The White Queen

SEPTEMBER 1483

Every day I get news of the arming and preparing of our people, not just in the counties where my brothers are active but all around the country. As the news slowly spreads that Richard has taken the crown, more and more of the common people, the small squires and market traders, and their betters: the heads of guilds and the small landlords, the greater men of the country, ask: How shall a younger brother take the inheritance of his dead brother’s son? How is any man to go quietly to his Maker if such a thing can happen, unchallenged? Why should a man strive all his life to make his family great if his little brother, the runt of the litter, can step into his shoes the minute he weakens?

And there are many, at the many places we used to visit, who remember Edward as a handsome man and me as his beautiful wife, those who remember the girls in their prettiness and our strong bright little boys. Those who called us a golden family who had brought peace to England and a quiver of heirs to the throne; and these people say that it is an outrage that we should not be in our palaces with our boy on the throne.

I write to my son the little King Edward and bid him be of good cheer, but my letters have started to come back without being opened. They come back untouched, the seals unbroken. I am not even spied upon. It is as if they are denying that he is even at the royal rooms in the Tower. I fret for the outbreak of the war that will free him and wish we would bring it forward, and not wait for Richard’s slow vainglorious progress northward through Oxfordshire, then Gloucestershire, then to Pontefract and York. At York he crowns his son, the thin and sickly boy, as Prince of Wales. He gives my Edward’s title to his son as if my boy was dead. I spend this day on my knees praying for God to give me revenge for this affront. I dare not think that it might be worse than an insult. I cannot bear to think that it might be that the title is vacant, that my son is dead.

Elizabeth comes to me at dinnertime and helps me to my feet. “You know what your uncle has done today?” I ask her.

She turns her face away from me. “I know,” she says steadily. “The town crier was shouting it all around the square. I could hear him from the doorway.”

“You didn’t open the door?” I demand anxiously.

She sighs. “I didn’t open the door. I never open the door.”

“Duke Richard has stolen your father’s crown, and now he has put his son in your brother’s robes. He will die for this,” I predict.

“Haven’t enough people died already?”

I take her hand and turn her towards me so she has to face me. “We are talking about the throne of England here, your brother’s birthright.”

“We are talking about the death of a family,” she says flatly. “You have daughters too, you know. Have you thought of our birthright? We have been cooped up here like rats for all summer, while you pray all day for revenge. Your most precious son is imprisoned or dead-you don’t even know which. You sent your other out into the darkness. We don’t know where he is, or even if he is still alive. You thirst for the throne, but you don’t even know if you have a boy to put on it.”

I gasp and step back. “Elizabeth!”

“I wish you would send word to my uncle that you accept his rule,” she says coldly, and her hand in mine is like ice. “I wish you would tell him that we are ready to come to terms-actually any terms that he chooses to name. I wish you would persuade him to release us to be an ordinary family, living at Grafton, far away from London, far away from plotting and treason and the threat of death. If you surrendered now, we might get my brothers back.”

“That would be for me to go right back to where I came from!” I exclaim.

“Were you not happy at Grafton with your mother and father, and with the husband who gave you Richard and Thomas?” she asks quickly, so quickly that I do not prepare my answer carefully.

“Yes,” I say unguardedly. “Yes, I was.”

“That is all I want for myself,” she says. “All I want for my sisters. And yet you insist on making us heirs to your misery. I want to be heir to the days before you were queen. I don’t want the throne: I want to marry a man whom I love, and love him freely.”

I look at her. “Then you would deny your father, you would deny me, you would deny everything that makes you a Plantagenet, a princess of York. You might as well be Jemma the maid if you don’t desire to be greater than you are, if you don’t see your chances and take them.”

She looks steadily back at me. “I would rather be Jemma the maid than you,” she says, and her voice is filled with the harsh contempt of a girl. “Jemma can go home to her own bed at night. Jemma can refuse to work. Jemma can run away and serve another master. But you are locked to the throne of England and you have enslaved us too.”

I draw myself up. “You may not speak to me like this,” I say to her coldly.

