The White Queen Read online

  “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.

  “Sweetheart, I was afraid,” he says. I can hardly hear him he speaks so low. “Sweetheart, I was most afraid.”

  “Of what?” I ask, a foolish question of a man who has had to flee for his life and put together an army in exile and is facing the most powerful army in Christendom.

  He turns and lies on his back, his hand still gripping me close to his side so I press against him from breastbone to toes.

  “When they said Warwick was coming for me, and George with him, I knew this time he would not take me and hold me. I knew this time it would be my death. I have never thought anyone would kill me before, but I knew Warwick would, and I knew George would let him.”

  “But you got away.”

  “I ran,” he said. “It was not a careful retreat, my love, it was not a maneuver. It was a rout. I ran in fear of my life, and all the time I knew myself for a coward. I ran and left you.”

  “It is not cowardice to get away from an enemy,” I say. “Anyway, you have come back to face him.”

  “I ran and I left you and the girls to face him,” he says. “I find I don’t think well of myself for that. I didn’t run to London for you. I didn’t get here and make a desperate stand. I ran to the nearest port and I took the first boat.”

  “Anyone would have done so. I never blamed you.” I lean up on my elbow and look down into his face. “You had to get away to get an army together and come back to save us. Everyone knew that. And my brother went with you, and your brother Richard. They judged it the right thing to do as well.”

  “I don’t know what they felt while they were running like deer, but I know what I felt. I was as scared as a child with a bully coming after him.”

  I fall silent. I don’t know how to comfort him, or what to say.

  He sighs. “I have been fighting for my kingdom or for my life ever since I was a boy. And in all that time I never thought I might lose. I never thought I would be captured. I never thought I would die. It’s odd, isn’t it? You will think me foolish. But in all that long time, even when my father was killed and my brother too, I never thought it could happen to me. I never thought it would be my head chopped off and stuck on a spike on the city walls. I thought myself unbeatable, invulnerable.”

  I wait.

  “And now I know I am not,” he says. “I have told no one this. I will tell no one but you. But I am not the man you married, Elizabeth. You married a boy who knew no fear. I thought that meant I was brave. But I was not brave—I was just lucky. Until now. Now I am a man and I have felt fear and fled from it.”

  I am about to say something to comfort him, a sweet lie; but then I think I will tell him the truth. “It’s a fool who is afraid of nothing,” I say. “And a brave man is one who knows fear and rides out and faces it. You ran then, but you are back now. Are you going to run away from battle tomorrow?”

  “God, no!”

  I smile. “Then you are the man I married. For the man I married was a brave young man, and you are a brave man still. The man I married had not known fear, nor had he a son, nor did he know love. But all these things have come to us and we are changed by them, but not spoiled by them.”

  He looks at me gravely. “You mean this?”

  “I do,” I say. “And I too have been very afraid, but I am not afraid with you here again.”

  He draws me even closer. “I think I will sleep now,” he says, comforted like a little boy, and I hold him tenderly, as if he were my little boy.

  I wake in the morning wondering at my joy, at the silky feel of my skin, at the warmth in my belly, at my sense of renewal and life, and then he stirs beside me and I know that I am safe, that he is safe, that we are together once more, and that this is why I have woken with sunshine on my bare skin. Then, in the next moment, I remember that he must go. And though he is now stirring, he is not smiling this morning. That shakes me again. Edward is always so confident, but this morning his face is grim.

  “Don’t say one word to delay me,” he says, getting out of the bed and throwing on his clothes. “I cannot bear to go. I cannot stand to leave you again. If you hold me back, I swear I will falter. Smile, and wish me good luck, sweetheart. I need your blessing; I need your courage.”

  I swallow my fear. “You have my blessing,” I say, strained. “Always you have my blessing. And all the good luck in the world.” I try to sound bright, but my voice quavers. “Are you going right away?”

  “I am going to fetch Henry that they have been calling king,” he says. “I will take him with me as a hostage. I saw him yesterday at his rooms in the Tower, before I came to you. He knew me. He said that he knew he would be safe with me, his cousin. He was like a child, poor thing. He did not seem to know that he had been king again.”

  “There is only one King of England,” I say staunchly. “And there has only been one King of England since you were crowned.”