Philippa Gregory - The White Queen

She turns without another word and goes from the room. For a moment, for a moment only, I am sorry for her.

George, the fool, chooses a fool’s death.

“He wants to be drowned in a barrel of wine.” Anthony, my brother, comes from the Privy Council meeting to find me rocking in the chair in the nursery, my baby George in my arms, and wishing that it was all over and my little prince’s namesake was dead and gone.

“You are trying to be funny?”

“No, I think he is trying to be funny.”

“What does he mean?”

“I suppose what he says. He wants to be drowned in a barrel of wine.”

“He really said that? He really means it?”

“I have come from the Privy Council just now. He wants to drown in wine, if he has to die.”

“A sot’s death,” I say, hating the thought of it.

“I suppose that is his joke against his brother.”

I raise my baby to my shoulder and stroke his back as if I would shield him from the cruelty of the world.

“I can think of worse ways to die,” Anthony observes.

“I can think of better. I would rather be hanged than held down in wine.”

He shrugs his shoulders. “Perhaps he thinks he can make mock of Edward, and of the death sentence. Perhaps he thinks he will force Edward to forgive him rather than execute this drunkard’s end. Perhaps he thinks the Church will protest and cause a delay and he will get away.”

“Not this time,” I say. “His sot’s luck has run out; he might as well have a drunkard’s end. Where will they do it?”

“In his chamber, at the Tower of London.”

I shudder. “God forgive him,” I say quietly. “That is an awful way to die.”

The headsman does it, leaving his axe to one side but wearing his black mask over his face. He is a big man with strong big hands, and he takes his apprentice with him. The two of them roll a barrel of malmsey wine into George’s room, and George the fool makes a joke of it and laughs with his mouth open wide as if already gasping for air, as his face bleaches white with fear.

They lever open the lid and find a box for George to stand on so he can lean over the top of the barrel and see his frightened face reflected back at him in the slopping surface of the wine. The smell of it fills the room. He mutters “Amen” to the prayers of the priest, as if he does not know what he is hearing.

He puts his head down to the ruby surface of the wine as if he were putting his head on the block, and he sucks great gulps of it as if he would drink the danger away, then he thrusts out his hands in the signal of assent, and the two men take his head and, holding him by the hair and the collar, plunge him down below the surface, half lifting him from the floor so his legs kick as if he is swimming, and the wine is slopped on the floor as he writhes, trying to escape. The wine cascades around their feet as the air bubbles out of him in great retching whoops. The priest steps back from the red puddle and goes on reading the last rites, his voice steady and reverent, while the two executioners hold the flailing head of the most stupid son of York deep into the barrel until his feet hang slack and there are no more bubbles of air, and the room smells like an old taproom.

That night at midnight I get up from my bed in the Palace of Westminster and go to my dressing room. On the top of a long cupboard for my furs is a little box with my private things. I open it. Inside is an old locket of silver so tarnished with age that it is black as ebony. I open the catch, and there is the old scrap of paper, torn from the bottom of my father’s letter. On it, written in blood, my blood, is the name George, Duke of Clarence. I screw the paper up in my fingers and I throw it on the embers of the fire and watch it twist in the heat of the ashes and then suddenly spring into flame.

“So go,” I say as George’s name goes up in smoke and my curse on him is completed. “But let you be the last York who dies in the Tower of London. Let it end here, as I promised my mother it would. Let it finish here.”

I wish I had remembered, as she taught me, that it is easier to unleash evil than call it back again. Any fool can blow up a wind, but who can know where it will blow or when it will stop?

I have my boy Edward, my son Sir Richard Grey, and my brother Anthony come to my private apartments for me to say good-bye to them. I cannot bear to let them go from me in public. I don’t want to be seen to weep as they leave. I bend to hold Edward close, as if I would never be parted from him, and he looks at me with his warm brown eyes, holds my face in his little hands, and says, “Don’t cry, Mama. There is nothing to cry about. I shall come again next Christmas. And you can visit me at Ludlow you know.”

“I know,” I say.

