The White Queen (46 page)

“What?” I ask. “What d’you mean?”

“We prayed for the prince, every day we did, and lit a candle for him, and all of
us at Reigate are more sorry than we can say that we are too late for him. We—”

“Wait,” I say urgently. “Wait. What are you saying?”

His big face is suddenly aghast. “Oh God spare me, don’t say you did not know and
I have told you like a great fool?” He wrings his hat in his hands, so the plume dips
into the river water that laps at the steps. “Oh gentle madam, I am a fool. I should
have made sure . . .” He glances anxiously up the dark passageway behind me. “Call
a lady,” he says. “Don’t you go fainting now.”

I hold the grating in clenched hands, though my head swims. “I won’t,” I promise him
through dry lips. “I don’t faint. Are you saying that the young King Edward is executed?”

He shakes his head. “Dead, is all I know. God bless your sweet face, and forgive me
for being the one to tell you such dark news. Such bad news and I to bring it to you!
When all we wanted to know was your wishes now.”

“Not executed?”

He shakes his head. “Nothing public. Poor boys. We know nothing for certain. We were
just told that the princes were put to death, God bless them, and that the rebellion
would go on against King Richard, who is still a usurper, but that we would put Henry
Tudor on the throne as the next heir and the next best thing for the country.”

I laugh, a cracked unhappy sound. “Margaret Beaufort’s boy? Instead of mine?”

He looks around him for help, frightened by the ring of madness in my laughter. “We
didn’t know. We were sworn to free the princes. We all mustered in your cause, Your
Grace. So we don’t know what we should do, now your princes have gone. And Thomas
Howard’s men are holding the road to your brother’s camp, so we couldn’t ask him.
We thought it best that I should slip away quietly, and come to London to ask you.”

“Who told you they are dead?”

He thinks for a moment. “It was a man from the Duke of Buckingham. He brought us some
gold, and weapons for those who had none. He said we could trust his master, who had
turned against the false King Richard for killing the boys. He said the duke had been
the King Richard’s loyal servant, thinking him the protector
of the boys, but when he found out that he had killed our princes he turned against
him in horror. He said that the duke knew all that the false king did and said, but
he could not prevent this murder.” He looks at me warily again. “God keep Your Grace.
Should you not have a lady with you?”

“The duke’s man told you all this?”

“A good man, he told us it all. And he paid for the men to have a drink to the Duke
of Buckingham as well. He said that the false King Richard had ordered their deaths
in secret before he left on his progress, and that, when he told the duke what he
had done, the duke swore he could have no more of this murderer’s reign but would
defy King Richard and we should all rise up against this man who would kill boys.
The duke himself would make a better king than Richard, and he has a claim to the
throne and all.”

Surely I would know if my son was dead? I heard the river sing for my brother. If
my son and heir, the heir to my house, the heir to the throne of England, was dead,
I would surely know that? Surely, my son could not be killed no more than three miles
from me, and I not know it? So I don’t believe it. I won’t believe it until they show
me his blessed body. He is not dead. I cannot believe he is dead. I will not believe
he is dead until I see him in his coffin.

“Listen to me.” I draw close to the bars and speak earnestly to him. “You go back
to Kent and tell your fellows that they are to rise for the princes, for my boys are
still alive. The duke is mistaken and the king has not
killed them. I know this; I am their mother. Tell them also that, even if Edward was
dead, his brother Richard is not with him but safely got away. He is safe in hiding
and he will come back and take the throne that is his. You go back to Kent and, when
the word comes for you to muster and march out, go with a proud heart for you must
destroy this false King Richard and free my boys and free me.”

“And the duke?” he asks. “And Henry Tudor?”

I make a face, and wave the thought of the two of them away. “Loyal allies to our
cause, I am sure,” I say with a certainty I no longer feel. “You be true to me, Sir
John, and I will remember you and every single one who fights for me and my sons,
when I am come to my own again.”

