The White Queen

NOVEMBER 1483

It is dark, almost eleven o’clock. I am on my knees, praying at the foot of my bed before I sleep, when I hear a light knock on the great outside door. At once my heart leaps, at once I think of my son Edward, of my son Richard, at once I think they are come home to me. I scramble to my feet, throw a cape over my nightgown, pull the hood over my hair, and run to the door.

I can hear the streets are quiet now, though all day they have been buzzing with the return of King Richard to London, and there has been endless talk of what revenge he will take on the rebels, whether he will break sanctuary and come against me, now he has proof that I raised the country against him. He knows this, and he knows the allies that I chose: Lady Margaret and the false Duke of Buckingham.

No one can tell me if my kinsmen are safe, captured, or dead: my three beloved brothers and my Grey son Thomas, who were riding with the rebels in Hampshire and Kent. I hear every sort of rumor: that they are run away to join Henry Tudor in Brittany, that they are dead in a field, that they are executed by Richard, that they have turned their coats and joined him. I have to wait, as does everyone in the country, for reliable news.

The rains have washed away roads, destroyed bridges, cut off whole towns. News comes into London in excitable bursts, and nobody can be sure what is true. But the storm has blown itself out; the rain has stopped now. When the rivers go back into their banks, I will have news of my family and their battles. I pray that they have got far away from England. In the case of defeat, the plan was to go to Edward’s sister Margaret in Burgundy, find my son Richard in his hiding place, and continue the war from overseas. King Richard will grip the country with the power of a tyrant now, I am sure.

There is a repeated tap on the door and someone rattles the latch. This is no frightened runaway, not my boy. I go to the great wooden portal and slide back the porter’s grille and look out. It is a man, as tall as me, his hood pulled forward to hide his face.

“Yes?” I say shortly.

“I need to see the dowager queen,” he whispers. “A message of great importance.”

“I am the dowager queen,” I say. “Tell me your message.”

He glances from right to left. “Sister, let me in,” he says.

Not for a moment do I think it is one of my brothers. “I am no sister of yours. Who do you think you are?”

He pushes back the hood and lifts the torch that he carries so I can see his handsome dark face. Not my brother, but my brother-in-law, my enemy, Richard. “I think I am the king,” he says with wry humor.

“Well, I don’t,” I say without a smile; but it makes him laugh.

“Have done,” he advises me. “It’s over. I am ordained and crowned, and your rebellion has been utterly defeated. I am king, whatever your wishes. I am alone, and unarmed. Let me in, sister Elizabeth, for all our sakes.”

Despite all that has been, I do just that. I slide the bolts on the little lantern door and open it and he slips in. I bolt it behind him. “What d’you want?” I ask. “I have a serving man in earshot. There is blood between you and me, Richard. You killed my brother and you killed my son. I will never forgive you for it. I have laid my curse on you for it.”

“I don’t expect your forgiveness,” he says. “I don’t even want it. You know how far your plots went against me. You would have killed me, if you had the chance. It was war between us. You know as well as I. And you have had your revenge. You know and I know what pains you have given me. You have put an enchantment on me, and my chest aches and my arm fails me without warning. My sword arm,” he reminds me. “What could be worse for me? You have cursed my sword arm. You had better pray that you never need my defense.”

I look at him closely. He is only thirty-one now, but the shadows under his eyes and the lines in his face are those of an older man. He looks haunted. I imagine he fears his arm failing him in battle. He has worked hard all his life to be as strong as his taller, thicker-muscled brothers. Now something is eating away at his power. I shrug. “If you are ill, you should see a physician. You are like a child, blaming your own weakness on magic. Perhaps you imagine it all.”

He shakes his head. “I didn’t come to complain. I came for something else.” He pauses, looks at me. He has that frank York look; he has my husband’s straight gaze. “Tell me, do you have your son Edward safe?” he asks me.

I can feel my heart thud with pain. “Why do you ask? You, of all people? You who took him?”

“Will you just answer? Do you have Edward and Richard safe?”

“No,” I say. I could wail like a heartbroken mother, but not in front of this man. “Why? Why d’you ask?”

He gives a sigh and slumps down in the porter’s chair, drops his head into his hands.

“You don’t have them in the Tower?” I ask him. “My boys? You don’t have them locked up?”

He shakes his head.

“You have lost them? You have lost my sons?”

Silent still, he nods. “I was praying that you had smuggled them out,” he says. “In the name of God, tell me! If you have done so, I will not hunt them, I will not harm them. You can choose a relic for me to swear on. I will swear to leave them wherever you have sent them. I won’t even ask where. Just tell me that you have them safe, so I know, I have to know. It is driving me mad not to know.”

