a stranger – when everything has got so far. I want things to stay as they are.

Loudest of all, her heart was screaming: I don't want a King who's not Dickon. She was remembering him warm against her, before he'd set off on his latest travels, pulling her to him at the tavern window to look at the full moon rising, and saying, very quietly, in a voice that sent shivers down her back while her waist and ribs and shoulders were warmed against his flesh: ‘This is what I do when we're apart. I come out and look at the full moon and think of you, wherever you are. You don't feel so far away if I can think you're looking at the same moon.’

She shook herself. ‘Well, so … what's he like, your future husband?’ she said, trying to look and sound warmer without saying anything overtly treasonous; who knew what the Princess might take it into her head to blurt out about this conversation at some later date?

Elizabeth shrugged. ‘Don't know,’ she said calmly. ‘Bad teeth, thin hair: that's what people say. It's not for me to ask. My mother would think anyone a good catch if they had a chance of being King of England … I just obey.’

She said it with complete acceptance. There was even a hint of rueful laughter in her eyes when she looked at Isabel again; as if she knew Isabel was secretly counting the beads of her own memories of Dickon, and giving thanks for each one, and feeling blessed to have been born, not with Elizabeth's royal blood flowing in her veins, but with all the possibilities of freedom and damnation open to her. As if the Princess, for a moment, had become older and wiser than her confidante.

‘They're planning to move on St Luke's Day,’ Isabel said clearly. It was important to get the detail right. ‘October the eighteenth. Risings all over southeast England. Kentishmen attacking London. The Duke of Buckingham bringing an army of Welshmen across the Severn. A West Country army meeting him. Then both armies going to meet Henry Tudor, who'll be landing in Devon with five thousand soldiers from Britanny. Then all of them marching east to engage you.’

Dickon had covered his face with his hands and turned his back when she'd first said his friend Buckingham was planning to betray him. There'd been a groan from inside the rumpled linen, where his head was. But she'd gone on talking to his one exposed shoulder, with its beloved tawny skin. Feeling righteous. Something had to be done.

He'd turned back round when she'd started giving the military details, though. She'd felt the alert flash of his eyes; sensed his mind fixing on her. He couldn't have expected her to know this. Now he was eating her up with his stare, weighing every word, almost smiling. When she finished, he did smile. But all he said was: ‘You'd have made a good soldier.’ And they lay in silence for a while, thinking their thoughts.

She hadn't had a qualm in the end.

After she'd left the Princess, she'd gone back to the silk house to think. She'd sat distractedly for a while, watching Joan Woulbarowe grinning rather prettily at her Lombard, Gasparino's brother Andrea, pulling down her lips to cover her bad teeth, as the first shaky pattern began to appear in the damask they were working on together, and giggling delightedly when the darker, younger man murmured Italian back at her, of which Isabel could only make out basic words, ‘Benon, benon,’ but perhaps Joan had already grasped more of the language. Or perhaps she just liked the seductive tone of voice. Isabel thought: Do I protect the Princess's secret? Or do I protect these people? My people?

The answer had been too obvious to worry over. You had to look after your own. It wasn't as hard as she'd thought it might be to betray the Princess's trust.

Dickon sat up in the bed. The straw in the mattress was fresh and soft and smelled of summer. He was going to make light of it to her.

‘Well, what do you think?’ he said, his voice higher than usual. ‘Could they win?’

He kept his eyes turned away.

‘I'm no soldier,’ she said helplessly.

‘You're my most honest adviser.’

He waited.

She said, doubtfully, thinking of all those armies blundering around different parts of the West Country, trying to meet up. ‘Well, it seems … messy.’

She didn't think the armies would beat Dickon's. Not by themselves. But what if ordinary people were pleased enough at the idea of getting rid of this king that they joined the enemy armies? There was so much talk, so many people who suspected Dickon had stolen the crown, insulted his mother's honour, killed his nephews, and who disliked him for it.

He nodded, as if he understood the thought she was hesitating over. The hardness that had always been a possibility in his face was suddenly visible again, in lines round his cheeks and eyes. He was making plans; moving troops in his mind.

She could see he wouldn't let himself be harmed. What worried her now was the harm he might do while he was making himself safe. She said, hastily: ‘Dickon.’ And when he looked at her, with eyes that were somewhere else, she added, as if the fog she lived in had suddenly cleared: ‘Please. Whatever you do, don't hurt the Princess.’

He didn't answer straight away. She wished she could know what was on his mind. He kissed her forehead and her heart turned over. ‘Of course,’ he said, more gently than she'd expected. ‘Elizabeth's not to blame. I'd never hurt her.’ After a pause, he added: ‘I wouldn't harm any of my kin. And I'd never kill a woman. You know that.’

London only heard the story of how the October rebellion was put down with delays, in dribs and drabs, in taverns and markets, from messengers and heralds, pedlars and gossips, as bitter autumn rain stripped leaves from the trees and life from the streets.

