The White Queen

MARCH 1485

Elizabeth writes to me briefly of the queen’s worsening health. She says no more-she need say no more-we both realize that if the queen dies, there will be no need for an annulment or the settlement of Queen Anne in an abbey; she will be out of the way in the easiest and most convenient way possible. The queen is afflicted with sorrows, she weeps for hours without cause, and the king does not come near her. My daughter records this as the queen’s loyal maid-in-waiting and does not tell me if she slips from the sick chamber to walk with the king in the gardens, if the buttercups in the hedgerow and the daisies on the lawn remind her and him that life is fleeting and joyful, just as they remind the queen that it is fleeting and sad.

Then one morning in the middle of March I awake to a sky unnaturally dark, to a sun quite obscured by a circle of darkness. The hens won’t come out of their house; the ducks put their heads under their wings and squat on the banks of the river. I take my two little girls outside and we wander uneasily, looking at the horses in the field who lie down and then lumber up again, as if they don’t know whether it is night or day.

“Is it an omen?” asks Bridget, who of all of my children seeks to see the will of God in everything.

“It is a movement of the heavens,” I say. “I have seen it happen with the moon before, but never with the sun. It will pass.”

“Does it mean an omen for the House of York?” Catherine echoes. “Like the three suns at Towton?”

“I don’t know,” I say. “But I don’t think any of us are in danger. Would you feel it in your heart, if your sister was in trouble?”

Bridget looks thoughtful for a moment then, prosaic child, she shakes her head. “Only if God spoke to me very loud,” she says. “Only if He shouted and the priest said it was Him.”

“Then I think we have nothing to fear,” I say. I have no sense of foreboding, though the darkened sun makes the world around us eerie and unfamiliar.

Indeed, it is not for three days that John Nesfield comes riding to Heytesbury with a black standard before him and the news that the queen, after a long illness, is dead. He comes to tell me, but he makes sure to spread the news throughout the country, and Richard’s other servants will be doing the same. They will all emphasize that there has been a long illness, and the queen has at last gone to her reward in heaven, mourned by a devoted and loving husband.

“Of course, some say she was poisoned,” Cook says cheerfully to me. “That’s what they’re saying in Salisbury market, anyway. The carrier told me.”

“How ridiculous! Who would poison the queen?” I ask.

“They say it was the king himself,” Cook says, putting her head to one side and looking wise, as if she knows great secrets of the court.

“Murder his wife?” I ask. “They think he would murder his wife of a dozen years? All of a sudden?”

Cook shakes her head. “They don’t have a good word to say of him in Salisbury,” she remarks. “They liked him well enough at first and they thought he would bring justice and fair wages for the common man, but since he puts northern lords over everything-well, there’s nothing they would not say against him.”

“You can tell them that the queen was always frail, and that she never recovered from the loss of her son,” I say firmly.

The Cook beams at me. “And am I to say nothing about who he might take as his next queen?”

I am silent. I had not realized that gossip had gone so far. “And nothing about that,” I say flatly.

I have been waiting for this letter ever since they brought me the news that Queen Anne was dead and the world was saying that Richard would marry my daughter. It comes, tearstained as always, from the hand of Lady Margaret.

To Lady Elizabeth Grey Your Ladyship, It has come to my notice that your daughter Elizabeth, the declared bastard of the late King Edward, has sinned against God and her own vows and dishonored herself with her uncle the usurper Richard, a process so wrong and unnatural that the very angels hide their gaze. Accordingly, I have advised my son Henry Tudor, rightful King of England, that he should not bestow his hand in marriage on such a girl alike dishonored by Act of Parliament and by her own behavior, and I have arranged for him to marry a young lady of birth far superior and of behavior far more Christian. I am sorry for you that in your widowhood and your humiliation you should have to bow your head under yet another sorrow, the shame of your daughter, and I assure you that I shall think of you in my prayers when I mention the foolish and the vain of this world. I remain your friend in Christ, To whom I pray for you in your old age that you may learn true wisdom and womanly dignity, Lady Margaret Stanley

I laugh at the pomposity of the woman, but as my laughter drains away, I feel cold, a shiver of cold, a foreboding. Lady Margaret has spent her life waiting for the throne that I called my own. I have every reason to think that her son Henry Tudor will also go on waiting for the throne of England, calling himself king, drawing to him the outcasts, the rebels, the disaffected: men who cannot live in England. He will go on haunting the York throne until he is dead, and it may be better that he should be brought to battle and killed sooner rather than later.

Richard, especially with my daughter at his side, can face down any criticism and should certainly win any battle against any force that Henry could bring. But the cold prickling of the nape of my neck tells me otherwise. I pick up the letter again and I feel the iron conviction of this Lancaster heiress. This is a woman whose belly is filled with pride. She has been eating nothing but her own ambition for nearly thirty years. I would do well to be wary of her now that she has decided that I am so powerless she need not pretend friendship anymore.

I wonder who she intends for Henry’s wife now? I guess she will be casting about for an heiress, maybe the Herbert girl, but nobody but my daughter can bring the love of England and the loyalty of the York House to the Tudor claimant. Lady Margaret may vent her spite, but it does not matter. If Henry wants to rule England, he will have to ally with York; they will have to deal with us one way or another. I take up my pen.

Dear Lady Stanley, I am sorry indeed to read that you have been listening to such slander and gossip and that this should cause you to doubt the good faith and honor of my daughter Elizabeth, which is, as it has always been, above question. I have no doubt that somber reflection on your part, and on his, will remind you and your son that England has no other York heiress of her importance. She is beloved of her uncle as she was beloved of her aunt, as she should be; but only the whispers of the gutter would suggest any impropriety. I thank you for your prayers, of course. I will assume that the betrothal stands for its many manifest advantages; unless you seriously wish to withdraw, which I think so unlikely that I send you my best wishes and my thanks for your prayers, which I know are especially welcome to God coming from such a humble and worthy heart. Elizabeth R

I sign “Elizabeth R,” which I never do these days; but as I fold the paper and drip wax and stamp it with my seal, I find I am smiling at my arrogance. “Elizabeth Regina,” I say to the parchment. “And I shall be My Lady, the Queen’s Mother, while you are still Lady Stanley with a son dead on the battlefield. Elizabeth R. So take that,” I say to the letter. “You old gargoyle.”