9

Spring 1483

It was ten years since Isabel had last been inside the Palace of Westminster. Yet, however much of a queen of silk she knew herself to have become in that decade, she was still overawed on this cold February morning by the sheer size of the city in stone; by the waiting, and the corridors, and the slow whispers of the men-at-arms.

She tried to put all that aside as she knelt in front of the plump girl with the pallid face and swollen eyes and flaming red-gold hair whom she'd come to serve. In businesslike fashion, she lifted a flap of red cloth of gold from one side of the girl's gown, folding her lips round her mouthful of pins, trying to work out where best to cut.

Princess Elizabeth, King Edward's eldest daughter, was sixteen to Isabel's twenty-six. But she looked far younger. She was stiff and owlish; her dignity was indistinguishable from a child's awkward silence.

The child had good reason to look solemn, Isabel thought, without particular compassion – there hadn't been a trace of warmth yet from the young royal person in front of her, standing so on her dignity, and Isabel saw no reason for personal sympathy. Princess Elizabeth had just failed to become the Queen of France. Her father's English alliance with France had collapsed now that the sly French King had decided not to bother with the English wedding and, instead, had married his son to the Duke of Burgundy's daughter. The Princess's glittering future had turned to dust in a day. King Edward was furious for many reasons, one being that the King of France had also stopped paying him the fat pension he'd been living on for years, and a king as poor as Edward couldn't easily handle any loss of income. So Isabel had been called in to unpick the Princess's trousseau, sewn in the now suddenly violently disliked French style, and to decide which silk pieces could be reworked in a fashion less painful to observers, which could be reused for more down-to-earth purpose later. That was King Edward's way of venting his anger and saving money at the same time. Jane Shore had suggested it to him, and, while he was laughing in his easygoing way at his mistress's idea, she'd also suggested Isabel be chosen to do the work.

It was Elizabeth who'd bravely said to Isabel that they should start with the wedding gown itself – a magnificent confection of cloth of gold embroidered with a latticework of gold thread and pearls so stiff it seemed to be standing up by itself. She was wearing it now. But, even with all that splendour on her back, she was nothing much to look at herself, Isabel thought; the red hair she'd inherited from her beautiful mother was lovely enough, but she'd also got her father's tight little rosebud lips, and a pair of green eyes that might, in happier times, have been pretty, but were puffy and pinkish today, probably from crying. In the quiet of the antechamber, she looked all set to cry again.

Isabel was trying not to look up at the Princess's trembling lower lip when she became aware of a small sound behind her. She froze. She'd heard this might happen: this creeping, no-warning, hackle-raising manifestation of a new presence in the room, right behind your back. It meant the Queen was here: King Edward's wife, Queen Elizabeth Woodville, the striking redhead hated by everyone in England, the woman whose pointy beauty hid the temper of the devil himself.

Isabel shifted on her knees. She was aware of the Queen only as a swish of colour somewhere behind her; a prickling down her spine. She guessed the Queen was pacing, on kid slippers that made no sound, along the thick arras of this small, hot room, which was so filled with valuable clothing of almost miraculous design that you could practically feel pearls and gold thread in the dust tickling your throat. The Princess had starting breathing shallowly, as if afraid, and she'd stopped moving. There was panic in her swollen eyes. Isabel was glad she'd been already on her knees when the Queen entered.

She'd heard the stories about the Queen, keeping the ladies of the court standing for three silent hours a day while she dined. It wasn't hard to see that England's only ever commoner Queen would be just as eager to impose humiliating rules on servants. Rules that emphasised the grandeur of a Queen who'd come from nowhere. Who'd come to the attention of the kingdom at large nineteen years ago, when the young King Edward – gloriously descended from Japhet, son of Noah, through the Kings of Troy, the founders of Rome, and Brutus, the first king of Britain – had sneaked off and secretly married her while out hunting. Back then, she'd just been the impoverished widow of Sir John Grey, a Lancastrian who'd been killed fighting on the wrong side at the second battle of St Albans; she'd had nothing but her red-gold hair to help her make her way. People said the King had drawn a dagger on her to force her into his bed; but she'd just stared him down with her cool green eyes and said, ‘I might be too base to be a King's wife; but I'm too good to be your harlot.’ So he'd married her instead, and she'd stayed Queen even though the marriage had caused another war.

King Edward's strongest lord, the Earl of Warwick, had been so furious he'd brought back old, defeated King Henry from the shadows, and tried, for a year, to be Lancastrian. But Edward had won through in the end, and returned to London after a year to reclaim his queen from sanctuary at Westminster. Queen Elizabeth Woodville had given birth to his son, little Prince Edward, at the Abbot's house there. She was fearless all right, but she'd never be royal enough to relax. She'd always need fantastical displays of obeisance to help her believe she'd risen so far in the world. Isabel wanted to avoid humiliation by staying safely out of her way.

The wildcat footsteps stopped. Isabel's head was bowed, so all she could see was her own torso and knees, but every fibre of her body could feel the eyes burning into her.

Suddenly a hand was thrust in front of her: white, elegant, glittering fingers. Isabel stared. She didn't know what to do with it. Then, gingerly, hoping she wouldn't wobble if she moved, she reached for it with her right hand and kissed the fingertips. She didn't dare raise her head. She wasn't invited to either.

‘They say you have nimble fingers, Mistress Claver,’ she heard. Isabel squinted up as far as she could without being impertinent enough to raise her head. The Queen – with the most perfectly beautiful cat-face over her perfectly beautiful cat-body – knew she was peeping. Isabel realised the other woman was looking straight back into her eyes, with one corner of her lovely mouth lifted. Isabel wouldn't call it a smile. But she did realise, from that look, that whatever it was that was making the Queen almost vibrate with suppressed rage, it wasn't Isabel. She breathed. Looked up more boldly.

The Queen flicked a dismissive hand towards the great armoury of clothing that had been designed to awe two kingdoms, and celebrate God's blessing of the Princess as His own anointed Queen of France. Said, with a twist of her lips so fastidious that she might have been looking at rotting corpses: ‘Well, do what you can with that’, and, turning away with lithe, liquid movements, stalked off to the door. From there, beside the guards, without turning round, she dropped three final words. ‘You may stand.’

But both Isabel and the Princess stayed frozen where they were for a few more moments, listening to her departing footsteps. Isabel got the impression that everything inside this Palace would always be done with the same caution. She wondered if everyone who survived a possible mauling by the Queen felt the same surge of warmth for their fellow-survivors as she was now feeling for the miserable-looking lump of a girl slouched in front of the arras. Growing up with that tiger of a mother must be every bit as frightening as Isabel's first dealings with Alice Claver had been.

Finally, she raised her head and dared to look at the Princess. For the first time, Princess Elizabeth deigned to look directly back at her, and Isabel was surprised to see that there was, after all, nothing childish in the girl's eyes. Elizabeth was no stranger to the curdling effects of humiliation and didn't expect Isabel to be; for all her trappings of finery, the princess was someone who didn't expect much from life. The Princess nodded dejectedly. ‘Let's go on,’ she said. ‘She won't be back for a while.’

