The White Queen

SUNDAY, JUNE 25, 1483: CORONATION DAY

“What?” I spit at the quiet dawn sky like an angry cat whose kittens have been taken away for drowning. “No royal barges? No booming cannon from the Tower? No wine flowing in the fountains of the city? No banging of drums, no ’prentice boys howling out the songs of their guilds? No music? No shouting? No cheering along the procession route?” I swing open the window that looks over the river and see the usual river traffic of barges and wherries and rowing boats, and I say to my mother and to Melusina, “Clearly, they don’t crown him today. Is he to die instead?” I think of my boy as if I were painting his portrait. I think of the straight line of his little nose still rounded at the tip like a baby, and the plump roundness of his cheeks and the clear innocence of his eyes. I think of the curve of the back of his head that used to fit my hand when I touched him, and the straight pure line of the nape of his neck when he was bent over his books in study. He was a brave boy, a boy who had been coached by his uncle Anthony to vault into a saddle and ride at the joust. Anthony promised that he would be fearless by learning to face fear. And he was a boy who loved the country. He liked Ludlow Castle, for he could ride into the hills and see the peregrine falcons soaring high above the cliffs, and he could swim in the cold water of the river. Anthony said he had a sense of landscape: rare in the young. He was a boy with the most golden future. He was born in wartime to be a child of peace. He would have been, I don’t doubt, a great Plantagenet king, and his father and I would have been proud of him.

I speak of him as if he is dead, for I have little doubt that since he is not crowned today, he will be killed in secret, just as William Hastings was dragged out and beheaded on Tower Green on a baulk of wood with the axeman hurriedly wiping his hands from his breakfast. Dear God, when I think of the nape of the neck of my boy and I think of the headsman’s axe, I feel sick enough to die myself.

I don’t stay at the window watching the river that keeps flowing indifferently, as if my boy were not in danger of his life. I dress and pin up my hair and then I prowl about our sanctuary like one of the lionesses in the Tower. I comfort myself with plotting: we are not friendless, I am not without hope. My son Thomas Grey will be busy, I know, meeting in secret at hidden places those who can be convinced to rise for us, and there must be many in the country, in London too, who are beginning to doubt exactly what Duke Richard means by a protectorate. Margaret Stanley is clearly working for us: her husband Lord Thomas Stanley warned Hastings. My sister-in-law Duchess Margaret of York will be working for us in Burgundy. Even the French should take an interest in my danger, if only to cause trouble for Richard. There is a safe house in Flanders, where a well-paid family is greeting a little boy and teaching him to disappear into the crowd of Tournai. The duke may have the upper hand now, but there are as many who will hate him, as hated us Riverses, and many more will be thinking fondly of me, now I am in danger. Most of all there will be the men who want to see Edward’s son and not his brother on the throne.

I hear the rush of hurried footsteps, and I turn to face new danger as my daughter Cecily comes running down the crypt and throws opens the door to my chamber. She is white with fright. “There is something at the door,” she says. “Something horrible at the door.”

“What is at the door?” I ask. At once, of course, I think it is the headsman.

“Something as tall as a man, but looking like Death.”

I throw a scarf over my head and I go to the door and slide open the grille. Death himself seems to be waiting for me. He is in black gaberdine with a tall hat on his head and a long white tube of a nose hiding all his face. It is a physician with the long cone of his nose mask stuffed with herbs to protect him from the airs of the plague. He turns the glittery slits of his eyes on me, and I feel myself shiver.

“There is none with plague in here,” I say.

“I am Dr. Lewis of Caerleon, the Lady Margaret Beaufort’s doctor,” he says, his voice echoing weirdly from the cone. “She says you are suffering from woman’s maladies, and would benefit from a physician.”

I open the door. “Come in, I am not well,” I say. But as soon as the door is closed to the outside world, I challenge him. “I am perfectly well. Why are you here?”

“The Lady Beaufort-Lady Stanley, I should say-is well too, God be praised for her. But she wanted to find a way to speak with you, and I am of her affinity, and loyal to you, Your Grace.”

I nod. “Take off your mask.”