Wordlessly, I shake my head.

He rubs his face, his eyes, as if they are gritty with lack of sleep. “I came straight to the Tower,” he says, speaking through his fingers. “The minute I returned to London. I was afraid. Everyone in England is saying they are dead. Lady Margaret Beaufort’s people have told everyone that the princes are dead. The Duke of Buckingham turned your army into his own, fighting to win the throne for him, by telling them that the princes were dead at my hand, and that they should have their revenge on me. He told them that he would lead them to avenge the princes’ deaths.”

“You didn’t kill them?”

“I did not,” he says. “Why should I? Think! Think it through. Why should I kill them? Why now? When your men attacked the Tower, I had them kept closer inside. They were watched night and day-I could not have killed them then, even if I had wanted to. They had guards all the time, one of them would have known, and they would tell. I have made them bastards and dishonored you. Your sons are no more threat to me than your brothers-beaten men.”

“You killed my brother Anthony,” I spit at him.

“He was a threat to me,” Richard replies. “Anthony could have raised an army and knew how to command men. He was a better soldier than me. Your sons are not. Your daughters are not. They don’t threaten me. I don’t threaten them. I don’t kill them.”

“Then where are they?” I wail. “Where is my boy Edward?”

“I don’t even know if they are dead or alive,” he says miserably. “Nor who ordered their death or capture. I thought you might have smuggled them out. That’s why I came here. If not you-then who? Did you authorize anyone to take them? Could anyone have them without your knowledge? Holding them as hostage?”

I shake my head, I cannot think. It is the gravest question I will ever face in my life, and I am stupid with grief. “I can’t think,” I say desperately.

“Try,” he says. “You know who your allies are. Your secret friends. My hidden enemies. You know what they might do. You know what they promised you, what you plotted with them. Think.”

I put my hands to my head, and I walk a few steps up and down. Perhaps Richard is lying to me, and he has killed Edward and the poor little page boy, and is here to throw the blame on others. But against that-as he says-he has no reason to do so, and also, why should he not admit it, and brazen it out? Who would even complain now that he has put down the rebellion against him? Why come here to me? When my husband murdered King Henry, he had his body shown to the people. He gave him a fine funeral. The whole point of killing him was to tell the world that the line was ended. If Richard had killed my sons to end Edward’s line, he would have announced it, now as he returned to London in victory, and given me the bodies to bury. He could say they had fallen ill. Better yet, he could say that Buckingham killed them. He could throw the blame on Buckingham, and he could give them a royal funeral and no one could do anything but mourn them.

So perhaps the Duke of Buckingham had them killed, the truth behind his rumor of their deaths? With the two boys gone, he was two steps nearer to the throne. Or would Lady Margaret have them killed, to clear the way for her son Henry Tudor? Both Tudor and Buckingham are the greatest beneficiaries from the deaths of my sons. They become the next heirs if my boys are dead. Could Lady Margaret have ordered the deaths of my sons, while claiming to be my friend? Could she have squared her holy conscience to do such a thing? Could Buckingham have killed his own nephews while swearing to set them free?

“You have searched for their bodies?” I ask, my voice very low.

“I have turned the Tower upside down, and had their servants questioned. They say that they put them to bed one night. In the morning they were gone.”

“They are your servants!” I burst out. “They follow your commands. My sons have died while in your keeping. Do you expect me to really believe you had no hand in their deaths? Do you expect me to believe they have vanished?”

He nods. “I want you to believe that they died or they were taken, without my order, without my knowledge, and without my consent, while I was far away preparing to fight. To fight your brothers, actually. One night.”

“Which night?” I ask.

“The night that it started to rain.”

I nod, thinking of the soft voice that sang a lullaby to Elizabeth, so quiet that I could not even hear it. “Oh, that night.”

He hesitates. “Do you believe me, that I am innocent of their deaths?”

I face him, the man that my husband loved: his brother. The man who fought beside my husband for my family and my sons. The man who killed my brother and my Grey son. The man who may have killed my royal son Edward. “No,” I say coldly. “I don’t believe you. I don’t trust you. But I am not certain. I am horribly uncertain of everything.”

He nods, as if to accept an unjust judgment. “It’s like that for me,” he remarks, almost as an aside. “I don’t know anything, I don’t trust anyone. We have killed certainty in these cousins’ wars and all that is left is mistrust.”

“So what will you do?” I ask.

