The White Queen Read online

  “Has he told you to break off your betrothal to Henry Tudor?” I ask her.

  “No! It’s nothing to do with that!”

  “Oh.” I nod. “But you can see that this will be a tremendous humiliation for Henry Tudor when the news gets out.”

  “I would never marry him anyway,” she bursts out. “I hate him. I believe it was he who sent the men to kill our boys. He would have come to London and taken the throne. We knew that. That’s why we called down the rain. But now…but now…”

  “Now what?”

  “Richard says that he will put Anne Neville aside and marry me,” she breathes. Her face is alight with joy. “He says that he will make me his queen and my son will sit on my father’s throne. We will make a dynasty of the House of York, and the white rose will be the flower of England forever.” She hesitates. “I know you cannot trust him, Lady Mother, but this is the man I love. Can you not love him for my sake?”

  I think that this is the oldest, hardest question between a mother and her daughter. Can I love him for your sake?

  No. This is the man who envied my husband, who killed my brother and my son Richard Grey, who seized my son Edward’s throne and who exposed him to danger, if nothing worse. But I need not answer the truth to this my most truthful child. I need not be open with this most transparent child. She has fallen in love with my enemy, and she wants a happy ending.

  I open my arms to her. “All I ever wanted was your happiness,” I lie. “If he loves you and will be true to you, and you love him, then I want nothing more.”

  She comes into my arms and she lays her head on my shoulder. But she is no fool, my daughter. She lifts her head and smiles at me. “And I shall be Queen of England,” she says. “At least that will please you.”

  My daughters stay with me for nearly a month, and we live the life of an ordinary family, as Elizabeth once wanted. In the second week it snows, and we find Nesfields’ sleigh and harness up one of the cart horses and make an expedition to one of the neighbors, and then find the snow has melted and we have to stay the night. The next day we have to trudge home in the mud and the slush as they cannot lend us horses and we take turns to ride bareback on our own big horse. It takes us the best part of the day to get home and we laugh and sing all the way.

  In the middle of the second week there is a messenger from court and he brings a letter for me, and one for Elizabeth. I call her to my private chamber, away from the girls, who have invaded the kitchen and are making marchpane sweetmeats for dinner, and we open our letters at either end of the writing table.

  Mine is from the king.

  I imagine Elizabeth will have spoken with you about the great love I bear her, and I wanted to tell you of my plans. I intend that my wife shall admit she is past the years of childbearing and take residence in Bermondsey Abbey and release me from my vows. I will seek the proper dispensations and then marry your daughter and she will be Queen of England. You will take the title of My Lady, the Queen’s Mother, and I will restore to you the palaces of Sheen and Greenwich on our wedding day, with your royal pension. Your daughters will live with you and at court, and you shall have the arranging of their marriages. They will be recognized as sisters to the Queen of England and of the royal family ofYork.

  If either of your sons has been in hiding and you know of his whereabouts, then you may now send for him in safety. I will make him my heir until Elizabeth gives birth to my son.

  I will marry Elizabeth for love, but I am sure you can see that this is the resolution of all our difficulties. I hope for your approval, but I will proceed anyway. I remain your loving kinsman. RR

  I read the letter through twice and I find a grim smile at his dishonest phrasing. “Resolution of all our difficulties” is, I think, a smooth way of describing a blood vendetta which has taken my brother and my Grey son, and which led me to foment rebellion against him and curse his sword arm. But Richard is a York—they take victory as their due—and these proposals are good for me and mine. If my son Richard can come home in safety and be a prince once more at the court of his sister, then I will have achieved everything that I swore to regain, and my brother and my son will not have died in vain.

  I glance down the table at Elizabeth. She is rosy with blushes and her eyes are filled with luminous tears. “He proposes marriage?” I ask her.

  “He swears that he loves me. He says he is missing me. He wants me back at court. He asks you to come with me. He wants everyone to know that I will be his wife. He says that Queen Anne is ready to retire.”

  I nod. “I won’t go while she is there,” I say. “And you may go back to court but you are to behave with more discretion. Even if the queen tells you to walk with him, you are to take a companion. And you are not to sit in her place.”

  She is about to interrupt, but I raise my hand. “Truly, Elizabeth, I don’t want you being named as his mistress, especially if you hope to be his wife.”

  “But I love him,” she says simply, as if that is all that matters.

  I look at her and I know my face is hard. “You can love him,” I say. “But if you want him to marry you and make you his queen, you will have more to do than simply loving.”

  She holds his letter to her heart. “He loves me.”

  “He may do, but he will not marry you if there is a whisper of gossip against you. Nobody gets to be Queen of England by being lovable. You will have to play your cards right.”

  She takes a breath. She is no fool, my daughter, and she is a York through and through. “Tell me what I have to do,” she says.

  FEBRUARY 1485

  I bid my daughters farewell on a dark day in February and watch their guard trot off through the mist that swirls around us for all of the day. They are out of sight in moments, as if they had disappeared into cloud, into water, and the thud of the hoofbeats is muffled and then silenced.

  The house seems very empty without the older girls. And in missing them, I find my thoughts and my prayers go to my boys, my dead baby George, my lost boy Edward, and my absent boy Richard. I have heard nothing of Edward since he went into the Tower, and nothing of Richard since that first letter when he told me he was doing well and answering to the name Peter.

  Despite my own caution, despite my own fears, I start to hope. I start to think that if King Richard marries Elizabeth and makes her his queen I will be welcomed at court again, I will take up my place as My Lady, the Queen’s Mother. I will make sure that Richard is trustworthy, and then I will send for my son.

  If Richard is true to his word and names him as his heir, then we will be restored: my son in the place he was born to, my daughter as Queen of England. It will not have come out as Edward and I thought it would when we had a Prince of Wales and a Duke of York and we thought, like young fools, that we would live forever. But it will have come out well enough. If Elizabeth can marry for love and be Queen of England, if my son can be king, after Richard, then it will have come out well enough.

  When I am at court, and in my power, I shall set men to find the body of my son, whether it is under the convenient stair—as Henry Tudor assures us—or buried in the river, as he corrects himself, whether it has been left in some dark lumber room, or is hidden on holy ground in the chapel. I shall find his body, and trace his killers. I shall know what took place: whether he was kidnapped and died by accident in the struggle, whether he was taken away and died of ill health, whether he was murdered in the Tower and buried there, as Henry Tudor is so very certain. I shall learn of his end, and bury him with honor, and order Masses for his soul to be said forever.

  MARCH 1485

  Elizabeth writes to me briefly of the queen’s worsening health. She says no more—she need say no more—we both realize that if the queen dies, there will be no need for an annulment or the settlement of Queen Anne in an abbey; she will be out of the way in the easiest and most convenient way possible. The queen is afflicted with sorrows, she weeps for hours without cause, and the king does not come near her.