The White Queen (19 page)

“You have to go to the Tower.” He swings round to order me. “I have to know you are
safe. All of you, your mother as well, go to the royal rooms in the Tower. Prepare
for the baby there. You know I will come to you as soon as I can.”

“When the enemy is in Northumberland? Why should I go to the Tower when you are riding
out to fight an enemy hundreds of miles away?”

“Because only the devil knows for sure where Warwick and Margaret will land,” he says
briefly. “I’m guessing they’ll split into two battles and land one to support the
uprising in the north and the other in Kent. But I don’t know. I’ve not heard from
George. I don’t know what they plan. Suppose they sail up the Thames while I am fighting
in Northumberland? Be my love, be brave, be a queen: go to the Tower with the girls
and keep yourselves safe. Then I can fight and win and come home to you.”

“My boys?” I whisper.

“Your boys will come with me. I shall keep them as safe as I can, but it is time they
played their part in our battles, Elizabeth.”

The baby turns inside me as if he is protesting too, and I am silenced by the heave
of the movement. “Edward, when will we ever be safe?”

“When I have won,” he says steadily. “Let me go and win now, beloved.”

I let him go. I think no power in the world would have stopped him, and I tell the
girls that we are staying in London at the Tower, one of their favorite palaces, and
that their father and their half brothers have gone to fight the bad men who still
hanker after the old King Henry, though he is a prisoner at the Tower himself, silent
in his rooms on the floor just below us. I tell them that their father will come home
safe to us. When they cry for him in the night, for they have bad dreams about the
wicked queen and the mad king, and their bad uncle Warwick, I promise them that their
father will defeat the bad people and come home. I promise he will bring the boys
safely back. He has given his word. He has never failed. He will come home.

But this time, he does not.

This time, he does not.

He and his brothers in arms, my brother Anthony, his brother Richard, his beloved
friend Sir William Hastings, and his loyal supporters, are shaken awake at Doncaster
in the early hours of the morning by a couple of the king’s minstrels who, coming
drunkenly home from whoring, happen to glance over the castle walls and see torches
on the road. The enemy advance guard, marching at night, a sure sign of Warwick in
command, is only an hour away, perhaps only moments away, coming to snatch the king
before he can meet with his army. The whole of the north is up against the king and
ready to fight for Warwick, and the royal party will be taken in a moment. Warwick’s
influence runs deep and wide in this part of the world, and Warwick’s
brother and Warwick’s brother-in-law have turned out against Edward and are fighting
for their kinsman and for King Henry, and will be at the castle gate within an hour.
There is no doubt in anyone’s mind that this time Warwick will not take prisoners.

Edward dispatches my boys to me, and then he, Richard, Anthony, and Hastings fling
themselves on their horses and ride away in the night, desperate not to be taken by
Warwick or his kinsmen, certain that this time there will be a summary execution for
them. Warwick tried once to capture and keep Edward, as we have captured and kept
Henry, and learned that there is no victory as final as death. He will never again
imprison Edward and wait for everyone to concede defeat. This time he wants him dead.

Edward rides out into the darkness with his friends and kinsmen and has no time to
send to me, to tell me where to meet him; he cannot even write to me to tell me where
he is going. I doubt that he knows himself. All he is doing is getting away from certain
death. Thoughts of how to return will come later. Now, tonight, the king is running
for his life.

The news comes to London in unreliable rumors, and it is all, always bad. Warwick
lands in England, as Edward predicted, but what he did not predict is the rush of
nobles to the traitor’s side, in support of the king they have left to rot in the
Tower for the last five years. The Earl of Shrewsbury joins him. Jasper Tudor—who
can raise most of Wales—joins him. Lord Thomas Stanley—who took the ruby ring at my
coronation joust and told me that his motto was “Without Changing”—joins him. A whole
host of lesser gentry follow these influential commanders, and Edward is swiftly outnumbered
in his own kingdom. All the Lancaster families are finding and polishing their old
weapons, hoping to march out to victory once again. It is as he warned me: he could
not spread out the wealth quickly enough, fairly enough, to enough people. We could
not spread the influence of my family far enough, deep enough. And now they think
they will do better under Warwick and the mad old king than under Edward and my family.