He takes the cone from his face and pushes back the hood from his head. He is a small dark man with a smiling, trustworthy face. He bows low. “She wants to know if you have devised a plan to rescue the two princes from the Tower. She wants you to know both she and her husband the Lord Stanley are yours to command, and she wants you to know that the Duke of Buckingham is filled with doubt as to where the Duke Richard’s ambition is leading him. She thinks the young duke is ready for turning.”

“Buckingham has done everything to put the duke where he sits now,” I say. “Why would he change his mind on this day of their victory?”

“Lady Margaret believes that the Duke of Buckingham could be persuaded,” he says, leaning forward to speak only into my ear. “She thinks he is starting to have doubts as to his leader. She thinks he would be interested in other, greater rewards than those the Duke Richard can offer him, and he is a young man, not yet thirty years old, easily swayed. He is afraid that the duke plans to take the throne for himself; he is afraid for the safety of your sons. You are his sister-in-law, these are his nephews too. He is concerned for the future of the princes, his little kinsmen. Lady Margaret bids me say to you that she thinks that the servants in the Tower can be bribed, and she wants to know how she can serve you in what plans you have to restore the Princes Edward and Richard to freedom.”

“It is not Richard…” I start to say when, like a ghost, from the door to the river, Elizabeth comes up the steps, the hem of her gown sodden.

“Elizabeth. What on earth are you doing?”

“I went down to sit by the river,” she says. Her face is strange and pale. “It was so quiet and beautiful at first this morning, and then it became more and more busy. I wondered why the river was so busy. It was almost as if the river would tell me herself.” She turns to regard the doctor. “Who is this?”

“He is a messenger from Lady Margaret Stanley,” I say. I am looking at her wet gown, which drags behind her like a tail. “How did you get so wet?”

“From the barges that went by,” she says. Her face is pale and hostile. “All the barges that went down the river to Baynard Castle, where Duke Richard is holding a great court. The wash from their passing was so great that it came in over the steps. What is happening there today? Half of London is on a barge going to the duke’s house, but it is supposed to be the day of my brother’s coronation.”

Dr. Lewis looks awkward. “I was about to tell your royal mother,” he says hesitantly.

“The river itself is a witness,” my daughter says rudely. “It washed over my feet as if to tell me. Anyone could guess.”

“Guess what?” I demand of them both.

“The Parliament has met and declared that Duke Richard is the rightful king,” he says quietly, though his words echo in the vaulted stone hall as if he were shouting a proclamation. “They ruled that your marriage with the king was held without the knowledge of the rightful lords, and achieved by witchcraft by your mother and yourself. And that the king was married already to another lady.”

“So you have been a whore for years and we are bastards,” Elizabeth finishes coolly. “We are defeated and shamed. It is over, all over. Can we take Edward and Richard and go now?”

“What are you saying?” I ask of her. I am as bewildered by this daughter of mine with her gown like a wet tail, like a mermaid come in from the river, as I am at the news that Richard has claimed the throne and we are cast down. “What are you saying? What were you thinking as you sat by the river? Elizabeth, you are so strange today. Why are you like this now?”

“Because I think we are cursed,” she flings out at me. “I think we are cursed. The river whispered a curse to me, and I blame you and my father for bringing us into this world and putting us here, in the grip of ambition, and yet not holding strongly enough to your power to make it right for us.”

I snatch at her cold hands tightly, and I hold her as if I would keep her from swimming away. “You’re not cursed, daughter. You are the finest and rarest of all my children, the most beautiful, the most beloved. You know that. What curse could stick to you?”

The gaze she turns on me is darkened with horror, as if she has seen her death. “You will never surrender, you will never let us be. Your ambition will be the death of my brothers, and when they are dead you will put me on the throne. You would rather have the throne than your sons, and when they are both dead, you will put me on my dead brother’s throne. You love the crown more than your children.”

I shake my head to deny the power of her words. This is my little girl, this is my easy, simple child, this is my pet, my Elizabeth. She is the very bone of my bone. She has never had a thought that I did not put in her head. “You cannot know such a thing; it’s not true. You cannot know. The river cannot tell you such a thing, and you cannot hear it, and it’s not true.”

“I will take my own brother’s throne,” she says as if she cannot hear me. “And you will be glad of it, for your ambition is your curse, so the river says.”