Isabel pinned in silence for a few more minutes. But she couldn't get those eyes, as watchful as hers had been every moment of her year in the selds, out of her head, or shake off her new awareness of the Princess as someone as helpless as Isabel had once been: someone waiting, and soaking up knowledge that might be useful later, biding her time, living through her period of powerlessness, just waiting for her chance to strike out for herself. So the silence grew warmer.

Eventually, Isabel ventured to speak. ‘This must be very strange for you,’ she mumbled, through her pins, and she was rewarded with just the kind of careful look she herself might have given one of the silkwomen she'd eventually grown close to, at the first sign of warmth. Elizabeth nodded, cautiously. ‘It seemed so definite, my wedding,’ she said. ‘For so long. We used to act it out in the nursery, even; my little brother Edward would play being the King of England, giving me away at the altar to become Queen of France.’

Her eyes slid away. ‘And now … nothing,’ she added. There was a hint of bitterness in her voice as she added, ‘I mean, for me. Though Edward will still be King one day.’

There was nothing Isabel could safely say to that. Carefully, she took out the remaining pins from her mouth and put them back in her box; then, thanking God for pins, called the two guards. While Elizabeth stepped out of the gown in one room, she oversaw the men carrying out the separated sleeves and train that made up the rest of the ensemble, each in a different padded velvet bag, from the outer room. The valuable garments would be taken under escort to Catte Street. It was a good first day's work.

The men returned to take away the pinned gown. Elizabeth stood in the doorway in her kirtle, listlessly watching. Trying again to comfort her, Isabel said: ‘I expect there'll be a new marriage arranged for you before we even have time to take any of these apart …’

The Princess smiled a wintry smile in return, acknowledging Isabel's efforts at optimism even if she didn't pretend to be reassured by them.

‘If I may,’ Isabel said, feeling sorrier than ever for the girl, though still not sure whether that was the same as enjoying her company, ‘I'll take my leave now, until next week. I don't want to tire Your Highness out …’ She raised an eyebrow, to signify, ‘May I be dismissed?’

To her surprise, that gesture made Elizabeth smile properly for the first time, like the child she'd so recently been. ‘You can lift one eyebrow by itself!’ she said, with unexpected childish joy. ‘Like my uncle! We're always trying; but none of us can.’

‘Oh …’ Isabel said, touched; suddenly able to imagine all those young princesses with time hanging so heavy on their hands, realising that their easiest refuge would, naturally, be in the innocence of childish games that kept dangerous adult eyes away from them. ‘Well, I'll show you the secret next time, then. We can practise.’

Was that really all it took to break the ice? Maybe they'd begin to have a real working relationship from now on; one that would bring Isabel more jobs in the future.

Isabel was smiling inside at a private joke, too: at how much more truth there was in the Princess's words than she could know. Dickon was always comically lifting one eyebrow. Had Isabel copied the gesture from him? Or he from her? She didn't know. But just that chance reminder of Dickon's existence – the memory of the muscles of his lively face working; the texture of his skin; his smell on the sheets – was enough to touch her with grace. It reminded her that, if she got out of the Palace within the hour – and she would now – she'd catch him at the inn before he went back north tomorrow.

She kept her dignity right through the process of leaving the Palace – one corridor, then a wait with the guards, smoothing down her skirts; another corridor, another escort, another wait until the next keys and spurs began jangling; right to the gates. But once she got outside, onto the street, she couldn't stop herself rushing. The air suddenly felt warm and wild with the promise of spring. She picked up her blue satin skirts so she could move faster. By the time she reached the Abbey, she was running.

He was waiting in the street. The impatient wind was flapping his cloak around his ankles. It was nearly dark.

‘Come on,’ he said, rough-voiced over the bluster of air. His eyes were gleaming. ‘We're not staying here. It's late. I'm going to take you back to London. Your Alice Claver will worry about you otherwise.’

She laughed. ‘What do you mean?’ she asked. She had to almost shout; the wind blew away her words. ‘There's still an hour; more.’ But he just began pulling her along, the way she'd come, grinning. He had an idea. There was nothing for her to do but go along with it. She could never be sure what Dickon would do next.

Last time he'd been south had been for Twelfth Night, a month or more earlier. They'd had a snatched, intent hour's walk along the river, in the dark of London, on a colder, frostier version of this evening. The streets had been still full of debris from the previous night's madness. He'd been on his way to the Tower, where Lord Hastings, his friend as well as Jane's, had been waiting to show him the latest coin he was in charge of minting, the new angelet. In their dark cloaks that night, she and Dickon had looked like any other couple who might have drunk too much in the revels the night before, clinging to each other, feeling each other's heat: lovers with nowhere to go. It had been too painful, that visit; so short, so unfulfilled. She'd plucked at the quiet cloak at his neck with both hands. ‘Your cloak of invisibility,’ she'd said sadly. ‘Who'd ever think you were a prince, kicking at old bottles on the wharves?’ And he'd looked at her with the same longing she felt. Said nothing; kissed her a last time in front of All Hallows by the Tower, and walked away briskly, whistling, but still looking lonely, with the horse he was leading jingling its harness and blowing great clouds of white behind him.

He must have thought of something better for this evening – though she couldn't imagine what could be better or easier than the warm quiet of his tavern room, a haven she so seldom managed to visit. At the jetty, with one hand holding his dark cap down on his hair and the other around Isabel's waist, Dickon pulled out a purse and gave the first boatman he saw a gold coin and a wink. The stubbly old man stared doubtfully at it as the first stars made their pinpoint appearances in the sky. His creaking six-seater rowboat wouldn't be worth that much if he sold it. Was the gentleman drunk?

‘Pick your boat up from the moorings below the bridge in the morning,’ Dickon said blithely. ‘I'll take it till then.’ The man began to protest. But Dickon cut through his wheezing my-livelihood-my-dearest-possession-as-God-help-me-I'm-a-father-of-six talk with another gold coin and a wave of the hand. ‘Have a drink on me,’ Dickon added.

The man's eyes opened very wide. As if scared Dickon might change his mind, he pocketed both coins and scuttled off, very quickly, up the jetty. Dickon threw his head back and laughed at the greed in those rheumy eyes. ‘Like a crab,’ he spluttered; ‘he just couldn't believe it, could he?’

Taking her cue from him, Isabel laughed too. Dickon made everything so easy.

He kissed her forehead. She raised her face to his, but, still smiling at the enjoyable memory, Dickon stepped back unexpectedly, and said, in servile tones, ‘Your vessel awaits, milady,’ and handed her down into the old boat. The water gurgled wildly around her, already nearly black, as the boat rocked and righted itself. The lantern at the back of the boat flickered, as if it was winking too. She looked breathlessly around. Was this his surprise? ‘And your boatman,’ he added, stepping in after her. He took the oars.

