Patted the place beside him; delaying tactics. Then, when she didn’t come to him, he raised his arms in a parody of innocence. “I did not lie,” he said, very definitely. But she could see he was uneasy.
She wouldn’t get caught up in Jesuitry. Her eyes bored into his. “You should have said.”
“Said what?” he hedged. There was a half- smile on his lips.
She couldn’t tell whether it signified anxiety or indifference, or even triumph, but whichever it was, it was enough to make her lose her temper. She had her father’s blood in her, all right.
Her hands were on her hips, and suddenly she was hissing, as if cursing him: “That you were getting up from this bed to arrest my sister and kill her lover and hunt down Lord Dorset and steal Prince Richard from his mother to God knows where. What do you think?”
To her horror, Isabel felt her voice thicken and break. “She’s my sister, Dickon,” she muttered, looking hastily down to hide the hot tears coming to her eyes.
There was a silence.
When she finally dared peep up through hot, wet, angry eyes, she saw, with dread, that he was angry too.
“Pull yourself together,” he said coldly. “This isn’t about your sister, for God’s sake.”
He took a breath. Stood up.
“This is an affair of state,” he began, in a more emollient tone.
“We all have to submit . . .”
But she couldn’t listen. She broke in, with furious passion: “It is about my sister! How can you say it’s not? You’ve shut her up in Ludgate jail! I’ve been there; I’ve seen her!”
“What do you care?” he snapped back. “You’ve always hated her. Suddenly you’re her protector?”
She fell silent, twisted her fingers. She didn’t know what to say.
Then, ignoring his last words, she summoned up her last flickers of righteous anger. “You’re calling her a whore and your brother a womanizer—but you’re here, meeting me. Aren’t I a whore, too, then? And aren’t you a womanizer, too—and a hypocrite?”
“Look,” he said quietly, “Isabel. Let’s start again.”
Unwillingly, she looked up. “I’m not a hypocrite,” he said with rough calm, holding her eyes with his. “If you’re talking about my being in this room with you, it’s you who always said that what happened in this room was separate from ordinary life. You can’t change the rules now, just because you feel like it.”
It stung her. He was right, about that at least. “And if you’re talking about”—he gave her a look that was aggressive and wary in equal measures as he thought of the right word—“outside, what’s been happening outside, then for God’s sake stop being a fool. It doesn’t suit you.”
He stood up, with the vague threat that was part of his every movement. “This is just reality, Isabel,” he said. “You have to do everything you can for your blood. It’s what I’ve always said, what I’ve always done. You’ve known me for long enough to know that.”
“But you . . .” She stuttered, so wrong- footed now she couldn’t get her words out.
He swept on. “You’ve been doing it too, protecting your blood. Hiding traitors for Jane Shore’s sake.” She went still. “Don’t think I don’t hear talk from the City, too,” he said, an aside, nodding at her shock with a chilly smile. Then he went on: “So you should understand. I’m just doing what I have to do to secure my dynasty.”
She stammered something, but even she couldn’t say what.
He ignored it, kept his eyes boring into hers. He was talking more persuasively now, carry ing her along with his argument.
“You must see how important this is. Those children are illegitimate. There’s no doubt about that. The Bishop of Bath and Wells says so; and he was the priest before whom Edward promised to marry Eleanor Butler. He’s kept his peace for years—maybe because of the allowance Edward paid him, who can say?—but now both Edward and the hush money are gone, and his conscience has finally made him speak out. There’s nothing for me to do but to deal with the consequences. God knows I didn’t ask for this.”
She took a step into the room. Still mistrustful, but at least willing to hear him out.
