The White Queen (29 page)

“Some kind of what?”

“Some kind of fat fishwife.”

“Well,” my brother says. “To be honest, you’re getting no younger, and in certain
lights, y’know . . .”

I tap him on the knee with my riding crop, and he laughs and winks at Baby Edward
on his little pony.

“I don’t like how he has taken all the north into his keeping. Edward has made him
overly great. He has made him a prince in his own principality. It is a danger to
us, and to our heirs. It is to divide the kingdom.”

“He had to reward him with something. Richard has laid down his life on Edward’s gambles
over and over again. Richard won the kingdom for Edward: he should have his share.”

“But it makes Richard all but a king in his own domain,” I protest. “It gives him
the kingdom of the north.”

“Nobody doubts his loyalty but you.”

“He is loyal to Edward, and to his house, but he doesn’t like me or mine. He envies
me everything I have, and he doesn’t admire my court. And what does that mean when
he thinks of our children? Will he be loyal to my boy, because he is Edward’s boy
too?”

Anthony shrugs. “We are raised up, you know. You have brought us up very high. There
are a lot of people who think we ride higher than our deserts, and on nothing more
than your roadside charms.”

“I don’t like how Richard married Anne Neville.”

Anthony laughs shortly. “Oh sister, nobody liked to see Richard, the wealthiest young
man in England, marry the richest young woman in England, but I never thought to see
you take the side of George, Duke of Clarence!”

I laugh unwillingly. George’s outrage at having his heiress sister-in-law snatched
from his own house by his own brother has entertained us all for half the year.

“Anyway, it is your husband who has obliged Richard,” Anthony remarks. “If Richard
wanted to marry Anne for love, he could have done so, and been rewarded by her love.
But it took the king to declare her mother’s fortune should be divided between the
two girls. It took your honorable husband to declare the mother legally dead—though
I believe the old lady stoutly protests her continuing life, and demands the right
to plead for her own lands—and it was your husband who took all the fortune from the
poor old lady to give to her two daughters, and thus, and so conveniently, to his
brothers.”

“I told him not to,” I say irritably. “But he paid no attention to me on this. He
always favors his brothers, and Richard far above George.”

“He is right to prefer Richard, but he should not break his own laws in his own kingdom,”
Anthony says with sudden seriousness. “That’s no way to rule. It is unlawful to rob
a widow, and he has done just that. And she is the widow of his enemy and in sanctuary.
He should be gracious to her, he should be merciful. If he were a truly chivalrous
knight, he would encourage her to come out of Beaulieu Abbey and take up her lands,
protect her daughters, and curb the greed of his brothers.”

“The law is what powerful men say it shall be,” I say irritably. “And sanctuary is
not unbreakable. If you were not a dreamer, far away in Camelot, you would know that
by now. You were at Tewkesbury, weren’t you? Did you see the sanctity of holy ground
then when they
dragged the lords from the abbey and stabbed them in the churchyard? Did you defend
sanctuary then? For I heard everyone unsheathed their swords and cut down the men
who were coming with their sword hilts held out?”

Anthony shakes his head. “I am a dreamer,” he concedes. “I don’t deny it, but I have
seen enough to know the world. Perhaps my dream is of a better one. This York reign
is sometimes too much for me, you know, Elizabeth. I cannot bear what Edward does
when I see him favor one man and disregard another, and for no reason but that it
makes himself stronger or his reign more secure. And you have made the throne your
fief: you distribute favors and wealth to your favorites, not to the deserving. And
the two of you make enemies. People say that we care for nothing but our own success.
When I see what we do, now that we are in power, I sometimes regret fighting under
the white rose. I sometimes think that Lancaster would have done just as well, or
at any rate no worse.”

“Then you forget Margaret of Anjou and her mad husband,” I say coldly. “My mother
herself said to me on the day we rode out for Reading that I could not do worse than
Margaret of Anjou and I have not done so.”

He concedes the point. “All right. You and your husband are no worse than a madman
and a harpy. Very good.”

I am surprised at his gravity. “It is as the world is, my brother,” I remind him.
“And you too have had your favors from the king and me. And now you are Earl
Rivers and brother-in-law to the king, and uncle to the king to be.”

“I thought we were doing more than lining our own pockets,” he says. “I thought we
were doing more than putting a king and a queen on the throne who were only better
than the worst that could be. You know, sometimes I would rather be in a white tabard
with a red cross, fighting for God in the desert.”

I think of my mother’s prediction that Anthony’s spirituality will one day triumph
over his Rivers worldliness and he will leave me. “Ah, don’t say that,” I say. “I
need you. And as Baby grows and has his own prince’s council, he will need you. I
can think of no man better fitted to guide him and teach him than you. There’s no
knight in England better read. There’s no poet in England who can fight as well. Don’t
say you will go, Anthony. You know you have to stay. I can’t be queen without you.
I can’t be me without you.”

He bows to me with his twisted smile and takes my hand and kisses it. “I won’t leave
you while you have need of me,” he promises. “I will never willingly leave you while
you need me. And, for sure, good times are coming soon.”

I smile, but he makes the optimistic words sound like a lament.

Edward beckons me to one side after dinner one evening at Windsor Castle and I go
to him smiling. “What do you want, husband? Do you want to dance with me?”

