The White Queen

SEPTEMBER 1464

He sends me a letter. He addresses me as Lady Elizabeth Grey and inside he writes “my love” he does not say “wife,” so he gives me nothing that can prove our marriage if he should deny it. He writes that he is busy but will send for me shortly. The court is at Reading, he will speak to Lord Warwick soon. The council is meeting, there is so much to do. The lost king, Henry, has still not been captured; he is out somewhere in the hills of Northumberland; but the queen has fled to her homeland of France demanding help, so an alliance with France is more important than ever before, to cut her out of the French councils, and make sure she cannot have allies. He does not remark that a French marriage would do this for him. He says he loves me, he burns up for me. Lover’s words, lover’s promises: nothing binding.

The same messenger brings a summons for my father to attend the court at Reading. It is a standard letter, every nobleman in the country will have had the same. My brothers Anthony, John, Richard, Edward, and Lionel are to go with him. “Write and tell me everything about it,” my mother commands my father as we watch them mount up. They make a little army themselves, my mother’s fine brood of sons.

“He will be calling us to announce his wedding to the French princess,” my father grumbles, bending over to tighten his girth under the saddle flap. “And much good an alliance with the French will do us. Much good it has ever done us before. Still, it will have to be done if Margaret of Anjou is to be silenced. And a French bride would welcome you at her court, a kinswoman.”

My mother does not even blink at the prospect of Edward’s French bride. “Write and tell me at once,” she says. “And God go with you, my husband, and keep you safe.”

He leans down from the saddle to kiss her hand and then turns his horse’s head down the road to the south. My brothers twirl their whips, raise their hats, bellow a farewell. My sisters wave, my sister-in-law Elizabeth curtseys to Anthony, who raises his hand to her, my mother, and to me. His face is grim.

But it is Anthony who writes to me two days later, and it is his manservant who rides like a madman to bring me his letter.