Edward would have been killed on the spot if they had caught him; but they have missed
him—that much is clear. But nobody knows where he is; and someone
comes to the Tower once a day to assure me that they have seen him and that he was
dying of his wounds, or that they have seen him and he is fleeing to France, or that
they have seen him on a bier and he is dead.

My boys arrive at the Tower travel-stained and weary, furious that they did not get
away with the king. I try not to hang on to them, or kiss them more often than morning
and night, but I can hardly believe that they have come safely back to me. Just as
I cannot believe that my husband and my brother have not.

I send to Grafton for my mother to come to us in the Tower. I need her advice and
company, and if we are indeed lost and I have to go abroad, I will want her with me.
But the messenger comes back and his face is grave.

“Your Lady Mother is not at her home,” he says.

“Where is she?”

He looks shifty, as if he wishes someone else could tell me bad news. “Tell me at
once,” I say, my voice sharp with fear. “Where is she?”

“She is under arrest,” he says. “Orders of the Earl of Warwick. He has ordered her
arrest, and his men came to Grafton and took her away.”

“Warwick has my mother?” I can hear my heart thudding in my ears. “My mother is a
prisoner?”

“Yes.”

I hear a rattling noise, and I see that my hands are shaking so badly that my rings
are clicking against the arms of the chair. I take a breath to steady myself, and
grip tight to stop myself shaking. My son Thomas comes closer to stand on one side
of my chair. Richard steps up to the other.

“On what charge?”

I think. It cannot be treason: nobody could argue that my mother has done more than
advise me. Nobody could charge her with treason when she has been a good mother-in-law
to the crowned king and a loving companion to his queen. Not even Warwick could stoop
so low as to charge a woman with treason and behead her for loving her daughter. But
this is a man who killed my father and my brother without reason. His desire must
only be to break my heart and rob Edward of the support of my family. This is a man
who will kill me if he ever gets hold of me.

“I am so sorry, Your Grace—”

“What charge?” I demand. My throat is dry and I give a little cough.

“Witchcraft,” he says.

There is no need of a trial to put a witch to death, though no trial has ever failed:
it is easy to find people to witness on oath that their cows died or that their horse
threw them because a witch had overlooked them. But in any case, there is no need
of either witnesses or a trial. A single priest is all that is needed to attest a
witch’s guilt, or a lord like Warwick can simply declare her guilty and no one will
defend her. Then she can be strangled and buried at the village crossroads. They usually
get the blacksmith to strangle the woman since he, by virtue of his trade, has big
strong hands.
My mother is a tall woman, a famous beauty with a long slim neck. Any man could choke
the life out of her in minutes. It does not need to be a brawny blacksmith. Any one
of Warwick’s guard could easily do it; would do it, in a moment, on a word, gladly
on Warwick’s word.

“Where is she?” I demand. “Where has he taken her?”

“Nobody at Grafton knew where they were going,” the man says. “I asked everyone. A
troop of horse came, and they made your mother ride pillion behind their commanding
officer, and they took her north. They told no one where they were going. They just
said that she was under arrest for witchcraft.”

“I must write to Warwick,” I say quickly. “Go and eat and get a fresh horse. I shall
need you to travel as fast as you can. Are you ready to leave at once?”

“At once,” he says, bows, and goes out.

I write to Warwick demanding her release. I write to every archbishop we once commanded,
and anyone who I think would speak for us. I write to my mother’s old friends and
family attached to the House of Lancaster. I even write to Margaret Beaufort, who,
as the heir of the House of Lancaster, may have some influence. Then I go to my chapel,
the Queen’s Chapel, and I get down on my knees all night to pray that God will not
allow this wicked man to take this good woman, who is blessed with nothing more than
a sacred foresight, a few pagan tricks, and a total lack of deference. At dawn, I
write her name on a dove’s feather and
send it floating downstream to warn Melusina that her daughter is in danger.

