Free The Kingmaker's Daughter by Philippa Gregory Page A

disdain, as if she cannot bear to see the two of us, as if we are something unclean, as if we are lepers. Father is not looking at us at all.
    ‘Come with me,’ Isabel whispers urgently to me. ‘You have to come with me if I have to serve her. Come and live in her household with me, Annie. I swear I can’t go on my
own.’
    ‘Father won’t let me . . .’ I reply rapidly. ‘Don’t you remember Mother refusing us last time? You’ll have to go, because of being her sister-in-law, but I
can’t come, Mother won’t let me, and I couldn’t bear it . . .’
    ‘And Lady Anne too,’ the king says easily.
    ‘Of course,’ Father says agreeably. ‘Whatever Her Grace desires.’

WESTMINSTER PALACE, LONDON, JANUARY 1470

    The queen is never rude to us: it is far worse than that. It is as if we are invisible to her. Her mother never speaks to us at all, and if she passes us in the gallery or in
the hall she steps back against the wall as if she would not let the skirt of her gown so much as touch us. If another woman stepped back like this I would take it as a gesture of deference, giving
me the way. But when the duchess does it, with a quick step aside without even looking at me, I feel as if she is drawing her skirts away from foul mud, as if I have something on my shoes or my
petticoat that stinks. We see our own mother only at dinner and at night when she sits with the queen’s ladies, a little circle of unfriendly silence around her, while they talk pleasantly
among themselves. The rest of the time we wait on the queen, attending her when she is dressing in the morning, following her when she goes to the nursery to see her three little girls, kneeling
behind her in chapel, sitting below her place at breakfast, riding out with her when she goes hunting. We are constantly in her presence and she never, by word or glance, ever acknowledges that we
are there.
    The rules of precedence mean that we often have to walk immediately behind her, and then she is simply blind to us, speaking over our heads to her other ladies. If the two of us happen to be the
only ones with her, she behaves as if she is quite alone. When we carry her train she walks at the same speed as if there were no-one behind her, and we have to scuttle along to keep up with her,
looking foolish. When she hands her gloves to us she does not even look to see if one of us is ready to take them. When I drop one she does not demean herself to notice. It is as if she would let
the priceless perfumed and embroidered leather lie in the mud rather than ask me to pick it up. When I have to hand something to her, a book of tales or a petition, she takes it as if it had come
out of thin air. If I pass her a posy of flowers or a handkerchief she takes it so that she does not touch my fingers. She never asks me for her prayer book or her rosary, and I do not dare to
offer them. I am afraid she would think them defiled by my bloody hands.
    Isabel sinks into a white-faced sullenness, does as she must do, and sits in silence, never volunteering a remark while the ladies chatter around her. As Isabel’s belly grows the queen
asks her to do less and less, but not as a courtesy. With one disdainful turn of her head she suggests that Isabel is not able to serve her, is no good as a lady in waiting, is good for nothing but
to breed like a pig. Isabel sits with her hands folded over her belly as if to hide the curve, as if she is afraid that the queen will cast her eye on the baby.
    But still, I cannot see the queen as my enemy, because I cannot rid myself of the sense that she is in the right and we are in the wrong, and that her visible contempt for me and my sister has
been earned by my father. I cannot be angry, I am too ashamed. When I see her smile at her daughters or laugh with her husband I am reminded of the first time I saw her when I thought her the most
beautiful woman in the world. She is still the most beautiful woman in the world but I am no