The Kingmaker's Daughter Read Online Free PDF Page A

Are you thrilled like your sister? Are you also rushing to serve the new queen? Do you want to dance around the new light?’
    Something in the way that he speaks warns me that this would be the wrong answer, though I remember the queen as a dazzled acolyte might remember the sight of a feast-day icon. I can think of
nothing more wonderful than to serve this beauty as her maid in waiting. And she likes me. Her mother smiled at me, she herself thought I was charming. I could burst for pride that she likes me and
joy that she has singled me out. But I am cautious. ‘Whatever you think best, Father,’ I say. I look down at my feet, and then up into his dark eyes. ‘Do we like her
now?’
    He laughs shortly. ‘God save us! What gossip have you been hearing? Of course we love and honour her; she is our queen, the wife of our king. She is his first choice of all the princesses
in the world. Just imagine! Of all the high-born ladies in Christendom that he could have married – and yet he chose her.’ There is something hard and mocking about his tone. I hear the
loyal words that he speaks; but I hear something behind them: a note like Isabel’s when she is bullying me. ‘You are a silly child to ask,’ he says. ‘We have all sworn
fealty to her. You yourself swore fealty at her coronation.’
    Isabel nods at me, as if to confirm my father’s condemnation. ‘She’s too young to understand,’ she assures him over my head. ‘She understands nothing.’
    My quick temper flares up. ‘I understand that the king didn’t do what my father advised! When Father had put him on the throne! When Father could have died fighting the bad queen and
the sleeping king for Edward!’
    This makes him laugh again. ‘Out of the mouths of babes indeed!’ Then he shrugs. ‘Anyway, you’re not going. Neither of you will go to court to serve under this queen. You
are going with your mother to Warwick Castle, and you can learn all you need to know about running a great palace from her. I don’t think Her Grace the queen can teach you anything that your
mother has not known from childhood. We were royal kinsmen when this queen was picking apples in the orchard of Groby Hall. Your mother was born a Beauchamp, she married into the Nevilles, so I
doubt that she has much to learn about being a great lady of England – certainly not from Elizabeth Woodville,’ he adds quietly.
    ‘But Father—’ Isabel is so distressed that she cannot stop herself speaking out. ‘Should we not serve the queen if she has asked for us? Or at any rate shouldn’t I
go? Anne is too young, but shouldn’t I go to court?’
    He looks at her as if he despises her longing to be in the centre of things, at the court of the queen, at the heart of the kingdom, seeing the king every day, living in the royal palaces,
beautifully dressed, in a court newly come to power, the rooms filled with music, the walls bright with tapestries, the court at play, celebrating their triumph.
    ‘Anne may be young, but she judges better than you,’ he says coldly. ‘Do you question me?’
    She drops into a curtsey and lowers her head. ‘No, my lord. Never. Of course not.’
    ‘You can go,’ he says, as if he is tired of both of us. We scurry from the room like mice that have felt the breath of a cat on their little furry backs. When we are safely outside
in his presence chamber and the door is shut behind us I nod to Isabel and say: ‘There! I was right. We don’t like the queen.’

WARWICK CASTLE, SPRING 1468

    We don’t like the queen. In the early years of her marriage she encourages her husband the king to turn against my father: his earliest and best friend, the man who made
him king and gave him a kingdom. They take the great seal of estate from my uncle George, and dismiss him from his great office of Lord Chancellor, they send my father as an envoy to France and
then play him false by making a private treaty with the rival Burgundy behind his back. My