16

When she asked about the crucifix, Dickon just sighed.

‘It's the same one,’ he said wearily, pulling himself up and buckling on his sword belt. ‘I gave it to Elizabeth to remember him by.’

But Elizabeth had said she'd hardly known her cousin. Why would she want his cross?

Isabel went on looking at Dickon. He frowned. ‘They were cousins,’ he said evasively.

She didn't look away.

As irritably as if she were interrogating him and forcing a confession, Dickon added: ‘And I've been wondering about her as a possible wife. If Anne were to die.’

She stared.

Defensively, he said: ‘Well, it would stop Henry Tudor trying to marry her. She'd get a crown, even as a bastard. It would stop her mother wanting revenge on me. It would make sense.’

Then, into the silence, he snapped: ‘For God's sake. Stop looking at me like that.’

But she couldn't. She couldn't even summon up the strength to pick up the sheet that had fallen away from her nakedness. She just went on sitting in the rumpled bed, with her chin on her knees and pale red hair flaming round her eyes, staring.

She'd accepted everything till now. She'd lived with her fears. She'd heard the stories about Hastings being dragged kicking and screaming from the Council chamber and spread-eagled across a tree stump to be beheaded, while Dickon watched. She'd shut her mind to them.

But this felt worse. It was betrayal. She couldn't say yes to this. She couldn't let him love another woman; and she couldn't believe his only motive, if he were thinking of marrying Elizabeth, would be forming a good alliance.

She couldn't shut her mind to the thought of his fastening that cross round Elizabeth's long neck.

Mastering himself, he sat down again. Put his hand on hers. ‘Look,’ he said, but she sensed that his gentleness masked impatience. ‘My son is dead; my wife is dying. It's my duty to think about this. I need an heir. This would be an alliance, that's all.’

She said nothing. She was ashes inside. Had he only really come to London this time to see Elizabeth; to make marriage plans with her?

‘Elizabeth's a child,’ he said, as if that would comfort her. ‘I don't love her.’

She said nothing.

He said: ‘I have to go.’ He was leaving for Nottingham and the North tomorrow.

She nodded.

He kissed her cheek before he went.

It would be weeks before he got back: the end of summer. She wouldn't even think about what he'd said. She couldn't. She threw herself even harder into her work.

She and Goffredo bought in weaving materials for the Italian teams, going at different times to the London markets and being careful to vary their suppliers. The slightly wobbly lengths of luminous cloth on the looms were getting bigger. It wouldn't be more than a few months before the silk-women could weave without guidance from the Italians. Soon they'd need to start planning how to announce the existence of the workshop at the Guildhall; from next spring, once the Mercery allowed them to trade, they'd be able to start making sales.

In London, where she went on Sundays to spend half of her week with the old women, she also made deals in the selds; wrote her sales into Alice's ledgers; joined the older women to entertain their clients; and went to the Guildhall with Alice and William Pratte. No one else had Isabel's eye for truth and falsehood, even Alice; Isabel was in constant demand on the commission, checking imported silk cloths for frauds. The Mercers relied on her ability to open up a length of damask and, after feeling it and looking at it by the light of the window, pronounce it either properly finished or badly worked in places, or inconsistent, or with warps too thin and however many pounds light of the weft threads it would have needed to make it tighter; or, having sniffed a suspect cloth, to say it had been artificially thickened, by a fraudulent exporter, with paste.

She remembered every foreign regulation, too, better than any clerk. When the foreign importer jumped angrily from his chair, shouting, ‘But it is perfectly honest to use gomma!’ it was Isabel who knew, and replied without hesitation, that while you could use it honestly in light cloths, such as sandals and satins, to make the colours shine and give consistency, the Venetian government had made the use of paste in any heavy parangon cloths illegal in 1457 and had enforced the regulation strictly ever since. London followed Venice's direction. There would be nothing for the importer to do but take his cloth and flounce away.

They were saying in the markets that the Queen was dying and the King was being punished for his sins. But the Claver profits were up.

‘You're a marvel; you work so hard,’ Robert Lynom said. ‘But don't you ever want to enjoy yourself? Go and stay with Jane. She's lonely; Thomas is always away these days raising troops for the King.’

