The White Queen

NOVEMBER 1470

When I had heard of desperate men claiming sanctuary by hanging on to the ring on the church door and yelling defiance at the thief takers, or dashing up the aisle and putting their hand on the high altar as if they were playing a childhood game of tag, I always thought that they must live thereafter on the wine of the Mass and the bread of the Host, and sleep in the pews pillowed on hassocks. It turns out that it is not as bad as this. We live in the crypt of the church built in St. Margaret’s churchyard, within the precincts of the abbey. It is a little like living in a cellar, but we can see the river from the low windows on one side of the room and we can glimpse the highway through the grille in the door, on the other side. We live like a poor family, dependent on the goodwill of Edward’s supporters and the citizens of London, who love the family of York and continue to do so, even though the world has changed again, the family of York is in hiding, and King Henry is acclaimed king once more.

Warwick, the ascendant Lord Warwick, the murderer of my father and brother and the kidnapper of my husband, enters London in triumph, George, his unhappy son-in-law, at his side. George may be a spy in their ranks, secretly on our side, or he may have turned his coat and turned it again and now hopes for crumbs from the Lancaster royal table. At any rate, he gets no message to me, nor does anything to guarantee my safety. He bobs along in the wake of the Kingmaker, as if he had no brother, no sister-in-law, perhaps still hoping for a chance at being king himself.

Warwick, triumphant, takes his old enemy King Henry from the Tower and proclaims him fit to rule and fully restored. He is now the liberator of his king and the savior of the House of Lancaster, and the country is filled with joy. King Henry is confused by this turn of events, but they explain to him, slowly and kindly once a day, that he is king again, and that his cousin Edward of York has gone away. They may even tell him that we, Edward’s family, are hiding in Westminster Abbey, for he orders-or they order in his name-that the sanctuary of the holy places shall be observed, and we are safe in our self-imposed prison.

Every day, the butchers send us meat, the bakers send us bread, even the milkmaids from the green fields of the city bring us pails of milk for the girls, and the fruit sellers from Kent bring the best of the crop to the abbey and leave it at the door for us. They tell the churchwardens that it is for the “poor queen” at her time of trouble, and then they remember that there is a new queen, Margaret of Anjou, only waiting for a fair wind to set sail and return to her throne, and they trip over their words and finally say, “You know who I mean. But make sure she has it, for fruit from Kent is very good for a woman near her time. It will make the baby come easier. And tell her that we wished her well and we will come again.”

It is hard for my girls to have so little news of their father, hard for them to be kept inside in the few small rooms, since they were born to the best of things. They have lived all their lives in the greatest palaces of England; now they are confined. They can stand on a bench to look out of the windows at the river, where the royal barge used to take them up and down between one palace and another, or they can take turns to get on a chair and look out of the grating at the streets of London, where they used to ride and hear people bless their names and their pretty faces. Elizabeth, my oldest girl, is only four years old, but it is as if she understands that a time of great sorrow and difficulty has come on us. She never asks me where her tame birds are; she never asks for the servants who used to pet her and play with her; she never asks for her golden top or her little dog, or her precious toys. She acts as if she had been born and bred in this little space, and she plays with her baby sisters as if she were a paid nursemaid, ordered to be cheerful. The only question she poses is: Where is her father?-and I have to learn to become accustomed to her looking up at me, a little puzzled frown on her round face, asking, “Is my father the king here yet, Lady Mother?”

It is hardest of all on my boys, who are like confined lion cubs in the small space and prowl around, bickering. In the end, my mother sets them exercises, sword play with broom handles, poems to learn, jumping and catching games that they have to do every day, and they keep a score and hope that it will make them stronger in the battle they long for, which will restore Edward to the throne.

As the days grow shorter and the nights grow darker, I know that my time is coming and my baby is due. My great terror is that I will die here, in childbirth, and my mother will be left here alone, in our enemy’s city, guarding my children.

“Do you know what will happen?” I ask her bluntly. “Have you foreseen it? And what will happen to my girls?”

I see some knowledge in her eyes, but the face she turns to me is untroubled. “You aren’t going to die, if that’s what you’re asking,” she says bluntly. “You are a healthy young woman and the king’s council is sending Lady Scrope to care for you, and a pair of midwives. There is no reason to think that you will die, any more than there was with any of the others. I expect you to survive this, and to have more children.”

