THE SEVENTH SON

Introductory Note

Some readers like to go straight into a novel, others - especially where history is concerned - prefer to know exactly where they are before they begin. This page and the next are intended for those of the latter persuasion. The former can safely skip them, since most of the information is also contained in the book's text, distributed on a need-to-know basis.
What were the Wars of the Roses all about? The foundations of the fifteenth-century Wars of the Roses were laid a century beforehand when King Edward III of England (1312-1377) fathered five sons. The eldest was Prince Edward, known as the Black Prince, while the younger, in order of seniority, were the dukes of Clarence, Lancaster, York, and Gloucester. The two eldest sons, Prince Edward and the duke of Clarence, both died before their father, Prince Edward leaving one son of his own, who duly succeeded to the throne as Richard II, and the duke of Clarence leaving only a daughter.
During the quarter-century after Edward III's death, the legitimate heir Richard II was deposed and murdered by his cousin Henry, who was the child of Edward's third son, the duke of Lancaster, and who ascended the throne as Henry IV.
King Henry IV and his successors, Henry V and Henry VI, were thus known as Lancastrians, their house coming to be symbolised by the red rose.
Henry VI was gentle, spiritual and politically incompetent, a king who by the 1450s seemed to invite overthrow. And there was a rival prepared to make the attempt - Richard, duke of York, who had almost as good a claim to the succession as Henry, being descended on his father's side from Edward III's fourth son, and on his mother's from Edward's second son. The Yorkist symbol came to be the white rose.
Before the book opens . . .In the last days of 1460, the duke of York and his second son, Edmund, were killed in battle against a royal army composed mostly of northerners and controlled by Henry VI's queen, the dazzling and formidable Margaret of Anjou, but within a few weeks they had been avenged by Edward, the 19-year-old eldest of York's sons, who sealed his triumph by having the defeated Henry VI deposed and imprisoned, and being declared king in his stead as Edward IV.
Edward's first decade as king was unsettled, ending in exile after his betrayal both by the man who had originally helped him to his throne - Richard Neville, earl of Warwick - and by his own brother, George, duke of Clarence. By the spring of 1471, however, Edward had returned from exile and recovered the throne, with Henry VI and Warwick both dead and Margaret of Anjou's armies decisively defeated.
George, duke of Clarence, made his submission to Edward and was welcomed back and rewarded, but it was the youngest of the three brothers - eighteen-year-old Richard, duke of Gloucester, who had remained loyal throughout - in whom Edward now reposed his trust, endowing him with important political and administrative responsibilities.
Now read on . . .

Chapter One
1471

1
'Sapphires for my bride-to-be and a severed head for the king my brother,' said Duke Richard cheerfully. 'As St Paul pointed out, gifts may vary but the spirit is the same. In the present instance, a spirit of goodwill.'
Francis Lovell, on horseback beside him, gave a faint splutter of laughter. Although not as well versed in the scriptures as Richard, he doubted whether the kind of gifts St Paul had had in mind would have included a head, newly detached from the body of a traitor and then parboiled with bay salt to preserve it for its journey to London. But Richard's brother, the king, would no doubt receive it with gratitude and order it to be impaled on London Bridge as a warning to others who might think of betraying his trust.
Richard, as if he knew what Francis was thinking - which he probably did - grinned at him. Then, suddenly, he knitted his brows. 'I've just thought of something. Anne does have blue eyes, doesn't she?'
He had known his bride-to-be for half a dozen years but Francis nobly refrained from pointing it out and merely said, 'Yes, she does. The sapphires will suit her very well.'
Richard was not in the least abashed. 'Oh, good.'
'Now,' he glanced round the courtyard of the tall stone keep that was Middleham castle and raised a gauntletted hand in a signal to his Master of the Horse. The high curtain wall of the castle had the effect not only of concentrating the pungent smells of the hundred mounted and liveried men milling around in the courtyard but of amplifying the gossiping voices, the clanking of arms, and the whinnying of horses into something resembling war in heaven. 'Let us go before we all suffocate or become deaf beyond hope of redemption.'
Since everyone knew that the young duke of Gloucester did not like to be kept waiting, there was an immediate flourish of trumpets calling the escort to order and the chaos of a moment before transformed itself into an orderly file moving out through the gatehouse, across the drawbridge, and downhill towards the river crossing that would take them into the heart of the Yorkshire Dales.

2
The September landscape came as a relief to the senses, wide and clean and austere under the morning sun, a gentle wind blowing the scents of warm moorland to the riders' nostrils even though early frosts had already tinged the grass with amber and the bracken with scarlet. Small flocks of migrating birds fluttered restlessly over the rugged hillsides, their calls drowned by the disciplined clamour of Richard's escort - gentlemen, yeomen and grooms, all wearing his badge of a white boar on their sleeves. The trumpeter, leading the cavalcade, raised his head every few moments to shatter the air with a series of blasts designed to advertise his master's coming to the dozen miles of empty valley that lay ahead of them.
'His enthusiasm will soon wear off,' Richard said absently after half an hour, then, 'Look,' he went on, his eyes on a small scythe-winged hawk skimming over the trees along the river bank, 'a hobby falcon. That explains why all the little birds have vanished into cover. What is a hobby doing as far north as this, I wonder?' Hawking was one of Richard's passions.
War was the other, and Francis, with the optimism of his sixteen years, expected that Richard, two years his senior, would grow out of it now that the country was at peace, now that the House of York had finally triumphed over that of Lancaster.
It was hard to imagine an England no longer at war with itself, but Francis, a gentle soul despite the knightly upbringing he had shared with Richard, could think of few prospects more pleasing.

3
It took them ten days, pushing along at Richard's usual ferocious pace, to reach London, and at what felt like every league along the way there was a battlefield to serve as a reminder of the late wars, the wars that had transformed Richard from the insignificant youngest son of a rebel lord into a royal duke, brother of England's now undisputed king, Edward IV.
Richard had fought in Edward's last two, decisive battles at Barnet and Tewkesbury and, as a reward, had been appointed as the king's representative in the north of England.
Francis knew that he was having some difficulty in establishing his authority and convincing the dour northerners that he was one of them at heart. It was his primary reason for wanting to marry Anne, whose family had dominated the north for more years than anyone cared to remember. Although her father, Richard Neville, earl of Warwick, had become the late earl of Warwick as a consequence of betraying Edward, most northerners remained loyal to the Nevilles. By marrying Anne, Richard hoped to buy their loyalty or, at the very least, their acceptance. He also had his eye on the Warwick estates.
But Edward's and Richard's self-centred middle brother, George, duke of Clarence, was making difficulties. Already married to Anne's elder sister, Isabel, George was determined to claim the Warwick estates for himself.
It was not hard to tell that George's intransigence was very much on Richard's mind as they rode south, and when they reached Coventry he regaled Francis with the tale of what had happened when he had last seen the place a few months earlier. It had been there that George, until then in treasonable alliance with Warwick - who had set him up as a potential alternative king - had seen the error of his ways and decided to make his submission to Edward.
'If it could be called submission,' remarked Richard caustically. 'Certainly, he went down on his knees. Certainly, he brought with him four thousand men he had raised in the West country to reinforce Edward's army. Certainly, he promised to be a good boy in future. But at no point did he bend his neck. My brother the king, however, chose to let it pass. It is his habit to be generous and forgiving, to think well of people . . .'
'Or to hope for the best,' Francis murmured under his breath.
'. . . until they give him an unequivocal reason to think otherwise. I hope George will have enough sense to behave himself.'
It was said in a tone suggesting that Richard thought it unlikely. Brotherly love had never been a feature of his and George's relationship. George was big, handsome and utterly unreliable except in terms of his own self-interest, and Francis knew that there was going to be a major clash between the two when Richard reached London.
A clash over the marriage on which Richard was determined.

4
In the city of London, in the Great Hall of the mansion close by St Paul's where her father had lived in a style famous for its ostentation, fifteen-year-old Anne Neville said, 'But I don't see why not. Richard would be a very good match for me.' She glanced up uncertainly. 'Wouldn't he?'
Anne was small, fair and fragile, and George, duke of Clarence, was very large. It made her nervous.
'No.'
'I don't know why you're against it. I want to marry him and he wants to marry me. And the king has given his permission.'
Her brother-in-law said austerely, 'It's a matter of property and family alliances. It's complicated and you wouldn't understand, even if I explained it to you. Anyway, it is not for you to decide who you should marry.'
He really was the most exasperating man. 'But I have to marry someone! And soon! I've been a widow for four whole months. I quite like Richard, and if I don't marry him, you or the king might make me marry someone I don't like at all.'
She forced herself to gaze up at George beseechingly. His good looks, height and splendid physique gave him a presence almost as striking as that of his brother the king, but his charm was a more debatable quantity. Indeed, 'domineering' was the word that had sprung to Anne's mind the first time she had met him and nothing had caused her to change her opinion since. She couldn't imagine how Isabel, compliant though she was, could bear to live with him.
As usual, he resorted to repeating himself, as if saying something often enough gave it the force of revealed truth. 'This is a most improper conversation. Who you marry is no concern of yours. Marriage is a business arrangement. Liking people doesn't enter into it.'
Anne was a sweet-natured and amenable girl who was quite used to being ordered around in the interests of property and family alliances, even if she was getting rather tired of it. Her father, fearsomely ambitious, had married Isabel off to George because it had seemed to him advantageous to be father-in-law to King Edward's brother and heir. Unfortunately, the king had disagreed, and there had been a general falling out.
Her father, undismayed, had therefore arranged for Anne herself to be married to the son of the king from whom Edward had usurped the crown, Henry VI. He and George had then succeeded in driving Edward into exile and restoring the imprisoned Henry VI to the throne.
George hadn't liked Henry's restoration at all, because it had reduced him from being the king's brother and heir to just an ordinary member of the nobility. So he had transferred his allegiance back to Edward when his brother had reappeared from exile.
Edward had regained the throne, and George behaved as if his own double dealing had been all that had made it possible. It didn't, of course, occur to him that Isabel and Anne might not take kindly to his boasting about how clever he had been in bringing about the deaths of their father, the earl of Warwick; Anne's husband, the prince of Wales; and her father-in-law, the saintly and incompetent King Henry VI.
Anne sighed. She did want to marry someone she liked this time because, truthfully, she hadn't in the least enjoyed being married to the prince of Wales who, exciting at first, had turned out to be as arrogant and objectionable as he was goodlooking, always waving a sword around and talking about the traitors he intended to slaughter. He had been seventeen when he was killed at the battle of Tewkesbury in May. Anne didn't think he would have made a very good king if he had survived.
George said, 'Anyway, I can't imagine why you like Richard. He's fathered two bastards to my certain knowledge and there's a lot of unpleasant gossip about him. I have it on good authority that it was he who cut down your husband when he was fleeing from the field at Tewkesbury. And it was he who ordered Somerset and the others to be dragged out of sanctuary in the abbey and executed a few days later. And afterwards, he was at the Tower of London when King Henry died, and when he later went to see the body lying in state at the Black Friars it began to bleed again. And you know what that means!'
Corpses were known to bleed afresh in the presence of their murderer. Anne frowned. 'But you were . . .' she began, and then saw that Isabel was biting her lip and giving a tiny, sharp shake of her head that conveyed as clearly as words, 'Don't say it!'
So, instead of going on, 'You were there, too, when King Henry died,' she said, 'I don't know who killed my husband, of course, but killing people is what battles are about. And it was Richard's duty as Constable of England to execute traitors like Somerset. And if King Edward didn't blame him for that, I don't see why you should.'
She couldn't believe she was standing up to George like this but, on the principle that she might as well be hanged for a sheep as for a lamb, went on, her delicate complexion heightened, 'Anyway, men always do that kind of thing. My father often executed people he didn't like, and he didn't have the excuse of acting on the king's behalf. And even if Richard did all those things, which I don't believe, he probably did them because the king told him to.'
There was a vibrating silence. George, his face scarlet, scrutinised the magnificently carved, painted and gilded ceiling while Isabel went back to her embroidery - a sash with George's heraldic emblem of a bull, endlessly repeated - and began stitching away as if her life depended on it.
'That is quite enough,' George said at last.
'Yes, George.'
'The king has confided you to my care, and I will not permit you to marry the duke of Gloucester.'
'But . . .' It was a stupid situation. The king had given Richard permission to marry her, but her guardian - the king's other brother - was determined that he shouldn't. She couldn't guess how it was all going to end, but there was nothing she could do to influence events. Wearily, she said, 'No, George.'
He couldn't bear not to have the last word. Looking down at her, he said, 'And don't delude yourself that he has any feelings for you. He only wants to marry you for your property and family connections.'
It took her a great effort of will to resist the desire to shriek, 'But that is what you keep telling me marriage is supposed to be about!'

