The White Queen (64 page)

I look at my cousin the queen. She and I will always be strangers to the Tudors. They
married her to My Lady’s son the king Henry. They called him Henry VII and after they
had tested her for more than a year, they grudgingly crowned her as his queen—though
she was royal to her fingertips and he was born very far from the throne. They married
me to My Lady’s half cousin Sir Richard. They required us both to deny our past, our
family, our childhoods, take their name and swear fealty and we have done so. But
I doubt that they will ever trust us.

Elizabeth my cousin smiles, looking over to where the young prince Arthur, her son
is waiting for his horse to be led from the stables. “How I wish all three of you
could stay here,” she says.

“He has to be in his principality,” I remind her. “He is a Prince of Wales, he has
to be in Wales.”

“I just . . .”

“The country is at peace. The king and queen of Spain will send their daughter now.
We will come back in no time, ready for the wedding.” I do not add that they will
send the young infanta now that they know my brother is dead. My brother died so that
this wedding could come about. The infanta’s carpet to the altar will be as red as
his blood. And I shall have to walk on it, in the Tudor procession, and smile.

“There was a curse,” she says suddenly, drawing close to me and putting her mouth
so close to my ear that I can feel the warmth of her breath against my cheek. “Margaret,
I have to tell you. There was a curse.” She puts her hand in mine and I can feel her
tremble.

“What curse?”

“It was that whoever took my brothers from the Tower, whoever put my brothers to death
should die too.”

Horrified, I pull back so that I can see her white face. “Whose curse? Who said such
a thing?”

The shadow of guilt that crosses her face tells me at once. It will have been her
mother, the witch, Elizabeth. There is no doubt in my mind that it is a murderous
curse from that murderous woman. “What did it say exactly?”

She slips her hand in my arm and we walk together to the stable gardens, through the
arched doorway so that we are alone in the enclosed space, the leafless tree spreading
its boughs over our heads.

“I said it too,” she admits. “It was my curse as much as hers, I said it with my mother.
I was only a girl, but I should have known better . . . but I said it with her. We
spoke to the river, to the goddess . . . you know! . . . We said: ‘Our boy was taken
when he was not yet a man, not yet king—though he was born to be both. So take his
murderer’s son while he is yet a boy, before he is a man, before he comes to his estate.
And then take his grandson too and when you take him, we will know by these deaths
that this is the working of our curse and this is payment for the loss of our son.’”

I shiver and gather my riding cape around me as if the sunlit garden were suddenly
damp and cold with an assenting breath from the river. “King Richard died, and his
son died before him,” I assert. “A man and his son. Your brothers disappeared while
in his keeping. If the curse works, perhaps it is done and his line is finished.”

She shrugs. No one who knew Richard would ever think for a moment that he had killed
his nephews. It is a ridiculous suggestion. He devoted his life to his brother, he
would have laid down his life for his nephews. He took the throne; but he would never
have hurt the boys. And not even the Tudors dare to claim that. They try to suggest
it, to hint around it, but not even they are barefaced enough to accuse a dead man
of a crime he would never have committed.

“If it was the king . . .” My voice is no more than a whisper. I hold her so close
that we could be embracing, my cloak around her shoulders, her hand in mine, I hardly
dare to speak in this court of spies. “If it was King Henry who killed your brothers . . .”

“Or his mother,” she adds very low. “Her husband had the keys of the Tower, my brothers
stood between her son and the throne. . . .”

We shudder, hands clasped as tight as if My Lady might be stealing up behind us to
listen. We are both terrified of the power of Margaret Beaufort, mother to Henry Tudor.
“All right, it’s all right,” I say trying to hold back my fear, trying to deny the
tremble of our hands. “But if it was her who killed your brother, then your curse
will fall on him, your own husband, and on his son also.”

“I know, I know,” she moans softly. “It’s what I have been afraid of since I first
thought it. His son, but
my
son also. Prince Arthur. My son.”

We stand very still as if we have been frozen in the wintry garden. In the tree above
our heads a robin sings a trill of song, his warning call, and then he flies away.

“Keep him safe!” she says with sudden passion. “Keep Arthur safe, Margaret!”

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