The White Queen Read online

Then the priest says, “And the ring?”

  And the king says. “A ring! I am a fool! I forgot! I don’t have a ring for you.” He turns to my mother. “Your Ladyship, can you lend me a ring?”

  “Oh, but I have one,” I say, almost surprised at myself. “I have one here.” From my pocket I take the ring that I have drawn so slowly and so patiently out of the water, the ring shaped like the crown of England that came with watery magic to bring me my heart’s desire, and the King of England himself puts it on my finger for my wedding ring. And I am his wife.

  And Queen of England—or, at any rate, the York Queen of England.

  His arm is tight around my waist as the boy sings the bidding, then the king turns to my mother and says, “Your Ladyship? Where can I take my bride?”

  My mother smiles and gives him a key. “There is a hunting lodge by the river.” She turns to me. “River Lodge. I had it made ready for you.”

  He nods and sweeps me from the little chapel and lifts me onto his big hunter. He mounts behind me and I feel his arms tighten around me as he takes up the reins. We go at a walk along the riverbank and when I lean back I can feel his heart beating. We can see the little lodge through the trees and there is a curl of smoke from the chimney. He swings down from his horse and lifts me off and takes the animal to the stalls at the back of the house while I open the door. It is a simple place with a fire burning in the hearth, a jug of wedding ale and two cups on the wooden table, two stools set for eating the bread and cheese and meat, and a large wooden bed, made up with the best linen sheets. The room goes dark as he comes in the doorway, ducking his tall head under the beams.

  “Your Grace…” I start and then I correct myself. “My lord. Husband.”

  “Wife,” he says with quiet satisfaction. “To bed.”

  The morning sun, which was so bright on the beams and the lime-washed ceiling when we went to bed, is turning the place golden in the late afternoon when he says to me, “Thank the Lady of Heaven that your father asked me to dinner. I am weak with hunger. I am dying of hunger. Let me out of bed, you witch.”

  “I offered you bread and cheese two hours ago,” I point out, “but you would not let me go three steps to the table to fetch it for you.”

  “I was busy,” he says, and pulls me back to his naked shoulder. At the smell of him and the touch of his skin, I feel my desire for him rise again and we move together. When we lie back, the room is rosy with the sunset and he gets out of bed. “I must wash,” he says. “Shall I bring you a jug of water from the yard?”

  His head brushes the ceiling; his body is perfect. I look him over with satisfaction, like a horse dealer looks at a beautiful stallion. He is tall and lean, his muscles hard, his chest broad, his shoulders strong. He smiles at me and my heart turns over for him. “You look as if you would eat me up,” he says.

  “I would,” I say. “I cannot think how to sate my desire for you. I think I will have to keep you prisoner here and eat you up in little cutlets, day after day.”

  “If I kept you prisoner, I would devour you in one greedy swallow,” he chuckles. “But you would not get out till you were with child.”

  “Oh!” The most delightful thought now strikes me. “Oh, I shall give you sons, and they will be princes.”

  “You will be the mother of the King of England, and the mother of the House of York, which will rule for ever, please God.”

  “Amen,” I say devoutly, and I feel no shadow, no shiver, no sense of unease. “God send you safely home to me from your battle.”

  “I always win,” he says in his supreme confidence. “Be happy, Elizabeth. You will not lose me on the battlefield.”

  “And I shall be queen,” I say again. For the first time I understand, truly understand, that if he comes home from the battle and the true king, Henry, is dead, then this young man will be the undisputed King of England—and I shall be first in the land.

  After dinner he takes his leave of my father and sets off to ride to Northampton. His page boy has come to the stable and fed and watered the horses and has them ready at the door. “I will come back tomorrow night,” he says. “I must see my men and raise my army, all day. But I shall be with you at dusk.”

  “Come to the hunting lodge,” I whisper. “And I will have dinner there for you like a good wife.”