5
Towcester, St Albans, Barnet . . .
'Only T-t-tewkesbury missing,' Francis volunteered as they descended Highgate Hill and saw the whole of London spread out before them, its skyline dominated by St Paul's and a forest of church towers and spires. Londoners were nothing if not supportive of their religion.
Richard looked blank for a moment, and then said, 'Well, we're not going all the way round by the west just for the pleasure of revisiting yet another battlefield.' It was one of his more endearing traits that, unlike many people, he never laughed at Francis's occasional stammer, or showed contempt or impatience, or tried to help him out. He had said once, 'You'll probably grow out of it when you accept that there's nothing wrong with being more of a scholar than a warrior.' Francis had blushed - something else he hoped he would grow out of, although at present all he seemed to be growing out of was his clothes.
'As it happens,' Richard said now, 'I wasn't thinking of battles. I was remembering ten years ago when my brother made his formal entry into London for his coronation. I was eight and George was eleven, and Edward had just inducted us as Knights of the Bath, so we rode in the procession to Westminster in our beautiful new blue gowns with their white silk trimmings and felt very mature and important.'
'Were there minstrels, and cloth-of-gold, and c-c-conduits flowing with wine?'
'Of course! No expense spared. Fortunately, the city merchants paid for most of it. Unfortunately, they didn't repeat the effect when Edward made his ceremonial re-entry last April. It wasn't parsimony, as it happens, just that they always prefer to be on the winning side, and this time they'd taken too long arguing over which the winning side was likely to be to have time to arrange for the pageantry. Wine and cloth-of-gold would have been wasted on Henry if things had gone the other way.'
'Does your b-b-brother hold it against them?'
'No, he can't afford to. Too much depends on his being able to borrow money from them.'
There was no hint of criticism in his voice, but Francis couldn't resist saying, 'Whereas you detest being beholden to anyone.'
Richard gave a shadowy smile and evaded the issue. 'The immediate question is, whom shall we go and visit first. Brother Edward? Or brother George?'

6
The queen said, 'As you know, my lord, I cannot love your brothers as dearly as you do yourself . . .'
'Naturally not,' the king replied abstractedly, his mind on the problem of how to finance his proposed invasion of France. 'Don't you have any ideas, Hastings?'
Hastings, the friend and mentor who held the post of Edward's lord chamberlain of the household, grimaced helplessly, all the expression lines of his forty-one years coming into play. They were pleasant lines, because although the first of his guiding principles was to make money, the second was to make himself liked by everyone. 'Parliament could vote a special tax to pay the longbowmen. Or we could try raising benevolences.'
'Not as a first step. People don't enjoy having loans forced out of them.'
The queen, who detested Lord Hastings - suspecting him, with some justification, of being her husband's whore-finder - was not accustomed to being ignored. She did not frown because it was ageing. She merely raised her voice slightly and amended her tone from genteelly gracious to shrewishly piercing. 'But I believe that my opinion is not without value.'
Edward's attention was caught and he smiled at her indulgently, thinking how pretty she always looked - the perfect ice maiden, though at thirty-four, twice married, and pregnant for the seventh time, perhaps 'maiden' was not the appropriate word. But elegant she was, with her Nordic fairness and the royal sense of style she had so swiftly developed after their clandestine marriage of seven years before. She reclined, now, in a gaily painted litter draped and cushioned with cloth-of-gold, four of her ladies-in-waiting on horseback around her. He would have liked to jump in and join her; he had never made love in a horse litter. His loins gave an interested twitch.
They were spending a few days at one of Edward's favourite residences, Eltham Palace in Kent, where he was planning major building works, but on this particular day he had chosen to ride out to survey its three deer parks and decide which to enclose and which to enlarge. It was a soothing way of passing the time and Edward, after three years of almost unbroken campaigning, was disinclined to expend more energy than necessary except in the pleasurable exercises of the bedchamber - or the horse litter.
He put temptation reluctantly aside. He was a big man and vigorous in bed. The litter probably wouldn't take the strain, although it might be worth trying some time. Urbanely, he said, 'Your opinion is always of value, my love. And with ten brothers and sisters of your own, I would not expect you to feel for George and Richard as I do.'
'No. Nor do I have a nature as forgiving as yours. I do not believe that George has mended his ways. Until our son was born last year, George was publicly recognised as your heir and I believe he still thinks of himself as such. I fear for little Eddie's safety.'
Delicately, she touched a handkerchief to her eyes while waving aside the reassurances trembling on her husband's lips. 'No, no. I am aware that you have arranged for every precaution to be taken. But George is setting himself up against you. Again. His opposition to the marriage between Richard and Anne Neville . . .'
'For which I have already given Richard permission,' the king interrupted defensively.
'. . . is based on pure greed. He is determined that his wife should hold on to all the Warwick estates, instead of sharing them with Anne. I believe you must force him to share.'
Edward's high, smooth forehead furrowed slightly. 'It's difficult, my love. I did grant them to the Lady Isabel, after her father was killed, and I would prefer not to offend George by taking them away again . . .'
'It should be George's concern not to offend you more than he has done already. But you must make him behave. If you force him to share the Warwick lands, he will no longer be able to afford to look like a king in waiting, which he does. I find the royal way in which he conducts himself really quite shocking!'
Edward said, 'He doesn't do so in my presence.'
'Perhaps you don't see it, because you don't want to. You are far too soft-hearted.'
'I'm fond of George, and if sometimes George appears not to reciprocate, that is just George's way. He has not quite grown up yet.'
She gave a tinkling laugh. 'He is twenty-one years old! Richard is eighteen and far more mature. You must favour him over George.'
The king turned to Hastings. 'William . . .'
Hastings had been hoping not to be involved because, for once, he was in agreement with the queen. George was pompous, arrogant and dangerous, but Edward could not be persuaded to see it, or to admit to seeing it. On the other hand, the queen's complaint about George's royal pretensions was laughable, coming from a woman who was little more than a parvenue but demanded the kind of subservience normally accorded only to those in whose veins ran the bluest of blue blood.
'Sire?'
'Should we favour Richard?' the king asked.
Hastings was cornered. 'He has been unfailingly loyal to you, sire. Although you have already rewarded him, you have given far greater reward to George, who has not been loyal to you. Richard may well feel that he has been unjustly treated.'
Edward's golden-brown eyes looked absent. 'I do not believe that there is anything at my disposal that I can afford to bestow on him without undermining my own finances. A rich marriage for him would certainly be the most convenient solution.'
Trying for the lighter touch, Hastings offered, 'Very true. And the Lady Anne appears to be the only candidate, since the queen's brothers have already appropriated to themselves all the other great heiresses in the realm.' Then, aware of being skewered by the queen's pale gaze, he added hurriedly, 'I merely mention it. However, I understand that Henry Stafford is close to death, which will make a widow of that clever wife of his, the Lady Margaret Beaufort. She might be available.'
Diverted, the queen exclaimed, 'Invite that woman into the royal family? Never!'
Privately, Hastings cursed himself for his stupidity, because 'that woman' might have become queen of England in her own right, had it not been for a general prejudice against women rulers. She also had a son by a previous marriage who, through his father, had a different though more distant claim to the throne. It was astounding how many potential claimants there were, if one stopped to think about it.
'Elizabeth, my dear!' Edward said in mild rebuke. And then, with a sigh, 'I suppose I have no choice but to order George to agree to Richard's marriage. If only the two of them could be persuaded to resolve the inheritance issue between themselves! But I expect I shall end by setting up a formal review so that they can argue it out in front of lawyers. George won't like that. If I know anything, he'll go on complaining about it for years!'

