The White Queen: A Novel

by Philippa Gregory

  “Then you forget Margaret of Anjou and her mad husband,” I say coldly. “My mother herself said to me on the day we rode out for Reading that I could not do worse than Margaret of Anjou and I have not done so.”

  He concedes the point. “All right. You and your husband are no worse than a madman and a harpy. Very good.”

  I am surprised at his gravity. “It is as the world is, my brother,” I remind him. “And you too have had your favors from the king and me. And now you are Earl Rivers and brother-in-law to the king, and uncle to the king to be.”

  “I thought we were doing more than lining our own pockets,” he says. “I thought we were doing more than putting a king and a queen on the throne who were only better than the worst that could be. You know, sometimes I would rather be in a white tabard with a red cross, fighting for God in the desert.”

  I think of my mother’s prediction that Anthony’s spirituality will one day triumph over his Rivers worldliness and he will leave me. “Ah don’t say that,” I say. “I need you. And as Baby grows and has his own prince’s council, he will need you. I can think of no man better fitted to guide him and teach him than you. There’s no knight in England better read. There’s no poet in England who can fight as well. Don’t say you will go, Anthony. You know you have to stay. I can’t be queen without you. I can’t be me without you.”

  He bows to me with his twisted smile and takes my hand and kisses it. “I won’t leave you while you have need of me,” he promises. “I will never willingly leave you while you need me. And, for sure, good times are coming soon.”

  I smile, but he makes the optimistic words sound like a lament.

  SEPTEMBER 1472

  Edward beckons me to one side after dinner one evening at Windsor Castle and I go to him smiling. “What do you want, husband? Do you want to dance with me?”

  “I do,” he says. “And then I am going to get hugely drunk.”

  “For any reason?”

  “None at all. Just for pleasure. But before all that, I have to ask you something. Can you take another lady into your rooms as a lady-in-waiting?”

  “Do you have someone in mind?” I am instantly alert to the danger that Edward has a new flirt that he wants to palm off on me, and that he thinks I will make her my lady-in-waiting to make his seduction the more convenient. This must show in my face, for he gives a whoop of laughter and says, “Don’t look so furious. I wouldn’t foist my whores upon you. I can house them myself. No, this is a lady of unimpeachable family. None other than Margaret Beaufort, the last of the Lancastrians.”

  “You want her to serve me?” I ask incredulously. “You want her to be one of my ladies?”

  He nods. “I have reason. You remember she is newly married to Lord Thomas Stanley?”

  I nod.

  “He is declared our friend, he is sworn to our support, and his army sat on the sidelines and saved us at the battle of Blore Heath, though he was promised to Margaret of Anjou. With his fortune and influence in the country I do need to keep him on our side. He had our permission to marry her well enough, and now he has done it, and seeks to bring her to court. I thought we could give her a position. I must have him on my council.”

  “Isn’t she wearisomely religious?” I ask unhelpfully.

  “She is a lady. She will adapt her behavior to yours,” he says equably. “And I need her husband close to me, Elizabeth. He is an ally who will be of importance both now and in the future.”

  “If you ask it so sweetly, what can I do but say yes?” I smile at him. “But don’t blame me if she is dull.”

  “I will not see her, nor any woman, if you are before me,” he whispers. “So don’t trouble yourself as to how she behaves. And in a little while, when she asks for her son Henry Tudor to come home again, he may—as long as she is loyal to us, and he can be persuaded to forget his dreams of being the Lancaster heir. They will both come to court and serve us, and everyone will forget there was ever such a thing as a House of Lancaster. We’ll marry him to some nice girl of the House of York whom you can pick out for him, and the House of Lancaster will be no more.”

  “I will invite her,” I promise him.

  “Then tell the musicians to play something merry and I will dance with you.”

  I turn and nod to the musicians and they confer for a moment and then play the newest tune, straight from the Burgundian court, where Edward’s sister Margaret is continuing the York tradition of making merry and the Burgundian tradition of high fashion. They even call the dance “Duchess Margaret’s jig,” and Edward sweeps me onto the floor and whirls me in the quick steps until everyone is laughing and clapping in a circle around us, and then taking their turn.

  The music ends and I spin away to a quieter corner, and Anthony my brother offers me a glass of small ale. I drink it thirstily. “So, do I still look like a fat fishwife?” I demand.

  “Oho, that stung, did it?” He grins. He puts his arms around me and hugs me gently. “No, you look like the beauty you are, and you know it. You have that gift, which our mother had, of growing older and becoming more lovely. Your features have changed from being merely those of a pretty girl to being those of a beautiful woman with a face like a carving. When you are laughing and dancing with Edward, you could pass for twenty, but when you are still and thoughtful, you are as lovely as the statues they are carving in Italy. No wonder women loathe you.”

  “As long as men do not.” I smile.

  JANUARY 1473

  In the cold days of January, Edward comes to my rooms where I am seated before the fire, a footstool before me so I can put my feet up. As he sees me sitting, uncharacteristically idle, he checks in the doorway and nods to the men behind him and to my women and says, “Leave us.” They go out with a little bustle, the newly arrived Lady Margaret Stanley among them, fluttering as women always do around Edward—even the holy Margaret Stanley.

