Authors: Philippa Gregory
The moment passes and Katherine touches my hand. “What is it? What do you see?”
“I see that he will be sorry that he started this,” I say quietly. “It will be the
end of him and his house.”
“And us?” she asks, peering into my face, as if she could see what I had seen. “Anthony?
And all of us?”
“And us too, I am afraid.”
That night when
it is midnight and dark as dark, I get up from my bed and take the scrap of linen
that Katherine gave me. I see the smear of food where the duke wiped his lips and
I bring it to my nose and sniff at it. Meat, I think, though he is an abstemious eater
and no drinker. I twist the material into a cord and I tie it round my right arm so
tightly that I can feel the arm ache. I go to bed and in the morning the white flesh
of my arm is blue with a bruise and my fingers are prickly with pins and needles.
I can feel the arm ache and, as I untie it, I moan with the pain. I feel the weakness
in my arm as I throw the cord in the fire. “So weaken,” I say to the flame. “Lose
your strength. Let your right arm fail, let your sword arm grow weak, let your hand
lose its grip. Take one breath and feel it catch in your chest. Take another and feel
choked. Sicken and weary. And burn up like this.” The cord flares in the fireplace,
and I watch it burn away.
My brother Lionel
comes to me in the early morning. “I have had a letter from the council. They beg
us to come out of sanctuary and to send your son Prince Richard to be with his brother
in the royal rooms in the Tower.”
I turn to the window and look at the river as if it might bring me advice. “I don’t
know,” I say. “No. I don’t want both princes in their uncle’s hands.”
“There is no doubt that the coronation is going to happen,” he says. “All the lords
are in London, the robes are being made, the abbey is ready. We should come out now
and take our rightful place. Hiding here we look as if we are guilty of something.”
I nibble on my lip. “Duke Richard is one of the sons of York,” I say. “He saw the
three suns burning in the sky as they rode to victory together. You cannot think he
will walk away from the chance of ruling England. You cannot think he will hand over
all the power of the kingdom to a young boy.”
“I think he will rule England through your son if you are not there to prevent it,”
he says bluntly. “He will put him on the throne and have him as his puppet. He will
be another Warwick, another Kingmaker. He does not want the throne for himself—he
wants to be regent and lord protector. He will call himself regent and rule through
your son.”
“Edward will be king from the moment he is crowned,” I say. “We will see who he will
listen to then!”
“Richard can refuse to hand over power till Edward is twenty-one,” he says. “He can
command the kingdom as regent for the next eight years. We have to be there, represented
in the Privy Council, protecting our interests.”
“If I could be sure my son is safe.”
“If Richard was going to kill him, he would have done it at Stony Stratford when they
arrested Anthony, and there was no one to protect him, and no witness but Buckingham,”
Lionel says flatly. “But he did not.
Instead, he went down on his knee and swore an oath of loyalty to him and brought
him in honor to London. It is we who have created mistrust. I am sorry, Sister: it
is you. I have never argued with you in my life, you know this. But you are mistaken
now.”
“Oh, easy for you to say,” I say irritably. “I have seven children to protect, and
a kingdom to rule.”
“Then rule it,” he says. “Take up your royal rooms in the Tower and attend your son’s
coronation. Sit on your throne and command the duke, who is nothing more than your
brother-in-law and the guardian of your son.”
I am brooding
on this. Perhaps Lionel is right and I should be at the heart of the planning for
the coronation, winning men over to the side of the new king, promising them favors
and honors at his court. If I come out now with my beautiful children and make my
court again, I can rule England through my son. I should claim our place, not hide
in fear. I think: I can do this. I need not go to war to win my throne. I can do this
as a reigning queen, as a beloved queen. The people are mine for the taking: I can
win them over. Perhaps I should come out of sanctuary into the summer sunshine, and
take up my place.
There is a little tap at the door and a man’s voice says, “Confessor for the dowager
queen.”
I open the grille. There is a father of the Dominican order, his hood up so his face
is hidden. “I am ordered to come to you to hear your confession,” he says.
