The White Queen (53 page)

“Yes, Lady Mother,” Anne says obediently. “But we were all given a holiday at Christmastide,
and I went to court at Westminster with all the others.”

“We had suckling pig here,” Bridget tells her older sisters solemnly. “And Catherine
ate so much marchpane she was sick in the night.”

Elizabeth laughs, and that anxious look has gone from her. “I have missed you little
monsters,” she says
tenderly. “After dinner I shall play, and you can dance, if you like.”

“Or we can play at cards,” Cecily offers. “The court is allowed cards again.”

“Has the king recovered from his grief?” I ask her. “And Queen Anne?”

Cecily shoots a triumphant look at her sister Elizabeth, who blushes deep red. “Oh,
he has recovered,” Cecily says, her voice quivering with laughter. “He seems much
recovered. We are all quite amazed. Don’t you think, Elizabeth?”

My patience, which never lasts very long with female spite, even when it is my own
daughter’s, is exhausted at this point. “Now that is enough,” I say. “Elizabeth, come
to my privy chamber now; the rest of you can eat your dinner, and you Cecily can ponder
on the proverb that one good word is worth a dozen bad ones.”

I rise from the table and sweep from the room. I can feel Elizabeth’s reluctance as
she follows me, and when we get to my room she shuts the door and I say simply to
her, “My daughter, what is all this about?”

For a second only she looks as if she would resist and then she quivers like a doe
at bay and says, “I have so wanted your advice, but I could not write to you. I had
to wait till I saw you. I meant to wait till after dinner. I have not deceived you,
Lady Mother . . .”

I sit down and gesture that she may sit beside me. “It is my uncle Richard,” she says
softly. “He is—oh Lady Mother—he is everything to me.”

I find I am sitting very still. Only my hands have
moved, and I am gripping them together to keep myself silent.

“He was so kind to me when we first came to court, then he went out of his way to
make sure that I was happy with my duties as a maid-in-waiting. The queen is very
kind, a very easy mistress to serve, but he would seek me out and ask me how I was
doing.” She breaks off. “He asked me if I missed you and told me you would be welcome
at court any time, and the court would honor you. He would speak of my father,” she
says. “He would remark how proud my father would be of me if he could see me now.
He would say that I am like him in some ways. Oh Mother, he is such a fine man, I
can’t believe that he . . . that he . . .”

“That he?” I echo her, my voice a little thread of an echo.

“That he cares for me.”

“Does he?” I feel icy, as if wintry waters are running down my spine. “Does he care
for you?”

She nods eagerly. “He never loved the queen,” she says. “He felt obliged to marry
her to save her from his brother George, Duke of Clarence.” She glances at me. “You
would remember. You were there, weren’t you? They were going to trap her and send
her to a nunnery. George was going to steal her inheritance.”

I nod. I don’t remember it quite like that; but I can see this makes a better story
for an impressionable girl.

“He knew that if George took her as his ward then he would take her fortune. She was
anxious to be married, and he thought it was the best thing that he could
do. He married her to secure her inheritance and for her own safety, and to put her
mind at ease.”

“Really,” I say. My recollection is that George had one Neville heiress and Richard
snapped up the other, and they quarreled like stray dogs over the inheritance. But
I see that Richard has told my daughter the more chivalrous version of the story.

“Queen Anne is not well.” Elizabeth bows her head to whisper. “She cannot have another
child, he is certain of it. He has asked the doctors, and they are sure she will not
conceive. He has to have an heir for England. He asked me if I thought it possible
that one of our boys had got away safely.”

My mind suddenly sharpens like a sword throwing sparks on a whetstone. “And what did
you say?”

She smiles up at me. “I would trust him with the truth, I would trust him with anything;
but I knew you would want me to lie,” she says sweetly. “I said we knew nothing but
what he had told us. And he said again that it had broken his heart but he did not
know where our boys are. He said if he knew now, he would make them his heirs. Mother,
think of it. He said that. He said that if he knew where our boys were, he would rescue
them and make them his heirs.”

