The White Queen: A Novel

by Philippa Gregory

  I cross myself. “God bless the poor little one,” I say. “Nobody would have wished that on them.”

  “Nobody did,” my mother says robustly. “But if Isabel had not taken ship with traitors, then she would have been safe in England with midwives and friends to care for her.”

  “Poor girl,” I say, a hand on my own big belly. “Poor girl. She has had little joy from her grand marriage. D’you remember her at court at Christmas?”

  “There is worse news,” my mother goes on. “Warwick and George have gone to his great friend King Louis of France, and now the two of them have met with Margaret d’Anjou at Angers, and another plot is spinning, just as we have been spinning here.”

  “Warwick still goes on against us?”

  My mother makes a grimace. “He must be a determined man, indeed, to see his own grandchild stillborn while his family is on the run, and go from a near shipwreck straight to forswear his oaths of loyalty. But nothing stops him. You would think a storm out of a blue sky would make him wonder, but nothing makes him wonder. Now he is courting Margaret d’Anjou, whom he once fought against. He had to spend half an hour on his knees to beg the forgiveness of her, his greatest enemy. She would not see him without his act of contrition. God bless her, she always did take herself very high.”

  “What d’you think he plans?”

  “It is the French king who is planning the dance now. Warwick thinks he is Kingmaker, but now he is a puppet. They call Louis of France the spider, and I must say he spins a finer thread even than us. He wants to bring down your husband and diminish our country. He is using Warwick and Margaret d’Anjou to do it. Margaret’s son, the so-called Prince of Wales, Prince Edward of Lancaster, is to marry Warwick’s younger daughter Anne to bind their lying parents together in a pact they cannot dishonor. Then I imagine they will all come to England to free Henry from the Tower.”

  “That little thing Anne Neville?” I demand, immediately diverted. “They would give her to that monster Edward, to make sure her father does not play false?”

  “They will,” my mother agrees. “She is only fourteen and they are marrying her to a boy who was allowed to choose how to execute his enemies when he was eleven years old. He was raised to be a devil. Anne Neville must be wondering if she is rising to be queen or falling among the damned.”

  “But it changes everything for George,” I say, thinking aloud. “It was one thing to fight his brother, the king, when he hoped to kill him and succeed him—but now? Why would he fight Edward when he gains nothing for himself? Why would he fight his brother to put the Lancaster king and then the Lancaster prince on the throne?”

  “I suppose he didn’t think such a thing would happen when he set sail with a wife near her time, and a father-in-law determined to win the crown. But now he has lost his son and heir, and his father-in-law has a second daughter who could be queen. George’s prospects are changed very much. He should have the sense to see that. But d’you think he has?”

  “Someone should advise him.” Our eyes meet. I never have to spell things out for my mother: we understand each other so well.

  “Shall you visit the king’s mother before dinner?” Mother asks me.

  I take my foot from the pedal of the spinning wheel and stop it with my hand. “Let’s go and see her now,” I suggest.

  She is sitting with her women sewing an altar cloth. One of them is reading from the Bible as they work. She is famously devout; her suspicion that we are not as saintly as she, worse, perhaps pagans, worst of all, perhaps witches, is just one of the many fears she holds against me. The years have not improved her view of me. She did not want me to marry her son, and even now, though I have proved my fertility and myself a good wife for him, she hates me still. Indeed, she has been so discourteous that Edward has given her Fotheringhay to keep her from court. As for me, I am not impressed by her sanctity: if she is such a good woman, then she should have taught George better. If she had the ear of God, she would not have lost her son Edmund and her husband. I curtsey to her as we enter, and she rises to curtsey low to me. She nods her women to pick up their work and go to one side. She knows I am not visiting her to inquire after her health. There is still no great love lost between us and never will be.

  “Your Grace,” she says levelly. “I am honored.”

  “My Lady Mother,” I say, smiling. “The pleasure is mine.”

  We all sit simultaneously in order to avoid the issue of priority, and she waits for me to speak.

  “I am so concerned for you,” I say sweetly. “I am sure you are worried about George, so far from home, proclaimed as a traitor, and all but entrapped with the traitor Warwick, estranged from his brother and from his family. His first baby lost, his own life in such danger.”

  She blinks. She had not anticipated my concern for her favorite George. “Of course I wish he were reconciled to us,” she says cautiously. “It is always sad when brothers quarrel.”

  “And now I hear that George is abandoning his own family,” I say plaintively. “A turncoat—not just against his brother but against you and against his own house.”

  She looks at my mother for an explanation.

  “He has joined Margaret d’Anjou,” my mother says bluntly. “Your son, a Yorkist, is going to fight for the Lancastrian king. Shameful.”

  “He will be defeated for certain: Edward always wins,” I say. “And then he must be executed as a traitor. How can Edward spare him, even for brotherly love, if George takes up the Lancaster colors? Think of him dying with a red rose at his collar! The shame for you! What would his father have said?”

  She is truly aghast. “He would never follow Margaret of Anjou,” she says. “His father’s greatest enemy?”

  “Margaret of Anjou put George’s father’s head on a spike on the walls of York, and now he serves her,” I say thoughtfully. “How can any of us ever forgive him?”

