The White Queen: A Novel

by Philippa Gregory

  I put my hand on hers. “He would want me to live, and to bring you children through this danger to life,” I say. “We will hide in sanctuary for now, but I swear we will come out again to our true place. You can call this the curse of ambition if you like, but without it I would not fight. And I will fight. You will see me fight, and you will see me win.

  “If we have to set sail to Flanders, we will do that. If we have to snap like cornered dogs, we will do that. If we have to hide like peasants in Tournai and live on eels from the River Scheldt, we will do that. But Richard will not destroy us. No man of this earth can destroy us. We will rise up. We are the children of the goddess Melusina: we may have to ebb but surely we will flow again. And Richard will learn this. He has caught us now at a low and dry place, but by God he will see us in flood.”

  I speak very bravely, but once I am silent I slide into grief for my Grey son, and for my brother, my dearest brother Anthony. I think of Richard Grey as a little boy once more, sitting so high on the king’s horse, holding my hand at the side of the road as we waited for the king to come by. He was my boy, he was my beautiful boy, and his father died in battle against one York brother and now he is dead at the hands of another. I remember my mother mourning her son and saying that when you have got a child through babyhood you think you are safe. But a woman is not safe. Not in this world. Not in this world where brother fights against brother and no one can ever put their sword aside, or trust in the law. I think of him as a baby in the cradle, as a toddler when he learned to walk holding on to my fingers, up and down, up and down the gallery at Grafton till my back ached from stooping, and then I think of him as the young man he was, a good man in the making.

  And Anthony my brother has been my dearest and most trusted friend and advisor since we were children together. Edward was right to call him the greatest poet and the finest knight at court. Anthony, who wanted to go on pilgrimage to Jerusalem and who would have gone had I not stopped him. Richard dined with the two of them at Stony Stratford when they met on the road to London, and talked pleasantly of the England that we would all build together, Riverses and Plantagenets, of the shared heir, my boy, whom we would put on the throne. Anthony was no fool but he trusted Richard—why should he not? They were kinsmen. They had been side by side in battle, brothers in arms. They had gone into exile together and returned to England in triumph. They were both uncles and guardians to my precious son.

  In the morning when Anthony came downstairs to breakfast in his inn, he found the doors barred and his men ordered away. He found Richard and Henry Stafford, the Duke of Buckingham, armed for battle, their men standing stone-faced in the yard. And they took him away, with my boy Richard Grey, and Sir Thomas Vaughan accused of treason, though they all three were faithful servants of my boy the new king.

  Anthony, in prison, awaiting his death in the morning, listens at the window for a moment, in case there is such a thing as the strong sweet song of Melusina, expecting to hear nothing, and then smiles when he hears a bell-like ringing. He shakes his head to clear the noise from his ears, but it stays, an unearthly voice that makes him, irreverently, chuckle. He never believed the legend of the girl who is half fish and half woman, the ancestor of his house; but now he finds he is comforted to hear her singing for his death. He stays at the window and leans his forehead against the cool stone. To hear her voice, high and clear, around the battlements of Pontefract Castle proves at last that his mother’s gifts and his sister’s gifts and her daughter’s gifts are real: as they always claimed, as he only half believed. He wishes he could tell his sister that he knows this now. They may need these gifts. Their gifts may be enough to save them. Perhaps to save all the family who named themselves Rivers to honor the water goddess who was the founder of their family. Perhaps even to save their two Plantagenet boys. If Melusina can sing for him, an unbeliever, then perhaps she can guide those who listen for her warnings. He smiles because the high clear song gives him hope that Melusina will watch over his sister and her boys, especially the boy who was in his care, the boy he loves: Edward the new King of England. And he smiles because her voice is that of his mother.

  He spends the night not in praying, nor in weeping but in writing. In his last hours he is not an adventurer, nor a knight, nor even a brother or an uncle, but a poet. They bring his writings to me and I see that, at the end, at the very moment he was facing his death, and the death of all his hopes, he knew that it was all vanity. Ambition, power, even the throne itself that has cost our family so dear: at the end he knew it was all meaningless. And he did not die in bitterness at this knowledge, but smiling at the folly of man, at his own folly.

  He writes:

  Somewhat musing

  And more mourning,

  In remembering

  Th’ unsteadfastness;

  This world being

  Of such wheeling,

  Me, contrarying;

  What may I guess?

  With displeasure,

  To my grievance,

  And no surance

  Of remedy;

  Lo, in this trance,

  Now in substance,

  Such is my dance,

  Willing to die

  Methinks truly,

  Bounden am I,

  And that greatly,

  To be content;

  Seeing plainly

  Fortune doth wry

  All contrary

  From mine intent.

  This is the last thing he does at dawn, and then they take him out and behead him on the orders of Richard, Duke of Gloucester, the new lord protector of England, who is now responsible for my safety, the safety of all my children, and especially the safety and future of my son Prince Edward, the rightful King of England.

  I read Anthony’s poem later, and I think that I particularly like “Fortune doth wry/ All contrary/ From mine intent.” Fortune has gone against all us Riverses this season: he was right in that.