  “Tomorrow evening,” he promises. Then he turns to my father and mother and thanks them for their hospitality, nods to their bows, and leaves.

  “His Grace is very attentive to you,” my father remarks. “Don’t you let your head be turned.”

  “Elizabeth is the most beautiful woman in England,” my mother replies smoothly. “And he likes a pretty face; but she knows her duty.”

  Then I have to wait again. All through the evening when I play cards with my boys and then hear them say their prayers and get ready for bed. All through the night when though I am exhausted and deliciously sore I cannot sleep. All through the next day when I walk and talk as if I were in a dream waiting for night until the moment that he ducks his head under the doorway and comes into the little room and takes me into his arms and says, “Wife, let us go to bed.”

  Three nights pass in this haze of pleasure, until the last morning when he says, “I have to go, my love, and I will see you when it is all over.” It is as if someone has thrown icy water in my face, and I gasp and say: “You are going to war?”

  “I have my army mustered, and my spies tell me that Henry is commanded by his wife to meet her on the east coast with her troops. I shall go at once and bring him to battle and then march to meet her as soon as she lands.”

  I clutch at his shirt as he pulls it on. “You will not go right now?”

  “Today,” he says, gently pushing me away, and continuing to dress.

  “But I cannot bear it without you.”

  “No. But you will. Now listen.”

  This is a different man from the entranced young lover of our three-night honeymoon. I have been thoughtless of everything but our pleasure; but he has been planning. This is a king defending his kingdom. I wait to hear what he will command. “If I win, and I will win, I will come back for you, and as soon as we can, we will announce our marriage. There will be many who will not be pleased, but it is done, and all they can do is accept it.”

  I nod. I know that his great advisor, Lord Warwick, is planning his marriage with a French princess, and Lord Warwick is accustomed to commanding my young husband.

  “If luck goes against me and I am dead, then you will say nothing of this marriage and these days.” He raises his hand to silence my objection. “Nothing. You would gain nothing for being the widow of a dead imposter, whose head will be stuck on the gates of York. It would be your ruin. As far as anyone knows you are the daughter of a family loyal to the House of Lancaster. You should stay that way. You will remember me in your prayers, I hope. But it will be a secret between you and me and God. And two of us will be silent for sure, for one of us is God and the other is dead.”

  “My mother knows…”

  “Your mother knows the best way to keep you safe will be to silence her page boy and her lady-in-waiting. She is prepared for that already, she understands, and I have given her money.”

  I swallow a sob. “Very well.”

  “And I should like you to marry again. Choose a good man, one who will love you and care for the boys, and be happy. I would want you to be happy.”

  I bow my head in speechless misery.

  “Now, if you find you are with child, you will have to leave England,” he commands. “Tell your mother at once. I have spoken to her, and she knows what to do. The Duke of Burgundy commands all of Flanders, and he will give you a house of your own for kinship with your mother and for love of me. If you have a girl, you can wait your time, get a pardon from Henry, and come back to England. If you leave it for a year, you will be deliciously notorious—men will be mad for you. You will be the beautiful widow of a dead pretender. Enjoy it all for my sake, I beg you. />
  “But if you have a boy, it’s a different matter altogether. My son will be heir to the throne. He will be the York heir. You will have to keep him safe. You may have to put him into hiding till he is old enough to claim his rights. He can live under an assumed name; he can live with poor people. Don’t be falsely proud. Hide him somewhere safe until he is old enough and strong enough to claim his inheritance. Richard and George, my brothers, will be his uncles and his guardians. You can trust them to protect any son of mine. It may be that Henry and his son die young and then your son will be the only heir to the throne of England. I don’t count the Lancaster woman, Margaret Beaufort. My boy should have the throne. It is my wish that he has the throne if he can win it, or if Richard and George can win it for him. Do you understand? You must hide my son in Flanders and keep him safe for me. He could be the next York king.”