“I speak from my heart,” she says.

“Then tell your heart to be true but your mouth to be silent. I don’t want disloyalty from my own daughter.”

“We are not an army at war! Don’t speak to me of disloyalty! What will you do? Behead me for treason?”

“We are an army at war,” I say simply. “And you will not betray me, nor your own position.”

I speak truer than I know, for we are an army on the march and that night we make our first move. The men of Kent rise first, and when they hear the rallying cries Sussex rises up with them. But the Duke of Norfolk, who remains true to Richard, marches his men south from London and holds our army down. They cannot reach their comrades in the west; he blocks the only road at Guildford. One man gets through to London, hires a little boat, and comes to the sanctuary water gate, under cover of mist and rain.

“Sir John,” I say through the grille. I dare not even open the gate for the screech of the iron on the wet stone, and besides, I don’t know him, and trust no one.

“I have come to tender my sympathy, Your Grace,” he says awkwardly. “And to know-my brothers and I want to know-if it is your will that we support Henry Tudor now.”

“What?” I ask. “What d’you mean?”

“We prayed for the prince, every day we did, and lit a candle for him, and all of us at Reigate are more sorry than we can say that we are too late for him. We-”

“Wait,” I say urgently. “Wait. What are you saying?”

His big face is suddenly aghast. “Oh God spare me, don’t say you did not know and I have told you like a great fool?” He wrings his hat in his hands, so the plume dips into the river water that laps at the steps. “Oh gentle madam, I am a fool. I should have made sure…” He glances anxiously up the dark passageway behind me. “Call a lady,” he says. “Don’t you go fainting now.”

I hold the grating in clenched hands, though my head swims. “I won’t,” I promise him through dry lips. “I don’t faint. Are you saying that the young King Edward is executed?”

He shakes his head. “Dead, is all I know. God bless your sweet face, and forgive me for being the one to tell you such dark news. Such bad news and I to bring it to you! When all we wanted to know was your wishes now.”

“Not executed?”

He shakes his head. “Nothing public. Poor boys. We know nothing for certain. We were just told that the princes were put to death, God bless them, and that the rebellion would go on against King Richard, who is still a usurper, but that we would put Henry Tudor on the throne as the next heir and the next best thing for the country.”

I laugh, a cracked unhappy sound. “Margaret Beaufort’s boy? Instead of mine?”

He looks around him for help, frightened by the ring of madness in my laughter. “We didn’t know. We were sworn to free the princes. We all mustered in your cause, Your Grace. So we don’t know what we should do, now your princes have gone. And Thomas Howard’s men are holding the road to your brother’s camp, so we couldn’t ask him. We thought it best that I should slip away quietly, and come to London to ask you.”

“Who told you they are dead?”

He thinks for a moment. “It was a man from the Duke of Buckingham. He brought us some gold, and weapons for those who had none. He said we could trust his master, who had turned against the false King Richard for killing the boys. He said the duke had been the King Richard’s loyal servant, thinking him the protector of the boys, but when he found out that he had killed our princes he turned against him in horror. He said that the duke knew all that the false king did and said, but he could not prevent this murder.” He looks at me warily again. “God keep Your Grace. Should you not have a lady with you?”

“The duke’s man told you all this?”

“A good man, he told us it all. And he paid for the men to have a drink to the Duke of Buckingham as well. He said that the false King Richard had ordered their deaths in secret before he left on his progress, and that, when he told the duke what he had done, the duke swore he could have no more of this murderer’s reign but would defy King Richard and we should all rise up against this man who would kill boys. The duke himself would make a better king than Richard, and he has a claim to the throne and all.”

Surely I would know if my son was dead? I heard the river sing for my brother. If my son and heir, the heir to my house, the heir to the throne of England, was dead, I would surely know that? Surely, my son could not be killed no more than three miles from me, and I not know it? So I don’t believe it. I won’t believe it until they show me his blessed body. He is not dead. I cannot believe he is dead. I will not believe he is dead until I see him in his coffin.

