The White Queen (49 page)

I look at him closely. He is only thirty-one now, but the shadows under his eyes and
the lines in his face are those of an older man. He looks haunted. I imagine he fears
his arm failing him in battle. He has worked hard all his life to be as strong as
his taller, thicker-muscled brothers. Now something is eating away at his power.
I shrug. “If you are ill, you should see a physician. You are like a child, blaming
your own weakness on magic. Perhaps you imagine it all.”

He shakes his head. “I didn’t come to complain. I came for something else.” He pauses,
looks at me. He has that frank York look; he has my husband’s straight gaze. “Tell
me, do you have your son Edward safe?” he asks me.

I can feel my heart thud with pain. “Why do you ask? You, of all people? You who took
him?”

“Will you just answer? Do you have Edward and Richard safe?”

“No,” I say. I could wail like a heartbroken mother, but not in front of this man.
“Why? Why d’you ask?”

He gives a sigh and slumps down in the porter’s chair, drops his head into his hands.

“You don’t have them in the Tower?” I ask him. “My boys? You don’t have them locked
up?”

He shakes his head.

“You have lost them? You have lost my sons?”

Silent still, he nods. “I was praying that you had smuggled them out,” he says. “In
the name of God, tell me! If you have done so, I will not hunt them, I will not harm
them. You can choose a relic for me to swear on. I will swear to leave them wherever
you have sent them. I won’t even ask where. Just tell me that you have them safe,
so I know, I have to know. It is driving me mad not to know.”

Wordlessly, I shake my head.

He rubs his face, his eyes, as if they are gritty with
lack of sleep. “I came straight to the Tower,” he says, speaking through his fingers.
“The minute I returned to London. I was afraid. Everyone in England is saying they
are dead. Lady Margaret Beaufort’s people have told everyone that the princes are
dead. The Duke of Buckingham turned your army into his own, fighting to win the throne
for him, by telling them that the princes were dead at my hand, and that they should
have their revenge on me. He told them that he would lead them to avenge the princes’
deaths.”

“You didn’t kill them?”

“I did not,” he says. “Why should I? Think! Think it through. Why should I kill them?
Why now? When your men attacked the Tower, I had them kept closer inside. They were
watched night and day—I could not have killed them then, even if I had wanted to.
They had guards all the time, one of them would have known, and they would tell. I
have made them bastards and dishonored you. Your sons are no more threat to me than
your brothers—beaten men.”

“You killed my brother Anthony,” I spit at him.

“He was a threat to me,” Richard replies. “Anthony could have raised an army and knew
how to command men. He was a better soldier than me. Your sons are not. Your daughters
are not. They don’t threaten me. I don’t threaten them. I don’t kill them.”

“Then where are they?” I wail. “Where is my boy Edward?”

“I don’t even know if they are dead or alive,” he says miserably. “Nor who ordered
their death or capture.
I thought you might have smuggled them out. That’s why I came here. If not you—then
who? Did you authorize anyone to take them? Could anyone have them without your knowledge?
Holding them as hostage?”

I shake my head, I cannot think. It is the gravest question I will ever face in my
life, and I am stupid with grief. “I can’t think,” I say desperately.

“Try,” he says. “You know who your allies are. Your secret friends. My hidden enemies.
You know what they might do. You know what they promised you, what you plotted with
them. Think.”

I put my hands to my head, and I walk a few steps up and down. Perhaps Richard is
lying to me, and he has killed Edward and the poor little page boy, and is here to
throw the blame on others. But against that—as he says—he has no reason to do so,
and also, why should he not admit it, and brazen it out? Who would even complain now
that he has put down the rebellion against him? Why come here to me? When my husband
murdered King Henry, he had his body shown to the people. He gave him a fine funeral.
The whole point of killing him was to tell the world that the line was ended. If Richard
had killed my sons to end Edward’s line, he would have announced it, now as he returned
to London in victory, and given me the bodies to bury. He could say they had fallen
ill. Better yet, he could say that Buckingham killed them. He could throw the blame
on Buckingham, and he could give them a royal funeral and no one could do anything
but mourn them.

