The White Queen (36 page)

He puts his head down to the ruby surface of the wine as if he were putting his head
on the block, and he sucks great gulps of it as if he would drink the danger away,
then he thrusts out his hands in the signal of assent, and the two men take his head
and, holding him by the hair and the collar, plunge him down below the surface, half
lifting him from the floor so his legs kick as if he is swimming, and the wine is
slopped on the floor as he writhes, trying to escape. The wine cascades around their
feet as the air bubbles out of him in great retching whoops. The priest steps back
from the red puddle and goes on reading the last rites, his voice steady and reverent,
while the two executioners hold the flailing head of the most stupid son of York deep
into the barrel until his feet hang slack and there
are no more bubbles of air, and the room smells like an old taproom.

That night at midnight I get up from my bed in the Palace of Westminster and go to
my dressing room. On the top of a long cupboard for my furs is a little box with my
private things. I open it. Inside is an old locket of silver so tarnished with age
that it is black as ebony. I open the catch, and there is the old scrap of paper,
torn from the bottom of my father’s letter. On it, written in blood, my blood, is
the name George, Duke of Clarence. I screw the paper up in my fingers and I throw
it on the embers of the fire and watch it twist in the heat of the ashes and then
suddenly spring into flame.

“So go,” I say as George’s name goes up in smoke and my curse on him is completed.
“But let you be the last York who dies in the Tower of London. Let it end here, as
I promised my mother it would. Let it finish here.”

I wish I had remembered, as she taught me, that it is easier to unleash evil than
call it back again. Any fool can blow up a wind, but who can know where it will blow
or when it will stop?

I have my boy Edward, my son Sir Richard Grey, and my brother Anthony come to my private
apartments for me to say good-bye to them. I cannot bear to let them go from me in
public. I don’t want to be seen to weep as they leave. I bend to hold Edward close,
as if I would never be parted from him, and he looks at me with his warm brown eyes,
holds my face in his little hands, and says, “Don’t cry, Mama. There is nothing to
cry about. I shall come again next Christmas. And you can visit me at Ludlow, you
know.”

“I know,” I say.

“And if you bring George, then I will teach him how to ride,” he promises me. “And
you can put young Richard into my keeping, you know.”

“I know.” I try to speak clearly, but the tears are in my voice.

Richard hugs me around the waist. He is as tall as me now, a young man. “I will care
for him,” he says. “You must visit us. Bring all my brothers and sisters. Come for
the summer.”

“I will, I will,” I say, and turn to my brother Anthony.

“Trust us to take care of ourselves,” he says, before I can even start the list of
things that make me fearful.
“And I will bring him safe home to you next year. And I will not leave him, not even
for Jerusalem. I will not leave him till he commands me to go. All right?”

I nod, blinking away my tears. There is something that troubles me at the thought
of Edward letting Anthony go from him. It is as if a shadow has fallen on us. “I don’t
know why, I just always fear for him so much, whenever I have to say good-bye to the
three of you. I can hardly bear to let him go.”

“I will guard him with my life,” Anthony promises. “He is as dear to me as life itself.
No harm will come to him while he is in my keeping. You have my word.”

He bows and turns to the door. Edward, beside him, does a mirror copy of the graceful
gesture. Richard my son puts his fist to his chest in the salute that means “I love
you.”

“Be happy,” Anthony says. “I have your boy safe.”

Then they are gone from me.

My boy George, always a slight baby, starts to fail before he reaches his second birthday.
The physicians know nothing, the ladies of the nursery can suggest only gruel and
milk, to be fed hourly. We try it, but he grows no stronger.

Elizabeth, his thirteen-year-old sister, plays with him every day, takes his little
hands and helps him to walk on his thin legs, makes up a story for every mouthful
of food that he eats. But even she sees that he is not thriving. He does not grow,
and his little arms and legs are like sticks.

“Can we get a physician from Spain?” I ask Edward. “Anthony always says that the Moors
have the wisest men.”

His face is weary with worry and sorrow for this, a precious son. “You can get anyone
you like from anywhere,” he says. “But Elizabeth, my love, find your courage. He is
a frail little boy, and he was a tiny baby. You have done well to keep him with us
this far.”

“Don’t say that,” I say quickly, shaking my head. “He will get better. The spring
will come and then the summer. He will get better in the summer for sure.”

I spend hours in the nursery with my little boy on
my lap, dripping gruel into his little mouth, holding his chest to my ear so I can
hear the faint patter of his heart.

They tell me that we are blessed to have two strong sons: the succession to the throne
of York is surely secure. I say nothing in reply to these fools. I am not nursing
him for the sake of York, I am nursing him for love. I do not want him to thrive to
be a prince. I want him to thrive to be a strong boy.