Oh would he? I think. But what guarantee do I have that he does not send an assassin?
“That’s good,” I say steadily. “But even so, you must not tell him about Richard.
I cannot trust him yet, even if you can.”

“I do!”
she exclaims. “I do trust him. I would trust him with my life itself—I have never
known such a man.”

I pause. Pointless to remind her that she has known no men. Most of her life she has
been a princess kept like a statue of porcelain in a box of gold. She came of age
as a prisoner, living with her mother and her sisters. The only men she ever saw were
priests and servants. She has had no preparation for an attractive man working on
her emotions, seducing her, urging her to love.

“How far has this gone?” I ask bluntly. “How far has this gone between the two of
you?”

She turns her head away. “It’s complicated,” she says. “And I feel so sorry for Queen
Anne.”

I nod. My girl’s pity for Queen Anne will not stop her from taking her husband is
my guess. After all, she is my daughter. And nothing stopped me when I named my heart’s
desire.

“How far has this gone?” I ask her again. “From Cecily, I take it that there is gossip.”

She flushes. “Cecily doesn’t know anything. She sees what everyone sees, and she is
jealous of me getting all the attention. She sees the queen favoring me, and lending
me her gowns and her jewels. Treating me as a daughter and telling me to dance with
Richard, urging him to walk with me, to ride with me when she is too ill to go out.
Truly, Mother, it is the queen herself who commands me to go and keep him company.
She says
that no one can divert him and cheer him as I do, and so the court says that she favors
me overmuch. That he favors me overmuch. That I am nothing more than a maid-in-waiting
but I am treated as . . .”

“As what?”

She bows her head to whisper. “The first lady at court.”

“Because of your gowns?”

She nods. “They are the queen’s own gowns; she has mine made to her pattern. She likes
us to dress the same.”

“It is she who dresses you like this?”

Elizabeth nods. She has no idea that this fills me with unease. “You mean she has
gowns for you made from her own material? To her own style?”

My girl hesitates. “And, of course, she does not look well in them.” She says no more
but I think of Anne Neville, grief-stricken, weary, ill, side by side with this blooming
girl.

“And you are first into the room behind her? You have precedence?”

“No one speaks of the law which made us bastards. Everyone calls me princess. And
when the queen does not dine, and often she does not, then I go into dinner as the
first lady and I sit beside the king.”

“So, it is Queen Anne who puts you into his company, even into her own place, and
the world sees this. Not Richard? Then what happens?”

“He says that he loves me,” she says quietly. She is
trying to be modest, but her pride and her joy blaze in her eyes. “He says that I
am the first love of his life and will be the last.”

I rise from my chair and go to the window and pull back the thick curtain so I can
look out at the bright cold stars over the dark land of the Wiltshire down. I think
I know what Richard is doing, and I don’t for one minute think that he has fallen
in love with my daughter, nor that the queen is making gowns for her out of love.

Richard is playing a hard game with my daughter as pawn, to dishonor her, and me,
and to make a fool of Henry Tudor, who has vowed to make her his wife. Tudor will
hear—as quickly as his mother’s spies can take ship—that his bride to be is in love
with his enemy and is known throughout the court as his mistress while his wife looks
on smiling. Richard would do this to damage Henry Tudor even though he dishonors his
own niece. Queen Anne would be compliant rather than stand up to Richard. Both Neville
girls were boot-scrapers to their men: Anne has been an obedient servant from the
first day of her marriage. And besides, she cannot refuse him. He is King of England
without a male heir, and she is barren. She will be praying that he does not put her
aside. She has no power at all: no son and heir, no baby in the cradle, no chance
of conception; she has no cards to play at all. She is a barren woman with no fortune
of her own—she is fit for nothing but the nunnery or the grave. She has
to smile and obey; protests will get her nowhere. Even helping in the destruction
of my daughter’s reputation will probably earn Anne nothing more than an honorable
annulment.

“Has he told you to break off your betrothal to Henry Tudor?” I ask her.

“No! It’s nothing to do with that!”

