The White Queen

MAY 1465

The king decides that I shall have the most glorious coronation that England has ever seen. This is not solely as a compliment to me. “We make you queen, undoubted queen, and every lord in the kingdom will bow his knee to you. My mother-” He breaks off and grimaces. “My mother will have to show you homage as part of the celebrations. Nobody will be able to deny that you are queen and my wife. It will silence those who say our marriage is not valid.”

“Who says?” I demand. “Who dares say?”

He grins at me. He is a boy still. “D’you think I would tell you and have you turn them into frogs? Never mind who speaks against us. They don’t matter as long as all they do is whisper in corners. But a great coronation for you also declares my position as king. Everyone can see that I am king and that poor thing Henry is a beggar somewhere in Cumbria and his wife a pensioner of her father in Anjou.”

“Hugely grand?” I say, not wholly welcoming the thought.

“You will stagger under the weight of your jewels,” he promises me.

In the event, it is even richer than he predicted, richer than I could have imagined. My entrance to London is by London Bridge, but the dirty old highway is transformed with wagon on wagon load of sparkling sand into a road more like a jousting arena. I am greeted by players dressed as angels, their costumes made from peacock feathers, their dazzling wings like a thousand eyes of blue and turquoise and indigo. Actors make a tableau of the Virgin Mary and the saints; I am exhorted to be virtuous and fertile. The people see me indicated as the choice of God for Queen of England. Choirs sing as I enter the city, rose petals are showered down on me. I am myself, my own tableau: the Englishwoman from the House of Lancaster come to be the Queen of York. I am an object of peace and unity.

I spend the night before my coronation at the grand royal apartments in the Tower, newly decorated for my stay. I don’t like the Tower: it gives me a shudder as I am carried shoulder high in a litter under the portcullis, and Anthony at my side glances up at me.

“What’s the matter?”

“I hate the Tower; it smells damp.”

“You have grown choosy,” Anthony says. “You are spoiled already, now that the king has given you great places of your own, the manor of Greenwich, and Sheen as well.”

“It’s not that,” I say, trying to name my unease. “It is as if there are ghosts here. Are my boys staying here tonight?”

“Yes, the whole family is here in the royal rooms.”

I make a little grimace of unease. “I don’t like my boys being here,” I say. “This is an unlucky place.”

Anthony crosses himself and jumps from his horse to lift me down. “Smile,” he commands me under his breath.

The lieutenant of the Tower is waiting to welcome me and give me the keys: this is no time for foreseeing, or for ghosts of boys lost long ago.

“Most gracious queen, greetings,” he says, and I take Anthony’s hand and smile, and hear the crowd murmur that I am a beauty beyond their imaginings.

“Nothing exceptional,” Anthony says for my ears only, so that I have to turn my head and stop myself giggling. “Nothing compared to our mother, for instance.”

Next day is my coronation at Westminster Abbey. For the court herald, bellowing names of dukes and duchesses and earls, it is a roster of the greatest and most noble families in England and Christendom. For my mother, carrying my train with the king’s sisters Elizabeth and Margaret, it is her triumph; for Anthony, a man so much of the world and yet so detached from it, I think it is a ship of fools and he would wish himself far away; and for Edward it is a vivid statement of his wealth and power to a country hungry for a royal family of wealth and power. For me it is a blur of ceremonial in which I feel nothing but anxiety: desperate only to walk at the right speed, to remember to slip off my shoes and go barefoot at the brocade carpet, to accept the two scepters in each hand, to bare my breast for the holy oil, to hold my head steady for the weight of the crown.

It takes three archbishops to crown me, including Thomas Bourchier, and an abbot, a couple of hundred clergy, and a full thousand choristers to sing my praises and call down God’s blessing on me. My kinswomen escort me; it turns out I have hundreds of them. The king’s family come first, then my own sisters, my sister-in-law Elizabeth Scales, my cousins, my Burgundy cousins, my kinswomen that only my mother can trace, and every other beautiful lady who can scrape an introduction. Everyone wants to be a lady at my coronation; everyone wants a place at my court.

By tradition, Edward is not even with me. He watches from behind a screen, my young sons with him: I may not even see him; I cannot catch courage from his smile. I have to do this all entirely alone, with thousands of strangers watching my every movement. Nothing is to detract from my rise from gentry woman to Queen of England, from mortal to a being divine: next to God. When they crown me and anoint me with the holy oil, I become a new being, one above mortals, only one step below angels, beloved, and the elect of heaven. I wait for the thrill down my spine of knowing that God has chosen me to be Queen of England; but I feel nothing but relief that the ceremony is over and apprehension at the massive banquet to follow.

