The White Queen Read online

  She is at the front door as we approach, the groom of the household at her side. She curtseys low. “Your Grace,” she says pleasantly, as if the king comes to visit every day. “You are very welcome to Grafton Manor.”

  A groom comes running and takes the reins of the horse to lead it to the stable yard. My boys cling on for the last few yards, as my mother steps back and bows the king into the hall. “Will you take a glass of small ale?” she asks. “Or we have a very good wine from my cousins in Burgundy?”

  “I’ll take the ale, if you please,” he says agreeably. “It is thirsty work riding. It is hot for spring. Good day to you, Lady Rivers.”

  The high table in the great hall is laid with the best glasses and a jug of ale as well as the wine. “You are expecting company?” he asks.

  She smiles at him. “There is no man in the world could ride past my daughter,” she says. “When she told me she wanted to put her own case to you, I had them draw the best of our ale. I guessed you would stop.”

  He laughs at her pride, and turns to smile at me. “Indeed, it would be a blind man who could ride past you,” he says.

  I am about to make some little comment, but again it happens. Our eyes meet, and I can think of nothing to say to him. We just stand, staring at each other for a long moment, until my mother passes him a glass and says quietly, “Good health, Your Grace.”

  He shakes his head, as if awakened. “And is your father here?” he asks.

  “Sir Richard has ridden over to see our neighbors,” I say. “We expect him back for his dinner.”

  My mother takes a clean glass and holds it up to the light and tuts as if there is some flaw. “Excuse me,” she says, and leaves. The king and I are alone in the great hall, the sun pouring through the big window behind the long table, the house in silence, as if everyone is holding their breath and listening.

  He goes behind the table and sits down in the master’s chair. “Please sit,” he says, and gestures to the chair beside him. I sit as if I am his queen, on his right hand, and I let him pour me a glass of small ale. “I will look into your claim for your lands,” he says. “Do you want your own house? Are you not happy living here with your mother and father?”

  “They are kind to me,” I say. “But I am used to my own household, I am accustomed to running my own lands. And my sons will have nothing if I cannot reclaim their father’s lands. It is their inheritance. I must defend my sons.”

  “These have been hard times,” he says. “But if I can keep my throne, I will see the law of the land running from one coast of England to another once more, and your boys will grow up without fear of warfare.”

  I nod my head.

  “Are you loyal to King Henry?” he asks me. “D’you follow your family as loyal Lancastrians?”

  Our history cannot be denied. I know that there was a furious quarrel in Calais between this king, then nothing more than a young York son, and my father, then one of the great Lancastrian lords. My mother was the first lady at the court of Margaret of Anjou; she must have met and patronized the handsome young son of York a dozen times. But who would have known then that the world might turn upside down and that the daughter of Baron Rivers would have to plead to that very boy for her own lands to be restored to her? “My mother and father were very great at the court of King Henry, but my family and I accept your rule now,” I say quickly.

  He smiles. “Sensible of you all, since I won,” he says. “I accept your homage.”

  I give a little giggle, and at once his face warms. “It must be over soon, please God,” he says. “Henry has nothing more than a handful of castles in lawless northern country. He can muster brigands like any outlaw, but he cannot raise a decent army. And his queen cannot go on and on bringing in the country’s enemies to fight her own people. Those who fight for me will be rewarded, but even those who have fought against me will see that I shall be just in victory. And I will make my rule run, even to the north of England, even through their strongholds, up to the very border of Scotland.”

  “Do you go to the north now?” I ask. I take a sip of small ale. It is my mother’s best but there is a tang behind it; she will have added some drops of a tincture, a love philter, something to make desire grow. I need nothing. I am breathless already.

  “We need peace,” he says. “Peace with France, peace with the Scots, and peace from brother to brother, cousin to cousin. Henry must surrender; his wife has to stop bringing in French troops to fight against Englishmen. We should not be divided anymore, York against Lancaster: we should all be Englishmen. There is nothing that sickens a country more than its own people fighting against one another. It destroys families; it is killing us daily. This has to end, and I will end it. I will end it this year.”

