The White Queen Read online

  And then I think of how my mother will take her loss, and that it will be me who has to tell her that he had a traitor’s death for fighting in my cause, after fighting all his life for the other side. I think of all of this, and I feel weary and sick to my soul, wearier and sicker than I have ever felt in all my life, even worse than when Father came home from the battle of Towton and said that our cause was lost, even worse than when my husband never came home at all from St. Albans and they told me he died bravely in a charge against the Yorks.

  I feel worse than I have ever done before, because now I know that it is easier to take a country into war than to bring it to live at peace, and a country at war is a bitter place to live, a risky place to have daughters, and a dangerous place to hope for a son.

  I am welcomed in London as a heroine, and the city is all for Edward; but it will make no difference if that butcher Warwick kills him in prison. I make my home for now in the well-fortified Tower of London with my girls and my Grey sons—they are obedient, scared as puppies now that they see that not every battle is won, and not every beloved son comes safe home. They are shaken by the loss of their uncle John and they ask every day for the safety of the king. We are all grieving: my girls have lost a good grandfather and a beloved uncle, and know that their father is in dreadful danger. I write to my kinsman the Duke of Burgundy and ask him to prepare a safe hiding place in Flanders for me, my Grey sons, and my royal girls. I tell him that we must find a little town, one of no importance, and a poor family who can pretend to take in English cousins. I must find somewhere for my daughters to hide that they will never be found.

  The duke swears he will do more than this. He will support the City if they turn out for me and for York. He promises men and an army. He asks me what news I have of the king. Is he safe?

  I cannot write to reassure him. The news of my husband is inexplicable. He is a king in captivity, just like the poor King Henry. How can such a thing be? How can such a thing continue? Warwick is still holding him at Middleham Castle, and persuading the lords to deny that Edward was ever king. There are those who say that Edward will be offered the choice: either to abdicate his throne for his brother, or climb the scaffold. Warwick will have either the crown or his head. There are those who say it is only days now before we hear that Edward is thrown down and fled to Burgundy; or dead. I have to listen to such gossip in the place of news, and I wonder if I am to be widowed in the same month that I have lost my father and my brother. And how shall I bear that?

  My mother comes to me in the second week of my vigil. She comes from our old home at Grafton, dry-eyed and somehow bowed, as if she has taken a wound to her belly and is bent over the pain. The moment that I see her I know that I won’t have to tell her that she is a widow. She knows she has lost the great love of her life, and her hand rests on the knot of her girdle all the time, as if to hold in a mortal wound. She knows that her husband is dead, but no one has told her how he died, or why. I have to take her into my private room, close the door on the children, and find the words to describe the death of her husband and son. And it was a shameful death, for good men, at the hand of a traitor.

  “I am so sorry,” I say. I kneel at her feet and clasp her hands. “I am so sorry, Mother. I will have Warwick’s head for this. I will see George dead.”

  She shakes her head. I look up at her and see lines on her face that I swear were never there before. She has lost the glow of a contented woman, and her joy has fallen away from her face and left weary lines.

  “No,” she says. She pats my plaited hair and says, “Hush, hush. Your father would not have wanted you to grieve. He knew the risks well enough. It was not his first battle, God knows. Here.” She reaches inside her gown and gives me a handwritten note. “His last letter to me. He sends me his blessing and his love to you. He wrote it as they told him he would be released. I think he knew the truth.”

  My father’s handwriting is clear and bold as his speech. I cannot believe I will not hear the one and see the other again and again.

  “And John…” She breaks off. “John is a loss to me and to his generation,” she says quietly. “Your brother John had his whole life before him.”

  She pauses. “When you raise a child and he becomes a man, you start to think that he is safe, that you are safe from heartbreak. When a child gets through all the illnesses of childhood, when a plague year comes and takes your neighbors’ children and yet your boy lives, you start to think he will be safe forever. Every year you think another year away from danger, another year towards becoming a man. I raised John, I raised all my children, breathless with hope. And we married him to that old woman for her title and her fortune, and we laughed knowing that he would outlive her. It was a great joke to us, knowing that he was such a young husband, to such an old woman. We laughed to make mock of her age, knowing her to be so much closer to the grave than he. And now she will see him buried and keep her fortune. How can such a thing be?”

  She breathes a long sigh, as if she is too tired for anything more. “And yet I should know. Of all the people in the world, I should have known. I have the Sight, I should have seen it all, but some things are too dark to foresee. These are hard times, and England is a country of sorrows. No mother can be sure that she will not bury her sons. When a country is at war, cousin against cousin, brother against brother, no boy is safe.”

  I sit back on my heels. “The king’s mother, Duchess Cecily, shall know this pain. She will have this pain that you are feeling. She will know the loss of her son George,” I spit. “I swear it. She will see him die the death of a liar and a turncoat. You have lost a son and so shall she, my word on it.”

  “So will you, by that rule,” my mother warns me. “More and more deaths, and more feuds, and more fatherless children, and more widowed brides. Do you want to mourn for your missing son in future days, as I am doing now?”

  “We can reconcile after George,” I say stubbornly. “They must be punished for this. George and Warwick are dead men from this day. I swear it, Mother. They are dead men from this day.” I rise up and go to the table. “I will tear a corner from his letter,” I say. “I will write their deaths in my own blood on my father’s letter.”

  “You are wrong,” she says quietly, but she lets me cut a corner from the letter and give it back to her.

  There is a knock at the door and I wipe the tears from my face before I let my mother call “Enter,” but the door is flung open without ceremony, and Edward, my darling Edward, strolls into the room as if he had been out for a day’s hunting and thought he would surprise me by coming home early.

  “My God! It is you! Edward! It is you? It is really you?”

  “It is me,” he confirms. “I greet you too, My Lady Mother Jacquetta.”

  I fling myself at him, and as his arms come around me, I smell his familiar scent and feel the strength of his chest, and I sob at the very touch of him. “I thought you were in prison,” I say. “I thought he was going to kill you.”

  “Lost his nerve,” he says shortly, trying to stroke my back and take down my hair at the same time. “Sir Humphrey Neville raised Yorkshire for Henry, and when Warwick went against him nobody supported him; he needed me. He started to see that nobody would have George for king, and I would not sign away my throne. He hadn’t bargained for that. He didn’t dare behead me. To say truth, I don’t think he could find a headsman to do it. I am crowned king: he can’t just lop off my head as if it were firewood. I am ordained; my body is sacred. Not even Warwick dares to kill a king in cold blood.

  “He came to me with the paper of my abdication, and I told him that I couldn’t see my way to signing. I was happy to stay in his house. The cook is excellent and the cellar better. I told him I was happy to move my whole court to Middleham Castle if he wanted me as a guest forever. I said I could see no reason why my rule should not run from his castle, at his expense. But that I would never deny who I am.”

  He laughs, his loud confident laugh. “S