Three thousand noblemen and their ladies sit down to dine with me and each course has nearly twenty dishes. I put off my crown to eat, and put it back on again between every course. It is like a prolonged dance where I have to remember the steps and it goes on for hours. To shield me from prying eyes, the Countess of Shrewsbury and the Countess of Kent kneel to hold a veil before me when I eat. I taste every dish out of courtesy but I eat almost nothing. The crown presses down like a curse on my head and my temples throb. I know myself to have ascended to the greatest place in the land and I long only for my husband and my bed.

There is a moment at one point in the evening, probably around the tenth course, when I actually think that this has been a terrible mistake and I would have been happier back at Grafton, with no ambitious marriage and no ascent to the rank of royals. But it is too late for regrets, and even though the finest of dishes taste of nothing in my weariness, I must still smile and smile, and put my heavy crown back on, and send out the best dishes to the favorites of the king.

The first go out to his brothers, George the golden young man, Duke of Clarence, and the youngest York boy, twelve-year-old Richard, Duke of Gloucester, who smiles shyly at me and dips his head when I send him some braised peacock. He is as unlike his brothers as is possible, small and shy and dark-haired, slight of build and quiet, while they are tall and bronze-headed and filled with their own importance. I like Richard on sight, and I think he will be a good companion and playmate to my boys, who are only a little younger than him.

At the end of the dinner, when I am escorted back to my chambers by dozens of noblemen and hundreds of clergy, I hold my head high as if I am not weary, as if I am not overwhelmed. I know that I have become something more than a mortal woman today: I have become half a goddess. I have become a divinity something like my ancestress Melusina, who was born a goddess and became a woman. She had to forge a hard bargain with the world of men to move from one world to another. She had to surrender her freedom in the water to earn her feet so that she could walk beside her husband on the earth. I can’t help but wonder what I will have to lose in order to be queen.

They put me to bed in Margaret of Anjou’s bed, in the echoing royal bedchamber, and I wait, the cover of cloth of gold up to my ears, until Edward can get away from the feasting and join me. He is escorted into my bedroom by half a dozen companions and menservants, and they formally undress him and leave him only when he is in his nightgown. He sees my wide-eyed gaze and laughs as he closes the door behind them.

“We are royal now,” he says. “These ceremonies have to be endured, Elizabeth.”

I reach out my arms for him. “As long as you are still you, even underneath the crown.”

He throws off his gown and comes naked to me, his shoulders broad, his skin smooth, the muscles moving in thigh and belly and flank. “I am yours,” he says simply, and when he slides into the cold bed beside me, I quite forget that we are queen and king and think only of his touch and my desire.

The following day there is a great tournament and the noblemen enter the lists in beautiful costumes, with poetry bellowed by their squires. My boys are in the royal box with me, their eyes wide and their mouths open at the ceremony, the flags, the glamour and the crowds, the enormity of the first great joust they have ever seen. My sisters and Elizabeth-Anthony’s wife-are seated beside me. We are starting to form a court of beautiful women; already people are speaking of an elegance that has never before been seen in England.

The Burgundian cousins are out in force, their armor the most stylish, their poetry the best for meter. But Anthony, my brother, is superb: the court goes mad over him. He sits a horse with such grace and he carries my favor and breaks the lances of a dozen men. No one can match his poetry either. He writes in the romantic style of the southern lands; he tells of joy with a tinge of sadness, a man smiling at tragedy. He composes poems about love that can never be fulfilled, of hopes that summon a man across a desert of sand, a woman across a sea of water. No wonder every lady at court falls in love with him. Anthony smiles, picks up the flowers that they throw into the arena, and bows, hand on his heart, without asking any lady for her favor.

“I knew him when he was just my uncle,” Thomas remarks.

“He is the favorite of the day,” I say to my father, who comes to the royal box to kiss my hand.

“What is he thinking of?” he demands of me, puzzled. “In my day we killed an opponent, not made a poem about them.”

Anthony’s wife Elizabeth laughs. “This is the Burgundian way.”

“These are chivalrous times,” I tell my father, smiling at his broad-faced puzzlement.

But the winner of the day is Lord Thomas Stanley, a handsome man who lifts his visor and comes for his prize, pleased to have won. The motto of his family is shown proudly on his standard: “Sans Changer.”