I glance at the doctor and wonder if she has a fever. “Elizabeth, the river cannot speak to you.”

“Of course it speaks to me, and of course I hear it!” she exclaims in impatience.

“There is no curse…”

She wheels around and glides across the room, her gown leaving a damp stain like a trail, and throws open the window. Dr. Lewis and I follow her, fearful for a moment that she has run mad and means to jump out; but at once I am halted by a high sweet keening from the river, a longing sound, a song of mourning, a note so anguished that I put my hands over my ears to block it out and look to the doctor for an explanation. He shakes his head in bewilderment, for he hears nothing but the cheerful noise of the passing barges as they go down for the king’s coronation, trumpets blaring and drums pounding. But he can see the tears in Elizabeth’s eyes and sees me shrink from the open windows, blocking my ears from the haunting sounds.

“That’s not for you,” I say. I am choking on my grief. “Ah, Elizabeth, my love, that’s not for you. That’s Melusina’s song: the song that we hear for a death in our house. That’s not a warning song for you. This will be for my son Richard Grey; I can hear it. It’s for my son and for my brother Anthony, my brother Anthony, whom I swore I would keep safe.”

The doctor is pale with fear. “I can hear nothing,” he says. “Just the noise of the people calling for the new king.”

Elizabeth is at my side, her gray eyes as dark as a storm on a wave at sea. “Your brother? What d’you mean?”

“My brother and my son are dead at the hands of Richard, Duke of Gloucester, just as my brother John and my father were dead at the hands of George, Duke of Clarence,” I predict. “The sons of York are murdering beasts, and Richard is no better than George. They have cost me the best men of my family and broken my heart. I can hear it. I can hear this. This is what the river is singing. The river is singing a lament for my son and for my brother.”

She steps closer. She is my tender girl again, her wild fury blown away. She puts her hand on my shoulder. “Mother-”

“Do you think he will stop here?” I burst out frantically. “He has my boy, he has my royal son. If he dares to take Anthony from me, if he could bear to take Richard Grey from me, d’you think he will stop at taking Edward too? A brother and a son he has robbed from me this day. I will never forgive him. I will never forget this. He is a dead man to me. I will see him wither, I will see his sword arm fail him, I will see him turn around looking for his friends like a lost child on the battlefield, I will see him fall.”

“Mother, be still,” she whispers. “Be still and listen to the river.”

It is the only word that can calm me. I run down the length of the room and throw open all the windows, and the warm summer air breathes into the cold darkness of the crypt. The water babbles low against the banks. There is a stink of low tide and mud, but the river flows on, as if to remind me that life goes on, as if to say that Anthony has gone, my boy Richard Grey has gone, and my boy the little Prince Richard has gone downstream to strangers on a little boat. But we still might flow deep once more.

There is music coming from some of the passing barges, noblemen making merry at the accession of Duke Richard. I cannot understand how they cannot hear the singing of the river, how they do not know that a light has gone out of this world with the death of my brother Anthony and my boy…my boy.

“He would not want you to grieve,” she says quietly. “Uncle Anthony loved you so much. He would not want you to grieve.”

I put my hand on hers. “He would want me to live, and to bring you children through this danger to life,” I say. “We will hide in sanctuary for now, but I swear we will come out again to our true place. You can call this the curse of ambition if you like, but without it I would not fight. And I will fight. You will see me fight, and you will see me win.

“If we have to set sail to Flanders, we will do that. If we have to snap like cornered dogs, we will do that. If we have to hide like peasants in Tournai and live on eels from the River Scheldt, we will do that. But Richard will not destroy us. No man of this earth can destroy us. We will rise up. We are the children of the goddess Melusina: we may have to ebb but surely we will flow again. And Richard will learn this. He has caught us now at a low and dry place, but by God he will see us in flood.”

I speak very bravely, but once I am silent I slide into grief for my Grey son, and for my brother, my dearest brother Anthony. I think of Richard Grey as a little boy once more, sitting so high on the king’s horse, holding my hand at the side of the road as we waited for the king to come by. He was my boy, he was my beautiful boy, and his father died in battle against one York brother and now he is dead at the hands of another. I remember my mother mourning her son and saying that when you have got a child through babyhood you think you are safe. But a woman is not safe. Not in this world. Not in this world where brother fights against brother and no one can ever put their sword aside, or trust in the law. I think of him as a baby in the cradle, as a toddler when he learned to walk holding on to my fingers, up and down, up and down the gallery at Grafton till my back ached from stooping, and then I think of him as the young man he was, a good man in the making.

