The White Queen (11 page)

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.

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.