The White Queen: A Novel Read online

  “Then you forget Margaret of Anjou and her mad husband,” I say coldly. “My mother herself said to me on the day we rode out for Reading that I could not do worse than Margaret of Anjou and I have not done so.”

  He concedes the point. “All right. You and your husband are no worse than a madman and a harpy. Very good.”

  I am surprised at his gravity. “It is as the world is, my brother,” I remind him. “And you too have had your favors from the king and me. And now you are Earl Rivers and brother-in-law to the king, and uncle to the king to be.”

  “I thought we were doing more than lining our own pockets,” he says. “I thought we were doing more than putting a king and a queen on the throne who were only better than the worst that could be. You know, sometimes I would rather be in a white tabard with a red cross, fighting for God in the desert.”

  I think of my mother’s prediction that Anthony’s spirituality will one day triumph over his Rivers worldliness and he will leave me. “Ah don’t say that,” I say. “I need you. And as Baby grows and has his own prince’s council, he will need you. I can think of no man better fitted to guide him and teach him than you. There’s no knight in England better read. There’s no poet in England who can fight as well. Don’t say you will go, Anthony. You know you have to stay. I can’t be queen without you. I can’t be me without you.”

  He bows to me with his twisted smile and takes my hand and kisses it. “I won’t leave you while you have need of me,” he promises. “I will never willingly leave you while you need me. And, for sure, good times are coming soon.”

  I smile, but he makes the optimistic words sound like a lament.

  SEPTEMBER 1472

  Edward beckons me to one side after dinner one evening at Windsor Castle and I go to him smiling. “What do you want, husband? Do you want to dance with me?”

  “I do,” he says. “And then I am going to get hugely drunk.”

  “For any reason?”

  “None at all. Just for pleasure. But before all that, I have to ask you something. Can you take another lady into your rooms as a lady-in-waiting?”

  “Do you have someone in mind?” I am instantly alert to the danger that Edward has a new flirt that he wants to palm off on me, and that he thinks I will make her my lady-in-waiting to make his seduction the more convenient. This must show in my face, for he gives a whoop of laughter and says, “Don’t look so furious. I wouldn’t foist my whores upon you. I can house them myself. No, this is a lady of unimpeachable family. None other than Margaret Beaufort, the last of the Lancastrians.”

  “You want her to serve me?” I ask incredulously. “You want her to be one of my ladies?”

  He nods. “I have reason. You remember she is newly married to Lord Thomas Stanley?”

  I nod.

  “He is declared our friend, he is sworn to our support, and his army sat on the sidelines and saved us at the battle of Blore Heath, though he was promised to Margaret of Anjou. With his fortune and influence in the country I do need to keep him on our side. He had our permission to marry her well enough, and now he has done it, and seeks to bring her to court. I thought we could give her a position. I must have him on my council.”

  “Isn’t she wearisomely religious?” I ask unhelpfully.

  “She is a lady. She will adapt her behavior to yours,” he says equably. “And I need her husband close to me, Elizabeth. He is an ally who will be of importance both now and in the future.”

  “If you ask it so sweetly, what can I do but say yes?” I smile at him. “But don’t blame me if she is dull.”

  “I will not see her, nor any woman, if you are before me,” he whispers. “So don’t trouble yourself as to how she behaves. And in a little while, when she asks for her son Henry Tudor to come home again, he may—as long as she is loyal to us, and he can be persuaded to forget his dreams of being the Lancaster heir. They will both come to court and serve us, and everyone will forget there was ever such a thing as a House of Lancaster. We’ll marry him to some nice girl of the House of York whom you can pick out for him, and the House of Lancaster will be no more.”

  “I will invite her,” I promise him.

  “Then tell the musicians to play something merry and I will dance with you.”

  I turn and nod to the musicians and they confer for a moment and then play the newest tune, straight from the Burgundian court, where Edward’s sister Margaret is continuing the York tradition of making merry and the Burgundian tradition of high fashion. They even call the dance “Duchess Margaret’s jig,” and Edward sweeps me onto the floor and whirls me in the quick steps until everyone is laughing and clapping in a circle around us, and then taking their turn.

  The music ends and I spin away to a quieter corner, and Anthony my brother offers me a glass of small ale. I drink it thirstily. “So, do I still look like a fat fishwife?” I demand.

  “Oho, that stung, did it?” He grins. He puts his arms around me and hugs me gently. “No, you look like the beauty you are, and you know it. You have that gift, which our mother had, of growing older and becoming more lovely. Your features have changed from being merely those of a pretty girl to being those of a beautiful woman with a face like a carving. When you are laughing and dancing with Edward, you could pass for twenty, but when you are still and thoughtful, you are as lovely as the statues they are carving in Italy. No wonder women loathe you.”

  “As long as men do not.” I smile.

  JANUARY 1473

  In the cold days of January, Edward comes to my rooms where I am seated before the fire, a footstool before me so I can put my feet up. As he sees me sitting, uncharacteristically idle, he checks in the doorway and nods to the men behind him and to my women and says, “Leave us.” They go out with a little bustle, the newly arrived Lady Margaret Stanley among them, fluttering as women always do around Edward—even the holy Margaret Stanley.

  He nods at their backs as they close the door behind them. “Lady Margaret? She is merry and good company for you?”

  “She is well enough,” I say, smiling up at him. “She knows, and I know, that she rode in the Tudor barge past my window when I was in sanctuary, and she enjoyed her moment of triumph then. And she knows, and I know, that I have the upper hand now. We don’t forget that. We aren’t men to clap each other on the back and say ‘No hard feelings’ after a battle. But we know also that the world has changed and we have to change too, and she never says a word to suggest that she wishes her son were acknowledged heir to the Lancaster throne, rather than Baby is to the York.”

  “I came to speak to you about Baby,” Edward says. “But I see that you should be speaking to me.”

  I widen my eyes and smile up at him. “Oh? About what?”

  He gives a little laugh and pulls a cushion off a settle and drops it to the floor so he can sit beside me. The freshly strewn herbs on the floor beneath his cushion release the scent of water mint. “Do you think I am blind? Or just stupid?”

  “Neither, my lord,” I say flirtatiously. “Should I?”

  “In all the time I have known you, you have always seated yourself as your mother taught you. Straight upright in a chair, feet together, hands in your lap or resting on the arms of the chair. Isn’t that how she taught you to sit? Like a queen? As if she knew all along you would have a throne?”

  I smile. “She probably did know, actually.”

  “And so now I find you lazing about in the afternoon, feet on a footstool.” He leans back and lifts the hem of my gown so that he can see my stockinged feet. “Shoes off! I am scandalized. You are clearly becoming a slattern, and my royal court is run by a hedgerow slut, just as my mother warned me.”

  “And so?” I ask, unmoved.

  “And so, I know you are with child. For the only time you ever sit with your feet up is when you are with child. And that is why I ask you if you think I am blind or just stupid?”

  “I think you are as fertile as a bull in a water meadow, if you want to know what I