And Anthony my brother has been my dearest and most trusted friend and advisor since we were children together. Edward was right to call him the greatest poet and the finest knight at court. Anthony, who wanted to go on pilgrimage to Jerusalem and who would have gone had I not stopped him. Richard dined with the two of them at Stony Stratford when they met on the road to London, and talked pleasantly of the England that we would all build together, Riverses and Plantagenets, of the shared heir, my boy, whom we would put on the throne. Anthony was no fool but he trusted Richard-why should he not? They were kinsmen. They had been side by side in battle, brothers in arms. They had gone into exile together and returned to England in triumph. They were both uncles and guardians to my precious son.

In the morning when Anthony came downstairs to breakfast in his inn, he found the doors barred and his men ordered away. He found Richard and Henry Stafford, the Duke of Buckingham, armed for battle, their men standing stone-faced in the yard. And they took him away, with my boy Richard Grey, and Sir Thomas Vaughan accused of treason, though they all three were faithful servants of my boy the new king.

Anthony, in prison, awaiting his death in the morning, listens at the window for a moment, in case there is such a thing as the strong sweet song of Melusina, expecting to hear nothing, and then smiles when he hears a bell-like ringing. He shakes his head to clear the noise from his ears, but it stays, an unearthly voice that makes him, irreverently, chuckle. He never believed the legend of the girl who is half fish and half woman, the ancestor of his house; but now he finds he is comforted to hear her singing for his death. He stays at the window and leans his forehead against the cool stone. To hear her voice, high and clear, around the battlements of Pontefract Castle proves at last that his mother’s gifts and his sister’s gifts and her daughter’s gifts are real: as they always claimed, as he only half believed. He wishes he could tell his sister that he knows this now. They may need these gifts. Their gifts may be enough to save them. Perhaps to save all the family who named themselves Rivers to honor the water goddess who was the founder of their family. Perhaps even to save their two Plantagenet boys. If Melusina can sing for him, an unbeliever, then perhaps she can guide those who listen for her warnings. He smiles because the high clear song gives him hope that Melusina will watch over his sister and her boys, especially the boy who was in his care, the boy he loves: Edward the new King of England. And he smiles because her voice is that of his mother.

He spends the night not in praying, nor in weeping but in writing. In his last hours he is not an adventurer, nor a knight, nor even a brother or an uncle, but a poet. They bring his writings to me and I see that, at the end, at the very moment he was facing his death, and the death of all his hopes, he knew that it was all vanity. Ambition, power, even the throne itself that has cost our family so dear: at the end he knew it was all meaningless. And he did not die in bitterness at this knowledge, but smiling at the folly of man, at his own folly.

He writes:

Somewhat musing And more mourning, In remembering Th’ unsteadfastness; This world being Of such wheeling, Me, contrarying; What may I guess?

With displeasure, To my grievance, And no surance Of remedy; Lo, in this trance, Now in substance, Such is my dance, Willing to die

Methinks truly, Bounden am I, And that greatly, To be content; Seeing plainly Fortune doth wry All contrary From mine intent.

This is the last thing he does at dawn, and then they take him out and behead him on the orders of Richard, Duke of Gloucester, the new lord protector of England, who is now responsible for my safety, the safety of all my children, and especially the safety and future of my son Prince Edward, the rightful King of England.

I read Anthony’s poem later, and I think that I particularly like “Fortune doth wry/ All contrary/ From mine intent.” Fortune has gone against all us Riverses this season: he was right in that.

And I shall have to find a way to live without him.

Something has changed between my daughter Elizabeth and me. My girl, my child, my first baby, has suddenly grown up, grown away. The child who believed that I knew everything, that I commanded everything, is now a young woman who has lost her father, and doubts her mother. She thinks I am wrong to keep us in sanctuary. She blames me for the death of her uncle Anthony. She accuses me-though never saying a word-of failing to rescue her brother Edward, of sending her little brother Richard out, unprotected, into the gray silence of the evening river.

