The White Queen (61 page)

“You will have to go back to her,” I say, turning to him.

He almost looks as if he would refuse.

“What?” I snap.

“Lady Margaret, I swear, I dread going to her. She is like a witch imprisoned in the
cleft of a pine tree; she is like an entrapped spirit; she is like a water goddess
on a frozen lake, waiting for spring. She lives in the gloom of sanctuary with the
river flowing all the time beside their rooms and she listens to the babble as a counselor.
She knows things that she cannot know by earthly means. She fills me with terror.
And her daughter is as bad.”

“You will have to summon your courage,” I say briskly. “Be brave: you are doing God’s
work. You have to go back to her and tell her to be of stout heart. Tell her that
I am certain that the princes are alive. Remind her that when we attacked the Tower
we heard the guards taking them back from the door. They were alive then—why would
Richard kill them now? Richard has taken the throne without killing them—why would
he put them to death now? Richard is a man who does his own work and he is hundreds
of miles away from them now. Tell her I will double my people in the Tower and that
I swear to her, on my honor, that I will protect them. Remind her that the uprising
will start next month. As soon as we defeat Richard the
king, we will set the boys free. Then, when she is reassured, when she is in her first
moment of relief—when you see the color come to her face and you have convinced her—in
that moment quickly ask her if she has her son Prince Richard in safety already. If
she has him hidden away somewhere.”

He nods, but he is pale with fear. “And are they safe?” he asks. “Can I truly assure
her that those poor boys are safe and we will rescue them? That the rumors, even in
your own household, are false? Do you know if they are alive or dead, Lady Margaret?
Can I tell their mother that they are alive and speak the truth?”

“They are in the hands of God,” I reply steadily, “as are we all. My son, too. These
are dangerous times, and the princes are in the hands of God.”

That night we
hear news of the first uprising. It is mistimed; it comes too early. The men of Kent
are marching on London, calling on the Duke of Buckingham to take the throne. The
men of Sussex get up in arms, believing they cannot delay a moment longer; and the
men of Hampshire beside them rise up, too, as a fire will leap from one dry woodland
to another. Richard’s most loyal commander, Thomas Howard, the brand-new Duke of Norfolk,
marches down the west road from London and occupies Guildford, fighting skirmishes
to the west and to the east, but holding the rebels down in their own counties and
sending a desperate warning to the king: the counties of the south are up
in the name of the former queen and her imprisoned sons, the princes.

Richard, the battle-hardened leader of York, marches south at the fast speed of a
York army, makes his center of command at Lincoln, and raises troops in every county,
especially from those whose people greeted his progress with such joy. He hears of
the betrayal of Henry Stafford, the Duke of Buckingham, when men come from Wales to
tell him that the duke is already on the march, going north through the Welsh marches,
recruiting men and clearly planning to cross at Gloucester, or perhaps Tewkesbury,
to come into the heart of England with his own men and his Welsh recruits. His beloved
friend is marching out under his standard, as proudly and as bravely as once he did
for Richard; only now he is marching against him.

Richard goes white with rage and he grips his right arm, his sword arm, above the
elbow, as if he were shaking with rage, as if to hold it steady. “A man with the best
cause to be true,” he exclaims. “The most untrue creature living. A man who had everything
he asked for. Never was a false traitor better treated; a traitor, a traitor.”

At once he sends out commissions of array to every county in England demanding their
loyalty, demanding their arms and their men. This is the first and greatest crisis
of his new reign. He summons them to support a York king; he demands the loyalty that
they gave to his brother, which they have all promised to him. He warns those who
cheered when he took the crown less
than sixteen weeks ago that they must now stand by that decision or England will fall
to an unholy alliance of the false Duke of Buckingham, the witch queen, and the Tudor
pretender.

It is pouring with rain, and there is a strong wind blowing hard from the north. It
is unnatural weather, witch’s weather. My son must set sail now, if he is to arrive
while the queen’s supporters are up and while Buckingham is marching. But if it is
so foul here, in the south of England, then I fear the weather in Brittany. He must
come at exactly the right moment to catch the weary victor of the first battle and
make them turn and fight again, while they are sick of fighting. But I stand at my
window and watch the rain pouring down and the wind lashing the trees in our garden
and I know he cannot set sail in this weather; the wind is howling toward the south.
I cannot believe he will even be able to get out of port.

The next day
the rains are worse and the river is starting to rise. It is over our landing steps
at the foot of the garden and the boatmen drag the Stanley barge up the garden to
the very orchard, out of the swirling flood, fearing that it will be torn from its
moorings by the current. I can’t believe that Henry can set sail in this; and, even
if he were to get out of the harbor, I can’t believe that he could safely get across
the English seas to the south coast.

My web of informers, spies, and plotters are stunned by the ferocity of the rain,
which is like a weapon
against us. The roads into London are all but impassable; no one can get a message
through. A horse and rider cannot get from London to Guildford; and as the river rises
higher, there is news of flooding and drowning upstream and down. The tides are unnaturally
high; and every day and night the floods from the river pour down to the inrushing
tide and there is a boiling surge of water that wipes out riverside houses, quays,
piers, and docks. Nobody can remember weather like this—a rainstorm which lasts for
days—and the rivers are bursting their banks all around England.

