Authors: Philippa Gregory
And Queen of England—or, at any rate, the York Queen of England.
His arm is tight around my waist as the boy sings the bidding, then the king turns
to my mother and says, “Your Ladyship? Where can I take my bride?”
My mother smiles and gives him a key. “There is a hunting lodge by the river.” She
turns to me. “River Lodge. I had it made ready for you.”
He nods and sweeps me from the little chapel and lifts me onto his big hunter. He
mounts behind me and I feel his arms tighten around me as he takes up the reins. We
go at a walk along the riverbank and when I lean back I can feel his heart beating.
We can see the little lodge through the trees and there is a curl
of smoke from the chimney. He swings down from his horse and lifts me off and takes
the animal to the stalls at the back of the house while I open the door. It is a simple
place with a fire burning in the hearth, a jug of wedding ale and two cups on the
wooden table, two stools set for eating the bread and cheese and meat, and a large
wooden bed, made up with the best linen sheets. The room goes dark as he comes in
the doorway, ducking his tall head under the beams.
“Your Grace . . .” I start, and then I correct myself. “My lord. Husband.”
“Wife,” he says with quiet satisfaction. “To bed.”
The morning sun,
which was so bright on the beams and the limewashed ceiling when we went to bed,
is turning the place golden in the late afternoon when he says to me, “Thank the Lady
of Heaven that your father asked me to dinner. I am weak with hunger. I am dying of
hunger. Let me out of bed, you witch.”
“I offered you bread and cheese two hours ago,” I point out, “but you would not let
me go three steps to the table to fetch it for you.”
“I was busy,” he says, and pulls me back to his naked shoulder. At the smell of him
and the touch of his skin, I feel my desire for him rise again and we move together.
When we lie back, the room is rosy with the sunset and he gets out of bed. “I must
wash,” he says. “Shall I bring you a jug of water from the yard?”
His head brushes the ceiling; his body is perfect. I look him over with satisfaction,
like a horse dealer looks
at a beautiful stallion. He is tall and lean, his muscles hard, his chest broad, his
shoulders strong. He smiles at me and my heart turns over for him. “You look as if
you would eat me up,” he says.
“I would,” I say. “I cannot think how to sate my desire for you. I think I will have
to keep you prisoner here and eat you up in little cutlets, day after day.”
“If I kept you prisoner, I would devour you in one greedy swallow,” he chuckles. “But
you would not get out till you were with child.”
“Oh!” The most delightful thought now strikes me. “Oh, I shall give you sons, and
they will be princes.”
“You will be the mother of the King of England, and the mother of the House of York,
which will rule for ever, please God.”
“Amen,” I say devoutly, and I feel no shadow, no shiver, no sense of unease. “God
send you safely home to me from your battle.”
“I always win,” he says in his supreme confidence. “Be happy, Elizabeth. You will
not lose me on the battlefield.”
“And I shall be queen,” I say again. For the first time I understand, truly understand,
that if he comes home from the battle and the true king, Henry, is dead, then this
young man will be the undisputed King of England—and I shall be first in the land.
After dinner he
takes his leave of my father and sets off to ride to Northampton. His page boy has
come to the stable and fed and watered the horses and has them
ready at the door. “I will come back tomorrow night,” he says. “I must see my men
and raise my army, all day. But I shall be with you at dusk.”
“Come to the hunting lodge,” I whisper. “And I will have dinner there for you like
a good wife.”
“Tomorrow evening,” he promises. Then he turns to my father and mother and thanks
them for their hospitality, nods to their bows, and leaves.
“His Grace is very attentive to you,” my father remarks. “Don’t you let your head
be turned.”
“Elizabeth is the most beautiful woman in England,” my mother replies smoothly. “And
he likes a pretty face; but she knows her duty.”
Then I have to wait again. All through the evening when I play cards with my boys
and then hear them say their prayers and get ready for bed. All through the night
when though I am exhausted and deliciously sore I cannot sleep. All through the next
day when I walk and talk as if I were in a dream waiting for night until the moment
that he ducks his head under the doorway and comes into the little room and takes
me into his arms and says, “Wife, let us go to bed.”