She shook her head. ‘Too much to do here,’ she said briskly.

If she went to the country, how could she be at Westminster?

Isabel stayed up late at Westminster on her three days a week there. At the silk house she made the silk weavers teach her the rudiments of their craft by day and danced with the Lombards at night, very fast, very late.

Once a week she walked to the Palace to the big bright apartment overlooking the river, where Princess Elizabeth now busied herself with hunts and preparations for the dances that would start again at the end of the summer. The Princess didn't want to finish the altar vestments that reminded her of those endless miserable months of sanctuary. They'd been sent off to the City for finishing. But she and her sisters did want dancing gowns. Isabel took a profitable commission from Lady Darcey, and subcontracted the job in the Mercery. Her patience with the princesses was paying dividends. Alice would be pleased.

But that was no longer the reason Isabel came. She came to torment herself by looking at Elizabeth from under her eyelashes: measuring the smoothness of the Princess's sixteen-year-old skin and the tiny waist and the slim neck and the white hands and the prominent eyes that she'd once thought ugly but which now seemed to glow with secrets. She tried not to think of the fine lines around her own eyes; the pale streaks in her hair. But she couldn't stop herself asking: How could Dickon not love this niece?

‘That's a beautiful cross,’ she said, on one knee, pinning.

Elizabeth looked down her thin nose, squinting towards it. ‘My cousin's,’ she said quietly, ‘God rest his soul. His Majesty gave it to me.’ But she didn't offer any more information.

Fishing for more, Isabel ventured, ‘How relieved you must be that His Majesty is so well-disposed to your family …’ But the Princess only nodded, with a remote half-smile. She'd learned caution. It was a long time since she'd confided in Isabel.

If only more people were more cautious, Isabel thought angrily, catching up with her servant.

‘Speta, Dotor Gigli! Drio de vu! Vienlo a Mesa?’ Joan Woulbarowe was joyfully trilling. She was looking prettier these days than she had in all the years Isabel had known her. She'd lost her neglected air. Her hair was dressed under her kerchief and her lips were full and pink and her eyes were gleaming, and there was a pretty gold heart on a red ribbon round her neck. The other Westminster silkwomen spent their evenings putting bets on how long it would take timid little Andrea di Costanzo to pluck up the courage to ask his brother Gasparino to ask Goffredo to ask Alice Claver to allow him to marry Joan Woulbarowe at the end of her initial two-year silk training contract. No one expected him to rush, but everyone knew he'd do it eventually.

Still, happy or not, Joan Woulbarowe would always be a fool, Isabel thought severely, as she emerged blinking into the summer sun from the dark mouth of St Thomas of Acre behind the fat doctor who'd been worshipping at the Italian chapel. What did Joan think she was doing, wandering round the City on a Sunday morning, warbling away in her fluent bad Italian to Lombards and drawing attention to herself? She was supposed to stay out of harm's way at Westminster.

Isabel caught up and tapped Joan Woulbarowe on the shoulder, interrupting whatever cheerful comment she'd been making to the Italian. Dr Gigli was a priest and medical man, not a merchant, so there was less immediate danger that Joan's sudden display of knowledge of Italian would cause any market gossip, but it was best to send Joan on her way quickly in any case.

Joan looked startled – though, Isabel thought grimly, not half-guilty enough at her own indiscretion.

‘Did you have a message for Mistress Claver, Joan?’ Isabel said, flashing a warning with her eyes.

‘Oh, no, Mistress Isabel,’ Joan answered innocently, ‘I was just going to visit my Auntie Rose in Lad Lane. She's broken her ankle. She likes to see me on a Sunday.’

Isabel sighed. ‘Well, run along,’ she said, and Joan fluttered anxious, uncomprehending eyes at her before turning away.

‘Bexon’ ndar caxa,’ she said politely to Dr Gigli, bobbing as she went. ‘Ah, la vita l'è na fraxe interóta. S-ciào vostro,’ he replied, equally courteously.