  I feel the sick fear that the people of this country have known for nearly a decade. “There must be another battle?”

  He smiles. “I shall try to keep it from your door, my lady. But it must be done and it must be done soon. I pardoned the Duke of Somerset and took him into my friendship, and now he has run away to Henry once more, a Lancastrian turncoat, faithless like all the Beauforts. The Percys are raising the north against me. They hate the Nevilles, and the Neville family are my greatest allies. It is like a dance now: the dancers are in their place; they have to do their steps. They will have a battle; it cannot be avoided.”

  “The queen’s army will come this way?” Though my mother loved her and was the first of her ladies, I have to say that her army is a force of absolute terror. Mercenaries, who care nothing for the country; Frenchmen who hate us; and the savage men of the north of England who see our fertile fields and prosperous towns as good for nothing but plunder. Last time she brought in the Scots on the agreement that anything they stole they could keep as their fee. She might as well have hired wolves.

  “I shall stop them,” he says simply. “I shall meet them in the north of England and I shall defeat them.”

  “How can you be so sure?” I exclaim.

  He flashes a smile at me, and I catch my breath. “Because I have never lost a battle,” he says simply. “I never will. I am quick on the field, and I am skilled; I am brave and I am lucky. My army moves faster than any other; I make them march fast and I move them fully armed. I outguess and I outpace my enemy. I don’t lose battles. I am lucky in war as I am lucky in love. I have never lost in either game. I won’t lose against Margaret of Anjou; I will win.”

  I laugh at his confidence, as if I am not impressed; but in truth he dazzles me.

  He finishes his cup of ale and gets to his feet. “Thank you for your kindness,” he says.

  “You’re going? You’re going now?” I stammer.

  “You will write down for me the details of your claim?”

  “Yes. But—”

  “Names and dates and so on? The land that you say is yours and the details of your ownership?”

  I almost clutch his sleeve to keep him with me, like a beggar. “I will, but—”

  “Then I will bid you adieu.”

  There is nothing I can do to stop him, unless my mother has thought to lame his horse.

  “Yes, Your Grace, and thank you. But you are most welcome to stay. We will dine soon…or—”

  “No, I must go. My friend William Hastings will be waiting for me.”

  “Of course, of course. I don’t wish to delay you…”

  I walk with him to the door. I am anguished at his leaving so abruptly, and yet I cannot think of anything to make him stay. At the threshold he turns and takes my hand. He bows his fair head low and, deliciously, turns my hand. He presses a kiss into my palm and folds my fingers over the kiss as if to keep it safe. When he comes up smiling, I see that he knows perfectly well that this gesture has made me melt and that I will keep my hand clasped until bedtime when I can put it to my mouth.

  He looks down at my entranced face, at my hand that stretches, despite myself, to touch his sleeve. Then he relents. “I shall fetch the paper that you prep
are, myself, tomorrow,” he says. “Of course. Did you think differently? How could you? Did you think I could walk away from you, and not come back? Of course I am coming back. Tomorrow at noon. Will I see you then?”

  He must hear my gasp. The color rushes back into my face so that my cheeks are burning hot. “Yes,” I stammer. “T…tomorrow.”

  “At noon. And I will stay to dinner, if I may.”

  “We will be honored.”

  He bows to me and turns and walks down the hall, through the wide-flung double doors and out into the bright sunlight. I put my hands behind me and I hold the great wooden door for support. Truly, my knees are too weak to hold me up.

  “He’s gone?” my mother asks, coming quietly through the little side door.

  “He’s coming back tomorrow,” I say. “He’s coming back tomorrow. He’s coming back to see me tomorrow.”