She drew in a deep gulp of wind. It was always like this: despair or euphoria, with nothing in between. The more she knew him the more she realised it always would be. He enjoyed living by the skin of his teeth. She liked to think that was why she loved him with this desperate simplicity – with a pure need that still sucked the breath out of her body and left her awed by its power. He didn't live with the solemnity of other princes, she thought; maybe because he hadn't always been a prince. He'd been everything in the course of the wars: noble before he became royal, since Edward hadn't grown up expecting to be King. Poor as well as rich. A winner now, but, for years, a loser. The uncertainty had left its mark; he still liked danger. She knew now that when she'd first met Dickon he'd just spent a year in hiding overseas with his brother. They'd only managed to escape England by a miracle. Lord Hastings had fought off the Lancastrians at the front door of the house where they'd been cornered; the King and Dickon escaped out the back. They'd found a ship, but had no money to pay for their passage. ‘We had no idea where we were going,’ Dickon had told her once, stroking her face, but with his mind in the past, ‘and we had nothing but the clothes we stood up in. Thank God, Edward had a cloak lined with marten fur; the skipper took it instead of money.’ He stopped; looked properly down at her; smiled wickedly. ‘Best argument I know for a good strong dark anonymous cloak, lined with something very expensive.’

The cloak he was wearing now was lined with marten, too. He took it off and put it across her shoulders, under a big sky, shot with wisps of flame-coloured cloud. She sat very still on the passengers' platform at the front of the boat, lined with mildewed cushions, snuggling into the heaviness of the cloak. It was still warm from the touch of his body. As he rowed them out into the current, she looked first at the sun sinking over the water, then, as he neatly turned the boat – wherever had he learned how to row? – at the muscles she could see working in his back and arms, through his plain shirt. The water gurgled around them. Dreamy and warm, she listened to his rhythmic, heavy breathing and the judder of oars against rowlocks. The light faded.

He stopped rowing. He looked back at her, or perhaps at the end of the sunset behind her, with an expression she couldn't read. ‘Beautiful,’ he said softly, in a voice that made her shiver. He laid the oars carefully to rest inside the boat and shifted himself, too, onto the passenger platform where she was sitting.

She leaned against him. There was a light sweat on his forehead; on his chest. There was hardly anyone else on the river this late. He pulled her to him in a suddenly tender embrace and let her mouth find his. ‘I'm willing to bet,’ he whispered, very low, very mischievous, ‘that you've never done this before’, and he pushed her gently backwards.

She sank against the cushions. He pulled the cloak over both of them; she muttered, ‘You can't; not here, on the river!’ But he ignored whatever confused words she was whispering – rightly, as the way she was pulling him down onto her made it clear to both of them she didn't mean them – and, under the cloak now covering both of them, began touching mouth to skin again.

‘Black cloak. No one can see us under it,’ she heard him whisper; then, mischievously, ‘I think.’ But by then she was beyond caring.

By the time their rapid breathing had given way to laughter; by the time she'd sat up, pulling her clothes back together, with her hair streaming loose and a shamefaced smile, saying, in a breathless pretence at reproach that was nothing of the kind, ‘You really are the most sinful man I can imagine’, as he kissed the inside of her arm and answered, ‘And you the most abandoned woman I know – so, a good match’, they'd drifted half a mile downstream and darkness had fallen in earnest.

‘O-o-oh,’ he said quickly, assessing where they were; sitting back up at the rower's bench, taking up the oars and setting off back upstream. ‘This is where I'd like the real boatman back. Pity he's off getting drunk on more money than he's ever seen in his life.’ He was humming under his breath as he rowed. She could see a flash of teeth every now and then.

He looks mighty pleased with himself, she thought.

As if intuiting her thought, he said gleefully: ‘Did you know, I've never done that before either?’

But she just gazed at him, without questions; committing to memory this sliver of happiness, like the sliver of moon now visible in the sky, to comfort her in all the times when he wasn't there.

There was no hope she'd ever see more of Dickon than she did now. He was still as knife-sharp and whip-hard as the youth she'd first known – her own god of war made flesh. It was only his brother the King who'd got fat and self-indulgent.

Isabel knew this as much from Jane as from Dickon. She liked the comfortable way Jane spoke of the King, who, over the years, had become more her friend than her lover. Jane's confidences didn't make Isabel think there'd be any point in revealing her own secret love to her sister.

It was obvious that Jane's cosy friendship had none of the perfect spare urgency of what Isabel felt for Dickon. Jane would never understand. Still, now Isabel had become so successful in the City that she didn't need to compare herself with Jane any more, she enjoyed laughing indulgently at her sister's wide-eyed stories. King Edward's gut wobbling when he laughed at something Jane said. King Edward relaxing away from his demanding, exhausting, sharp-faced harridan of a wife, or chomping on a chicken, or enjoying letting Jane beat him at backgammon.

Now that King Edward liked those simple pleasures too much to want to fight his own wars, he needed Dickon to do all his fighting for him. He knew his brother to be more than a hard-bodied fighter and inspired general. Dickon was loyal too. And that meant Dickon was always on the road, and always would be.

As a reward for Dickon's military successes in Scotland – the whole of last year an agony of ignorance for Isabel, while he was away campaigning – the King had just added to his brother's already vast northern territories by granting him the county of Cumberland. Dickon was King of the North in all but name. He was happy. He'd never leave and come south. It was as unthinkable as the idea he'd once suggested: that Isabel might go and set up business in York. She'd just laughed: ‘What would I do in York?’ Even if there hadn't been her ever-expanding business in London and the Low Countries to think about, they both knew she wouldn't want to live in the shadow of his wife and child. Not that she was jealous of his wife, but she hated him even to mention his son, Edward, who must be nine or ten. She felt the child, not the mother, to be her real rival; she didn't want to think of his existence. They both tried not to complain of the shortness of their time together. This was all they could hope for. It had to be enough.

Now the rumour was that the King would soon start another war on France. If he did, Dickon would certainly go. And Isabel would endure more of the helpless pain of waiting; knowing she'd only find out if he'd been hurt or killed through street talk, because no one would think to tell her; why would anyone think she wanted to know? But before that began, for the next few months, while the war thickened like smoke before taking shape, he'd be coming to court; there'd be times – nights; half-days only, sometimes, but moments, at least, moments like this – to snatch at any price now so they could be remembered in the long wait later. If it meant lying to Alice Claver – still her mistress, formally, although nowadays it was Isabel who really ran everything – then so be it. She had no qualms about that. The commission Jane had just got for her, to work personally for Princess Elizabeth, would be more useful than Jane could possibly have imagined. As long as Alice Claver believed her to be at the Palace, she'd have no questions, ever, about Isabel going off to Westminster at short notice – where she could quietly see Dickon too.

‘Do you think’, she said, fishing for information about the shape her future would take, watching his back move, trying to sound casual, ‘you will be sent to France?’

He didn't answer at once. But an oar sliced wildly over the surface of the water, splashing both of them and jerking the boat sideways.

He pulled it round; then, once his stroke was established again, said seriously, ‘I don't know. Hastings wants to go all right. Spring's almost here: the campaign season. But I can't tell what's on Edward's mind.’

She couldn't see his face. His voice was coming from the shadows.

‘Of course, if I went and Hastings went, and we took a proper army, Edward would end up alone here with all his wife's relatives,’ she could hear him saying lightly, as if he might laugh, between gulps of air. ‘In a court crawling with Woodville woodlice.’