Isabel stood uncertainly, watching. Dr Gigli stayed where he was, too, watching Joan's back recede. ‘It is a long time I do not see Joan,’ he said with warmth. ‘Her aunt used to work in my house.’

Isabel smiled in a ‘very-interesting-but-I-must-rush’ way, but the plump Italian with the intrigued expression wasn't letting her go that easily. He turned his pot belly her way.

‘She has been learning Italian, I see.’

Isabel quailed inside. But she put a confiding, knowing, slightly leering look on her face. ‘She's in love,’ she said.

‘So I've heard.’ He nodded, up and down, up and down, so that his double chins wobbled into one another. Gaining confidence – it was so nearly the truth of why Joan was learning Italian – she embroidered her story by adding, ‘with a Lucchese, they say’, at the same time as Dr Gigli said something himself.

She only realised what he'd been saying, and how definitely he'd been saying it, when it was too late: ‘With a Venetian, I can hear. She's talking Venetian.’

‘El maestro de léngoa pì sicuro xe l'uso,’ he added thoughtfully. ‘Usage is the best teacher of language.’

Isabel cursed herself. Why hadn't she shut up? She was more of a fool than Joan. She smiled wider and shook her head innocently. ‘Oh, I wouldn't know. A Lucchese – that's just what I heard,’ she gabbled, aware she was sounding foolish. ‘But maybe a Venetian. I won't contradict you. I expect you can tell, can't you? Different accents, words …’

He was looking at her again now, squinting against the sun. ‘There are not so many Venetians in London,’ he said consideringly. ‘Just the Conterini and their people. And me. And your friend Goffredo D'Amico, of course.’ Isabel nodded, politely, desperate to move away. ‘Although,’ he added, ‘there is always talk of others.’

‘I must go,’ she said, simpering uneasily.

‘Perhaps you've heard the rumours yourself? That King Edward wrote a licence for Italians to teach silk weaving here? Venetians? Signor Mancini has been saying for years that he heard that at court, from the scrivener of’, he crossed himself, ‘the late Lord Hastings.’

She looked down. He gestured up at St Thomas’, still smiling. ‘Since your servant speaks my language so well, you may know the Venetian saying yourself: La mé religion xe sercar la verità 'nte la vita e la vita 'nte la verità. My religion is to seek out truth in life and life in truth.’

She shook her head, trying to keep the smile on her face.

‘We also say,’ he continued urbanely, ‘Juteme a capir quel che ve digo e ve lo speigarò mejo: help me to understand what I am saying, and I will explain it better.’

He held her gaze. She looked blankly back. ‘There's even a rumour that your Signore D'Amico has been importing looms from Venice,’ he added. His chins rippled again. ‘Not that there's any sign of any such thing actually happening. Still, you know what we Venetians are like – we love gossip. What would life be without a good rumour, eh!’

And he threw back his head and bellowed with laughter. Isabel laughed too; bowed and walked away, still smiling prettily. It was only when she turned off Cheapside to walk through the market that she saw Dr Gigli still standing outside the church. He wasn't laughing any more, but he was still looking her way.

But she put Dr Gigli out of her mind when she got back to the quiet of Westminster. He was so far away. And she had too much else to worry about.

What she'd found herself thinking about, most of every day and even in the night, when she woke up, tossing and turning, was how to get the Princess to discuss Dickon. She'd find something out that way, at least, wouldn't she? She'd thought of so many ways to get that conversation going; but they all seemed contrived.

She knew – felt – there was something going on. The whispers she overheard, through half-closed bedchamber doors at the Princess's Palace rooms, were quick and intent. She just couldn't tell if they were connected with Dickon. Once she heard a doubtful mutter of, ‘You'd think ten drops of laudanum a day would fell an ox,’ before the Princess came out to the parlour to greet her.

It had been a female voice speaking, though so low-pitched she couldn't be sure it had been the Princess's; but what could those words mean? Dowager Elizabeth Woodville had taken to flashing in and out of the fittings, inspecting Isabel's sewing with her old queenly demeanour, breathing through a nose which, though beautiful, always had the white flecks of suppressed anger in it. She was waiting for something.

