The White Queen (41 page)

“I think Richard has made his decision, I think he has promised to himself. I think
he has decided that the best thing for him, and for England, is a strong new king
and not a boy of twelve. And now he has made up his mind, he will do whatever it takes
to put himself on the throne. Cost what it may.”

She opens the door a crack and peers out. She picks up the basket to make it look
as if she was delivering goods to us. She peeps back at me around the door. “The king
always said that Richard would stop at nothing once he had agreed a plan,” she says.
“If he stops at nothing now, you will not be safe. I hope you can make yourself safe,
Your Grace, you and the children . . . you
and Edward’s boys.” She dips a little curtsey and whispers, “God bless you for his
sake,” and the door clicks behind her and she has gone.

I don’t hesitate.
It is as if the thud of axe through Hastings’s neck on Tower Green is a trumpet blast
that signals the start of a race. But this is a race to get my son to safety from
the threat of his uncle, who is now on a path of murder. There is no doubt in my mind
anymore that Duke Richard will kill both my sons to make his way clear to the throne.
I would not give a groat for the life of George’s son, either, wherever he is housed.
I saw Richard go into the room of the sleeping King Henry to kill a defenseless man
because his claim to the throne was as good as Edward’s. There is no doubt in my mind
that Richard will follow the same logic as the three brothers did that night. A sacred
and ordained king stood between their line and the throne—and they killed him. Now
my boy stands between Richard and the throne. He will kill him if he can, and it may
be that I cannot prevent it. But I swear, he will not get my younger boy Richard.

I have prepared him for this moment, but when I tell him that he will have to go at
once, tonight, he is startled that it has come so soon. His color drains away from
his cheeks, but his bright boyish bravery makes him hold his head up and bite his
little lip so as not to cry. He is only nine, but he has been raised to be a prince
of the House of York. He has been raised to show courage. I kiss him on the top of
his fair head
and tell him to be a good boy, and remember all that he has been told to do, and when
it starts to grow dark, I lead him down through the crypt, down the stairs, even deeper,
down into the catacomb below the building, where we have to go past the stone coffins
and the vaulted rooms of the burial chambers with one lantern before us and one in
his little hand. The light does not flicker. He does not tremble even when we go past
the shadowy graves. He walks briskly beside me, his head up.

The way leads out to a hidden iron gate, and beyond it a stone pier extending out
into the river, with a rocking rowing boat silently alongside. It is a little wherry,
hired for river traffic, one of hundreds. I had hoped to send him out in the warship,
commanded by my brother Edward, with men at arms sworn to protect him; but God knows
where Edward is this night, and the fleet has turned against us, and will sail for
Richard the duke. I have no warships at my command. We will have to make do with this.
My boy has to go out with no protection but two loyal servants, and the blessing of
his mother. One of Edward’s friends is waiting for him at Greenwich, Sir Edward Brampton,
who loved Edward. Or so I hope. I cannot know. I can be certain of nothing.

The two men are waiting silently in the boat, holding it against the current with
a rope through the ring on the stone steps, and I push my boy towards them and they
lift him on board and seat him in the stern. There is no time for any farewells, and
anyway there is
nothing I can say but a prayer for his safety that catches me in the throat as if
I have swallowed a dagger. The boat pushes off and I raise my hand to wave to him,
and see his little white face under the big cap looking back at me.

I lock the iron gate behind me, and then go back up the stone steps, silent through
the silent catacombs, and I look out from my window. His boat is pulling away into
the river traffic, the two men at the oars, my boy in the stern. There is no reason
for anyone to stop them. There are dozens like them, hundreds of boats crisscrossing
the river, about their own business, two workingmen with a lad to run errands. I swing
open my window but I will not call to him. I will not call him back. I just want him
to be able to see me if he glances up. I want him to know that I did not let him go
lightly, that I looked for him until the last, the very last moment. I want him to
see me looking for him through the dusk, and know that I will look for him for the
rest of my life, I will look for him till the hour of my death, I will look for him
after death, and the river will whisper his name.

He does not glance up. He does as he was told. He is a good boy, a brave boy. He remembers
to keep his head down and his cap pulled down on his forehead to hide his fair hair.
He must remember to answer to the name of Peter, and not expect to be served on bended
knee. He must forget the pageants and the royal progresses, the lions at the Tower,
and the jester tumbling head over heels to make him laugh. He must forget the
crowds of people cheering his name and his pretty sisters who played with him and
taught him French and Latin and even a little German. He must forget the brother he
adored who was born to be king. He must be like a bird, a swallow, who in winter flies
beneath the waters of the rivers and freezes into stillness and silence and does not
fly out again until spring comes to unlock the waters and let them flow. He must go
like a dear little swallow into the river, into the keeping of his ancestress Melusina.
He must trust that the river will hide him and keep him safe, for I can no longer
do so.

I watch the boat from my window and at first I can see him in the stern, rocking as
the little wherry moves in steady pulses, as the boatman pulls on the oars. Then the
current catches it and they go faster and there are other boats, barges, fishing boats,
trading ships, ferryboats, wherries, even a couple of huge logging rafts, and I can
see my boy no longer and he has gone to the river and I have to trust him to Melusina
and the water, and I am left without him, marooned without my last son, stranded on
the riverbank.

My grown son,
Thomas Grey, goes the same night. He slips out of the door dressed like a groom into
the backstreets of London. We need someone on the outside to hear news and raise our
forces. There are hundreds of men loyal to us, and thousands who would fight against
the duke. But they must be mustered and organized, and Thomas has to do this. There
is no one else left who can. He is twenty-seven. I know I am sending him
out to danger, perhaps to his death. “Godspeed,” I say to him. He kneels to me and
I put my hand on his head in blessing. “Where will you go?”