“Listen to me.” I draw close to the bars and speak earnestly to him. “You go back to Kent and tell your fellows that they are to rise for the princes, for my boys are still alive. The duke is mistaken and the king has not killed them. I know this; I am their mother. Tell them also that, even if Edward was dead, his brother Richard is not with him but safely got away. He is safe in hiding and he will come back and take the throne that is his. You go back to Kent and, when the word comes for you to muster and march out, go with a proud heart for you must destroy this false King Richard and free my boys and free me.”

“And the duke?” he asks. “And Henry Tudor?”

I make a face, and wave the thought of the two of them away. “Loyal allies to our cause, I am sure,” I say with a certainty I no longer feel. “You be true to me, Sir John, and I will remember you and every single one who fights for me and my sons, when I am come to my own again.”

He bows and ducks back down the stairs and steps cautiously into the rocking rowboat and then he is lost in the dark mist of the river. I wait for him to disappear and for the quiet splash of the oars to fade away and then I look down into the dark waters. “The duke,” I whisper into the waters. “The Duke of Buckingham is telling everyone that my sons are dead. Why would he do that? When he is sworn to rescue them? When he is sending gold and arms to the rebellion? Why would he tell them, in the very moment that he calls them out, that the princes are dead?”

I eat supper with my girls and with the few servants who have stayed with us in sanctuary, but I cannot hear seven-year-old Anne’s careful reading of the Bible, nor join Elizabeth in questioning them as to what they have just heard. I am as inattentive as Catherine, who is only four. I can think of nothing but why there should be a rumor that my boys are dead.

I send the girls to bed early; I cannot bear to hear them playing at cards or singing a round. All night I walk up and down in my room, stepping along the one floorboard that does not creak to the window over the river, and back again the other way. Why would Richard kill my boys now, when he has accomplished all that he wanted without their deaths? He has persuaded the council to name them as bastards, he has passed an act of Parliament that denies my marriage. He has named himself as the next legitimate heir and the archbishop himself has put the crown on his dark head. His sickly wife Anne is crowned as Queen of England and their son is invested as Prince of Wales. All this was achieved with me mewed up in sanctuary, and my son in prison. Richard is triumphant: Why would he want us dead? Why would he need us dead now? And how should he hope to escape blame for the crime, when everyone knows the boys are in his keeping? Everyone knows he took my son Richard against my will; it could not have been more public, and the archbishop himself swore that no harm would come to him.

And it is not like Richard to ride away from work that needs doing. When he and his brothers decided that poor King Henry should die, the three of them met outside his door and went in together, their faces grim but their minds made up. These are York princes: they have no objection to wicked deeds; but they do not leave them to others, they do them firsthand. The risk of asking another to kill two innocent princes of the blood, bribing the guards, hiding the bodies, would be unbearable for Richard. I have seen how he kills: directly, without warning, but openly, without shame. The man who beheaded Sir William Hastings on a piece of builders’ timber would not wink at holding a pillow over the face of a young boy. If the thing was to be done, I would have sworn he would do it himself. At the very least he would give the order and watch that it was done.

All this is to convince me that Sir John from Reigate is mistaken and my boy Edward is still alive. But again and again as I turn at the window and glance down at the river in darkness and mist, I wonder if I am mistaken, mistaken in everything, even in my trust in Melusina. Perhaps Richard managed to find someone who would kill the boys. Perhaps Edward is dead, and perhaps I have lost the Sight, and I just don’t know. Perhaps I know nothing anymore.

By the early hours of the morning I cannot bear to be alone for another minute, and I send a messenger to fetch Dr. Lewis to me. I tell them to wake him and get him out of bed, for I am mortally ill. By the time he is admitted by the guards, my lie is becoming true, and I am running a fever from sheer agony of mind.

“Your Grace?” he asks cautiously.

I am haggard in the candlelight, my hair in a clumsy plait, my robe knotted around me. “You have to get your servants, trusted men, into the Tower to guard my son Edward, since we cannot get him out,” I say bluntly. “Lady Margaret must use her influence, she must use her husband’s name, to ensure my sons are well guarded. They are in danger. They are in terrible danger.”