She doubts that I have secured a safe hiding place for Richard and that our plan of the changeling page will work. She knows that if I sent a false prince to keep Edward company, it is because I doubt my ability to get Edward home safe. She has no hopes of the uprising that my Grey son Thomas is organizing. She fears that we will never be rescued.

Ever since the morning when we heard the singing of the river, and then the afternoon when they brought us the news of Anthony and Richard Grey’s death, she has no faith in my judgment. She has not repeated her belief that we are cursed, but there is something about the darkness of her eyes and the pallor of her face that tells me she is hagridden. God knows, I have not cursed her, and I know no one who would do such a thing to such a girl of gold and silver, but it is true: she looks as if someone has put a dark thumbprint down on her and marked her out for a hard destiny.

Dr. Lewis comes again and I ask him to look at her and tell me if she is well. She has almost stopped eating and she is pale. “She needs to be free,” he says simply. “I tell you as a physician what I hope to see soon as an ally. All your children, you yourself, Your Grace, cannot stay here. You need to be out in the good air, enjoying the summer. She is a delicate girl-she needs exercise and sunshine. She needs company. She is a young woman-she should be dancing and courting. She needs to plan her future, to dream of her betrothal, not to be cooped up here, fearing death.”

“I have an invitation from the king.” I make myself say the title, as if Richard could ever deserve it, as if the crown on his head and the oil on his breast could make him anything more than the traitor and the turncoat he is. “The king is anxious that I take the girls to my house in the country this summer. He says the princes can be released to me there.”

“And will you go?” He is intent on my answer. He leans forward to hear.

“My boys must be released to me first. I have no guarantee of my safety or that of my girls unless my boys are returned to me, as he promised they would be.”

“Take care, Your Grace, take care. Lady Margaret fears he will play you false,” he breathes. “She says the Duke of Buckingham thinks that he will have your boys…” He hesitates as if he cannot bear to say the words. “Done to death. She says that the Duke of Buckingham is so horrified by this that he will rescue your boys for you, restore your sons to you, if you will guarantee his safety and his prosperity when you are back in power. If you will promise him your friendship, your undying friendship when you come to your own again. Lady Margaret says that she will bring him to make an alliance with you and yours. The three families: Stafford, Rivers, and the House of Lancaster, against the false king.

I nod. I have been waiting for this. “What does he want?” I ask bluntly.

“His daughter, when he has one, to marry your son, the young King Edward,” he says. “He himself to be named as regent and lord protector till the young king is of age. He himself to have the kingdom of the north-just as Duke Richard had. If you will make him as great a duke as your husband made Duke Richard, he will betray his friend and rescue your sons.”

“And what does she want?” I ask, as if I cannot guess, as if I do not know that she has spent every day of the last twelve years, ever since her son was exiled, trying to bring him safely back to England. He is the only child she has ever conceived, the only heir to her family fortune, to her dead husband’s title. Everything she achieves in her life will be nothing if she cannot get her son back to England to inherit.

“She wants an agreement that her son can take his title and inherit her lands, her brother-in-law Jasper restored to his lands in Wales. She wants them both free to return to England, and she wants to betroth her son Henry Tudor to your daughter Elizabeth, and to be named as heir after your boys,” he says in a rush.

I do not pause for a moment. I have only been waiting for the terms and these are exactly what I expected. Not through foreseeing but through the commonplace sense of what I would demand if I were in Lady Margaret’s strong position: married to the third greatest man in England, in alliance with the second, planning to betray the first. “I agree,” I say. “Tell the Duke of Buckingham and tell Lady Margaret that I agree. And tell them my price: I have to have my sons restored to me at once.”

Next morning, my brother Lionel comes to me smiling. “There is someone to see you at the water gate,” he says. “A fisherman. Greet him quietly, my sister. Remember that discretion is a woman’s greatest gift.”

I nod and hurry to the door.

Lionel puts a hand on my arm, less a bishop, more a brother. “Don’t shriek like a girl,” he says bluntly, and lets me go.

