The White Queen (18 page)

“Poor girl,” I say, a hand on my own big belly. “Poor girl. She has had little joy
from her grand marriage. D’you remember her at court at Christmas?”

“There is worse news,” my mother goes on. “Warwick and George have gone to his great
friend King Louis of France, and now the two of them have met with Margaret d’Anjou
at Angers, and another plot is spinning, just as we have been spinning here.”

“Warwick still goes on against us?”

My mother makes a grimace. “He must be a determined man, indeed, to see his own grandchild
stillborn while his family is on the run, and go from a near shipwreck straight to
forswear his oaths of loyalty. But nothing stops him. You would think a storm out
of a blue sky would make him wonder, but nothing makes him wonder. Now he is courting
Margaret d’Anjou, whom he once fought against. He had to spend half an hour on his
knees to beg the forgiveness of her, his greatest enemy. She would not see him without
his act of contrition. God bless her, she always did take herself very high.”

“What d’you think he plans?”

“It is the French king who is planning the dance now. Warwick thinks he is Kingmaker,
but now he is
a puppet. They call Louis of France the spider, and I must say he spins a finer thread
even than us. He wants to bring down your husband and diminish our country. He is
using Warwick and Margaret d’Anjou to do it. Margaret’s son, the so-called Prince
of Wales, Prince Edward of Lancaster, is to marry Warwick’s younger daughter Anne
to bind their lying parents together in a pact they cannot dishonor. Then I imagine
they will all come to England to free Henry from the Tower.”

“That little thing Anne Neville?” I demand, immediately diverted. “They would give
her to that monster Edward, to make sure her father does not play false?”

“They will,” my mother agrees. “She is only fourteen and they are marrying her to
a boy who was allowed to choose how to execute his enemies when he was eleven years
old. He was raised to be a devil. Anne Neville must be wondering if she is rising
to be queen or falling among the damned.”

“But it changes everything for George,” I say, thinking aloud. “It was one thing to
fight his brother, the king, when he hoped to kill him and succeed him—but now? Why
would he fight Edward when he gains nothing for himself? Why would he fight his brother
to put the Lancaster king and then the Lancaster prince on the throne?”

“I suppose he didn’t think such a thing would happen when he set sail with a wife
near her time, and a father-in-law determined to win the crown. But now he has lost
his son and heir, and his father-in-law has a second daughter who could be queen.
George’s prospects
are changed very much. He should have the sense to see that. But d’you think he has?”

“Someone should advise him.” Our eyes meet. I never have to spell things out for my
mother: we understand each other so well.

“Shall you visit the king’s mother before dinner?” Mother asks me.

I take my foot from the pedal of the spinning wheel and stop it with my hand. “Let’s
go and see her now,” I suggest.

She is sitting
with her women sewing an altar cloth. One of them is reading from the Bible as they
work. She is famously devout; her suspicion that we are not as saintly as she, worse,
perhaps pagans, worst of all, perhaps witches, is just one of the many fears she holds
against me. The years have not improved her view of me. She did not want me to marry
her son, and even now, though I have proved my fertility and myself a good wife for
him, she hates me still. Indeed, she has been so discourteous that Edward has given
her Fotheringhay to keep her from court. As for me, I am not impressed by her sanctity:
if she is such a good woman, then she should have taught George better. If she had
the ear of God, she would not have lost her son Edmund and her husband. I curtsey
to her as we enter, and she rises to curtsey low to me. She nods her women to pick
up their work and go to one side. She knows I am not visiting her to inquire after
her health. There is still no great love lost between us and never will be.

“Your Grace,” she says levelly. “I am honored.”

“My Lady Mother,” I say, smiling. “The pleasure is mine.”

We all sit simultaneously in order to avoid the issue of priority, and she waits for
me to speak.

“I am so concerned for you,” I say sweetly. “I am sure you are worried about George,
so far from home, proclaimed as a traitor, and all but entrapped with the traitor
Warwick, estranged from his brother and from his family. His first baby lost, his
own life in such danger.”

She blinks. She had not anticipated my concern for her favorite George. “Of course
I wish he were reconciled to us,” she says cautiously. “It is always sad when brothers
quarrel.”

“And now I hear that George is abandoning his own family,” I say plaintively. “A turncoat—not
just against his brother but against you and against his own house.”

She looks at my mother for an explanation.

“He has joined Margaret d’Anjou,” my mother says bluntly. “Your son, a Yorkist, is
going to fight for the Lancastrian king. Shameful.”

“He will be defeated for certain: Edward always wins,” I say. “And then he must be
executed as a traitor. How can Edward spare him, even for brotherly love, if George
takes up the Lancaster colors? Think of him dying with a red rose at his collar! The
shame for you! What would his father have said?”

She is truly aghast. “He would never follow Margaret of Anjou,” she says. “His father’s
greatest enemy?”

“Margaret of Anjou put George’s father’s head on a spike on the walls of York, and
now he serves her,” I say thoughtfully. “How can any of us ever forgive him?”

“It cannot be so,” she says. “He might be tempted to join Warwick. It is hard for
him to always come second to Edward, and—” She breaks off, but we all know that George
is jealous of everyone: his brother Richard, Hastings, me, and all of my kin. We know
she has filled his head with wild thoughts that Edward is a bastard and so he is the
true heir. “And besides, what—”

“What good does it do him?” I supplement smoothly. “I see what you think of him. Indeed,
he always thinks of nothing but his gain and never of loyalty or his word or his honor.
He is all George and no York.”

She flushes at that, but she cannot deny that George has been the most selfish spoiled
boy who ever turned coat.

