The White Queen: A Novel

by Philippa Gregory

  She links her arm in mine as she used to do when we were girls at Grafton and we drift over to the window to look out at the sluggish water. “They are saying you were married by witchcraft,” she says, her lips hardly moving. “And they are finding someone to swear that Edward was married to another woman before you.”

  I meet her frowning gaze. “It’s an old scandal. It doesn’t trouble me.”

  “Please. Listen. I may not be able to come again. My husband grows in power and importance. I think he will send me away to the country, and I cannot disobey him. Listen to me. They have Robert Stillington, the Bishop of Bath and Wells—”

  “But he is our man,” I interrupt, forgetting that there is no “us” anymore.

  “He was your man. Not anymore. He was Edward’s chancellor, but now he is the duke’s great friend. He assures him, as he told George, Duke of Clarence, that Edward was married to Dame Eleanor Butler before he was married to you, and that she had his legitimate son.”

  I turn my face away. This is the price I pay for having an incontinent husband. “In truth, I think he promised her marriage,” I whisper. “He may even have gone through a ceremony with her. Anthony always thought so.”

  “That’s not all.”

  “What more?”

  “They are saying that Edward the king was not even his father’s son. He was a bastard foisted on his father.”

  “That scandal again?”

  “That again.”

  “And who is serving up these cold old meats?”

  “It is the Duke Richard, and my husband, talking everywhere. But worse, I think the king’s mother Cecily is ready to confess in public that your husband was a bastard. I think she will do it to put her son Richard on the throne—and your son to one side. Duke Richard and my husband are claiming everywhere that your husband was a bastard, and his son too. That makes Duke Richard the next true heir.”

  I nod. Of course. Of course. Then we will be banished into exile and Duke Richard becomes King Richard and his whey-faced son takes my handsome boy’s place.

  “And worst of all,” she whispers, “the duke suspects you of raising your own army. He has warned the council that you plan to destroy him and all the old lords of England. And so he has sent to York for men loyal to him. He is bringing an army of northerners down on us.”

  I feel my grip on her arm tighten. “I am raising my people,” I confirm. “I have my plans. When do the men from the north arrive?”

  “He has just sent for them,” she says. “They cannot be here for a few days yet. Perhaps a week, perhaps more. Are you ready to rise now?”

  “No,” I breathe. “Not yet.”

  “I don’t know what you can do from here. Had you not better come out and go before the Privy Council yourself? Do any of the lords or Privy Council come to you? Do you have a plan?”

  I nod. “Be sure we have plans. I shall get Edward released, and I shall smuggle my boy Richard away to safety at once. I am bribing the guards at the Tower to free Edward. He has good men about him. I can trust them to look the other way. My Grey son Thomas is going to escape from here. He will go to Sheriff Hutton to rescue his brother Richard Grey and his uncle Anthony, and then they will arm and come back and release us all. They will raise our people. We will win this.”

  “You will get the boys away first?”

  “Edward planned our escapes years ago, before they were even born. I swore I would keep the boys safe, whatever happened. Remember we came to the throne through such battles; he never thought we were safe. We were always prepared for danger. Even if Richard would not hurt them, I cannot have him holding them and telling the world they are bastards. Our brother Sir Edward will bring in the fleet to attack Duke Richard, and one of the ships will take the boys to Margaret in Flanders and they will be safe there.”

  She grips my elbow and her face is white. “Dearest…oh Elizabeth! Dear God! You don’t know?”

  “What? What now?”

  “Our brother Edward is lost. His fleet mutinied against him in favor of the lord protector.”

  For a moment I am numb with shock. “Edward?” I turn to her and grip her hands. “Is he dead? Have they killed our brother Edward?”

  She shakes her head. “I don’t know for sure. I don’t think anyone knows. Certainly he is not proclaimed dead. He was not executed.”

  “Who turned the men against him?”