7
Richard, having installed his household in the great waterside palace known as Baynard's Castle, the family home by the Thames, immediately despatched his serjeant of the stable to deliver the head of the Bastard of Fauconberg, which had survived its journey well, to the royal palace at Westminster, then himself set out, with Francis and a small bodyguard for company, for the Warwick mansion next to St Paul's.
Long familiar with the city, he barely glanced around him as the trumpeter cleared a path for him and bonnets were doffed towards him, but Francis looked with interest at the tradesmen's tiny houses, unable to imagine how people could actually live in them, and tried to assess the worth of the goods set out on the stalls in front.
Blocking their path ahead was a lumbering convoy of carts laden with firewood, hay and straw being carried up from the wharves, and the inevitable moment came when the straw bulging over the sides of one cart swept a merchant's entire stock of linen and ribbons off his stall on to the filthy ground. At once, a fist fight broke out which within seconds developed into a small riot. Knives began flashing and Richard was just saying, a disquieting gleam in his eye, 'We will have to do something,' when a sheriff arrived with his serjeants and yeomen, cuffed the ears of the belligerents, and dragged a random few of them off in the general direction of the pillory at Ludgate in the city wall.
Slightly deflated, Richard said, 'Well, that's swift retribution, if you like! My brother's campaign to impose law and order is obviously having an effect.'
As they approached Ludgate, the houses became larger and more imposing, and the late earl of Warwick's proved to be the most imposing of them all. Warwick's household had been so large that it was not uncommon for as many as six whole oxen to be consumed at breakfast.
The Great Hall of the mansion, which was stonewalled, whitewashed, tapestry-hung and as vast as its name implied, proved to be very full of people. Such halls had long been the focus of life in England's castles and mansions, the place where the lord kept open house for his followers, retainers and any other respectable persons who chose to present themselves, but it was becoming increasingly fashionable for the nobility to retire into their new Great Chambers, which could be entered only by invitation. George, it seemed, had chosen not to adopt the new ways, no doubt because a crowded Great Hall was an index of popularity and power - which ministered to his vanity.
Scanning the hall, Francis observed a chaplain who appeared to be testing the pitch of half a dozen choirboys, although how he could hear their piping voices in the general babel Francis could not imagine. Further over, dictating to a seated clerk, was a grey-faced gentleman with an armful of papers who looked as if he might be the household receiver, or rent collector. A jester was prancing around tapping people on the shoulder with his bauble and presumably telling them jokes, while a melancholy-looking fellow over in one corner was grinding away on a hurdy-gurdy. And everywhere, brightly clad knights and gentlemen were engrossed in conversations that seemed to entail a great deal of shouting and gesticulating.
Close by the far window was a small group of women, the only women in the room. Seated on a hard stool was a slender dark girl, languidly occupied with distaff and spindle. Three drab, middle-aged gentlewomen stood by, their hands folded subserviently. And in the centre, partly obscured from Francis's sight by a plump, curly-haired gentleman who was clearly offering her a special price on the lengths of velvet draped over his arm, was George's wife, the Lady Isabel. No sign of the Lady Anne.
And then the steward was leading them across to George, who with apparent relief dismissed the stout bishop with whom he had been conversing, but whose jovial welcome to his brother was as false as a harlot's vows of love.
Towering over the compact and neatly built Richard, George said, 'You look well, young Diccon. What news of the frozen north?'
'Thawing nicely. Lord Lovell here has been complaining of the heat.'
George floundered. 'Er, Lovell?' He stared at Francis as if he were a spirit that had strayed in from elfland, although even if he had no memory for faces he certainly knew - he was that kind of man - that the ninth Baron Lovell was one of the wealthiest young peers in England.
Francis straightened up his lanky length and did his best to look it.
'Ah, yes, Lovell. How are you? You've grown.' Without waiting for an answer, George turned back to Richard, but before he could say more Richard resumed with the bland amiability of one who did not expect to be denied, 'We have come to see the Lady Anne.'
'She's not here.'
Richard was silent for a moment. Then, 'In what sense?'
'What do you mean, ''In what sense?'' I said, she's not here.'
'She is supposed to be living here under your guardianship. Has she gone out to visit friends? Or to buy ribbons from the mercer? Or has she ceased to live here?'
'That's it. She doesn't live here any more.'
'So where does she live?'
'Don't know. How should I know?'
Richard's lips tightened but, when he spoke, his voice was relaxed. 'Don't play the fool, George. I know you have a brain in that big handsome head of yours, even if you choose to pretend otherwise.'
This tribute left George unmoved. 'Don't know where she is. She took herself off without a word to anybody. Didn't want to see you.'
It was an unlikely story. After a moment, Richard turned away to the great oriel window and stood looking out through the leaded panes.
Superficially, both men appeared calm and controlled. Francis knew that discipline and propriety had been the watchwords of their mother, the exquisite but terrifying Duchess Cicely, who had ruled their early upbringing with a rod of iron. But George's fists were clenching and unclenching at his sides, while Richard was fidgeting with the dagger at his belt, twitching it an inch out of its scabbard and pushing it back again, which might have been taken as a sign of irritation except that Richard's fidgets were more often a sign of surplus energy than of nervous tension.
Richard said, 'I know you don't want me to marry Anne, but make no mistake about it. Inheritance or no inheritance, I am determined on it.'
'Rubbish. It's not her you want. It's her claim to the Warwick titles and estates. And you can't have them, because I've got them. If you knew where she was, I wouldn't put it past you to run off with her.'
The noise in the Great Hall did not abate, but the silence within their little group was almost palpable. And then Richard's shoulders shook, and when he turned back to face George he was laughing. Genuinely. 'Run off with her? Oh, no. I propose doing things correctly. There have been quite enough clandestine marriages in our family already and I have no intention of starting another war, as yours and Edward's did.'
George's handsome nostrils flared. His own marriage to Warwick's elder daughter had sealed his alliance with Warwick; it had been a direct act of rebellion against Edward, who had forbidden it. And it was Edward's own secret marriage to the seductive but humbly born widow, Dame Elizabeth Grey, née Woodville, in place of the French royal bride Warwick had been negotiating for him, that had alienated Warwick from him in the first place.
George exploded, 'I don't know what you mean. Nothing clandestine about my marriage. Isabel's father gave us his blessing and we were married in public by an archbishop of the church!'
It might have sounded convincing to someone who didn't know that the 'public' marriage had taken place not in England but in Calais, and that the archbishop in question had been the earl of Warwick's brother.
Richard's lips twitched and he said, 'Of course,' in a soothing tone which incensed George even more.
Francis studied the pair of them with amusement, George eye-catchingly splendid in a calf-length, ermine-trimmed robe of deep rose over a bright blue tunic, with a roll-brimmed blue hood on his head; Richard in his modish rust-coloured, wide-shouldered and extremely - some said indecently - short tunic above dark grey fitted hose and the new duckbill-toed shoes, his bowl-shaped green hat tipped jauntily forward over his nose. It was easy to understand that Richard, less impressive physically than George and never allowed to forget it, should compensate by running intellectual rings round his brother.
The duchess of York had borne her husband twelve children and lost five of them, including three sons, in infancy. Of the seven who had survived, four had been sons, the eldest of them Edward and the youngest, ten years later, Richard. Edward and George were both spectacularly tall, fair, handsome and beautifully muscled; so, reputedly, had been the second brother, Edmund, killed at Wakefield.
But Richard, born three years after George, came from a different mould. Several inches shorter than his elders, he was brown-haired rather than fair, lithe rather than muscular, brimming with physical and mental energy. The elder brothers seemed to have inherited their looks, on a grandiose scale, from their mother's side of the family, but it was generally held that Richard was the image of his father, except for one fundamental difference. Whereas the duke of York had been of a rash disposition and had paid for it with his life, his youngest son was the opposite, a thinker, a planner - a cautious and careful young man. Only Francis knew that he was not invariably as cool as he chose to appear. In the past and in an occasional burst of boyish mischief, he had proved capable of casting it all to the winds.
Now, he said, 'I am sorry that the Lady Anne prefers not to see me. Perhaps, if I could meet her, I could persuade her to take a different view. You are sure you have no idea where she is?'
'None at all.'
George's air of innocence was so elaborate that no one could possibly have believed him.
Richard said carelessly, 'Never mind. Lovell will find her.'
A startled Francis reflected that it was just as well he was not expected to open his mouth. There wasn't a letter in the alphabet that would not have had him stuttering like a kettledrum.
Just then came the sound of a flute being blown by a youthful yeoman who had appeared in the doorway, signalling to everyone that the room was to be cleared to enable the trestle tables to be set up for supper.
George did not invite Richard and Francis to stay.
'We must pay our respects to the Lady Isabel before we leave,' Richard said, unexpectedly striding off towards the little group of women with George hot on his heels. Francis followed more slowly, reflecting that while George was preventing Richard from asking the Lady Isabel about her sister's whereabouts, he himself might take the opportunity of questioning the girl with the distaff, whom he vaguely remembered from Middleham in the days when Richard and he had been among the youthful nobles who had been boarded out there for their knightly education.
He remembered her name just in time, and murmured, 'Constantia?'
She looked up from tucking her distaff into her belt. 'Don't you mean C-c-constantia?'
'No, I don't, you wicked girl. Where is the Lady Anne?'
Her mischievous expression vanished. 'I can't tell you. I daren't! Duke George is watching.' She dropped her spindle and bent to pick it up at the same moment as Francis did. In the confusion of apologies following the crashing of their heads, Francis heard her whisper, 'Sir John . . .' But then George was looming over them, saying, 'All well?'
The Lady Isabel had disappeared, and Richard was standing chewing his lower lip as he always did when he was thinking hard. 'Time to take our leave, Lovell,' he said.
George escorted them every step of the way to where their horses and servants awaited them, and then stood watching them ride off.

8
'Why me? And why ''Lovell''?' Francis demanded.
'George doesn't understand friendship, only the master and servant relationship.'
'Oh. Thank you.'
'He gave me no opportunity to speak to Isabel. Did you have any luck with the girl?'
'Was it obvious?'
'To me, but probably not to George.'
'All she managed to say was, ''Sir John . . .'', before we were interrupted.'
'Well, well. At least it reduces the list of possibilities, but how many Sir Johns can you think of?'
Francis counted on the fingers of his gauntlet. 'Mmm. Seventeen?'
'Clever of you. I can only make fifteen. Now, let us consider. Since George is behind it all, we can safely assume that Anne has not gone rushing off to a member of her own family. So that rules out the Nevilles and their assorted kin, including the Beauchamps and Despensers.'
'Her mother-in-law?'
Raising an eyebrow, Richard said, 'To languish with her in prison in the Tower? I doubt it.'
'I wasn't thinking of Margaret of Anjou herself, more about supporters who could have been kind to Anne when they were in France. Like Sir John Fortescue.'
'Certainly, he's a kindly man. And a ''Sir John'', too! But let us first look at George's retainers. Those to whom he could say, ''Look after the Lady Anne for me. Keep her hidden.'' '
'Hidden?'
'No point in placing her where she could be recognised by anyone who dropped in for a cup of ale.'
Francis was slightly shocked. 'You're not suggesting she might be locked up somewhere?'
Richard gave him no immediate answer because his gelding shied, startled by a dog darting out from a dark alley. But as Richard brought him back under control, the torches over the merchants' booths lit a spark in his grey eyes. 'If she is locked up, George will pay for it, and so will Sir John, whoever he may be. We'll try Kemp first. He has a house in Paternoster Row. Then Strensham, in Basinges Lane, and Harewell, over by Bucklersbury. After that, if need be, we can take further thought.'