He bows and ducks back down the stairs and steps cautiously into the rocking rowboat
and then he is lost in the dark mist of the river. I wait for him to disappear and
for the quiet splash of the oars to fade away and then I look down into the dark waters.
“The duke,” I whisper into the waters. “The Duke of Buckingham is telling everyone
that my sons are dead. Why would he do that? When he is sworn to rescue them? When
he is sending gold and arms to the rebellion? Why would he tell them, in the very
moment that he calls them out, that the princes are dead?”

I eat supper
with my girls and with the few servants who have stayed with us in sanctuary, but
I cannot hear seven-year-old Anne’s careful reading of the Bible, nor
join Elizabeth in questioning them as to what they have just heard. I am as inattentive
as Catherine, who is only four. I can think of nothing but why there should be a rumor
that my boys are dead.

I send the girls to bed early; I cannot bear to hear them playing at cards or singing
a round. All night I walk up and down in my room, stepping along the one floorboard
that does not creak to the window over the river, and back again the other way. Why
would Richard kill my boys now, when he has accomplished all that he wanted without
their deaths? He has persuaded the council to name them as bastards, he has passed
an act of Parliament that denies my marriage. He has named himself as the next legitimate
heir and the archbishop himself has put the crown on his dark head. His sickly wife
Anne is crowned as Queen of England and their son is invested as Prince of Wales.
All this was achieved with me mewed up in sanctuary, and my son in prison. Richard
is triumphant: Why would he want us dead? Why would he need us dead now? And how should
he hope to escape blame for the crime, when everyone knows the boys are in his keeping?
Everyone knows he took my son Richard against my will; it could not have been more
public, and the archbishop himself swore that no harm would come to him.

And it is not like Richard to ride away from work that needs doing. When he and his
brothers decided that poor King Henry should die, the three of them met outside his
door and went in together, their faces grim but their minds made up. These are York
princes:
they have no objection to wicked deeds; but they do not leave them to others, they
do them firsthand. The risk of asking another to kill two innocent princes of the
blood, bribing the guards, hiding the bodies, would be unbearable for Richard. I have
seen how he kills: directly, without warning, but openly, without shame. The man who
beheaded Sir William Hastings on a piece of builders’ timber would not wink at holding
a pillow over the face of a young boy. If the thing was to be done, I would have sworn
he would do it himself. At the very least he would give the order and watch that it
was done.

All this is to convince me that Sir John from Reigate is mistaken and my boy Edward
is still alive. But again and again as I turn at the window and glance down at the
river in darkness and mist, I wonder if I am mistaken, mistaken in everything, even
in my trust in Melusina. Perhaps Richard managed to find someone who would kill the
boys. Perhaps Edward is dead, and perhaps I have lost the Sight, and I just don’t
know. Perhaps I know nothing anymore.

By the early
hours of the morning I cannot bear to be alone for another minute, and I send a messenger
to fetch Dr. Lewis to me. I tell them to wake him and get him out of bed, for I am
mortally ill. By the time he is admitted by the guards, my lie is becoming true, and
I am running a fever from sheer agony of mind.

“Your Grace?” he asks cautiously.

I am haggard in the candlelight, my hair in a clumsy plait, my robe knotted around
me. “You have to get your servants, trusted men, into the Tower to guard my son Edward,
since we cannot get him out,” I say bluntly. “Lady Margaret must use her influence,
she must use her husband’s name, to ensure my sons are well guarded. They are in danger.
They are in terrible danger.”

“You have news?”

“There is a rumor spreading that my boys are dead,” I say.

He shows no surprise. “God forbid it, Your Grace, but I fear that it is more than
a rumor. It is as the Duke of Buckingham warned us. He said that this false king would
kill his nephews to get the throne.”

I recoil, very slightly, as if I had put out my hand and seen a snake sunning itself
where I was about to touch.

“Yes,” I say, suddenly wary. “That is what I have heard, and it was the Duke of Buckingham’s
man who said it.”

He crosses himself. “God spare us.”

“But I hope that the deed is not yet done, and I hope to prevent it.”

He nods. “Alas, I am afraid that we may be too late, and that they are already lost
to us. Your Grace, I grieve with all my heart for you.”