  “It cannot be so,” she says. “He might be tempted to join Warwick. It is hard for him to always come second to Edward, and—” She breaks off, but we all know that George is jealous of everyone: his brother Richard, Hastings, me, and all of my kin. We know she has filled his head with wild thoughts that Edward is a bastard and so he is the true heir. “And besides, what—”

  “What good does it do him?” I supplement smoothly. “I see what you think of him. Indeed, he always thinks of nothing but his gain and never of loyalty or his word or his honor. He is all George and no York.”

  She flushes at that, but she cannot deny that George has been the most selfish spoiled boy who ever turned coat.

  “He thought when he went with Warwick that Warwick would make him king,” I say bluntly. “Then they found that nobody would have George for king if they could have Edward. Only two people in the country think George is a better man than my husband.”

  She waits.

  “George himself and you,” I say precisely. “Then he fled with Warwick because he did not dare face Edward after betraying him again. And now he finds that Warwick’s plan has changed. Warwick will not put George on the throne. He will marry Anne his daughter to Edward of Lancaster; he will put the young Edward of Lancaster on the throne and become father-in-law to the King of England that way. George and Isabel are no longer his choice for King and Queen of England. Now it is Edward of Lancaster and Anne. The best that George can hope for is to be brother-in-law to the usurping Lancaster King of England instead of brother to the rightful York king.”

  George’s mother nods.

  “Little profit for him,” I observe. “For a great deal of work, and dreadful danger.”

  I let her think on this for a moment. “Now, if he were to turn his coat again and come back to his brother, penitent and truly loyal, Edward would have him back,” I say. “Edward would forgive him.”

  “He would?”

  I nod. “I can promise it.” I don’t add that I will never forgive him, and that he and Warwick are dead men to me and have been ever since they executed my fat
her and brother after the battle of Edgecote Moor, and they will be dead men hereafter, whatever they do. Their names are in the black locket in my jewelry case, and their names will never see the light again until they themselves are in the eternal darkness.

  “It would be such a good thing if George, a young man without good advisors, could hear from someone, in private, in secret, that he could come back safely to his brother,” my mother observes at random, looking out of the window at the scudding clouds. “Sometimes a young man needs good advice. Sometimes he needs to be told that he has taken a wrong turning but that he can come back to the high road. A young man such as George should not be fighting for Lancaster, dying with a red rose on his collar. A young man like George should be with his family, with his brothers who love him.” She pauses to let his mother think this through. It is really beautifully done.

  “If only someone could tell him that he was welcome at home, then you would have your son back, the brothers would be reunited, York would fight for York once more, and George would lose nothing. He would be brother to the King of England, and he would be Duke of Clarence as he has always been. We could undertake that Edward would restore him. There lies his future. This other way he is—what would one call him?” She pauses to wonder what one would call Cecily’s favorite son, then she finds the words: “An utter numpty.”

  The king’s mother rises to her feet; my mother gets up too. I stay seated, smiling up at her, letting her stand before me. “I always so enjoy talking with you both,” she says, her voice trembling with anger.

  Now I rise, my hand on my spreading belly, and I wait for her to curtsey to me. “Oh, me too. Good day, My Lady Mother,” I say pleasantly.

  And so it is done, as easily as an enchantment. Without another word said, without Edward even knowing, a lady from the king’s mother’s court decides to visit her great friend, George’s wife, poor Isabel Neville. The lady, heavily veiled, takes a boat, goes to Angers, finds Isabel, wastes no time on her crying in her room, finds George, tells him of his mother’s tender love and her concerns for him. George tells her in return of his increasing discomfort with the allies to whom he is not only sworn but also married. God, he thinks, does not bless their union since their baby died in the storm, and nothing has gone right for him since he married Isabel. Surely, nothing as unpleasant as this should ever happen to George? Now he finds himself in the company of his family’s enemies and—far worse for him—in second place again. Turncoat George says that he will come to England with the invading army of Lancaster, but as soon as he sets foot in his beloved brother’s kingdom he will tell us where they have landed, and what is their strength. He will seem to stand by them as brother-in-law to the Lancaster Prince of Wales until the battle is joined, and then he will attack them from behind, and fight his way through to his brothers once more. He will be a son ofYork, one of the three sons of York again. We can rely on him. He will destroy his present friends, and his wife’s own family. He is loyal to York. In his innermost heart, he has always been loyal to York.

  My husband brings this encouraging news to me, unaware that this is the doing of women, spinning their toils around men. I am resting on my daybed, one hand on my belly, feeling the baby move.

  “Isn’t this wonderful?” he asks me, truly delighted. “George will come back to us!”

  “I know that you love George,” I say. “But even you have to admit he is an absolute crawling thing, loyal to no one.”

  My generous-hearted husband smiles. “Oh, he is George,” he says kindly. “You can’t be too hard on him. He has always been everyone’s favorite; he has always been one to please himself.”

  I find a smile in return. “I am not too hard on him,” I say. “I am glad he has come back to you.” And inwardly, I say to myself: But he is a dead man.