Sister, This is your triumph, and I am glad to my heart for you. There has been an earthshaking quarrel between the king and Lord Warwick, for my lord brought a marriage contract to the king for him to marry Princess Bona of Savoy, as everyone was expecting. The king, with the contract before him and the pen in his hand, raised his head and told his lordship that he could not marry the Princess for-actually-he was already married.You could have heard a feather fall; you could hear the angels gasp. I swear I heard Lord Warwick’s very heart pound as he asked the king to repeat what he had said. The king was white as a girl but he faced Lord Warwick (which I would not want to do myself) and told him that all his plans and all his promises were as nothing. His lordship took the king by the arm as if he were a boy and hustled him from the room into a privy chamber, leaving the rest of us boiling with gossip and amazement like neeps seething in a stew. I took the chance to pin our father into the corner and tell him that I thought the king might announce his marriage to you, so as to prevent us looking as great fools as Lord W-but even in that moment I confess to you that I feared that the king might be admitting marriage to another lady. There has been another lady mentioned of noble birth, better than ours, actually, and she has his son. Forgive me, Sister, but you don’t know how bad his reputation has been. So Father and I were like hares in March, jumping at nothing, while the privy chamber door stayed shut and the king was locked away with the man who made him and who-God knows-might just as quickly unmake him again. Of course Lionel wanted to know what we were whispering about, and John too. Thank God, Edward and Richard had gone out, so there were only two extra to tell; but they couldn’t believe it any more than Father, and I had much to do to keep the three of them quiet. You can imagine what it was like. An hour must have passed but no one could bear to leave the council chamber until they had the end of this story. Sister, they were pissing in the fireplaces rather than leave the great hall-and then the door opened and the king came out looking shaken and Lord Warwick came out looking grim and the king put on his happiest smile and said, “Well, my lords, I thank you for your patience. I am happy and proud to tell you that I am married to Lady Elizabeth Grey,” and he nodded towards my father and I swear he shot me a look which begged me to keep Father quiet, so I got hold of the old man’s shoulder and leaned hard to keep him anchored to the ground. Edward got the other side of him as ballast, and Lionel crossed himself like he was an archbishop already. Father and I bowed proudly and simpered about ourselves, as if we had known all along and only failed to mention that we were now brother and father-in-law to the King of England from sheer delicacy. John and Richard stumbled in at this most inconvenient moment and we had to mutter to them that the world was turned upside down and they did better than you can imagine. They managed to close their mouths and stood beside Father and me, and people took our dumbstruck faces for quiet pride. We were a quartet of idiots trying to look suave. You cannot imagine the bluster and the shouting and the complaints and the trouble which followed. Nobody in my hearing dared to suggest that the king had stooped too low, but I know that behind me and on either side there were men who think so, and will go on thinking so. Still, the king kept his fair head high and brazened it out, and Father and I went and stood on either side of him, and all my brothers stood behind us, and no one can deny that we are a handsome family, or at the very least tall, and the thing is done, nobody can now deny it. You can tell Mother that her great gamble has paid a thousandfold: you will be Queen of England and we will be England’s ruling family, even if no one in England wants us. Father kept his mouth shut till we were clear of the court but I swear his eyes were rolling in his head like Idiot Jim at Stony Stratford, till we got to our lodgings and I could tell him what had been done and how it had been done-at least as far as I knew-and now he is aggrieved that nobody told him, since he would have managed it so well and been so discreet-but given that he is father-in-law to the King of England I think he will forgive you and Mother for keeping your women’s toils to your- selves. Your brothers went out and got drunk on credit, as anyone would do. Lionel swears he will be pope. Your new husband is clearly stunned by the row that has broken on his head, and he will find it hard to reconcile with his former master Lord Warwick, who is dining apart tonight and could make a dangerous enemy. We are to dine with the king and his interests are ours. The world has changed for us Riverses, and we are become so great that I confidently expect us to flow up hills. We are now passionate Yorkists and you can expect Father to plant white roses in his hedgerows and wear a bloom in his hat. You can tell Mother that whatever magic she deployed to bring this about has the stunned admiration of her husband and sons. If the magic was nothing more than your beauty, we admire that too. You are now summoned to be presented at court, here at Reading. The king’s order will be sent tomorrow. Sister, be warned by me and please come dressed modestly and with only a small escort. It will not avert envy but we should try not to make matters worse than they already are. We have made enemies of every family in the kingdom. Families that we do not even know will be cursing our luck and wishing us to fall. Ambitious fathers with pretty daughters will never forgive you. We will have to be on our guard for the rest of our lives. You have put us into great opportunity but also great risk, my sister. I am brother-in-law to the King of England, but I must say tonight my greatest hope is to die in my bed, at peace with the world, as an old man. Your brother,

Anthony But I think, in the meantime, before my peaceful death, I shall ask him to make me a duke.

My mother plans our journey to Reading and the summoning of our family as if she were a queen militant. Every relation that would benefit from our rise or might contribute to our position is commanded from every corner of England, and even our Burgundy family-her kinsmen-are invited to come to London for my coronation. She says that they will give me the royal and noble status that we need, and besides, in the state the world is in, it is always wise to have powerful relatives for support or refuge.

She starts to draw up a list of eligible lords and ladies for my brothers and sisters to marry; she starts to consider noble children who will be made wards and can be raised in a royal nursery to our profit. She understands, and she starts to teach me, how the patronage and power of the English court works. She knows it well enough. She was married into the royal family with her first husband, the Duke of Bedford. Then she was second lady in the kingdom under the Lancaster queen; now she will be second lady under the York queen: me. No one knows better than she how to plow the furrow that is royal England.

She sends a string of instructions to Anthony to order tailors and sempstresses so that I shall have new dresses waiting for me, but she takes his advice that we should enter into our greatness quietly, and without any sign of glorying in this leap from being of the defeated House of Lancaster to being new partners of the victorious House of York. My sisters, cousins, and sister-in-law are to ride with us to Reading, but there is to be no great train with standards and trumpets. Father writes to her that there are many who begrudge us our prosperity, but the ones whom he fears above all are the king’s greatest friend Sir William Hastings, the king’s great ally Lord Warwick, and the king’s close family: his mother, sisters and brothers, as they have the most to lose from new favorites at court.