So perhaps the Duke of Buckingham had them killed, the truth behind his rumor of their
deaths? With the two boys gone, he was two steps nearer to the throne. Or would Lady
Margaret have them killed, to clear the way for her son Henry Tudor? Both Tudor and
Buckingham are the greatest beneficiaries from the deaths of my sons. They become
the next heirs if my boys are dead. Could Lady Margaret have ordered the deaths of
my sons, while claiming to be my friend? Could she have squared her holy conscience
to do such a thing? Could Buckingham have killed his own nephews while swearing to
set them free?

“You have searched for their bodies?” I ask, my voice very low.

“I have turned the Tower upside down, and had their servants questioned. They say
that they put them to bed one night. In the morning they were gone.”

“They are your servants!” I burst out. “They follow your commands. My sons have died
while in your keeping. Do you expect me to really believe you had no hand in their
deaths? Do you expect me to believe they have vanished?”

He nods. “I want you to believe that they died or they were taken, without my order,
without my knowledge, and without my consent, while I was far away preparing to fight.
To fight your brothers, actually. One night.”

“Which night?” I ask.

“The night that it started to rain.”

I nod, thinking of the soft voice that sang a lullaby
to Elizabeth, so quiet that I could not even hear it. “Oh, that night.”

He hesitates. “Do you believe me, that I am innocent of their deaths?”

I face him, the man that my husband loved: his brother. The man who fought beside
my husband for my family and my sons. The man who killed my brother and my Grey son.
The man who may have killed my royal son Edward. “No,” I say coldly. “I don’t believe
you. I don’t trust you. But I am not certain. I am horribly uncertain of everything.”

He nods, as if to accept an unjust judgment. “It’s like that for me,” he remarks,
almost as an aside. “I don’t know anything, I don’t trust anyone. We have killed certainty
in these cousins’ wars and all that is left is mistrust.”

“So what will you do?” I ask.

“I’ll do nothing, and say nothing,” he decides, his voice is bleak and weary. “No
one will dare to ask me directly, though they will all suspect me. I shall say nothing
and let people think what they will. I don’t know what has happened to your boys,
but nobody will ever believe that. If I had them alive, I would produce them and prove
my innocence. If I found their bodies, I would show them and blame it on Buckingham.
But I don’t have them, alive or dead, and so I cannot defend myself. Everyone will
think that I have killed two boys in my care, in cold blood, for no good reason. They
will call me a monster.” He pauses. “Whatever else I do in my life, this will cast
a crooked shadow. All that everyone
will ever remember of me is this crime.” He shakes his head. “And I didn’t do it,
and I don’t know who did it, and I don’t even know if it was done.”

He pauses. “What will
you
do?” he asks as it occurs to him.

“I?”

“You were here in sanctuary so that your girls should be safe when you believed that
their brothers were in danger from me,” he reminds me. “That worst thing has now happened.
Their brothers are now gone: What will you do with your girls, with yourself? There
is no point in staying in sanctuary now—you are no longer the royal family with an
heir who might make a claim. You are the mother of nothing but girls.”

As he says this, the loss of Edward suddenly hits me, and I give a moan, and take
the pain in my belly, like the pangs of his birth all over again. I drop to my knees
on the stone floor and I bend over my pain. I can hear myself groaning, and I can
feel myself rocking.

He does not rush to comfort me, or even to raise me up. He stays seated in his chair,
his dark head leaning on his hand, watching me as I keen like a peasant woman over
the death of her firstborn son. He says nothing to deny my grief nor staunch it. He
lets me cry. He sits beside me for a long long time and he lets me cry.

After a while, I take the hem of my cloak and I rub my wet face and then I sit back
on my heels and look at him.

“I am sorry for your loss,” he says formally, as if I were not kneeling on a stone
floor with my hair falling
down and my face wet with tears. “It was not of my ordering, nor of my doing. I took
the throne without harming either one of them. I would not have harmed them after.
They were Edward’s sons. I loved them for him. And God knows, I loved him.”

“I know that, at any rate,” I say, as formal as he.

He gets to his feet. “Will you leave sanctuary now?” he asks. “You have nothing to
gain by staying here.”

“I have nothing,” I agree with him. “Nothing.”