Isabel snickered encouragingly. No one liked the jumped-up Woodvilles, all the Queen's on-the-make relatives who'd crept and married and slunk into power along with the commoner Queen. Court was two factions: them, against everyone who hated them. Only Jane, prudently, kept in with both groups. One of Jane's long-term admirers was, as ever, Lord Hastings, a leading light of the true nobility at court. Her other admirer, still, was Hastings' bitterest Woodville rival, the pretty, pushy, blond Marquess of Dorset (Isabel wasn't sure he was as faithful to his chaste love of Jane as Hastings was). Dorset was Queen Elizabeth Woodville's son by her first marriage. His beery, bleary, insulting attempt to grope Isabel in a tent, long ago, had defined her feelings towards the entire Woodville clan. Now she wrinkled her face and muttered, ‘Ugh. Like Dorset … Jane still sees him, you know …’

Dickon had laughed at the story of that fumble. And it was one of the pleasures of being with him – a childish pleasure, she knew, but one that went with letting herself be perfectly frank with her lover – that Isabel sometimes encouraged him to talk less than kindly about Jane. Jane's overdressing. Jane's idleness. Jane's wish to twist men round her little finger. Jane's belief that the world could run on nothing more than smiles and silliness. Isabel knew, deep down, that Dickon only joined in because she egged him on; and sometimes she was uncomfortably aware that he was more loyal to his brother than she to her sister. But then, his brother was the King; while her sister was … well, a royal mistress was still a whore, wasn't she? Today, Dickon wasn't going to be drawn into a spiteful conversation about Jane. She could see his head up in front, shaking sympathetically. But all he said was, ‘Ah, once a Woodville … you've heard Dorset told the King last week that Hastings was plotting to sell Calais to the French, haven't you?’ She laughed with him. Then he went on with his own thought, excusing his brother's indecisiveness about whether to go to war on France: ‘Being left alone with a palace full of vermin like that would give me pause, all right. If I were Edward. He's still weighing things up.’

His voice fell silent. The only sound was the oars on the water.

‘I don't mind,’ he said suddenly, through the rhythmic splashing. ‘About France. I can't go yet anyway. There's something I've got to settle first, at home.’

She heard the tightness in his voice now. This was what he was really thinking about.

Ready to reassure, she asked: ‘What?’ She wanted to know; but she never knew if she would still want to know once she knew more. His problems so often just reminded her of the gulf between their two lives.

‘A land problem,’ he said. Voice hollow; oars steady. ‘In a way.’

‘What way?’ she persisted, sharply now, sitting forward. It was important to her to understand him, however hard it sometimes was. She wanted to do what little was in her power to protect him. ‘Tell me.’

As he began, she realised it wasn't what her merchant mind would call a land problem at all. Dickon's nephew, a child called George Neville, lived with Dickon at Middleham. And he was ill: fever; coughing blood; wasting. ‘I'm taking a physician north in the morning,’ Dickon said. ‘It's why I can't stay longer. I'm worried he's dying.’

She murmured, neutrally. Sometimes it didn't do to show your ignorance. She'd find out in a minute why, to an aristocrat, this was a land problem. She just had to let him tell.

He did. George was the child of traitors. Because of the rebellion by his Neville father and uncle twelve years ago, the estates the boy might once have inherited had been confiscated. They'd been given instead to Dickon and his brother Clarence, because the King's two brothers had Neville wives, and (after Clarence died, and Dickon got the rest of the lands too) the Neville estates had become the heart of Dickon's northern domains. Dickon needed that land to keep the rest of the North under his control. But – and here was the rub – if little George Neville were now to die childless, the Act of Parliament that had given Dickon the lands also said that the lands would only be Dickon's for his lifetime. His son, Edward of Middleham, wouldn't inherit them. After Dickon's death, they would go back to the Nevilles.

‘You see my problem,’ Dickon said. He'd stopped rowing. He'd raised the oars out of the water, and was pushing down on them with taut arms. He was twisting his head back to look at her for guidance. ‘He dies – and it weakens my authority throughout the North, and loses my child half his inheritance.’ He grimaced. ‘And he is dying. I can see.’

She nodded. Quickly, to herself, she flicked through possible forms of comfort or advice she might offer. There was no point in expressing sympathy for the Neville boy's suffering; she hadn't heard any note of regret in that low-pitched exposition that suggested Dickon might enjoy living with him or miss his company if he passed on. And she couldn't discuss Dickon's own son's prospects, even if she'd had anything useful to say. But she could hear her lover wanted a framework to plan by; he wanted her wits.

‘Who's the doctor?’ she said. As a Londoner, she knew physicians, at least.

‘Gigli,’ he said.

‘The Venetian,’ she replied thoughtfully. She knew Dr Gigli sometimes tutored the little Prince of Wales and his brother Richard, when they were at Westminster. She'd seen him at prayer at St Thomas of Acre: he was sleek, with glittering eyes and a smooth jowl. The London Lombards all took their illnesses to him. ‘Well, he has a good reputation.’

Dickon carried on looking steadily at her. It was too dark to be able to see the puckered brow or the chewed lower lip: the expression he wore when the burdens of leadership outweighed the pleasures. All she could see was eyes. But she read quiet hope in them; the closest he ever came to vulnerability. It made her heart swell to be needed liked this.

She filled her voice with all the calm certainty she could. She leaned forward; she could just reach close enough to put a hand on his twisted near shoulder. He put his own hand on hers. ‘Well, take Gigli to the boy. See how he does,’ she said, feeling the comfort of skin on skin; hoping it comforted him too. ‘Gigli may make a difference.’

She let the warmth vibrate in her voice and linger in the air for a moment. Then she pressed on. Dickon was too sharp-brained to be satisfied with just that. ‘But if the boy really is dying, and there's nothing Gigli can do,’ she said frankly, ‘it's still not an insoluble problem.’

It was his turn to murmur, as if waiting for enlightenment.

‘Look, the King's just granted you the whole palatinate of Cumberland,’ she went on persuasively. ‘He certainly doesn't want your estates broken up. You hold his kingdom together. He's going to need you even more soon – to fight in France. You'll have to use that need. Talk to him while he plans the campaign; while needing you is uppermost in his mind. And make him promise then – soon – to intervene to protect your son. He'll understand why.

He's your brother; he loves you. And he's the King. He'll find a way.’

Slowly, Dickon nodded. In the lantern light she could see clouds clearing from his eyes. ‘Yesss,’ he murmured, letting breath escape slowly from his chest, and already his voice was less tight. ‘I can see how the French campaign will help concentrate his mind …’

He started rowing again; big, easy strokes, towards the shore. It was getting cold. Isabel pulled the cloak tighter about her, wishing she could get rid of the image behind her eyes: a child's bony white face and pitiful black-ringed eyes.

It was only when they were already at the jetty, and Dickon was leaning forward in the thickness of the night air, fiddling with the rope, that he spoke again. ‘Edward will help,’ the black velvet voice said; and it had borrowed Isabel's certainty.

Aware that a parting was coming, but not wanting to make much of it, they talked only about inconsequential things on the way through the dark streets, already nearly empty so close to curfew. Dickon asked about Isabel's meeting with the Princess (‘They're good children, Edward's,’ he said, without especial warmth). They laughed at the terrifying appearance Queen Elizabeth Woodville had made during the fitting. Dickon said he'd walk up to the Tower from Catte Street now, and ask Hastings for a bed rather than go to his family home in London, Baynard's Castle. Hastings would be amused to see him on foot, and to hear he'd rowed upriver like a boatman. Quelling her impossible wish to be able to follow him, Isabel told him about the deal she was proud of having made with Pieter Bruinvels of Antwerp for £45 of Lucchese black velvet for shipment next week.