I remember Hastings looking at me as if I were roadside merchandise, a pedlar’s pack, the very first time that I met the king, and I promise myself that he will never look at me in that way again. Hastings, I think I can manage. He loves the king like no other, and he will accept any choice that Edward makes, and defend it too. But Lord Warwick frightens me. He is a man who will stop at nothing to get his own way. As a boy he saw his father rebel against his lawful king and set up a rival house in the name of York. When his father and Edward’s father were killed together, he at once continued his father’s work and saw Edward crowned king, a boy of only nineteen. Warwick is thirteen years his senior: an adult man compared with a boy. Clearly he has planned all along to put a boy on the throne and to rule from the shadows. Edward’s choice of me will be the first declaration of independence from his mentor, and Warwick will be quick to prevent any others. They call him the kingmaker and when we were Lancastrians we said that the Yorks were nothing but puppets and he and his family were the puppet masters. Now I am married to Warwick’s puppet, and I know that he will try to set me dancing to his tune as well. Still, there is no time to do anything but bid farewell to my boys, make them promise to obey their tutors and be good, mount the new horse that the king has sent me for the journey, and with my mother at my side and my sisters following behind me take the road to Reading and to the future that waits for me.

I say to my mother, “I am afraid.”

She brings her horse beside mine and she puts back the hood of her cape so that I can see the smiling confidence in her face. “Perhaps,” she says. “But I was at the court of Queen Margaret d’Anjou; I swear you cannot be a worse queen than her.”

Despite myself, I giggle. This comes from a woman who was Margaret of Anjou’s most trusted lady-in-waiting and the first lady of her court. “You have changed your tune.”

“Aye, for now I am in a different choir. But it is true nonetheless. You could not be a worse queen for this country than she was, God help her, wherever she is now.”

“Mother-she was married to a husband who was out of his wits for half of the time.”

“And whether he was saintly, sane, or raving mad, she always went her own way. She took a lover,” she says cheerfully, ignoring my scandalized gasp. “Of course she did. Where d’you think she got her son Edward? Not from the king, who was struck deaf and dumb nearly for the whole year that the child was conceived and born. I expect you to do better than her. You cannot doubt that you can do better than her. And Edward cannot help but do better than a sainted half-wit, God bless the poor man. And as for the rest, you should give your husband a son and heir, protect the poor and innocent, and further the hopes of your family. That is all you need to do, and you can do that. Any ninny with an honest heart, a scheming family, and an open purse can do that.”

“There will be many people who hate me,” I say. “Many who hate us.”

She nods. “Then make sure that you get the favors that you want and the places that you need before they take the ear of the king,” she says simply. “There are only so many great positions for your brothers; there are only a few noblemen for your sisters to marry. Make sure that you get everything you want in the first year, and then you have taken the high ground, and are in battle array. We are ready for whatever comes against us, and even if your influence declines with the king, then we are still safe.”

“My lord Warwick…” I say nervously.

She nods. “He is our enemy,” she says. It is the declaration of a blood feud. “You will watch him, and you will be wary of him. We will all be on our guard against him. Him and the king’s brothers: George, the Duke of Clarence, who is always so charming, and the boy Richard, the Duke of Gloucester. They too will be your enemies.”

“Why the king’s brothers?”

“Your sons will disinherit them. Your influence will turn the king from them. They have been three fatherless boys together; they have fought side by side for their family. He called them the three sons of York; he saw a sign for the three of them in the heavens. But now he will want to be with you, not with them. And the grants of lands and wealth that he might have given to them will come to you and yours. George was the heir after Edward, Richard the heir after him. As soon as you have a boy they drop one place.”

“I am going to be Queen of England,” I protest. “You make it sound like a battle to the death.”

“It is a battle to the death,” she says simply. “That is what it means to be Queen of England. You are not Melusina, rising from a fountain to easy happiness. You will not be a beautiful woman at court with nothing to do but make magic. The road you have chosen will mean that you have to spend your life scheming and fighting. Our task, as your family, is to make sure you win.”

