The White Queen Read online

  There is a little scream from the women, and poor Margaret staggers as if to faint. My sisters and I are half fish, not girls; we just goggle at our mother and the king’s mother head to head, like a pair of slugging battle-axe men in the jousting ring, saying the unthinkable.

  “There are many who would believe me,” the king’s mother threatens.

  “More shame to you then,” my mother says roundly. “The rumors about his fathering reached England. Indeed, I was among the few who swore that a lady of your house would never stoop so low. But I heard, we all heard, gossip of an archer named—what was it—” She pretends to forget and taps her forehead. “Ah, I have it: Blaybourne. An archer named Blaybourne who was supposed to be your amour. But I said, and even Queen Margaret d’Anjou said, that a great lady like you would not so demean herself as to lie with a common archer and slip his bastard into a nobleman’s cradle.”

  The name Blaybourne drops into the room with a thud like a cannonball. You can almost hear it roll to a standstill. My mother is afraid of nothing.

  “And anyway, if you can make the lords throw down King Edward, who is going to support your new King George? Could you trust his brother Richard not to have his own try at the throne in his turn? Would your kinsman Lord Warwick, your great friend, not want the throne on his own account? And why should they not feud among themselves and make another generation of enemies, dividing the country, setting brother against brother again, destroying the very peace that your son has won for himself and for his house? Would you destroy everything for nothing but spite? We all know the House of York is mad with ambition; will we be able to watch you eat yourselves up like a frightened cat eats her own kittens?”

  It is too much for her. The king’s mother puts out a hand to my mother, as if to beg her to stop. “No, no. Enough. Enough.”

  “I speak as a friend,” my mother says quickly, as sinuous as a river eel. “And your thoughtless words against the king will go no further. My girls and I would not repeat such a scandal, such a treasonous scandal. We will forget that you ever said such a thing. I am only sorry that you even thought of it. I am amazed that you should say it.”

  “Enough,” the king’s mother repeats. “I just wanted you to know that this ill-conceived marriage is not my choice. Though I see I must accept it. You show me that I must accept it. However much it galls me, however much it denigrates my son and my house, I must accept it.” She sighs. “I will think of it as my burden to bear.”

  “It was the king’s choice, and we must all obey him,” my mother says, driving home her advantage. “King Edward has chosen his wife and she will be Queen of England and the greatest lady—bar none—in the land. And no one can doubt that my daughter will make the most beautiful queen that England has ever seen.”

  The king’s mother, whose own beauty was famous in her day, when they called her the Rose of Raby, looks at me for the first time without pleasure. “I suppose so,” she says grudgingly.

  I curtsey again. “Shall I call you Mother?” I ask cheerfully.

  As soon as the ordeal of my welcome from Edward’s mother is over, I have to prepare for my presentation to the court. Anthony’s orders from the London dressmakers have been delivered in time, and I have a new gown to wear in the palest of gray, trimmed with pearls. It is cut low in the front, with a high girdle of pearls and long silky sleeves. I wear it with a conical high headdress that is draped with a scarf of gray. It is both gloriously rich and beguilingly modest, and when my mother comes to my room to see that I am dressed, she takes my hands and kisses me on both cheeks. “Beautiful,” she says. “Nobody could doubt that he married you for love at first sight. Troubadour love, God bless you both.”

  “Are they waiting for me?” I ask nervously.

  She nods her head to the chamber outside my bedroom door. “They are all out there: Lord Warwick and the Duke of Clarence and half a dozen others.”

  I take a deep breath, and I put my hand to steady my headdress, and I nod to my maids-in-waiting to throw open the double doors, and I raise my head like a queen, and walk out of the room.

  Lord Warwick, dressed in black, is standing at the fireside, a big man, in his late thirties, shoulders broad like a bully, stern face in profile as he is watching the flames. When he hears the door opening, he turns and sees me, scowls, and then pastes a smile on his face. “Your Grace,” he says, and bows low.

