The White Queen: A Novel Read online

  Your brother,

  Anthony

  But I think, in the meantime, before my peaceful death, I shall ask him to make me a duke.

  My mother plans our journey to Reading and the summoning of our family as if she were a queen militant. Every relation that would benefit from our rise or might contribute to our position is commanded from every corner of England, and even our Burgundy family—her kinsmen—are invited to come to London for my coronation. She says that they will give me the royal and noble status that we need, and besides, in the state the world is in, it is always wise to have powerful relatives for support or refuge.

  She starts to draw up a list of eligible lords and ladies for my brothers and sisters to marry; she starts to consider noble children who will be made wards and can be raised in a royal nursery to our profit. She understands, and she starts to teach me, how the patronage and power of the English court works. She knows it well enough. She was married into the royal family with her first husband, the Duke of Bedford. Then she was second lady in the kingdom under the Lancaster queen; now she will be second lady under the York queen: me. No one knows better than she how to plow the furrow that is royal England.

  She sends a string of instructions to Anthony to order tailors and sempstresses so that I shall have new dresses waiting for me, but she takes his advice that we should enter into our greatness quietly, and without any sign of glorying in this leap from being of the defeated House of Lancaster to being new partners of the victorious House of York. My sisters, cousins, and sister-in-law are to ride with us to Reading, but there is to be no great train with standards and trumpets. Father writes to her that there are many who begrudge us our prosperity, but the ones whom he fears above all are the king’s greatest friend Sir William Hastings, the king’s great ally Lord Warwick, and the king’s close family: his mother, sisters and brothers, as they have the most to lose from new favorites at court.

  I remember Hastings looking at me as if I were roadside merchandise, a pedlar’s pack, the very first time that I met the king, and I promise myself that he will never look at me in that way again. Hastings, I think I can manage. He loves the king like no other, and he will accept any choice that Edward makes, and defend it too. But Lord Warwick frightens me. He is a man who will stop at nothing to get his own way. As a boy he saw his father rebel against his lawful king and set up a rival house in the name of York. When his father and Edward’s father were killed together, he at once continued his father’s work and saw Edward crowned king, a boy of only nineteen. Warwick is thirteen years his senior: an adult man compared with a boy. Clearly he has planned all along to put a boy on the throne and to rule from the shadows. Edward’s choice of me will be the first declaration of independence from his mentor, and Warwick will be quick to prevent any others. They call him the kingmaker and when we were Lancastrians we said that the Yorks were nothing but puppets and he and his family were the puppet masters. Now I am married to Warwick’s puppet, and I know that he will try to set me dancing to his tune as well. Still, there is no time to do anything but bid farewell to my boys, make them promise to obey their tutors and be good, mount the new horse that the king has sent me for the journey, and with my mother at my side and my sisters following behind me take the road to Reading and to the future that waits for me.

  I say to my mother, “I am afraid.”

  She brings her horse beside mine and she puts back the hood of her cape so that I can see the smiling confidence in her face. “Perhaps,” she says. “But I was at the court of Queen Margaret d’Anjou; I swear you cannot be a worse queen than her.”

  Despite myself, I giggle. This comes from a woman who was Margaret of Anjou’s most trusted lady-in-waiting and the first lady of her court. “You have changed your tune.”

  “Aye, for now I am in a different choir. But it is true nonetheless. You could not be a worse queen for this country than she was, God help her, wherever she is now.”

  “Mother—she was married to a husband who was out of his wits for half of the time.”

  “And whether he was saintly, sane, or raving mad, she always went her own way. She took a lover,” she says cheerfully, ignoring my scandalized gasp. “Of course she did. Where d’you think she got her son Edward? Not from the king, who was struck deaf and dumb nearly for the whole year that the child was conceived and born. I expect you to do better than her. You cannot doubt that you can do better than her. And Edward cannot help but do better than a sainted half-wit, God bless the poor man. And as for the rest, you should give your husband a son and heir, protect the poor and innocent, and further the hopes of your family. That is all you need to do, and you can do that. Any ninny with an honest heart, a scheming family, and an open purse can do that.”

  “There will be many people who hate me,” I say. “Many who hate us.”

  She nods. “Then make sure that you get the favors that you want and the places that you need before they take the ear of the king,” she says simply. “There are only so many great positions for your brothers; there are only a few noblemen for your sisters to marry. Make sure that you get everything you want in the first year, and then you have taken the high ground, and are in battle array. We are ready for whatever comes against us, and even if your influence declines with the king, then we are still safe.”

  “My lord Warwick…” I say nervously.

  She nods. “He is our enemy,” she says. It is the declaration of a blood feud. “You will watch him, and you will be wary of him. We will all be on our guard against him. Him and the king’s brothers: George, the Duke of Clarence, who is always so charming, and the boy Richard, the Duke of Gloucester. They too will be your enemies.”

  “Why the king’s brothers?”

  “Your sons will disinherit them. Your influence will turn the king from them. They have been three fatherless boys together; they have fought side by side for their family. He called them the three sons of York; he saw a sign for the three of them in the heavens. But now he will want to be with you, not with them. And the grants of lands and wealth that he might have given to them will come to you and yours. George was the heir after Edward, Richard the heir after him. As soon as you have a boy they drop one place.”

  “I am going to be Queen of England,” I protest. “You make it sound like a battle to the death.”

  “It is a battle to the death,” she says simply. “That is what it means to be Queen of England. You are not Melusina, rising from a fountain to easy happiness. You will not be a beautiful woman at court with nothing to do but make magic. The road you have chosen will mean that you have to spend your life scheming and fighting. Our task, as your family, is to make sure you win.”

  In the darkness of the forest he saw her, and whispered her name, Melusina, and at that summoning she rose out of the water and he saw that she was a woman of cool and complete beauty to the waist, and below that she was scaled, like a fish. She promised him that she would come to him and be his wife, she promised him that she would make him as happy as a mortal woman can, she promised him that she would curb her wild side, her tidal nature, that she would be an ordinary wife to him, a wife that he could be proud of; if he in return would let her have a time when she could be herself again, when she could return to her element of water, when she could wash away the drudgery of a woman’s lot and be, for just a little while, a water goddess once more. She knew that being a mortal woman is hard on the heart, hard on the feet. She knew that she would need to be alone in the water, under the water, the ripples reflected on her scaly tail now and then. He promised her that he would give her everything, everything she wanted, as men in love always do. And she trusted him despite herself, as women in love always do.

  My father and all my brothers ride out of Reading to greet us, so I might enter the town with my kinsmen at my side. There are crowds along the road and hundreds watching my father pull off his hat as he rides towards me, and then dismounts and kneels to me in the dust, honoring me as queen.