Philippa Gregory - The White Queen

“What?” I spit at the quiet dawn sky like an angry cat whose kittens have been taken away for drowning. “No royal barges? No booming cannon from the Tower? No wine flowing in the fountains of the city? No banging of drums, no ’prentice boys howling out the songs of their guilds? No music? No shouting? No cheering along the procession route?” I swing open the window that looks over the river and see the usual river traffic of barges and wherries and rowing boats, and I say to my mother and to Melusina, “Clearly, they don’t crown him today. Is he to die instead?” I think of my boy as if I were painting his portrait. I think of the straight line of his little nose still rounded at the tip like a baby, and the plump roundness of his cheeks and the clear innocence of his eyes. I think of the curve of the back of his head that used to fit my hand when I touched him, and the straight pure line of the nape of his neck when he was bent over his books in study. He was a brave boy, a boy who had been coached by his uncle Anthony to vault into a saddle and ride at the joust. Anthony promised that he would be fearless by learning to face fear. And he was a boy who loved the country. He liked Ludlow Castle, for he could ride into the hills and see the peregrine falcons soaring high above the cliffs, and he could swim in the cold water of the river. Anthony said he had a sense of landscape: rare in the young. He was a boy with the most golden future. He was born in wartime to be a child of peace. He would have been, I don’t doubt, a great Plantagenet king, and his father and I would have been proud of him.

I speak of him as if he is dead, for I have little doubt that since he is not crowned today, he will be killed in secret, just as William Hastings was dragged out and beheaded on Tower Green on a baulk of wood with the axeman hurriedly wiping his hands from his breakfast. Dear God, when I think of the nape of the neck of my boy and I think of the headsman’s axe, I feel sick enough to die myself.

I don’t stay at the window watching the river that keeps flowing indifferently, as if my boy were not in danger of his life. I dress and pin up my hair and then I prowl about our sanctuary like one of the lionesses in the Tower. I comfort myself with plotting: we are not friendless, I am not without hope. My son Thomas Grey will be busy, I know, meeting in secret at hidden places those who can be convinced to rise for us, and there must be many in the country, in London too, who are beginning to doubt exactly what Duke Richard means by a protectorate. Margaret Stanley is clearly working for us: her husband Lord Thomas Stanley warned Hastings. My sister-in-law Duchess Margaret of York will be working for us in Burgundy. Even the French should take an interest in my danger, if only to cause trouble for Richard. There is a safe house in Flanders, where a well-paid family is greeting a little boy and teaching him to disappear into the crowd of Tournai. The duke may have the upper hand now, but there are as many who will hate him, as hated us Riverses, and many more will be thinking fondly of me, now I am in danger. Most of all there will be the men who want to see Edward’s son and not his brother on the throne.

I hear the rush of hurried footsteps, and I turn to face new danger as my daughter Cecily comes running down the crypt and throws opens the door to my chamber. She is white with fright. “There is something at the door,” she says. “Something horrible at the door.”

“What is at the door?” I ask. At once, of course, I think it is the headsman.

“Something as tall as a man, but looking like Death.”

I throw a scarf over my head and I go to the door and slide open the grille. Death himself seems to be waiting for me. He is in black gaberdine with a tall hat on his head and a long white tube of a nose hiding all his face. It is a physician with the long cone of his nose mask stuffed with herbs to protect him from the airs of the plague. He turns the glittery slits of his eyes on me, and I feel myself shiver.

“There is none with plague in here,” I say.

“I am Dr. Lewis of Caerleon, the Lady Margaret Beaufort’s doctor,” he says, his voice echoing weirdly from the cone. “She says you are suffering from woman’s maladies, and would benefit from a physician.”

I open the door. “Come in, I am not well,” I say. But as soon as the door is closed to the outside world, I challenge him. “I am perfectly well. Why are you here?”

“The Lady Beaufort-Lady Stanley, I should say-is well too, God be praised for her. But she wanted to find a way to speak with you, and I am of her affinity, and loyal to you, Your Grace.”

I nod. “Take off your mask.”