“You can’t have a child bastard on the throne of England. It would be a blasphemy in the eyes of God and a crime in the eyes of man,” he went on, drawing her closer, visibly growing in confidence as she went on listening. “It’s bad enough having a child king, with every great lord in the land eyeing him and wondering whether his own blood isn’t bluer and his own army bigger and if it mightn’t be worth trying to seize power. But once the child’s known to be a bastard, it would be anarchy. You’d have civil war again before you could blink. You’d have Lancastrians creeping back from overseas; enemies crawling in from everywhere. And hasn’t enough English blood been shed already, in enough wars no one wanted? For the sake of my country . . . for the sake of my family honor . . . I had no choice.”
Isabel wanted to be convinced. But this wasn’t enough.
Flatly, she said: “But you called your brother a bastard too. You shamed his memory. There was no need for that.”
Flatly, he replied: “There was. It’s true.”
She looked as skeptical as she dared.
But he went on, in the same flat, everyday voice: “We’ve always known it in the family. My father was away fighting in France for a year before Edward was born.”
She was still taunting him with her hard eyes, but he didn’t seem to care.
“Work it out,” he added harshly. “It only takes nine months.”
In the uneasy silence that followed, Isabel thought: He seems so sure.
She didn’t even ask him why he’d never accused Edward of being a bastard while he was still alive. Why would he, back then, when Edward was king, and the best, safest king in living memory into the bargain; and when Edward was happy to make over to his brother the entire North of England for himself? If he was telling the truth now, the lie would have been in the past; but she could see why he’d have been tempted to keep quiet until now.
“Once I’d started truth- telling, there was no reason not to tell all the truths,” Dickon went on, as if agreeing with her unspoken judgment. “It makes things clearer.”
Then he sighed, and bleakness shivered over his face like the north wind.
“But I knew Hastings would never accept the truth about Edward,” he added. “He’d spent his life serving him. I knew he’d fight me to get Edward’s boy the crown.” He looked sadder still.
“So I did what I had to . . . He was my friend, but I had no choice.”
The distance between them had diminished; had she gone on creeping toward him? He took a last step forward to stand before her, head bowed, eyes on hers. She could feel his breath on her cheek. She meant to ask about Rivers, or Grey; people were saying he’d had the princesses’ Woodville uncles executed this week too. But somehow she didn’t.
“I want you to understand,” he said, very softly. “I don’t harm the innocent. You know me. You know that. The boys are safe; my nephews. So is your sister, if it comes to that.” She caught her breath. “I’d never hurt a woman. She’ll come to no harm, I promise.”
“But you accused her of witchcraft,” she muttered faintly, trying to fight the longing to fall into his arms. “Jane. She could burn for that. And you can’t possibly think it’s true.”
He shook his head. “It’s just what the crowd needed to hear, to know it’s serious. She won’t be tried as a witch,” he whispered. “Trust me.” But his eyes shifted away. As if aware that he’d shown weakness by admitting to a lie, he added irritably: “Look, it’s the same thing you did when you stole your father’s apprentices—you were showing you meant business. You know exactly why I did it.”
Isabel didn’t want to be distracted into defending herself over that. It was true, she’d felt triumphant at gaining the ascendancy, as well as guilty, after hiring away John Lambert’s staff and seeing her father leave London, bewildered and beate
n. Perhaps Dickon had been striving for the same effect when he’d had Jane denounced as a sorceress. Perhaps he felt guilty too.
All she said, looking imploringly at him, was: “But why Jane? Why mix her up in this at all? You said it yourself. She’s got nothing to do with it. It’s not about her.”
He shrugged. She thought he might be surprised she kept coming back to Jane.
His voice got lighter. It made her cheeks burn again to see he couldn’t take Jane Shore’s plight seriously; she didn’t want to think about why. He said: “Because people need a clear idea of who’s ruling them. They know Edward was a lady’s man; now they can see that wasn’t such a good thing. Jane Shore behind bars has been an illustration everyone can understand. It shows them: from now on, we live by the rules.”
His voice was still quiet; but determined. “My rules,” he said.
She blinked.
“People like to complicate things, but I’m a very simple man,”
he said, and he looked at her as straightforwardly as he ever had.