‘And how's your Venetian?’ Dickon asked, as the Catte Street house came into view. ‘Goffredo D'Amico?’

There was a trace of awkwardness in the question. He'd left it till last to ask about the silk-weaving business that was still her favourite commercial dream. He kept the scepticism off his face, too; he made a point of taking her work concerns as seriously as she took his; but she felt disbelief hiding in him somewhere.

She knew Dickon had long ago stopped taking this project seriously. She couldn't be surprised, either, after all these years of Goffredo coming and going from London, always with new stories about why his endlessly protracted negotiations with the Venetian authorities hadn't yet borne fruit, always with some new bureaucratic obstacle to be overcome; the excruciatingly slow pace at which she and Goffredo had exported from Venice and imported to England all the separately packed parts of all those looms and other machines and delivered them, under a variety of aliases, to the house at Westminster, which was supposed to be full of Venetian masters, working, but still wasn't. There were times when she didn't believe the workshop would ever start work, either; when all that filled her heart when she thought of Goffredo, composing his ruggedly handsome features into a mask of regret and wringing his elegant hands as he poured out his latest excuse, was frustration. There were times when only Alice Claver seemed to go on doggedly trusting Goffredo. She'd growl: ‘Have faith’, and, ‘You may not realise it, but what he's achieving over there is really nothing short of a miracle.’ Reality must be testing even Alice's faith to the utmost; still, Isabel knew it was important to go on trying to believe it would happen. So she suppressed the sigh that had almost escaped her lips, and said, with her best attempt at enthusiasm: ‘Well, it's coming along! Goffredo went back to Venice last week to collect the weavers. He says they'll be here by Passiontide. The workshop could be up and running by May Day.’

Her voice sounded forced, even to herself; her smile was strained.

Dickon drew her into his arms and touched his nose to hers. She felt the whole length of his body against hers in the pause that followed. She never wanted him to go. ‘Passiontide, eh?’ he murmured, and the lopsided smile on his face was one of farewell. ‘It would be good if you were in Westminster often by then. I might be, too.’

And he was off. A flash of eyes; then just a shadow flitting along the wall.

It always took a moment to shake off one world and enter another – a moment of dizziness. But she could hear women's conversation in the great hall, where there'd be a fire by now; where they would have eaten already. The old silkwomen were waiting for her.

Sometimes the sound of those voices stripped Isabel of all the sleek self-assurance she'd assumed as she learned to make trades with the greatest merchants of Europe; sometimes they made her feel, again, like a shy young apprentice. Tonight was like that.

Sighing, Isabel re-entered her own reality and pushed open the door.

Anne Pratte's lip quivered when Isabel reported back on her successful first encounter at the Palace, and told them plainly what she'd just decided at the front door – that if she was going to go back to Westminster once a week for the rest of the fittings, she'd stay a night there at the silk house once a week too. ‘It will avoid this late return,’ she said, as the curfew bell began ringing outside the window, ‘in the dark.’

Alice Claver looked thunderous. But, as Isabel inspected her mistress's face to see how bad the impending storm might be and what protective measures she should take, she found herself caught instead in the regretful thought: how old she looks. Iron-grey hair, so many tones darker than Anne Pratte's gentle white that Isabel, who looked at both women every day, had somehow not been aware of it until now. A heavily corded throat. Lines dragging her cheeks down past her mouth; more lines between nose and mouth from her habit of wrinkling her lips into a small, tight O at the same time as she narrowed her eyes. Blotched, heavily veined hands.

‘But,’ Anne Pratte faltered, ‘you can't. You'll be away for half the working week.’

‘Quite impossible!’ Alice Claver barked. ‘You spend far too much time gadding about as it is. We need you here.’ She paused. Considered. Added, ‘I’, and nodded, more decisively, ‘need you here.’

Touched, Isabel said: ‘But I'll still be here.’ It was a new idea to her that her formidable teachers might be lonely without her, but Alice Claver's jutting lower lip made it wrenchingly plain how much they must now depend on her to be their child, their hope, their entertainment. She made her voice gentle. ‘It's only one night a week.’

In principle, they should have been excited; let her do what she needed to make the contract work. Most people in the Mercery would have killed for this contract. Once Isabel had been to the Palace for measurements and fittings, she could subcontract the agreed alterations through the Claver house. The money would be excellent. And the prestige of working directly for the royal family, without having to bow and scrape to the officials at the Royal Wardrobe in Old Jewry, was beyond price.

Suddenly Isabel recalled Jane's bright, encouraging gaze when she'd told her sister about the promised work. ‘It's up to you’, Jane had said kindly, ‘to make yourself so indispensable that you go on being called back to Westminster to do more.’ Remembering the kindness in those beautiful eyes made Isabel prickle uncomfortably; when she knew she was so often so uncharitable towards her sister. Thanks to Jane, there need be no more of the subterfuges she'd had to enter into until now, whenever Dickon sent word in his peculiar way – ‘there'll be cured pork for sale at the Almonry tomorrow at noon’, or ‘firewood on Friday’ – to signify he was on the road south.

It had always been so hard for her to get away from Alice and Anne; she'd run out of excuses. Once she'd had to return to London before Dickon even got to Westminster. He'd been delayed; she'd been pretending to equip the kitchen at the Westminster silk house with pans; to have stayed a second night would have meant worrying Alice. Another time, after another delay on the road from Middleham, she'd had to throw herself on Jane's incurious mercy and pretend to be staying with her sister, while, in reality, she was sneaking back to Westminster to wait again in the empty silk house; stuffing rags around the shutters so her candle flame wouldn't show; slinking into cook-shops, buying pies with her face half-covered by veils; or just going hungry, too consumed by the hope he was at the door, or would be soon, to care. Now, the work Jane had found her would make it possible for Isabel to be nearby when Dickon was there; Isabel's faith and planning would do the rest. Jane's done me a big favour, she thought guiltily.

‘But, dear, you can't do the job properly anyway; you're not a real vestment-maker,’ Anne Pratte was saying plaintively.

From behind her, her husband, sitting so quiet and still that Isabel had almost forgotten he was there, rumbled into life. Sympathetic life, Isabel was relieved to hear.

‘But, dear, that doesn't matter,’ William Pratte said, with exaggerated patience. ‘It's not a problem to find craftswomen. That's not what we're talking about.

This is a great opportunity for Isabel. Of course she must do whatever she needs to make a good fist of it.’

‘Well, what about the petition?’ Anne Pratte wailed back at her husband. ‘We can't finish that without her.’

Isabel smiled. That, at least, was clearly not true. William Pratte had the next draft petition to be presented to Parliament under his hand. They'd been discussing it before they ate. Even now the light had all but gone, Isabel could still make out phrases from the front-page preamble, written out in his crabby old-man's hand: ‘Sylkewymmen and Throwestres of the Craftes and occupation of Silkewerk …’ ‘… lyved full honourably, and therewith many good Householdes kept, and many Gentilwymmen and other in grete noumbre like as there nowe be more than a M, haue be drawen under theym in lernyng the same Craftes and occupation ful vertueusly …’ He could be long-winded on paper. But he wasn't now. He just picked up the papers and waved them at his wife. She looked damply down.