  And I shall have to find a way to live without him.

  Something has changed between my daughter Elizabeth and me. My girl, my child, my first baby, has suddenly grown up, grown away. The child who believed that I knew everything, that I commanded everything, is now a young woman who has lost her father, and doubts her mother. She thinks I am wrong to keep us in sanctuary. She blames me for the death of her uncle Anthony. She accuses me—though never saying a word—of failing to rescue her brother Edward, of sending her little brother Richard out, unprotected, into the gray silence of the evening river.

  She doubts that I have secured a safe hiding place for Richard and that our plan of the changeling page will work. She knows that if I sent a false prince to keep Edward company, it is because I doubt my ability to get Edward home safe. She has no hopes of the uprising that my Grey son Thomas is organizing. She fears that we will never be rescued.

  Ever since the morning when we heard the singing of the river, and then the afternoon when they brought us the news of Anthony and Richard Grey’s death, she has no faith in my judgment. She has not repeated her belief that we are cursed, but there is something about the darkness of her eyes and the pallor of her face that tells me she is hagridden. God knows, I have not cursed her, and I know no one who would do such a thing to such a girl of gold and silver, but it is true: she looks as if someone has put a dark thumbprint down on her and marked her out for a hard destiny.

  Dr. Lewis comes again and I ask him to look at her and tell me if she is well. She has almost stopped eating and she is pale. “She needs to be free,” he says simply. “I tell you as a physician what I hope to see soon as an ally. All your children, you yourself, Your Grace, cannot stay here. You need to be out in the good air, enjoying the summer. She is a delicate girl—she needs exercise and sunshine. She needs company. She is a young woman—she should be dancing and courting. She needs to plan her future, to dream of her betrothal, not to be cooped up here, fearing death.”

  “I have an invitation from the king.” I make myself say th
e title, as if Richard could ever deserve it, as if the crown on his head and the oil on his breast could make him anything more than the traitor and the turncoat he is. “The king is anxious that I take the girls to my house in the country this summer. He says the princes can be released to me there.”

  “And will you go?” He is intent on my answer. He leans forward to hear.

  “My boys must be released to me first. I have no guarantee of my safety or that of my girls unless my boys are returned to me, as he promised they would be.”

  “Take care, Your Grace, take care. Lady Margaret fears he will play you false,” he breathes. “She says the Duke of Buckingham thinks that he will have your boys…” He hesitates as if he cannot bear to say the words. “Done to death. She says that the Duke of Buckingham is so horrified by this that he will rescue your boys for you, restore your sons to you, if you will guarantee his safety and his prosperity when you are back in power. If you will promise him your friendship, your undying friendship when you come to your own again. Lady Margaret says that she will bring him to make an alliance with you and yours. The three families: Stafford, Rivers, and the House of Lancaster, against the false king.

  I nod. I have been waiting for this. “What does he want?” I ask bluntly.

  “His daughter, when he has one, to marry your son, the young King Edward,” he says. “He himself to be named as regent and lord protector till the young king is of age. He himself to have the kingdom of the north—just as Duke Richard had. If you will make him as great a duke as your husband made Duke Richard, he will betray his friend and rescue your sons.”

  “And what does she want?” I ask, as if I cannot guess, as if I do not know that she has spent every day of the last twelve years, ever since her son was exiled, trying to bring him safely back to England. He is the only child she has ever conceived, the only heir to her family fortune, to her dead husband’s title. Everything she achieves in her life will be nothing if she cannot get her son back to England to inherit.

  “She wants an agreement that her son can take his title and inherit her lands, her brother-in-law Jasper restored to his lands in Wales. She wants them both free to return to England, and she wants to betroth her son Henry Tudor to your daughter Elizabeth, and to be named as heir after your boys,” he says in a rush.

  I do not pause for a moment. I have only been waiting for the terms and these are exactly what I expected. Not through foreseeing but through the commonplace sense of what I would demand if I were in Lady Margaret’s strong position: married to the third greatest man in England, in alliance with the second, planning to betray the first. “I agree,” I say. “Tell the Duke of Buckingham and tell Lady Margaret that I agree. And tell them my price: I have to have my sons restored to me at once.”

  Next morning, my brother Lionel comes to me smiling. “There is someone to see you at the water gate,” he says. “A fisherman. Greet him quietly, my sister. Remember that discretion is a woman’s greatest gift.”

  I nod and hurry to the door.

  Lionel puts a hand on my arm, less a bishop, more a brother. “Don’t shriek like a girl,” he says bluntly, and lets me go.

  I slip through the door and go down the stone steps that lead to the stone corridor. It is shadowy, lit only by the daylight filtering through the iron gate that opens out to the river. A little wherry is bobbing at the doorway, a small fishing net piled in the stern. A man in a filthy cape and a pulled-down hat is waiting at the doorway, but nothing can disguise his height. Forewarned by Lionel I don’t cry out, and dissuaded by the stink of old fish I don’t run into his arms. I just say quietly, “Brother, my brother, I am glad with all my heart to see you.”