Three nights pass in this haze of pleasure, until the last morning when he says, “I
have to go, my love, and I will see you when it is all over.” It is as if someone
has thrown icy water in my face, and I gasp and say: “You are going to war?”
“I have my army mustered, and my spies tell me that Henry is commanded by his wife
to meet her on the east coast with her troops. I shall go at once and bring
him to battle and then march to meet her as soon as she lands.”
I clutch at his shirt as he pulls it on. “You will not go right now?”
“Today,” he says, gently pushing me away, and continuing to dress.
“But I cannot bear it without you.”
“No. But you will. Now listen.”
This is a different man from the entranced young lover of our three-night honeymoon.
I have been thoughtless of everything but our pleasure; but he has been planning.
This is a king defending his kingdom. I wait to hear what he will command. “If I win,
and I will win, I will come back for you, and as soon as we can, we will announce
our marriage. There will be many who will not be pleased, but it is done, and all
they can do is accept it.”
I nod. I know that his great advisor, Lord Warwick, is planning his marriage with
a French princess, and Lord Warwick is accustomed to commanding my young husband.
“If luck goes against me and I am dead, then you will say nothing of this marriage
and these days.” He raises his hand to silence my objection. “Nothing. You would gain
nothing for being the widow of a dead imposter, whose head will be stuck on the gates
of York. It would be your ruin. As far as anyone knows you are the daughter of a family
loyal to the House of Lancaster. You should stay that way. You will remember me in
your prayers, I hope. But it will be a secret between you
and me and God. And two of us will be silent for sure, for one of us is God and the
other is dead.”
“My mother knows . . .”
“Your mother knows the best way to keep you safe will be to silence her page boy and
her lady-in-waiting. She is prepared for that already, she understands, and I have
given her money.”
I swallow a sob. “Very well.”
“And I should like you to marry again. Choose a good man, one who will love you and
care for the boys, and be happy. I would want you to be happy.”
I bow my head in speechless misery.
“Now, if you find you are with child, you will have to leave England,” he commands.
“Tell your mother at once. I have spoken to her, and she knows what to do. The Duke
of Burgundy commands all of Flanders, and he will give you a house of your own for
kinship with your mother and for love of me. If you have a girl, you can wait your
time, get a pardon from Henry, and come back to England. If you leave it for a year,
you will be deliciously notorious—men will be mad for you. You will be the beautiful
widow of a dead pretender. Enjoy it all for my sake, I beg you.
“But if you have a boy, it’s a different matter altogether. My son will be heir to
the throne. He will be the York heir. You will have to keep him safe. You may have
to put him into hiding till he is old enough to claim his rights. He can live under
an assumed name; he can live with poor people. Don’t be falsely proud. Hide him somewhere
safe until he is old enough and strong enough to claim his inheritance. Richard and
George,
my brothers, will be his uncles and his guardians. You can trust them to protect any
son of mine. It may be that Henry and his son die young and then your son will be
the only heir to the throne of England. I don’t count the Lancaster woman, Margaret
Beaufort. My boy should have the throne. It is my wish that he has the throne if he
can win it, or if Richard and George can win it for him. Do you understand? You must
hide my son in Flanders and keep him safe for me. He could be the next York king.”
“Yes,” I say simply. I see that my grief and my fear for him is no longer a private
matter. If we have made a child in these long nights of lovemaking, then he is not
just a child of love, he is an heir to the throne, a claimant, a new player in the
long deadly rivalry between the two houses of York and Lancaster.
“This is hard for you,” he says, seeing my pale face. “My intention is that it should
never happen. But remember, your refuge is Flanders if you have to keep my son safe.
And your mother has money and knows where to go.”
“I will remember,” I say. “Come back to me.”
He laughs. It is not forced; it is the laugh of a happy man, confident in his luck
and his abilities. “I will,” he says. “Trust me. You have married a man who is going
to die in his bed, preferably after making love to the most beautiful woman in England.”