“These are just the things you have to do to make sure the things you need to happen do happen. Not always nice, but necessary.
You can’t be a king and a parfit gentil knight at the same time.”
His face was inches away, looming over hers. His hand brushed her shoulder. She felt her body strain toward him. Held it in check. He murmured: “No one wants more war. I had to stop the factions . . . the plots. I want to be king of a land at peace.”
There was a terrible sincerity on his face. He was looking intently into her eyes. She could see how important it was to him that she should believe him; and a part of her was, unwillingly, grateful that he so wanted her approval. But by then she was so full of contradictory desires—with the urges to shout and slap giving way again to the longing to fall into his arms and do without words altogether—that the only phrase he’d spoken that she remembered was, “I want to be king.”
“Trust me,” he breathed.
She didn’t. However familiar his face, and her feelings, she knew she was looking into the eyes of someone who’d become a stranger. Yet that didn’t stop her wanting him.
They stood very close, arms by their sides, not touching.
When she went on not moving, he muttered, and she thought she detected a note of pleading: “You know I’m the only safety this land can hope for; and I’ve been doing the best I can to keep the peace. You must know that, from your own perspective if nothing else. Think about it. Your Goffredo’s coming back; you know your weaving venture will be safe if I’m on the throne. Every other entrepreneur in London will be making the same calculation.” He gave her a bright stare, a challenge. “Without me, who knows?”
If Goffredo ever does come, Isabel thought hopelessly. There had been no word from the Venetian since all this started. What Dickon was saying now was true enough. But it still sounded like a bargain with the devil.
Still, she could make bargains too, she thought, glimpsing a way to regain her peace of mind. Stepping back, but gently, she said: “All right, but let Jane go.” Every fiber of her being wanted to stay; she was astonished at the iron willpower pulling her away.
“She’s served the purpose you wanted, hasn’t she?”
There was surprise on his face, but reluctant admiration too.
His head began nodding—a tiny movement. That half- smile came back to his lips. She stopped in the doorway. “I’ll come back here next week, at the same time,” she added, more calmly than she felt.
“But only if Jane’s free.”
Isabel didn't want to visit Will Caxton at the Red Pale today; she didn’t dare look in his eyes after telling him that she was Dickon’s lover. He’d be frantic with worry that Dickon had imprisoned Jane. He might even, unbearably, want her to admit her judgment had been as addled by love as she privately knew it to be. So she kept away.
Still, she felt more self- possessed as she walked to the abbot’s house. Making her demand that Jane be set free had given her at least a frail hope to cling to. If there’d been any truth in Dickon’s litany of self- justification and excuses, he’d surely see sense and get Jane released from prison. That would be something.
Her hope wasn't enough to help her face the five pairs of eyes in the princesses’ parlor.
She could see at once they’d learned new facts that frightened them. Perhaps they’d found out that their Woodville uncles, Earl Rivers and Sir Thomas Grey, were dead. Perhaps they’d heard that Lord Hastings’s servants had tried to visit princes Edward and Richard at the Tower, but had been turned away.
It didn’t take long for her to understand how they’d started to find out more, either. It was Elizabeth who was putting the questions this time, not the little girls with their lisping voices and terrified pink- rimmed rabbit eyes. Elizabeth had stopped being reluctant to be seen to beg for information. In her dangerous position, she must have realized she needed to know everything she could—just to survive. She must have started asking every servant and passing priest what was happening. Princess Elizabeth had got thinner in the past week. She was very pale, too, but it suited her; her cheekbones were becoming as elegant as her mother’s. And she was wheedling rumors out of Isabel this morning with all the expert cunning of a market woman.
“They have killed my mother’s brothers,” she said quietly, drawing Isabel in and sitting her down on the bench, making a flattering point of paying attention to the silkwoman’s comfort.
There was no sign of the coronation dress. It must have been shut away in a chest somewhere. “My mother’s confessor told us.”