I slip through the door and go down the stone steps that lead to the stone corridor. It is shadowy, lit only by the daylight filtering through the iron gate that opens out to the river. A little wherry is bobbing at the doorway, a small fishing net piled in the stern. A man in a filthy cape and a pulled-down hat is waiting at the doorway, but nothing can disguise his height. Forewarned by Lionel I don’t cry out, and dissuaded by the stink of old fish I don’t run into his arms. I just say quietly, “Brother, my brother, I am glad with all my heart to see you.”

A flash of his dark eyes from under the heavy brim shows me my brother Richard Woodville’s smiling face, villainously covered with a beard and a mustache. “Are you all right?” I ask, rather shocked at his appearance.

“Never better,” he says jauntily.

“And you know about our brother Anthony?” I ask. “And my son Richard Grey?”

He nods, suddenly grim. “I heard this morning. That’s partly why I came today. I am sorry, Elizabeth, I am sorry for your loss.”

“You are Earl Rivers now,” I say. “The third Earl Rivers. You are head of the family. We seem to be getting through heads of our family rather quickly. Do you, please, hold the title a little longer.”

“I’ll do what I can,” he promises. “God knows, I inherit the title of two good men. I hope to hold it longer, but I doubt I can do better. Anyway, we are close to an uprising. Listen to me. Richard feels himself secure with the crown on his head, and he is to go on progress to show himself to the kingdom.”

I have to stop myself spitting into the water. “I wonder the horses have the brass neck even to walk.”

“As soon as he is out of London, his guard with him, we will storm the Tower and get Edward out. The Duke of Buckingham is with us and I trust him. He has to travel with King Richard, and the king will force Stanley go with him too-he still doubts him; but Lady Margaret will stay in London and command the Stanley men and her own affinity to join us. Already she has her men placed in the Tower.”

“Will we have enough men?”

“Near on a hundred. The new king has made Sir Robert Brackenbury the constable of the Tower. Brackenbury would never hurt a boy in his care-he is a good man. I have put new servants in the royal rooms, men who will open the doors for me when I give them the word.”

“And then?”

“We get you and the girls safely away to Flanders. Your sons, Richard and Edward, can join you,” he says. “Have you heard from the men who took Prince Richard yet? Is he safe in hiding?”

“Not yet,” I say fretfully. “I have been looking for a message every day. I should have heard that he is safe by now. I pray for him every hour. I should have heard by now.”

“A letter could have gone astray; it means nothing. If it had gone wrong, they would have sent you news for sure. And just think: you can collect Richard from his hiding place on your way to Margaret’s court. Once you are with your boys and safe again, we raise our army. Buckingham will declare for us. Lord Stanley and his whole family is promised by his wife, Margaret Beaufort. Half of Richard’s other lords are ready to turn against him, according to the Duke of Buckingham. Lady Margaret’s son Henry Tudor will raise arms and men in Brittany, and invade Wales.”

“When?” I breathe.

He glances behind him. The river is busy as ever with ships coming and going, little trading wherries weaving in and out of the bigger boats. “Duke Richard-” He breaks off and grins at me. “Forgive me, ‘King Richard’ is to leave London at the end of July on progress. We will rescue Edward at once, and give you and him long enough to get to safety, say two days, and then, while the king is out of touch, we will rise.”

“And Edward our brother?”

“Edward is recruiting men in Devon and Cornwall. Your son Thomas is working in Kent. Buckingham will bring out the men from Dorset and Hampshire, Stanley will bring out his affinity from the Midlands, and Margaret Beaufort and her son can raise Wales in the name of the Tudors. All the men of your husband’s household are determined to save his sons.”

I nibble at my finger, thinking as my husband would have thought: men, arms, money, and the spread of support around the south of England. “It is enough if we can defeat Richard before he brings in his men from the north.”

He grins at me, the Rivers’s reckless grin. “It is enough and we have everything to win and nothing to lose,” he says. “He has taken the crown from our boy: we have nothing to fear. The worst has already happened.”

“The worst has already happened,” I repeat, and the shiver that goes down my spine I attribute to the loss of Anthony my brother, my dearest brother, and the death of my Grey son. “The worst has already happened. There can be nothing worse than our losses already.”

Richard puts his dirty hand on mine. “Be ready to leave whenever I send the word,” he says. “I will tell you as soon as I have Prince Edward safe.”

“I will.”