The White Queen: A Novel Read online

  For no reason at all, I shiver.

  “What is it?”

  “Nothing, I don’t know. A shiver of cold: nothing. I know he will make a wonderful king. He’s a real York and a real son of the House of Rivers. There could be no better start for a boy.”

  DECEMBER 1476

  Christmas comes, and my darling son Prince Edward comes home to Westminster for the feast. Everyone marvels at how he has grown. He is seven next year, and a straight-standing, handsome, fair-headed boy with a quickness of understanding and an education that is all from Anthony, and the promise of good looks and charm that is all his father’s.

  Anthony brings both my sons to me, Richard Grey and Prince Edward, for my blessing and then releases them to find their brothers and sisters.

  “I miss you all three. So much,” I say.

  “And I you,” he says, smiling at me. “But you look well, Elizabeth.”

  I make a face. “For a woman who is sick every morning.”

  He is delighted. “You are expecting a baby again?”

  “Again, and given the sickness, they all think it will be a boy.”

  “Edward must be delighted.”

  “I assume so. He shows his delight by flirting with every woman within a hundred miles.”

  Anthony laughs. “That’s Edward.”

  My brother is happy. I can tell at once, from the easy set of his shoulders and the relaxed lines around his eyes. “And what about you? Do you still like Ludlow?”

  “Young Edward and Richard and I have things just as we want them,” he says. “We are a court devoted to scholarship, chivalry, jousting, and hunting. It is a perfect life for all three of us.”

  “He studies?”

  “As I report to you. He is a clever boy and a thoughtful one.”

  “And you don’t let him take risks hunting?”

  He grins at me. “Of course I do! Did you want me to raise a coward for Edward’s throne? He has to test his courage in the hunting field and in the jousting arena. He has to know fear and look it in the face and ride towards it. He has to be a brave king, not a fearful one. I would serve you both very ill if I steered him away from any risk and taught him to fear danger.”

  “I know, I know,” I say. “It is just that he is so precious—”

  “We are all precious,” Anthony declares. “And we all have to live a life with risk. I am teaching him to ride any horse in the stable and to face a fight without a tremble. That will keep him safer than trying to keep him on safe horses and away from the jousting arena. Now, to far more important things. What have you got me for Christmas? And are you going to name your baby for me, if you have a boy?”

  The court prepares for the Christmas feast with its usual extravagance, and Edward orders new clothes for all the children and ourselves as part of the pageant that the world expects from England’s handsome royal family. I spend some time every day with the little Prince Edward. I love to sit beside him when he sleeps, and listen to his prayers as he goes to bed, and summon him to my rooms for breakfast every day. He is a serious little boy, thoughtful, and he offers to read to me in Latin, Greek, or French until I have to confess that his learning far surpasses my own.

  He is patient with his little brother Richard, who idolizes him, following him everywhere at a determined trot, and he is tender to baby Anne, hanging over her cradle and marveling at her little hands. Every day we compose a play or a masque, every day we go hunting, every day we have a great ceremonial dinner and dancing and an entertainment. People say that the Yorks have an enchanted court, an enchanted life, and I cannot deny it.

  There is only one thing that casts a shadow on the days before Christmas: George the Duke of Dissatisfaction.

  “I do think your brother grows more peculiar every day,” I complain to Edward when he comes to my rooms in Whitehall Palace to escort me to dinner.

  “Which one?” he asks lazily. “For you know I can do nothing right in the eyes of either. You would think they would be glad to have a York on the throne and peace in Christendom, and one of the finest Christmas feasts we have ever arranged; but no: Richard is leaving court to go back north as soon as the feast is over, to demonstrate his outrage that we are not slogging away in a battle with the French, and George is simply bad tempered.”

  “It is George’s bad temper which is troubling me.”

  “Why, what has he done now?” he asks.

  “He has told his server that he will not eat anything sent to him from our table,” I say. “He has told him he will only eat privately, in his own room, after the rest of us have had dinner. When we send him a dish down the room to him as a gesture of courtesy for him to taste, he will refuse it. I hear he plans to send it back to us as an open insult. He will sit at the dinner table in company with an empty plate before him. He will not drink either. Edward, you will have to speak to him.”

  “If he is refusing drink, it is more than an insult, it is a miracle!” Edward smiles. “George cannot refuse a glass of wine, not if it came from the devil himself.”

  “It is no laughing matter if he uses our dinner table to insult us.”

  “Yes, I know. I have spoken to him.” He turns to the retinue of lords and ladies who are forming a line behind us. “Give us a moment,” he says and draws me off to a window bay where he can talk without being overheard. “Actually, it’s worse than you know, Elizabeth. I think he is spreading rumors against us.”

  “Saying what?” I ask. George’s resentment of his older brother was not satisfied by his failed rebellion and forgiveness. I had hoped he would settle into being one of the two greatest dukes in England. I had thought he would be happy with his wife, the whey-faced Isabel, and her enormous fortune, even though he lost control of his sister-in-law Anne when she married Richard. But like any mean, ambitious man, he counts his losses more than his gains. He begrudged Richard his wife, little Anne Neville. He begrudged Richard the fortune that she brought him. He cannot forgive Edward for giving Richard permission to marry her, and he watches every grant that Edward makes to my family and kinsmen, every acre of land Edward gives to Richard. You would think England was a tiny field that he feared losing a row of peas, such is his anxious suspicion. “What can he say against us? You have been ceaselessly generous to him.”

  “He is saying again that my mother betrayed my father and that I am a bastard,” he says, his mouth to my ear.

  “For shame! That old story!” I exclaim.

  “And he is claiming that he made an agreement with Warwick and Margaret of Anjou which said that at Henry’s death he should be king. So that he is rightful king now, as Henry’s appointed heir.”

  “But he killed Henry himself!” I exclaim.

  “Hush, hush. Nothing of that.”

  I shake my head and the veil from my headdress dances in my agitation. “No. You must not be mealymouthed about that now, not between the two of us in private. You said at the time that his heart gave out, and that was good enough for everyone. But George cannot pretend that he is the man’s chosen and named heir when he was his murderer.”

  “He says worse,” my husband warns.

  “Of me?” guess.

  He nods. “He says that you—” He breaks off and looks round to see that no one is in earshot. “He says that you are a w…” His voice is so low he cannot speak the word.

  I shrug my shoulders. “A witch?”

  He nods.

  “He is not the first to say so. I suppose he will not be the last. While you are King of England he cannot hurt me.”

  “I don’t like it being said about you. Not just for your reputation but for your safety. It is a dangerous name to attach to a woman, whoever her husband might be. And besides, everyone always goes on to say that our marriage was an enchantment. And that leads them to say that there was no true marriage at all.”

  I give a little hiss like an angry cat. I care less about my own reputation: my mother taught me that a powerful woman will always attract slander