9
'Are you managing, my lady?' enquired Sir John's wife a little tremulously.
'No, I am not,' Anne snapped, in no mood for mincing words. But then she giggled. Mincing words, mincing almonds, what was there to choose? Putting down her cleaver, she wiped her hands on her skirts and said, 'I know I offered to help prepare the food for your babies, but I cannot make the almond milk without help.'
'Oh, dear! What shall we do? Cow's milk is very bad for them.'
How was it possible, Anne wondered, for a woman to be so helpless? Presumably she was accustomed to leaving everything to the children's nurse, which would be fine except when the nurse fell ill, as she had done now.
With some exasperation, she said, 'It takes pounds of almonds to make as much milk as the babies need. I have chopped them as best I can, but I am not strong enough to grind them. Unless the milk is to be very weak the yeoman powderer will have to pulverise them with his giant pestle and mortar.'
'But those are for salt.' Her ladyship sounded perfectly vacant.
'They can be used for other things.'
Doubtfully, 'Can they? Perhaps I should ask the clerk of the kitchen.'
'Perhaps you should.' Anne had to raise her voice because there was suddenly a great deal of noise coming from the passage leading between the main kitchen and the Great Hall, the noise of men shouting angrily. The two women peered out from the nursery pantry and, like everyone else in the kitchens, stared open-mouthed towards the archway where a mass of struggling bodies seemed to be fighting to get through.
It didn't last long. After a few moments, the bodies disentangled themselves and shook themselves down.
Anne said, 'Ooooh,' and hastily began tucking her hair into her cap.
One man was still shouting, 'You have no right to break in like this. How dare you!' while another and much younger one ostentatiously restored his dagger to the scabbard at his belt, surveyed the kitchens and, ignoring the irate porter, strolled across to Anne to smile at her charmingly and bow over her small, greasy hand. He was a very attractive, dangerous-looking young man.
'My lord duke,' she said weakly, smiling back. 'What an unexpected pleasure.'
He tilted his head in acknowledgement, then, glancing at Sir John's twittering lady, said, 'No doubt someone will explain to me why my bride-to-be, the future duchess of Gloucester, should be hidden away in this vulgar establishment, employed as a kitchen maid!'
Richard had always behaved and sounded older than he was, but now he excelled himself. Even the king could not have been more majestic.
Anne caught sight of Francis Lovell and, meeting his eye, saw that he was having as much difficulty in sustaining his gravity as she was.
Pink-cheeked with suppressed hilarity, she fixed her gaze on Richard and said, 'My lord duke, you mistake the situation . . .'

10
Nothing would convince him.
'Employed as a kitchen maid!'
He and Francis stood guard over her while a servant was despatched to pack her belongings.
'It had nothing to do with George. He wanted me out of the house in case you came to take me away . . .'
'Three boxes. Is that everything?'
'I think so. But I was in the kitchen from choice. It was preferable to sitting in that woman's chamber and listening to her tedious conversation . . .'
'Not Baynard's Castle, I think. My mother is not in residence to lend respectability. And you cannot go back to my brother's. Kitchen maid, indeed! I will take you to sanctuary in St Martin's le Grand. I understand that their guest lodgings are well appointed. You will be safe and comfortable there until I can make arrangements for our marriage. Are you ready?'
'Yes. But I should say goodbye to my hostess . . .'
'Unnecessary.'
Her submissiveness vibrant with sarcasm, which Richard entirely failed to notice, Anne said, 'Very well, my lord.' Francis winked at her conspiratorially as he tossed the porter a gold noble. The man had only been doing his duty in trying to keep them out.
Richard said, 'The next thing is to deal with George.'

Chapter Two
1472
1
High-handed though Richard could be when dealing with opposition, his quarrel with George was not of a kind that could be resolved by simply bursting into the Warwick mansion with a body of armed men at his heels.
Assuring himself of the person of the Lady Anne had been only the first stage, though it had been one that had given him more pleasure than he expected - largely because the Anne of today was such an improvement on the Anne of yesterday.
He had remembered her, from his years in the household of the earl of Warwick before that gentleman's break with Edward, as a pale and nondescript little girl, a most unlikely daughter for the overpowering earl and his scarcely less overpowering lady. So, when he had stormed off from George's in search of her, he had done so in the resigned knowledge that a colourless wife was the price he had to pay for the power and possessions he so desperately needed. It had startled him a good deal to discover that she had changed almost beyond recognition, that there was now something very taking about her, something which owed little to the neat prettiness of her features, her soft fair hair, her blue eyes and dainty figure. The episode in the kitchen might have been overheated, in all senses, but he had still been aware of the sweetness of her expression, the sparkle of fun, the look of candid innocence. He had found himself liking her - a most unexpected bonus.
Now, having assured himself of the lady, he had to assure himself of her property. And that was a matter of some legal intricacy, since the 'Warwick inheritance', though vast, was not a single entity. Part of it was entailed, which meant that the law required it to pass from Warwick himself to his male next of kin. Part also consisted of estates which he had enjoyed in the rôle of husband to his countess, whose personal inheritance they were and which should have reverted to her when she became a widow. Strictly speaking, only the third and final part was available to be divided between his two daughters.
Or should have been.
But Warwick had been attainted for treason, and all his estates had passed to the crown. Whereupon Edward had used them to pay off his brothers for their help in restoring him to the throne. With a nod towards testamentary disposition, he had granted George's wife Isabel all the estates to which she might be assumed to have hereditary expectations. And to Richard he awarded the property belonging to the entail. Anne's rights, and her mother's, were ignored.
But, now, with Richard anxious to marry Anne for the half-share she should have had, as well as for the power of the Neville name, George was flatly refusing to part with anything. Royal grant, he maintained, took precedence over testamentary probability.
It was not, of course, as simple as that, and for weeks Richard's and George's attorneys had a highly enjoyable and profitable time, blessed by clients who failed to appreciate that their own inspirational meddling contributed nothing beyond extra noughts on their bill.
Just before Christmas, Francis decided that it was time he paid attention to his own affairs for a change - which included becoming better acquainted with his wife, to whom he had been distantly married for five years. It had been a match arranged in their childhood, and Nan, although now of an age to consummate the marriage, was still resident at her parents' home in the north and refusing to leave it. Francis knew he ought to do something about taking her to his family home at Minster Lovell in Oxfordshire, but it was desperately in need of repairs and improvements and he thought it might be unkind to insist.
Richard, asked for advice, said merely, 'You must do as you think best.'
When Francis returned to London in January, deep in gloom over the bigotry of his mother-in-law and hoping that her daughter hadn't inherited it - it was hard to tell, since she had done little but blush and look helpless - Richard greeted him briskly.
'I hope things went well? Now, pay attention. Edward has summoned George and myself to Sheen next month. He says he has been much irritated by public gossip and reports of violence involving our retainers, and that it is time for us to argue our cases before himself and his council.'
Francis knew better than to ask, 'Are you prepared?' Richard was always prepared.

2
They went by barge to the palace of Sheen, the delightful residence on the banks of the Thames begun by Henry V and completed by his son, three leagues upriver from London.
The scene that met them when, having landed at the water gate, they entered the hall of the royal lodgings, was less delightful. A platform had been erected at the end of the hall and five men sat lined up on it, the king in the centre under his canopy of state, wonderfully handsome and stately in a gold-on-black damasked robe over a gold-embroidered black tunic, and with a jewelled gold coronet on his fair head. The royal chamberlain, Lord Hastings, was on his right, pink-faced and white-haired, his wide mouth bracketed by deeply carved smile lines; and the royal steward, Lord Stanley, was on his left, a big, deceptively soldierly looking man with morose eyes, a large nose, and a small mouth. The two outer chairs were occupied by the queen's brother, Anthony Woodville, Earl Rivers, whose resemblance to her was striking, and a small, mean-faced bishop whom Francis failed to recognise.
'John Morton, bishop of Ely,' Richard murmured. 'A Lancastrian until last year, and a very sharp little lawyer who specialises in disputed wills. Edward admires his ability, if not his personality.'
Below the platform was a large square green-baize table strewn with document rolls and surrounded by officials wearing parti-coloured gowns of blue and white or brown and green. At the end of the table furthest from the king and facing him were already congregated Richard's and George's attorneys, distinguished by the coarsely woven white mesh cauls they wore on their heads.
There was to be no time wasted on the courtesies. As soon as George appeared with, like Richard, only one gentleman in attendance, there was a flourish of trumpets and the king declared the council in session.
'It appears to us unseemly,' Edward began in a very haughty way, 'that a dispute between two of the greatest nobles in the realm should have become the subject of common gossip and speculation. It is also unacceptable that men wearing the white boar badge of Gloucester and the black bull badge of Clarence should be unable to meet in the streets without resorting to fisticuffs or worse.'
Richard listened virtuously, but George, to the king's obvious exasperation, allowed his eyes to wander around the chamber, studying the people, the tapestries, the painted ceiling, and at one point sniffing audibly as if trying to identify the powerful smell of damp that was natural to a building standing on the banks of a tidal river. It caused several of those present also to sniff enquiringly, though less brazenly.
Francis thought what a rash fellow he was. After his treachery of the years 1469-71, when he had sought not only his brother Edward's crown but his life, he should have thought himself lucky to be still alive and free. A sensible man would have lain low, behaving quietly and responsibly for a while at least. But not George.
The king said, 'This being an advisory council, not a court of law, we are not bound by the formalities. Let the duke of Clarence begin the proceedings by stating his case.'
George cleared his throat sharply. 'The dispute concerns my ward, the Lady Anne Neville. The lady having been married outside this kingdom and then widowed, but being still of tender years and having no guardian, was put in my care by you, sire, because of my relationship to her as the husband of her sister, the Lady Isabel.'
He stopped for breath. Then, 'It is the responsibility of a guardian to arrange a suitable marriage for his ward . . .'
The king intervened. 'As I understand it, the Lady Anne is fifteen years old and therefore well above the legal age of consent. According to both secular and canon law' - he glanced at Bishop Morton - 'she is entitled to reject a marriage that does not find favour with her.'
The bishop nodded, thin-lipped and narrow-eyed.
George was all injured innocence. 'I know that. But I am not trying to enforce an unwanted marriage on her. Rather the opposite. What I am doing is fulfilling my legal duty as her guardian by refusing permission for a marriage of which I cannot approve.'
The king glanced at Bishop Morton again, and the bishop said, 'It is a point well made. Perhaps you would be so good as to amplify it?'
Inaudibly, except to Francis, Richard breathed, 'Go on, George. Commit yourself.'
George's attorney rose on tiptoe to murmur in his ear but George shook his head and replied loftily, 'The proposed marriage is with Richard Plantagenet, duke of Gloucester, whom I believe to be a wholly unsuitable match for the Lady Anne.'
Briefly, there was silence. It was broken by the queen's brother, who was generally held to be a kindly, serious and honourable man - temperamentally so unlike his grasping and widely unpopular Woodville kin that he was whispered to be a changeling. He was just thirty years old, haggardly handsome, exactly of an age with the king and a dozen years younger than the other royal favourite, Lord Hastings, who was sitting next to him trying to look judicious but succeeding only in looking as if he could have done with an extra hour or two in bed that morning. As was the way with royal favourites, the two men detested each other.
With the studied air of nonchalance that characterised all his dealings, Lord Rivers said, 'Perhaps we may ask about the duke of Clarence's reasons for regarding the duke of Gloucester as an unsuitable match for his ward?'
It opened the gates for discussion of the real issue, the inheritance. Francis could see Richard thinking, 'Thank you.'
George reacted badly. Rivers might be the queen's brother, but he was very much George's inferior in rank. 'No, you may not ask. I have made my decision on perfectly good grounds and I will not have my judgement questioned!'
'Oh, but you will,' said the king tartly. 'You have caused a great deal of trouble by disobeying our royal wish that the marriage should take place, and we require you to explain yourself.'