“I’ll do nothing, and say nothing,” he decides, his voice is bleak and weary. “No one will dare to ask me directly, though they will all suspect me. I shall say nothing and let people think what they will. I don’t know what has happened to your boys, but nobody will ever believe that. If I had them alive, I would produce them and prove my innocence. If I found their bodies, I would show them and blame it on Buckingham. But I don’t have them, alive or dead, and so I cannot defend myself. Everyone will think that I have killed two boys in my care, in cold blood, for no good reason. They will call me a monster.” He pauses. “Whatever else I do in my life, this will cast a crooked shadow. All that everyone will ever remember of me is this crime.” He shakes his head. “And I didn’t do it, and I don’t know who did it, and I don’t even know if it was done.”

He pauses. “What will you do?” he asks as it occurs to him.

“I?”

“You were here in sanctuary so that your girls should be safe when you believed that their brothers were in danger from me,” he reminds me. “That worst thing has now happened. Their brothers are now gone: What will you do with your girls, with yourself? There is no point in staying in sanctuary now-you are no longer the royal family with an heir who might make a claim. You are the mother of nothing but girls.”

As he says this, the loss of Edward suddenly hits me, and I give a moan, and take the pain in my belly, like the pangs of his birth all over again. I drop to my knees on the stone floor and I bend over my pain. I can hear myself groaning, and I can feel myself rocking.

He does not rush to comfort me, or even to raise me up. He stays seated in his chair, his dark head leaning on his hand, watching me as I keen like a peasant woman over the death of her firstborn son. He says nothing to deny my grief nor staunch it. He lets me cry. He sits beside me for a long long time and he lets me cry.

After a while, I take the hem of my cloak and I rub my wet face and then I sit back on my heels and look at him.

“I am sorry for your loss,” he says formally, as if I were not kneeling on a stone floor with my hair falling down and my face wet with tears. “It was not of my ordering, nor of my doing. I took the throne without harming either one of them. I would not have harmed them after. They were Edward’s sons. I loved them for him. And God knows, I loved him.”

“I know that, at any rate,” I say, as formal as he.

He gets to his feet. “Will you leave sanctuary now?” he asks. “You have nothing to gain by staying here.”

“I have nothing,” I agree with him. “Nothing.”

“I will make an agreement between you and me,” he says. “I will promise the safety and good treatment of your girls if you come out. The older ones can come to court. I shall treat them as my nieces, honorably. You can come with them. I shall see them married to good men, with your approval.”

“I shall go home,” I say. “And take them with me.”

He shakes his head. “I am sorry, I can’t allow that. I will have your girls at court, and you can live at Heytesbury in the care of Sir John Nesfield for a while. I am sorry, but I cannot trust you among your tenants and affinity.” He hesitates. “I cannot have you where you might raise men against me. I cannot allow you to be where you would find men to plot with. It is not that I am suspicious of you, you understand: it is that I cannot trust anybody. I never trust anybody, anywhere.”

There is a footstep behind him, and he whirls around and draws his dagger to hold before him, ready to strike. I scramble up and put my hand on his right arm and push it easily down: he is terribly weak. I remember the curse I have laid on him. “Put up,” I say. “It will be one of the girls.”

He steps back and Elizabeth comes out of the shadows to my side. She is in her nightgown with a cape thrown over it and her hair in a plait under her nightcap. She is as tall as me now. She stands beside me and regards her uncle gravely. “Your Grace,” she says, with the smallest of curtseys.

He hardly bows to her; he is staring at her in amazement. “You are grown, Elizabeth,” he hesitates. “You are the Princess Elizabeth? I would hardly have known you. I last saw you when you were a girl and here you are…you.”

I glance at her, and to my amazement I see that the color is rising in her cheeks. She is blushing under his bewildered look. She puts her hand to her hair, as if she wishes she were dressed and not barefoot like a child.

“Go to your room,” I say abruptly to her.

She curtseys and turns, obedient at once, but she pauses at the door. “Is it about Edward?” she asks. “Is my brother safe?”

Richard looks to me to see if she can be told the truth. I turn to her. “Go to your room. I will tell you later.”

Richard rises to his feet. “Princess Elizabeth,” he says quietly.

Again she stops, though she has been told to leave, and she turns to him. “Yes, Your Grace?”

“I am sorry to tell you that your brothers are missing, but I want you to know that it is no fault of mine. They are gone from their rooms in the Tower and nobody can tell me if they are alive or dead. I came here to your mother tonight in case she had smuggled them away.”

The quick glance she throws towards me would tell him nothing. I know she is thinking that at least our boy Richard is safely away in Flanders, but she is expressionless.

“My brothers are missing?” she repeats, wonderingly.

“They are likely dead,” I say, pain making my voice harsh.

