The White Queen (17 page)

I am amazed at the cost of running a court, of the price of all this beauty, even
the charges for food, of the continual demands from every courtier for a hearing,
for a place, for a slice of land or a favor, for a post where he can levy taxes or
for help in claiming an inheritance.

“This is what it is to be a king,” Edward says to me as he signs the last of the day’s
petitions. “As King of England I own everything. Every duke and earl and baron holds
his lands at my favor; every knight and squire below him has a stream from the river.
Every petty farmer and tenant and copyholder and peasant below him depends on my favor.
I have to give out wealth and power in order to keep the rivers flowing. And if it
goes wrong, at the least sign of it going wrong, there will be someone saying that
they wished Henry was back on the throne, that it was better in the old days. Or that
they think his son Edward, or George, might do a more generous job. Or, surely to
God, there is another claimant to the throne somewhere—Margaret Beaufort’s son Henry,
let’s have the Lancaster boy for a change—who might speed the flow. To keep my power,
I have to give it away in
carefully spaced and chosen pitchers. I have to please everyone. But none too much.”

“They are money-grubbing peasants,” I say irritably. “And their loyalty goes with
their interest. They think of nothing but their own desires. They are worse than serfs.”

He smiles at me. “They are indeed. Every one of them. And each of them wants their
little estate and their little house just as I want my throne and as much as you wanted
the manor of Sheen, and places for all your kinsmen. We are all anxious for wealth
and land, and I own it all, and have to give it out carefully.”

As the weather turns warmer and it starts to grow brighter in the mornings and the
birds start to sing in the gardens of Westminster Palace, Edward’s informers bring
him reports from Lincolnshire of another uprising in favor of Henry, the king, as
though he were not forgotten by everyone else in the world, living quietly in the
Tower of London, more an anchorite than a prisoner.

“I shall have to go,” Edward says to me, letter in his hand. “If this leader, whoever
he is, is a forerunner for Margaret of Anjou, then I have to defeat him before she
lands her army in his support. It looks like she plans to use him to test the support
of her cause, to have him take the risk of raising troops, and when she sees he has
raised an English army for her, she will land her French one and then I will have
to face them both.”

“Will you be safe?” I ask. “Against this person who has not even the courage to have
a name of his own?”

“As always,” he says steadily. “But I won’t let the army go out without me again.
I have to be there. I have to lead.”

“And where is your loyal friend Warwick?” I ask acidly. “And your trusted brother
George? Are they
recruiting for you? Are they hurrying to be at your side?”

He smiles at my tone. “Ah, you are mistaken, little Queen of Mistrust. I have a letter
here from Warwick offering to raise men to march with me, and George says he will
come too.”

“Then you make sure that you watch them in battle,” I say, completely unconvinced.
“They will not be the first men to bring soldiers to the battlefield and change sides
at the last moment. When the enemy is before you, cast an eye behind you to see what
your true and loyal friends are doing at the rear.”

“They have promised their loyalty,” he soothes me. “Truly, my dearest. Trust me. I
can win battles.”

“I know you can, I know you do,” I say. “But it is so hard to see you march out. When
will it end? When will they stop raising an army for a cause which is over?”

“Soon,” he says. “They will see we are united and we are strong. Warwick will bring
in the north to our side, and George will prove to be a true brother. Richard is with
me as always. I will come home as soon as this man is defeated. I will come home early
and I will dance with you on May Day morning, and you will smile.”

“Edward, you know, just this once, this one time, I think I cannot bear to see you
go. Cannot Richard command the army? With Hastings? Can you not stay with me? This
time, just this time.”

He takes my hands and presses them against his lips. He is not affected by my anxiety
but amused by
it. He is smiling. “Oh why? Why this time? Why does this time matter so much? Do you
have something to tell me?”

I cannot resist him. I am smiling in return. “I do have something to tell you. But
I have been saving it.”

“I know. I know. Did you think I didn’t know? So tell me, what is this secret that
I am supposed not to have any idea about?”

“It should bring you home safely to me,” I say. “It should bring you home quickly
to me, and not send you out in your pomp.”

He waits, smiling. He has been waiting for me to tell him as I have been reveling
in the secret. “Tell me,” he says. “This has been a long time coming.”

“I am with child again,” I say. “And this time I know it is a boy.”

He scoops me to him and holds me gently. “I knew it,” he says. “I knew that you were
with child. I knew it in my bones. And how can you know it is a boy, my little witch,
my enchantress?”

I smile up at him, secure in women’s mysteries. “Ah, you don’t need to know how I
know,” I say. “But you can know that I am certain. You can be sure of it. Know this.
We will have a boy.”

“My son, Prince Edward,” he says.

I laugh, thinking of the silver spoon that I drew out of the silvery river on midwinter’s
eve. “How do you know that his name will be Edward?”

“Of course it will. I have been determined on it for years.”

“Your son, Prince Edward,” I repeat. “So make sure you are home safely, in time for
his birth.”

“Do you know when?”

“In the autumn.”

“I will come home safely to bring you peaches and salt cod. What was it you wanted
so much when you were big with Cecily?”

“Samphire,” I laugh. “Fancy you remembering! I could not have enough of it. Make sure
you come home to bring me samphire and anything else I crave. This is a boy, this
is a prince; he must have whatever he desires. He will be born with a silver spoon.”

“I shall come home to you. And you are not to worry. I don’t want him born with a
frown.”

“Then you beware of Warwick and your brother. I don’t trust them.”

“Promise to rest and be happy and make him strong in your belly?”

“Promise to come back safe and make him strong in his inheritance,” I counter.