“He thought when he went with Warwick that Warwick would make him king,” I say bluntly.
“Then they found that nobody would have George for king if they could have Edward.
Only two people in the country think George is a better man than my husband.”

She waits.

“George himself and you,” I say precisely. “Then he fled with Warwick because he did
not dare face Edward after betraying him again. And now he finds that Warwick’s plan
has changed. Warwick will not put George on the throne. He will marry Anne his daughter
to Edward of Lancaster; he will put the young Edward of
Lancaster on the throne and become father-in-law to the King of England that way.
George and Isabel are no longer his choice for King and Queen of England. Now it is
Edward of Lancaster and Anne. The best that George can hope for is to be brother-in-law
to the usurping Lancaster King of England instead of brother to the rightful York
king.”

George’s mother nods.

“Little profit for him,” I observe. “For a great deal of work, and dreadful danger.”

I let her think on this for a moment. “Now, if he were to turn his coat again and
come back to his brother, penitent and truly loyal, Edward would have him back,” I
say. “Edward would forgive him.”

“He would?”

I nod. “I can promise it.” I don’t add that I will never forgive him, and that he
and Warwick are dead men to me and have been ever since they executed my father and
brother after the battle of Edgecote Moor, and they will be dead men hereafter, whatever
they do. Their names are in the black locket in my jewelry case, and their names will
never see the light again until they themselves are in the eternal darkness.

“It would be such a good thing if George, a young man without good advisors, could
hear from someone, in private, in secret, that he could come back safely to his brother,”
my mother observes at random, looking out of the window at the scudding clouds. “Sometimes
a young man needs good advice. Sometimes he needs to be told that he has taken a wrong
turning but that
he can come back to the high road. A young man such as George should not be fighting
for Lancaster, dying with a red rose on his collar. A young man like George should
be with his family, with his brothers who love him.” She pauses to let his mother
think this through. It is really beautifully done.

“If only someone could tell him that he was welcome at home, then you would have your
son back, the brothers would be reunited, York would fight for York once more, and
George would lose nothing. He would be brother to the King of England, and he would
be Duke of Clarence as he has always been. We could undertake that Edward would restore
him. There lies his future. This other way he is—what would one call him?” She pauses
to wonder what one would call Cecily’s favorite son, then she finds the words: “An
utter numpty.”

The king’s mother rises to her feet; my mother gets up too. I stay seated, smiling
up at her, letting her stand before me. “I always so enjoy talking with you both,”
she says, her voice trembling with anger.

Now I rise, my hand on my spreading belly, and I wait for her to curtsey to me. “Oh,
me too. Good day, My Lady Mother,” I say pleasantly.

And so it is done, as easily as an enchantment. Without another word said, without
Edward even knowing, a lady from the king’s mother’s court decides to visit her great
friend, George’s wife, poor Isabel Neville. The lady, heavily veiled, takes a boat,
goes to Angers, finds Isabel, wastes no time on her crying in her room,
finds George, tells him of his mother’s tender love and her concerns for him. George
tells her in return of his increasing discomfort with the allies to whom he is not
only sworn but also married. God, he thinks, does not bless their union since their
baby died in the storm, and nothing has gone right for him since he married Isabel.
Surely, nothing as unpleasant as this should ever happen to George? Now he finds himself
in the company of his family’s enemies and—far worse for him—in second place again.
Turncoat George says that he will come to England with the invading army of Lancaster,
but as soon as he sets foot in his beloved brother’s kingdom he will tell us where
they have landed, and what is their strength. He will seem to stand by them as brother-in-law
to the Lancaster Prince of Wales until the battle is joined, and then he will attack
them from behind, and fight his way through to his brothers once more. He will be
a son of York, one of the three sons of York again. We can rely on him. He will destroy
his present friends, and his wife’s own family. He is loyal to York. In his innermost
heart, he has always been loyal to York.

My husband brings this encouraging news to me, unaware that this is the doing of women,
spinning their toils around men. I am resting on my daybed, one hand on my belly,
feeling the baby move.

“Isn’t this wonderful?” he asks me, truly delighted. “George will come back to us!”

“I know that you love George,” I say. “But even you
have to admit he is an absolute crawling thing, loyal to no one.”

My generous-hearted husband smiles. “Oh, he is George,” he says kindly. “You can’t
be too hard on him. He has always been everyone’s favorite; he has always been one
to please himself.”

I find a smile in return. “I am not too hard on him,” I say. “I am glad he has come
back to you.” And inwardly, I say to myself: But he is a dead man.

I am running behind my husband, my hand on my large belly, down the long winding corridors
of the Palace of Westminster. Servants run behind us carrying goods. “You can’t go.
You swore to me you would be with me for the birth of our baby. It will be a boy,
your son. You must be with me.”

He turns, his face grave. “Sweetheart, our son will have no kingdom if I don’t go.
Warwick’s brother-in-law, Henry Fitzhugh, has raised Northumberland. There’s no doubt
in my mind that Warwick will strike in the north, and then Margaret will land her
army in the south. She will come straight to London to free her husband from the Tower.
I have to go, and I have to go fast. I have to deal with the one and then turn and
march south to catch the other before she comes here for you. I don’t dare even stop
for the pleasure of arguing with you.”

“What about me? What about me and the girls?”

He is muttering orders to the clerk, who runs behind him with a writing desk as he
strides towards the stables. He pauses to shout orders at his equerries. Soldiers
are rushing to the armory to draw their weapons and breastplates; sergeants are bawling
at them to fall
in. The great wagons are being loaded again with tents, weapons, food, gear. The great
army of York is on the march again.