Philippa Gregory - The White Queen

“How can he?” I say, looking out at the city that now declares itself all for Lancaster. “How can he even begin?”

“He has been in touch with your brothers, and with all our kinsmen. He is raising his forces, and he has never lost a battle.”

“He has never fought Warwick. And Warwick taught him everything he knows about war.”

“He is king,” she says. “Even if they now say that it meant nothing. He was crowned, he is divinely ordained, he has had the holy oil on his breast-they cannot deny that he is king. Even if another crowned and ordained king sits on the throne. But Edward is lucky, and Henry is not. Perhaps it comes down only to that: if you are a lucky man. And the Yorks are a lucky house.” She smiles. “And of course he has us. We can wish him well, no harm in a little spell for good luck. And if that does not improve his chances, then nothing will.”

My mother brews up tisanes and leans from the window and pours them into the river, whispering words that no one can hear, throws powder on the fires to make them burn green and smoke. She never stirs the children’s porridge without whispering a prayer, turns her pillow over twice before she gets into bed, claps her shoes together before putting them on to rid them of bad luck.

“Does any of it mean anything?” my son Richard asks me, one eye on his grandmother, who is twisting a plait of ribbon and whispering over it.

I shrug. “Sometimes,” I say.

“Is it witchcraft?” he asks nervously.

“Sometimes.”

Then in March my mother tells me, “Edward is coming to you. I am sure of it.”

“You have foreseen it?” I ask.

She giggles. “No, the butcher told me.”

“What did the butcher tell you? London is filled with gossip.”

“Yes, but he had a message from a man in Smithfield who serves the ships that go to Flanders. He saw a little fleet sailing northwards in the worst weather, and one of them was flying the Sun in Splendor: the badge of York.”

“Edward is invading?”

“Perhaps at this very moment.”

In April, in the early hours of the night, I hear the sound of cheering from the streets outside and I jump from my bed and go to the window to listen. The abbey serving girl pounds on the door and comes running into the room and babbles, “Your Grace! Your Grace! It is him. It is the king. Not King Henry, the other king. Your king. The York king. King Edward!”

I draw my nightgown around me and put my hand to the plait of my hair. “Here now? Are they cheering for him?”

“Cheering for him now!” she exclaims. “Lighting torches to guide him on his way. Singing and throwing down gold coins before him. Him, and a band of soldiers. And he must be coming here!”

“Mother! Elizabeth! Richard! Thomas! Girls!” I call out. “Get up! Get dressed! Your father is coming. Your father is coming to us!” I seize the serving girl by the arm. “Get me hot water to wash in and the best gown I have. Leave the firewood, it doesn’t matter. Who’s going to sit by that paltry fire ever again?” I push her from the room to fetch the water, and I pull my hair out of the nighttime plait as Elizabeth comes running into my room, her big eyes wide. “Is it the bad queen coming? Lady Mother, is the bad queen here?”

“No, sweetheart! We are saved. It is your own good father coming to visit us. Can’t you hear them cheering?”

I stand her up on a stool to the grille in the door, then I splash water on my face and twist my hair up under my headdress. The girl brings me my gown and ties it up, fumbling with the ribbons, and then we hear the thunder of his knock at the door and Elizabeth screams and jumps down to open it, and then falls back as he comes in, taller and graver than she remembers him, and in a moment I have run to him, barefoot as I am, and I am in his arms again.

“My son,” he demands after he has held me and kissed me and rubbed his rough chin against my cheek. “Where is my son? Is he strong? Is he well?”

“He is strong and well. He is five months old this month,” my mother says as she brings him in, swaddled tightly, and sweeps Edward a great curtsey. “And you are welcome home, son Edward, Your Grace.”

Gently he puts me aside and goes swiftly to her. I had forgotten that he could move so lightly on his feet, like a dancer. He takes his son from my mother’s arms, and though he whispers “Thank you,” he does not even see her: he is quite distracted. He takes the baby over to the light of the window, and Baby Edward opens his dark-blue eyes and yawns, his rosebud mouth opening wide, and he looks into the face of his father as if to return the intense gray-eyed scrutiny.

“My son,” he says quietly. “Elizabeth, forgive me, that you had to give birth to him here. I would not have had that for the world.”