  I curtsey to him but I see his smile does not warm his dark eyes. He was counting on Edward remaining under his control. He had promised the King of France that he could deliver Edward in marriage. Now everything has gone wrong for him, and people are asking if he is still the power behind this new throne, or if Edward will make his own decisions.

  The Duke of Clarence, the king’s beloved brother George, is beside him looking like a true York prince, golden-haired, ready of smile, graceful even in repose, a handsome dainty copy of my husband. He is fair and well made, his bow is as elegant as an Italian dancer’s, and his smile is charming. “Your Grace,” he says. “My new sister. I give you joy of your surprise marriage and wish you well in your new estate.”

  I give my hand and he draws me to him and kisses me warmly on both cheeks. “I do truly wish you much joy,” he says cheerfully. “My brother is a fortunate man indeed. And I am happy to call you my sister.”

  I turn to the Earl of Warwick. “I know that my husband loves and trusts you as his brother and his friend,” I say. “It is an honor to meet you.”

  “The honor is all mine,” he says curtly. “Are you ready?”

  I glance behind me: my sisters and mother are lined up to follow me in procession. “We are ready,” I say, and with the Duke of Clarence on one side of me and the Earl of Warwick on the other, we march slowly to the abbey chapel through a crowd that parts as we come towards them.

  My first impression is that everyone I have ever seen at court is here, dressed in their finest to honor me, and there are a few hundred new faces too, who have come in with the Yorks. The lords are in the front with their capes trimmed with ermine, the gentry behind them with chains of office and jewels on display. The aldermen and councillors of London have trooped down to be presented, the city fathers among them. The civic leaders of Reading are there, struggling to see and be seen around the big bonnets and the plumes, behind them the guildsmen of Reading and gentry from all England. This is an event of national importance; anyone who could buy a doublet and borrow a horse has come to see the scandalous new queen. I have to face them all alone, flanked by my enemies, as a thousand gazes take me in: from my slippered feet to my high headdress and airy veil, take in the pearls on my gown, the carefully modest cut, the perfection of the lace piece that hides and yet enhances the whiteness of the skin of my shoulders. Slowly, like a breeze going through treetops, they doff their hats and bow, and I realize that they are acknowledging me as queen, queen in the place of Margaret of Anjou, Queen of England, the greatest woman in the realm, and nothing in my life will ever be the same again. I smile from side to side, acknowledging the blessings and the murmurs of praise, but I find that I am tightening my grip on Warwick’s hand, and he smiles down at me, as if he is pleased to sense my fear, and he says, “It is natural for you to be overwhelmed, Your Grace.” It is, indeed, natural for a commoner but would never have occurred to a princess, and I smile back at him and cannot defend myself, and cannot speak.

  That night in bed, after we have made love, I say to Edward, “I don’t like the Earl of Warwick.”

  “He made me what I am today,” he says simply. “You must love him for my sake.”

  “And your brother George? And William Hastings?”

  He rolls onto his side and grins at me. “These are my companions and my brothers-in-arms,” he says. “You are marrying into an army at war. We cannot choose our allies; we cannot choose our friends. We are just glad of them. Love them for me, beloved.”

  I nod as if obedient. But I think I know my enemies.

  MAY 1465
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br />   The king decides that I shall have the most glorious coronation that England has ever seen. This is not solely as a compliment to me. “We make you queen, undoubted queen, and every lord in the kingdom will bow his knee to you. My mother—” He breaks off and grimaces. “My mother will have to show you homage as part of the celebrations. Nobody will be able to deny that you are queen and my wife. It will silence those who say our marriage is not valid.”

  “Who says?” I demand. “Who dares say?”

  He grins at me. He is a boy still. “D’you think I would tell you and have you turn them into frogs? Never mind who speaks against us. They don’t matter as long as all they do is whisper in corners. But a great coronation for you also declares my position as king. Everyone can see that I am king and that poor thing Henry is a beggar somewhere in Cumbria and his wife a pensioner of her father in Anjou.”

