The White Queen (9 page)

Anthony folds me in his arms and pats my back. “Of course he loves you,” he says.
“What man could not? And if he does not, then he is a fool.”

“I love him,” I say miserably. “I would love him if he were a nobody.”

“No, you wouldn’t,” he says gently. “You are your mother’s child through and through;
you don’t have the blood of a goddess in you for nothing. You were born to be queen
and maybe everything will come out well. Maybe he loves you and will stand by you.”

I tilt my head back to scan his face. “But you don’t believe it.”

“No,” he says honestly. “To tell you the truth, I think you have seen the last of
him.”

He sends me a letter. He addresses me as Lady Elizabeth Grey and inside he writes
“my love”; he does not say “wife,” so he gives me nothing that can prove our marriage
if he should deny it. He writes that he is busy but will send for me shortly. The
court is at Reading, he will speak to Lord Warwick soon. The council is meeting, there
is so much to do. The lost king, Henry, has still not been captured; he is out somewhere
in the hills of Northumberland; but the queen has fled to her homeland of France demanding
help, so an alliance with France is more important than ever before, to cut her out
of the French councils, and make sure she cannot have allies. He does not remark that
a French marriage would do this for him. He says he loves me, he burns up for me.
Lover’s words, lover’s promises: nothing binding.

The same messenger brings a summons for my father to attend the court at Reading.
It is a standard letter, every nobleman in the country will have had the same. My
brothers Anthony, John, Richard, Edward, and Lionel are to go with him. “Write and
tell me everything about it,” my mother commands my father as we watch them mount
up. They make a little army themselves, my mother’s fine brood of sons.

“He will be calling us to announce his wedding to the French princess,” my father
grumbles, bending over to tighten his girth under the saddle flap. “And much good
an alliance with the French will do us. Much good it has ever done us before. Still,
it will have to be done if Margaret of Anjou is to be silenced. And a French bride
would welcome you at her court, a kinswoman.”

My mother does not even blink at the prospect of Edward’s French bride. “Write and
tell me at once,” she says. “And God go with you, my husband, and keep you safe.”

He leans down from the saddle to kiss her hand and then turns his horse’s head down
the road to the south. My brothers twirl their whips, raise their hats, bellow a farewell.
My sisters wave, my sister-in-law Elizabeth curtseys to Anthony, who raises his hand
to her, my mother, and to me. His face is grim.

But it is Anthony who writes to me two days later, and it is his manservant who rides
like a madman to bring me his letter.

Sister,

This is your triumph, and I am glad to my heart for you. There has been an earthshaking
quarrel between the king and Lord Warwick, for my lord brought a marriage contract
to the king for him to marry Princess Bona of Savoy, as everyone was expecting. The
king, with the contract before him and the pen in his hand, raised his head and told
his lordship that he could not marry the Princess for—actually—he
was already married. You could have heard a feather fall; you could hear the angels
gasp. I swear I heard Lord Warwick’s very heart pound as he asked the king to repeat
what he had said. The king was white as a girl but he faced Lord Warwick (which I
would not want to do myself) and told him that all his plans and all his promises
were as nothing. His lordship took the king by the arm as if he were a boy and hustled
him from the room into a privy chamber, leaving the rest of us boiling with gossip
and amazement like neeps seething in a stew.

I took the chance to pin our father into the corner and tell him that I thought the
king might announce his marriage to you, so as to prevent us looking as great fools
as Lord W—but even in that moment I confess to you that I feared that the king might
be admitting marriage to another lady. There has been another lady mentioned of noble
birth, better than ours, actually, and she has his son. Forgive me, Sister, but you
don’t know how bad his reputation has been. So Father and I were like hares in March,
jumping at nothing, while the privy chamber door stayed shut and the king was locked
away with the man who made him and who—God knows—might just as quickly unmake him
again.

Of course Lionel wanted to know what we were whispering about, and John too. Thank
God, Edward and Richard had gone out, so there were only two extra to tell; but they
couldn’t believe it any more than Father, and I had much to do to keep
the three of them quiet. You can imagine what it was like.

An hour must have passed but no one could bear to leave the council chamber until
they had the end of this story. Sister, they were pissing in the fireplaces rather
than leave the great hall—and then the door opened and the king came out looking shaken
and Lord Warwick came out looking grim and the king put on his happiest smile and
said, “Well, my lords, I thank you for your patience. I am happy and proud to tell
you that I am married to Lady Elizabeth Grey,” and he nodded towards my father and
I swear he shot me a look which begged me to keep Father quiet, so I got hold of the
old man’s shoulder and leaned hard to keep him anchored to the ground. Edward got
the other side of him as ballast, and Lionel crossed himself like he was an archbishop
already. Father and I bowed proudly and simpered about ourselves, as if we had known
all along and only failed to mention that we were now brother and father-in-law to
the King of England from sheer delicacy.

John and Richard stumbled in at this most inconvenient moment and we had to mutter
to them that the world was turned upside down and they did better than you can imagine.
They managed to close their mouths and stood beside Father and me, and people took
our dumbstruck faces for quiet pride. We were a quartet of idiots trying to look suave.
You cannot imagine the bluster and the shouting and the
complaints and the trouble which followed. Nobody in my hearing dared to suggest that
the king had stooped too low, but I know that behind me and on either side there were
men who think so, and will go on thinking so. Still, the king kept his fair head high
and brazened it out, and Father and I went and stood on either side of him, and all
my brothers stood behind us, and no one can deny that we are a handsome family, or
at the very least tall, and the thing is done, nobody can now deny it. You can tell
Mother that her great gamble has paid a thousandfold: you will be Queen of England
and we will be England’s ruling family, even if no one in England wants us.