In the darkness of the forest he saw her, and whispered her name, Melusina, and at that summoning she rose out of the water and he saw that she was a woman of cool and complete beauty to the waist, and below that she was scaled, like a fish. She promised him that she would come to him and be his wife, she promised him that she would make him as happy as a mortal woman can, she promised him that she would curb her wild side, her tidal nature, that she would be an ordinary wife to him, a wife that he could be proud of; if he in return would let her have a time when she could be herself again, when she could return to her element of water, when she could wash away the drudgery of a woman’s lot and be, for just a little while, a water goddess once more. She knew that being a mortal woman is hard on the heart, hard on the feet. She knew that she would need to be alone in the water, under the water, the ripples reflected on her scaly tail now and then. He promised her that he would give her everything, everything she wanted, as men in love always do. And she trusted him despite herself, as women in love always do.

My father and all my brothers ride out of Reading to greet us, so I might enter the town with my kinsmen at my side. There are crowds along the road and hundreds watching my father pull off his hat as he rides towards me, and then dismounts and kneels to me in the dust, honoring me as queen.

“Get up, Father!” I say alarmed.

He rises slowly and bows again. “You must become accustomed, Your Grace,” he says to me, his head bent to his knees.

I wait till he comes up smiling at me. “Father, I don’t like to see you bow to me.”

“You are Queen of England, now, Your Grace. Every man but one must bow to you.”

“But you will still call me Elizabeth, Father?”

“Only when we are alone.”

“And you will give me your blessing?”

His wide smile assures me that everything is the same as ever. “Daughter, we have to play at being kings and queens. You are the newest and most unlikely queen to a new and unlikely house. I never dreamed that you would capture a king. I certainly never thought that this lad would capture a throne. We are making a new world here; we are forming a new royal family. We have to be more royal than royalty itself or nobody will believe us. I can’t say I quite believe it myself.”

My brothers all jump down from their horses, doff their caps, and kneel to me on the public highway. I look down at Anthony who called me a whore and my husband a liar. “You can stay down there,” I say. “Who is right now?”

“You are,” he says cheerfully, rising up, kissing my hand, and remounting his horse. “I give you joy of your triumph.”

My brothers come around me and kiss my hand. I smile down at them; it is as if we are all about to burst out laughing at our own presumption. “Who’d have thought it?” John says wonderingly. “Who would ever have dreamed it?”

“Where is the king?” I ask as we start our small procession through the gates of the town. The streets are lined on either side with townspeople, guildsmen, apprentices, and there is a cheer for my beauty and laughter at our procession. I see Anthony flush when he hears a couple of bawdy jokes, and I put my hand on his gloved fist, clenched on the pommel of his saddle. “Hush,” I say. “People are bound to make mock. This was a secret wedding, we cannot deny it, and we will have to live down the scandal. And you don’t help me at all if you look offended.”

At once he assumes the most ghastly simper. “This is my court smile,” he says out of the corner of his upturned mouth. “I use it when I talk to Warwick or the royal dukes. How d’you like it?”

“Very elegant,” I say, trying not to laugh. “Dear God, Anthony, d’you think we will get through this all right?”

“We will get through it triumphantly,” he says. “But we must stick together.”

We turn up the high street and now there are hastily made banners and pictures of saints held from the overhanging windows to welcome me to the city. We ride to the abbey; and there, in the center of his court and advisors, I see him, Edward, dressed in cloth of gold with a scarlet cape and a scarlet hat on his head. He is unmistakable, the tallest man in the crowd, the most handsome, the undoubted King of England. He sees me, and our eyes meet, and it is once again as if no one else is there. I am so relieved to see him that I give him a little wave, like a girl, and instead of waiting for me to halt my horse and dismount and approach him up the carpet, he breaks away from them all and comes quickly to my side and lifts me off my horse and into his arms.

There is a roar of delighted applause from the onlookers and a shocked silence from the court at this passionate breach of protocol.

“Wife,” he says in my ear. “Dear God, I am so glad to have you in my arms.”

“Edward,” I say. “I have been so afraid!”

“We have won,” he says simply. “We will be together forever. I shall make you Queen of England.”

“And I shall make you happy,” I say, quoting the marriage vows. “I shall be bonny and blithe at bed and board.”