  A flash of his dark eyes from under the heavy brim shows me my brother Richard Woodville’s smiling face, villainously covered with a beard and a mustache. “Are you all right?” I ask, rather shocked at his appearance.

  “Never better,” he says jauntily.

  “And you know about our brother Anthony?” I ask. “And my son Richard Grey?”

  He nods, suddenly grim. “I heard this morning. That’s partly why I came today. I am sorry, Elizabeth, I am sorry for your loss.”

  “You are Earl Rivers now,” I say. “The third Earl Rivers. You are head of the family. We seem to be getting through heads of our family rather quickly. Do you, please, hold the title a little longer.”

  “I’ll do what I can,” he promises. “God knows, I inherit the title of two good men. I hope to hold it longer, but I doubt I can do better. Anyway, we are close to an uprising. Listen to me. Richard feels himself secure with the crown on his head, and he is to go on progress to show himself to the kingdom.”

  I have to stop myself spitting into the water. “I wonder the horses have the brass neck even to walk.”

  “As soon as he is out of London, his guard with him, we will storm the Tower and get Edward out. The Duke of Buckingham is with us and I trust him. He has to travel with King Richard, and the king will force Stanley go with him too—he still doubts him; but Lady Margaret will stay in London and command the Stanley men and her own affinity to join us. Already she has her men placed in the Tower.”

  “Will we have enough men?”

  “Near on a hundred. The new king has made Sir Robert Brackenbury the constable of the Tower. Brackenbury would never hurt a boy in his care—he is a good man. I have put new servants in the royal rooms, men who will open the doors for me when I give them the word.”

  “And then?”

  “We get you and the girls safely away to Flanders. Your sons, Richard and Edward, can join you,” he says. “Have you heard from the men who took Prince Richard yet? Is he safe in hiding?”

  “Not yet,” I say fretfully. “I have been looking for a message every day. I should have heard that he is safe by now. I pray for him every hour. I should have heard by now.”

  “A letter could have gone astray; it means nothing. If it had gone wrong, they would have sent you news for sure. And just think: you can collect Richard from his hiding place on your way to Margaret’s court. Once you are with your boys and safe again, we raise our army. Buckingham will declare for us. Lord Stanley and his whole family is promised by his wife, Margaret Beaufort. Half of Richard’s other lords are ready to turn against him, according to the Duke of Buckingham. Lady Margaret’s son Henry Tudor will raise arms and men in Brittany, and invade Wales.”

  “When?” I breathe.

  He glances behind him. The river is busy as ever with ships coming and going, little trading wherries weaving in and out of the bigger boats. “Duke Richard—” He breaks off and grins at me. “Forgive me, ‘King Richard’ is to leave London at the end of July on progress. We will rescue Edward at once, and give you and him long enough to get to safety, say two days, and then, while the king is out of touch, we will rise.”

  “And Edward our brother?”

  “Edward is recruiting men in Devon and Cornwall. Your son Thomas is working in Kent. Buckingham will bring out the men from Dorset and Hampshire, Stanley will bring out his affinity from the Midlands, and Margaret Beaufort and her son can raise Wales in the name of the Tudors. All the men of your husband’s household are determined to save his sons.”

  I nibble at my finger, thinking as my husband would have thought: men, arms, money, and the spread of support around the south of England. “It is enough if we can defeat Richard before he brings in his men from the north.”

  He grins at me, the Rivers’s reckless grin. “It is enough and we have everything to win and nothing to lose,” he says. “He has taken the crown from our boy: we have nothing to fear. The worst has already happened.”

  “The worst has already happened,” I repeat, and the shiver that goes down my spine I attribute to the loss of Anthony my brother, my dearest brother, and the death of my Grey son. “The worst has already happened. There can be nothing worse than our losses already.”

  Richard puts his dirty hand on mine. “Be ready to leave whenever I send the
word,” he says. “I will tell you as soon as I have Prince Edward safe.”

  “I will.”

  JULY 1483

  I am waiting at the window, dressed in my traveling cape, my chest of jewels at my hand, my girls with me, ready to leave. We are silent, we have been silently waiting for more than an hour. We are straining to hear something, anything, but there is only the slap of the river against the walls and the occasional burst of music or laughter from the streets. Elizabeth beside me is tight as a lute string, white with anxiety.

  Then there is a sudden crash of noise, and my brother Lionel comes running into the sanctuary and slams and bolts the door behind him.

  “We failed,” he says, gasping for breath. “Our brothers are safe, your son too. They got away down the river and Richard went to earth in the Minories, but we couldn’t take the White Tower.”

  “Did you see my boy?” I demand.

  He shakes his head. “They had the two boys in there. I heard them shouting orders. We were so close I could hear them shouting through the door to take the boys inward, to a more secure chamber. Dear God, sister, forgive me. I was the thickness of a door away from them but we could not batter it down.”

  I sit down as my knees give way beneath me and I drop the box of jewels to the floor. Elizabeth is ashen. She turns and slowly starts to take the girls’ capes off, one by one, folding them up, as if it is important that they are not creased.

  “My son,” I say. “My son.”