  “Hugely grand?” I say, not wholly welcoming the thought.

  “You will stagger under the weight of your jewels,” he promises me.

  In the event, it is even richer than he predicted, richer than I could have imagined. My entrance to London is by London Bridge, but the dirty old highway is transformed with wagon on wagon load of sparkling sand into a road more like a jousting arena. I am greeted by players dressed as angels, their costumes made from peacock feathers, their dazzling wings like a thousand eyes of blue and turquoise and indigo. Actors make a tableau of the Virgin Mary and the saints; I am exhorted to be virtuous and fertile. The people see me indicated as the choice of God for Queen of England. Choirs sing as I enter the city, rose petals are showered down on me. I am myself, my own tableau: the Englishwoman from the House of Lancaster come to be the Queen of York. I am an object of peace and unity.

  I spend the night before my coronation at the grand royal apartments in the Tower, newly decorated for my stay. I don’t like the Tower: it gives me a shudder as I am carried shoulder high in a litter under the portcullis, and Anthony at my side glances up at me.

  “What’s the matter?”

  “I hate the Tower; it smells damp.”

  “You have grown choosy,” Anthony says. “You are spoiled already, now that the king has given you great places of your own, the manor of Greenwich, and Sheen as well.”

  “It’s not that,” I say, trying to name my unease. “It is as if there are ghosts here. Are my boys staying here tonight?”

  “Yes, the whole family is here in the royal rooms.”

  I make a little grimace of unease. “I don’t like my boys being here,” I say. “This is an unlucky place.”

  Anthony crosses himself and jumps from his horse to lift me down. “Smile,” he commands me under his breath.

  The lieutenant of the Tower is waiting to welcome me and give me the keys: this is no time for foreseeing, or for ghosts of boys lost long ago.

  “Most gracious queen, greetings,” he says, and I take Anthony’s hand and smile, and hear the crowd murmur that I am a beauty beyond their imaginings.

  “Nothing exceptional,” Anthony says for my ears only, so that I have to turn my head and stop myself giggling. “Nothing compared to our mother, for instance.”

  Next day is my coronation at Westminster Abbey. For the court herald, bellowing names of dukes and duchesses and earls, it is a roster of the greatest and most noble families in England and Christendom. For my mother, carrying my train with the king’s sisters Elizabeth and Margaret, it is her triumph; for Anthony, a man so much of the world and yet so detached from it, I think it is a ship of fools and he would wish himself far away; and for Edward it is a vivid statement of his wealth and power to a country hungry for a royal family of wealth and power. For me it is a blur of ceremonial in which I feel nothing but anxiety: desperate only to walk at the right speed, to remember to slip off my shoes and go barefoot at the brocade carpet, to accept the two scepters in each hand, to bare my breast for the holy oil, to hold my head steady for the weight of the crown.

  It takes three archbishops to crown me, including Thomas Bourchier, and an abbot, a couple of hundred clergy, and a full thousand choristers to sing my praises and call down God’s blessing on me. My kinswomen escort me; it turns out I have hundreds of them. The king’s family come first, then my own sisters, my sister-in-law Elizabeth Scales, my cousins, my Burgundy cousins, my kinswomen that only my mother can trace, and every other beautiful lady who can scrape an introduction. Everyone wants to be a lady at my coronation; everyone wants a place at my court.

  By tradition, Edward is not even with me. He watches from behind a screen, my young sons with him: I may not even see him; I cannot catch courage from his smile. I have to do this all entirely alone, with thousands of strangers watching my every movement. Nothing is to detract from my rise from gentry woman to Queen of England, from mortal to a being divine: next to God. When they crown me and anoint me with the holy oil, I become a new being, one above mortals, only one step below angels, beloved, and the elect of heaven. I wait for the thrill down my spine of knowing that God has chosen me to be Queen of England; but I feel nothing but relief that the ceremony is over and apprehension at the massive banquet to follow.

