The White Queen (39 page)

I grit my teeth. This is to insult me and everyone of my family, especially my brother
Anthony, who influences Edward more than any other, who loves him like
his own, who this very day is imprisoned for him. “You can tell Sir William that Duke
Richard must release my brother without charge at once,” I snap. “You can tell him
that the Privy Council should be reminded of the rights of the Rivers family and the
king’s widow. I am still queen. The country has seen a queen fight for her rights
before: you should all be warned. The duke has kidnapped my son and ridden into London
fully armed. I will bring him to account for it when I can.”

She looks frightened. She clearly does not want to be a go-between for a career courtier
and a vengeful queen. But this is where she is now called, and she will have to do
her best. “I will tell him, Your Grace,” she says. She makes another deep curtsey
and then she goes to the door. “May I express my sympathy for the loss of your husband?
He was a great man. It was an honor to be allowed to love him.”

“He didn’t love you,” I say with sudden spite, and I see her pale face whiten.

“No, he never loved anyone like he loved you,” she replies so sweetly that I cannot
but be touched by her tenderness. There is a little smile on her face, but her eyes
are wet again. “There was never any doubt in my mind but there was one queen on the
throne and the same queen in his heart. He made sure that I knew that. Everyone knew
that. It was only ever you for him.”

She slides the bolt and opens the little door inside the great gate. “You too were
dear to him,” I say, driven, despite myself, to be fair to her. “I was jealous of
you
because I knew that you were very dear to him. He said you were his merriest whore.”

Her face lights up as if a warm flame had flared inside a lantern. “I am glad he thought
that of me, and that you are kind enough to tell me,” she says. “I was never one for
politics or place. I just loved to be with him, and if I could to make him happy.”

“Yes, very well, very well,” I say, rapidly running out of generosity. “So Godspeed.”

“And God be with you, Your Grace,” she says. “I may be asked to come again with messages
for you. Will you admit me?”

“As well you as any of the others. God knows, if Hastings is going to use Edward’s
whores as messengers, I shall admit hundreds,” I say irritably, and I see her faint
smile as she slips through the half-opened door and I slam it closed behind her.

Hastings’s reassurances do not delay me. I am set on war against Richard. I shall
destroy him, and free my son and my brother and release the young king. I shall not
wait, obedient as Hastings suggests, for Richard to crown Edward. I don’t trust him,
and I don’t trust the Privy Council or the citizens of London, who are waiting, as
turncoats, to join the winning side. I shall put us on the attack and we should take
him by surprise.

“Send the message to your uncle Edward,” I say to Thomas, my younger Grey son. “Tell
him to bring in the fleet battle-ready, and we will come out of sanctuary and raise
the people. The duke sleeps at Baynard’s Castle with his mother. Edward must bombard
the castle while we break into the Tower and get Edward our prince.”

“What if Richard means nothing but to crown him?” he asks me. He is starting to write
the message in code. Our messenger is waiting in hiding, ready to ride to the fleet,
who are standing by in the deep water of the Downs.

“Then Richard is dead and we crown Edward anyway,” I say. “Perhaps we have killed
a loyal friend and a York prince, but that will be ours to mourn later. Our time is
now. We can’t wait for him to strengthen his
command of London. Half the country will still not even have heard that King Edward
is dead. Let us finish Duke Richard before his rule lasts any longer.”

“I should like to recruit some of the lords,” he says.

“Do what you can,” I say indifferently. “I have word from Lady Margaret Stanley that
her husband is ours though he seems to be Richard’s friend. You can ask him. But those
who did not rise for us as Richard came into London can die with him, for all I care.
They are traitors to me and to the memory of my husband. Those who survive this battle
will be tried for treason and beheaded.”

Thomas looks up at me. “Then you are declaring war again,” he says. “We Riverses and
our placemen, our cousins and kinsfolk and affinity against the lords of England with
Duke Richard, your brother-in-law, at their head. This is York against York now. It
will be a bitter struggle and hard to end once it has started. Hard to win, as well.”

“It has to be started,” I reply grimly. “And I have to win.”

The whore Elizabeth
Shore is not the only one who comes to me with whispered news. My sister Katherine,
wife of the prideful Duke of Buckingham, my former ward, comes on a family visit,
bringing good wine and some early raspberries from Kent.

“Your Grace, my sister,” she says to me, curtseying low.

“Sister Duchess,” I reply coolly. We married her to
the Duke of Buckingham when he was an angry orphan of only nine. We won her thousands
of acres of land and the greatest title in England, short of prince. We showed him
that, although he was as proud as a peacock chick of his great name, greater by far
than ours, still we had the power to choose his wife, and it amused me to take his
ancient name and give it to my sister. Katherine was lucky to be made a duchess by
my favor, while I was a queen. And now the circle of fortune goes round and round
and she finds herself married not to a resentful boy but to a man of nearly thirty,
who is now the best friend of the lord protector of England, and I am a widowed queen,
in hiding, with my enemy in power.

She links her arm in mine as she used to do when we were girls at Grafton and we drift
over to the window to look out at the sluggish water. “They are saying you were married
by witchcraft,” she says, her lips hardly moving. “And they are finding someone to
swear that Edward was married to another woman before you.”

I meet her frowning gaze. “It’s an old scandal. It doesn’t trouble me.”

“Please. Listen. I may not be able to come again. My husband grows in power and importance.
I think he will send me away to the country, and I cannot disobey him. Listen to me.
They have Robert Stillington, the Bishop of Bath and Wells—”

“But he is our man,” I interrupt, forgetting that there is no “us” anymore.

“He
was
your man. Not anymore. He was Edward’s
chancellor, but now he is the duke’s great friend. He assures him, as he told George,
Duke of Clarence, that Edward was married to Dame Eleanor Butler before he was married
to you, and that she had his legitimate son.”