Isabel was tacking on a sleeve lace, miserably aware of Elizabeth's elegant column of a neck just a few inches away, when she finally plucked up courage to find out more.

‘Your lovely crucifix … your gift from His Majesty,’ she murmured, and Elizabeth fluttered a hand towards it: a lovely hand with white, smooth skin, glittering with rings.

‘… It reminds me of what I've heard people saying …’ Isabel went on, and she was aware of Elizabeth's sharpening of attention without needing to look up.

‘… about His Majesty's intentions if, God forbid, God takes Her Majesty the Queen to Himself …’

Elizabeth said nothing, but her narrow nostrils flared white; how like her mother she'd become.

Isabel blurted: ‘They're saying he might take it into his head to marry you next.’

She was miserably aware that she hadn't got her opening gambit right, even before she saw Elizabeth's green eyes move down to fix consideringly on her own lowered head. There was a flicker of what she thought might be amusement on the Princess's face.

Gently, Elizabeth said: ‘You seem to be taking a great interest in his intentions …’ And she raised one eyebrow and let the faintest of smiles come onto her lips.

Isabel widened her eyes, hoping she looked innocent rather than alarmed. The Princess's tone was cooler and more knowing than she'd anticipated. ‘Oh no,’ she muttered hastily, ‘I just thought … you'd … appreciate being forewarned.’

The Princess nodded. ‘Thank you,’ she said, ending the conversation.

Isabel's mouth was so dry it felt as though she'd been eating ashes. Had the Princess become so sharply aware of another woman's interest in Dickon because she too was in love? Isabel stepped around her client to begin working on the laces for the other shoulder, and as she moved she noticed Elizabeth's hand flutter back up to the red winking eye of the cross round her neck.

Winter set in early that year. By the first Friday in September, the wind outside was already heavy with the rot of wet leaves and the threat of snow; inside the Palace, the smell of fish frying in the kitchens hung in the air.

The word was the King was on his way south.

Isabel and the princesses were putting together the finished sections of the altarpiece that Isabel had had made up in the City and brought back. Dowager Elizabeth Woodville was going to offer the cloths to the Abbot, who'd afforded her so much hospitality, as a Christmas gift of thanks.

Elizabeth hadn't settled to the work. She was restless. When she'd seen the silkwoman walk in, she'd just nodded and flown off to her sisters' bedchambers – the chambers all opened on to the same reception room – chirruping at them from the doorways to come out and finish the work they'd started. Then she'd called to Isabel: ‘I have a letter to finish; I'll join you shortly,’ and vanished.

Isabel was left alone with the younger girls, who didn't much like the idea of sewing up panels they were only pretending to have embroidered themselves, but who at least hadn't altogether lost the habit of confiding. So she sewed. They talked. She listened.

‘Our mother is so happy to be back at court …’

‘She's even started writing to Uncle Dorset …’

‘He's her son … our half-brother … her favourite, we think … she misses him …’

‘She's told him it's quite safe here now, after all …’

‘She wants him to desert Henry Tudor …’

‘And come home …’

‘And he's thinking about it …’

‘It's miserable in Britanny, he says …’

‘Cold and tense …’

‘So he says he might come …’

‘And we're wondering if he'll be here by Christmas.’

She smiled, for their happiness but also for the shiver of hope in her own heart. Perhaps that was what all the whispering and letters whisked away when she got too close had been about all along; perhaps the plotting had been as innocent as these children's stories; perhaps there'd been no reason for her to worry. The Queen wasn't dead, for all the gloomy rumours in the markets. Dickon didn't need a new wife. The Queen would get better. The rebels would creep back from abroad, like Dorset. He'd regain his old confidence; get over his grief; lose his fears. She just needed to keep faith.

The children got bored before the work was done. One by one they lisped their excuses and went back to their rooms. Isabel carried on sewing, alone, feeling more peaceful than she had all summer. She just needed faith, she thought; everything would be all right. Have faith, she found herself whispering, in time with her stitches. Have faith.

A shadow moved nearby. Male footsteps stopped a few paces away. She didn't recognise them; it must be a servant. She didn't look up.