3
No one could have described George's expression as that of a dutiful subject arraigned before his king. Upstanding, handsome, splendidly dressed in damasked blue, he was still unmistakably a younger brother resentful at always coming second.
'Now, see here, Edward,' he blurted, but before he could go any further the king stopped him with a sharp, 'Enough!'
When Edward took that tone, even George paid attention. He paused, turned to his chief attorney, and held out his hand for a roll of papers. He disguised his discomfiture well, Francis thought, even if there was a petulant twist to his lips as he turned back to the bench.
'Very well. I believe the character of the said duke of Gloucester to be such that he would not take properly tender care of a nobly born and gently reared young woman.'
Taking tender care of a young wife was such an unlikely qualification for a husband that smothered smiles were apparent all round the table. Wives were contributors of marriage portions and bearers of heirs, no more, unless a man were unnaturally lucky. And a wife whose husband treated her civilly and did not beat her could think herself equally lucky. What was Clarence talking about? Richard of Gloucester was a tough, loyal, sensible young man, a man of his time. What more could a young woman ask for?
'You will have to do better than that,' said the king. He had had to threaten his own wife with a dagger before she accepted him, and their marriage had been both successful and fruitful. Having a selective memory, he had forgotten that what had brought the dagger into play had been her resistance not to becoming his wife, but to becoming his mistress.
George said, 'Very well. The Lady Anne has been used to live in the greatest luxury, first as daughter of the earl of Warwick, the wealthiest noble in the land, and subsequently in my own care.'
'Kitchen maid,' Richard muttered, not quite under his breath. A few lips twitched among the officials at the table. The story had already gone the rounds.
'I do not believe,' George went on, plunging deeper into the mire, 'that the duke of Gloucester is sufficiently well endowed with titles and estates to maintain her in the style to which she is accustomed.'
The king and his four advisers stared disbelievingly at him for a moment. Then the king said, 'That can be remedied easily enough.'
'No, it can't. Not if I have anything to do with it!' George met his brother's eyes unflinchingly, secure in his own illicit power. He had rebelled against Edward before, and everyone knew that he would do so again if thwarted. Edward had been dethroned once, and the threat of a repetition ought, George was convinced, to be enough to frighten him into favouring George himself over Richard, who was, and probably would always remain, selflessly loyal.
He thought he had won when Edward said, 'I believe this might be a suitable moment for us to retire and refresh ourselves with a cup of wine. We will convene again when the bells ring for sext.'

4
The king and his councillors having departed the hall, servants appeared with leather jugs of ale and wooden drinking bowls for those left behind, who had already gravitated into small, gossipy groups. George threw a single, triumphant glance at Richard and then became immersed in conversation with his attorneys.
Richard said, to Francis's mild surprise, 'Let us go outdoors and breathe some fresher air.' It was a typically dull, cold and unpleasant February day, and the wide, brown, sluggish river smelled anything but fresh.
However, there was someone else enjoying the scene - the big-nosed, balding, expensively dressed but indefinably slovenly-looking royal steward, Lord Stanley, who had clearly just been relieving himself into the river. Francis, introduced to him and surprised by the limpness of his handshake, knew of him as the head of a powerful family with vast estates and followings in the Midlands and the North-West, a man with a reputation for wiliness and an amazing talent for ending up on the winning side, whichever side that happened to be.
'Can't talk now,' Stanley said. 'Everything's sub judice, wouldn't be proper.'
Richard nodded gravely. 'No.' He gestured around. 'The weather does not look promising.'
'Oh, I don't know.' Stanley glanced towards the sky. 'I think it will clear. You should have a more - ah - settled trip back to London.'
'Really?'
Stanley nodded and turned away.
Nothing could have appeared more innocent or uncontrived. Richard's eyes sparkled. 'Good. That sounds hopeful. Now let us wait for the noon bell to summon us back indoors.'

5
It was Lord Stanley who re-opened the proceedings. 'It appears desirable to our lord the king that this council be reminded of the situation concerning the redistribution of what is known as the Warwick inheritance.'
George sighed gustily.
'Upon the death in battle of the late, traitorous earl of Warwick,' Stanley went on, 'George, duke of Clarence, in right of his wife, the Duchess Isabel, took arbitrary possession of the late earl's titles and lands, the duchess being the elder of the earl's two children, both daughters. Certain of the earl's estates - those legally entailed to his male next-of-kin - were exempt from this arrangement.
'However, the late earl, by bearing arms against the king when the royal banner was displayed, had been guilty of treason, which carries the penalty of forfeiture. The inheritance in its entirety, therefore, reverted to the king. Errr . . .'
Stanley held out a large hand and waggled his fingers, and after some frantic shuffling one of the officials at the green baize table handed a document roll up to him.
'Errr . . . Yes. The king, of his generosity and in recognition of the duke of Clarence's assistance in restoring him to the throne, then chose to grant the duke all those lands to which the duchess had hereditary expectations. The king similarly, in recognition of Richard, duke of Gloucester's loyal services, granted to him all that part of the Warwick inheritance entailed to Warwick's male next-of-kin.'
George interrupted, 'And that was ill-judged! Male Gloucester may be, but he's a long way from being next-of-kin. I'm nearer in line myself.'
Lord Hastings, on the platform, grinned mischievously, as if to say, 'Don't you wish you'd thought of that before!' while Stanley replied evasively, 'Certainly you were both kin through your mother, the sister of the late earl. But that is not the issue.'
'No, I agree. It isn't,' George said. 'The issue is that the king my brother granted me everything to which my wife had hereditary expectations, and I don't see why I should share it with anyone.'
Coolly, Richard's voice broke in. 'Careful, George. Royal grants can be taken away as easily as they are made.'
The king said acidly, 'Thank you, Richard.'
'It appears to me,' intervened little Bishop Morton, 'that there may be some question about the definition of the Duchess Isabel's ''hereditary expectations''. Am I correct in thinking that the duke of Clarence believes these to include the properties and titles which she may ultimately inherit from her mother, the countess of Warwick, when that lady is gathered to God?'
George said, 'Of course.'
'So that, although the countess's possessions should have reverted to her on the death of her husband, who had legal title to them only during his lifetime, the duke of Clarence has appropriated them on his wife's behalf.'
George said, 'Of course. The king my brother granted me everything to which my wife had hereditary expectations, and that includes what will naturally come to her when her mother dies.'
The king frowned. 'I did not intend the countess to be dispossessed of her rightful property in the meantime.'
'Then you should have been more careful, shouldn't you?' George sounded as if this was a schoolroom squabble rather than a royal enquiry.
Francis shook his head to clear it, and glanced at Richard, whose face showed the same weary tolerance as everyone else's. George was always so convinced of his own rightness that he couldn't conceive of any sensible man thinking otherwise, which helped to explain his manner, even if it didn't justify it. It was a constant source of irritation to those around him that, although he had a perfectly good brain, he used it only in the context of his own obsessions. Richard had said once, 'George is like an attorney who knows everything about the law but fails to recognise that a brain can be useful for other, everyday things like deciding where to hammer in a nail on which to hang his hat.'
Richard stepped forward. 'May I speak, sire?'
'Do!'
'May I suggest that much of the present difficulty could be resolved if the matter of the inheritance were treated as just that, an orthodox inheritance dispute uncomplicated by royal grants - or their wording.' He smiled charmingly at Bishop Morton, who looked unimpressed.
But to others Richard sounded like a sensible man. Everyone knew that the uncertainty associated with royal grants was a perennial source of worry to the recipients. So if everything could be settled on the routinely legal basis of natural inheritance, the king's two quarrelsome young brothers might go away and let everyone else get on with their lives in peace.
'Let us, for the time being,' Richard went on, 'leave the matter of the countess of Warwick's possessions in abeyance. Let us also think further about the entail of the late earl's own possessions. His closest male kin is, of course, the young duke of Bedford, whose father, like Warwick, died a traitor and should therefore be forfeit.'
Francis, aware that Richard was no more interested than George was in the rights of young Bedford or the deprived countess of Warwick, wondered whether Richard wasn't, in fact, digging a pit for himself to fall into.
The bishop was shaking his head and grimacing disapprovingly - what a spiteful-looking little man he was, Francis thought - but his expression changed suddenly and his mouth rounded into an 'Ouch!' as Lord Stanley gave him a hearty kick on the shin, which Francis observed with pleasure from where he was standing, but which no one else seemed to notice.
Richard's words sounded perfectly rational, and Francis wondered if he himself was the only man present to whom they also sounded distinctly slippery. Young Bedford could probably fend for himself, but the countess, in sanctuary at Beaulieu, seemed to have no one to speak for her, although rumour had it that she was speaking quite vociferously for herself. It had not previously occurred to Francis, orphaned as a child and brought up in largely masculine company, that being a woman might be almost as difficult as being a man, in a different way, of course. So absorbed was he in this revelation that he almost missed what came next.
'. . . principles of natural justice,' Richard was saying. 'Then that part of the Warwick inheritance which is available for distribution to his heirs of the body ought properly to be divided between his two daughters, Isabel and Anne.'
The king and the members of his council nodded sagaciously. So, too, did the queen, now seated with her ladies behind but not quite hidden by a screen in the corner of the hall. No one asked Richard to define what he meant by 'available'.
Unbelievably, George laughed aloud. It did not appear to be a calculated response, more as if he had suddenly been struck by a clever and pleasing thought.
Richard raised a politely enquiring eyebrow.
George said, 'I withdraw my opposition to your marriage with the Lady Anne.' Everyone looked at him. 'But even if the law requires her to benefit from the Warwick inheritance - which I will resist with vigour, since that would mean my being deprived of what has been royally granted to me - you will have to be legally married to her. And you may find that a problem!'

