The White Queen

SUMMER 1471

I am seated with my mother on a raised bed of camomile, the warm scent of the herb all around us, in the garden of the royal manor of Wimbledon, one of my dower houses, given to me as queen, and still one of my favorite country houses. I am picking out colors for her embroidery. The children are down at the river, feeding ducks with their nursemaid. I can hear their high voices in the distance, calling the ducks by the names they have given them, and scolding them when they don’t respond. Now and then I can hear the distinctive squeak of joy from my son. Every time I hear his voice my heart lifts that I have a boy, and a prince, and that he is a happy baby; and my mother, thinking the same, gives a little nod of satisfaction.

The country is so settled and peaceful, one would think there had never been a rival king and armies marching at double time to face each other. The country has welcomed the return of my husband; we have all rushed towards peace. More than anything else, we all want to get on with our lives under a fair rule, and forget the loss and pain of the last sixteen years. Oh, there are a few who hold out: Margaret Beaufort’s son, now the most unlikely heir to the Lancaster line, is holed up in Pembroke Castle in Wales with his uncle, Jasper Tudor, but they cannot last for long. The world has changed, and they will have to sue for peace. Margaret Beaufort’s own husband, Henry Stafford, is a Yorkist now and fought on our side at Barnet. Perhaps only she, stubborn as a martyr, and her silly son are the last Lancastrians left in the world.

I have a dozen shades of green laid out on my white-gowned knee, and my mother is threading her needle, holding it up to the sky to see better, bringing it closer to her eyes and then farther away again. I think it is the first time in my life I have ever seen a trace of weakness in her. “Can’t you see to thread your needle?” I ask her, half amused.

And she turns and smiles at me and says, quite easily, “My eyes are not the only things that are failing me, and my thread is not the only thing that is blurred. I shan’t see sixty, my child. You should prepare yourself.”

It is as if the day has suddenly gone cold and dark. “Shan’t see sixty!” I exclaim. “Why ever not? Are you ill? You said nothing! Shall you see the physician? We must go back to London?”

She shakes her head and sighs. “No, there is nothing for a physician to see, and thank God, nothing that some fool with a knife would think he could cut out. It is my heart, Elizabeth. I can hear it. It is beating wrongly-I can hear it skip a beat, and then go slowly. It will not beat strongly again, I don’t think. I don’t expect to see many more summers.”

I am so aghast I don’t even feel sorrow. “But what shall I do?” I demand, my hand on my belly, where another new life is beginning. “Mother, what shall I do? You can’t think of it! How shall I manage?”

“You can’t say I haven’t taught you everything,” she says with a smile. “Everything I know and everything I believe I have taught you. And some of it may even be true. And I am sure that you are safe on your throne at last. Edward has England in his hand, he has a son to come after him, and you have another baby on the way.” She puts her head on one side as if she is listening to some distant whisper. “I can’t tell. I don’t think this is your second boy; but I know you will have another boy, Elizabeth, I am sure of that. And what a boy he will be! I am sure of that too.”

“You must be with me for the birth of another prince. You would want to see a Prince of York christened as he should be,” I say plaintively, as if promising her a treat if she will only stay. “You would be his godmother. I would put him in your keeping. You could choose his name.”

“Richard,” she says at once. “Call him Richard.”

“So get well and stay with me and see Richard born,” I urge her.

She smiles and I see now the telltale signs that I had not seen before. The weariness even when she holds herself upright in her chair, the creamy color of her face, and the brown shadows under her eyes. How could I not have seen these before? I who love her so well that I kiss her cheek every day and kneel for her blessing-how could I not have noticed that she has grown so thin?

I throw the silks aside and kneel at her feet, clasp her hands, suddenly feel that they are bony, suddenly notice they are freckled with age. I look up into her tired face. “Mother, you have been with me through everything. You will never leave me now?”

“Not if I could choose to stay,” she says. “But I have felt this pain for years, and I know it is coming to an end.”

“Since when?” I ask fiercely. “How long have you felt this pain?”

“Since the death of your father,” she says steadily. “The day they told me that he was dead, that they had beheaded him for treason, I felt something move deep inside me, like my heart breaking; and I wanted to be with him, even in death.”

“But not to leave me!” I cry selfishly. And then cleverly I add, “And surely, you cannot bear to leave Anthony?”

She laughs at that. “You both are grown,” she says. “You both can live without me. You must both learn to live without me. Anthony will go on a pilgrimage to Jerusalem as he longs to do. You will see your son grow to be a man. You will see our little Elizabeth marry a king and have a crown of her own.”

“I’m not ready!” I cry out like a desolate child. “I can’t manage without you!”

She smiles gently, touches my cheek with her thin hand. “Nobody is ever ready,” she says tenderly. “But you will manage without me, and through you, and your children, I will have founded a line of kings in England. Queens as well, I think.”