“You have news?”

“There is a rumor spreading that my boys are dead,” I say.

He shows no surprise. “God forbid it, Your Grace, but I fear that it is more than a rumor. It is as the Duke of Buckingham warned us. He said that this false king would kill his nephews to get the throne.”

I recoil, very slightly, as if I had put out my hand and seen a snake sunning itself where I was about to touch.

“Yes,” I say, suddenly wary. “That is what I have heard, and it was the Duke of Buckingham’s man who said it.”

He crosses himself. “God spare us.”

“But I hope that the deed is not yet done, and I hope to prevent it.”

He nods. “Alas, I am afraid that we may be too late, and that they are already lost to us. Your Grace, I grieve with all my heart for you.”

“I thank you for your sympathy,” I say steadily. My temples are throbbing, I cannot think. It is as if I am looking at the snake and it looks back at me.

“Please God, this uprising destroys the uncle who could do such a thing. God will be on our side against such a Herod.”

“If it was Richard.”

He looks at me suddenly, as if this shocks him, though he seems well able to tolerate the idea of the murder of children. “Who else could do such a thing? Who else would benefit? Who killed Sir William Hastings, and your brother and your other son? Who is the murderer of your family and your worst enemy, Your Grace? You can suspect no one else!”

I can feel myself tremble and the tears start to come; they are burning my eyes. “I don’t know,” I say unsteadily. “I just feel certain that my boy is not dead. I would know if he was killed. A mother would know that. Ask Lady Margaret: she would know if her Henry was dead. A mother knows. And anyway, my Richard at least is safe.”

He takes the bait and I see his response-I see the flash of a spy looking from his melting eyes. “Oh, is he?” he asks invitingly.

I have said enough. “They are both safe, please God,” I correct myself. “But tell me-why are you so certain that they are dead?”

He puts his hand gently on mine. “I did not want to grieve you. But they have not been seen since the false king left London, and the duke and Lady Margaret both believe that he had them killed before he left. There was nothing any of us could do to save them. When we besieged the Tower, they were already dead.”

I pull my hand away from his comforting grasp and put it to my aching forehead. I wish I could think clearly. I remember Lionel telling me that he heard the servants shouting to take the boys deeper into the Tower. I remember him telling me that he was just the distance of the door from Edward. But why would Dr. Lewis lie to me?

“Would it not have been better for our cause if the duke had kept silent?” I ask. “My friends and family and allies are recruiting men to rescue the princes, but the duke is telling them that they are already dead. Why should my men turn out, if their prince is dead?”

“As well they should know now as later,” he says smoothly, too smoothly.

“Why? I say. “Why should they know now, before the battle?”

“So that everyone knows it is the false king who gave the order,” he says. “So that Duke Richard has the blame. Your people will rise for revenge.”

I cannot think, I cannot think why this matters. I can sense a lie in here somewhere, but I cannot put my finger on it. Something is wrong, I know it.

“But who would doubt that it is King Richard who had them killed? As you say, the murderer of my kinsmen? Why would we declare our fears now, and confuse our people?”

“Nobody would doubt it,” he assures me. “No one else but Richard would do such a thing. No one else would benefit from such a crime.”

I jump to my feet in sudden impatience, and knock the table and overturn the candlestick.

“I don’t understand!”

He snatches at the candle and the flame bobs and throws a terrible shadow on his friendly face. For a moment he is as he was when I first saw him when Cecily came to tell me that Death was at the door. I gasp in fear and I step back from him as he puts the candle carefully back on the table and stands, as he should do, since I, the dowager queen, am standing.

“You can go,” I say disjointedly. “Forgive me, I am distressed. I don’t know what to think. You can leave me.”

“Shall I give you a draft to help you sleep? I am so sorry for your grief.”

“No, I will sleep now. I thank you for your company.” I take a breath. I push back the hair from my face. “You have calmed me with your wisdom. I am at peace now.”

He looks puzzled. “But I have said nothing.”