“I don’t care a damn about dinnertime,” he says vulgarly, and I hide my face against his shoulder and laugh.

I still have to meet his mother; and Edward takes me to her private chambers before dinner. She was not present during my welcome from the court, and I am right to read this as her first snub, the first of many. He leaves me at her door. “She wants to see you alone.”

“How do you think she will be?” I ask nervously.

He grins. “What can she do?”

“That is the very thing I would like to know before I go in to face her,” I say dryly, and walk past him as they throw open the doors to her presence chamber. My mother and three of my sisters come with me as a makeshift court, my newly declared ladies-in-waiting, and we step forward with all the eagerness of a coven of witches dragged to trial.

The dowager Duchess Cecily is seated on a great chair covered by a cloth of estate, and she does not trouble herself to rise to greet me. She is wearing a gown encrusted with jewels at the hem and the breast, and a large square headdress that she wears proudly, like a crown. Very well, I am her son’s wife but not yet an ordained queen. She is not obliged to curtsey to me, and she will think of me as a Lancastrian, one of her son’s enemies. The turn of her head and the coldness of her smile convey very clearly that to her I am a commoner, as if she herself had not been born an ordinary Englishwoman. Behind her chair are her daughters Anne, Elizabeth, and Margaret, dressed quietly and modestly so as not to outshine their mother. Margaret is a pretty girl: fair and tall like her brothers. She smiles shyly at me, her new sister-in-law, but nobody steps forward to kiss me, and the room is as warm as a lake in December.

I curtsey low, but not very low, to Duchess Cecily, out of respect to my husband’s mother, and behind me I see my mother sweep her grandest gesture and then stand still, her head up, a queen herself, in everything but a crown.

“I will not pretend that I am happy with this secret marriage,” the dowager duchess says rudely.

“Private,” my mother interrupts smartly.

The duchess checks, amazed, and raises her perfectly arched eyebrows. “I beg your pardon, Lady Rivers. Did you speak?”

“Neither my daughter nor your son would so far forget themselves as to marry in secret,” my mother says, her Burgundy accent suddenly revived. It is the very accent of elegance and high style for the whole of Europe. She could not remind everyone more clearly that she is the daughter of the Count of Saint-Pol, Burgundian royalty by birth. She was on first-name terms with the queen, whom she alone persists in calling Margaret d’Anjou, with much emphasis on the “d” of the title. She was the Duchess of Bedford by her first marriage to a duke of the royal blood, and the head of the Lancaster court when the woman seated so proudly before us was born nothing more than Lady Cecily Neville of Raby Castle. “Of course it was not a secret wedding. I was there and so were other witnesses. It was a private wedding.”

“Your daughter is a widow and years older than my son,” Her Grace says, joining battle.

“He is hardly an inexperienced boy. His reputation is notorious. And there are only five years between them.”

There is a gasp from the duchess’s ladies and a flutter of alarm from her daughters. Margaret looks at me with sympathy, as if to say there is no escaping the humiliation to come. My sisters and I are like standing stones, as if we were dancing witches under a sudden enchantment.

“And the good thing,” my mother says, warming to her theme, “is that we can at least be sure that they are both fertile. Your son has several bastards, I understand, and my daughter has two handsome legitimate boys.”

“My son comes from a fertile family. I had eight boys,” the dowager duchess says.

My mother inclines her head and the scarf on her headdress billows like a sail filled with the swollen breeze of her pride. “Oh, yes,” she remarks. “So you did. But of that eight, only three boys left, of course. So sad. As it happens, I have five sons. Five. And seven girls. Elizabeth comes from fertile royal stock. I think we can hope that God will bless the new royal family with issue.”

“Nonetheless, she was not my choice, nor the choice of the Lord Warwick,” Her Grace repeats, her voice trembling with anger. “It would mean nothing if Edward were not king. I might overlook it if he were a third or fourth son to throw himself away…”

“Perhaps you might. But it does not concern us. King Edward is the king. The king is the king. God knows, he has fought enough battles to prove his claim.”

