The White Queen

JULY 1483

I am waiting at the window, dressed in my traveling cape, my chest of jewels at my hand, my girls with me, ready to leave. We are silent, we have been silently waiting for more than an hour. We are straining to hear something, anything, but there is only the slap of the river against the walls and the occasional burst of music or laughter from the streets. Elizabeth beside me is tight as a lute string, white with anxiety.

Then there is a sudden crash of noise, and my brother Lionel comes running into the sanctuary and slams and bolts the door behind him.

“We failed,” he says, gasping for breath. “Our brothers are safe, your son too. They got away down the river and Richard went to earth in the Minories, but we couldn’t take the White Tower.”

“Did you see my boy?” I demand.

He shakes his head. “They had the two boys in there. I heard them shouting orders. We were so close I could hear them shouting through the door to take the boys inward, to a more secure chamber. Dear God, sister, forgive me. I was the thickness of a door away from them but we could not batter it down.”

I sit down as my knees give way beneath me and I drop the box of jewels to the floor. Elizabeth is ashen. She turns and slowly starts to take the girls’ capes off, one by one, folding them up, as if it is important that they are not creased.

“My son,” I say. “My son.”

“We got in through the water gate, and then across the first lane before they even saw us. We were starting up the steps as someone sounded the alarm, and though we sprinted up the steps to the door of the White Tower, they slammed it shut. We were just seconds away from it. Thomas was firing at the locks and we threw ourselves against it, but I heard the bolts slam from the inside and then they came pouring out of the guard room. Richard and I turned to face them and we fought, holding them off, while Thomas and the Stanley men tried to batter the door in, or even lift it from its hinges, but you know-it is too strong.”

“The Stanleys were there, as they promised?”

“They were, and Buckingham’s men. None in their livery, of course, but they all wore a white rose. It was strange to see the white rose again. And strange to be fighting to enter a place that we own. I shouted to Edward to be of good cheer, that we would come for him, that we would not fail him. I don’t know if he heard. I don’t know.”

“You’re hurt,” I say, suddenly noticing the cut on his forehead.

He rubs it, as if his blood were dirt. “It is nothing. Elizabeth, I would rather have died than come back without him.”

“Don’t speak of death,” I say quietly. “Pray God he is safe tonight and was not frightened by this. Pray God they just take him to a more secure room inside the Tower and don’t think to take him away.”

“And it may only be for another month,” he says to me. “Richard said to remind you of that. Your friends are arming, King Richard is riding north with only his personal guard. Buckingham and Stanley are in his train, they will persuade him not to turn back. They will encourage him to go on to York. Jasper Tudor will bring an army from Brittany. Our next battle will come soon. When the usurper Richard is dead, we will have the keys to the Tower in our hands.”

Elizabeth straightens up, her sisters’ cloaks draped neatly over her arm. “And do you trust all your new friends, Mother?” she asks coldly. “All these new allies who have suddenly come to your side but don’t succeed? All of them ready to risk their lives to restore Edward to his throne when they all ate well and drank deep at Duke Richard’s coronation just a few weeks ago? I hear that Lady Margaret carried the train of the new Queen Anne, just as she used to carry yours. The new queen kissed her on both cheeks. She was honored at the coronation. Now she calls out her men for us? Now she is our loyal ally? The Duke of Buckingham was the ward who hated you for marrying him to my aunt Katherine, and he still hates you. Are these your true allies? Or are they loyal servants of the new king set out to entrap you? For they play both parts, and they are traveling with him now, and feasting at Oxford. They weren’t there in danger at the Tower, rescuing my brother.”

I look at her coldly in return. “I cannot choose my allies,” I say. “To save my son, I would plot with the devil himself.”

She shows me the ghost of a sour smile. “Perhaps you already have.”