“I do,” he says. “And then I am going to get hugely drunk.”

“For any reason?”

“None at all. Just for pleasure. But before all that, I have to ask you something.
Can you take another lady into your rooms as a lady-in-waiting?”

“Do you have someone in mind?” I am instantly alert to the danger that Edward has
a new flirt that he wants to palm off on me, and that he thinks I will make her my
lady-in-waiting to make his seduction the more convenient. This must show in my face,
for he gives a whoop of laughter and says, “Don’t look so furious. I wouldn’t foist
my whores upon you. I can house them myself. No, this is a lady of unimpeachable family.
None other than Margaret Beaufort, the last of the Lancastrians.”

“You want her to serve me?” I ask incredulously. “You want her to be one of my ladies?”

He nods. “I have reason. You remember she is newly married to Lord Thomas Stanley?”

I nod.

“He is declared our friend, he is sworn to our support, and his army sat on the sidelines
and saved us at the battle of Blore Heath, though he was promised to Margaret of Anjou.
With his fortune and influence in the country I do need to keep him on our side. He
had our permission to marry her well enough, and now he has done it, and seeks to
bring her to court. I thought we could give her a position. I must have him on my
council.”

“Isn’t she wearisomely religious?” I ask unhelpfully.

“She is a lady. She will adapt her behavior to yours,” he says equably. “And I need
her husband close to me, Elizabeth. He is an ally who will be of importance both now
and in the future.”

“If you ask it so sweetly, what can I do but say yes?” I smile at him. “But don’t
blame me if she is dull.”

“I will not see her, nor any woman, if you are before me,” he whispers. “So don’t
trouble yourself as to how she behaves. And in a little while, when she asks for her
son Henry Tudor to come home again, he may—as long as she is loyal to us, and he can
be persuaded to forget his dreams of being the Lancaster heir. They will both come
to court and serve us, and everyone will forget there was ever such a thing as a House
of Lancaster. We’ll marry him to some nice girl of the House of York whom you can
pick out for him, and the House of Lancaster will be no more.”

“I will invite her,” I promise him.

“Then tell the musicians to play something merry and I will dance with you.”

I turn and nod to the musicians and they confer for a moment and then play the newest
tune, straight from the Burgundian court, where Edward’s sister Margaret is continuing
the York tradition of making merry and the Burgundian tradition of high fashion. They
even call the dance “Duchess Margaret’s jig,” and Edward sweeps me onto the floor
and whirls me in the quick steps until everyone is laughing and clapping in a circle
around us, and then taking their turn.

The music ends and I spin away to a quieter corner, and Anthony my brother offers
me a glass of small ale. I drink it thirstily. “So, do I still look like a fat fishwife?”
I demand.

“Oho, that stung, did it?” He grins. He puts his arms around me and hugs me gently.
“No, you look like the beauty you are, and you know it. You have that gift, which
our mother had, of growing older and becoming more lovely. Your features have changed
from being merely those of a pretty girl to being those of a beautiful woman with
a face like a carving. When you are laughing and dancing with Edward, you could pass
for twenty, but when you are still and thoughtful, you are as lovely as the statues
they are carving in Italy. No wonder women loathe you.”

“As long as men do not.” I smile.

In the cold days of January, Edward comes to my rooms where I am seated before the
fire, a footstool before me so I can put my feet up. As he sees me sitting, uncharacteristically
idle, he checks in the doorway and nods to the men behind him and to my women and
says, “Leave us.” They go out with a little bustle, the newly arrived Lady Margaret
Stanley among them, fluttering as women always do around Edward—even the holy Margaret
Stanley.

He nods at their backs as they close the door behind them. “Lady Margaret? She is
merry and good company for you?”

“She is well enough,” I say, smiling up at him. “She knows, and I know, that she rode
in the Tudor barge past my window when I was in sanctuary, and she enjoyed her moment
of triumph then. And she knows, and I know, that I have the upper hand now. We don’t
forget that. We aren’t men to clap each other on the back and say ‘No hard feelings’
after a battle. But we know also that the world has changed and we have to change
too, and she never says a word to suggest that she wishes her son were acknowledged
heir to the Lancaster throne, rather than Baby is to the York.”

“I came to speak to you about Baby,” Edward says. “But I see that you should be speaking
to me.”

I widen my eyes and smile up at him. “Oh? About what?”

He gives a little laugh and pulls a cushion off a settle and drops it to the floor
so he can sit beside me. The freshly strewn herbs on the floor beneath his cushion
release the scent of water mint. “Do you think I am blind? Or just stupid?”

“Neither, my lord,” I say flirtatiously. “Should I?”

“In all the time I have known you, you have always seated yourself as your mother
taught you. Straight upright in a chair, feet together, hands in your lap or resting
on the arms of the chair. Isn’t that how she taught you to sit? Like a queen? As if
she knew all along you would have a throne?”

I smile. “She probably did know, actually.”

“And so now I find you lazing about in the afternoon, feet on a footstool.” He leans
back and lifts the hem of my gown so that he can see my stockinged feet. “Shoes off!
I am scandalized. You are clearly becoming a slattern, and my royal court is run by
a hedgerow slut, just as my mother warned me.”