The White Queen: A Novel Read online

  “We got in through the water gate, and then across the first lane before they even saw us. We were starting up the steps as someone sounded the alarm, and though we sprinted up the steps to the door of the White Tower, they slammed it shut. We were just seconds away from it. Thomas was firing at the locks and we threw ourselves against it, but I heard the bolts slam from the inside and then they came pouring out of the guard room. Richard and I turned to face them and we fought, holding them off, while Thomas and the Stanley men tried to batter the door in, or even lift it from its hinges, but you know—it is too strong.”

  “The Stanleys were there, as they promised?”

  “They were, and Buckingham’s men. None in their livery, of course, but they all wore a white rose. It was strange to see the white rose again. And strange to be fighting to enter a place that we own. I shouted to Edward to be of good cheer, that we would come for him, that we would not fail him. I don’t know if he heard. I don’t know.”

  “You’re hurt,” I say, suddenly noticing the cut on his forehead.

  He rubs it, as if his blood were dirt. “It is nothing. Elizabeth, I would rather have died than come back without him.”

  “Don’t speak of death,” I say quietly. “Pray God he is safe tonight and was not frightened by this. Pray God they just take him to a more secure room inside the Tower and don’t think to take him away.”

  “And it may only be for another month,” he says to me. “Richard said to remind you of that. Your friends are arming, King Richard is riding north with only his personal guard. Buckingham and Stanley are in his train, they will persuade him not to turn back. They will encourage him to go on to York. Jasper Tudor will bring an army from Brittany. Our next battle will come soon. When the usurper Richard is dead, we will have the keys to the Tower in our hands.”

  Elizabeth straightens up, her sisters’ cloaks draped neatly over her arm. “And do you trust all your new friends, Mother?” she asks coldly. “All these new allies who have suddenly come to your side but don’t succeed? All of them ready to risk their lives to restore Edward to his throne when they all ate well and drank deep at Duke Richard’s coronation just a few weeks ago? I hear that Lady Margaret carried the train of the new Queen Anne, just as she used to carry yours. The new queen kissed her on both cheeks. She was honored at the coronation. Now she calls out her men for us? Now she is our loyal ally? The Duke of Buckingham was the ward who hated you for marrying him to my aunt Katherine, and he still hates you. Are these your true allies? Or are they loyal servants of the new king set out to entrap you? For they play both parts, and they are traveling with him now, and feasting at Oxford. They weren’t there in danger at the Tower, rescuing my brother.”

  I look at her coldly in return. “I cannot choose my allies,” I say. “To save my son, I would plot with the devil himself.”

  She shows me the ghost of a sour smile. “Perhaps you already have.”

  AUGUST 1483

  The summer grows very hot and Lionel slips out of sanctuary and out of London to join our brothers and our allies in the rebellion that is to defeat Richard. Without him I feel very much alone. Elizabeth is quiet and distant, and I have nobody to share my fears. Downriver my son remains a prisoner in the Tower, and Jemma tells us that nobody sees him or the little changeling playing in the Tower gardens anymore. They had been practicing archery on the green, but nobody sees them at the butts now. Since our rescue attempt their guardians have kept them close inside, and I start to fear the danger of plague in the heat of the city and think of them in those small dark rooms.

  At the end of August there is a shout from a boatman on the river, and I swing open the window wide and look out. Sometimes they bring me gifts, often just a creel of fish, but this man has a ball in his hand. “Can you catch, Your Grace?” he asks, seeing me at the window.

  I smile. “Yes, I can,” I say.

  “Then catch this,” he says, and tosses a white ball up to me. It comes soaring through the window over my head, and I reach up and catch it double-handed and laugh for a moment at the fun of playing again. Then I see it is a ball wrapped in white paper and I go back to the window; but the man has gone.

  I unwrap it and smooth out the paper and I put my hand to my heart and then to my mouth to silence my cry as I recognize the childish round hand of my little boy Richard.

  Dearest Lady Mother,

  Greetings and blessings [he starts carefully]. I am not allowed to write often, nor to tell you exactly where I am, in case the letter is stolen, except to say that I arrived safely and it is quite all right here. They are kind people and I have learned how to row a boat already and they say I am good and handy. In a little while I am to go away to school for they cannot teach me all I need to know here, but I will come back for the summer and go fishing for eels, which are very nice when you get used to them, unless I can come home to you again.

  Give my love to my sisters and my love and duty to my brother the king, and my honor and love to you.

  Signed,

  your son Richard, Duke of York.

  Though now I am called Peter, and I remember to answer to Peter always. The woman here, who is kind to me, calls me her little Perkin, and I don’t mind this.

  I read the words through tears, then I mop my eyes and read them again. I smile at the thought of his being called handy, and I have to take a breath to stop myself crying out at the thought of his being called Perkin. I want to weep at his being taken away from me, so young, such a small boy; and yet he is safe, I should be glad that he is safe: the only one of my children away from the danger of being of this family in this country, in these wars, which will start again. The boy who now answers to Peter will go quietly to school, learn languages, music, and wait. If we win, he will come home as a prince of the blood; if we lose, he will be the weapon they do not know we have, the boy in hiding, the prince in waiting, the nemesis of their ambitions; and my revenge. He and his will haunt every king who comes after us, like a ghost.

  “Mother Mary watch over him,” I whisper, my head in my hands, my eyes shut tight on my tears. “Melusina, guard our boy.”

  SEPTEMBER 1483

  Every day I get news of the arming and preparing of our people, not just in the counties where my brothers are active but all around the country. As the news slowly spreads that Richard has taken the crown, more and more of the common people, the small squires and market traders, and their betters: the heads of guilds and the small landlords, the greater men of the country, ask: How shall a younger brother take the inheritance of his dead brother’s son? How is any man to go quietly to his Maker if such a thing can happen, unchallenged? Why should a man strive all his life to make his family great if his little brother, the runt of the litter, can step into his shoes the minute he weakens?

  And there are many, at the many places we used to visit, who remember Edward as a handsome man and me as his beautiful wife, those who remember the girls in their prettiness and our strong bright little boys. Those who called us a golden family who had brought peace to England and a quiver of heirs to the throne; and these people say that it is an outrage that we should not be in our palaces with our boy on the throne.

  I write to my son the little King Edward and bid him be of good cheer, but my letters have started to come back without being opened. They come back untouched, the seals unbroken. I am not even spied upon. It is as if they are denying that he is even at the royal rooms in the Tower. I fret for the outbreak of the war that will free him and wish we would bring it forward, and not wait for Richard’s slow vainglorious progress northward through Oxfordshire, then Gloucestershire, then to Pontefract and York. At York he crowns his son, the thin and sickly boy, as Prince of Wales. He gives my Edward’s title to his son as if my boy was dead. I spend this day on my knees praying for God to give me revenge for this affront. I dare not think that it might be worse than an insult. I cannot bear to think that it might be that the title is vacant, that my son is dead.

  El