The footsteps moved quietly away. It wasn't a servant. The man had spurs that clinked. Looking past her needle at the ground, she saw mud on his boots. The spurs were golden.

With a shock, she realised whose boots these were. This was how they'd first met, wasn't it? In a church, by candlelight, with the spurs glinting.

There was a silence the length of a held breath. He'd always had the gift of stillness.

Her first instinct, before she even looked up, was to surrender to the tide of happiness flooding over her. She'd been waiting for months to feel his hand on the curve of her back again; the deep, comforting, heel-of-the-hand caress she'd made her life. Concern on his thin, dark face, in his narrow eyes, which needn't be hard. The silken bass voice murmuring, ‘I've missed you.’ And now he was here.

The things she hadn't realised she'd been planning to say all summer were on her lips now. She'd say: ‘I'm sorry.’ She'd say: ‘I took no account of your grief.’ She'd say: ‘I reacted wrongly,’ and: ‘I will always love you.’ They never talked of love. She'd say anything to make it right.

The weight she'd been carrying for so long was miraculously rising from her shoulders. Everything could be mended, she thought blissfully: everything. She looked up.

But none of what she'd imagined happened.

When their eyes did meet, she found him poised, taut and still and dark as ever. But his expression was guarded. His eyes were hooded. There wasn't even a ghost of a smile on his lips. She thought: he's embarrassed. She realised, hotly: embarrassed I'm here.

She realised: He's come to see Elizabeth first.

He bowed slightly. She'd never seen him in court clothes; in smooth-fitting hose; in a beautifully cut, black velvet tunic with gold embroidery and a jewelled crucifix swinging from it; in an elaborate mulberry hat. He didn't remove the hat.

‘Good day,’ he said quietly, but his eyes slid away.

‘You're here,’ she said. It sounded stupid. But she didn't understand. Why hadn't he sent her a message?

He looked around at all the open doorways. Nodded, rather sadly.

‘To see the lady Elizabeth,’ he said, in the kind of firm but gentle voice people use when breaking bad news.

Beseechingly, she put a hand out; her eyes were so full of heat and wetness she could hardly see him. She couldn't bear it.

He caught the hand. Clasped it in both his. ‘Isabel,’ he muttered; and when she somehow managed to open her eyes and look piteously up at him, stripped of every shred of pride and self-respect she'd ever laid claim to, she saw pain in his eyes too.

‘I was coming to you, too,’ he whispered indecisively. ‘Truly.’ She could see he didn't know how to placate her – not here, where anyone might come in at any time.

But he hadn't come to her first. Her mind kept coming back to that. He always came to the Red Pale before the Palace. The only reason he could have to avoid meeting her this time was that he did intend to marry Elizabeth – and, worse, that he loved Elizabeth – and didn't want to have to explain himself to Isabel. Isabel knew him too well to be deceived. He must have realised she'd see through him if he tried to lie.

Nothing else made sense.

‘It's not that I don't want …’ he whispered. He was having trouble getting the next word out. His teeth were clenched. He shut his eyes. ‘… you.’ He squeezed her hand till she thought her bones would break. ‘You know I do. But I need this.’

There was no time for more. Low though their voices were, Elizabeth had heard something. She came dancing out through her doorway with sunshine on her white-peach cheeks and, with more charm than decorum, half-ran over the flagstones towards her uncle.

Hastily, Dickon dropped Isabel's hand at the first sound from the bedchamber. Then he turned to his niece and clasped her hands instead. As he bowed to her, Isabel saw the look he gave Elizabeth – a look of utter, devoted enchantment; nothing like the amused way his eyes crinkled at her. Then it was gone, while he swept his hat down, revealing the rumpled black hair that Isabel wanted, more than ever before, to run her fingers through; the head she knew, in that instant, she'd never touch again.

The Princess fluttered; looking beautiful. Turning uncertainly towards Isabel, whose presence she'd just remembered. ‘This is my … embroiderer … Mistress Claver,’ she murmured to him, as if drawing his attention to the presence of a servant. ‘His Majesty,’ she added, over Isabel's head.