I shake my head. I cannot wait for him to leave. “You have shared my worries, and that is the act of a friend.”

“I shall see Lady Margaret first thing this morning and tell her of your fears. I shall ask her to put her men in the Tower to get news of your boys. If they are alive, we will find men to guard them. We will keep them safe.”

“At least Richard is safe,” I remark incautiously.

“Safer than his brother?”

I smile like a woman with a secret. “Doctor, if you had two precious rare jewels and you feared thieves, would you put your two treasures in the same box?”

“Richard was not in the Tower?” His voice is a breath, his blue eyes staring; he is all aquiver.

I put my finger to my lips. “Hush.”

“But two boys were killed in the bed…”

Were they? Oh were they? How are you so very sure of this? I keep my face as still as marble as he turns from me, and bows and goes to the door.

“Tell Lady Margaret I beg her to guard my son in the Tower as if he were her own,” I say.

He bows again and is gone.

When the children wake, I tell them I am ill and I keep to my chamber. Elizabeth I turn away at the door and tell her that I need to sleep. I don’t need sleep, I need to understand. I hold my head in my hands and walk up and down the room barefoot, so that they don’t hear that I am pacing, racking my brains. I am alone in a world of master conspirators. The Duke of Buckingham and Lady Margaret are working together, or perhaps they are working for themselves. They are pretending to serve me, to be allies, or perhaps they are loyal and I am wrong to mistrust them. My mind goes round and round and I pull the hair at my temples as if the pain could make me think.

I have ill-wished Richard, the tyrant, but his death can wait. He imprisoned my boys, but it is not he who is spreading the rumor that they are dead. He was holding them in prison against their will, against my will; but he was not preparing the people for their deaths. He has taken the throne and he has taken the title Prince of Wales by lies and deception. He does not need to kill them to get his own way. He is triumphant already, without murdering my son. He got all he wanted without blood on his hands, so there is no need for him to kill Edward now. Richard is safe on the throne, the council has accepted him, the lords have accepted him, he is on a royal progress in a country that greets him with joy. There is a rebellion in the making, of my making; but he thinks Howard has put it down. As far as he knows he is safe. He need only keep my boys imprisoned until I am ready to accept my defeat, as Elizabeth urges me to do.

But the Duke of Buckingham has a claim to inherit the throne that would follow that of Richard’s line-but only if my sons were dead. His claim is no good unless my sons are dead. If Richard’s sickly son were to die and Richard were to fall in battle and Buckingham were leading the victorious rebellion, then Buckingham could take the crown. Nobody would deny that he is the next heir-especially if everyone knew that my sons were already dead. Then Buckingham would do just as my Edward did when he claimed the crown; but there was a rival claimant in the Tower. When my Edward entered London at the head of a victorious army, he went straightaway with his two brothers into the Tower of London, where the true king was prisoner and they killed him, though Henry had no more strength than an innocent boy. When the Duke of Buckingham defeats Richard, he will march into London and into the Tower saying he will have the truth about my boys. Then there will be a pause, long enough for people to remember the rumors and start to fear, and Buckingham will come out, tragic-faced, and say that he has found my boys dead, buried under a paving stone, or hidden in a cupboard, murdered by their wicked uncle Richard. This is the truth of the rumor that he himself started. He will say that, since they are dead, he will take the throne and there will be nobody left alive to deny him.

And Buckingham is Constable of England. He has the keys to the Tower in his hands right now.

I nibble my finger and pause at the window. So much for Buckingham. Now let me consider my great friend Lady Margaret Stanley and her son Henry Tudor. They are the heirs of the House of Lancaster; she might think it time England turned to Lancaster again. She has to ally with Buckingham and with my followers; the Tudor boy cannot bring in enough foreign recruits to defeat Richard on his own. He has lived his life in exile: this is his chance to come back to England and come back as king. She would be a fool to take such a risk as rebelling against Richard for anything less than the throne. Her new husband is an essential ally of Richard’s; they are well placed in this new court. She has negotiated her son’s forgiveness and safe return to England with Richard. She has been allowed to hand her lands over to her son, as his inheritance. Would she throw all this into jeopardy for the pleasure of putting my son on the throne to oblige me? Why would she? Why ever would she take such a risk? Is she not more likely to be working for her own son to claim the throne? She and Buckingham together are preparing the country to learn that my sons are dead, at Richard’s hand.