I nod in silence.

“And he is baptized and named Edward as I wanted?”

“He is.”

“And he thrives?”

“We are just starting to feed him solid food,” my mother says proudly. “And he is taking to it. He sleeps well and he is a bright, clever boy. Elizabeth has nursed him herself, and no one could have been a better wet nurse to him. We have made you a little prince here.”

Edward looks at her. “Thank you for his care,” he says. “And for staying with my Elizabeth.” He looks down. His daughters, Elizabeth, Mary, and Cecily, are gathered around him, gazing up at him as if he were some strange beast, a unicorn perhaps, who has suddenly cantered into their nursery.

Gently he kneels so that he does not tower above them, still holding the baby in the crook of his arm. “And you are my girls, my princesses,” he says quietly to them. “Do you remember me? I have been away a long time, more than half a year; but I am your father. I have been away from you for far too long, but there was never a day when I did not think of you and your beautiful mother and swear that I would come home to you and set you in your rightful places again. Do you remember me?”

Cecily’s lower lip trembles, but Elizabeth speaks: “I remember you.” She puts her hand on his shoulder and looks into his face without fear. “I am Elizabeth, I am the oldest. I remember you; the others are too small. Do you remember me, your Elizabeth? Princess Elizabeth? One day I shall be Queen of England like my mother.”

We laugh at that, and he gets to his feet again, hands the baby to my mother, and takes me into his arms. Richard and Thomas step forward and kneel for his blessing.

“My boys,” he says warmly. “You must have hated it, cooped up in here.”

Richard nods. “I wish I had been with you, Sire.”

“Next time you shall,” Edward promises him.

“How long have you been in England?” I ask, my words muffled as he starts to pull my hair down. “Have you an army?”

“I came with your brother and with my true friends,” he says. “Richard my brother, your brother Anthony, Hastings, of course, the ones who went into exile with me. And now others are coming to my side. George, my brother, has left Warwick and will fight for me. He and Richard and I embraced each other as brothers once more, before the very walls of Coventry, under the nose of Warwick. George has brought Lord Shrewsbury over to us. And Sir William Stanley has come over to my side. There will be others.” I think of the power of Warwick and the Lancastrian affinity, and the French army that Margaret will bring, and I know that it is not enough.

“I can stay tonight,” he says. “I had to see you. But tomorrow I have to go to war.”

I can hardly believe him. “You will never leave me tomorrow?”

“Sweetheart, I took a risk just coming here. Warwick is holed up in Coventry and will neither surrender nor give battle, for he knows that Margaret of Anjou is coming with her army and together they will make a mighty force. George came out and is with us, and he has brought Shrewsbury and his tenants; but it’s not enough. I have to take Henry as a hostage, and ride out to face her. They will be hoping that I will be cornered here, but I will take the battle to them and, if I am lucky, then I will meet Warwick and defeat him before I have to meet Margaret and defeat her.”

My mouth grows dry and I swallow in fear at the thought of his facing one great general, and then the great army of Margaret. “The French army will come with Margaret?”

“The miracle is that she has not yet landed. We were both ready to sail at the same time. We were about to race each other to England. We have both been pinned down by the weather since February. She had her fleet ready to sail from Honfleur nearly a month ago, and she has been out and driven back by a storm over and over again. There was a gap in the wind in my favor for no more than a day. It was like magic, my love, and we got away, blown all the way to Yorkshire. But at least it gives me the chance to take them one at a time and not face a united army led by the two of them at once.”

I glance at my mother at the mention of the storm, but her face is smilingly innocent. “You will not go tomorrow?”

“Sweetheart, you have me tonight. Shall we spend the time talking?”

We turn and go into my chamber, and he closes the door with a kick of his foot. He takes me into his arms as he always does. “Bed, Wife,” he says.

He takes me as he has always done, passionately, as a dry man slaking his thirst. But for once, tonight, he is a different man. The smell of his hair and his skin is the same, and that is enough to make me beg for his touch, but after he has had me, he holds me tightly in his arms, as if for once the pleasure is not enough. It is as if he wants something more from me.

“Edward?” I murmur. “Are you all right?”

He does not answer but buries his head against my shoulder and my neck as if he would block out the world with the warmth of my flesh.