“The baby?” I ask, trying to read her face.

“You know he is healthy,” she says, smiling. “Anyone who has felt that child kick knows he is strong. There is no reason for you to fear.”

“But there is something,” I say certainly. “You foresee something about Edward, my baby prince Edward.”

She looks at me for a moment and then she decides to speak honestly. “I can’t see him becoming king,” she says. “I have read the cards and I have looked at the reflection of the moon on the water. I have tried asking the crystal, and looking into the smoke. Indeed, I have tried everything I know which is inside the laws of God and is allowed in this holy space. But to tell you the truth, Elizabeth: I cannot see him being king.”

I laugh out loud. “Is that it? Is that all? Dear God, Mother, I cannot see his own father being king again, and he is crowned and ordained! I cannot see myself being queen again, and I have had the holy oil on my breast and the scepters in my hand. I don’t hope for a Prince of Wales here, just a healthy boy. Just let him be born strong and grow to be a man, and I will be content. I don’t need him to be King of England. I just want to know that he and I will live through this.”

“Oh, you’ll live through this,” she says. An airy wave of her hand dismisses the cramped rooms; the girls’ truckle beds in one corner; the servants’ straw mattresses on the floor in another; the poverty of the space; the chill of the cellar; the damp in the stone of the walls; the smoking fire; the dauntless courage of my children, who are forgetting that they ever lived anywhere better. “This is nothing. I expect to see us rise from this.”

“How?” I ask her disbelievingly.

She leans over and she puts her mouth to my ear. “Because your husband is not growing vines and making wine in Flanders,” she says. “He is not carding wool and learning to weave. He is equipping an expedition, making allies, raising money, planning to invade England. The London merchants are not the only ones in the country who prefer York to Lancaster. And Edward has never lost a battle. D’you remember?”

Uncertainly, I nod. Even though he is defeated and in exile, it is true that he has never lost a battle.

“So when he comes against Henry’s forces, even when they are captained by Warwick and driven on by Margaret of Anjou, don’t you think he will win?”

It is not a proper confinement, as a queen should be confined, with a ceremonial retirement from court six weeks before the date of the birth, and a closing of the shutters and a blessing of the room.

“Nonsense,” my mother says buoyantly. “You retired from daylight itself, didn’t you? Confinement? I should think no queen has ever been so confined. Who has ever been confined to sanctuary before?”

It is not a proper royal birth with three midwives and two wet nurses, and rockers and noble godmothers and mistresses of the nursery standing by, and ambassadors waiting with rich gifts. Lady Scrope is sent by the Lancaster court to make sure that I have everything I need, and I think this a gracious gesture from the Earl of Warwick to me. But I have to bring my baby into the world with no waiting husband and court at the door, and almost none to help me, and his godfathers are the Abbot of Westminster and the prior, and his godmother is Lady Scrope: the only people who are with me, neither great lords of the land nor foreign kings, the usual godfathers for a royal baby, but good and kind people who have been trapped at Westminster with us.

I call him Edward, as his father wants, and as the silver spoon from the river predicted. Margaret of Anjou, with her invasion fleet held in port by storms, sends me a message to tell me to call him John. She does not want another Prince Edward in England to rival her son. I ignore her words as from a nobody. Why would I listen to the preferences of Margaret of Anjou? My husband named him Edward, and the silver spoon came from the river with his name on it. Edward he is: Edward, Prince ofWales, he shall be, even if my mother is right and he is never Edward the king.

Among ourselves we call him Baby, and no one calls him the Prince of Wales, and I think as I drift into sleep after the birth, all warm with him in my arms, half drunk from the birthing cup that they have given me, that perhaps this baby will not be king. There have been no cannons fired for him and no bonfires lit on hilltops. The fountains and conduits of London have not run with wine, the citizens are not drunk with joy, there are no announcements of his arrival racing to the great courts of Europe. It is like having an ordinary baby, not a prince. Perhaps he will be an ordinary boy and I will become an ordinary woman again. Perhaps we will not be great people, chosen by God, but just happy.