“Oh.” I nod. “But you can see that this will be a tremendous humiliation for Henry
Tudor when the news gets out.”

“I would never marry him anyway,” she bursts out. “I hate him. I believe it was he
who sent the men to kill our boys. He would have come to London and taken the throne.
We knew that. That’s why we called down the rain. But now . . . but now . . .”

“Now what?”

“Richard says that he will put Anne Neville aside and marry me,” she breathes. Her
face is alight with joy. “He says that he will make me his queen and my son will sit
on my father’s throne. We will make a dynasty of the House of York, and the white
rose will be the flower of England forever.” She hesitates. “I know you cannot trust
him, Lady Mother, but this is the man I love. Can you not love him for my sake?”

I think that this is the oldest, hardest question between a mother and her daughter.
Can I love him for your sake?

No. This is the man who envied my husband, who killed my brother and my son Richard
Grey, who seized my son Edward’s throne and who exposed him to danger,
if nothing worse. But I need not answer the truth to this my most truthful child.
I need not be open with this most transparent child. She has fallen in love with my
enemy, and she wants a happy ending.

I open my arms to her. “All I ever wanted was your happiness,” I lie. “If he loves
you and will be true to you, and you love him, then I want nothing more.”

She comes into my arms and she lays her head on my shoulder. But she is no fool, my
daughter. She lifts her head and smiles at me. “And I shall be Queen of England,”
she says. “At least that will please you.”

My daughters stay
with me for nearly a month, and we live the life of an ordinary family, as Elizabeth
once wanted. In the second week it snows, and we find Nesfield’s sleigh and harness
up one of the cart horses and make an expedition to one of the neighbors, and then
find the snow has melted and we have to stay the night. The next day we have to trudge
home in the mud and the slush as they cannot lend us horses and we take turns to ride
bareback on our own big horse. It takes us the best part of the day to get home and
we laugh and sing all the way.

In the middle of the second week there is a messenger from court and he brings a letter
for me, and one for Elizabeth. I call her to my private chamber, away from the girls,
who have invaded the kitchen and are making marchpane sweetmeats for dinner, and we
open our letters at either end of the writing table.

Mine is from the king.

I imagine Elizabeth will have spoken with you about the great love I bear her, and
I wanted to tell you of my plans. I intend that my wife shall admit she is past the
years of childbearing and take residence in Bermondsey Abbey and release me from my
vows. I will seek the proper dispensations and then marry your daughter and she will
be Queen of England. You will take the title of My Lady, the Queen’s Mother, and I
will restore to you the palaces of Sheen and Greenwich on our wedding day, with your
royal pension. Your daughters will live with you and at court, and you shall have
the arranging of their marriages. They will be recognized as sisters to the Queen
of England and of the royal family of York.

If either of your sons has been in hiding and you know of his whereabouts, then you
may now send for him in safety. I will make him my heir until Elizabeth gives birth
to my son.

I will marry Elizabeth for love, but I am sure you can see that this is the resolution
of all our difficulties. I hope for your approval, but I will proceed anyway. I remain
your loving kinsman.

RR

I read the letter through twice and I find a grim smile at his dishonest phrasing.
“Resolution of all our difficulties” is, I think, a smooth way of describing a blood
vendetta which has taken my brother and my Grey son, and which led me to foment rebellion
against him and
curse his sword arm. But Richard is a York—they take victory as their due—and these
proposals are good for me and mine. If my son Richard can come home in safety and
be a prince once more at the court of his sister, then I will have achieved everything
that I swore to regain, and my brother and my son will not have died in vain.

I glance down the table at Elizabeth. She is rosy with blushes and her eyes are filled
with luminous tears. “He proposes marriage?” I ask her.

“He swears that he loves me. He says he is missing me. He wants me back at court.
He asks you to come with me. He wants everyone to know that I will be his wife. He
says that Queen Anne is ready to retire.”

I nod. “I won’t go while she is there,” I say. “And you may go back to court but you
are to behave with more discretion. Even if the queen tells you to walk with him,
you are to take a companion. And you are not to sit in her place.”