“Enter, Father,” I say, and open the door wide to him. He comes in quietly, his sandals
making no noise on the flagstones. He bows and waits for the door to be closed behind
him.
“I am come on the order of Bishop Morton,” he says quietly. “If anyone asks you, I
came to offer you a chance to confess, and you spoke to me of a sin of sadness and
excessive grief, and I counseled you against despair. Agreed?”
“Yes, Father,” I say.
He passes me a slip of paper. “I shall wait ten minutes and then leave,” he says.
“I am not allowed to take a reply.”
He goes to the stool by the door and sits, waiting for the time to pass. I take the
note to the window for the light, and as the river gurgles beneath the window I read
it. It is sealed with the crest of the Beauforts. It is from Margaret Stanley, my
former lady-in-waiting. Despite being Lancaster born and bred, and mother to their
heir, she and her husband Thomas Stanley have been loyal to us for the last eleven
years. Perhaps she will stay loyal. Perhaps she will even take my side against Duke
Richard. Her interests lie with me. She was counting on Edward to forgive her son
his Lancaster blood and let him come home from his exile in Brittany. She spoke to
me of a mother’s love for her boy and how she would give anything to have him home
again. I promised her that it would happen. She has no reason to love Duke Richard.
She might well think her chances of getting her boy home are better
if she stays friends with me and supports my return to power.
But she has written nothing of a conspiracy nor words of support. She has written
only a few lines:
Anne Neville is not journeying to London for the coronation. She has not ordered horses
or guards for the journey. She has not been fitted for special robes for the coronation.
I thought you would like to know. M S
I hold the letter in my hand. Anne is sickly and her son is weak. She might prefer
to stay at home. But Margaret, Lady Stanley, has not gone to all this trouble and
danger to tell me this. She wants me to know that Anne Neville is not hastening to
London for the grand coronation, for there is no need for her to make haste. If she
is not coming, it will be at her husband Richard’s command. He knows that there will
be nothing to attend. If Richard has not ordered his wife to London in time for the
coronation, the most important event of the new reign, then it must be because he
knows that a coronation will not take place.
I stare out at the river for a long, long time and think what this means for me and
my two precious royal sons. Then I go and kneel before the friar. “Bless me, Father,”
I say, and I feel his gentle hand come down on my head.
The serving maid
who goes out to buy the bread and meat every day comes home, her face white,
and speaks to my daughter Elizabeth. My girl comes to me.
“Lady Mother, Lady Mother, can I speak with you?”
I am looking out of the window, brooding on the water as if I hope Melusina might
rise out of the summertime sluggish flow and advise me. “Of course, sweetheart. What
is it?”
Something about her taut urgency warns me.
“I don’t understand what is happening, Mother, but Jemma has come home from the market
and says there is some story of a fight in the Privy Council, an arrest. A fight in
the council room! And Sir William . . .” She runs out of breath.
“Sir William Hastings?” I name Edward’s dearest friend, the sworn defender of my son,
and my newfound ally.
“Yes, him. Mother, they are saying in the market that he is beheaded.”
I hold the stone windowsill as the room swims. “He can’t be—she must have it wrong.”
“She says that the Duke Richard found a plot against him, and arrested two great men
and beheaded Sir William.”
“She must be mistaken. He is one of the greatest men in England. He cannot be beheaded
without trial.”
“She says so,” she whispers. “She says that they took him out and took off his head
on a piece of lumber on Tower Green, without warning, without trial, without charge.”
My knees give way beneath me and she catches me
as I fall. The room goes dark to me, and then I see her again, her headdress knocked
aside, her fair hair spilling down, my beautiful daughter looking into my face, and
whispering, “Lady Mother, Mama, speak to me. Are you all right?”
“I’m all right,” I say. My throat is dry, and I find I am lying on the floor with
her arm supporting me. “I am all right, sweetheart. But I thought I heard you say
. . . I thought you said . . . I thought you said that Sir William Hastings is beheaded?”
