The White Queen: A Novel Read online

  Elizabeth and I sleep in each other’s arms, listening to the water pouring off the roof of the abbey and cascading onto the pavements. In the early hours of the morning I start to hear the dripping sound of rain leaking through the slate roof, and I get up to start the fire again and put a pot under the drips. Elizabeth opens the shutter and says that it is raining as hard as ever; it looks like it might rain all day.

  The girls play at Noah’s Ark and Elizabeth reads them the story from the Bible, and then they prepare a pageant with their toys and roughly stuffed cushions serving as pairs of animals. The ark is my table upturned with sheets tied from leg to leg. I let them eat their dinner inside the ark and reassure them before bedtime that the great Flood for Noah happened a long long time ago and God would not send another, not even to punish wickedness. This rain will do nothing but keep bad men in their houses, where they can do no harm. A flood will keep all the wicked men away from London, and we shall be safe.

  Elizabeth looks at me with a little smile, and after the girls have gone to bed she takes a candle and goes down through the catacombs to look at the level of the river water.

  It is running higher than it has ever done before, she says. She thinks it will flood the corridor to the steps, a rise of several feet. If it does not stop raining soon, it will come even higher. We are not at risk—it is two flights of stone stairs down to the river—but the poor people who live on the riverbanks will be packing up their few things and abandoning their homes to the water.

  The next morning Jemma comes in to us with her dress hitched up, muddy to the knees. The streets are flooding in the low-lying areas and there are stories of houses being swept away and, upriver, bridges being destroyed, and villages being cut off. Nobody has ever seen such rain in September and it still does not stop. Jemma says that there are no fresh foods in the market as many of the roads are washed away and the farmers cannot bring in their goods. Bread is more expensive for lack of flour, and some bakers cannot get their ovens to light, for all they have is wet firewood. Jemma says she will stay the night with us—she is afraid to leave through the flooded streets.

  In the morning it is still raining and the girls, at the window again, report strange sights. A drowned cow frightens Bridget as it floats by beneath the window; an overturned cart has been swept into the waters. Timbers from some building go by rolling over and over in the flood, and we hear the thud as something heavy hits the water-gate steps. The water gate is a gate only to water this morning; the corridor is flooded and we can see only the very top of the ironwork and a glimpse of daylight. The river must be up by nearly ten feet, and high tide will pour water into the catacombs and wash the sleeping dead.

  I don’t look for a messenger from my brothers. I don’t expect that anyone could get through from the West Country to London in this weather. But I don’t need to hear from them to know what is happening. The rivers are up against Buckingham, the tide is running against Henry Tudor, the rain is pouring down on their armies, the waters of England have risen up to protect their prince.

  OCTOBER 1483

  Richard the false king, appalled at the betrayal of his great friend and the man he had raised to be Constable of England, takes only a moment to realize that the force mustered by the Duke of Buckingham is enough to defeat the royal guard twice over. He has to raise an army, commanding every able-bodied man in England to rally to his side, demanding their loyalty as their king. Mostly, they turn out for him, albeit slowly. The Duke of Norfolk has held down the rebellion in the southern counties. He is sure that London is safe, but he has no doubt that Buckingham is raising troops in Wales, and that Henry Tudor will sail from Brittany to join him there. If Henry brings in a thousand men, then the rebels and the king’s army will be well matched, and nobody would bet on the outcome. If he brings in more than that, Richard will be fighting for his survival against bad odds and against an army led by Jasper Tudor, one of the greatest commanders that Lancaster has ever had.

  Richard marches to Coventry and keeps Lord Stanley, Lady Margaret’s husband and the stepfather of Henry Tudor, close at his side. Stanley’s son Lord Strange is not to be found at home. His servants say that he has massed an enormous army of his tenants and retainers and is marching to serve his master. Richard’s worry is: nobody knows who that master might be.

  Richard leads his forces south from Coventry, to cut off his betraying friend Buckingham from the uprising of our forces in the southern counties. He plans that Buckingham will cross the Severn River to enter England, and find no allies but the royal army waiting grimly for him in the pouring rain.

  The troops move slowly down the churning mud of the roads. Bridges are washed away and they have to march extra miles to find a crossing. The horses of the officers and the mounted guard labor chest-deep in glutinous mud; the men march with their heads down, soaked to the skin, and at night when they rest they cannot light fires, for everything is wet.

  Grimly, Richard drives them on, taking a little pleasure in knowing that the man he loved and trusted above all others, Henry Stafford, Duke of Buckingham, is also pushing his way through mud, through swollen rivers, through incessant rain. This must be bad weather for recruiting rebels, Richard thinks. This must be bad weather for the young duke, who is no seasoned campaigner like Richard. This must be bad weather for a man dependent on allies from overseas. Surely Buckingham cannot hope that Henry Tudor has set sail in storms such as these, and he will not be able to get word of the Rivers forces in the southern counties.

  Then the king hears good news. Buckingham is not only facing the driving rain, which never stops, he is constantly attacked by the Vaughans of Wales. They are chieftains in this territory, and they have no love for the young duke. He had hoped they would let him rise against Richard, perhaps even support him. But they have not forgotten that it was he who took Thomas Vaughan from his master the young king and executed him. At every turn of the road there are half a dozen of them, guns primed, ready to shoot the first rank of men and ride off. At every valley there are men hidden in trees throwing rocks, firing arrows, setting a shower of spears down through the rain into Buckingham’s straggling force until the men feel that the rain and the spears are the same thing and that they are fighting an enemy like water, from which there is no escape, and which drives down mercilessly and never stops.

  Buckingham cannot get his messengers to ride into Wales to bring out the Welsh men loyal to the Tudors. His scouts are cut down the moment they are out of sight of the main column, so his army cannot swell with hard fighting men, as Lady Margaret promised him that it would. Instead, every night, and at every stop, and even in broad daylight on the road, his men are slipping away. They are saying he is an unlucky leader and that his campaign will be washed away. Every time they line up to march they are fewer; he can see the column on the drowned road does not stretch so long. When he rides up and down, cheering the men on, promising them victory, they don’t meet his eyes. They keep their heads down, as if his optimistic speech and the pelting of the rain are both the same meaningless noise.

  Buckingham cannot know, but he guesses that Henry Tudor, the ally he plans to betray, is also beaten by the wall of water that never stops. He is pinned in port by the same storm that is blowing Buckingham’s army away. Henry Tudor has five thousand mercenaries, a massive force, an unbeatable force, paid and armed by the Duke of Brittany—enough to take England on his own. He has knights and horse and cannon and five ships, an expedition that cannot fail—except for the wind and the pouring rain. The ships toss and yaw; even inside the shelter of the harbor, they twang at the mooring ropes. The men, packed inside for the short journey across the English sea, vomit with seasickness, miserable in the hold. Henry Tudor strides like a caged lion on the dockside, looking for a break in the clouds, for the wind to change. The skies pour down on his copper head without pity. The horizon is black with more rain, the wind is onshore, always onshore, keeping his ships shuddering against the harbor walls.