The White Queen (2 page)

The White Queen

In the darkness of the forest the young knight could hear the splashing of the fountain
long before he could see the glimmer of moonlight reflected on the still surface.
He was about to step forward, longing to dip his head, drink in the coolness, when
he caught his breath at the sight of something dark, moving deep in the water. There
was a greenish shadow in the sunken bowl of the fountain, something like a great fish,
something like a drowned body. Then it moved and stood upright and he saw, frighteningly
naked: a bathing woman. Her skin as she rose up, water coursing down her flanks, was
even paler than the white marble bowl, her wet hair dark as a shadow.

She is Melusina, the water goddess, and she is found in hidden springs and waterfalls
in any forest in Christendom, even in those as far away as Greece. She bathes in the
Moorish fountains too. They know her by another name in the northern countries, where
the lakes are glazed with ice and it crackles when she rises. A man may love her if
he keeps her secret and lets her alone when she wants to bathe, and she may love him
in return until he breaks his word, as men always do, and she sweeps him into the
deeps, with her fishy tail, and turns his faithless blood to water.

The tragedy of Melusina, whatever language tells it, whatever tune it sings, is that
a man will always promise more than he can do to a woman he cannot understand.

My father is Sir Richard Woodville, Baron Rivers, an English nobleman, a landholder,
and a supporter of the true Kings of England, the Lancastrian line. My mother descends
from the Dukes of Burgundy and so carries the watery blood of the goddess Melusina,
who founded their royal house with her entranced ducal lover, and can still be met
at times of extreme trouble, crying a warning over the castle rooftops when the son
and heir is dying and the family doomed. Or so they say, those who believe in such
things.

With this contradictory parentage of mine: solid English earth and French water goddess,
one could expect anything from me: an enchantress, or an ordinary girl. There are
those who will say I am both. But today, as I comb my hair with particular care and
arrange it under my tallest headdress, take the hands of my two fatherless boys and
lead the way to the road that goes to Northampton, I would give all that I am to be,
just this once, simply irresistible.

I have to attract the attention of a young man riding out to yet another battle, against
an enemy that cannot be defeated. He may not even see me. He is not likely to be in
the mood for beggars or flirts. I have to excite
his compassion for my position, inspire his sympathy for my needs, and stay in his
memory long enough for him to do something about them both. And this is a man who
has beautiful women flinging themselves at him every night of the week, and a hundred
claimants for every post in his gift.

He is a usurper and a tyrant, my enemy and the son of my enemy, but I am far beyond
loyalty to anyone but my sons and myself. My own father rode out to the battle of
Towton against this man who now calls himself King of England, though he is little
more than a braggart boy; and I have never seen a man as broken as my father when
he came home from Towton, his sword arm bleeding through his jacket, his face white,
saying that this boy is a commander such as we have never seen before, and our cause
is lost, and we are all without hope while he lives. Twenty thousand men were cut
down at Towton at this boy’s command; no one had ever seen such death before in England.
My father said it was a harvest of Lancastrians, not a battle. The rightful King Henry
and his wife, Queen Margaret of Anjou, fled to Scotland, devastated by the deaths.

Those of us left in England did not surrender readily. The battles went on and on
to resist the false king, this boy of York. My own husband was killed commanding our
cavalry, only three years ago at St. Albans. And now I am left a widow and what land
and fortune I once called my own has been taken by my mother-in-law with the goodwill
of the victor, the master of this boy-king, the great puppeteer who is known as the
Kingmaker:
Richard Neville, Earl of Warwick, who made a king out of this vain boy, now only twenty-two,
and will make a hell out of England for those of us who still defend the House of
Lancaster.

There are Yorkists in every great house in the land now, and every profitable business
or place or tax is in their gift. Their boy-king is on the throne, and his supporters
form the new court. We, the defeated, are paupers in our own houses and strangers
in our own country, our king an exile, our queen a vengeful alien plotting with our
old enemy of France. We have to make terms with the tyrant of York, while praying
that God turns against him and our true king sweeps south with an army for yet another
battle.

In the meantime, like many a woman with a husband dead and a father defeated, I have
to piece my life together like a patchwork of scraps. I have to regain my fortune
somehow, though it seems that neither kinsman nor friend can make any headway for
me. We are all known as traitors. We are forgiven but not beloved. We are all powerless.
I shall have to be my own advocate, and make my own case to a boy who respects justice
so little that he would dare to take an army against his own cousin: a king ordained.
What can one say to such a savage that he could understand?

My boys, Thomas, who is nine, and Richard, who is eight, are dressed in their best,
their hair wetted and smoothed down, their faces shining from soap. I have tight hold
of their hands as they stand on either side of me, for these are true boys and they
draw dirt to them as
if by magic. If I let them go for a second, then one will scuff his shoes and the
other rip his hose, and both of them will manage to get leaves in their hair and mud
on their faces, and Thomas will certainly fall in the stream. As it is, anchored by
my grip, they hop from one leg to another in an agony of boredom, and straighten up
only when I say, “Hush, I can hear horses.”