He takes the cone from his face and pushes back the hood from his head. He is a small dark man with a smiling, trustworthy face. He bows low. “She wants to know if you have devised a plan to rescue the two princes from the Tower. She wants you to know both she and her husband the Lord Stanley are yours to command, and she wants you to know that the Duke of Buckingham is filled with doubt as to where the Duke Richard’s ambition is leading him. She thinks the young duke is ready for turning.”

“Buckingham has done everything to put the duke where he sits now,” I say. “Why would he change his mind on this day of their victory?”

“Lady Margaret believes that the Duke of Buckingham could be persuaded,” he says, leaning forward to speak only into my ear. “She thinks he is starting to have doubts as to his leader. She thinks he would be interested in other, greater rewards than those the Duke Richard can offer him, and he is a young man, not yet thirty years old, easily swayed. He is afraid that the duke plans to take the throne for himself; he is afraid for the safety of your sons. You are his sister-in-law, these are his nephews too. He is concerned for the future of the princes, his little kinsmen. Lady Margaret bids me say to you that she thinks that the servants in the Tower can be bribed, and she wants to know how she can serve you in what plans you have to restore the Princes Edward and Richard to freedom.”

“It is not Richard…” I start to say when, like a ghost, from the door to the river, Elizabeth comes up the steps, the hem of her gown sodden.

“Elizabeth. What on earth are you doing?”

“I went down to sit by the river,” she says. Her face is strange and pale. “It was so quiet and beautiful at first this morning, and then it became more and more busy. I wondered why the river was so busy. It was almost as if the river would tell me herself.” She turns to regard the doctor. “Who is this?”

“He is a messenger from Lady Margaret Stanley,” I say. I am looking at her wet gown, which drags behind her like a tail. “How did you get so wet?”

“From the barges that went by,” she says. Her face is pale and hostile. “All the barges that went down the river to Baynard Castle, where Duke Richard is holding a great court. The wash from their passing was so great that it came in over the steps. What is happening there today? Half of London is on a barge going to the duke’s house, but it is supposed to be the day of my brother’s coronation.”

Dr. Lewis looks awkward. “I was about to tell your royal mother,” he says hesitantly.

“The river itself is a witness,” my daughter says rudely. “It washed over my feet as if to tell me. Anyone could guess.”

“Guess what?” I demand of them both.

“The Parliament has met and declared that Duke Richard is the rightful king,” he says quietly, though his words echo in the vaulted stone hall as if he were shouting a proclamation. “They ruled that your marriage with the king was held without the knowledge of the rightful lords, and achieved by witchcraft by your mother and yourself. And that the king was married already to another lady.”

“So you have been a whore for years and we are bastards,” Elizabeth finishes coolly. “We are defeated and shamed. It is over, all over. Can we take Edward and Richard and go now?”

“What are you saying?” I ask of her. I am as bewildered by this daughter of mine with her gown like a wet tail, like a mermaid come in from the river, as I am at the news that Richard has claimed the throne and we are cast down. “What are you saying? What were you thinking as you sat by the river? Elizabeth, you are so strange today. Why are you like this now?”

“Because I think we are cursed,” she flings out at me. “I think we are cursed. The river whispered a curse to me, and I blame you and my father for bringing us into this world and putting us here, in the grip of ambition, and yet not holding strongly enough to your power to make it right for us.”

I snatch at her cold hands tightly, and I hold her as if I would keep her from swimming away. “You’re not cursed, daughter. You are the finest and rarest of all my children, the most beautiful, the most beloved. You know that. What curse could stick to you?”

The gaze she turns on me is darkened with horror, as if she has seen her death. “You will never surrender, you will never let us be. Your ambition will be the death of my brothers, and when they are dead you will put me on the throne. You would rather have the throne than your sons, and when they are both dead, you will put me on my dead brother’s throne. You love the crown more than your children.”

I shake my head to deny the power of her words. This is my little girl, this is my easy, simple child, this is my pet, my Elizabeth. She is the very bone of my bone. She has never had a thought that I did not put in her head. “You cannot know such a thing; it’s not true. You cannot know. The river cannot tell you such a thing, and you cannot hear it, and it’s not true.”

“I will take my own brother’s throne,” she says as if she cannot hear me. “And you will be glad of it, for your ambition is your curse, so the river says.”