The rain stopped the Duke of Buckingham's army, as if God were on King Richard's side. A storm blew Henry Tudor's little fleet to the wrong place. He never landed. Prudently, he sailed back to Britanny. The various West Country uprisings fizzled out without joining up. Buckingham was caught at Salisbury and beheaded.

Lady Darcey was present at Isabel's next few sewing sessions. Isabel avoided the Princess's pink eyes, feeling the dislike that comes naturally for someone you've wronged. The uprising was not mentioned. Three needles flashed in silence. The King was away in the West Country for weeks, cleaning up.

No one harmed Princess Elizabeth or her mother or sisters. Dickon had told the truth about that, at least. None of the street talk even associated them with the foiled plot. People on the street just wondered why the King hadn't done something worse to Lady Margaret Beaufort, Henry Tudor's mother, who was known to have been raising money in the City for the uprising. She was under house arrest, but her jailer was her husband, Lord Stanley. There was no accounting for it, they shrugged; she'd only try again. They weren't softened by the King's softness.

The person most frightened by the talk of armies, as far as Isabel could see, was Jane. She'd got out of bed at last, and recovered her health enough to go to church every morning and have her daily interrogations conducted, in Alice's great hall, by the King's Solicitor. Thomas Lynom might be a royal bureaucrat, but he seemed a friendly enough man, with his brother's kindly eyes and good bones. He raised his hat to Isabel and passed the time of day affably enough with her whenever they passed in the hall, and she sensed he was well-disposed towards Jane. But when the invasion talk started, Jane, very quiet by day, began grinding her teeth and crying out in her sleep at night. Her thin fingers pulled at things. Whenever Isabel stayed in London, sharing a bed with Jane, she noticed boxes with their silk hinges broken; ripped cushions with their stuffing pulled half out. But she didn't ask Jane what was troubling her. She couldn't. It wasn't her place, if Jane hadn't confided in her. Isabel stifled the hurt she might have felt that Jane hadn't done so. She'd hoped that they might become closer, but perhaps it was as well they hadn't. Isabel didn't trust herself with other people's secrets any more. Her sister might just say something she'd feel compelled to tell Dickon.

But Isabel listened. And one day, as she left the house for the Guildhall, where she was to represent the Clavers at a meeting with Low Countries merchants, through the open door of the great hall she overheard Jane's new, thin, weak voice. ‘I'm so afraid,’ her sister was saying, and she sounded on the verge of tears. ‘I have nightmares about soldiers … I wake up in the night thinking they're coming for me.’

There was a comforting male rumble.

‘But I'm a sitting target,’ Jane said, her voice going higher before it did break into sobs. ‘And it would be so easy for him to do it again. Blame me for all this. Call me a witch. Make a public example of me … I'm so afraid, so afraid …’

Isabel slipped out. She didn't want to hear any more.

She didn't hurry back; she didn't want to have to face Jane's terror. But when she did slip in to dinner, late, everything had changed. Alice and Anne weren't the only people at the table, methodically shoving food into their mouths. Thomas Lynom was there too, sitting beside Jane, and there were flowers on the table, and Jane, who'd hardly eaten a thing for days, was looking at her interrogator with shining eyes as he put bits of game pie in her mouth and murmured, to approving laughs from the silkwomen, ‘Now, eat up, do; you look like a dying bird; it's time we fattened you up.’

Jane got up when she saw her sister. Shyly, she smiled. ‘Isabel,’ she said, and Isabel was astonished to see her sister's eyes start batting up and down, in that charmingly flirtatious way she'd had before, from the hands in her lap to Isabel's face. ‘I have something to tell you …’

Isabel guessed what was coming as soon as she glanced at Thomas, who was blushing to the roots of his dark-blond hair, looking a fool but too happy to care.

‘We're going to marry at the end of the month. I'm going to move to the country,’ Jane murmured breathily, and her eyes, as clear as summer skies, invited Isabel to celebrate her joy.

For the first time in a long time, Isabel found herself bursting out laughing. Alice was guffawing, too; and Isabel was able to meet her mistress's relieved eyes and share the moment. She needn't have worried about Jane, after all. Jane hadn't lost her resilience, any more than she'd lost her old knack of casting spells over men. But marrying her interrogator; now that was a masterstroke. Whatever was Dickon going to say?

She didn't care. It would be all right now Jane was going to be all right. She couldn't believe Dickon would punish her sister for falling in love. So she rushed to her sister and Thomas; embraced them both; let her gratitude to her sister's unexpected saviour shine on her face. Still, she couldn't quite stop herself dissembling. She didn't say any of the things she'd actually been thinking. Instead, with a light laugh that didn't altogether hide her sympathy for the oldest fool for love she knew, she just asked: ‘Whatever will poor Will Caxton say?’