‘Your Majesty,’ she said, head down, so no one could see her clenching her teeth. ‘I was just leaving.’

‘No,’ the Princess said politely, ‘please stay. Don't hurry. Finish the work before you go.’ She turned to Dickon, and slipped her arm through his. Dully, Isabel watched the two arms, one black, one a gleaming blue-green, twine together. ‘I was hoping His Majesty might take me for a stroll anyway … ?’

He bowed again and walked his niece out. Neither of them looked back. The Princess was giggling in a breathy, girlish way. His head was bowed towards her.

Isabel sat and listened to their footsteps recede until all she could hear was the beat of her own heart. She was remembering those two arms touching each other. She was staring at the roses and pearls on the altar cloth, but her eyes weren't focused; she could only see a vague whiteness, the colour of clouds and shrouds. She could still feel herself breathing, strangely calm. But she didn't understand how that could be, since her life had just ended.

No one else was there, so, methodically, obsessively, Isabel searched the rooms for more proof. It didn't take long. Elizabeth had left a letter out, only half-finished, in her private room.

Like a spy, Isabel scanned the page. The Princess had been writing to the Duke of Norfolk – Lord Howard's new title, a reward for helping Dickon take power last year.

In the letter, the Princess asked the Duke of Norfolk ‘to be a mediator for me to the King, on behalf of the marriage propounded between us’.

The Princess called Dickon ‘my only joy and maker in this world’.

The Princess wrote that she was the King's, in heart and thought.

The Princess had stopped and scratched out the last line of her draft. But Isabel could still make out what was underneath the petulant stabs of ink. The words Princess Elizabeth had thought better of writing had been: ‘Winter is on us already, and I fear the Queen will never die.’

Feeling blanketed in an otherworldly white cloud, Isabel walked back to the Red Pale, wondering at how ordinary her rhythmic footfalls sounded, how steady her breathing.

‘Forget him,’ Will Caxton kept saying. ‘We all make mistakes. Put it behind you. Let it go.’ She could feel his hands patting ineffectually at her heaving shoulders. She could feel the rough wood of his kitchen table against her cheek. He seemed to have been saying the same thing for hours, and his voice was harder than his hands.

‘I can't,’ she snivelled or howled by turns, hating her weakness. She couldn't imagine a life without Dickon. What would be left?

Seriously, Caxton said: ‘You must. Don't think you can play Jane to his Edward and not be scarred. He's not Edward. Edward might have been a sensualist; but he had a good heart, at least. He honestly loved Jane.’

Isabel was too flayed inside to feel the anger she should at being compared with Jane. She shouldn't have told Will that Dickon had never said he loved her; had never given her gifts. Perhaps that was why Will looked angry; he was such a soft man. He thought love should be hearts and flowers and frolics. He couldn't imagine it being the need she felt.

She just muttered, defiantly: ‘But I don't want troubadours and trinkets. That's not why … I'm not like Jane. I didn't want a king. He wasn't a king when I met him. I didn't even know who he was. He was just a man; one who showed me how to think; how to plan for success. When I had nothing else; when I was just an apprentice; when my father turned me away; I thought, all the time, for years, what would he do in my position? I modelled myself on him …’ she sniffed. ‘And if I lose him, and that, I'd lose what I've made myself. What would be left?’

Will said, impatiently, ‘But you're not making sense. So what if he taught you chess? You're certainly not thinking strategically now. You're blinding yourself to your own needs. You're letting him hurt you. You're refusing to see the truth: that even if you love him, he's cold. Corrupt. Rotten to the core. You must know that. Don't let him corrupt you too.’

She shook her head, desperate to defend Dickon. ‘But he's not,’ she stammered. ‘People say he's wicked. But he's not.’

The shadows from the candle flame lent Caxton's gentle features the sternness of an avenging angel. ‘Look,’ he said, ‘this isn't the worst thing he's done, by a long way. I can see it would hurt you to find out he's fixing up a marriage to the niece he calls a bastard before his wife's even dead. But why are you so much more upset about this than anything else? You can't have just forgotten the rest, surely? Putting your sister in prison. Murdering her lover. Stealing the throne. Killing his nephews.’