Then I have to wait for news. For a whole week I have to wait, hearing nothing and
fearing the very worst. Daily, people come to tell me that my husband is dead. Now
I fear they will say the same of my mother, and I will be utterly alone in the world.
I pray to God, I whisper to the river: someone has to save my mother. Then, at last,
I hear that she is freed, and two days later she comes to me in the Tower.

I run into her arms and I cry as if I were her daughter of ten years old. She holds
me and she rocks me as if I were still her little girl, and when I look up into her
beloved face, I see there are tears on her own cheeks.

“I’m safe,” she says. “He didn’t hurt me. He didn’t put me to question. He held me
only for a few days.”

“Why did he let you go?” I ask. “I wrote to him, I wrote to everybody, I prayed and
I wished; but I didn’t think he would show you any mercy.”

“Margaret d’Anjou,” she answers with a wry smile. “Of all the women in the world!
She commanded him to release me as soon as she heard that he had arrested me. We were
good friends once, and we are kinswomen still. She remembered my service at her court,
and she ordered Warwick to release me, or face her extreme displeasure.”

I give an incredulous laugh. “She commanded him to release you, and he obeyed?”

“She is his daughter’s mother-in-law now, as well as his queen,” my mother points
out. “And he is her
sworn ally and counting on her army to support him as he recaptures the country. And
I was her companion when she came to England as a bride, and her friend through all
the years of her queenship. I was of the House of Lancaster then, as we all were,
until you married Edward.”

“It was good of her to save you,” I concede.

“This is a cousins’ war, indeed,” my mother says. “We all have those we love on the
other side. We all have to face killing our own family. Sometimes we can be merciful.
God knows, she is not a merciful woman, but she thought she would be merciful to me.”

I am sleeping
uneasily in the rich royal apartments of the Tower of London, the flicker of moonlight
reflected from the river onto the drapes over my bed. I am lying on my back, the weight
of the baby heavy on my belly, an ache in my side, drifting between sleep and wakefulness
when I see, as bright as moonlight on the arras above me, my husband’s face, gaunt
and aged, bent low over the galloping mane of his horse, riding like a madman through
the night, less than a dozen men around him.

I give a little cry and turn on the pillow. The rich embroidery presses against my
cheek and I sleep again; but again I wake to the image of Edward riding hard through
darkness on a strange road.

I half wake, crying out against the picture in my mind, and as I drift between sleeping
and wakefulness, I see a small fishing port, Edward, Anthony, William,
and Richard hammering on a door, arguing with a man, hiring his boat, forever looking
over their shoulders to the west, for their enemies. I hear them promise the ship’s
master anything, anything! if he will launch his little ship and take them to Flanders.
I see Edward strip off his great coat of furs and offer it as payment. “Take it,”
he says. “It’s worth more than your boat twice over. Take it and I will think it a
service.”

“No,” I say in my sleep. Edward is leaving me, leaving England, leaving me and breaking
his word that he would be with me for the birth of our son.

The seas are high outside the harbor, the dark waves topped with white foam. The little
ship rises and falls, rolling between the waves, water breaking over the bows. It
seems impossible that it should climb to the top of the waves, and then it crashes
down in the troughs. Edward stands at the stern, clutching to the side for support,
thrown about by the movement of the boat, looking back at the country he called his
own, watching for the flare of the torches of the men coming after him. He has lost
England. We have lost England. He claimed the throne, and he was crowned king. He
crowned me as queen, and I believed that we were established. He never lost a battle;
but Warwick has been too much, too fast, too duplicitous for him. Edward is heading
for exile, just as Warwick did. He is heading out into a vicious storm, just as Warwick
did. But Warwick went straight to the King of France and found an ally and an army.
I cannot see how Edward will ever return.