  Three thousand noblemen and their ladies sit down to dine with me and each course has nearly twenty dishes. I put off my crown to eat, and put it back on again between every course. It is like a prolonged dance where I have to remember the steps and it goes on for hours. To shield me from prying eyes, the Countess of Shrewsbury and the Countess of Kent kneel to hold a veil before me when I eat. I taste every dish out of courtesy but I eat almost nothing. The crown presses down like a curse on my head and my temples throb. I know myself to have ascended to the greatest place in the land and I long only for my husband and my bed.

  There is a moment at one point in the evening, probably around the tenth course, when I actually think that this has been a terrible mistake and I would have been happier back at Grafton, with no ambitious marriage and no ascent to the rank of royals. But it is too late for regrets, and even though the finest of dishes taste of nothing in my weariness, I must still smile and smile, and put my heavy crown back on, and send out the best dishes to the favorites of the king.

  The first go out to his brothers, George the golden young man, Duke of Clarence, and the youngest York boy, twelve-year-old Richard, Duke of Gloucester, who smiles shyly at me and dips his head when I send him some braised peacock. He is as unlike his brothers as is possible, small and shy and dark-haired, slight of build and quiet, while they are tall and bronze-headed and filled with their own importance. I like Richard on sight, and I think he will be a good companion and playmate to my boys, who are only a little younger than him.

  At the end of the dinner, when I am escorted back to my chambers by dozens of noblemen and hundreds of clergy, I hold my head high as if I am not weary, as if I am not overwhelmed. I know that I have become something more than a mortal woman today: I have become half a goddess. I have become a divinity something like my ancestress Melusina, who was born a goddess and became a woman. She had to forge a hard bargain with the world of men to move from one world to another. She had to surrender her freedom in the water to earn her feet so that she could walk beside her husband on the earth. I can’t help but wonder what I will have to lose in order to be queen.

  They put me to bed in Margaret of Anjou’s bed, in the echoing royal bedchamber, and I wait, the cover of cloth of gold up to my ears, until Edward can get away from the feasting and join me. He is escorted into my bedroom by half a dozen companions and menservants, and they formally undress him and leave him only when he is in his nightgown. He sees my wide-eyed gaze and laughs as he closes the door behind them.

  “We are royal now,” he says. “These ceremonies have to be endured, Elizabeth.”

  I reach out my arms for him. “As long as you are still you, even underneath the crown.”

  He throws off his gown and comes naked to me, his shoulders broad, his skin smooth, the muscles moving in thigh and belly and flank. “I am
yours,” he says simply, and when he slides into the cold bed beside me, I quite forget that we are queen and king and think only of his touch and my desire.

  The following day there is a great tournament and the noblemen enter the lists in beautiful costumes, with poetry bellowed by their squires. My boys are in the royal box with me, their eyes wide and their mouths open at the ceremony, the flags, the glamour and the crowds, the enormity of the first great joust they have ever seen. My sisters and Elizabeth—Anthony’s wife—are seated beside me. We are starting to form a court of beautiful women; already people are speaking of an elegance that has never before been seen in England.

  The Burgundian cousins are out in force, their armor the most stylish, their poetry the best for meter. But Anthony, my brother, is superb: the court goes mad over him. He sits a horse with such grace and he carries my favor and breaks the lances of a dozen men. No one can match his poetry either. He writes in the romantic style of the southern lands; he tells of joy with a tinge of sadness, a man smiling at tragedy. He composes poems about love that can never be fulfilled, of hopes that summon a man across a desert of sand, a woman across a sea of water. No wonder every lady at court falls in love with him. Anthony smiles, picks up the flowers that they throw into the arena, and bows, hand on his heart, without asking any lady for her favor.

  “I knew him when he was just my uncle,” Thomas remarks.

  “He is the favorite of the day,” I say to my father, who comes to the royal box to kiss my hand.

  “What is he thinking of?” he demands of me, puzzled. “In my day we killed an opponent, not made a poem about them.”

  Anthony’s wife Elizabeth laughs. “This is the Burgundian way.”