‘What’s happening?’ I ask, coming into the room. ‘What are you doing?’
She gets to her feet. ‘We’re leaving,’ she says. ‘Walk me down to the stable yard.’
I take her hand to keep her inside the chamber. ‘You can’t travel like this. Where are you going? I thought you were going to L’Erber for your confinement?’
‘George says we can’t stay at court,’ she says. ‘It’s not safe. We won’t be safe even at L’Erber. I’m going into confinement at Tewkesbury Abbey.’
‘Halfway to Wales?’ I exclaim in horror. ‘Iz, you can’t!’
‘I have to go,’ she says. ‘Help me, Anne.’
I take her hand in my arm and she leans on me as we go down the winding stone stairs and out into the cold bright stable yard. She gives a little gasp at a stab of pain in her belly. I am certain that she is not fit to make the journey. ‘Isabel, don’t go. Don’t travel like this. Come to my house if you won’t go to your own.’
‘We’re not safe in London,’ she whispers. ‘She tried to poison George and me. She sent poisoned food to our rooms.’
‘No!’
‘She did. George says that we are not safe at court nor even in London. He says that the queen’s enmity is too great a danger. Annie, you should leave too. Get Richard to take you home to Middleham. George says that she will turn Edward against both his brothers. He says she will strike against us this Christmas. She will bring the court together for the Christmas feast and then accuse both brothers and have them arrested.’
I am so frightened that I can hardly speak. I take both her hands in mine. ‘Isabel, surely this is madness. George is making a war in his dreams, he constantly speaks against the king and his right to the throne, he whispers against the queen. The dangers are all of his own making.’
She laughs without humour. ‘D’you think so?’
George’s master of horse brings up her litter, drawn by matched mules. Her ladies in waiting draw back the curtains and I help her seat herself on the soft cushions. The maids put hot bricks beneath her feet and the kitchen boy comes with a brass tray of hot coals.
‘I do,’ I say. ‘I do.’ I am trying to suppress my fear for her, so near her time, travelling cross-country on muddy roads. I cannot forget that she had to travel near her time once before and that ended in a death and heartbreak and the loss of a son. I lean into the litter and whisper: ‘The king and the queen are bent on pleasure this Christmas, and showing off their new clothes and their endless children. They’re drunk on vanity and luxury. We’re not in danger, neither of us are in danger, nor our husbands. They’re the king’s own brothers, they’re royal dukes. The king loves them. We are safe.’
Her face is white with the strain. ‘I have a dead lapdog who stole a piece of chicken from a dish meant for me,’ she says. ‘I tell you, the queen is set on my death, on yours too.’
I am so horrified I cannot speak. I just hold her hand and warm it between my own. ‘Iz, don’t go like this.’
‘George knows, I tell you. He knows for certain. He’s had a warning from someone in her household. She is going to have both brothers arrested and executed.’
I kiss her hands and her cheeks. ‘Dearest Iz . . .’
She puts her arms around my neck and hugs me. ‘Go to Middleham,’ she whispers. ‘For me: because I ask it of you. For your own safety: because I am warning you. For your boy: to keep him safe. For God’s sake go. Get away from here, Annie. I swear they will have us all killed. She will not stop until your husband and my husband and both of us are dead.’
All through the cold days which grow increasingly dark and wintry I look for news of Isabel’s confinement, and think of her in the guest rooms of Tewkesbury Abbey, waiting for her baby to come. I know that George will have provided her with the best of midwives, there will be a physician nearby, and companions to cheer her, and a wet nurse waiting, and the rooms will be warm and comfortable for her. But still I wish I could have been with her. The birth of another child to a royal duke is an important event, and George will have left nothing to chance. If it is a boy then it establishes him as a man with two heirs – as good as his brother the king. Still, I wish I had been allowed to go to her. Still, I wish that he had allowed her to stay in London.
I go to Richard as he sits at his table in his privy chamber to ask him if I may join Isabel in Tewkesbury, and he refuses me out of hand. ‘George’s household has become a centre of treason,’ he says flatly. ‘I have seen some of the sermons and chapbooks which are being written under his patronage. They question my brother’s legitimacy, they name my mother as a whore, and my father as a cuckold. They suggest his marriage to the queen is invalid and that his sons are bastards. It is shameful what George is saying. I cannot forgive it, Edward cannot overlook it. Edward is going to have to act against him.’
‘Would he do anything to Isabel?’
‘Of course not,’ Richard says impatiently. ‘What has she to do with it?’
‘Then can’t I go to her?’
‘We can’t associate with them,’ Richard rules. ‘George is impossible. We cannot be seen near him.’
‘She is my sister! She has done nothing.’
‘Perhaps after Christmas. If Edward does not arrest him before then.’
I go to the door and put my hand on the brass ring. ‘Can we go home to Middleham?’
‘Not before the Christmas feast, it would be to insult the king and queen. George leaving the city so suddenly is insult enough. I won’t make matters worse.’ He hesitates, his pen raised over a document for signing. ‘What is it? Are you missing Edward?’
‘I am afraid,’ I whisper to him. ‘I am afraid. Isabel told me something, warned me . . .’
He does not try to reassure me. He does not ask me what was Isabel’s warning. Later, when I think about it, that is the worst of it. He merely nods. ‘You have nothing to fear,’ he says. ‘I am guarding us. And besides, if we left it would show that we were fearful too.’
In November I receive a letter from Isabel, travel-stained and delayed on the flooded roads. It is one of Isabel’s exultant three-page scrawls.
I was right. I have a boy. He is a good size, long-limbed and fat, and fair like his father. He is feeding well and I am up and walking around already. The labour was quick and easy. I have told George that I will have another just like that! As many as he likes! I have written to the king and to the queen and she sent some very good linen with her congratulations.
George will attend court at Christmas after all, as he does not want to look as if he is afraid. Then he will meet me at Warwick Castle after the king’s feast. You must come and see the baby after the twelfth night. George says there can be no objection to you visiting us on your way to Middleham, and that you are to tell your husband so, from him.
It has rained so much that I have not cared about being in confinement though I am getting tired of it now. I shall be churched in December and then we will go home. I can’t wait to bring a new Richard into Warwick Castle. Father would have been so pleased, I would have been his favourite daughter forever – getting him a second grandson, and he would have plans for his greatness . . .
And so on, and so on, over three crumpled pages, with afterthoughts in the margins. I put the letter to one side and place my hand on the softness of my belly as if the warmth of my hand could hatch a new baby as if it were a chick in a shell. Isabel is right to be happy and proud in the safe delivery of another baby, and I am glad for her. But she might have thought how her words would strike me: her younger sister, still only twenty years old, with only one little boy in the nursery, after four, nearly five years of marriage.