The White Queen (60 page)

I can’t help but wonder if the old king, the sleeping king, is awake tonight somewhere
in the wild lands of the north of England. It is rather horrible to think of him,
fast asleep but knowing in his very dreams that they are dancing and that a new king
and queen have crowned themselves and put themselves in his place, and tomorrow a
new queen will wear his wife’s crown. Father says I have nothing to fear: the bad
queen has run away to France and will get no help from her French friends. Father
is meeting with the King of France himself to make sure that he becomes our friend
and the bad queen will get no help from him. She is our enemy; she is the enemy of
the peace of England. Father will make sure that there is no home for her in France,
as there is no throne for her in England. Meanwhile, the sleeping king without his
wife, without his son, will be wrapped up warm in some little castle somewhere near
Scotland, dozing his life away like a bee in a curtain all winter. My father says
that he will sleep and she will burn with rage until they both grow old and die, and
there is nothing for me to fear at all. It was my father who bravely drove the sleeping
king off the throne and put his crown on the head of King Edward, so it must be right.
It was my father who faced the terror that was the bad queen, a she wolf worse than
the wolves of France, and defeated her. But I don’t like to think of the old king
Henry, with the moonlight shining on his closed eyelids, while the men who drove him
away are dancing in what was once his great hall. I don’t like to think of the bad
queen, far away in France, swearing that she will have revenge on us, cursing our
happiness and saying that she will come back here, calling it her home.

By the time that Isabel finally comes in I am kneeling up at the narrow window to
look at the moonlight, shining on the river, thinking of the king dreaming in its
glow. “You should be asleep,” she says bossily.

“She can’t come for us, can she?”

“The bad queen?” Isabel knows at once the horror of Queen Margaret of Anjou who has
haunted both our childhoods. “No. She’s defeated—she was utterly defeated by Father
at Towton. She ran away. She can’t come back.”

“You’re sure?”

Isabel puts her arm around my thin shoulders. “You know I am sure. You know we are
safe. The mad king is asleep and the bad queen is defeated. This is just an excuse
for you to stay awake when you should be asleep.”

Obediently, I turn around and sit up in bed, pulling the sheets up to my chin. “I’m
going to sleep. Wasn’t it wonderful?”

“Not particularly.”

“Don’t you think she is beautiful?”

“Who?” she says, as if she really doesn’t know, as if it is not blindingly obvious
who is the most beautiful woman in England tonight.

“The new queen, Queen Elizabeth.”

“Well I don’t think she’s very queenly,” she says, trying to sound like our mother
at her most disdainful. “I don’t know how she will manage at her coronation, and at
the joust and the tournament—she was just the wife of a country squire and the daughter
of a nobody. How will she ever know how to behave?”

“Why? How would you behave?” I ask, trying to prolong the conversation. Isabel always
knows so much more than me, five years older than me, our parents’ favorite, a brilliant
marriage ahead of her, almost a woman while I am still nothing but a child. She even
looks down on the queen!

“I would carry myself with much more dignity than her. I would not whisper with the
king and demean myself as she did. I wouldn’t send out dishes and wave to people like
she did. I wouldn’t trail all my brothers and sisters into court like she did. I would
be much more reserved and cold. I wouldn’t smile at anyone, I wouldn’t bow to anyone.
I would be a true queen, a queen of ice without family or friends.”

I am so attracted by this picture that I am halfway out of my bed again. I pull off
the fur cover from our bed. I hold it up to her. “Like what? How would you be? Show
me, Izzy!”

She takes it like a cape around her shoulders, throws her head back, draws herself
up to her four feet six inches, and strides around the little chamber with her head
very high, nodding distantly to imaginary courtiers. “Like this,” she says. “Comme
ça, elegant and unfriendly.”

I jump out of bed and snatch up a shawl, throw it over my head, and follow her, mirroring
her nod to right and left, looking as regal as Isabel. “How do you do?” I say to an
empty chair. I pause as if listening to a request for some favor. “No, not at all.
I won’t be able to help you. I am so sorry, I have already given that post to my sister.”

“To my father, Lord Rivers,” Izzy adds.

“To my brother Anthony—he’s so handsome.”

“To my brother John and a fortune to my sisters. There is nothing left for you at
all. I have a large family,” Isabel says being the new queen in her haughty drawl.
“And they all must be accommodated.”

“All of them,” I supplement. “Dozens of them. Did you see how many
of them came into the great hall behind me? Where am I to find titles and land for
all of them?”

We walk in grand circles and pass each other as we go by, inclining our heads with
magnificent indifference. “And who are you?” I inquire coldly.

“I am the Queen of England,” Isabel says, changing the game without warning. “I am
Queen Isabel of England and France, newly married to King Edward. He fell in love
with me for my beauty. He is mad for me. He has run completely mad for me and forgotten
his friends and his duty. We married in secret, and now I am to be crowned queen.”

“No, no,
I
was being the Queen of England,” I say, dropping the shawl and turning on her. “I
am Queen Anne of England. I am the Queen of England. King Edward chose me.”

“He never would—you’re the youngest.”

“He did! He did!” I can feel the rise of my temper, and I know that I will spoil the
game, but I cannot bear to give her precedence once again, even in a game in our own
chamber.

“We can’t both be Queen of England,” she says reasonably enough. “You be the Queen
of France, you can be the Queen of France. France is nice enough.”