‘Don't be a fool, Anne,’ Alice Claver said. ‘That's not the point.’ She fixed Isabel with an accusing stare. ‘It's Goffredo.’

Now they all turned to look at Isabel.

Goffredo's current trip to Venice was supposed to be the very last of the dozens he'd made, over the years, to set up the business. When he came back he'd have the Venetian master weavers he'd contracted with him: Gasparino di Costanzo, Alvise Bianco di Jacopo, and Marino da Cataponte. Their families would come too. Once they reached England, they'd need to be set up; brought to the Westminster house; have servants hired; be taught enough English to survive in the street; and be provided with food, firewood, silk thread, and the discreet, hand-picked apprentices from London whom Isabel had already sounded out. It would be pandemonium for months; the time they'd been waiting on for so long. It could start any day now. They were ready and waiting for Goffredo: debts settled; Venetian travel permits issued; bags practically packed.

At least, they were supposed to be. But Isabel surely wasn't the only person in the room to realise that, even if Goffredo didn't run into storms on the journey, there would be bound to be more last-minute hitches and hiccups once he was there. There was only a month and a half before Passiontide. ‘Passiontide at the latest!’ he'd promised, joyful and optimistic as ever. But they all also remembered that Isabel had raised an eyebrow at him over the table. And that he'd blushed; and shrugged as if she'd caught him out in a lie; and spread his big hands out so wide that the jewels on his fingers had glittered, and added, ‘if I possibly can’, in a shamed little-boy way. Personally, Isabel doubted he and his teams would get to England before the end of summer. Michaelmas. Or, just possibly, if things went unusually smoothly, by Lammastide in August. Meanwhile, she reasoned, there was no point in turning down lucrative work.

She hesitated, feeling her way into words that would persuade, not offend, Alice and Anne. Refusing to feel panic that this gift, this freedom that her sister had won her, could be snatched away. Wondering how Dickon would have handled the old women's resistance. Letting her tongue and her instinct take the lead.

In the end, staring at the expectant eyes, all Isabel did was to smile and spread her hands out wide. ‘This is only for a few months,’ she said firmly. ‘It's a question of putting out the work, and getting it back in. It's a wonderful relationship to nurture; and, anyway, do we really know when Goffredo is coming?’ She added, sarcastically: ‘Passiontide at the latest!’ Then: ‘Eef poss-ssible! May Day eef not a-poss-ssible! Or St John's Eve, or Lammastide! Or Michaelmas! Or Christmastide eef my ship a-sinks!’

She wasn't really that good at Goffredo's Venetian braggadoccio. But her imitation made William Pratte laugh – a big snort of relief. Then, with silent women on either side giving him their most terrifying stares, he snuffled and stopped. ‘Well,’ he said, looking hunted. ‘She's right, you know. It will take him months. Venice always does.’

Two more deadly looks struck him. But he went defiantly on: ‘Look, even if he does get here by Passiontide, or Lady Day, it's surely not a problem. Isabel will already be spending one night a week at Westminster. She'll be right where she's needed.’

There was another awful silence. Finally, slowly, reluctantly, Anne Pratte muttered: ‘I suppose you're right, dear,’ and turned up the corners of her mouth in something not far off a smile. The ice and fire went out of the spring air. And, although Alice Claver continued to say nothing, just to give William Pratte the kind of looks that Christ in His goodness had forborne to give Judas Iscariot, her furious distress at the planned change in their routine somehow didn't matter. The decision Isabel wanted had been taken without Alice Claver's consent: a sign of the shift in power in the household that they all, without speaking, recognised had happened. Full of relief and sunshine, Isabel found herself thinking of the older woman's thwarted rage with something like sympathy.

In the morning, Isabel went to Old Jewry to thank Jane. She knew it was right to visit her sister. And she was grateful to her. But there were butterflies in her stomach all the same.

She didn't know why she still found it so hard to be affectionate and gracious with her sister. She should feel easier with Jane, she thought, now that her own income had become substantial enough to take the sting out of having been disinherited. Isabel's profits from trading had allowed her to invest about a third of her capital in three small rental houses, six shops in the Crown Seld, a block of stalls down Soper Lane and the tenement in which Joan Woulbarowe's old aunt Rose Trapp lived. Her rents alone must equal anything John Lambert's inheritance would bring Jane, especially now that he'd chosen the precarious route to wealth of relying on rents from country property; and since he had (foolishly, in Isabel's view) allowed the King to repay all those vast cash loans with manors of dubious provenance: estates confiscated from exiled Lancastrians and scattered around the West Country. John Lambert lived in Somerset now. Isabel didn't see him. Jane said he had aspirations to buy or earn himself a knighthood; enter the gentry. Still, he must worry: what if, one day, the Lancastrians he'd displaced out there came back to claim their lands? Jane had the house in Old Jewry that had been her portion after Will Shore had finally seen sense and accepted the annulment the King arranged. She had the King's gifts and jewels. Still, Isabel was certainly richer.

It didn't make any difference. Being with Jane still made her feel all thumbs and elbows. An afterthought. Second best.

It didn't help that as she turned the corner into Old Jewry, she bumped, literally, into Will Caxton, who'd stopped in the street to brush worriedly at himself before what must be an important meeting. As soon as they'd disentangled themselves, he went back to picking imaginary specks off his carefully brushed baldekin doublet, not seeming to realise his sleeves were so worn they'd gone threadbare at the elbow. ‘Isabel, in London, what a pleasure,’ he said at the same time, peering affectionately at her; then bowing with the dignified mercer's formality he'd maintained long after leaving the guild. ‘I was just going to pay a call on your sister. Are you?’

She smiled a little sadly and nodded. ‘I suppose I should have expected to find you heading this way too, Will,’ she said, wishing Jane's magic didn't work so reliably on every man she met, even this one, Isabel's dearest old friend.

Ever since Caxton had come back to England, and really had set up his printshop, and his home, at Westminster, right next to Isabel's silk house, she was in and out all the time. She relied on him to keep an eye on her house, to light the occasional fire in winter and open the occasional window in summer. She turned to him for advice about how to store and stack the machines Goffredo was sending, and for keys and pans and the occasional loan of servants. But their friendship was closer than that. Will Caxton, with his new printing venture, was already living the dream Isabel had for her own future. She drank in every one of his stories about the ups and downs of his business. She kept his secrets. She sympathised with the loneliness and worry of his work. She trusted his judgement. She'd come to think of him like family; like a rather old brother.

But she couldn't quite respect his feelings for Jane. It had been five years since the elderly widower first declared his love for Jane Shore by dedicating to her one of the books he was now printing full-time on the presses he'd brought home. Not by name – he'd been too timid – but they'd all known who he had in mind when he'd prefaced his Chaucer translation of Boethius in 1478 with the coy phrase ‘printed at the request of a singular frende & gossip of mine’.