This is my baby boy. I cannot bear to lose him as I lost his sister. I cannot bear
that he should die in my arms as she died in my mother’s arms and they went away together.
I haunt the nursery during the day and even at night I come to watch him sleep, and
I am sure he is growing no stronger.

He is asleep on my lap one day in March, and I am rocking him in the chair and humming,
without knowing I am doing so, a little song: a Burgundian lullaby half remembered
from my childhood.

The song ends, and there is silence. I still the rocking of the chair, and everything
is quiet. I put my ear to his little chest to hear the beating of his heart, and I
cannot hear the beating of his heart. I put my cheek to his nose, his mouth to feel
the warmth of his breath. There is no flutter of breath. He is still warm and soft
in my arms, warm and soft as a little bird. But my George has gone. I have lost my
son.

I hear the sound of the lullaby again, softly, as softly as the wind, and I know that
Melusina is rocking him now, and my boy George has gone. I have lost my son.

They tell me that I still have my boy Edward, that I am lucky in that my handsome
boy of eight years old is so strong and grows so well. They tell me to be glad of
Richard, his five-year-old brother. I smile, for I am glad of both of my boys. But
that makes no difference to my loss of George, my little George with his blue eyes
and his tuft of blond hair.

Five months later,
I am in confinement awaiting the birth of another child. I don’t expect a boy, I
don’t imagine that one child can replace another. But little Catherine comes at just
the right time to comfort us, and there is a York princess in the cradle again and
the York nursery is busy as usual. A year later and I have another baby, my little
girl Bridget.

“I think this will be our last,” I say regretfully to Edward when I come out of confinement.

I had been afraid that he would note that I was growing older. But instead he smiles
at me as if we were still young lovers, and kisses my hand. “No man could have asked
for more,” he says sweetly to me. “And no queen has ever labored harder. You have
given me a great family, my love. And I am glad this will be our last.”

“You don’t want another boy?”

He shakes his head. “I want to take you for pleasure, and hold you in my arms for
desire. I want you to know that it is your kiss that I want, not another heir to the
throne. You can know that I love you, quite for yourself, when I come to your bed,
and not as the York’s broodmare.”

I tilt back my head and look at him under my eyelashes. “You think to bed me for love
and not for children? Isn’t that sin?”

His arm comes around my waist and his palm cups my breast. “I shall make sure that
it feels richly sinful,” he promises me.

The weather is cold and unseasonal and the rivers run high. We are at Westminster
for the feast of Easter, and I look from my window at the fullness and the fast flow
of the river and think of my son Edward, beyond the great waters of the Severn River,
far away from me. It is as if England is a country of intersecting waterways, lakes
and streams and rivers. Melusina must be everywhere; this is a country made in her
element.

My husband Edward, a man of the land, has a whim to go fishing and takes himself out
for the day and comes home soaking wet and merry. He insists that we eat the salmon
that he caught in the river for our dinner, and it is borne into the dining room at
shoulder height with a fanfare: a royal catch.

That night he is feverish and I scold him for getting wet and cold, as if he were
still a boy and could take such risks with his health. The next day he is worse and
he gets up for a little while but then goes back to bed: he is too tired. The next
day the physician says that he should be bled, and Edward swears that they may not
touch him. I tell the doctors that it shall be as the king insists, but I go to his
room when he is sleeping and I look at his flushed face to reassure myself that this
is nothing more than a passing illness. This is not the plague or a serious fever.
He is a strong man in good health. He can take a chill and throw it off within a week.

He gets no better. And now he starts to complain of gripping pains in the belly and
a terrible flush of heat. Within a week the court is in fear, and I am in a state
of silent terror. The doctors are useless: they don’t even know what is wrong with
him; they don’t know what has caused his fever; they don’t know what will cure it.
He can keep nothing down. He vomits everything he eats, and he is fighting the pain
in his belly as if it were a new war. I keep a vigil in his room, my daughter Elizabeth
beside me, nursing him with two wise women whom I trust. Hastings, the friend of his
boyhood and his partner in every enterprise including the stupid, stupid fishing trip,
keeps his vigil in the outer room. The Shore whore has taken to living on her knees
at the altar in Westminster Abbey, they tell me, in an agony of fear for the man she
loves.

“Let me see him,” William Hastings implores me.

I turn a cold face to him. “No. He is sick. He needs no companion for whoring or drinking
or gambling. So he has no need of you. His health has been ruined by you, and all
them like you. I will nurse him to health now, and, if I have my way, when he is well
he will not see you again.”

“Let me see him,” he says. He does not even defend himself against my anger. “All
I want is to see him. I can’t bear not to see him.”