She crossed herself. Filled with a sudden longing to be wiser and older, she thought: it’s ignorant to live in a city that’s about to be entered by a conquering army (King Edward’s army was at St Albans, people said; it would be here any day, and the mayor had already given the order to let the soldiers in) yet be so innocent of disaster. Pig ignorant. I’ve grown up in a land where two families of kings have been fighting each other for the throne for as long as anyone can remember, and I know nothing about it. You don’t if you’re a Londoner. We hardly see it. Still, he’d think me a child if he knew.
He didn’t notice her gesture. ‘Well, we survived. But we’ve been unlucky ever since with our marriage choices,’ he was saying, with a twist to his mouth that made his face look pinched and hard. ‘My eldest brother ran away with a war widow, the stupidest possible love match, just when what family we still had was finally arranging a proper alliance for him. We’re only just seeing the end of the years of hatred that brought. And then a second brother married to spite the eldest brother, deliberately going against his wishes. And that’s meant more trouble…’
He sighed and looked down at the neat meat squares his hands had been cutting as he talked, and pushed one gently towards himself with his knife. Then he stabbed it. Isabel took another sip of rough dark wine as it disappeared into his mouth, wondering which brother he’d been thinking of when he’d made that stabbing movement. ‘I’m glad it’s over now,’ she ventured, glancing up, ‘your family trouble, I mean.’
Perhaps it was the smallness of her voice that made his eyes gentle again.
‘Almost over,’ he corrected, looking properly at her once more. ‘There’s still my marriage to arrange.’
For a second, his voice was so tender that her heart leapt. She caught her breath, leaning eagerly forward behind her cup. Then she felt a sigh ebb out of her as he went on, more harshly: ‘And now it’s my turn there’s nothing I want more than to make a marriage that will be good for my family – but my second brother’s trying to stop me. He’s fighting it so hard that I think even my trying to do the right thing might turn out to be the wrong thing. I’ve found myself thinking I should pull back… to satisfy him.’ His jaw tightened, as it had in church. ‘I’m not going to, though,’ he added firmly. ‘That wouldn’t help either. But I sometimes wonder if we’ll ever stop being orphans at war, wilful children in men’s bodies, destroying each other while we try to sort out the things our father should have decided.’ He sighed. ‘You can see why I believe there’s nothing more important than marrying in the best interests of your family, can’t you?’ he added with more energy. ‘You have to work together, do your duty; or you’re lost.’
‘Oh,’ Isabel muttered lamely. There was another long silence, broken from somewhere behind by a roar of male laughter. The girl cleared away their boards. Isabel noticed that the light was failing. The window was still bright, but his face was falling into shadow. She hadn’t heard the bell; but the markets must be closing.
He was sitting very straight and apparently still on his stool. She felt, rather than saw, the tiny movement of his hand twitching at his sword hilt. She remembered peeping sideways at his hands in the church: they’d been brown and well-made, with thin fingers, with bitten nails.
She wanted to ask: ‘Do you love her?’ But she sensed that was a question girls giggling in silkrooms might ask, and not for him. Instead, she faltered, ‘But don’t you ever wish…?’ and left the question hanging. She didn’t know herself how she’d have finished it.
When his voice came out of the gloom again, it was wistful and there was no flash of eyes; he must be looking down.
‘Ah, wishes…’ he whispered back. ‘If we could live by our wishes… please ourselves: live at peace, kill nothing but dragons… eat buttercups… ride unicorns… who knows what any of us would do?’
She heard a quiet rumble of laughter. She could see the ghost of the evening star through a smeared window pane. She put her cup down and left her hands spread on the table. She looked at the two pale shadows on the dark wood: fingers long and lovely enough to embroider church vestments with, as her father liked to say. The question flashed through her mind – was he looking at them too? – as she thought, all I want is to go on sitting here in this darkness; not to talk; not to think; not to go home.
‘Of course, you don’t have to take my advice,’ he said in the end. When she looked up his eyes were gleaming quizzically at her again over steepled fingers, his long eyes the only clearly visible part of his shadowed form. ‘If you have choices, that is.’
‘Choices?’ she repeated dully, as reality came back like a sour taste in the mouth. Knowing that her father wouldn’t let her run away from marrying Thomas Claver by paying her dowry to a nunnery instead, since she’d never shown the least sign of having a vocation; wondering if she’d have the nerve to risk walking out of his great place, where she’d always been Miss Isabel, daintily perched on wallows of silk, sewing altar cloths, to become a withered, unregarded, unmarried housekeeper in the household of the kind of wealthy wife Jane would become. Knowing she wouldn’t. Aware too that there were other, worse possibilities that her imagination was shying away from. ‘What choices?’
He glanced over at the chessboard and grinned. ‘Strategic choices,’ he said, with a return of the wolfish energy she’d glimpsed as they left the church. ‘You mustn’t think life is a romance; that some knight errant will come along and slay the dragon for you. Knights don’t really sit and pine at lovely ladies’ gates. They fight. That’s reality. War. Chess. All you can do is plan as many steps ahead as you can and position yourself for a good move next time. Know what your powers are and what you can do.’
Briskly, he shook out a couple of pieces. ‘Look. Say I’m a king: I can move in several directions. If the way I want is blocked, there are others open to me. But let’s call you a pawn. You don’t have so many choices. All you can do is move forward, one step at a time. And I’d imagine your only forward movement now is to say yes.’
She glanced up; down, at her fingers, plucking at each other; up again through her eyelashes, seeking his eyes but hiding hers when she met them; not wanting to acquiesce. How could he look so soft, but be so hard? Was that what the war had done to him, or just his nature? She didn’t want to accept that her dilemma could be reduced to this ruthless balancing of possible outcomes; this cold-blooded comparison of disadvantage. All she wanted was to come up with some way of talking her father out of his foolishness, she thought; ready to toss her head like an impatient pony, but restraining herself just in time, with the dawning awareness that there was no place left in her life for petulance. Her father wasn’t going to change his mind.
‘Well?’ the man in front of her murmured. His voice might be soft, but there was no ignoring the challenge in it. ‘Do you have any other choices?’
She shook her head, filling up inside with a darkness that crawled and churned.
‘You’re young,’ she heard him add. She thought she heard sympathy. ‘Take the long view. This is only your first move. You’ll get more chances later.’
The serving girl was lighting candles in the back vaults; people were crowding in from the markets. She couldn’t bring herself even to nod. Forever yawned ahead of her fourteen-year-old mind like a pit. She got up. Wished she had a cloak to wrap carefully around herself. It would be cold outside. There was nowhere to go but home.
‘Thank you for your company,’ she muttered, staring at her feet, and turned to the door.
He was on his feet in a dark whirl; beside her, a hand on her back. ‘It’s not easy, I know,’ he whispered. ‘I was lucky we met today: you’ve helped me see what I should do. So thank you. And good luck. I hope I’ve helped you do the right thing too.’
She was aware of his downturned face just above hers. From very close, she became conscious of his arm stretching