Isabel had seen him fall in love, two years before that, when he'd first come back to England. He was staying then with the Prattes while he organised his Westminster lease. Isabel thought: if he's setting up a new business too, he'll need powerful friendships. Will Caxton had never met Jane, or wanted to – Alice Claver's disapproval had been enough for him. But Jane was established as the King's mistress now; she might help Will as she'd helped Isabel. So, impulsively, Isabel had invited him and Jane on a picnic at Moorfields. But, instead of using this precious contact wisely, as she'd had every reason to expect, Will had taken one look at the tall blonde girl in yellow silk, coloured up beetroot-red under the fading ginger hair peeping out from the hat he hadn't set properly on his head, and begun to talk. Flirt. Pass her dainties with suggestive smiles. Bring her little gifts. Sing German love songs in a cracked voice. Tell her City gossip in his odd Kentish accent. Laugh too hard and fast at her court stories. Lurk in the street when he hoped she might pass by. Cadge invitations to her presence. Cringing like a dog that's always expecting to be kicked; but, because Jane was too happy-go-lucky, or lazy, to cause pain, never actually feeling her toe crack against his ribs. There was no hope for him; he knew that. But he'd always seemed happy to worship without hope.

Looking at his old face, addled and silly with love, Isabel thought: he may stay like this forever. ‘Let's brush you up,’ she added gently, dusting him off and tweaking at sleeves and seams until he went pink with pleasure. There was nothing to be done about his black fingers. ‘Those elbows need fixing,’ she chided affectionately, before, linking arms, they made their way together to Jane's door.

Jane was delighted to see them both. She'd already been hugging to herself her pleasure at having got Isabel such a good commission; hoping her sister would call. But now dear old Will was here too, with that bulging bag that no doubt meant he had some new book-printing favour to ask, and giving her one of his adorably imploring looks. She'd be able to tell him the good news she was saving up for him – and be able to show Isabel how well she was looking after her sister's friends, too.

‘Come in, come in,’ she said, scattering kisses and embraces and smiles and bows around with the extravagance of mannerism she'd learned by long association with courtiers, yet which still felt a little unnatural around her sister. Isabel sometimes courteously told her that being the King's mistress, or whatever it was that she was to Edward these days, suited her; that she grew more beautiful by the day, even at the advanced age of twenty-eight; but her silkwoman sister always said those things with an ironic gleam in her eye that suggested to Jane she didn't quite mean them.

Although Jane had kept some of her family ties to the City whose existence surrounded her, and had even gone to the trouble of having herself declared a Freewoman of the City of London at the same time as Isabel, on Isabel's twenty-first birthday, so that, in principle, both sisters now had the right to trade as well as to advantageous access to justice and London government, Isabel's sceptical expression when considering Jane's courtly ways sometimes made Jane feel an alien in her own home town. So now Jane tried to restrain the dance of her hair and veils and arms; the glitter of gold on silk; but at the same time she wasn't too worried if Isabel did find her affected today, because once Isabel found out what new miracles Jane had managed to arrange, she'd … she'd … Jane couldn't even quite imagine how her still-faced, watchful-eyed sister would express her extreme joy. But that she'd feel it there could be no doubt. She knew Isabel worried about Will too.

Will Caxton was always bothering Jane about his books.

He had an insatiable hunger for patrons. Jane had done her best. She'd got him the official title of King's printer, and, although his new calling earned him only a fraction of what his old Mercery dealings had brought him, he was as happy as a lark translating books and writing prefaces and running his print shop and messing about with his foreign foreman Wynkyn and their strange, clanking machines. (His print machines had been good cover for Isabel, now that the parts of the twenty silk looms, deviously imported in pieces over a period of several years, so that their purpose couldn't be guessed at in the port of London – Jane admired the way they'd done that – were all propped up along the walls of the silk-house workshop, ready to be assembled. Anyone not conversant with the silk trade, and in Westminster there was no one but Isabel who was, might just be fooled into thinking these were parts for more outlandish print machines at the Caxton house next door.)

But poor Will still worried all the time about money. Jane thought Isabel probably would, in the same way, if the Claver silk-weaving venture ever got going – even though silk was a more reliable source of income than the printed word. Worry was the price everyone would have to pay for putting their heart into promoting these risky new manufactures. Even now Will was back in England, where he'd thought buyers would flock to him for his books, it was often hard to shift stock. He still had piles of the early ones, for which he'd chosen such bad dedicatees; he didn't seem to have the knack of finding good protectors for himself.

The first book, the chess one, which he'd printed in Bruges, he'd been foolish enough to dedicate to the King's second brother, the Duke of Clarence – who, as any Londoner could have told him, if he'd bothered to ask, had no time for books anyway and was a petulant, unstable, vengeful, dangerous fool into the bargain. (And that was even before the Duke had gone mad with grief over the death of his wife and son, and ended up accused of treason over all the murky stories about witchcraft, poisoning, wax dolls and pins that began to attach to him; and was then found dead in the Tower, where he'd been imprisoned.) If it hadn't been for Jane's introductions and praise in the right quarters, Caxton's business might easily have got into serious trouble right at the start.

Once Jane had started helping him, Caxton had acquired some influential friends. Jane had had a word with Dorset. Within weeks, Caxton had been permitted to dedicate books to the most bookish of the Woodvilles, Dorset's uncle and Queen Elizabeth Woodville's brother, Earl Rivers. Rivers was now the governor of little Prince Edward and his brother and spent a lot of time with them at Ludlow, on the Welsh border, where the Prince of Wales' household was formally based. Caxton and the learned Earl Rivers had developed a book-lover's friendship, and Caxton had won several commissions to print the Earl's translations. He'd even been allowed to present a book to the little crown prince himself – he'd chosen the story of Jason, the boy king threatened by his Herod-like wicked uncle, Pelias, who usurped the throne while pretending to be Jason's protector. With a further nudge from Jane, Caxton had included both boy princes in the flowery dedication he'd been allowed to make to the King of his account of the crusade of Godfrey of Bouillon.

Just to be sure Will Caxton had friends among the Woodvilles' enemies, Jane had also made sure that Will Hastings received a book dedicated to him – a Mirror of the World ordered by Hugh Bryce, the goldsmith, Will Hastings' deputy at the Royal Mint. So Caxton should have been nicely set up.

But Jane knew he'd got stuck on the translation of The Golden Legend that Earl Rivers had ordered from him back in the autumn. He'd spent too long on it: a labour of love he couldn't bear to hurry. She didn't like to imagine the poor man, running low on funds, too scared to ask for an advance, scratching himself all over, rumpling up his hair in that unattractive way he had whenever he got worried. So she'd found more help.

In her parlour, with its wonderful pearl-encrusted hanging showing Judgement Day (she wasn't superstitious; she refused to believe her understanding with Edward could mean she'd be among the damned being strangled on the wall by the little tapestry devils, or that God had cursed her, any more than he had Edward), Jane politely pressed exotic fruits and cups of wine on her guests, and listened with affectionate pride while Isabel told the story of meeting the Princess, and tittered at Isabel's account of the Queen's fearsome pacing, and bowed her head modestly and prettily when Isabel thanked her, less laconically than she usually did, before breaking her news.

‘Will,’ she breathed, her gaze as sweetly honeyed as her breath, enjoying his happy-to-drown look: ‘I've got you two new commissions. Good ones. Very good.’

His eyes opened wide. So excited and relieved that she knew she'd guessed right about his being hard up.

