The White Queen: A Novel Read online

  Anthony Woodville, the queen’s brother, seemed to be ahead of his time in regard to education and culture. What more can you tell us about him? Was Elizabeth honoring his memory by becoming a patroness of Queens’ College Cambridge?

  Elizabeth took over the role of patron of Queens’ College from her predecessor Margaret of Anjou, but her interest in education and culture may have been inspired and would certainly have been encouraged by her brother, who was a true Renaissance man: spiritual, martial, thoughtful, and innovative. He brought the printer William Caxton to England and sponsored the first printed book; he was famous for his ability in the joust; and he was a loyal brother to Elizabeth and a devoted uncle to her son. The poem I quote in the book was indeed the poem he wrote the night before he died. We can only speculate as to the sort of man he can have been that he should spend his last hours on earth, not in rage or grief, but in crafting a poem of such detachment and clarity.

  If you could go back in time and live in any of the royal courts you’ve written about, which one would it be and why?

  I would be absolutely mad to want to be a woman of any of these times. A Tudor or Plantagenet woman was wholly ruled by men: either father or husband. She would find it difficult to seek any education, make her own fortune, or improve her circumstances. Her husband would have a legal right over her that was equal to his ownership of domestic animals; and the chances of dying in childbirth were very high. If one could go back in time and be a wealthy man, these would be times of adventure and opportunity but still tremendously dangerous. I think I would prefer the Tudor period to diminish the danger of being killed in battle, but there were still regular plagues and foreign wars to face. I cannot sufficiently express my enthusiasm for modern medicine, votes for women, and safe contraception.

  The younger Elizabeth emerges as quite a vivid and spirited character. Will we be seeing more of her in a future book?

  Elizabeth, the Princess of York, goes on to marry Henry VII and so is mother to a royal dynasty, just as her father and mother hoped they were creating a royal dynasty. She is, of course, mother of Henry VIII, and her granddaughter is England’s greatest queen—Elizabeth I. Elizabeth of York will be the subject of the third book of this series, to be called The White Princess. But coming next is the story of the mother of Henry VII, the indomitable Margaret Beaufort, whom you may have glimpsed in this novel but who deserves a book all to herself. It is called The Red Queen.

  Work in Progress

  1453

  The light of the open sky is brilliant after the darkness of the inner rooms. I blink and hear the roar of many voices. But this is not my army calling for me, this whisper growing to a rumble is not their roar of attack, nor the drumming of their swords on shields. The rippling noise of linen in the wind is not my embroidered angels and lilies against the sky, but cursed English standards in the triumphant May breeze. This is a different sort of roar from our bellowed hymns, this is a hungry howl of people who are hungry for death: actually, for my death.

  Ahead of me, towering above me as I step over the threshold from my prison into the town square, is my destination: a wood stack, with a stepladder of rough staves leaning against it. I whisper: ‘A cross. May I have a cross?’ And then louder: ‘A cross! I must have a cross!’ And some man, a stranger, an enemy, an Englishman, one that we call a ‘goddam’, for their unending blaspheming, holds out a crucifix of rough whittled wood, something of his own crude making, and I snatch it without pride from his dirty hands. I clutch it as they push me towards the wood pile and thrust me up the ladder, my feet scraping on the rough wood, as I climb higher than my own height, until I reach the unsteady platform hammered into the top of the bonfire, and they turn me, roughly, and tie my hands behind me around the stake.

  It all goes so slowly then, that I could almost think that time itself has frozen and the angels are coming down for me. Stranger things have happened. Did not the angels come for me when I was herding sheep? Did they not call me by name? Did I not lead an army to the relief of Orléans? Did I not crown the dauphin and drive out the English? Just me? A girl from Domrémy, advised by angels?

  They light the kindling all around the bottom, and the smoke eddies and billows in the breeze, then the fire takes hold and the hot cloud shrouds me, and makes me cough, blinking, my eyes streaming. Already it is scalding my bare feet, I step from one foot to another, foolishly, as if I hope to spare myself discomfort, and I peer through the smoke in case someone is running with buckets of water, to say that the king I crowned has forbidden this; or the English who bought me from a soldier, now acknowledge that I am not theirs to kill, or the Church knows that I am a good girl, a good woman, innocent of everything but serving God with a passionate purpose.

  No one. The noise of the crowd goes on: a mixture of shouted blessings and curses, prayers and obscenities. I look upward to the blue sky for my angels descending, and a log shifts in the pyre below me, and my stake rocks, and the first sparks fly up and scorch my gown. I see them land and glow like fireflies on my skirt and I feel a dry scratching in my throat and I cough from the smoke and whisper like a little girl: ‘Dear God, save me, your daughter! Dear God, put down your hand for me. Dear God, save me, your maid…’

  There is a crash of noise and a blow to my head and I am sitting, bewildered, on the floorboards of my bedroom, my hand to my head, looking around me like a fool and seeing nothing. My lady companion opens my door, and seeing me, dazed, my prayer stool tipped over says irritably: ‘Lady Margaret go to bed. It is long past your bedtime. Our Lady does not value the prayers of disobedient girls. There is no merit in exaggeration.’

  She slams the door shut and I hear her telling the maids that one of them must go in now and put me to bed and sleep beside me to make sure I don’t rise up at midnight for another session of prayer. They don’t like me to follow the hours of the Church; they stand between me and a life of holiness because they say I am too young and need my sleep. They dare to suggest that I am showing off, playing at piety, when I know that God has called me and it is my duty, my higher duty to obey.

  I cannot recapture the vision that was so bright, just a moment ago; it is gone. For a moment, for a sacred moment, I was there: I was the Maid of Orléans, the sainted Joan of France. I understood what a girl could do, what a woman could be. But then they drag me back to earth, and scold me as if I were an ordinary girl, and spoil everything.

  ‘Our Lady Mary, guide me, angels come to me,’ I whisper, trying to get back to the square, to the watching crowds, to the holy moment. But it has all gone. I have to haul myself up the bedpost to stand. I am dizzy from fasting and praying, and I rub my knee where I knocked it. There is a wonderful roughness on the skin of my knee, and I put my hand down and pull up my nightgown to see them both, and they are the same. Saints’ knees, Praise God, I have saints’ knees. I have prayed so much, and on such hard floors that the skin of my knees is becoming roughened, like the callus on the finger of an English long-bowman. I am only nine years old, but I have saints’ knees. This has got to count for something, whatever my old lady governess may say to my mother about excessive and theatrical devotion. I have saints’ knees. I have hardened the skin of my knees by continual prayer, these are my stigmata: saints’ knees. Pray God I can meet their challenge and have a saint’s end too.

  I get into bed, as I have been ordered to do; for obedience, even to foolish and vulgar women, is a virtue. I may be the daughter of one of the greatest of English commanders in France, descendant of the great Beaufort family and so an heir to the throne of Henry VI of England, but still I have to obey my lady governess and my mother as if I were any other nine-year-old girl. I am the ward of the Earl of Suffolk, the greatest man in the kingdom after the king, and betrothed to marry his son John de la Pole, and yet still I have to do as I am told by a stupid old woman who sleeps through the priest’s homily and sucks sugared plums through grace. I count her as a cross I have to bear, and I offer her up in my prayers.