“I thank you for your sympathy,” I say steadily. My temples are throbbing, I cannot
think. It is as if I am looking at the snake and it looks back at me.

“Please God, this uprising destroys the uncle who could do such a thing. God will
be on our side against such a Herod.”

“If it
was
Richard.”

He looks at me suddenly, as if this shocks him, though he seems well able to tolerate
the idea of the murder of children. “Who else could do such a thing? Who else would
benefit? Who killed Sir William Hastings, and your brother and your other son? Who
is the murderer of your family and your worst enemy, Your Grace? You can suspect no
one else!”

I can feel myself tremble and the tears start to come; they are burning my eyes. “I
don’t know,” I say unsteadily. “I just feel certain that my boy is not dead. I would
know if he was killed. A mother would know that. Ask Lady Margaret: she would know
if her Henry was dead. A mother knows. And anyway, my Richard at least is safe.”

He takes the bait and I see his response—I see the flash of a spy looking from his
melting eyes. “Oh, is he?” he asks invitingly.

I have said enough. “They are both safe, please God,” I correct myself. “But tell
me—why are you so certain that they are dead?”

He puts his hand gently on mine. “I did not want to grieve you. But they have not
been seen since the false king left London, and the duke and Lady Margaret both believe
that he had them killed before he left. There was nothing any of us could do to save
them. When we besieged the Tower, they were already dead.”

I pull my hand away from his comforting grasp and put it to my aching forehead. I
wish I could think clearly. I remember Lionel telling me that he heard the servants
shouting to take the boys deeper into the Tower. I remember him telling me that he
was just the distance of the door from Edward. But why would Dr. Lewis lie to me?

“Would it not have been better for our cause if the duke had kept silent?” I ask.
“My friends and family and allies are recruiting men to rescue the princes, but the
duke is telling them that they are already dead. Why should my men turn out, if their
prince is dead?”

“As well they should know now as later,” he says smoothly, too smoothly.

“Why?” I say. “Why should they know now, before the battle?”

“So that everyone knows it is the false king who gave the order,” he says. “So that
Duke Richard has the blame. Your people will rise for revenge.”

I cannot think, I cannot think why this matters. I can sense a lie in here somewhere,
but I cannot put my finger on it. Something is wrong, I know it.

“But who would doubt that it is King Richard who had them killed? As you say, the
murderer of my kinsmen? Why would we declare our fears now, and confuse our people?”

“Nobody would doubt it,” he assures me. “No one else but Richard would do such a thing.
No one else would benefit from such a crime.”

I jump to my feet in sudden impatience, and knock the table and overturn the candlestick.

“I don’t understand!”

He snatches at the candle and the flame bobs and throws a terrible shadow on his friendly
face. For a moment he is as he was when I first saw him when Cecily came to tell me
that Death was at the door. I gasp in fear and I step back from him as he puts the
candle carefully back on the table and stands, as he should do, since I, the dowager
queen, am standing.

“You can go,” I say disjointedly. “Forgive me, I am distressed. I don’t know what
to think. You can leave me.”

“Shall I give you a draft to help you sleep? I am so sorry for your grief.”

“No, I will sleep now. I thank you for your company.” I take a breath. I push back
the hair from my face. “You have calmed me with your wisdom. I am at peace now.”

He looks puzzled. “But I have said nothing.”

I shake my head. I cannot wait for him to leave. “You have shared my worries, and
that is the act of a friend.”

“I shall see Lady Margaret first thing this morning and tell her of your fears. I
shall ask her to put her men in the Tower to get news of your boys. If they are alive,
we will find men to guard them. We will keep them safe.”

“At least Richard is safe,” I remark incautiously.

“Safer than his brother?”

I smile like a woman with a secret. “Doctor, if you
had two precious rare jewels and you feared thieves, would you put your two treasures
in the same box?”

“Richard was not in the Tower?” His voice is a breath, his blue eyes staring; he is
all aquiver.

I put my finger to my lips. “Hush.”