“What does it mean?” Richard mutters to his brother.

“Without changing,” Thomas says. “And you would know if you studied rather than wasting your time.”

“And do you never change?” I ask Lord Stanley. He looks at me: the daughter of a family that has changed completely, turned from one king to another, a woman who has changed from being a widow into being a queen, and he bows. “I never change,” he says. “I support God and the king and my rights, in that order.”

I smile. Pointless to ask him how he knows what God wants, how he knows which king is rightful, how he can be sure that his rights are just. These are questions for peace, and our country has been at war too long for complicated questions. “You are a great man in the jousting arena,” I remark.

He smiles. “I was lucky not to be listed against your brother Anthony. But I am proud to joust before you, Your Grace.”

I bend from the queen’s box to give him the prize of the tournament, a ruby ring, and he shows me that it is too small for his big hand.

“You must marry a beautiful lady,” I tease him. “A virtuous woman, whose price is beyond rubies.”

“The finest lady in the kingdom is married and crowned.” He bows to me. “How shall we-who are neglected-bear our unhappiness?”

I laugh at this, it is the very language of my kinsmen, the Burgundians who have made flirtation a form of high art. “You must endeavor,” I say. “So formidable a knight should found a great house.”

“I will found my house, and you will see me win again,” he says, and at his words, for some reason, I feel a little shiver. This is a man who is not just strong in the jousting arena, I think. This is a man who would be strong on the battlefield. This is a man without scruple who will pursue his own interest. Formidable, indeed. Let us hope he is true to his motto and never changes from his loyalty to our House of York.

When the goddess Melusina fell in love with the knight he promised her that she would be free to be herself if she would only be his wife. They settled it that she would be his wife and walk on feet but once a month, she might go to her own chamber, fill a great bath with water, and, for one night only, be her fishy self. And so they lived in great happiness for many years. For he loved her and he understood that a woman cannot always live as a man. He understood that she could not always think as he thought, walk as he walked, breathe the air that he took in. She would always be a different being from him, listening to a different music, hearing a different sound, familiar with a different element. He understood that she needed her time alone. He understood that she had to close her eyes and sink beneath the glimmer of the water and swish her tail and breathe through her gills and forget the joys and the trials of being a wife-just for a while, just once a month. They had children together, and they grew in health and beauty; he grew more prosperous and their castle was famous for its wealth and grace. It was famous also for the great beauty and sweetness of its lady, and visitors came from far away to see the castle, its lord, and his beautiful mysterious wife.

As soon as I am crowned queen I set about establishing my family, and my mother and I become the greatest matchmakers in the kingdom.

“Will this not cause more enmity?” I ask Edward. “My mother has a list of lords for my sisters to marry.”

“You have to do it,” he assures me. “They complain that you are a poor widow from a family of unknowns. You have to improve your family by marrying them to the nobility.”

“We are so many, I have so many sisters, I swear we will take up all the eligible young men. We will leave you with a dearth of lords.”

He shrugs. “This country has been divided into either York or Lancaster for too long. Make me another great family that will support me when York wavers, or when Lancaster threatens. You and I need to link ourselves to the nobility, Elizabeth. Give your mother free rein, we need cousins and in-laws in every county in the land. I shall ennoble your brothers, and your Grey sons. We need to create a great family around you, both for your position and for your defense.”

I take him at his word and I go to my mother and find her seated at the great table in my rooms, with pedigrees and contracts and maps all around her, like a commander raising troops.

“I see you are the goddess of love,” I observe.

She glances up at me, frowning in concentration. “This is not love; this is business,” she says. “You have your family to provide for, Elizabeth, and you had better marry them to wealthy husbands or wives. You have a lineage to create. Your task as queen is to watch and order the nobility of your country: no man must grow too great, no lady can fall too low. I know this: my own marriage to your father was forbidden, and we had to beg pardon from the king, and pay a fine.”

“I would have thought that would have put you on the side of freedom and true love?”

She laughs shortly. “When it was my freedom and my love affair: yes. When it is the proper ordering of your court: no.”

“You must be sorry that Anthony is already married now that we could command a great match for him?”

My mother frowns. “I am sorry that she is barren and in poor health,” she says bluntly. “You can keep her at court as a lady-in-waiting and she is of the best family; but I don’t think she will give us sons and heirs.”

“You will have dozens of sons and heirs,” I predict, looking at her long lists of names and the boldly drawn arrows between the names of my sisters and the names of English noblemen.