“So Jemma said, Mother. But I didn’t think you even liked him.”
I sit up, my head aching. “Child, this is no longer a question of liking. This lord
is your brother’s greatest defender, the only defender who has approached me. He doesn’t
like me, but he would lay down his life to put your brother on the throne and keep
his word to your father. If he is dead, we have lost our greatest ally.”
She shakes her head in bewilderment. “Could he have done something very wrong? Something
that offended the lord protector?”
There is a light tap at the door and we all freeze. A voice calls in French,
“C’est moi.”
“It’s a woman, open the door,” I say. For a moment I had been certain it was Richard’s
headsman, now come for us, with Hastings’s blood unwiped on the blade of his axe.
Elizabeth runs to open the lantern door in the big wooden gate and the whore Elizabeth
Shore slips in, a hood over her fair head, a cloak wrapped tight around her rich brocade
gown. She curtseys low to me,
as I am still huddled on the floor. “You’ve heard then,” she says shortly.
“Hastings is not dead?”
Her eyes are filled with tears but she is succinct. “Yes, he is. That’s why I’ve come.
He was accused of treason against Duke Richard.”
Elizabeth my daughter drops to her knees beside me and takes my icy hand in hers.
“Duke Richard accused Sir William of conspiring his death. He said that William had
procured a witch to act against him. The duke said that he is out of breath and falling
sick and that he is losing his strength. He said he has lost the strength in his sword
arm, and he bared his arm in the council chamber and showed it to Sir William from
the wrist to his shoulder, and said surely he could see it was withering away. He
says he is under an enchantment from his enemies.”
My eyes stay on her pale face. I don’t even glance at the fireplace where the twist
of linen from the duke’s napkin was burned, after I tied it around my forearm, and
then cursed it, to rob him of breath and strength, to make his sword arm weak as a
hunchback’s.
“Who does he name as the witch?”
“You,” she says. I feel Elizabeth flinch.
And then she adds, “And me.”
“The two of us acting in concert?”
“Yes,” she says simply. “That’s why I came to warn you. If he can prove you are a
witch, can he break sanctuary, and take you and your children out of here?”
I nod. He can.
And in any case, I remember the battle of Tewkesbury, when my own husband broke sanctuary
with no reason or explanation, and dragged wounded men out of the abbey and butchered
them in the graveyard and then went into the abbey and killed some more on the altar
steps. They had to scrub the chancel floor clean of the blood; they had to resanctify
the whole place, it was so fouled with death.
“He can,” I say. “Worse has been done before.”
“I must go,” she says fearfully. “He may be watching me. William would have wanted
me to do what I can to keep your children safe, but I can do no more. I should tell
you: Lord Stanley did what he could to save William. He warned him that the duke would
act against him. He had a dream that they would be gored by a boar with bloody tusks.
He warned William. It was just that William didn’t think it would be so fast . . .”
The tears are running down her cheeks now and her voice is choked. “So unjust,” she
whispers. “And against such a good man. To have soldiers drag him from council! To
take off his head without even a priest! No time to pray!”
“He was a good man,” I concede.
“Now that he is gone you have lost a protector. You are all in grave danger,” she
states. “As am I.”
She pulls the hood back over her hair and goes to the door. “I wish you well,” she
says. “And Edward’s boys. If I can serve you, I will. But in the meantime I must not
be seen coming to you. I dare not come again.”
“Wait,” I say. “Did you say Lord Stanley remains loyal to the young King Edward?”
“Stanley, Bishop Morton, and Archbishop Rotherham are all imprisoned by order of the
duke, suspected of working for you and yours. Richard thinks they have been plotting
against him. The only men left free in the council now are those who will do the duke’s
bidding.”
“Has he run mad?” I ask incredulously. “Has Richard run mad?”
She shakes her head. “I think he has decided to claim the throne,” she says simply.
“D’you remember how the king used to say that Richard always did what he promised?
That if Richard swore he would do something it was done—cost what it may?”
I don’t like to have this woman quoting my husband to me, but I agree.