  When the sun is setting and my boys are saying their evening prayers, blond heads on their clasped hands at the foot of their trestle beds, my mother leads the way out of the front door of the house and down the winding footpath to where the bridge, a couple of wooden planks, spans the River Tove. She walks across, her conical headdress brushing the overhanging trees, and beckons me to follow her. At the other side, she puts her hand on a great ash tree, and I see there is a dark thread of silk wound around the rough-grained wood of the thick trunk.

  “What is this?”

  “Reel it in,” is all she says. “Reel it in, a foot or so every day.”

  I put my hand on the thread and pull it gently. It comes easily; there is something light and small tied onto the far end. I cannot even see what it might be, as the thread loops across the river into the reeds, in deep water on the other side.

  “Magic,” I say flatly. My father has banned these practices in his house: the law of the land forbids it. It is death to be proved as a witch, death by drowning in the ducking stool, or strangling by the blacksmith at the village crossroads. Women like my mother are not permitted our skills in England today; we are named as forbidden.

  “Magic,” she agrees, untroubled. “Powerful magic, for a good cause. Well worth the risk. Come every day and reel it in, a foot at a time.”

  “What will come in?” I ask her. “At the end of this fishing line of yours? What great fish will I catch?”

  She smiles at me and puts her hand on my cheek. “Your heart’s desire,” she says gently. “I didn’t raise you to be a poor widow.”

  She turns and walks back across the footbridge, and I pull the thread as she has told me, take in twelve inches of it, tie it fast again, and follow her.

  “So what did you raise me for?” I ask her, as we walk side by side to the house. “What am I to be? In your great scheme of things? In a world at war, where it seems, despite your foreknowledge and magic, we are stuck on the losing side?”

  The new moon is rising, a small sickle of a moon. Without a word spoken, we both wish on it; we bob a curtsey, and I hear the chink as we turn over the little coins in our pockets.

  “I raised you to be the best that you could be,” she says simply. “I didn’t know what that would be, and I still don’t know. But I didn’t raise you to be a lonely woman, missing her husband, struggling to keep her boys safe; a woman alone in a cold bed, her beauty wasted on empty lands.”

  “Well, Amen,” I say simply, my eyes on the slender sickle. “Amen to that. And may the new moon bring me something better.”

  At noon the next day I am in my ordinary gown, seated in my privy chamber, when the girl comes in a rush to say that the king is riding down the road towards the Hall. I don’t let myself run to the window to look for him, I don’t allow myself a dash to the hammered-silver looking glass in my mother’s room. I put down my sewing, and I walk down the great wooden stairs, so that when the door opens and he comes into the hall, I am serenely descending, looking as if I am called away from my household chores to greet a surprise guest.

  I go to him with a smile and he greets me with a courteous kiss on the cheek, and I feel the warmth of his skin and see, through my half-closed eyes, the softness of the hair that curls at the nape of his neck. His hair smells faintly of spices, and the skin of his neck smells clean. When he looks at me, I recognize desire in his face. He lets go of my hand slowly, and I step back from him with reluctance. I turn and curtsey as my father and my two oldest brothers, Anthony and John, step forwards to make their bows.

  The conversation at dinner is stilted, as it must be. My family is deferential to this new King of England; but there is no denying that we threw our lives and our fortune into battle against him, and my husband was not the only one of our household and affinity who did not come home. But this is how it must be in a war that they have called “the Cousins’ War,” since brother fights against brother and their sons follow them to death. My father has been forgiven, my brothers too, and now the victor breaks bread with them as if to forget that he crowed over them in Calais, as if to forget that my father turned tail and ran from his army in the bloodstained snow at Towton.

  King Edward is easy. He is charming to my mother and amusing to my brothers Anthony and John, and then Richard, Edward, and Lionel when they join us later. Three of my younger sisters are home, and they eat their dinner in silence, wide-eyed in admiration, but too afraid to say a word. Anthony’s wife, Elizabeth, is quiet and elegant beside my mother. The king is observant of my father and asks him about game and the land, about the price of wheat and the steadiness of labor. By the time they have served the preserved fruit and the sweetmeats he is chatting like a friend of the family, and I can sit back in my chair and watch him.