“To the safest place in London,” he says with a rueful smile. “A place that loved
your husband and will never forgive Duke Richard for betraying him. The only honest
business in London.”

“Where d’you mean?”

“The whorehouse,” he says with a grin.

And then he turns into the darkness and is gone.

Next morning, early,
Elizabeth brings the little page boy to me. He served us at Windsor, and has agreed
to serve us again. Elizabeth holds him by the hand for she is a kind girl, but he
smells of the stables, where he has been sleeping. “You will answer to the name of
Richard, Duke of York,” I tell him. “People will call you my lord, and sire. You will
not correct them. You will not say a word. Just nod.”

“Yes’m,” he mumbles.

“And you will call me Lady Mother,” I say.

“Yes’m.”

“Yes, Lady Mother.”

“Yes, Lady Mother,” he repeats.

“And you will have a bath and put on clean clothes.”

His frightened little face flashes up at me. “No! I can’t bathe!” he protests.

Elizabeth looks aghast. “Anyone will know at once,” she says.

“We’ll say he is ill,” I say. “We’ll say he has a cold or
a sore throat. We’ll tie up his jaw with a flannel and put a scarf around his mouth.
We’ll tell him to be silent. It’s only for a few days. Just to give us time.”

She nods. “I’ll bathe him,” she says.

“Get Jemma to help you,” I say. “And one of the men will probably have to hold him
in the water.”

She finds a smile, but her eyes are shadowed. “Mother, do you really think my uncle
the duke would harm his own nephew?”

“I don’t know,” I say. “And that is why I have sent my beloved royal son away from
me, and my boy Thomas Grey has to go out into the darkness. I don’t any longer know
what the duke might do.”

The serving girl
Jemma asks if she can go out on Sunday afternoon to see the Shore whore serve her
penance. “To do what?” I ask.

She dips a curtsey, her head bowed low, but she is so desperate to go that she is
ready to risk offending me. “I am sorry, ma’am, Your Grace, but she is to walk in
the city in her kirtle carrying a lighted taper and everyone is going to see her.
She has to do penance for sin, for being a whore. I thought if I came in early every
day for the next week you might let me—”

“Elizabeth Shore?”

Her face bobs up. “The notorious whore,” she recites. “The lord protector has ordered
that she do public penance for her sins of the flesh.”

“You can go and watch,” I say abruptly. One more gaze in the crowd will make no difference.
I think of
this young woman who Edward loved, who Hastings loved, walking barefoot in her petticoat,
carrying a taper, shielding its flickering flame while people shout abuse or spit
on her. Edward would not like this, and for him, if not for her, I would stop it if
I could. But there is nothing I can do to protect her. Richard the duke has turned
vicious and even a beautiful woman has to suffer for being beloved.

“She is punished for nothing but her looks.” My brother Lionel has been listening
at the window for the appreciative murmur of the crowd as she walks around the city
boundary. “And because now Richard suspects her of hiding your brother Thomas. He
raided her house but he couldn’t find Thomas. She kept him safe, hidden from Gloucester’s
men, and then got him out of the way.”

“God bless her for that,” I say.

Lionel smiles. “Apparently, this punishment has gone wrong for Duke Richard anyway.
Nobody is speaking ill of her as she walks,” he says. “One of the ferryboat men shouted
up at me when I was at the window. He says that the women cry shame on her, shame,
and the men just admire her. It’s not every day that they see such a lovely woman
in her petticoat. They say she looks like a naked angel, beautiful and fallen.”

I smile. “Well, God bless her anyway, angel or whore.”

My brother the bishop smiles too. “I think her sins were ones of love, not of malice,”
he says. “And in these hard days perhaps that is what matters the most.”

They send my kinsman, Cardinal Thomas Bourchier, and half a dozen other lords from
the Privy Council to reason with me, and I greet them as a queen, draped in the royal
diamonds looted from the treasury, seated on a grand chair for my throne. I hope I
look queenly and dignified; in truth I feel murderous. These are the lords of my Privy
Council. They have the positions that my husband gave them. He made them what they
are today, and now they dare come to me and tell me what Duke Richard requires of
me. Elizabeth stands behind me, and my other four daughters in a row. None of my sons
or brothers are present, They don’t remark that my son Thomas Grey is escaped from
sanctuary and is on the loose in London, and I certainly don’t draw attention to his
absence.

They tell me that they have proclaimed Duke Richard protector of the realm, regent,
and governor of the prince, and they assure me that they are preparing for the coronation
of my son Prince Edward. They want my younger son Richard to join his brother in the
royal rooms in the Tower.

“The duke will be protector for only a matter of days, only till the coronation,”
Thomas Bourchier explains to
me, his face so earnest that I must trust him. This is a man who has spent his life
trying to bring peace to this country. He crowned Edward as king and me as queen because
he believed that we would bring peace to this country. I know that he is speaking
from his heart. “As soon as the young king is crowned, then all the power reverts
to him and you are dowager queen and mother of the king,” he says. “Come back to your
palace, Your Grace, and attend the coronation of your son. The people wonder that
they don’t see you, and it looks odd to the foreign ambassadors. Let us do as we all
swore to the king on his deathbed—put your son on the throne and all work together
leaving aside enmity. Let the royal family be housed in the royal apartments in the
Tower, and let them come out in their power and their beauty for their boy’s coronation.”