The White Queen: A Novel Read online

  “You don’t believe that the man could hurt you from ill-wishing?” he demands. “He is no wizard. There is no such thing. It is a fairy tale to frighten children, Elizabeth.” He glances back at my children, who are appealing to Elizabeth for a ruling on a dropped catch.

  “George believes him. He paid him good money to foretell the king’s death and then some more to bring it about by overlooking. George hired this wizard to destroy us. Already his spells are in the air, in the earth, even in the water.”

  “Oh nonsense. He is no more a wizard than you are a witch.”

  “I don’t claim to be a witch,” I say quietly. “But I have Melusina’s inheritance. I am her heir. You know what I mean: I have her gift, just as Mother did. Just as my daughter Elizabeth has. The world sings to me and I hear the song. Things come to me; my wishes come true. Dreams speak to me. I see signs and portents. And sometimes I know what will happen in the future. I have the Sight.”

  “These could all be revelations from God,” he says firmly. “This is the power of prayer. All the rest is wishful thinking. And women’s nonsense.”

  I smile. “I think they are from God. I never doubt it. But God speaks to me through the river.”

  “You are a heretic and a pagan,” he says with brotherly scorn. “Melusina is a fairy story, but God and His Son are your avowed faith. For heaven’s sake, you have founded religious houses and chantries and schools in His name. Your love of rivers and streams is a superstition, learned from our mother, like that of ancient pagans. You can’t puddle them up into a religion of your own, and then frighten yourself with devils of your own devising.”

  “Of course, brother,” I say with my eyes cast down. “You are a nobleman of learning: I am sure you know best.”

  “Stop!” he throws up a hand, laughing. “Stop. You need not think I am going to try to debate with you. You have your own theology, I know. Part fairy tale and part Bible and all nonsense. Please, for all of our sakes, make it a secret religion. Keep it to yourself. And don’t frighten yourself with imaginary enemies.”

  “But I do dream true.”

  “If you say so.”

  “Anthony, my whole life is a proof of magic, that I can foresee.”

  “Name one thing.”

  “Did I not marry the King of England?”

  “Did I not see you stand out in the road like the strumpet you are?”

  I exclaim against his crow of laughter. “It was not like that! It was not like that! And besides, my ring came to me from the river!”

  He takes my hands and kisses them both. “It is all nonsense,” he says gently. “There is no Melusina but an old, half-forgotten story that Mother used to tell us at bedtime. There is no enchantment but Mother encouraging you with play. You have no powers. There is nothing but what we can do as sinners under the will of God. And Thomas Burdett has no powers but ill-will and a huckster’s promise.”

  I smile at him and I don’t argue. But in my heart I know that there is more.

  “How did the story of Melusina end?” my little boy Edward asks me that night when I am listening to his bedtime prayers. He is sharing a room with his three-year-old brother Richard, and both boys look at me hopefully, wanting a story to delay their bedtime.

  “Why would you ask?” I sit on a chair beside their fire and draw a footstool towards me so I can put up my feet to rest. I can feel the new baby stir in my body. I am six months into my time, and what feels like a lifetime yet to go.

  “I heard my lord uncle Anthony speak to you of her today,” Edward says. “What happened after she came out of the water and married the knight?”

  “It ends sadly,” I say. I gesture to them that they must get into bed, and they obey me but two pairs of unblinking, bright eyes watch me over their covers. “The stories differ. Some people say that a curious traveler came to their house and spied on her and saw her becoming a fish in her bath. Some say her husband broke his word that she was free to swim alone, and spied on her and saw her become fish again.”

  “But why would he mind? Edward asks sensibly. “Since she was half fish when he met her?”

  “Ah, he thought he could change her to be the woman he wanted,” I say. “Sometimes a man likes a woman, but then hopes he can change her. Perhaps he was like that.”

  “Is there any fighting in this story?” Richard asks sleepily, as his head droops to the pillow.

  “No, none,” I say. I kiss Edward’s forehead and then I go to the other bed and kiss Richard. They both still smell like babies, of soap and warm skin. Their hair is soft and smells of fresh air.

  “So what happens when he knows she is half fish?” Edward whispers as I go to the door.

  “She takes the children and leaves him,” I say. “And they never meet again.”

  I blow out a branch of candles but leave the other burning. The firelight in the little grate makes the room warm and cozy.

  “That’s really sad,” Edward says mournfully. “Poor man, that he could not see his children or his wife again.”

  “It is sad,” I say. “But it is just a story. Perhaps there is another ending that people forgot to tell. Perhaps she forgave him and went back to him. Perhaps he turned into a fish for love and swam after her.”

  “Yes.” A happy boy, he is easily comforted. “Good night, Mama.”

  “Good night and God bless you both.”

  When he saw her, the water lapping on her scales, head down in the bath he had built especially for her, thinking that she would like to wash—not to revert to fish—he had that instant revulsion that some men feel when they understand, perhaps for the first time, that a woman is truly “other.” She is not a boy though she is weak like a boy, nor a fool though he has seen her tremble with feeling like a fool. She is not a villain in her capacity to hold a grudge, nor a saint in her flashes of generosity. She is not any of these male qualities. She is a woman. A thing quite different to a man.What he saw was a half fish, but what frightened him to his soul was the being which was a woman.

  George’s malice to his brother becomes horribly apparent in the days of the trial of Burdett and his conspirators. When they hunt for evidence, the plot unravels to reveal a tangle of dark promises and threats, recipes for poisoned capes, a sachet of ground glass, and outright curses. In Burdett’s papers they find not only a chart of days drawn up to foretell Edward’s death, but a set of spells designed to kill him. When Edward shows them to me, I cannot stop myself shivering. I tremble as if I had an ague. Whether they can cause death or not, I know that these ancient drawings on dark paper have a malevolent power. “They make me cold,” I say. “They feel so cold and damp. They feel evil.”

  “Certainly they are evil evidence,” Edward says grimly. “I would not have dreamed that George could have gone so far against me. I would have given the world for him to live at peace with us, or at the very least to keep this quiet. But he hired such incompetent men that now everyone knows that my own brother was conspiring against me. Burdett will be found guilty and he will hang for his crime. But it is bound to come out that George directly commissioned him. George is guilty of treason too. But I cannot put my own brother on trial!”

  “Why not?” I ask sharply. I am seated on a low cushioned stool by the fire in my bedroom, wearing only my fur-lined night cape. We are on our way to our separate beds, but Edward cannot keep his trouble to himself any longer. Burdett’s slimy spells may not have hurt his health, but they have darkened his spirit. “Why can you not put George on trial and send him to a traitor’s death? He deserves it.”

  “Because I love him,” he says simply. “As much as you do your brother Anthony. I cannot send him to the scaffold. He is my little brother. He has been at my side in battle. He is my kinsman. He is my mother’s favorite. He is our George.”

  “He has been on the other side in battle too,” I remind him. “He has been a traitor to you and your family more than once already. He would have seen you dead if he and Warwick had caught you and