  “Thomas Howard.” She names the rising nobleman who has joined Richard’s cause hoping for profit and place. “He went among the fleet. They were doubtful at putting to sea anyway. They turned against the Rivers command. Our family is hated by many of the common people.”

  “Lost,” I say. Still I cannot take in the enormity of our defeat. “We have lost Edward, and lost the fleet, and lost the treasure he was carrying,” I whisper. “I was counting on him to rescue us. He was going to come up the river and take us to safety. And the treasure would have bought us an army in Flanders and paid our supporters here. And the fleet was to bombard London and take it from the river.”

  She hesitates, and then, as if my despair had brought her to a decision, she puts her hand inside her cape and brings out a scrap of thread, a corner of a kerchief. She gives it to me.

  “What’s this?”

  “It is a scrap I cut from Duke Richard’s napkin when he dined with my husband,” she says. “He held it in his right hand; he wiped his mouth.” She lowers her voice and her eyes. She was always frightened of our mother’s powers. She never wanted to learn any of our skills. “I thought you could use it,” she says. “I thought perhaps you might use it.” She hesitates. “You have to stop the Duke of Gloucester. He grows in power every day. I thought you might make him sick.”

  “You cut this from the duke’s napkin?” I ask incredulously. Katherine always hated any sort of conjuring; she would never even have her fortune told by the gypsies at the fair.

  “It is for Anthony,” she whispers fiercely. “I am so afraid for our brother Anthony. You will keep the boys safe, I know. You will get them away. But the duke has Anthony in his power, and both my husband and the duke hate him so much. They envy him for his learning and his bravery and because he is so beloved, and they are afraid of him, and I love him so much. You have to stop the duke, Elizabeth. Truly you do. You have to save Anthony.”

  I whisk it into my sleeve so that no one, not even the children, can see it. “Leave this with me,” I say. “Don’t even think about it. You have too honest a face, Katherine. Everyone will know what I am doing if you don’t put it right out of your mind.”

  She gives a nervous giggle. “I never could lie.”

  “Forget everything about it.”

  We walk back to the front door. “Go with God,” I say to her. “And pray for me and our boys.”

  The smile drains from her face. “These are dark days for us Riverses,” she says. “I pray you keep your children safe, sister, and yourself.”

  “He will be sorry that he started this,” I predict. For a moment I pause, for suddenly, like a vision, I see Richard looking as young as a lost boy, staggering in the midst of a battlefield, his great sword slack in his weakened hand. He is looking around for friends, and he has none. He is looking around for his horse, but his horse has gone. He is trying to summon his strength, but he has none. The shock on his face would make anyone pity him.

  The moment passes and Katherine touches my hand. “What is it? What do you see?”

  “I see that he will be sorry that he started this,” I say quietly. “It will be the end of him and his house.”

  “And us?” she asks, peering into my face, as if she could see what I had seen. “Anthony? And all of us?”

  “And us too, I am afraid.”

  That night when it is midnight and dark as dark, I get up from my bed and take the scrap of linen that Katherine gave me. I see the smear of food where the duke wiped his lips and I bring it to my nose and sniff at it. Meat, I think, though he is an abstemious eater and
no drinker. I twist the material into a cord and I tie it round my right arm so tightly that I can feel the arm ache. I go to bed and in the morning the white flesh of my arm is blue with a bruise and my fingers are prickly with pins and needles. I can feel the arm ache and, as I untie it, I moan with the pain. I feel the weakness in my arm as I throw the cord in the fire. “So weaken,” I say to the flame. “Lose your strength. Let your right arm fail, let your sword arm grow weak, let your hand lose its grip. Take one breath and feel it catch in your chest. Take another and feel choked. Sicken and weary. And burn up like this.” The cord flares in the fireplace, and I watch it burn away.

  My brother Lionel comes to me in the early morning. “I have had a letter from the council. They beg us to come out of sanctuary and to send your son Prince Richard to be with his brother in the royal rooms in the Tower.”

  I turn to the window and look at the river as if it might bring me advice. “I don’t know,” I say. “No. I don’t want both princes in their uncle’s hands.”