“I will make an agreement between you and me,” he says. “I will promise the safety
and good treatment of your girls if you come out. The older ones can come to court.
I shall treat them as my nieces, honorably. You can come with them. I shall see them
married to good men, with your approval.”

“I shall go home,” I say. “And take them with me.”

He shakes his head. “I am sorry, I can’t allow that. I will have your girls at court,
and you can live at Heytesbury in the care of Sir John Nesfield for a while. I am
sorry, but I cannot trust you among your tenants and affinity.” He hesitates. “I cannot
have you where you might raise men against me. I cannot allow you to be where you
would find men to plot with. It is not that I am suspicious of you, you understand:
it is that I cannot trust anybody. I never trust anybody, anywhere.”

There is a footstep behind him, and he whirls around and draws his dagger to hold
before him, ready to strike. I scramble up and put my hand on his right arm and push
it easily down: he is terribly weak. I remember
the curse I have laid on him. “Put up,” I say. “It will be one of the girls.”

He steps back and Elizabeth comes out of the shadows to my side. She is in her nightgown
with a cape thrown over it and her hair in a plait under her nightcap. She is as tall
as me now. She stands beside me and regards her uncle gravely. “Your Grace,” she says,
with the smallest of curtseys.

He hardly bows to her; he is staring at her in amazement. “You are grown, Elizabeth,”
he hesitates. “You are the Princess Elizabeth? I would hardly have known you. I last
saw you when you were a girl and here you are . . . you.”

I glance at her, and to my amazement I see that the color is rising in her cheeks.
She is blushing under his bewildered look. She puts her hand to her hair, as if she
wishes she were dressed and not barefoot like a child.

“Go to your room,” I say abruptly to her.

She curtseys and turns, obedient at once, but she pauses at the door. “Is it about
Edward?” she asks. “Is my brother safe?”

Richard looks to me to see if she can be told the truth. I turn to her. “Go to your
room. I will tell you later.”

Richard rises to his feet. “Princess Elizabeth,” he says quietly.

Again she stops, though she has been told to leave, and she turns to him. “Yes, Your
Grace?”

“I am sorry to tell you that your brothers are missing, but I want you to know that
it is no fault of mine.
They are gone from their rooms in the Tower and nobody can tell me if they are alive
or dead. I came here to your mother tonight in case she had smuggled them away.”

The quick glance she throws towards me would tell him nothing. I know she is thinking
that at least our boy Richard is safely away in Flanders, but she is expressionless.

“My brothers are missing?” she repeats, wonderingly.

“They are likely dead,” I say, pain making my voice harsh.

“You don’t know where they are?” she asks the king.

“I wish to God that I did,” he says. “Without knowing where they are or if they are
safe, everyone will think they are dead and blame me.”

“They were in your keeping,” I remind him. “And why would anyone take them as hostages
without telling? At the very least, you have let my boy die while you were fighting
to keep the throne which was his by right.”

He nods as if to accept that much of the blame and turns to go. Elizabeth and I watch
in silence as he unbolts the door.

“I won’t forgive this wrong done to me and my house,” I warn him. “Whoever it was
that killed my boys, I shall put a curse on their house that they will have no firstborn
son to inherit. Whoever took my son will lose his son. He will spend his life longing
for an heir. He will bury his firstborn and long for him, for I cannot even bury mine.”

He shrugs his shoulders. “Curse him, whoever did it,” he says indifferently. “Blight
his house. For he has cost me my reputation and my peace.”

“We two will curse him,” Elizabeth says, standing beside me, her arm around my waist.
“He will pay for taking our boy. He will regret this loss that he has dealt to us.
He will be sorry for this terrible cruelty. He will suffer remorse. Even if we never
know who did this.”

“Oh, but we will know him,” I chime in like a coven’s chorus. “We will know him by
the death of his children. When his son and heir dies, we shall know him then. We
shall know that the curse we lay on him now is working, all down the years, generation
after generation, until his line dies out. When he puts his own son in the grave,
it will be our curse that buries him. And then we shall know who it was who took our
boy, and he will know that our curse has taken from him what he took from us. When
he has only girls to inherit, we will know him then.”