Father kept his mouth shut till we were clear of the court but I swear his eyes were
rolling in his head like Idiot Jim at Stony Stratford, till we got to our lodgings
and I could tell him what had been done and how it had been done—at least as far as
I knew—and now he is aggrieved that nobody told him, since he would have managed it
so well and been so discreet—but given that he is father-in-law to the King of England
I think he will forgive you and Mother for keeping your women’s toils to yourselves.
Your brothers went out and got drunk on credit, as anyone would do. Lionel swears
he will be pope.

Your new husband is clearly stunned by the row that has broken on his head, and he
will find it hard to reconcile with his former master Lord Warwick, who is dining
apart tonight and could make a
dangerous enemy. We are to dine with the king and his interests are ours. The world
has changed for us Riverses, and we are become so great that I confidently expect
us to flow up hills. We are now passionate Yorkists and you can expect Father to plant
white roses in his hedgerows and wear a bloom in his hat. You can tell Mother that
whatever magic she deployed to bring this about has the stunned admiration of her
husband and sons. If the magic was nothing more than your beauty, we admire that too.

You are now summoned to be presented at court, here at Reading. The king’s order will
be sent tomorrow. Sister, be warned by me and please come dressed modestly and with
only a small escort. It will not avert envy but we should try not to make matters
worse than they already are. We have made enemies of every family in the kingdom.
Families that we do not even know will be cursing our luck and wishing us to fall.
Ambitious fathers with pretty daughters will never forgive you. We will have to be
on our guard for the rest of our lives. You have put us into great opportunity but
also great risk, my sister. I am brother-in-law to the King of England, but I must
say tonight my greatest hope is to die in my bed, at peace with the world, as an old
man.

Your brother,

Anthony

But I think, in the meantime, before my peaceful death, I shall ask him to make me
a duke.

My mother plans our journey to Reading and the summoning of our family as if she were
a queen militant. Every relation that would benefit from our rise or might contribute
to our position is commanded from every corner of England, and even our Burgundy family—her
kinsmen—are invited to come to London for my coronation. She says that they will give
me the royal and noble status that we need, and besides, in the state the world is
in, it is always wise to have powerful relatives for support or refuge.

She starts to draw up a list of eligible lords and ladies for my brothers and sisters
to marry; she starts to consider noble children who will be made wards and can be
raised in a royal nursery to our profit. She understands, and she starts to teach
me, how the patronage and power of the English court works. She knows it well enough.
She was married into the royal family with her first husband, the Duke of Bedford.
Then she was second lady in the kingdom under the Lancaster queen; now she will be
second lady under the York queen: me. No one knows better than she how to plow the
furrow that is royal England.

She sends a string of instructions to Anthony to order tailors and sempstresses so
that I shall have new dresses waiting for me, but she takes his advice that we should
enter into our greatness quietly, and without any sign of glorying in this leap from
being of the defeated House of Lancaster to being new partners of the victorious House
of York. My sisters, cousins, and
sister-in-law are to ride with us to Reading, but there is to be no great train with
standards and trumpets. Father writes to her that there are many who begrudge us our
prosperity, but the ones whom he fears above all are the king’s greatest friend Sir
William Hastings, the king’s great ally Lord Warwick, and the king’s close family:
his mother, sisters, and brothers, as they have the most to lose from new favorites
at court.

I remember Hastings looking at me as if I were roadside merchandise, a pedlar’s pack,
the very first time that I met the king, and I promise myself that he will never look
at me in that way again. Hastings, I think I can manage. He loves the king like no
other, and he will accept any choice that Edward makes, and defend it too. But Lord
Warwick frightens me. He is a man who will stop at nothing to get his own way. As
a boy he saw his father rebel against his lawful king and set up a rival house in
the name of York. When his father and Edward’s father were killed together, he at
once continued his father’s work and saw Edward crowned king, a boy of only nineteen.
Warwick is thirteen years his senior: an adult man compared with a boy. Clearly he
has planned all along to put a boy on the throne and to rule from the shadows. Edward’s
choice of me will be the first declaration of independence from his mentor, and Warwick
will be quick to prevent any others. They call him the kingmaker and when we were
Lancastrians we said that the Yorks were nothing but puppets and he and his family
were the puppet masters. Now I am married to Warwick’s puppet, and I know that he
will
try to set me dancing to his tune as well. Still, there is no time to do anything
but bid farewell to my boys, make them promise to obey their tutors and be good, mount
the new horse that the king has sent me for the journey, and with my mother at my
side and my sisters following behind me take the road to Reading and to the future
that waits for me.

I say to my mother, “I am afraid.”

She brings her horse beside mine and she puts back the hood of her cape so that I
can see the smiling confidence in her face. “Perhaps,” she says. “But I was at the
court of Queen Margaret d’Anjou; I swear you cannot be a worse queen than her.”

Despite myself, I giggle. This comes from a woman who was Margaret of Anjou’s most
trusted lady-in-waiting and the first lady of her court. “You have changed your tune.”