“It is a promise.”

He was wrong.
Dear God, Edward was so wrong. Not, thank God, about winning the battle: for that
was the battle that they called Losecoat Field, when the barefooted fools fighting
for a lack-wit king were in such a rush to run away that they dropped their weapons
and even their coats to escape from the charge led by my husband, who was fighting
his way through them, to
keep his promise to me, to come home in time to bring me peaches and samphire.

No, he was wrong about the loyalty of Warwick and George, his brother, who—it turned
out—had planned and paid for the uprising and had decided this time to be certain
of Edward’s defeat. They were going to kill my Edward and put George on the throne.
His own brother and Warwick, who had been his best friend, had decided together that
the only way to defeat Edward was to stab him from behind on the battlefield, and
they would have done it too; but for the fact that he rode so fast in the charge that
no man could catch him.

Before the battle had even begun Lord Richard Welles, the petty leader, had gone down
on his knees to Edward, confessed the plan, and showed Warwick’s orders and George’s
money. They paid him to lead an uprising in the name of King Henry, but in truth it
was only a feint to draw Edward into battle and to kill him there. Warwick had learned
his lesson truly. He had learned that you cannot hold a man like my Edward. He has
to be dead to be defeated. George, his own brother, had overcome his fraternal affection.
He was ready to slit his brother’s throat on the battlefield and to wade through his
blood to get to the crown. The two of them had bribed and ordered poor Lord Welles
to raise a battle to bring Edward into danger, and then found once again that Edward
was too much for them. When Edward saw the evidence against them, he
summoned them as kinsmen, the friend who had been an older brother to him and the
youth who was his brother indeed; and when they did not come, he knew what to think
of them at last, and he summoned them as traitors to answer to him: but they were
long gone.

“I shall see them dead,” I say to my mother as we sit before an open window in my
privy chamber at Westminster Palace, spinning wool and gold thread to make yarn for
a costly cloak for the baby. It will be purest lambswool and priceless gold, a cloak
fit for a little prince, the greatest prince in Christendom. “I shall see the two
of them dead. I swear it, whatever you say.”

She nods at the spindle in her hand and the wool I am carding. “Don’t put ill-wishing
into his little cape,” she says.

I stop the wheel and put the wool to one side. “There,” I say. “The work can wait;
but the ill-wishing cannot.”

“Did you know: Edward promised a safe conduct to Lord Richard Welles if he would confess
his treason and reveal the plot; but when he did so, he broke his word and killed
him?”

I shake my head.

My mother’s face is grave. “Now the Beaufort family are in mourning for their kinsman
Welles, and Edward has given a new cause to his enemies. He has broken his word, too.
No one will trust him again; no one will dare to surrender to him. He has shown himself
a man who cannot be trusted. As bad as Warwick.”

I shrug. “These are the fortunes of war. Margaret
Beaufort knows them as well as I. And she will have been unhappy anyway, since she
is the heir to the House of Lancaster and we summoned her husband Henry Stafford to
march out for us.” I give a hard laugh. “Poor man, caught between her and our summons.”

My mother can’t hide her smile. “No doubt she was on her knees all the while,” she
says cattily. “For a woman who boasts that she has the ear of God, she has little
benefit to show for it.”

“Anyway, Welles doesn’t matter,” I say. “Alive or dead. What matters is that Warwick
and George will be heading for the court of France, speaking ill of us, and hoping
to raise an army. We have a new enemy, and this one is in our own house, our own heir.
What a family the Yorks are!”

“Where are they now?” my mother asks me.

“At sea, heading for Calais, according to Anthony. Isabel is big with child, on board
ship with them, and no one to care for her but her mother, the Countess of Warwick.
They will be hoping to enter Calais and raise an army. Warwick is beloved there. And
if they put themselves in Calais, we will have no safety at all with them waiting
just over the sea, threatening our ships, half a day’s sail away from London. They
must not enter Calais; we have to prevent it. Edward has sent the fleet to sea, but
our ships will never catch them in time.”

I rise to my feet and lean out of the open window into the sunshine. It is a warm
day. The River Thames below me sparkles like a fountain; it is calm. I look to
the southwest. There is a line of dark clouds on the horizon as if there might be
dirty weather at sea. I put my lips together and I blow a little whistle.

Behind me, I hear my mother’s spindle laid aside, and then I hear the soft sound of
her whistle also. I keep my eye on the line of clouds and I let my breath hiss like
the wind of a storm. She comes to stand behind me, her arm around my broad waist.
Together we whistle gently into the spring air, blowing up a storm.

Slowly but powerfully the dark clouds pile up, one on top of another, until there
is a great thunderhead of threatening dark cloud, south, far away, over the sea. The
air freshens. I shiver in the sudden chill, and we turn from the cooler, darkening
day and close the window on the first scud of rain.

“Looks like a storm out at sea,” I remark.

A week later
my mother comes to me with a letter in her hand. “I have news from my cousin in Burgundy.
She writes that George and Warwick were blown off the coast of France and then nearly
wrecked in terrible seas off Calais. They begged the fort to let them enter for the
sake of Isabel, but the castle would not admit them and they had the chain up across
the entrance to the port. A wind got up from nowhere and the seas nearly drove them
on to the walls. The fort would not let them in; they could not land the boat in high
seas. Poor Isabel went into labor in the middle of the storm. They were tossed about
for hours, and her baby died.”

I cross myself. “God bless the poor little one,” I say. “Nobody would have wished
that on them.”

“Nobody did,” my mother says robustly. “But if Isabel had not taken ship with traitors,
then she would have been safe in England with midwives and friends to care for her.”