  “There is no doubt that the coronation is going to happen,” he says. “All the lords are in London, the robes are being made, the abbey is ready. We should come out now and take our rightful place. Hiding here we look as if we are guilty of something.”

  I nibble on my lip. “Duke Richard is one of the sons of York,” I say. “He saw the three suns burning in the sky as they rode to victory together. You cannot think he will walk away from the chance of ruling England. You cannot think he will hand over all the power of the kingdom to a young boy.”

  “I think he will rule England through your son if you are not there to prevent it,” he says bluntly. “He will put him on the throne and have him as his puppet. He will be another Warwick, another Kingmaker. He does not want the throne for himself—he wants to be regent and lord protector. He will call himself regent and rule through your son.”

  “Edward will be king from the moment he is crowned,” I say. “We will see who he will listen to then!”

  “Richard can refuse to hand over power till Edward is twenty-one,” he says. “He can command the kingdom as regent for the next eight years. We have to be there, represented in the Privy Council, protecting our interests.”

  “If I could be sure my son is safe.”

  “If Richard was going to kill him, he would have done it at Stony Stratford when they arrested Anthony, and there was no one to protect him, and no witness but Buckingham,” Lionel says flatly. “But he did not. Instead, he went down on his knee and swore an oath of loyalty to him and brought him in honor to London. It is we who have created mistrust. I am sorry, Sister: it is you. I have never argued with you in my life, you know this. But you are mistaken now.”

  “Oh, easy for you to say,” I say irritably. “I have seven children to protect, and a kingdom to rule.”

  “Then rule it,” he says. “Take up your royal rooms in the Tower and attend your son’s coronation. Sit on your throne and command the duke, who is nothing more than your brother-in-law and the guardian of your son.”

  I am brooding on this. Perhaps Lionel is right and I should be at the heart of the planning for the coronation, winning men over to the side of the new king, promising them favors and honors at his court. If I come out now with my beautiful children and make my court again, I can rule England through my son. I should claim our place, not hide in fear. I think: I can do this. I need not go to war to win my throne. I can do this as a reigning queen, as a beloved queen. The people are mine for the taking: I can win them over. Perhaps I should come out of sanctuary into the summer sunshine, and take up my place.

  There is a little tap at the door and a man’s voice says, “Confessor for the dowager queen.”

  I open the grille. There is a father of the Dominican order, his hood up so his face is hidden. “I am ordered to come to you to hear your confession,” he says.

  “Enter, Father,” I say, and open the door wide to him. He comes in quietly, his sandals making no noise on the flagstones. He bows and waits for the door to be closed behind him.

  “I am come on the order of Bishop Morton,” he says quietly. “If anyone asks you, I came to offer you a chance to confess, and you spoke to me of a sin of sadness and excessive grief, and I counseled you against despair. Agreed?”

  “Yes, Father,” I say.

  He passes me a slip of paper. “I shall wait ten minutes and then leave,” he says. “I am not allowed to take a reply.”

  He goes to the stool by the door and sits, waiting for the time to pass. I take the note to the window for the light, and as the river gurgles beneath the window I read it. It is sealed with the crest of the Beauforts. It is from Margaret Stanley, my former lady-in-waiting. Despite being Lancaster born and bred, and mother to their heir, she and her husband Thomas Stanley have been loyal to us for the last eleven years. Perhaps she will stay loyal. Perhaps she will even take my side against Duke Richard. Her interests lie with me. She was counting on Edward to forgive her son his Lancaster blood and let him come home from his exile in Brittany. She spoke to me of a mother’s love for her boy and how she would give anything to have him home again. I promised her that it would happen. She has no reason to love Duke Richard. She might well think her chances of getting her boy home are better if she stays friends with me and supports my return to power.

