JANUARY 1477

We mourn for her, but George has barely buried her, barely blown out the candles, before he comes strutting back to court, full of plans for a new wife, and this time he is aiming high. Charles of Burgundy, the husband of our Margaret of York, has died in battle and his daughter Mary is a duchess and heiress of one of the wealthiest duchies in Christendom.

Margaret, always a Yorkist, and fatally blind to the faults of her family, suggests that her brother George, so fortunately free, should marry her stepdaughter-thereby consulting the needs of her York brother more than her Burgundy ward; or so I think. George, of course, is at once on fire with ambition. He announces to Edward that he will take either the Duchess of Burgundy or the Princess of Scotland.

“Impossible,” Edward says. “He is faithless enough when he has a duke’s income paid by me. If he were as rich as a prince with an independent fortune, none of us would be safe. Think of the trouble he would cause for us in Scotland! Dear God, think of him bullying our sister Margaret in Burgundy! She’s only just widowed, her stepdaughter newly orphaned. I would as willingly send a wolf to the two of them as George.”

SPRING 1477

George broods over his brother’s refusal and then we hear outrageous news, news so extraordinary that we start by thinking it must be an exaggerated rumor: it cannot be true. George suddenly declares that Isabel died not of childbed fever, but of poisoning, and bundles the poisoner into jail.

“Never!” I exclaim to Edward. “Has he run mad? Who would have hurt Isabel? Who has he arrested? Why?”

“It is worse than arrest,” he says. He looks quite stunned by the letter in his hand. “He must be crazed. He has rushed this woman servant before a jury and ordered them to find her guilty of murder, and he has had her beheaded. She is dead already. Dead on George’s word, as if there were no law of the land. As if he were a greater power than the law, greater than the king. He is ruling my kingdom as if I had allowed tyranny.”

“Who is she? Who was she?” I demand. “The poor serving girl?”

“Ankarette Twynho,” he says, reading the name from the letter of complaint. “The jury says he threatened them with violence and made them bring in a verdict of guilty, though there was no evidence against her but his oath. They say they did not dare refuse him, and that he forced them to send an innocent woman to her death. He accused her of poison and witchcraft, and of serving a great witch.” He raises his eyes from the letter and sees my white face. “A great witch? Do you know anything of this, Elizabeth?”

“She was my spy in his household,” I confess quickly. “But that is all. I had no need to poison poor little Isabel. What would I gain from it? And witchcraft is nonsense. Why would I cast a spell on her? I didn’t like her, nor her sister, but I wouldn’t ill-wish them.”

He nods. “I know. Of course you didn’t have Isabel poisoned. But did George know that the woman he accused was in your pay?”

“Perhaps. Perhaps. Why else would he accuse her? What else could she have done to offend him? Does he mean to warn me? To threaten us?”

Edward throws down the letter on the table. “God knows! What does he hope to gain by murdering a servant woman but to cause more trouble and gossip? I shall have to act on this, Elizabeth. I can’t let it go.”

“What will you do?”

“He has a little group of his own advisors: dangerous, dissatisfied men. One of them is certainly a practicing fortune-teller, if not worse. I shall arrest them. I shall bring them to trial. I shall do to his men what he has done to your servant. It can serve as a warning for him. He cannot challenge us or our servants without risk to himself. I only hope he has the sense to see it.”

I nod. “They cannot hurt us?” I ask. “These men?”

“Only if you believe, as George seems to think, that they can cast a spell against us.”

I smile in the hope of hiding my fear. Of course I believe that they can cast a spell against us. Of course I fear that they have already done so.

I am right to be troubled. Edward arrests the notorious sorcerer Thomas Burdett, and two others, and they are put to question and a farrago of stories of black arts and threats and enchantments starts to spill out.

My brother Anthony finds me leaning my heavy belly on the river wall and staring into the water at Whitehall Palace on a sunny May afternoon. Behind me, in the gardens, the children are playing a game of bat and ball. By the outraged cries of cheating, I guess that my son Edward is losing and taking advantage of his status as Prince of Wales to change the score. “What are you doing here?” Anthony asks.

“I am wishing this river was a moat that could keep me and mine safe from enemies without.”

“Does Melusina come when you call her from the waters of the Thames?” he asks with a skeptical smile.

“If she did, I would have her hang George, Duke of Clarence, alongside his wizard. And I would have her do that to them both at once, without more words.”

“You don’t believe that the man could hurt you from ill-wishing?” he demands. “He is no wizard. There is no such thing. It is a fairy tale to frighten children, Elizabeth.” He glances back at my children, who are appealing to Elizabeth for a ruling on a dropped catch.

“George believes him. He paid him good money to foretell the king’s death and then some more to bring it about by overlooking. George hired this wizard to destroy us. Already his spells are in the air, in the earth, even in the water.”

“Oh nonsense. He is no more a wizard than you are a witch.”

“I don’t claim to be a witch,” I say quietly. “But I have Melusina’s inheritance. I am her heir. You know what I mean: I have her gift, just as Mother did. Just as my daughter Elizabeth has. The world sings to me and I hear the song. Things come to me; my wishes come true. Dreams speak to me. I see signs and portents. And sometimes I know what will happen in the future. I have the Sight.”

“These could all be revelations from God,” he says firmly. “This is the power of prayer. All the rest is wishful thinking. And women’s nonsense.”

I smile. “I think they are from God. I never doubt it. But God speaks to me through the river.”

“You are a heretic and a pagan,” he says with brotherly scorn. “Melusina is a fairy story, but God and His Son are your avowed faith. For heaven’s sake, you have founded religious houses and chantries and schools in His name. Your love of rivers and streams is a superstition, learned from our mother, like that of ancient pagans. You can’t puddle them up into a religion of your own, and then frighten yourself with devils of your own devising.”

“Of course, brother,” I say with my eyes cast down. “You are a nobleman of learning: I am sure you know best.”

“Stop!” he throws up a hand, laughing. “Stop. You need not think I am going to try to debate with you. You have your own theology, I know. Part fairy tale and part Bible and all nonsense. Please, for all of our sakes, make it a secret religion. Keep it to yourself. And don’t frighten yourself with imaginary enemies.”

“But I do dream true.”

“If you say so.”

“Anthony, my whole life is a proof of magic, that I can foresee.”

“Name one thing.”

“Did I not marry the King of England?”

“Did I not see you stand out in the road like the strumpet you are?”

I exclaim against his crow of laughter. “It was not like that! It was not like that! And besides, my ring came to me from the river!”

He takes my hands and kisses them both. “It is all nonsense,” he says gently. “There is no Melusina but an old, half-forgotten story that Mother used to tell us at bedtime. There is no enchantment but Mother encouraging you with play. You have no powers. There is nothing but what we can do as sinners under the will of God. And Thomas Burdett has no powers but ill-will and a huckster’s promise.”