The White Queen (3 page)

Sir William raises his eyebrow at his king’s choice for a stopping place. “Then I
doubt that you’ll want to stay very long,” he says unpleasantly, and rides on. The
ground shakes as they go by, and they leave us in warm quietness as the dust settles.

“My father has been forgiven and his title restored,” I say defensively. “You forgave
him yourself after Towton.”

“I remember your father and your mother,” the king says equably. “I have known them
since I was a boy in good times and bad. I am only surprised that they never introduced
me to you.”

I have to stifle a giggle. This is a king notorious for seduction. Nobody with any
sense would let their daughter meet him. “Would you like to come this way?” I ask.
“It is a little walk to my father’s house.”

“D’you want a ride, boys?” he asks them. Their heads bob up like imploring ducklings.
“You can both go up,” he says, and lifts Richard and then Thomas into the saddle.
“Now hold tight. You on to your brother and you—Thomas, is it?—you hold on to the
pommel.”

He loops the rein over his arm and then offers me his other arm, and so we walk to
my home, through the wood, under the shade of the trees. I can feel the warmth of
his arm through the slashed fabric of his sleeve. I have to stop myself leaning towards
him. I look ahead to the house and to my mother’s window and see, from the little
movement behind the mullioned panes of glass, that she has been looking out, and willing
this very thing to happen.

She is at the front door as we approach, the groom of the household at her side. She
curtseys low. “Your Grace,” she says pleasantly, as if the king comes to visit every
day. “You are very welcome to Grafton Manor.”

A groom comes running and takes the reins of the horse to lead it to the stable yard.
My boys cling on for the last few yards, as my mother steps back and bows the king
into the hall. “Will you take a glass of small ale?” she asks. “Or we have a very
good wine from my cousins in Burgundy?”

“I’ll take the ale, if you please,” he says agreeably. “It is thirsty work riding.
It is hot for spring. Good day to you, Lady Rivers.”

The high table in the great hall is laid with the best glasses and a jug of ale as
well as the wine. “You are expecting company?” he asks.

She smiles at him. “There is no man in the world could ride past my daughter,” she
says. “When she told me she wanted to put her own case to you, I had them draw the
best of our ale. I guessed you would stop.”

He laughs at her pride, and turns to smile at me. “Indeed, it would be a blind man
who could ride past you,” he says.

I am about to make some little comment, but again it happens. Our eyes meet, and I
can think of nothing to say to him. We just stand, staring at each other for a long
moment, until my mother passes him a glass and says quietly, “Good health, Your Grace.”

He shakes his head, as if awakened. “And is your father here?” he asks.

“Sir Richard has ridden over to see our neighbors,” I say. “We expect him back for
his dinner.”

My mother takes a clean glass and holds it up to the light and tuts as if there is
some flaw. “Excuse me,” she says, and leaves. The king and I are alone in the great
hall, the sun pouring through the big window behind the long table, the house in silence,
as if everyone is holding their breath and listening.

He goes behind the table and sits down in the master’s chair. “Please sit,” he says,
and gestures to the chair beside him. I sit as if I am his queen, on his right hand,
and I let him pour me a glass of small ale. “I will look into your claim for your
lands,” he says. “Do you want your own house? Are you not happy living here with your
mother and father?”

“They are kind to me,” I say. “But I am used to my
own household, I am accustomed to running my own lands. And my sons will have nothing
if I cannot reclaim their father’s lands. It is their inheritance. I must defend my
sons.”

“These have been hard times,” he says. “But if I can keep my throne, I will see the
law of the land running from one coast of England to another once more, and your boys
will grow up without fear of warfare.”

I nod my head.

“Are you loyal to King Henry?” he asks me. “D’you follow your family as loyal Lancastrians?”

Our history cannot be denied. I know that there was a furious quarrel in Calais between
this king, then nothing more than a young York son, and my father, then one of the
great Lancastrian lords. My mother was the first lady at the court of Margaret of
Anjou; she must have met and patronized the handsome young son of York a dozen times.
But who would have known then that the world might turn upside down and that the daughter
of Baron Rivers would have to plead to that very boy for her own lands to be restored
to her? “My mother and father were very great at the court of King Henry, but my family
and I accept your rule now,” I say quickly.