I turn my face away. This is the price I pay for having an incontinent husband. “In
truth, I think he promised her marriage,” I whisper. “He may even have gone through
a ceremony with her. Anthony always thought so.”

“That’s not all.”

“What more?”

“They are saying that Edward the king was not even his father’s son. He was a bastard
foisted on his father.”

“That scandal again?”

“That again.”

“And who is serving up these cold old meats?”

“It is the Duke Richard, and my husband, talking everywhere. But worse, I think the
king’s mother Cecily is ready to confess in public that your husband was a bastard.
I think she will do it to put her son Richard on the throne—and your son to one side.
Duke Richard and my husband are claiming everywhere that your husband was a bastard,
and his son too. That makes Duke Richard the next true heir.”

I nod. Of course. Of course. Then we will be banished into exile and Duke Richard
becomes King Richard and his whey-faced son takes my handsome boy’s place.

“And worst of all,” she whispers, “the duke suspects
you of raising your own army. He has warned the council that you plan to destroy him
and all the old lords of England. And so he has sent to York for men loyal to him.
He is bringing an army of northerners down on us.”

I feel my grip on her arm tighten. “I am raising my people,” I confirm. “I have my
plans. When do the men from the north arrive?”

“He has just sent for them,” she says. “They cannot be here for a few days yet. Perhaps
a week, perhaps more. Are you ready to rise now?”

“No,” I breathe. “Not yet.”

“I don’t know what you can do from here. Had you not better come out and go before
the Privy Council yourself? Do any of the lords or Privy Council come to you? Do you
have a plan?”

I nod. “Be sure we have plans. I shall get Edward released, and I shall smuggle my
boy Richard away to safety at once. I am bribing the guards at the Tower to free Edward.
He has good men about him. I can trust them to look the other way. My Grey son Thomas
is going to escape from here. He will go to Sheriff Hutton to rescue his brother Richard
Grey and his uncle Anthony, and then they will arm and come back and release us all.
They will raise our people. We will win this.”

“You will get the boys away first?”

“Edward planned our escapes years ago, before they were even born. I swore I would
keep the boys safe,
whatever happened. Remember we came to the throne through such battles; he never thought
we were safe. We were always prepared for danger. Even if Richard would not hurt them,
I cannot have him holding them and telling the world they are bastards. Our brother
Sir Edward will bring in the fleet to attack Duke Richard, and one of the ships will
take the boys to Margaret in Flanders and they will be safe there.”

She grips my elbow and her face is white. “Dearest . . . oh Elizabeth! Dear God! You
don’t know?”

“What? What now?”

“Our brother Edward is lost. His fleet mutinied against him in favor of the lord protector.”

For a moment I am numb with shock. “Edward?” I turn to her and grip her hands. “Is
he dead? Have they killed our brother Edward?”

She shakes her head. “I don’t know for sure. I don’t think anyone knows. Certainly
he is not proclaimed dead. He was not executed.”

“Who turned the men against him?”

“Thomas Howard.” She names the rising nobleman who has joined Richard’s cause, hoping
for profit and place. “He went among the fleet. They were doubtful at putting to sea
anyway. They turned against the Rivers command. Our family is hated by many of the
common people.”

“Lost,” I say. Still I cannot take in the enormity of our defeat. “We have lost Edward,
and lost the fleet, and lost the treasure he was carrying,” I whisper. “I was
counting on him to rescue us. He was going to come up the river and take us to safety.
And the treasure would have bought us an army in Flanders and paid our supporters
here. And the fleet was to bombard London and take it from the river.”

She hesitates, and then, as if my despair had brought her to a decision, she puts
her hand inside her cape and brings out a scrap of thread, a corner of a kerchief.
She gives it to me.

“What’s this?”

“It is a scrap I cut from Duke Richard’s napkin when he dined with my husband,” she
says. “He held it in his right hand; he wiped his mouth.” She lowers her voice and
her eyes. She was always frightened of our mother’s powers. She never wanted to learn
any of our skills. “I thought you could use it,” she says. “I thought perhaps you
might use it.” She hesitates. “You have to stop the Duke of Gloucester. He grows in
power every day. I thought you might make him sick.”

“You cut this from the duke’s napkin?” I ask incredulously. Katherine always hated
any sort of conjuring; she would never even have her fortune told by the gypsies at
the fair.

“It is for Anthony,” she whispers fiercely. “I am so afraid for our brother Anthony.
You will keep the boys safe, I know. You will get them away. But the duke has Anthony
in his power, and both my husband and the duke hate him so much. They envy him for
his learning
and his bravery and because he is so beloved, and they are afraid of him, and I love
him so much. You have to stop the duke, Elizabeth. Truly you do. You have to save
Anthony.”

I whisk it into my sleeve so that no one, not even the children, can see it. “Leave
this with me,” I say. “Don’t even think about it. You have too honest a face, Katherine.
Everyone will know what I am doing if you don’t put it right out of your mind.”

She gives a nervous giggle. “I never could lie.”

“Forget everything about it.”

We walk back to the front door. “Go with God,” I say to her. “And pray for me and
our boys.”

The smile drains from her face. “These are dark days for us Riverses,” she says. “I
pray you keep your children safe, sister, and yourself.”

“He will be sorry that he started this,” I predict. For a moment I pause, for suddenly,
like a vision, I see Richard looking as young as a lost boy, staggering in the midst
of a battlefield, his great sword slack in his weakened hand. He is looking around
for friends, and he has none. He is looking around for his horse, but his horse has
gone. He is trying to summon his strength, but he has none. The shock on his face
would make anyone pity him.