Isabel nodded. She crossed herself. “God rest their souls,” she said carefully; not knowing, in the confusion of these times, what would constitute treason; worried even that banality might. “I’d heard too. I’m sorry for your grief.”
The princess paused; then, very softly, while Isabel was still full of pity, she asked: “Perhaps you know—is there any news in London of our brothers?”
Isabel glanced up to the window ledge, where little Richard’s game of knucklebones was still waiting for his return, gathering dust. Isabel didn’t want to deceive Princess Elizabeth. She and her sisters must be afraid men would come for them too. It was natural for the princesses to try to find out all they could, and plan their defenses accordingly. So, haltingly, Isabel told them that the princes hadn’t been seen playing outside the royal apartments at the Tower in the past few days, and that Lord Hastings’s men had been turned away when they’d tried to pay a visit. There was tavern talk about rescuing them. She told Elizabeth that too. She kept quiet about the other piece of tavern gossip doing the rounds: that the boys had been murdered.
“I’m sorry not to have better news,” she finished, to the girls’ quietly bowed heads. “They’ve probably just been moved to a different apartment.”
They must know that was a false hope. But the younger girls nodded earnestly, as if they really wanted to believe it; and even Elizabeth looked grateful to Isabel for trying.
It wrung Isabel’s heart. There had to be something she could say that would represent genuinely good news for them. Then she realized what. “I’ve heard,” she found herself saying, “that your uncle Dorset is safe.”
She thought, as she spoke: Why am I doing this? I’d do better to keep quiet. Then, defiantly: If Dickon’s heard that Dorset’s got away abroad from listening to City talk, why shouldn’t I know?
“Overseas,” she added. “No one knows how.” Five pairs of eyes, blazing with hope, begged for more. “I don’t know if it’s true, of course,” she continued, “it’s just what they’re saying in the markets. But they’re saying he’s gone to Britanny. To Henry Tudor.”
They sat very quietly, hardly daring to breathe, taking that in.
But Isabel was briefly aware of a gleam of satisfaction in Princess Elizabeth’s eyes—the same satisfaction she’d have felt herself, digging out a nugget of street knowledge that could be of value soon.
She sat on the boat, painfully remembering the quiet room she’d walked out of, repeating to herself: If Dickon lets Jane out, it will prove he’s telling the truth. And if he tells the truth about that, why would I doubt everything else? If Dickon lets Jane out, I’ll be able to go back next week.
Hope was so cruel. It brought wisps of more innocent moments with Dickon back into her mind. Stories she knew half of, through him; whose endings she still longed to hear.
Only a few weeks ago they’d been on a boat like this, together, wondering whether Dickon would have to go to France to fight Edward’s war. That story had been broken off forever, she thought, and relief mixed itself up in her agonizing nostalgia.
There’d be no French war for a while now. Thank God. She let her mind meander on. There’d been the story of the dying nephew, too. What had happened to him? In that other life just a few weeks ago, Dickon had been hiring doctors to go north to treat little George Neville. He’d been so worried about the boy’s health.
If George Neville died, Dickon’s landholdings would be compromised. His son wouldn’t inherit. He’d have to beg the King for help.
What had happened after that? Had the boy died? Perhaps he had. How worried Dickon would have been when King Edward died too, right at the same time, Isabel thought, with sudden compassion—if the king’s death had come just when Dickon most needed his brother’s help to keep his lands together. He must have 2 felt as panicked as she had about her silk- weaving house. He’d been far away in the North; he’d been only the uncle of the new king- to- be, whom he hardly knew; and the boy had seemed so safely in the hands of his other uncles, the Woodvilles, whom he loved; and they hated Dickon . . . Dickon couldn’t have had faith that the boy- king Edward would have helped him.
She reined herself in. Why was she fretting about this?
Sternly, she told herself: It’s just another story that’s stopped mattering. Dickon is king now; what does he care about the Duke of Gloucester’s estates in the North? His son will inherit something better: a crown.
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