  SUMMER 1470

  I am running behind my husband, my hand on my large belly, down the long winding corridors of the Palace of Whitehall. Servants run behind us carrying goods. “You can’t go. You swore to me you would be with me for the birth of our baby. It will be a boy, your son. You must be with me.”

  He turns, his face grave. “Sweetheart, our son will have no kingdom if I don’t go. Warwick’s brother-in-law, Henry Fitzhugh, has raised Northumberland. There’s no doubt in my mind that Warwick will strike in the north, and then Margaret will land her army in the south. She will come straight to London to free her husband from the Tower. I have to go, and I have to go fast. I have to deal with the one and then turn and march south to catch the other before she comes here for you. I don’t dare even stop for the pleasure of arguing with you.”

  “What about me? What about me and the girls?”

  He is muttering orders to the clerk, who runs behind him with a writing desk as he strides towards the stables. He pauses to shout orders at his equerries. Soldiers are rushing to the armory to draw their weapons and breastplates; sergeants are bawling at them to fall in. The great wagons are being loaded again with tents, weapons, food, gear. The great army of York is on the march again.

  “You have to go to the Tower.” He swings round to order me. “I have to know you are safe. All of you, your mother as well, go to the royal rooms in the Tower. Prepare for the baby there. You know I will come to you as soon as I can.”

  “When the enemy is in Northumberland? Why should I go to the Tower when you are riding out to fight an enemy hundreds of miles away?”

  “Because only the devil knows for sure where Warwick and Margaret will land,” he says briefly. “I’m guessing they’ll split into two battles and land one to support the uprising in the north and the other in Kent. But I don’t know. I’ve not heard from George. I don’t know what they plan. Suppose they sail up the Thames while I am fighting in Northumberland? Be my love, be brave, be a queen: go to the Tower with the girls and keep yourselves safe. Then I can fight and win and come home to you.”

  “My boys?” I whisper.

  “Your boys will come with me. I shall keep them as safe as I can, but it is time they played their part in our battles, Elizabeth.”

  The baby turns inside me as if he is protesting too, and I am silenced by the heave of the movement. “Edward, when will we ever be safe?”

  “When I have won,” he says steadily. “Let me go and win now, beloved.”

  I let him go. I think no power in the world would have stopped him, and I tell the girls that we are staying in London at the Tower, one of their favorite palaces, and that their father and their half brothers have gone to fight the bad men who still hanker after the old King Henry, though he is a prisoner at the Tower himself, silent in his rooms on the floor just below us. I tell them that their father will come home safe to us. When they cry for him in the night, for they have bad dreams about the wicked queen and the mad king, and their bad uncle Warwick, I promise them that their father will defeat the bad people and come home. I promise he will bring the boys safely back. He has given his word. He has never failed. He will come home.

  But this time, he does not.

  This time, he does not.

  He and his brothers in arms, my brother Anthony, his brother Richard, his beloved friend Sir William Hastings, and his loyal supporters, are shaken awake at Doncaster in the early hours of the morning by a couple of the king’s minstrels who, coming drunkenly home from whoring, happen to glance over the castle walls and see torches on the road. The enemy advance guard, marching at night, a sure sign of Warwick in command, is only an hour away, perhaps only moments away, coming to snatch the king before he can meet with his army. The whole of the north is up against the king and ready to fight for Warwick, and the royal party will be taken in a moment. Warwick’s influence runs deep and wide in this part of the world, and Warwick’s brother and Warwick’s brother-in-law have turned out against Edward and are fighting for their kinsman and for King Henry, and will be at the castle gate within an hour. There is no doubt in anyone’s mind that this time Warwick will not take prisoners.

  Ed
ward dispatches my boys to me, and then he, Richard, Anthony, and Hastings fling themselves on their horses and ride away in the night, desperate not to be taken by Warwick or his kinsmen, certain that this time there will be a summary execution for them. Warwick tried once to capture and keep Edward, as we have captured and kept Henry, and learned that there is no victory as final as death. He will never again imprison Edward and wait for everyone to concede defeat. This time he wants him dead.

  Edward rides out into the darkness with his friends and kinsmen and has no time to send to me, to tell me where to meet him; he cannot even write to me to tell me where he is going. I doubt that he knows himself. All he is doing is getting away from certain death. Thoughts of how to return will come later. Now, tonight, the king is running for his life.

  AUTUMN 1470

  The news comes to London in unreliable rumors, and it is all, always bad. Warwick lands in England, as Edward predicted, but what he did not predict is the rush of nobles to the traitor’s side, in support of the king they have left to rot in the Tower for the last five years. The Earl of Shrewsbury joins him. Jasper Tudor—who can raise most of Wales—joins him. Lord Thomas Stanley—who took the ruby ring at my coronation joust and told me that his motto was “Without Changing”—joins him. A whole host of lesser gentry follow these influential commanders, and Edward is swiftly outnumbered in his own kingdom. All the Lancaster families are finding and polishing their old weapons, hoping to march out to victory once again. It is as he warned me: he could not spread out the wealth quickly enough, fairly enough, to enough people. We could not spread the influence of my family far enough, deep enough. And now they think they will do better under Warwick and the mad old king than under Edward and my family.