“You don’t know where they are?” she asks the king.

“I wish to God that I did,” he says. “Without knowing where they are or if they are safe, everyone will think they are dead and blame me.”

“They were in your keeping,” I remind him. “And why would anyone take them as hostages without telling? At the very least, you have let my boy die while you were fighting to keep the throne which was his by right.”

He nods as if to accept that much of the blame and turns to go. Elizabeth and I watch in silence as he unbolts the door.

“I won’t forgive this wrong done to me and my house,” I warn him. “Whoever it was that killed my boys, I shall put a curse on their house that they will have no firstborn son to inherit. Whoever took my son will lose his son. He will spend his life longing for an heir. He will bury his firstborn and long for him, for I cannot even bury mine.”

He shrugs his shoulders. “Curse him, whoever did it,” he says indifferently. “Blight his house. For he has cost me my reputation and my peace.”

“We two will curse him,” Elizabeth says, standing beside me, her arm around my waist. “He will pay for taking our boy. He will regret this loss that he has dealt to us. He will be sorry for this terrible cruelty. He will suffer remorse. Even if we never know who did this.”

“Oh, but we will know him,” I chime in like a coven’s chorus. “We will know him by the death of his children. When his son and heir dies, we shall know him then. We shall know that the curse we lay on him now is working, all down the years, generation after generation, until his line dies out. When he puts his own son in the grave, it will be our curse that buries him. And then we shall know who it was who took our boy, and he will know that our curse has taken from him what he took from us. When he has only girls to inherit, we will know him then.”

He steps through the doorway and looks back at the two of us, a wry smile twisting his mouth. “Do you not know yet that there is only one thing worse than not getting your wish?” he asks. “As I have done? I wished to be king and now I am king and it has brought me no joy at all. Elizabeth, has your mother not warned you to take care what you wish for?”

“She has warned me,” she says steadily. “And since you took my father’s throne, and took my uncle and my beloved brothers, I have learned to wish for nothing.”

“Then she would do well to warn you against the working of your curse.” He turns to me with a bitter smile. “D’you not remember the wind that you whistled up to destroy Warwick, which blew him away from Calais so his daughter lost her baby at sea? That was a weapon for us that no one else could have summoned. But d’you not remember that the storm went on too long and nearly drowned your husband and all of us that were with him?”

I nod.

“Your curses last too long and strike at the wrong people,” he says. “Maybe one day you will wish that my right arm was strong enough to defend you. Maybe one day you will regret the death of someone’s son and heir, even if they were guilty, even if your curse runs true.”

The revenge of Richard the king falls heavily on the lords and leaders of the rebellion; he forgives the lesser men for having been misled. He discovers that Margaret Beaufort, the wife of his ally, Lord Stanley, was the mistress of the plot and the go-between for her son and the Duke of Buckingham, and he banishes her to her husband’s house and orders her to be kept close. Her allies-Bishop Morton and Dr. Lewis-escape out of the country. My son Thomas Grey has got clean away and is at the court of Henry Tudor in Brittany. It is a court of young men, hopeful rebels, filled with ambition and desire.

King Richard complains of my son Thomas Grey as a rebel and an adulterer, as if treason and love were both alike crimes. He charges him with treason and puts a price on his head. Thomas writes to me from Brittany and tells me that, if Henry Tudor could have landed, the rebellion would have gone our way for sure. Their fleet was scattered by the storm that Elizabeth and I called down on Buckingham’s head. The young man who said he was coming to save us was nearly drowned. Thomas has no doubt that Henry Tudor can raise an army great enough to defeat even a York prince. He tells me that Henry will come again to England, as soon as the winter storms have died down, and that this time he will win.

And put himself on the throne, I write to my son. There is no longer any pretense that he is fighting for the inheritance of my boys.

My son replies: “No, Henry Tudor fights for nobody but himself, and probably always did and always will. But the prince, as he calls himself, will bring the crown to the House of York, for he will marry Elizabeth, and make her Queen of England, and their son will be King of England.

“Your son should have been King of England,” Thomas writes. “But your daughter still could be queen. Am I to tell Henry that Elizabeth will marry him if he defeats Richard? It would bring all of our kinship and affinity to his side, and I cannot see what future you and my half sisters have while the usurper Richard is on the throne, and while you are hiding in sanctuary.

I write back:

Tell him, I am still as good as the word that I gave to his mother, Lady Margaret. Elizabeth will be his wife when he defeats Richard and takes the throne of England. Let York and Lancaster be as one and let the wars be over.

I pause, and add a note.

Ask him if his mother knows what happened to my boy Edward.