  He nods at their backs as they close the door behind them. “Lady Margaret? She is merry and good company for you?”

  “She is well enough,” I say, smiling up at him. “She knows, and I know, that she rode in the Tudor barge past my window when I was in sanctuary, and she enjoyed her moment of triumph then. And she knows, and I know, that I have the upper hand now. We don’t forget that. We aren’t men to clap each other on the back and say ‘No hard feelings’ after a battle. But we know also that the world has changed and we have to change too, and she never says a word to suggest that she wishes her son were acknowledged heir to the Lancaster throne, rather than Baby is to the York.”

  “I came to speak to you about Baby,” Edward says. “But I see that you should be speaking to me.”

  I widen my eyes and smile up at him. “Oh? About what?”

  He gives a little laugh and pulls a cushion off a settle and drops it to the floor so he can sit beside me. The freshly strewn herbs on the floor beneath his cushion release the scent of water mint. “Do you think I am blind? Or just stupid?”

  “Neither, my lord,” I say flirtatiously. “Should I?”

  “In all the time I have known you, you have always seated yourself as your mother taught you. Straight upright in a chair, feet together, hands in your lap or resting on the arms of the chair. Isn’t that how she taught you to sit? Like a queen? As if she knew all along you would have a throne?”

  I smile. “She probably did know, actually.”

  “And so now I find you lazing about in the afternoon, feet on a footstool.” He leans back and lifts the hem of my gown so that he can see my stockinged feet. “Shoes off! I am scandalized. You are clearly becoming a slattern, and my royal court is run by a hedgerow slut, just as my mother warned me.”

  “And so?” I ask, unmoved.

  “And so, I know you are with child. For the only time you ever sit with your feet up is when you are with child. And that is why I ask you if you think I am blind or just stupid?”

  “I think you are as fertile as a bull in a water meadow, if you want to know what I
think!” I exclaim. “Every other year I have a baby to you.”

  “And all the others,” he says unrepentantly. “Don’t forget them. So when is this precious one due?”

  “In the summer,” I say. “And more than that…”

  “Yes?”

  I pull his fair head towards me, and whisper in his ear. “I think he will be a boy.”

  His head jerks up, his face filled with joy. “You do? You have signs?”

  “Women’s fancies,” I say, thinking of my mother with her head on one side as if she were listening for the sound of little feet in riding boots clattering across heaven. “But I think so. I hope so.”

  “A boy born to theYorks at a time of peace,” he says longingly. “Ah, my dear, you are a good wife. You are my beauty. You are my only love.”

  “So what about all the others?”

  He dismisses the mistresses and their babies with one wave of his hand. “Forget them. I have. The only woman in the world for me is you. Now as always.”

  He kisses me gently, holding back his usual ready arousal. We will not be lovers again until after the baby is born and I have been churched. “My darling,” he whispers to me.

  We sit for a little while in silence, watching the fire. “But what did you come to see me for?” I ask.

  “Ah, yes. This should make no difference, I think. I want to send Baby to start his little kingdom in Wales. To Ludlow Castle.”

  I nod. This is how it has to be. This is what it means to have a prince and not a girl. My oldest darling daughter Elizabeth can stay with me until she is married, but my son has to go and serve his apprenticeship as a king. He has to go to Wales, for he is Prince of Wales, and he has to rule it with his own council.

  “But he is not yet three,” I say plaintively.

  “Old enough,” my husband says. “And you shall travel to Ludlow with him, if you think you are strong enough, and order it just as you wish, and make sure that he has the companions and tutors that you want. And I will appoint you to his council and you can choose the other members, and you will guide him and order his studies and his life until he is fourteen.”

  I pull Edward’s face towards me again and I kiss his mouth. “Thank you,” I say. He is leaving my son in my keeping when most kings would say that the boy has to live only with men, taken away from the counsels of women. But Edward makes me the guardian of my son, honors my love for him, respects my judgment. I can bear the separation from Baby if I am to appoint his council, for it means that I shall visit him often and his life shall still be in my keeping.

  “And he can come home for feast days and holy days,” Edward says. “I shall miss him too, you know. But he has to be in his principality. He has to make a start at ruling. Wales has to know their prince, and learn to love him. He has to know his land as from childhood, and thus we keep their loyalty.”

  “I know,” I say. “I know.”

  “And Wales has always been loyal to the Tudors,” Edward adds, almost as an aside. “And I want them to forget him.”

  I consider carefully who shall have the raising of my boy in Wales, and who shall head his council and rule Wales for him until he is of age, and then I come to the decision I would have made if I had picked the first name that came to mind, without thinking. Of course. Who else would I trust with the most precious possession in the world?

  I go to my brother Anthony’s rooms, which are set back from the main stair, overlooking the private gardens. His door is guarded by his manservant, who swings it open and announces me in a respectful whisper. I cross through his presence chamber and knock on the door of his private room, and enter.