“I could prevent him being king,” she rushes in, temper getting the better of her, her cheeks scarlet. “I could disown him, I could deny him, I could put George on the throne in his place. How would you like that-as the outcome of your so-called private wedding, Lady Rivers?”

The duchess’s ladies blanch and sway back in horror. Margaret, who adores her brother, whispers, “Mother!” but dares say no more. Edward has never been their mother’s favorite. Edmund, her beloved Edmund, died with his father at Wakefield, and the Lancastrian victors stuck their heads on the gates of York. George, his brother, younger again, and his mother’s darling, is the pet of the family. Richard, the youngest of all, is the dark-haired runt of the litter. It is incredible that she should talk of putting one son before another, out of order.

“How?” my mother says sharply, calling her bluff. “How would you overthrow your own son?”

“If he was not my husband’s child-”

“Mother!” Margaret wails.

“And how could that be?” demands my mother, as sweet as poison. “Would you call your own son a bastard? Would you name yourself a whore? Just for spite, just to throw us down, would you destroy your own reputation and put cuckold’s horns on your own dead husband? When they put his head on the gates of York, they put a paper crown on him to make mock. That would be nothing to putting cuckold’s horns on him now. Would you dishonor your own name? Would you shame your husband worse than his enemies did?”

There is a little scream from the women, and poor Margaret staggers as if to faint. My sisters and I are half fish, not girls; we just goggle at our mother and the king’s mother head to head, like a pair of slugging battle-axe men in the jousting ring, saying the unthinkable.

“There are many who would believe me,” the king’s mother threatens.

“More shame to you then,” my mother says roundly. “The rumors about his fathering reached England. Indeed, I was among the few who swore that a lady of your house would never stoop so low. But I heard, we all heard, gossip of an archer named-what was it-” She pretends to forget and taps her forehead. “Ah, I have it: Blaybourne. An archer named Blaybourne who was supposed to be your amour. But I said, and even Queen Margaret d’Anjou said, that a great lady like you would not so demean herself as to lie with a common archer and slip his bastard into a nobleman’s cradle.”

The name Blaybourne drops into the room with a thud like a cannonball. You can almost hear it roll to a standstill. My mother is afraid of nothing.

“And anyway, if you can make the lords throw down King Edward, who is going to support your new King George? Could you trust his brother Richard not to have his own try at the throne in his turn? Would your kinsman Lord Warwick, your great friend, not want the throne on his own account? And why should they not feud among themselves and make another generation of enemies, dividing the country, setting brother against brother again, destroying the very peace that your son has won for himself and for his house? Would you destroy everything for nothing but spite? We all know the House of York is mad with ambition; will we be able to watch you eat yourselves up like a frightened cat eats her own kittens?”

It is too much for her. The king’s mother puts out a hand to my mother, as if to beg her to stop. “No, no. Enough. Enough.”

“I speak as a friend,” my mother says quickly, as sinuous as a river eel. “And your thoughtless words against the king will go no further. My girls and I would not repeat such a scandal, such a treasonous scandal. We will forget that you ever said such a thing. I am only sorry that you even thought of it. I am amazed that you should say it.”

“Enough,” the king’s mother repeats. “I just wanted you to know that this ill-conceived marriage is not my choice. Though I see I must accept it. You show me that I must accept it. However much it galls me, however much it denigrates my son and my house, I must accept it.” She sighs. “I will think of it as my burden to bear.”

“It was the king’s choice, and we must all obey him,” my mother says, driving home her advantage. “King Edward has chosen his wife and she will be Queen of England and the greatest lady-bar none-in the land. And no one can doubt that my daughter will make the most beautiful queen that England has ever seen.”

The king’s mother, whose own beauty was famous in her day, when they called her the Rose of Raby, looks at me for the first time without pleasure. “I suppose so,” she says grudgingly.

I curtsey again. “Shall I call you Mother?” I ask cheerfully.