It sounds like the patter of rain at first, and then in a moment a rumble like thunder.
The jingle of the harness and the flutter of the standards, the chink of the chain
mail and the blowing of the horses, the sound and the smell and the roar of a hundred
horses ridden hard is overwhelming and, even though I am determined to stand out and
make them stop, I can’t help but shrink back. What must it be to face these men riding
down in battle with their lances outstretched before them, like a galloping wall of
staves? How could any man face it?

Thomas sees the bare blond head in the midst of all the fury and noise and shouts
“Hurrah!” like the boy he is, and at the shout of his treble voice I see the man’s
head turn, and he sees me and the boys, and his hand snatches the reins and he bellows
“Halt!” His horse stands up on its rear legs, wrenched to a standstill, and the whole
cavalcade wheels and halts and swears at the sudden stop, and then abruptly everything
is silent and the dust billows around us.

His horse blows out, shakes its head, but the rider is like a statue on its high back.
He is looking at me and I at him, and it is so quiet that I can hear a thrush in the
branches of the oak above me. How it sings. My God,
it sings like a ripple of glory, like joy made into sound. I have never heard a bird
sing like that before, as if it were caroling happiness.

I step forward, still holding my sons’ hands, and I open my mouth to plead my case,
but at this moment, this crucial moment, I have lost my words. I have practiced well
enough. I had a little speech all prepared, but now I have nothing. And it is almost
as if I need no words. I just look at him and somehow I expect him to understand everything—my
fear of the future and my hopes for these my boys, my lack of money and the irritable
pity of my father, which makes living under his roof so unbearable to me, the coldness
of my bed at night, and my longing for another child, my sense that my life is over.
Dear God, I am only twenty-seven, my cause is defeated, my husband is dead. Am I to
be one of many poor widows who will spend the rest of their days at someone else’s
fireside trying to be a good guest? Shall I never be kissed again? Shall I never feel
joy? Not ever again?

And still the bird sings as if to say that delight is easy, for those who desire it.

He makes a gesture with his hand to the older man at his side, and the man barks out
a command and the soldiers turn their horses off the road and go into the shade of
the trees. But the king jumps down from his great horse, drops the reins, and walks
towards me and my boys. I am a tall woman but he overtops me by a head; he must be
far more than six feet tall. My boys crane their necks up to see him; he is a giant
to them.
He is blond haired, gray eyed, with a tanned, open, smiling face, rich with charm,
easy with grace. This is a king as we have never seen before in England: this is a
man whom the people will love on sight. And his eyes are fixed on my face as if I
know a secret that he has to have, as if we have known each other forever, and I can
feel my cheeks are burning but I cannot look away from him.

A modest woman looks down in this world, keeps her eyes on her slippers; a supplicant
bows low and stretches out a pleading hand. But I stand tall, I am aghast at myself,
staring like an ignorant peasant, and find I cannot take my eyes from his, from his
smiling mouth, from his gaze, which is burning on my face.

“Who is this?” he asks, still looking at me.

“Your Grace, this is my mother, Lady Elizabeth Grey,” my son Thomas says politely,
and he pulls off his cap and drops to his knee.

Richard on my other side kneels too and mutters, as if he cannot be heard, “Is this
the king? Really? He is the tallest man I have ever seen in my life!”

I sink down into a curtsey but I cannot look away. Instead, I gaze up at him, as a
woman might stare with hot eyes at a man she adores.

“Rise up,” he says. His voice is low, for only me to hear. “Have you come to see me?”

“I need your help,” I say. I can hardly form the words. I feel as if the love potion,
which my mother soaked into the scarf billowing from my headdress, is
drugging me, not him. “I cannot obtain my dowry lands, my jointure, now I am widowed.”
I stumble in the face of his smiling interest. “I am a widow now. I have nothing to
live on.”

“A widow?”

“My husband was Sir John Grey. He died at St. Albans,” I say. It is to confess his
treason and the damnation of my sons. The king will recognize the name of the commander
of his enemy’s cavalry. I nip my lip. “Their father did his duty as he conceived it
to be, Your Grace; he was loyal to the man he thought was king. My boys are innocent
of anything.”

“He left you these two sons?” He smiles down at my boys.

“The best part of my fortune,” I say. “This is Richard and this is Thomas Grey.”

He nods at my boys, who gaze up at him as if he were some kind of high-bred horse,
too big for them to pet but a figure for awestruck admiration, and then he looks back
to me. “I am thirsty,” he says. “Is your home near here?”

“We would be honored . . .” I glance at the guard who rides with him. There must be
more than a hundred of them. He chuckles. “They can ride on,” he decides. “Hastings!”
The older man turns and waits. “You go on to Grafton. I will catch you up. Smollett
can stay with me, and Forbes. I will come in an hour or so.”

Sir William Hastings looks me up and down as if I am a pretty piece of ribbon for
sale. I show him a
hard stare in reply, and he takes off his hat and bows to me, throws a salute to the
king, shouts to the guard to mount up.

“Where are you going?” he asks the king.

The boy-king looks at me.

“We are going to the house of my father, Baron Rivers, Sir Richard Woodville,” I say
proudly, though I know the king will recognize the name of a man who was high in the
favor of the Lancaster court, fought for them, and once took hard words from him in
person when York and Lancaster were daggers drawn. We all know of one another well
enough, but it is a courtesy generally observed to forget that we were all loyal to
Henry VI once, until these turned traitor.