  “Yes,” I say simply. I see that my grief and my fear for him is no longer a private matter. If we have made a child in these long nights of lovemaking, then he is not just a child of love, he is an heir to the throne, a claimant, a new player in the long deadly rivalry between the two houses of York and Lancaster.

  “This is hard for you,” he says, seeing my pale face. “My intention is that it should never happen. But remember, your refuge is Flanders if you have to keep my son safe. And your mother has money and knows where to go.”

  “I will remember,” I say. “Come back to me.”

  He laughs. It is not forced; it is the laugh of a happy man, confident in his luck and his abilities. “I will,” he says. “Trust me. You have married a man who is going to die in his bed, preferably after making love to the most beautiful woman in England.”

  He holds out his arms and I step towards him and feel the warmth of his embrace. “Make sure you do,” I say. “And I will make sure that the most beautiful woman in your eyes is always me.”

  He kisses me, but briskly, as if his mind is already elsewhere, and he detaches himself from my clasping hands. He has gone from me long before he ducks his head to get through the doorway, and I see that his page has brought his horse round to the door and is ready to go.

  I run outside to wave to him and he is already up in the saddle. His horse is dancing on the spot; he is a great chestnut beast, strong and powerful. He arches his neck and tries to rear against Edward’s tight rein. The King of England towers against the sun on his great war horse and for a moment I too believe that he is invincible. “Godspeed, good luck!” I call, and he salutes me and wheels his horse, and rides out, the rightful King of England, to fight the other rightful King of England for the kingdom itself.

  I stand with my hand raised in farewell until I cannot see his standard with the white rose of York carried before him, until I cannot hear the hoofbeats of his horse, until he has quite gone from me; and then, to my horror, my brother Anthony, who has seen all of this, who has been watching for who knows how long, steps out from the shadow of the tree and walks towards me.

  “You whore,” he says.

  I stare at him as if I don’t understand the meaning of the word. “What?”

  “You whore. You have shamed our house and your name and the name of your poor dead husband who died fighting that usurper. God forgive you, Elizabeth. I am going at once to tell my father, and he will put you in a nunnery, if he does not strangle you first.”

  “No!” I stride forward and grab at his arm, but he shakes me off.

  “Don’t touch me, you slut. D’you think I want your hands on me after they have been all over him?”

  “Anthony, it is not what you think!”

  “My eyes deceive me?” he spits savagely. “It is an enchantment? You are Melusina? A beautiful goddess bathing in the woods and he that just departed was a knight sworn to your service? This is Camelot now? An honorable love? This is poetry and not the gutter?”

  “It is honorable!” I am driven to reply.

  “You don’t know the meaning of the word. You are a slut and he will pass you on to Sir William Hastings when they next ride by, as he does with all his sluts.”

  “He loves me!”

  “As he tells each and every one.”

  “He does. He is coming back to me—”

  “As he always promises.”

  Furious, I thrust my left fist towards him and he ducks away, expecting a punch in the face. Then he sees the gleam of gold on my finger and he all but laughs. “He gave you this? A ring? I am supposed to be impressed by a love token?”

  “It is not a love token, it is a wedding ring. A proper ring given in marriage. We are married.” I make my announcement in triumph, but I am instantly disappointed.

  “Dear God, he has fooled you,” he says, anguished. He takes me into his arms and presses my head against his chest. “My poor sister, my poor fool.”

  I struggle free. “Let me go, I am nobody’s fool. What are you saying?”

  He looks at me with sorrow, but his mouth is twisted into a bitter smile. “Let me guess, was this a secret wedding, in a private chapel? Did none of his friends and courtiers attend? Is Lord Warwick not to be told? Is it to be kept private? Are you to deny it, if asked?”

  “Yes. But—”

  “You are not married, Elizabeth. You have been tricked. It was a pretend service that has no weight in the eyes of God nor of man. He has fooled you with a trumpery ring and a pretend priest so that he could get you into bed.”

  “No.”