  But she has written nothing of a conspiracy nor words of support. She has written only a few lines:

  Anne Neville is not journeying to London for the coronation. She has not ordered horses or guards for the journey. She has not been fitted for special robes for the coronation. I thought you would like to know. M S

  I hold the letter in my hand. Anne is sickly and her son is weak. She might prefer to stay at home. But Margaret, Lady Stanley, has not gone to all this trouble and danger to tell me this. She wants me to know that Anne Neville is not hastening to London for the grand coronation, for there is no need for her to make haste. If she is not coming, it will be at her husband Richard’s command. He knows that there will be nothing to attend. If Richard has not ordered his wife to London in time for the coronation, the most important event of the new reign, then it must be because he knows that a coronation will not take place.

  I stare out at the river for a long, long time and think what this means for me and my two precious royal sons. Then I go and kneel before the friar. “Bless me, Father,” I say, and I feel his gentle hand come down on my head.

  The serving maid who goes out to buy the bread and meat every day comes home, her face white, and speaks to my daughter Elizabeth. My girl comes to me.

  “Lady Mother, Lady Mother, can I speak with you?”

  I am looking out of the window, brooding on the water as if I hope Melusina might rise out of the summertime sluggish flow and advise me. “Of course, sweetheart. What is it?”

  Something about her taut urgency warns me.

  “I don’t understand what is happening, Mother, but Jemma has come home from the market and says there is some story of a fight in the Privy Council, an arrest. A fight in the council room! And Sir William…” She runs out of breath.

  “Sir William Hastings?” I name Edward’s dearest friend, the sworn defender of my son, and my newfound ally.

  “Yes, him. Mother, they are saying in the market that he is beheaded.”

  I hold the stone windowsill as the room swims. “He can’t be—she must have it wrong.”

  “She says that the Duke Richard found a plot against him, and arrested two great men and beheaded Sir William.”

  “She must be mistaken. He is one of the greatest men in England. He cannot be beheaded without trial.”

  “She says so,” she whispers. “She says that they took him out and took off his head on a piece of lumber on Tower Green, without warning, without trial, without charge.”

  My knees give way beneath me and she catches me as I fall. The room goes dark to me, and then I see her again, her headdress knocked aside, her fair hair spilling down, my beautiful daugh
ter looking into my face, and whispering, “Lady Mother, Mama, speak to me. Are you all right?”

  “I’m all right,” I say. My throat is dry, and I find I am lying on the floor with her arm supporting me. “I am all right, sweetheart. But I thought I heard you say…I thought you said…I thought you said that Sir William Hastings is beheaded?”

  “So Jemma said, Mother. But I didn’t think you even liked him.”

  I sit up, my head aching. “Child, this is no longer a question of liking. This lord is your brother’s greatest defender, the only defender who has approached me. He doesn’t like me, but he would lay down his life to put your brother on the throne and keep his word to your father. If he is dead, we have lost our greatest ally.”

  She shakes her head in bewilderment. “Could he have done something very wrong? Something that offended the lord protector?”

  There is a light tap at the door and we all freeze. A voice calls in French, “C’est moi.”

  “It’s a woman, open the door,” I say. For a moment I had been certain it was Richard’s headsman, now come for us, with Hastings’s blood unwiped on the blade of his axe. Elizabeth runs to open the lantern door in the big wooden gate and the whore Elizabeth Shore slips in, a hood over her fair head, a cloak wrapped tight around her rich brocade gown. She curtseys low to me, as I am still huddled on the floor. “You’ve heard then,” she says shortly.

  “Hastings is not dead?”

  Her eyes are filled with tears but she is succinct. “Yes, he is. That’s why I’ve come. He was accused of treason against Duke Richard.”

  Elizabeth my daughter drops to her knees beside me and takes my icy hand in hers.

  “Duke Richard accused Sir William of conspiring his death. He said that William had procured a witch to act against him. The duke said that he is out of breath and falling sick and that he is losing his strength. He said he has lost the strength in his sword arm, and he bared his arm in the council chamber and showed it to Sir William from the wrist to his shoulder, and said surely he could see it was withering away. He says he is under an enchantment from his enemies.”