Would Henry Tudor be hard enough of heart to march into the Tower declaring he is bent on rescue, strangle two boys, and come out with the dreadful news that the princes, for whom he was bravely fighting, are dead? Could he and his great friend and ally Buckingham divide up the kingdom together: Henry Tudor taking his fiefdom of Wales, Buckingham taking the north? Or if Buckingham was dead in battle, would Henry not be the uncontested heir to the throne? Would his mother send her servants into the Tower, not to save my boy, but to suffocate him as he sleeps? Could she bear to do that, saintly woman as she is? Would she countenance anything for her son, even the death of mine? I don’t know. I can’t know. All I can know for certain is that the duke and Lady Margaret are spreading the word, even while they are marching out to fight for the princes, that they believe the princes are already dead, and her ally lets slip that the two boys are killed in bed. The only man not preparing the world to mourn their deaths, the only man who does not benefit from their deaths, is the one whom I thought was my mortal enemy: Richard of Gloucester.

It takes me all day to measure my danger, and even at dinnertime I cannot be sure of anything. The lives of my sons may depend on who I sense as my enemy and who I trust as my friend and yet I cannot be certain. My suggestion-that my son Richard at least is safe and away from the Tower-should give any murderer pause; I hope I have bought some time.

In the afternoon I write to my brothers as they are raising men in the southern counties of England, to warn them of this plot that may be hatching like a snake in its egg inside our plot. I say that our enemy Richard is still our enemy; but his ill-will may be nothing to the danger posed by our allies. I send out messengers, uncertain if they will ever reach my brothers, or reach them in time. But I say clearly:

I believe now that the safety of my sons, of myself, depends on the Duke of Buckingham and his ally Henry Tudor not reaching London. Richard is our enemy and a usurper, but I believe if Buckingham and Tudor march into London in victory they will come as our killers.You must stop Buckingham’s march. Whatever you do, you must get to the Tower ahead of him and ahead of Henry Tudor and save our boy.

That night I stand at the window over the river and listen. Elizabeth opens the door of the bedroom where the girls sleep and comes to stand behind me, her young face grave.

“What is the matter now, Mother?” she says. “Please tell me. You have been locked up all day. Have you had bad news?”

“Yes,” I say. “Tell me, have you heard the river singing, like it did on the night that my brother Anthony and my son Richard Grey died?”

Her eyes slide away from mine.

“Elizabeth?”

“Not like that night,” she qualifies.

“But you hear something?”

“Very faintly,” she says, “a very soft, low singing like a lullaby, like a lament. Do you hear nothing?”

I shake my head. “No, but I am filled with fear for Edward.”

She comes and puts her hand on mine. “Is there new danger for my poor brother, even now?”

“I think so. I think that the Duke of Buckingham will turn on us if he wins this battle against the false King Richard. I have written to your uncles, but I don’t know if they can stop him. The Duke of Buckingham has a great army. He is marching along the River Severn in Wales and then he will come into England, and I don’t know what I can do. I don’t know what I can do from here to keep my son safe from him, to keep us all safe from him. We have to keep him from London. If I could trap him in Wales, I would.”

She looks thoughtful and goes to the window. The damp air from the river breathes into the stuffy rooms. “I wish it would rain,” she says idly. “It’s so hot. I so wish it would rain.”

A cool breeze whispers into the room as if to answer her wish, and then the pit, pat, pit of raindrops on the leaded panes of the open window. Elizabeth swings open the window wider so that she can see the sky and the dark clouds blowing down the river valley.