He smiles. “Sensible of you all, since I won,” he says. “I accept your homage.”

I give a little giggle, and at once his face warms. “It must be over soon, please
God,” he says. “Henry has nothing more than a handful of castles in lawless northern
country. He can muster brigands like any outlaw,
but he cannot raise a decent army. And his queen cannot go on and on bringing in the
country’s enemies to fight her own people. Those who fight for me will be rewarded,
but even those who have fought against me will see that I shall be just in victory.
And I will make my rule run, even to the north of England, even through their strongholds,
up to the very border of Scotland.”

“Do you go to the north now?” I ask. I take a sip of small ale. It is my mother’s
best but there is a tang behind it; she will have added some drops of a tincture,
a love philter, something to make desire grow. I need nothing. I am breathless already.

“We need peace,” he says. “Peace with France, peace with the Scots, and peace from
brother to brother, cousin to cousin. Henry must surrender; his wife has to stop bringing
in French troops to fight against Englishmen. We should not be divided anymore, York
against Lancaster: we should all be Englishmen. There is nothing that sickens a country
more than its own people fighting against one another. It destroys families; it is
killing us daily. This has to end, and I will end it. I will end it this year.”

I feel the sick fear that the people of this country have known for nearly a decade.
“There must be another battle?”

He smiles. “I shall try to keep it from your door, my lady. But it must be done and
it must be done soon. I pardoned the Duke of Somerset and took him into my friendship,
and now he has run away to Henry
once more, a Lancastrian turncoat, faithless like all the Beauforts. The Percys are
raising the north against me. They hate the Nevilles, and the Neville family are my
greatest allies. It is like a dance now: the dancers are in their place; they have
to do their steps. They will have a battle; it cannot be avoided.”

“The queen’s army will come this way?” Though my mother loved her and was the first
of her ladies, I have to say that her army is a force of absolute terror. Mercenaries,
who care nothing for the country; Frenchmen who hate us; and the savage men of the
north of England who see our fertile fields and prosperous towns as good for nothing
but plunder. Last time she brought in the Scots on the agreement that anything they
stole they could keep as their fee. She might as well have hired wolves.

“I shall stop them,” he says simply. “I shall meet them in the north of England and
I shall defeat them.”

“How can you be so sure?” I exclaim.

He flashes a smile at me, and I catch my breath. “Because I have never lost a battle,”
he says simply. “I never will. I am quick on the field, and I am skilled; I am brave
and I am lucky. My army moves faster than any other; I make them march fast and I
move them fully armed. I outguess and I outpace my enemy. I don’t lose battles. I
am lucky in war as I am lucky in love. I have never lost in either game. I won’t lose
against Margaret of Anjou; I will win.”

I laugh at his confidence, as if I am not impressed; but in truth he dazzles me.

He finishes his cup of ale and gets to his feet. “Thank you for your kindness,” he
says.

“You’re going? You’re going now?” I stammer.

“You will write down for me the details of your claim?”

“Yes. But—”

“Names and dates and so on? The land that you say is yours and the details of your
ownership?”

I almost clutch his sleeve to keep him with me, like a beggar. “I will, but—”

“Then I will bid you adieu.”

There is nothing I can do to stop him, unless my mother has thought to lame his horse.

“Yes, Your Grace, and thank you. But you are most welcome to stay. We will dine soon
. . . or—”

“No, I must go. My friend William Hastings will be waiting for me.”

“Of course, of course. I don’t wish to delay you . . .”

I walk with him to the door. I am anguished at his leaving so abruptly, and yet I
cannot think of anything to make him stay. At the threshold he turns and takes my
hand. He bows his fair head low and, deliciously, turns my hand. He presses a kiss
into my palm and folds my fingers over the kiss as if to keep it safe. When he comes
up smiling, I see that he knows perfectly well that this gesture has made me melt
and that I will keep my hand clasped until bedtime when I can put it to my mouth.