6
A few days later, the Lady Margaret Beaufort, interviewing her prospective fourth husband, said with deceptive naivety, 'And what, Lord Stanley, did the duke of Clarence mean by that?'
Stanley, much more interested in his own marital prospects than in Richard of Gloucester's, shrugged his heavy shoulders and said, 'Papal dispensations and that kind of thing.'
'And that kind of thing?' the Lady Margaret repeated, dropping her eyes to her little golden goblet with the daisy on its cover. In the course of her twenty-eight years, she had learned the knack of innocent enquiry. Usually, it brought her the answers she expected, but sometimes there was a small nugget of extra information that proved to be of value.
'Richard of Gloucester and Anne Neville are related several times within the prohibited degrees of affinity. Clarence had enough difficulty extracting a dispensation from Rome when he married Lady Isabel in sixty-nine, because they were first cousins and Lady Isabel was also his mother's godchild. In Richard's case, the same impediments apply, with the additional one that his brother and Lady Anne's sister are man and wife. So if he doesn't get a papal dispensation, he won't be properly married in the eyes of the church and won't have any rights in the Warwick inheritance at all, even if the king's council decides that the Lady Anne is entitled to part of it.'
Absently, she said, 'We have a new pope now. Perhaps he may be more flexible than the last.'
Stanley guffawed. 'I'm sure he will. He's a della Rovere, and that's a family that knows what the world is about. But while a quid pro quo will always buy flexibility, I doubt if young Diccon has any to offer.'
'I suppose not.'
They were at Margaret's favourite residence, the moated and castellated manor known as Woking Old Hall, set among orchards, gardens and a deer park, and conveniently accessible by river from London. Stanley had been reassured to discover how many servants there were and how well maintained everything was. The counting house had recently been reroofed and the stables repaired; there were sheep and cattle sheds, a poultry house and a fishpond. Inside the Hall, the walls were hung with fine tapestries representing not scenes of piety, which he would have expected, but Classical epics, tales of kings and heroes - the labours of Hercules, the lives of Samson, Saul, and Nebuchadnezzar.
There was no reason for him to know that the pewter and glass on the table and the magnificent canopy of crimson sarcenet under which he and Lady Margaret dined had been specially ordered for a visit from King Edward three years before and had been packed away and rarely used since. Lady Margaret brought them out only when she wished to impress, and it was seldom that she needed or desired to impress.
'However, let us discuss our own marriage.' Stanley smiled ingratiatingly and, not for the first time, Margaret wondered why she was proposing to marry a man almost ten years older than she was, twice her size and with half her intelligence. But she knew the answer. He was powerful, and available, and she needed him.
She was a wealthy woman with lands scattered widely across the country, always under attack from others who claimed rights in them. Holding on to her estates took up almost as much time and effort as managing them. She had no intention of being caught in the same kind of trap as the unfortunate countess of Warwick, who had no powerful supporters and was being treated as if she were already dead because the dukes of Clarence and Gloucester wanted her possessions for themselves.
Margaret, on the other hand, wanted her possessions for her son, who had been born to her when she was thirteen years old and already a widow, under circumstances of such pain and torment that she could never bear a child again. Above all, she wanted his title back for him, the title of earl of Richmond which, because of his blood relationship to King Henry VI - his father, her then husband, had been Henry's half-brother - had been taken away from him some years before by King Edward and bestowed on the duke of Clarence. Who refused to part with it again.
She weighed up the question of how Clarence would react to the resolution of his dispute with the duke of Gloucester. If he won, there would be no holding him; he was not a generous man and would not be prepared to give up anything. If he lost, he would cling to what he had, unless the king chose to bring him to heel by further depriving him. In that case, Stanley's influence might well be decisive in retrieving the honour of Richmond for fifteen-year-old Henry, now in voluntary exile in Brittany. She had urged him to go, because she feared what the king might do if he stayed. The king's promises of safety and security were not to be trusted and she knew that Edward must think he had every reason to feel vindictive towards any potential Lancastrian claimant to his throne.
She had only a mild interest in the wellbeing of the Lady Anne Neville, briefly wife to the late prince of Wales, one of her own multitude of nephews-by-marriage, and no feeling at all - other than a vague dislike - for Richard of Gloucester who, after Tewkesbury, had dragged her cousin Edmund Beaufort, duke of Somerset, out of sanctuary and executed him at the king's command. But she prayed devoutly that Gloucester would emerge triumphant, because George of Clarence badly needed to be cut down to size.
'. . . my lady must be guaranteed an income of not less than three hundred and thirty pounds a year from your estates in Cheshire and North Wales,' her receiver-general Reginald Bray was saying to Lord Stanley as she turned back to the business in hand.
'And you in return, my lord,' she intervened, 'will of course have a life interest in my own estates, which I hope may be expanded with the passage of time.'
Stanley had a fairly shrewd idea of what was on her mind, and nodded approval. She was a remarkable woman, refined of feature, gracious and charming in manner, more than conventionally pious, tiny in stature and looking as if a puff of wind would blow her away, but as strong-minded in pursuit of her own ends as any man he could think of. If they had both been younger, her personality might have posed a problem, but they were two mature and experienced people and, in any case, need not see more of each other than they wanted to. He suspected that the bedchamber would be out of bounds, but substitute wives were easy to come by at Edward's court. Edward was always looking for candidates to whom he could pass on his discarded mistresses.
Margaret, elegant in black velvet trimmed with ermine and pearls, her hair invisible under the face-framing widow's barbe, had the feeling that Stanley would soon fall into the habit of referring to her as 'my clever little wife'. Just as long as he did not do so in her hearing . . .

7
'I will marry Anne at Middleham immediately after Easter,' Richard said. 'In the village church. In style. Archbishop Neville can conduct the service. And that,' he added with satisfaction, 'should leave no one in any doubt that I am the true inheritor of all Warwick's power and influence in the north.'
The king and his council had chosen to ignore the niceties of the dispute over the Warwick inheritance and, on March 18th, had reached a decision that all of it, without exception, was in the king's gift and divisible according to his wishes. George was to give up some lands to the Lady Anne and, in return, received a promise that if the king, at some future date, were to take back any of the estates he held by royal grant, he would be suitably compensated. The dilemma of the countess of Warwick - alive, but treated by the law as if she were dead - was not confronted, and George continued to administer his share of her estates as his own. Richard would do the same with those transferred to Anne.
It was a compromise that satisfied no one except the king. 'Principles of division' were of limited usefulness to those more interested in the practicalities of it - practicalities such as who was entitled to collect rents from which estates without the risk of becoming embroiled in a fight.
Francis said, 'But Richard, what about the p-p-papal dispensation for your marriage? That isn't going to arrive from Rome within the next t-t-two or three weeks.'
'No. The Curia is famously slow about such things.'
'Even if it is granted at all.'
Richard shrugged.
Francis grinned, remembering Richard lecturing George a few months earlier about his intended match with the Lady Anne. 'I propose doing things correctly,' he had said. 'There have been quite enough clandestine marriages in our family already.' And George had exploded, 'Nothing clandestine about my marriage. Isabel's father gave us his blessing and we were married in public by an archbishop of the church!' Did Richard recognise the irony of having that same archbishop preside over his own canonically clandestine marriage?
'So what are you going to d-d-do about it?'
'If it comes, well and good. If it does not, no one need know. We will simply behave as if it has come.'

8
Anne was so relieved when Francis arrived to take her away from sanctuary at St Martin's le Grand and escort her home to Middleham that she disgraced herself by flinging her arms round him.
'What a delight to be going home! It's almost two years since my father took me to Margaret of Anjou's horrid, cold, poverty-stricken court-in-exile at Koeur to marry the prince of Wales. And then I was dragged along on their stupid invasion of England, which anyone could have seen was doomed to fail. And then I had to hide with her in that convent near Tewkesbury. And then I found myself as George's ward and having to do what he said. And now I have had six months of unbearable idleness in St Martin's, with only one five-minute visit from Richard - complete with entourage! - to enquire after my wellbeing. Oh, Francis! Where is my horse? Let us get on the road at once!'
He laughed back at her. 'I have a pretty little palfrey for you, and no, we are not going to ride north at a full gallop. Think of your dignity or, if not yours, think of Richard's.'
She had changed a good deal in her two adventurous years, from a fair, composed and rather anonymous little girl into a positive and lively-minded young woman. Francis liked the new version even when physical weariness began to take its toll. She had always had a delicate constitution.
At one point, he asked anxiously, 'Should I have brought a litter for you? I didn't think of it.'
'Certainly not.' Her smile reappeared. 'I can see that you have never travelled in a horse litter. You are jiggled around unmercifully, jarred by every bump in the road, made seasick by the swaying, and when the leading horse stops suddenly, the rear horse collides with the back of the litter and throws you to the floor. Bruises, bruises, bruises. Thank you, no. In any case, we are in a hurry. Has Richard gone ahead, or is he following us?'
'Following. He had arrangements to make.'
'And so have I! Clothes! After two years as a vagrant, I have nothing to wear. I must be suitably attired for my wedding.'
Francis said, 'I believe you will find, when the sumpter horses are unloaded, that there are some rolls of sarcenets and velvets and cloth-of-gold. Richard thought you might need them.'
She blinked at him for a moment then, sounding as if she were holding back tears, managed, 'How kind of him. I feel as if no one has been kind to me for years.'
Francis said nothing. Kindness had not been at the top of Richard's list of priorities. As Anne's husband at Middleham, he would be publicly seen as Warwick's heir. This marriage was, to him, the ultimate symbol of his new power in the north and he was determined that it should be splendid.