“And if you bring George, then I will teach him how to ride,” he promises me. “And you can put young Richard into my keeping, you know.”

“I know.” I try to speak clearly, but the tears are in my voice.

Richard hugs me around the waist. He is as tall as me now, a young man. “I will care for him,” he says. “You must visit us. Bring all my brothers and sisters. Come for the summer.”

“I will, I will,” I say, and turn to my brother Anthony.

“Trust us to take care of ourselves,” he says, before I can even start the list of things that make me fearful. “And I will bring him safe home to you next year. And I will not leave him, not even for Jerusalem. I will not leave him till he commands me to go. All right?”

I nod, blinking away my tears. There is something that troubles me at the thought of Edward letting Anthony go from him. It is as if a shadow has fallen on us. “I don’t know why, I just always fear for him so much, whenever I have to say good-bye to the three of you. I can hardly bear to let him go.”

“I will guard him with my life,” Anthony promises. “He is as dear to me as life itself. No harm will come to him while he is in my keeping. You have my word.”

He bows and turns to the door. Edward, beside him, does a mirror copy of the graceful gesture. Richard my son puts his fist to his chest in the salute that means “I love you.”

“Be happy,” Anthony says. “I have your boy safe.”

Then they are gone from me.

My boy George, always a slight baby, starts to fail before he reaches his second birthday. The physicians know nothing, the ladies of the nursery can suggest only gruel and milk, to be fed hourly. We try it, but he grows no stronger.

Elizabeth, his thirteen-year-old sister, plays with him every day, takes his little hands and helps him to walk on his thin legs, makes up a story for every mouthful of food that he eats. But even she sees that he is not thriving. He does not grow, and his little arms and legs are like sticks.

“Can we get a physician from Spain?” I ask Edward. “Anthony always says that the Moors have the wisest men.”

His face is weary with worry and sorrow for this, a precious son. “You can get anyone you like from anywhere,” he says. “But Elizabeth, my love, find your courage. He is a frail little boy, and he was a tiny baby. You have done well to keep him with us this far.”

“Don’t say that,” I say quickly, shaking my head. “He will get better. The spring will come and then the summer. He will get better in the summer for sure.”

I spend hours in the nursery with my little boy on my lap, dripping gruel into his little mouth, holding his chest to my ear so I can hear the faint patter of his heart.

They tell me that we are blessed to have two strong sons: the succession to the throne of York is surely secure. I say nothing in reply to these fools. I am not nursing him for the sake of York, I am nursing him for love. I do not want him to thrive to be a prince. I want him to thrive to be a strong boy.

This is my baby boy. I cannot bear to lose him as I lost his sister. I cannot bear that he should die in my arms as she died in my mother’s arms and they went away together. I haunt the nursery during the day and even at night I come to watch him sleep, and I am sure he is growing no stronger.

He is asleep on my lap one day in March, and I am rocking him in the chair and humming, without knowing I am doing so, a little song: a Burgundian lullaby half remembered from my childhood.

The song ends, and there is silence. I still the rocking of the chair, and everything is quiet. I put my ear to his little chest to hear the beating of his heart, and I cannot hear the beating of his heart. I put my cheek to his nose, his mouth to feel the warmth of his breath. There is no flutter of breath. He is still warm and soft in my arms, warm and soft as a little bird. But my George has gone. I have lost my son.

I hear the sound of the lullaby again, softly, as softly as the wind, and I know that Melusina is rocking him now, and my boy George has gone. I have lost my son.

They tell me that I still have my boy Edward, that I am lucky in that my handsome boy of eight years old is so strong and grows so well. They tell me to be glad of Richard, his five-year-old brother. I smile, for I am glad of both of my boys. But that makes no difference to my loss of George, my little George with his blue eyes and his tuft of blond hair.

Five months later, I am in confinement awaiting the birth of another child. I don’t expect a boy, I don’t imagine that one child can replace another. But little Catherine comes at just the right time to comfort us, and there is a York princess in the cradle again and the York nursery is busy as usual. A year later and I have another baby, my little girl Bridget.

“I think this will be our last,” I say regretfully to Edward when I come out of confinement.