He looks down at my entranced face, at my hand that stretches, despite myself, to
touch his sleeve.
Then he relents. “I shall fetch the paper that you prepare, myself, tomorrow,” he
says. “Of course. Did you think differently? How could you? Did you think I could
walk away from you, and not come back? Of course I am coming back. Tomorrow at noon.
Will I see you then?”

He must hear my gasp. The color rushes back into my face so that my cheeks are burning
hot. “Yes,” I stammer. “T . . . tomorrow.”

“At noon. And I will stay to dinner, if I may.”

“We will be honored.”

He bows to me and turns and walks down the hall, through the wide-flung double doors
and out into the bright sunlight. I put my hands behind me and I hold the great wooden
door for support. Truly, my knees are too weak to hold me up.

“He’s gone?” my mother asks, coming quietly through the little side door.

“He’s coming back tomorrow,” I say. “He’s coming back tomorrow. He’s coming back to
see me tomorrow.”

When the sun
is setting and my boys are saying their evening prayers, blond heads on their clasped
hands at the foot of their trestle beds, my mother leads the way out of the front
door of the house and down the winding footpath to where the bridge, a couple of wooden
planks, spans the River Tove. She walks across, her conical headdress brushing the
overhanging trees, and beckons me to follow her. At the other side, she puts her hand
on a great ash tree, and I see there is a dark
thread of silk wound around the rough-grained wood of the thick trunk.

“What is this?”

“Reel it in,” is all she says. “Reel it in, a foot or so every day.”

I put my hand on the thread and pull it gently. It comes easily; there is something
light and small tied onto the far end. I cannot even see what it might be, as the
thread loops across the river into the reeds, in deep water on the other side.

“Magic,” I say flatly. My father has banned these practices in his house: the law
of the land forbids it. It is death to be proved as a witch, death by drowning in
the ducking stool, or strangling by the blacksmith at the village crossroads. Women
like my mother are not permitted our skills in England today; we are named as forbidden.

“Magic,” she agrees, untroubled. “Powerful magic, for a good cause. Well worth the
risk. Come every day and reel it in, a foot at a time.”

“What will come in?” I ask her. “At the end of this fishing line of yours? What great
fish will I catch?”

She smiles at me and puts her hand on my cheek. “Your heart’s desire,” she says gently.
“I didn’t raise you to be a poor widow.”

She turns and walks back across the footbridge, and I pull the thread as she has told
me, take in twelve inches of it, tie it fast again, and follow her.

“So what did you raise me for?” I ask her, as we walk side by side to the house. “What
am I to be? In
your great scheme of things? In a world at war, where it seems, despite your foreknowledge
and magic, we are stuck on the losing side?”

The new moon is rising, a small sickle of a moon. Without a word spoken, we both wish
on it; we bob a curtsey, and I hear the chink as we turn over the little coins in
our pockets.

“I raised you to be the best that you could be,” she says simply. “I didn’t know what
that would be, and I still don’t know. But I didn’t raise you to be a lonely woman,
missing her husband, struggling to keep her boys safe; a woman alone in a cold bed,
her beauty wasted on empty lands.”

“Well, Amen,” I say simply, my eyes on the slender sickle. “Amen to that. And may
the new moon bring me something better.”

At noon the
next day I am in my ordinary gown, seated in my privy chamber, when the girl comes
in a rush to say that the king is riding down the road towards the Hall. I don’t let
myself run to the window to look for him, I don’t allow myself a dash to the hammered-silver
looking glass in my mother’s room. I put down my sewing, and I walk down the great
wooden stairs, so that when the door opens and he comes into the hall, I am serenely
descending, looking as if I am called away from my household chores to greet a surprise
guest.

I go to him with a smile and he greets me with a courteous kiss on the cheek, and
I feel the warmth of his skin and see, through my half-closed eyes, the softness of
the
hair that curls at the nape of his neck. His hair smells faintly of spices, and the
skin of his neck smells clean. When he looks at me, I recognize desire in his face.
He lets go of my hand slowly, and I step back from him with reluctance. I turn and
curtsey as my father and my two oldest brothers, Anthony and John, step forwards to
make their bows.