9
It was such a delightful spring day when the marriage was solemnised between the duke of Gloucester and the Lady Anne Neville that although she knew perfectly well that marriage, even lacking a papal dispensation, was a sacrament as well as a business arrangement, it was as much as Anne could do not to twinkle cheerfully at everyone within range.
She did not have any maidenly fears as to what the night would bring; had not done so even on the occasion of her first wedding. She supposed that having been reared in the countryside might have something to do with it; one could hardly remain ignorant of how domestic animals waxed fruitful and multiplied. But there was more to it than that. Although she herself was one of only two children, her father had been one of ten and her great-aunt - Richard's mother, the saintly Duchess Cicely - had been the eighteenth child of her father and had herself borne her husband twelve infants. So the act of marital intimacy, Anne had reassured herself, could not be so very shocking. And indeed it hadn't been shocking with the prince of Wales. But Jesu! it had been dull. She hoped that Richard, who was good at everything, would be good at that, too.
When they met at the church door, he nodded approvingly at her sky blue velvet robe with its trimming of cloth-of-gold, the deep V of its neckline displaying to perfection the wonderful sapphire necklace he had given her six months before. On her head was a tall, pointed hennin draped with fragile blue sarcenet. She and the sempstresses and her ladies-in-waiting had been stitching away all night and had finished only an hour before the ceremony, but it had been worth it. She smiled with mock graciousness at her husband-to-be and nodded approvingly back at his own blue doublet embroidered with the white roses of York, surmounted by a long gown of darker blue cloth-of-gold damasked with the insignia of the Order of the Garter and lined with white satin. He was a handsome, hard-looking young man and, since she herself was small and slender, his lack of height did not trouble her.
And then the proceedings began on the steps of the church, with hundreds of Yorkshiremen, their dogs and their horses as far from silent witnesses.
Richard did not raise his voice as he spoke of the dower his wife would receive from him - £133 a year - and held out to her an open book on which rested a gold ring. The parish clerk waved his aspersion, sprinkling it and them with holy water, and then she placed her right hand in Richard's and he slipped the ring on and off the thumb, the forefinger and the middle finger, murmuring in turn, 'In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit,' before placing it finally on the fourth finger where it was destined to remain.
'With this ring, I thee wed, with this gold I thee honour, and with this dowry I thee endow.' And then it was time for them to turn away into the church for prayers and Mass and a final blessing of their marriage.
Anne's uncle, George Neville, Archbishop of York, was forty years old, a clever, ambitious and learned man and an astute politician. Anne was pleased that he had agreed to conduct the ceremony, because she was fond of him and knew that Richard was, too.
Afterwards, with Richard walking by her side and the church bells still gaily ringing, she was carried back the short distance to the eastern gate of the castle in a ridiculously extravagant litter draped with garlands of gilded leaves and enamelled flowers.
The wedding feast was a splendid affair. Richard and Anne sat under a bright red canopy of state on a dais at the end of the Great Hall with, at right angles to it, long tables for their most distinguished guests. Of Richard's immediate family, only one was present, his eldest sister, the duchess of Exeter; a somewhat inappropriate guest, Richard remarked with a hint of sourness, since she had just divorced her husband in order to marry her lover. The duke and duchess of Clarence, cynically invited, had chosen not to attend, while the king - who customarily kept the feast of St George, on April 22nd, at Windsor - had sent Lord Hastings to represent him.
Of Anne's family, there was a huge assortment of uncles, aunts and cousins, including her dislikable Aunt Alice FitzHugh and the limp little daughter who was Francis Lovell's wife. Aunt Alice, an unregenerate Lancastrian, detested the House of York and therefore loathed Richard - and Francis by association. Anne reflected that she must make an effort to help Francis sort out his domestic situation; he needed help, and she was as fond of him as if he were the brother she had never had.
But the vast majority of the guests were men who had previously supported her father, the earl of Warwick, and whom Richard hoped now to draw into his sphere of influence. Glancing along the tables, Anne saw Percies of Northumberland, Nevilles of Westmorland, Beauchamps, Scropes and Greystokes, and guessed that lesser members of the same families were seated with an assortment of judges, lawyers, clergy, aldermen and squires at further tables in the Great Chamber, through the doorway from the Great Hall.
There were carved wooden partitions at the far end of the Hall, screening off the pantry and the buttery. The kitchens were on the floor below, and Anne had almost forgotten how many cold draughts and cooking smells came sweeping up the staircase along with the gentlemen waiters as the dishes were brought in in procession, with the marshal of the hall shouting 'By your leave, my masters!' and everyone standing up and taking off their hats and waiting while the server and carver and cupbearer went on bended knee before the bridal pair.
It was a lavish feast. In the first course there were venison with frumenty, roast beef, roast swan, lampreys in galantine sauce, a custard with dates and prunes. Then came an interval when the company was entertained by acrobats and tumblers, mummers, jesters and musicians, and afterwards the second course offered a soup of chicken in almond milk, roast pig, roast crane, roast rabbit, chicken glazed golden with egg yolks, spicy fish pie, and - to Anne's relief, since her appetite had deserted her - some light and fragile little pastry fritters filled with raisins of Corinth.
'Sumer is icumen in,' warbled the singers, almost inaudibly in the rising din of hundreds of well-fed guests gossiping about politics, and rents, and the wickedness of the Scots on the other side of the Border.
After three hours, it was time to clear the boards and, meditatively, when the archbishop had pronounced the grace after meat, Anne watched the castle almoner march round the Hall with his basket, collecting the bread trenchers soaked with sauces and drippings from the dishes for which they had served as platters, for distribution as alms to the poor. She was beginning to feel the effects of lack of sleep and wondered whether she could slip away for a brief rest during the hours of sport and dancing that lay ahead. The prospect of thereafter sitting through a lengthy supper did not appeal to her at all, but was unavoidable.
She shuddered slightly, and Richard interrupted his conversation with her Uncle George - reminiscing about the famously ostentatious feast he had held to celebrate his enthronement as archbishop of York - to raise an enquiring eyebrow. 'I am finding all this a little tiring,' she confessed, and he said, 'You will have to get used to it.'
'What? To getting married?'
'To great banquets.' He grinned and turned back to her uncle. 'As I remember, your guests and their servants numbered well over two thousand people . . .'

10
The day ended at last. The Compline bell rang and Richard and she, their hair full of the seeds, symbols of fertility, that had been showered upon them, went publicly to bed. The bedclothes were drenched with incense and holy water but the guests crowding into the chamber also brought with them an overpowering smell of wine and ale. The ever-present jester pranced up to the great fourposter and tapped Richard and Anne in turn with his bauble, his badge of office, chirruping something that was no doubt intended to be witty. Anne could not hear him above the noise, but did not feel that she had missed anything. As jesters went, he was not a very good one.
At last, in response to calls for silence, the noise diminished, and Archbishop George raised his voice and his hands to bless the marriage bed. 'God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, bless these young people and sow in them the seed of eternal life, that it may spread throughout the length of days and down the ages . . .'
It was some time before they were left alone, but when everyone had been more or less forcibly ejected from the room, Anne leapt out of bed, exclaiming, 'What a relief.'
'I beg your pardon?'
'These seeds. Spread throughout the length of days, indeed! They're spread throughout the whole length of the bed. I feel as full of perforations as a sieve.'
Together, they brushed the seeds out and, since they were both in a reprehensibly frivolous state of mind, ended by laughing so much that there was no trace of embarrassment when they fell into each other's arms.
She had been right in guessing that Richard would prove less dull in bed than her first husband. Since he had already fathered two bastards - she must ask him about those some time, but not quite yet, perhaps - he had presumably had more experience.
Somewhere in the middle of the night, lying with her head on Richard's shoulder and his arm around her, Anne murmured, 'How lovely it is to be home.'
'Home?' Richard repeated drowsily. 'What do you mean by ''home''?'
'The place where you belong! Where you always come back to. Where you know you will be more contented than anywhere else in the world. You know perfectly well what I mean!' Then, suddenly tentative, 'Don't you?'
He chuckled. 'I know the theory, but the practice has always managed to escape me.'
She cocked her head enquiringly.
He had no desire to talk, and he smoothed one hand tantalisingly down the length of her body as he said, 'My first eight years were spent at Fotheringhay, which my mother loved. But since then, through no particular fault of mine, it has been two months here, four months there, six months somewhere else.'
'You had four years here at Middleham, learning to be a knight,' she pointed out.
'Yes - and being a member, however junior, of your father's train meant that, everywhere he went, I went too. If you think back, you will remember that he was very rarely here.'
'That's true, I suppose. Oh, poor Richard! To have been nothing but a vagabond all your life. Something will have to be done . . .'
'Undoubtedly.' He moved, purposefully.
'Richard!'
All in all, it was a most enjoyable night.