“England! I am the Queen of England. I hate France!”

“Well, you can’t be,” she says flatly. “I am the oldest. I chose first. I am the Queen
of England and Edward is in love with me.”

I am wordless with rage at her claiming of everything, her sudden enforcing of seniority,
our sudden plunge from happy play to rivalry. I stamp my foot and my face flushes
with temper; I can feel hot tears in my eyes. “England! I am Queen!”

“You always spoil everything because you are such a baby,” she says, turning away
as the door behind us opens and Margaret comes into the room.

“Time you were both asleep, my ladies. Gracious! What have you done to your bedspread?”

“Isabel won’t let me …” I start. “She is being mean… .”

“Never mind that,” Margaret says briskly. “Into bed. You can share whatever it is
tomorrow.”

“She won’t share!” I gulp down salt tears. “She never does. We were playing but then
…”

Isabel laughs shortly as if my grief is comical, and she exchanges a look with Margaret
as if to say that the baby is having a temper tantrum again. This is too much for
me. I let out a wail and I throw myself
facedown on the bed. No one cares for me, no one will see that we were playing together,
as equals, as sisters, until Isabel claimed something which was not hers to take.
She should know that she should share. It is not right that I should come last, that
I always come last. “It’s not right!” I say brokenly. “It’s not fair on me!”

Isabel turns her back to Margaret, who unlaces the fastening of her gown and holds
it low so that she can step out of it disdainfully, like the queen she was pretending
to be. Margaret hangs the gown, ready for powdering and brushing tomorrow, and Isabel
pulls a nightgown over her head and lets Margaret brush her hair and plait it up.

I lift my flushed face from the pillow to watch the two of them, and Isabel glances
across at my big tragic eyes and says shortly, “You should be asleep anyway. You always
cry when you’re tired. You’re such a baby. You shouldn’t have been allowed to come
to dinner.” She looks at Margaret and says, “Tell her.”

“Go to sleep, Lady Anne,” Margaret says gently. “There’s nothing to carry on about,”
and I roll on my side and turn my face to the wall. Nobody treats me with any respect,
and my own sister hates me. I hear the ropes of the bed creak as she gets in beside
me. Nobody makes her say her prayers, though she will certainly go to hell. Margaret
says, “Good night, sleep well, God bless,” and then blows out the candles and goes
out of the room.

We are alone together in the firelight. I feel Isabel heave the covers over to her
side, and I lie still. She whispers, sharp with malice, “You can cry all night if
you want, but I shall still be Queen of England and you will not.”

“I am a Neville!” I squeak.

“Margaret is a Neville,” Isabel proves her point, “but illegitimate, Father’s acknowledged
bastard. So she serves as our lady-in-waiting. Now I think of it, you are probably
illegitimate too and you will have to be my lady-in-waiting.”

I feel a sob rising up in my throat, but I put both my hands over my mouth. I will
not give her the satisfaction of hearing me cry, I will stifle my sobs. If I could
stop my own breath, I would; and then they would write to my father and say that I
was quite cold and dead, and then she would be sorry that I was suffocated because
of her unkindness, and my father—far away tonight—would blame her for the loss of
his little girl that he loved above any other. At any rate, he ought to love me above
any other. At any rate, I wish he did.

I go to bed uneasy, and the very next day, straight after matins, Dr. Lewis comes
to my rooms, looking strained and anxious. At once I say I am feeling unwell, and
send all my women away. We are alone in my privy chamber and I let him take a stool
and sit opposite me, almost as an equal.

“The Queen Elizabeth summoned me to sanctuary last night and she was distraught,”
he says quietly.

“She was?”

“She had been told that the princes were dead, and she was begging me to tell her
that it was not the case.”

“What did you say?”

“I didn’t know what you would have me say. So I told her what everyone in the City
is saying: that they are dead. That Richard had them killed either on the day of his
coronation or as he left London.”

“And she?”

“She was deeply shocked; she could not believe it. But, Lady Margaret, she said a
terrible thing—” He breaks off, as if he dare not name it.

“Go on,” I say, but I can feel a cold shiver of dread creeping up my spine. I fear
I have been betrayed. I fear that this has gone wrong.

“She cried out at first and then she said: ‘At least Richard is safe.’”

“She meant Prince Richard? The younger boy?”

“The one they took into the Tower to keep his brother company.”

“I know that! But what did she mean?”

“That’s what I asked her. I asked her at once what she meant, and she smiled at me
in the most frightening way and said, ‘Doctor, if you had only two precious, rare
jewels and you feared thieves, would you put your two treasures in the same box?’”

He nods at my aghast expression.

“What does she mean?” I repeat.

“She wouldn’t say more. I asked her if Prince Richard was not in the Tower when the
two boys were killed. She just said that I was to ask you to put your own guards into
the Tower to keep her son safe. She would say nothing more. She sent me away.”

I rise from my stool. This damned woman, this witch, has been in my light ever since
I was a girl, and now, at this very moment when I am using her, using her own adoring
family and loyal supporters to wrench the throne from her, to destroy her sons, she
may yet win, she may have done something that will spoil everything for me. How does
she always do it? How is it that when she is brought so low that I can even bring
myself to pray for her, she manages to turn her fortunes around? It must be witchcraft;
it can only be witchcraft. Her happiness and her success have haunted my life.
I know her to be in league with the devil. I wish he would take her to hell.