  “And now to business,” he says to my father. “Lady Elizabeth tells me that she has lost her dower lands.”

  My father nods. “I am sorry to trouble you with it, but we have tried to reason with Lady Ferrers and Lord Warwick without result. They were confiscated after”—he clears his throat—“after St. Albans, you understand. Her husband was killed there. And now she cannot get her dower lands returned. Even if you regard her husband as a traitor, she herself is innocent and she should at least have her widow’s jointure.”

  The king turns to me. “You have written down your title and the claim to the land?”

  “Yes,” I say. I give him the paper and he glances at it.

  “I shall speak to Sir William Hastings and ask him to see that this is done,” he says simply. “He will be your advocate.”

  It seems to be as easy as that. In one stroke I will be freed from poverty and have a property of my own again; my sons will have an inheritance and I will be no longer a burden on my family. If someone asks for me in marriage, I will come with property. I am no longer a case for charity. I will not have to be grateful for a proposal. I will not have to thank a man for marrying me.

  “You are gracious, Sire,” my father says easily, and nods to me.

  Obediently I rise from my chair and curtsey low. “I thank you,” I say. “This means everything to me.”

  “I shall be a just king,” he says, looking at my father. “I would want no Englishman to suffer for my coming to my throne.”

  My father makes a visible effort to silence his reply that some of us have suffered already.

  “More wine?” My mother interrupts him swiftly. “Your Grace? Husband?”

  “No, I must go,” the king says. “We are mustering troops all over Northamptonshire and equipping them.” He pushes back his chair and we all—my father and brothers, my mother and sisters and I—bob up like puppets to stand as he stands. “Will you show me around the garden before I leave, Lady Elizabeth?”

  “I shall be honored,” I say.

  My father opens his mouth to offer his company, but my mother says quickly, “Yes, do go, Elizabeth,” and the two of us slip from the room without a companion.

  It is as warm as summer as we come from the darkness of the hall, and he offers me his arm and we walk down the steps to the garden, arms linked, in silence. I tak
e the path around the little knot garden and we wind our way, looking at the trim hedges and the neat white stones; but I see nothing. He gathers my hand a little closer under his arm and I feel the warmth of his body. The lavender is coming into flower, and I can smell the scent, sweet as orange blossom, sharp as lemons.

  “I have only a little time,” he says. “Somerset and Percy are mustering against me. Henry himself will come out of his castle and lead his army if he is in his right mind and can command. Poor soul, they tell me he is in his wits now, but he could lose them again at any moment. The queen must be planning to land an army of Frenchmen in their support and we will have to face the power of France on English soil.”

  “I shall pray for you,” I say.

  “Death is near us all,” he says seriously. “But it is a constant companion to a king come to his crown through the battlefield, and now riding out to fight again.”

  He pauses, and I stop with him. It is very quiet but for a single bird singing. His face is grave. “May I send a page boy to bring you to me tonight?” he asks quietly. “I have a longing for you, Lady Elizabeth Grey, that I have never felt for any woman before. Will you come to me? I ask it not as a king, and not even as a soldier who might die in battle, but as a simple man to the most beautiful woman he has ever seen. Come to me, I beg you, come to me. It could be my last wish. Will you come to me tonight?”

  I shake my head. “Forgive me, Your Grace, but I am a woman of honor.”

  “I may never ask you again. God knows, I may never ask any woman again. There can be no dishonor in this. I could die next week.”

  “Even so.”

  “Are you not lonely?” he asks. His lips are almost brushing my forehead he is so close to me, I can feel the warmth of his breath on my cheek. “And do you feel nothing for me? Can you say you don’t want me? Just once? Don’t you want me now?”

  As slowly as I can, I let my eyes rise to his face. My gaze lingers on his mouth, then I look up.

  “Dear God, I have to have you,” he breathes.