I have no one to talk to but my God, and I cannot always hear His voice, as if the
rain is blotting out His face, and the wind blowing away His words. This is how I
know for sure that it is a witch’s wind. I spend my day at the window overlooking
the garden, watching the river boil over the garden wall and come up through the orchard,
lap by lap, till the trees themselves seem to be stretching up to the heavy clouds
for help. Whenever one of my ladies comes to my side, or Dr. Lewis comes to my door,
or any of the plotters in London ask for admittance, they all want to know what is
happening: as if I know any more than them, when all I can hear is rain, as if I can
foretell the future in the gale-ripped sky. But I know nothing—anything could be happening
out there; a waterlogged massacre could be taking place even half a mile away, and
none of us would know. We would hear no voices over the sound of the storm; no lights
would show through the rain.

I spend my nights in my chapel, praying for the
safety of my son and the success of our venture, and hearing no answer from God but
only the steady hammer of the torrent on the roof and the whine of the wind lifting
the slates above me, until I think that God Himself has been blotted from the heavens
of England by the witch’s wind, and I will never hear Him again.

Finally, I get a letter from my husband at Coventry.

The king has commanded my presence and I fear he doubts me. He has sent for my son
Lord Strange, too, and was very dark when he learned that my son is from his home
with an army of ten thousand men on the march; but my son has told nobody where he
is going, and his servants only swear that he said he was raising his men for the
true cause. I assure the king that my son will be marching to join us, loyal to the
throne; but he has not yet arrived here at Coventry Castle.

Buckingham is trapped in Wales by the rising of the River Severn. Your son, I believe,
will be held in port by the storm on the seas. The queen’s men will be unable to march
out on the drowned roads, and the Duke of Norfolk is waiting for them. I think your
rebellion is over; you have been beaten by the rain and the rising of the waters.
They are calling it the Duke of Buckingham’s Water and it has washed him and his ambition
to hell along with your hopes. Nobody has seen a storm like this since the Queen Elizabeth
called up a mist to hide her husband’s army at the battle of Barnet or summoned snow
for him at Tewkesbury. Nobody doubts she can do such a thing and most of us only hope
she will stop before she washes us all away. But why? Can she be working against you
now? And, if so, why? Does she know, with her inner sight, what has befallen her boys
and who has done it? Does she think you have done it? Is she drowning your son in
revenge?

Destroy what papers you have kept and deny whatever you have done. Richard is coming
to London for his revenge and there will be a scaffold built on Tower Green. If he
believes half what he has heard, he will put you on it and I will be unable to save
you.

Stanley

I have been on my knees all night, but I don’t know if God can hear me through the
hellish noise of the rain. My son sets sail from Brittany with fifteen valuable ships
and an army of five thousand men and loses them all in the storm at sea. Only two
ships struggle ashore on the south coast and learn at once that Buckingham has been
defeated by the rising of the river, his rebellion is washed away by the waters, and
Richard is waiting, dry-shod, to execute the survivors.

My son turns his back on the country that should have been his and sails for Brittany
again, flying like a faint-heart, leaving me here, unprotected, and clearly guilty
of plotting his rebellion. We are parted once more, my heir and me, this time without
even meeting, and this time it feels as if it is forever. He and Jasper leave me to
face the king, who marches vengefully on London like an invading enemy, mad with anger.
Dr. Lewis vanishes off to Wales; Bishop Morton takes the first ship that can sail
after the storms and goes to France; Buckingham’s men slip from the City in silence
and under lowering skies; the queen’s kin make their way to Brittany and to the tattered
remains of my son’s makeshift court; and my husband arrives in London in
the train of King Richard, whose handsome face is dark with the sullen rage of a traitor
betrayed.

“He knows,” my husband says shortly as he comes to my room, his traveling cape still
around his shoulders, his sympathy scant. “He knows you were working with the queen,
and he will put you on trial. He has evidence from half a dozen witnesses. Rebels
from Devon to East Anglia know your name and have letters from you.”

“Husband, surely he will not.”

“You are clearly guilty of treason and that is punishable by death.”

“But if he thinks you are faithful . . .”

“I am faithful,” he corrects me. “It is not a matter of opinion but of fact. Not what
the king thinks—but what he can see. When Buckingham rode out, while you were summoning
your son to invade England and paying rebels, while the queen was raising the southern
counties, I was at his side, advising him, loaning him money, calling out my own affinity
to defend him, faithful as any northerner. He trusts me now as he has never done before.
My son raised an army for him.”

“Your son’s army was for me!” I interrupt.

“My son will deny that; I will deny that; we will call you a liar and nobody can prove
anything, either way.”

I pause. “Husband, you will intercede for me?”

He looks at me thoughtfully, as if the answer could be no. “Well, it is a consideration,
Lady Margaret. My king Richard is bitter; he cannot believe that the Duke of Buckingham,
his best friend, his only friend, could
betray him. And you? He is astonished at your infidelity. You carried his wife’s train
at her coronation, you were her friend, you welcomed her to London. He feels you have
betrayed him. Unforgivably. He thinks you as faithless as your kinsman Buckingham;
and Buckingham was executed on the spot.”

“Buckingham is dead?”

“They took off his head in Salisbury marketplace. The king would not even see him.
He was too angry with him and he is filled with hate toward you. You said that Queen
Anne was welcome to her city, that she had been missed. You bowed the knee to him
and wished him well. And then you sent out messages to every disaffected Lancastrian
family in the country to tell them the cousins’ war had come again, and that this
time you will win.”

I grit my teeth. “Should I run away? Should I go to Brittany, too?”