‘But he didn't, he didn't,’ she sobbed defiantly. ‘They're alive.’

Very gently, he said, ‘How do you know?’

‘Because the Princess told me.’

‘And how does she know?’

‘Because she got a letter from her brother. It's what made her come out of sanctuary.’

‘And who delivered the letter to her?’ Caxton asked.

Dickon. She didn't bother saying the word. She could see Will knew.

He nodded, as if she'd proved his point. ‘You see,’ he said kindly. ‘If you believe that, he's corrupted you already.’

Caxton found a scrap of compassion for the Princess. ‘She'd want to believe it – her mother too – because their only chance of becoming royal again is if she marries his crown. But you're better than that; there's no need for you to believe a lie. Try and think clearly. It makes no sense to break your heart over whether he's fallen in love with your Princess. What you should be worrying about is what he wants from you. He's never loved you; he just needed someone to approve of all his schemes and games and manoeuvrings for power; someone to make him feel he's not wicked. He is. He didn't even care enough about you not to persecute your sister when it suited him. Can't you see?’

‘But,’ she sobbed. It was all true; Will was right; Dickon's darkness was eating away at her. But she didn't care, as long as she could see him. Sometimes; somehow. ‘He's all I have.’

That made Will angry. He stopped patting her shoulders. He stood up, pushing his stool back. He grabbed her wrists and pulled her up too. The pale eyes looking into hers were furious. She flinched.

‘He's not all you have,’ Caxton said loudly and quickly. ‘That's nonsense. Nonsense. You're the heir to one of the best silk businesses in London. You have your weavers to look after. And you have us, to look after you. There's a lot in your life. Don't forget it.’

It would never be enough without Dickon.

But when Will saw the shame in Isabel's eyes at that thought, he stopped shaking her. He dropped her wrists and let her go back to her hopeless sobbing. She cried herself out.

In the end, in the quiet, he shook his own head. ‘It's like a sickness, what you've got, isn't it?’ he said. His voice was sad; but cold, too. ‘Go home. Think about what I'm saying, Isabel. It's madness for you to love that man. Don't let him destroy you.’

There was frost on the bushes. The looms were just falling silent when she pushed her own door open. She could hear voices. Joan Woulbarowe's Andrea looked up and grinned. He was a wizened nut of a man. His teeth were as black as his bride's.

‘Look, Mistress,’ he said, beckoning her over. ‘It is going very well. This cloth,’ he pointed at the loom he'd been examining, where Joan sat bathed in evening light over a blue-green woven marvel of flowers and birds, ‘is the first we can be proud to sell.’

Isabel couldn't focus on the cloth. It reminded her of the Princess's sleeve, rubbing against Dickon's arm. She thought she might be sick if she looked. So she smiled. It was a pale, grim excuse of a smile, but it cost her more effort than she'd have thought possible. ‘Good,’ she said faintly, feeling proud to be trying. ‘Good. Good.’

‘I am going to finish it with a gold thread in the selvage,' he said importantly, ‘and the Claver seal. We can put it in the storehouse, ready for trading. God willing we will have twenty or thirty of this quality ready for sale by Passiontide.’

She said, ‘Good. Good,’ a few more times, then stopped.

He looked curiously at her. ‘I believe we are about to be very successful,’ he said.

She mumbled, ‘Good’, again.

He stared. ‘Mistress Claver,’ he said, ‘are you feeling well?’

She could feel shivers down her back; aches in her arms and legs. What was she doing in this dark little house, with its walls swaying drunkenly in and out, with this dark little man she hardly knew?

‘Not very well,’ she muttered. ‘I think … a chill coming on … lie down.’

He beckoned to Joan and Agnes, who hurried forward. Anxiously they bundled Isabel upstairs to the women's room, loosened her robe, and covered her with all the blankets they could find. Someone brought her broth.

She lay glassy-eyed, feeling far away from the bustle, wondering why she'd wanted this – why she'd ever thought weaving silk mattered, or that she'd be happy if she made this business work – when now she understood, with sickening simplicity, that happiness was somewhere quite different; somewhere she'd never go again.