  He is seated at a table before the fire, a glass of wine in his hand, a dozen well-sharpened quills before him, sheets of expensive paper covered with crossed-through lines. He is writing, as he does most afternoons when the early darkness of winter drives everyone indoors. He writes every day now, and he no longer posts his poems in the joust: they are too important to him.

  He smiles and sets a chair for me close to the fire. He puts a footstool under my feet without comment. He will have guessed that I am with child. Anthony has the eyes of a poet as well as the words. He doesn’t miss much.

  “I am honored,” he says with a smile. “Do you have a command for me, Your Grace, or is this a private visit?”

  “It is a request,” I say. “Because Edward is going to send Baby to Wales to set up his court, and I want you to go with him as his chief advisor.”

  “Won’t Edward send Hastings?” he asks.

  “No, I am to appoint Baby’s council. Anthony, there is much profit to be won from Wales. It needs a strong hand, and I would want it to be under our family’s command. It can’t be Hastings, or Richard. I don’t like Hastings, and I never will, and Richard has the Neville lands in the north—we can’t let him have the west too.”

  Anthony shrugs. “We have enough wealth and influence, don’t we?”

  “You can never have too much.” I state the obvious. “And anyway, the most important thing is that I want you to have the guardianship of Baby.”

  “You’d better stop calling him Baby if he is to be Prince of Wales with his own court,” my brother reminds me. “He will be moving to a man’s estate, his own command, his own court, his own country. Soon you will be seeking a princess for him to marry.”

  I smile into the warm flames. “I know, I know. We are considering it already. I can’t believe it. I call him Baby because I like to remember how he was when he was in his gowns, but he has his short clothes and he has his own pony now, and is growing every day. I change his riding boots every quarter.”

  “He’s a fine little boy,” Anthony says. “And though he takes after his father I sometimes think I see his grandfather in him. You can see he is a Woodville, one of ours.”

  “I won’t have anyone but you be his guardian,” I say. “He must be raised as a Rivers at a Rivers court. Hastings is a brute, and I wouldn’t trust the care of my cat to either of Edward’s brothers: George thinks of nothing but himself, and Richard is too young. I want my Prince Edward to learn from you, Anthony. You wouldn’t want anyone else to influence him, would you?”

  He shakes his head. “I wouldn’t have him raised by any of them. I didn’t realize the king was setting him up in Wales so soon.”

  “This spring,” I say. “I don’t know how I shall bear to let him go.”

  Anthony pauses. “I won’t be able to take my wife with me,” he says. “If you thought she might be the Lady of Ludlow. She is not strong enough, and this year she is worse than ever, weaker.”

  “I know. If she wants to live at court, I will see she is well cared for. But you would not stay behind for her?”

  He shakes his head. “God bless her, no.”

  “So you will go?”

  “I will, and you can visit us,” Anthony says grandly. “At our new court. Where will we be? Ludlow?”

  I nod. “You can learn Welsh and become a bard,” I say.

  “Well, I can promise to bring up the boy as you and our family would wish,” he says. “I can keep him to his learning and to his sports. I can teach him what he will need to be a good king of York. And it is something, to raise a king. It is a legacy to leave: that of making the boy who will be king.”

  “Enough to sacrifice your pilgrimage for another year?” I ask.

  “You know I can never refuse you. And your word is the king’s command and nobody can refuse that. But in truth, I would not refuse to serve the young Prince Edward: it will be something to be guardian of such a boy. I should be proud to have the making of the next King of England. And I will be glad to be at the court of the Prince of Wales.”

  “Do I always have to call him that now? Is he not to be Baby anymore?”

  “You do.”

  SPRING 1473

  The young Edward, Prince of Wales and his uncle Earl Rivers, my Grey son Richard, now Sir Richard by order of his stepfather the king, and I make a grand progress t
o Wales so the little prince can see his country and be seen by as many people as possible. His father says that this is how we make our rule secure: we show ourselves to the people, and by demonstrating our wealth, our fertility, and our elegance we make them feel secure in their monarchy.

  We go by slow stages. Edward is strong, but he is not yet three years old and riding all day is too tiring for him. I order that he shall have a rest every afternoon, and go to bed in my chamber, early at night. I am glad of the leisurely pace on my own account, riding pillion so that I can sit sideways as the new curve of my belly is starting to show. We reach the pretty town of Ludlow without incident, and I decide to stay in Wales with my firstborn son for the first half year, until I am certain that the household is organized for his comfort and safety, and that he is settled and happy in his new home.

  He is all delight; there is no regret for him. He misses the company of his sisters, but he loves being the little prince at his own court, and he enjoys the company of his half brother, Richard, and his uncle. He starts to learn the land around the castle, the deep valleys and beautiful mountains. He has the servants who have been with him since babyhood. He has new friends in the children of his court, who are brought to learn and play with him, and he has the watchful care of my brother. It is I who cannot sleep for the week before I am due to leave him. Anthony is at ease, Richard is happy, and Baby is joyous in his new home.