He holds out his arms and I step towards him and feel the warmth of his embrace. “Make
sure you do,”
I say. “And I will make sure that the most beautiful woman in your eyes is always
me.”
He kisses me, but briskly, as if his mind is already elsewhere, and he detaches himself
from my clasping hands. He has gone from me long before he ducks his head to get through
the doorway, and I see that his page has brought his horse round to the door and is
ready to go.
I run outside to wave to him and he is already up in the saddle. His horse is dancing
on the spot; he is a great chestnut beast, strong and powerful. He arches his neck
and tries to rear against Edward’s tight rein. The King of England towers against
the sun on his great war horse and for a moment I too believe that he is invincible.
“Godspeed, good luck!” I call, and he salutes me and wheels his horse, and rides out,
the rightful King of England, to fight the other rightful King of England for the
kingdom itself.
I stand with my hand raised in farewell until I cannot see his standard with the white
rose of York carried before him, until I cannot hear the hoofbeats of his horse, until
he has quite gone from me; and then, to my horror, my brother Anthony, who has seen
all of this, who has been watching for who knows how long, steps out from the shadow
of the tree and walks towards me.
“You whore,” he says.
I stare at him as if I don’t understand the meaning of the word. “What?”
“You whore. You have shamed our house and your name and the name of your poor dead
husband who died fighting that usurper. God forgive you, Elizabeth. I am going at
once to tell my father, and he will put you in a nunnery, if he does not strangle
you first.”
“No!” I stride forward and grab at his arm, but he shakes me off.
“Don’t touch me, you slut. D’you think I want your hands on me after they have been
all over him?”
“Anthony, it is not what you think!”
“My eyes deceive me?” he spits savagely. “It is an enchantment? You are Melusina?
A beautiful goddess bathing in the woods and he that just departed was a knight sworn
to your service? This is Camelot now? An honorable love? This is poetry and not the
gutter?”
“It is honorable!” I am driven to reply.
“You don’t know the meaning of the word. You are a slut and he will pass you on to
Sir William Hastings when they next ride by, as he does with all his sluts.”
“He loves me!”
“As he tells each and every one.”
“He does. He is coming back to me—”
“As he always promises.”
Furious, I thrust my left fist towards him and he ducks away, expecting a punch in
the face. Then he sees the gleam of gold on my finger and he all but laughs. “He gave
you this? A ring? I am supposed to be impressed by a love token?”
“It is not a love token, it is a wedding ring. A proper ring given in marriage. We
are married.” I make my
announcement in triumph, but I am instantly disappointed.
“Dear God, he has fooled you,” he says, anguished. He takes me into his arms and presses
my head against his chest. “My poor sister, my poor fool.”
I struggle free. “Let me go, I am nobody’s fool. What are you saying?”
He looks at me with sorrow, but his mouth is twisted into a bitter smile. “Let me
guess, was this a secret wedding, in a private chapel? Did none of his friends and
courtiers attend? Is Lord Warwick not to be told? Is it to be kept private? Are you
to deny it, if asked?”
“Yes. But—”
“You are not married, Elizabeth. You have been tricked. It was a pretend service that
has no weight in the eyes of God nor of man. He has fooled you with a trumpery ring
and a pretend priest so that he could get you into bed.”
“No.”
“This is the man who hopes to be King of England. He has to marry a princess. He’s
not going to marry some beggarly widow from the camp of his enemy, who stood out on
the road to plead with him to restore her dowry. If he marries an Englishwoman at
all, she will be one of the great ladies of the Lancaster court, probably Warwick’s
daughter Isabel. He’s not going to marry a girl whose own father fought against him.
He’s more likely to marry a great princess of Europe, an infanta from Spain, or a
princesse from France. He has to marry to set himself more safely on the throne, to
make
alliances. He’s not going to marry a pretty face for love. Lord Warwick would never
allow it. And he is not such a fool as to go against his own interests.”
“He doesn’t have to do what Lord Warwick wants! He’s the king.”