11
A few days later, the king arrested Archbishop Neville and deported him to prison in Calais, England's foothold in France.
Richard was annoyed. It was not only that he had a personal liking for the politically unprincipled but intellectually stimulating archbishop, but that by imprisoning the most distinguished member of the Neville family Edward seemed to be undermining Richard's attempts to reach a modus vivendi with the traditional Neville supporters in the north.
No formal statement was issued from court, but rumour had it that Edward proposed absorbing the revenues of the see of York into the royal treasury; that he had taken personal possession of the archbishop's extensive store of worldly goods; and that he had ordered the precious stones to be removed from the archbishop's magnificent, jewelled mitre and used to make a new crown for himself.
'Oh, dear!' Anne said. 'Uncle George will be miserable in that dreadful place, with not even his books to console him. Can you not speak to your brother on his behalf?'
It was then she discovered that Richard, though he didn't usually allow it to show, was somewhat in awe of his brother. 'I'm sure he has good reasons of policy for what he has done. I just wish he would tell me what they are!'
No explanations were forthcoming, so in September Richard despatched Francis to London to discover tactfully what was going on.
Francis soon discovered that a great deal more was going on than met the eye, but it was not easy to make sense of it. Although he himself had gained greatly in assurance over the preceding year, had more or less stopped stammering and blushing, and had even stopped growing, he couldn't - or not without a juvenile giggle - imagine himself saying outright to the king, 'Please, sire, your brother of Gloucester wants to know what is going on.'
Unfortunately, Lords Hastings and Stanley, the sources on whom he had been relying, both proved to be suffering from an acute attack of discretion, partly explained by the presence at court of the seigneur de Gruuthuse.
It was de Gruuthuse, as Burgundian governor of Holland, who had taken Edward and Richard under his wing when they had fled to the Low Countries almost two years before, but this return visit, Francis discovered, was not simply a return of hospitality. Edward had reached the limit of his patience with King Louis XI of France, a sly and clever man who amused himself by trying to manipulate English affairs; any traitor who fled from England could be assured not only of a welcome from Louis but, if required, of practical assistance with men and money. Now, Edward intended to teach him a lesson by invading France, but wanted first to be assured of support from the independent duchies of Brittany and Burgundy, who weren't fond of Louis, either.
The diplomatic situation was delicate, and talking about it was frowned on, although Francis soon learned that the wheels of diplomacy had been well oiled with gifts to the seigneur de Gruuthuse - among them a pretty but pointless crossbow strung with silk, and a gold cup garnished with jewels and containing that most valued specific against poison, a piece of unicorn horn. It was seven inches long - a very expensive statement of goodwill.
As for Archbishop Neville, he, it seemed, had suffered from being on the fringes of the French manoeuvres.
Or so Francis eventually discovered from no less a person than the queen, who deigned to receive him during the dancing that followed a spectacular banquet in her Great Chamber at Windsor.
On one knee before her, he began by expressing his admiration of the chamber.
'Yes,' she said a little pettishly, 'it is very fine when all the candles are lit, but it needs more daylight. The king has agreed to have a bay window added for me. Do you have large windows at - Minster Lovell, is it?'
'Not at present, though I too hope to embark on building works . . .'
He risked rising to his feet, since it was abundantly clear that she had no interest in him or Minster Lovell. Her eyes were on her six-year-old daughter, the Princess Elizabeth, who was executing a stately basse danse with the young duke of Buckingham.
Francis knew where his duty lay. 'The princess your daughter is a very lovely and very accomplished little girl. You must be proud of her.'
He was horrified to see tears come to the queen's eyes, eyes that he now observed to be brown rather than the blue her fairness would have suggested.
'Yes,' she said. 'I also have two other lovely little girls.' Then, her voice becoming uneven. 'I had three, but my new baby Margaret has been taken from me, only a few weeks after she was born.'
Francis, as cowardly as any other man in the face of a woman's emotions, resisted the desperate instinct to look around for escape. But he was rescued just as he had begun to blurt, 'Oh, dear, how sad,' by a female voice which turned out to belong to a very small lady in brown velvet and pearls who had materialised at the queen's side.
'Madame, you are distressed. May I be of help?'
Francis was startled to see the queen's pathetic expression freeze and then reshape itself into one of unmistakable loathing. He wished even more devoutly that he were elsewhere.
'Ah, Lady Margaret,' the queen said acidly. 'You are going to raise my spirits by reminding me how fortunate I am to be the mother of six living children, and perhaps others in the future, when you have only one child and no hope of more.'
The solicitude on Lady Margaret's small pointed face did not abate. 'No, madame, I know what bereavements you have suffered . . .'
'I have been bereft of my mother, too, this year. Did you know? Her death hastened by your own unprincipled acquisition of her dower rights in the Kendal estates.'
'I think not, madame. It is not earthly troubles but the grace of Our Lord that decides when His lambs are gathered unto Him.'
The queen having thus been reduced to speechless fury, the lady turned to Francis and said, 'You're young Lovell, I hear. I knew your father.' It was more than Francis had done. 'You have come from Middleham. And how is my niece?'
Only then did Francis realise that this must be the Lady Margaret Beaufort, now the wife of Lord Stanley. Laboriously, he worked it out. As the erstwhile widow of the half-brother of the late King Henry VI, she would be aunt by marriage to Henry's son, Edward of Lancaster, the late soi-disant prince of Wales, to whom Anne had been briefly married. Which did make Anne a niece. Of sorts.
'She is well and happy, I believe.'
'I was sorry to have missed the wedding ceremony, but my own nuptials were close upon me and I was much engaged.'
While Francis tried to remember whether Lady Margaret had even been invited, the queen found her voice again, directing it at Francis. 'It was a disappointment to the king that Duke Richard should have invited that traitor, Archbishop George Neville, to conduct the ceremony.'
Since the archbishop had been brother to Richard Neville, earl of Warwick, who had not only rebelled against the queen's husband but executed her father and one of her brothers without trial, it was not to be expected that she would be an admirer of the Nevilles. But to call the archbishop himself a traitor? He was surely too clever for that.
'Traitor?' Francis said.
'The earl of Oxford is his sister's husband. An implacable opponent of the king, as I am sure you know, and at present in France harassing our garrison in Calais.' Francis did know, since the earl of Oxford had been attainted and Edward had generously granted all his possessions to Richard. 'The archbishop,' the queen went on, 'was in secret communication with him.'
The small lady in brown said, in a tone full of meaning, 'And so, it is believed, were others.'
She and the queen, in sudden accord, glared across the room at George, duke of Clarence, who was occupied in giving the king and the seigneur de Gruuthuse the benefit of his opinion on some matter on which they were probably better informed than he. They were bearing it well.
It was a release when the little Princess Bess came prancing across the room towards her mother, followed by the duke of Buckingham, a tall, supercilious, handsome boy of about seventeen.
'Ah, nephew!' said the Lady Margaret, and Francis had to begin working things out all over again. This one was not too difficult. Lady Margaret's recently deceased third husband had been the younger brother of this boy's father.
The queen said, 'Your lady wife seems to have deserted us. It is not acceptable, without making a formal farewell. Has she been taken ill?'
'I shouldn't think so,' said the duke airily. 'I would have heard if there had been anything wrong.' His lady wife happened to be one of the queen's sisters, and he had been married off to her, willy nilly, when he was ten. Rumour had it that he detested her, and all her kin.
But it occurred to Francis that there might be a further reason why he and the queen were eyeing each other with dislike. Buckingham, besides being head of the richest and longest-established of the great landowning families and therefore Edward's mightiest subject, was also of royal blood and all too aware of it. It made the king nervous and frightened the queen, obsessive about the possibility, however remote, of competition threatening her two-year-old son, the heir to the throne.
Francis felt mildly faint. He had sometimes regretted having few relatives of his own, but that regret was suddenly swept away in a flood of purest gratitude.

12
Richard was chewing his lower lip in a way that had become familiar to Anne during the six months of their marriage. It meant that he was concentrating hard and would not even hear her if she said anything, or not if she said anything domestic and unimportant. He would hear, soon enough, if she told him that the Scots were at the gates.
She smiled at his secretary, who had glanced up from his busy scribbling to Richard's dictation, and went away.
'You are very occupied these days,' she remarked that afternoon, as they rinsed their hands before sitting down for supper in the Great Chamber. For once, there were no guests of note to share their board - with the approach of winter the number of travellers seeking hospitality always diminished markedly - so that they were able to converse sensibly while they ate, interrupted only by the ceremonial bringing and taking away of dishes that were an inescapable adjunct of life in the household of a royal duke.
He said, 'Yes. If you are interested, I am endeavouring to make sense of the possessions that have been so generously bestowed on me by the king my brother. You know how scattered they are - from your father's estates here in the north to the others forfeited from the earl of Oxford and the leaders of the Lincolnshire rebellion, which are mainly in Essex and the eastern counties.'
Anne had been pleased and surprised that Richard found it possible to talk to her as if she were a rational human being, rather than just a wife. She had thought at first that it might be because, in his early youth, he had been brought up in a house full of sisters, ruled over by their dauntless mother, the Duchess Cicely. But then she reflected that the same could hardly be said for George, three years older, who had been there too.
She had mentioned it to Francis, who had said, 'It's just how Richard is made. True friendship is a rare commodity on the upper levels of society - too many people have too many axes to grind - and Richard values his friends accordingly.'
'Even if they happen to be women? Or wives?'
Francis had laughed. 'I don't think he even notices.'
'Oh, yes, he does!'
But the marriage bed, she had to admit to herself, was more a friendly than a passionate place. Pleasure certainly, and affection, perhaps, but not much more. Neither her nor Richard's emotions were engaged, but that was no bad thing. It left them both their independence of spirit. It meant, too, that when Richard was away, as he increasingly was - trying to establish a working relationship with Henry Percy of Northumberland, settling local disputes, carrying out civic duties in York - they missed each other, but not to distraction.
Now, Richard went on, 'Add the offices of Constable and Admiral of England - I am almost grateful that I had to soothe George by relinquishing the post of Great Chamberlain to him - and you will see that I can't possibly administer them all. What I am trying to do, for a start, is put the records in order. Rights, titles, old documents, petitions, patents, and so on. Did your father, for example, allow his entitlements over knights' fees to lapse?'
'Goodness! I don't know.'
'I didn't think you would,' he said, his mouth turning down in mock dejection, and signalled to his cup bearer. He took a long, grateful gulp of ale. 'Ugh, how I dislike salt cod. Why am I eating it?' It was a fish day and the kitchens seemed not to have soaked the cod in as many changes of water as they should have done.
Anne said, 'This blandesorre of pike is good. Why don't you try it?' but Richard had already moved on.
'Once everything is written down I will be able to assess what has to be done to bring in a worthwhile income. George has four thousand five hundred pounds and does scarcely anything for it. I have nothing like that, yet the king is anxious for me to try and bring some order and unity into this lawless north.' He frowned. 'I cannot possibly do it without adequate funds.'
Anne's blue eyes danced. 'Perhaps I could help.'
Her husband eyed her suspiciously. 'Yes?'
'We-e-ll, if all else fails, I could always find paid employment as a kitchen maid, couldn't I?'