“I should do,” she says with satisfaction. “And not one of them less than a lord.”

So we have a month of weddings. Every sister of mine is married to a lord, except for Katherine, where I go one better and betroth her to a duke. He is not yet ten years old, a sulky child, Henry Stafford, the little Duke of Buckingham. Warwick had him in mind for his daughter Isabel. But as the boy is a royal ward since the death of his father, he is at my disposal. I am paid a fee to guard him, and I can do with him what I want. He is an arrogant rude boy to me; he thinks he is of such a great family, he is so filled with pride in himself that I take a pleasure in forcing this young pretender to the throne into marriage with Katherine. He regards her, and all of us, as unbearably beneath him. He thinks he is demeaned by marriage to us, and I hear he tells his friends, boasting like a boy, that he will have his revenge, and we will fear him one day, he will make me sorry that I insulted him, one day. This makes me laugh; and Katherine is glad to be a duchess even with a sulky child for a husband.

My twenty-year-old brother John, who is luckily still single, will be married to Lord Warwick’s aunt, Lady Catherine Neville. She is dowager Duchess of Norfolk, having wedded and bedded and buried a duke. This is a slap in the face to Warwick, and that alone gives me mischievous joy, and, since his aunt is all but one hundred years old, marriage to her is a jest of the most cruel sort. Warwick will learn who makes the alliances in England now. Besides, she must soon die, and then my brother will be free again and wealthy beyond belief.

For my son, my darling Thomas Grey, I buy little Anne Holland. Her mother, the Duchess of Exeter, my husband’s own sister, charges me four thousand marks for the privilege, and I note the price of her pride and pay it so that Thomas can inherit the Holland fortune. My son will be as wealthy as any prince in Christendom. I rob the Earl of Warwick of this prize too-he wanted Anne Holland for his nephew and it was all but signed and sealed; but I outbid him by a thousand marks-a fortune, a king’s fortune, which I can command and Warwick cannot. Edward makes Thomas the Marquis of Dorset to match his prospects. I shall have a match for my son Richard Grey as soon as I can see a girl who will bring him a fortune; in the meantime he will be knighted.

My father becomes an earl; Anthony does not gain the dukedom that he joked about, but he does get the lordship of the Isle of Wight; and my other brothers get their places in royal service or in the church. Lionel will be a bishop as he wanted. I use my great position as queen to put my family into power, as any woman would do, and indeed as any woman risen to greatness from nothing would be advised to do. We will have our enemies-we have to make connections and allies. We have to be everywhere.

By the end of the long process of marriage and ennoblement, no man can live in England without encountering one of my family: you cannot make a trade, plow a field, or try a case without meeting one of the great Rivers family or their dependants. We are everywhere; we are where the king has chosen to place us. And should the day come that everyone turns against him, he will find that we, the Riverses, run deep and strong, a moat around his castle. When he loses all other allies, we will still be his friends, and now we are in power.

We are loyal to him and he cleaves to us. I swear to him my faith and my love, and he knows there is no woman in the world who loves him more than I do. My brothers and my father, my cousins and my sisters, and all our new husbands and wives promise him their absolute loyalty, whatever comes, whoever comes against us. We make a new family neither Lancaster nor York; we are the Woodville family enobled as Riverses, and we stand behind the king like a wall of water. Half the kingdom can hate us, but now I have made us so powerful that I do not care.

Edward settles to the business of governing a country that is accustomed to having no king at all. He appoints justices and sheriffs to replace men killed in battle; he commands them to impose law and order in their counties. Men who have seized the chance to make war on their neighbors have to return to their own bounds. The soldiers discharged from one side or another have to go back to their homes. The warring bands who have taken their chance to ride out and terrorize must be hunted down, the roads have to be made safe again. Edward starts the hard work of making England a country at peace with itself once more. A country at peace instead of a country at war.

Then, finally, there is an end to the constant warfare when we capture the former King Henry, half lost and half-witted in the hills of Northumberland, and Edward orders him to be brought to the Tower of London, for his own safety and for ours. He is not always in his right mind, God keep him. He moves into the rooms in the Tower and seems to know where he is; he seems to be glad to be home after his wandering. He lives quietly, communing with God, a priest at his side night and day. We don’t even know if he remembers his wife or the son she told him was his; certainly, he never speaks of them nor asks for them in faraway Anjou. We don’t know for sure if he always remembers that once he was king. He is lost to the world, poor Henry, and he has forgotten everything that we have taken from him.