I go to stand beside her. I can see the rain falling on the dark water of the river, fat drops of rain that make the first few circles, like the bubbles from a fish, and then more and more, until the silky surface of the river is pitted with falling raindrops and then the storm comes down so hard that we can see nothing but a whirl of falling water as if the very heavens are opening on England. We laugh and pull the window shut against the storm, our faces and arms running with water before we get the clasp bolted, and then we go to the other rooms, closing the windows and barring the shutters against the weather that is pouring down outside, as if all my grief and worry were a storm of tears over England.

“This rain will bring a flood,” I predict, and my daughter nods in silence.

It rains all night. Elizabeth sleeps in my bed as she used to do when she was a child, and we lie in the warm and dry, and listen to the pattering of the drops. We can hear the constant wash against the windows and the splashing on the river. Then the gutters start to fill and the water from the roofs runs with a sound like fountains playing, and we fall asleep, like two water goddesses to the sound of driving rain and rising water.

When we wake in the morning it is almost as dark as night, and it is still raining. It is high tide, and Elizabeth goes down to the water gate and says the water is rising over the steps. All the craft on the river are battened down for bad weather, and the few wherries that are plying for trade are rowed by men hunched against the wind with sacks over their heads, shiny with the wet. The girls spend the morning up at the windows watching the soaked boats go by. They are riding higher than usual as the river fills and starts to flood, and then the little boats are all taken in and moored or hauled up as the river goes into spate and the currents are too strong. We light a fire against the stormy day; it is as dark and wet as November, and I play cards with the girls and let them win. How I love the sound of this rain.

Elizabeth and I sleep in each other’s arms, listening to the water pouring off the roof of the abbey and cascading onto the pavements. In the early hours of the morning I start to hear the dripping sound of rain leaking through the slate roof, and I get up to start the fire again and put a pot under the drips. Elizabeth opens the shutter and says that it is raining as hard as ever; it looks like it might rain all day.

The girls play at Noah’s Ark and Elizabeth reads them the story from the Bible, and then they prepare a pageant with their toys and roughly stuffed cushions serving as pairs of animals. The ark is my table upturned with sheets tied from leg to leg. I let them eat their dinner inside the ark and reassure them before bedtime that the great Flood for Noah happened a long long time ago and God would not send another, not even to punish wickedness. This rain will do nothing but keep bad men in their houses, where they can do no harm. A flood will keep all the wicked men away from London, and we shall be safe.

Elizabeth looks at me with a little smile, and after the girls have gone to bed she takes a candle and goes down through the catacombs to look at the level of the river water.

It is running higher than it has ever done before, she says. She thinks it will flood the corridor to the steps, a rise of several feet. If it does not stop raining soon, it will come even higher. We are not at risk-it is two flights of stone stairs down to the river-but the poor people who live on the riverbanks will be packing up their few things and abandoning their homes to the water.

The next morning Jemma comes in to us with her dress hitched up, muddy to the knees. The streets are flooding in the low-lying areas and there are stories of houses being swept away and, upriver, bridges being destroyed, and villages being cut off. Nobody has ever seen such rain in September and it still does not stop. Jemma says that there are no fresh foods in the market as many of the roads are washed away and the farmers cannot bring in their goods. Bread is more expensive for lack of flour, and some bakers cannot get their ovens to light, for all they have is wet firewood. Jemma says she will stay the night with us-she is afraid to leave through the flooded streets.

In the morning it is still raining and the girls, at the window again, report strange sights. A drowned cow frightens Bridget as it floats by beneath the window; an overturned cart has been swept into the waters. Timbers from some building go by rolling over and over in the flood, and we hear the thud as something heavy hits the water-gate steps. The water gate is a gate only to water this morning; the corridor is flooded and we can see only the very top of the ironwork and a glimpse of daylight. The river must be up by nearly ten feet, and high tide will pour water into the catacombs and wash the sleeping dead.

I don’t look for a messenger from my brothers. I don’t expect that anyone could get through from the West Country to London in this weather. But I don’t need to hear from them to know what is happening. The rivers are up against Buckingham, the tide is running against Henry Tudor, the rain is pouring down on their armies, the waters of England have risen up to protect their prince.