‘The Marquess of Dorset would like you to print him a curial,’ she said, pleasurably drawing out the next phrase, ‘he has the text ready.’ She knew Will would be most thrilled of all to hear that; a prepared text meant this would be a quick job, probably even quick enough to pay whatever bills were pressing. Will began to burble something; his face was pink under hair that looked more salt than pepper these days – soon, Jane thought sadly, if inconsequentially, it would be quite white.

‘And when you've done that, do you think’, she continued with exquisite politeness, ‘you would have time to translate the Book of the Knight of the Tower into English … and print it’ – it was cruel to pause now, but she couldn't resist waiting so she could be absolutely sure she had both listeners' full attention – ‘for Her Majesty the Queen?’

The reaction was just what she'd hoped. Will kissing her hand and laughing with such delight and relief that he was practically sobbing; and Isabel so astonished that Jane had done something so practical for Will, not to mention getting a commission from the woman who hated her most at court (though it should be obvious that she'd gone through Dorset, as usual), that she forgot to look half as quizzical as usual.

Jane found herself quietly watching her sister, as she often did, for some telltale sign of love. A token around her neck, perhaps; a mark on her skin. Or just a blush. But even today, when Isabel was smiling with more warmth than usual, there was nothing.

She'd never say this to Isabel, of course, but her most secret hope was that her little sister would be distracted from her money-making by falling in love and marrying, and give the whole thing up. She'd like to see her sister married and happy with children one day soon. She'd like to see Isabel lose her self-contained look; see her tired out with happiness instead. Sometimes she thought she'd like that for herself, too, one day; sometimes when she surprised other women gazing at the babies in their arms, two faces locked together in a look of shared, complete absorption, she'd feel a pang of loneliness she couldn't explain, even to herself. But it wasn't the time for her now. She was too well established as she was to think of changing her life. Edward needed his escapes to her; she couldn't imagine a life without his visits. And too many of her own people in the City needed her to be with Edward. Especially her father. Even if John Lambert had long ago given up hope of becoming Mayor of London, the greatest dream of his life, he'd consoled himself in recent years with his new ambition of dying a country gentleman. It had been a blow, of course, when his entire team of ex-apprentices left his silk house within days, each one implausibly claiming to be going home to the provinces to care for sick parents. Jane had felt indignant with Isabel for a while: there were so many other silk-women she could have chosen to hire away from their masters, after all; and their father had been so bewildered. Still, she could see why Isabel had chosen that revenge. John Lambert hadn't been kind to her either, and they were both so stubborn there was no talking sense into either of them about their feud. So Jane had looked for other ways to help her father. The King, with a bit of gentle nudging from Jane, had repaid John Lambert for his loans with a gift of 2,000 acres in the West Country, confiscated from the Lancastrian Courtenay family. Jane's father had started to find himself enjoying his new manors in Devon and Somerset, enough to want more. He needed Jane right where she was. So Jane carried on from one carefree day to the next, doing one small favour here and another insignificant kindness there, going hawking or staying at home playing cards with her guests, without worrying too much about tomorrow. Edward would give John Lambert a knighthood soon. And whatever happened, she thought, God would provide for her.

But Isabel – there was no reason for her to wait. And Jane had an instinct that there was more to Isabel's trips west so many times a year than the agonisingly slow progress of the silk-weaving venture really justified.

Part of it Jane understood. It was obvious Isabel wanted time away from that old dragon Alice Claver, who as far as Jane could see still treated her clever, competent, loyal ex-apprentice with the kind of suspicious mistrust not even a thief deserved. Jane was delighted to help deceive the stout old brute by pretending Isabel was with her whenever Isabel asked her to. But she couldn't help hoping there was more to the trips than that. She wanted them to mean there was a love story somewhere in Isabel's life.

That was why, the last time Edward had spent the night with her, she'd hit on the French gowns alteration idea. She'd broached it at just the right moment, too: after she'd teased him, when he'd pushed the blankets of her bed away and revealed his increasingly well-upholstered stomach, and she'd put her head happily on it and her bare arms around it and whispered, mischievously, ‘still a fine figure of a man!’ – which he was, considering he'd turned forty and enjoyed his pleasures so flamboyantly – and he'd laughed until his gut rippled, and grinned down at her in his indulgent way, and pulled her back up to him. It was in the middle of the kiss that followed that she'd realised what she needed to ask – to get Isabel all the free time away she could need.

Jane looked with satisfaction at her sister, who was talking with such animation now to dear old Will. ‘I've told them I'm going to spend Friday nights at the silk house from now on,’ Isabel was telling him, at the rattlesnake speed she favoured when she was excited, ‘so I'll be right next door. We could have dinner at the tavern, often; and perhaps even eat together in the mornings, if you can spare the time, before I come back to London. I'll be taking the boat, for now; no horses yet; it's too early to hire servants, until we know when the silk teams will be here; I don't want to take yours too often …’

There was a bit of colour in Isabel's usually pale cheeks, Jane thought; but nothing to suggest anything more than excitement at the idea of actually sleeping at the silk house – which must make the idea of the silk-weaving venture seem more real for her. Nothing to suggest a hidden love.

She smiled wistfully at them. She didn't mind the possibility that Isabel might be hiding something from her; not if it made her happy. If Isabel did turn out to have a secret in Westminster, Jane thought, trusting in God to make everything come right in His own time, she'd tell her sister about it whenever the moment was right.

Goffredo hadn't come back by Passiontide. Nor had Dickon. But Isabel's pleasant new routine of weekly visits to the Princess, dinners at the Red Pale with Will Caxton and Friday night stays at the silk house was well enough established for her to have grown used even to the place's lonely night-time creaks and scuttlings.

She couldn't go for the usual fitting on Good Friday itself, so, unusually, she went the following Tuesday instead, 9 April, once the churches were glorious with flowers and the Lenten shrouds thrown back and people with roast lamb in their stomachs had lost the meatless scratchiness of March and got roses in their cheeks instead.

She hardly noticed the balminess of the breeze. She let the river slip by unwatched. She was happily preoccupied with the task ahead: discussing with the Princess the placement of tassels and the commissioning of new laces and points for a pair of crimson damask sleeves embroidered with fleurs-de-lys, which would also need unpicking and reworking. With white roses, perhaps?

It was only as she got off the boat at Westminster that she realised something was wrong.

There were more people out and about than usual – all sorts: men-at-arms, housewives, monks – and there was an air of panic about them. Rushing about like ants whose home has been trodden on, she thought curiously. What's got into them?

Then the bells began. Abbey bells. One booming, gloomy note, over and over again. It went right through her head.

Half-deafened, full of a misery she didn't yet understand, she trotted into the gatehouse to ask. There was a fat woman outside, holding a grocery basket, sobbing.

The gatekeeper's hat was off. He looked frightened.

‘Someone's died,’ Isabel said: a kind of question.

The man crossed himself and shivered. ‘God rest his soul. He only had a cold,’ he mumbled confusedly.

‘Who?’ Isabel snapped. But even as she asked she realised she knew; and with the knowledge came dread at all the unknown possibilities this death might bring – a dread so intense that she almost burst into tears like the fat housewife outside. By the time the gatekeeper had composed himself enough to mutter two words – ‘The King’ – Isabel was on her way out.

She had to get back to London. Jane would need her.