The White Queen: A Novel Read online

  I put my hand on hers. “He would want me to live, and to bring you children through this danger to life,” I say. “We will hide in sanctuary for now, but I swear we will come out again to our true place. You can call this the curse of ambition if you like, but without it I would not fight. And I will fight. You will see me fight, and you will see me win.

  “If we have to set sail to Flanders, we will do that. If we have to snap like cornered dogs, we will do that. If we have to hide like peasants in Tournai and live on eels from the River Scheldt, we will do that. But Richard will not destroy us. No man of this earth can destroy us. We will rise up. We are the children of the goddess Melusina: we may have to ebb but surely we will flow again. And Richard will learn this. He has caught us now at a low and dry place, but by God he will see us in flood.”

  I speak very bravely, but once I am silent I slide into grief for my Grey son, and for my brother, my dearest brother Anthony. I think of Richard Grey as a little boy once more, sitting so high on the king’s horse, holding my hand at the side of the road as we waited for the king to come by. He was my boy, he was my beautiful boy, and his father died in battle against one York brother and now he is dead at the hands of another. I remember my mother mourning her son and saying that when you have got a child through babyhood you think you are safe. But a woman is not safe. Not in this world. Not in this world where brother fights against brother and no one can ever put their sword aside, or trust in the law. I think of him as a baby in the cradle, as a toddler when he learned to walk holding on to my fingers, up and down, up and down the gallery at Grafton till my back ached from stooping, and then I think of him as the young man he was, a good man in the making.

  And Anthony my brother has been my dearest and most trusted friend and advisor since we were children together. Edward was right to call him the greatest poet and the finest knight at court. Anthony, who wanted to go on pilgrimage to Jerusalem and who would have gone had I not stopped him. Richard dined with the two of them at Stony Stratford when they met on the road to London, and talked pleasantly of the England that we would all build together, Riverses and Plantagenets, of the shared heir, my boy, whom we would put on the throne. Anthony was no fool but he trusted Richard—why should he not? They were kinsmen. They had been side by side in battle, brothers in arms. They had gone into exile together and returned to England in triumph. They were both uncles and guardians to my precious son.

  In the morning when Anthony came downstairs to breakfast in his inn, he found the doors barred and his men ordered away. He found Richard and Henry Stafford, the Duke of Buckingham, armed for battle, their men standing stone-faced in the yard. And they took him away, with my boy Richard Grey, and Sir Thomas Vaughan accused of treason, though they all three were faithful servants of my boy the new king.

  Anthony, in prison, awaiting his death in the morning, listens at the window for a moment, in case there is such a thing as the strong sweet song of Melusina, expecting to hear nothing, and then smiles when he hears a bell-like ringing. He shakes his head to clear the noise from his ears, but it stays, an unearthly voice that makes him, irreverently, chuckle. He never believed the legend of the girl who is half fish and half woman, the ancestor of his house; but now he finds he is comforted to hear her singing for his death. He stays at the window and leans his forehead against the cool stone. To hear her voice, high and clear, around the battlements of Pontefract Castle proves at last that his mother’s gifts and his sister’s gifts and her daughter’s gifts are real: as they always claimed, as he only half believed. He wishes he could tell his sister that he knows this now. They may need these gifts. Their gifts may be enough to save them. Perhaps to save all the family who named themselves Rivers to honor the water goddess who was the founder of their family. Perhaps even to save their two Plantagenet boys. If Melusina can sing for him, an unbeliever, then perhaps she can guide those who listen for her warnings. He smiles because the high clear song gives him hope that Melusina will watch over his sister and her boys, especially the boy who was in his care, the boy he loves: Edward the new King of England. And he smiles because her voice is that of his mother.

  He spends the night not in praying, nor in weeping but in writing. In his last hours he is not an adventurer, nor a knight, nor even a brother or an uncle, but a poet. They bring his writings to me and I see that, at the end, at the very moment he was facing his death, and the death of all his hopes, he knew that it was all vanity. Ambition, power, even the throne itself that has cost our family so dear: at the end he knew it was all meaningless. And he did not die in bitterness at this knowledge, but smiling at the folly of man, at his own folly.

  He writes:

  Somewhat musing

  And more mourning,

  In remembering

  Th’ unsteadfastness;

  This world being

  Of such wheeling,

  Me, contrarying;

  What may I guess?

  With displeasure,

  To my grievance,

  And no surance

  Of remedy;

  Lo, in this trance,

  Now in substance,

  Such is my dance,

  Willing to die

  Methinks truly,

  Bounden am I,

  And that greatly,

  To be content;

  Seeing plainly

  Fortune doth wry

  All contrary

  From mine intent.

  This is the last thing he does at dawn, and then they take him out and behead him on the orders of Richard, Duke of Gloucester, the new lord protector of England, who is now responsible for my safety, the safety of all my children, and especially the safety and future of my son Prince Edward, the rightful King of England.

  I read Anthony’s poem later, and I think that I particularly like “Fortune doth wry/ All contrary/ From mine intent.” Fortune has gone against all us Riverses this season: he was right in that.

  And I shall have to find a way to live without him.

  Something has changed between my daughter Elizabeth and me. My girl, my child, my first baby, has suddenly grown up, grown away. The child who believed that I knew everything, that I commanded everything, is now a young woman who has lost her father, and doubts her mother. She thinks I am wrong to keep us in sanctuary. She blames me for the death of her uncle Anthony. She accuses me—though never saying a word—of failing to rescue her brother Edward, of sending her little brother Richard out, unprotected, into the gray silence of the evening river.

  She doubts that I have secured a safe hiding place for Richard and that our plan of the changeling page will work. She knows that if I sent a false prince to keep Edward company, it is because I doubt my ability to get Edward home safe. She has no hopes of the uprising that my Grey son Thomas is organizing. She fears that we will never be rescued.

  Ever since the morning when we heard the singing of the river, and then the afternoon when they brought us the news of Anthony and Richard Grey’s death, she has no faith in my judgment. She has not repeated her belief that we are cursed, but there is something about the darkness of her eyes and the pallor of her face that tells me she is hagridden. God knows, I have not cursed her, and I know no one who would do such a thing to such a girl of gold and silver, but it is true: she looks as if someone has put a dark thumbprint down on her and marked her out for a hard destiny.

  Dr. Lewis comes again and I ask him to look at her and tell me if she is well. She has almost stopped eating and she is pale. “She needs to be free,” he says simply. “I tell you as a physician what I hope to see soon as an ally. All your children, you yourself, Your Grace, cannot stay here. You need to be out in the good air, enjoying the summer. She is a delicate girl—she needs exercise and sunshine. She needs company. She is a young woman—she should be dancing and courting. She needs to plan her future, to dream of her betrothal, not to be cooped up here, fearing death.”

  “I have an invitation from the king.” I make myself say th