As soon as the ordeal of my welcome from Edward’s mother is over, I have to prepare for my presentation to the court. Anthony’s orders from the London dressmakers have been delivered in time, and I have a new gown to wear in the palest of gray, trimmed with pearls. It is cut low in the front, with a high girdle of pearls and long silky sleeves. I wear it with a conical high headdress that is draped with a scarf of gray. It is both gloriously rich and beguilingly modest, and when my mother comes to my room to see that I am dressed, she takes my hands and kisses me on both cheeks. “Beautiful,” she says. “Nobody could doubt that he married you for love at first sight. Troubadour love, God bless you both.”

“Are they waiting for me?” I ask nervously.

She nods her head to the chamber outside my bedroom door. “They are all out there: Lord Warwick and the Duke of Clarence and half a dozen others.”

I take a deep breath, and I put my hand to steady my headdress, and I nod to my maids-in-waiting to throw open the double doors, and I raise my head like a queen, and walk out of the room.

Lord Warwick, dressed in black, is standing at the fireside, a big man, in his late thirties, shoulders broad like a bully, stern face in profile as he is watching the flames. When he hears the door opening, he turns and sees me, scowls, and then pastes a smile on his face. “Your Grace,” he says, and bows low.

I curtsey to him but I see his smile does not warm his dark eyes. He was counting on Edward remaining under his control. He had promised the King of France that he could deliver Edward in marriage. Now everything has gone wrong for him, and people are asking if he is still the power behind this new throne, or if Edward will make his own decisions.

The Duke of Clarence, the king’s beloved brother George, is beside him looking like a true York prince, golden-haired, ready of smile, graceful even in repose, a handsome dainty copy of my husband. He is fair and well made, his bow is as elegant as an Italian dancer’s, and his smile is charming. “Your Grace,” he says. “My new sister. I give you joy of your surprise marriage and wish you well in your new estate.”

I give my hand and he draws me to him and kisses me warmly on both cheeks. “I do truly wish you much joy,” he says cheerfully. “My brother is a fortunate man indeed. And I am happy to call you my sister.”

I turn to the Earl of Warwick. “I know that my husband loves and trusts you as his brother and his friend,” I say. “It is an honor to meet you.”

“The honor is all mine,” he says curtly. “Are you ready?”

I glance behind me: my sisters and mother are lined up to follow me in procession. “We are ready,” I say, and with the Duke of Clarence on one side of me and the Earl of Warwick on the other, we march slowly to the abbey chapel through a crowd that parts as we come towards them.

My first impression is that everyone I have ever seen at court is here, dressed in their finest to honor me, and there are a few hundred new faces too, who have come in with the Yorks. The lords are in the front with their capes trimmed with ermine, the gentry behind them with chains of office and jewels on display. The aldermen and councillors of London have trooped down to be presented, the city fathers among them. The civic leaders of Reading are there, struggling to see and be seen around the big bonnets and the plumes, behind them the guildsmen of Reading and gentry from all England. This is an event of national importance; anyone who could buy a doublet and borrow a horse has come to see the scandalous new queen. I have to face them all alone, flanked by my enemies, as a thousand gazes take me in: from my slippered feet to my high headdress and airy veil, take in the pearls on my gown, the carefully modest cut, the perfection of the lace piece that hides and yet enhances the whiteness of the skin of my shoulders. Slowly, like a breeze going through treetops, they doff their hats and bow, and I realize that they are acknowledging me as queen, queen in the place of Margaret of Anjou, Queen of England, the greatest woman in the realm, and nothing in my life will ever be the same again. I smile from side to side, acknowledging the blessings and the murmurs of praise, but I find that I am tightening my grip on Warwick’s hand, and he smiles down at me, as if he is pleased to sense my fear, and he says, “It is natural for you to be overwhelmed, Your Grace.” It is, indeed, natural for a commoner but would never have occurred to a princess, and I smile back at him and cannot defend myself, and cannot speak.

That night in bed, after we have made love, I say to Edward, “I don’t like the Earl of Warwick.”

“He made me what I am today,” he says simply. “You must love him for my sake.”

“And your brother George? And William Hastings?”

He rolls onto his side and grins at me. “These are my companions and my brothers-in-arms,” he says. “You are marrying into an army at war. We cannot choose our allies; we cannot choose our friends. We are just glad of them. Love them for me, beloved.”

I nod as if obedient. But I think I know my enemies.