  “This is the man who hopes to be King of England. He has to marry a princess. He’s not going to marry some beggarly widow from the camp of his enemy, who stood out on the road to plead with him to restore her dowry. If he marries an Englishwoman at all, she will be one of the great ladies of the Lancaster court, probably Warwick’s daughter Isabel. He’s not going to marry a girl whose own father fought against him. He’s more likely to marry a great princess of Europe, an infanta from Spain, or a dauphine from France. He has to marry to set himself more safely on the throne, to make alliances. He’s not going to marry a pretty face for love. Lord Warwick would never allow it. And he is not such a fool as to go against his own interests.”

  “He doesn’t have to do what Lord Warwick wants! He’s the king.”

  “He is Warwick’s puppet,” my brother says cruelly. “Lord Warwick decided to back him, just as Warwick’s father backed Edward’s father. Without the support of Warwick, neither your lover nor his father would have been able to make anything of his claim to the throne. Warwick is the kingmaker, and he has made your lover into King of England. Be very sure he will make the queen too. He will choose who Edward is to marry, and Edward will marry her.”

  I am stunned into silence. “But he didn’t. He can’t. Edward married me.”

  “A play, a charade, mumming, nothing more.”

  “It wasn’t. There were witnesses.”

  “Who?”

  “Mother, for one,” I say eventually.

  “Our mother?”

  “She was witness, along with Catherine, her lady-in-waiting.”

  “Does Father know? Was he there?”

  I shake my head.

  “There you are then,” he says. “Who are your many witnesses?”

  “Mother, Catherine, the priest, and a boy singer,” I say.

  “Which priest?”

  “One I don’t know. The king commanded him there.”

  He shrugs. “If he was a priest at all. He is more likely some fool or mummer pretending as a favor. Even if he is ordained, the king can still deny that the marriage was valid and it is the word of three women and a boy against the King of England. Easy enough to get you three arrested on some charge and held for a year or so until he is married to whatever princess he chooses. He has played you and Mother for fools.”

  “I swear to you that he loves me.”

  “Maybe he does,” he concedes. “As maybe he loves each and every one of the women he has bedded, and there are hundreds of them. But when the battle is over and he is riding home and
sees another pretty girl by the roadside? He will forget you within a sennight.”

  I rub my hand against my cheek and find that my cheeks are wet with tears. “I’m going to tell Mother what you said,” I say weakly. It is the threat of our childhood; it didn’t frighten him then.

  “Let’s both go to her. She won’t be happy when she realizes that she has been fooled into pushing her daughter into dishonor.”

  We walk in silence through the woods and then over the footbridge. As we go by the big ash tree I glance at the trunk. The looped thread has gone; there is no proof that the magic was ever there. The waters of the river where I dragged my ring from the flood have closed over. There is no proof that the magic ever worked. There is no proof that there is such a thing as magic at all. All I have is a little gold ring shaped like a crown that may mean nothing.

  Mother is in the herb garden at the side of the house and, when she sees my brother and me walking together in stubborn silence, a pace apart, saying nothing, she straightens up with the herbs in her basket and waits for us to come towards her, readying herself for trouble.

  “Son,” she greets my brother. Anthony kneels for her blessing and she puts her hand on his fair head and smiles down on him. He rises to his feet and takes her hand in his.

  “I think the king has lied to you and to my sister,” he says bluntly. “The marriage ceremony was so secret that there is nobody of any authority to prove it. I think he went through the sham ceremony to have the bedding of her, and he will deny that they were married.”

  “Oh, do you?” she says, unruffled.

  “I do,” he says. “And it won’t be the first time he has pretended marriage to a lady in order to bed her. He has played this game before, and the woman ended with a bastard and no wedding ring.”

  My mother, magnificently, shrugs her shoulders. “What he has done in the past is his own affair,” she says. “But I saw him wedded and bedded, and I wager that he will come back to claim her as his wife.”

  “Never,” Anthony says simply. “And she will be ruined. If she is with child, she will be utterly disgraced.”