The White Queen (56 page)

“And when I am older, Her Grace Lady Margaret says that I will come back to England
and take up my father’s throne,” my boy says to me. “She says that men have waited
longer and with worse chances than me. She says look at Henry Tudor thinking he has
a chance now, Henry Tudor who had to run away from England when he was younger than
me, and now comes back with an army!”

“He has had a lifetime in exile. Pray God, you will not.”

“Are we going to see the battle?” he asks eagerly.

I smile. “No, a battlefield is no place for a boy. But when Richard wins and marches
to London, we will join him and your sisters.”

“And I can come home then? Do I come back to court? And be with you for always?”

“Yes,” I say. “Yes. We will be together again, as we should be.”

I reach out and stroke his fringe of fair hair from his eyes. He sighs and puts his
head on my lap. For a moment we are very still. I can hear the old house creaking
around us as it settles for the night, and somewhere out in the darkness an owl is
calling.

“And what of my brother Edward?” he asks very quietly. “I have always hoped you had
him in hiding, somewhere else.”

“Has Lady Margaret said nothing? Sir Edward?”

“They say that we don’t know, that we cannot be sure. I thought that you would know.”

“I am afraid he is dead,” I say gently. “Murdered by men in the pay of the Duke of
Buckingham and Henry Tudor. I am afraid your brother is lost to us.”

“When I am grown, I will avenge him,” he says proudly, a York prince in every way.

I put my hand gently on his head. “When you are grown and if you are king, you can
live in peace,” I say. “I will have taken vengeance. It is not for you. It is finished.
I have Masses said for his soul.”

“But not for mine!” he says with his cheeky boyish grin.

“Yes, for yours, for I have to keep up a pretense just as you do, I have to pretend
that you are lost to me as he is, but when I pray for you, at least I know that you
are alive and safe and will come home. And besides, it
will do you no harm to have the good women of Bermondsey Abbey praying for you.”

“They can pray to bring me safely home again then,” he says.

“They do,” I say. “We all do. I have prayed for you three times a day since you went,
and I think of you every hour.”

He leans his head against my knees and I run my fingers through his blond hair. At
the back, behind his ears, it is curly; I can wind the curls around my fingers like
golden rings. It is only when he gives a little snore like a puppy that I realize
we have sat for hours and he is fast asleep. It is only when I feel the weight of
his warm head against my knees that I realize he is truly home, a prince come to his
kingdom; and that, when battle is met and won, the white rose of York will bloom once
more in the green hedgerows of England.

JAMES STEWART

P
HILIPPA
G
REGORY
was already an established historian and writer when she discovered her interest
in the Tudor period and wrote the internationally bestselling novel
The Other Boleyn Girl
. Now she is looking at the family that preceded the Tudors: the magnificent Plantagenets,
a family of complex rivalries, loves, and hatreds.

Her other great interest is the charity that she founded nearly twenty years ago:
Gardens for The Gambia. She has raised funds and paid for 140 wells for the primary
schools of this African country. A former student of Sussex University, and a Ph.D.
and Alumna of the Year 2009 of Edinburgh University, her love for history and commitment
to historical accuracy are the hallmarks of her writing. She lives with her family
on a small farm in Yorkshire, England.

She welcomes visitors to her website at
www.PhilippaGregory.com
.

This new novel, the first of a series about the Plantagenets, came from my discovery
of one of the most interesting and thought-provoking queens of England: Elizabeth
Woodville. Most of the story that I tell about her here is fact, not fiction—she lived
a life far beyond even my imagination! She was indeed the most famously beautiful
descendant of the dukes of Burgundy, who cherished the tradition that they were descended
from Melusina, the water goddess. When I discovered this fact, I realized that in
Elizabeth Woodville, a rather disregarded and disliked queen, I would be able to rewrite
the story of a queen of England who was also the descendant of a goddess and the daughter
of a woman tried and found guilty of witchcraft.

Given my own interest in the medieval view of magic, of what it tells us about women’s
power, and of the prejudice that powerful women meet, I knew this was going to be
rich terrain for me as a researcher and writer—and so it has been.

We know that Elizabeth first met Edward with a request for financial help and that
she married him in secret, but their meeting on the road as she stood under an oak
tree (which is still growing at Grafton Regis, Northamptonshire, today) is a popular
legend
and may or may not be true. Her drawing of his dagger to save herself from rape was
a contemporary rumor; we don’t know it was historical fact. But much of her life with
Edward was well recorded, and I have drawn on the histories and based my novel on
the facts wherever they exist. Of course, sometimes I have had to choose from rival
and contradictory versions, and sometimes I have had to fill in the gaps of history
with explanations or accounts of my own making.

There is more fiction in this novel than in my previous ones, since we are further
back in time than the Tudors, and the record is more patchy. Also, this was a country
at war and many decisions were taken on the spot, leaving no documentary record. Some
of the most important decisions were secret plots, and often I have had to deduce
from the surviving evidence the reasons for particular actions, or even what took
place. For example, we have no reliable evidence as to the so-called “Buckingham Plot,”
but we know that Lady Margaret Stanley, her son Henry Tudor, Elizabeth Woodville,
and the Duke of Buckingham were the main leaders of the rebellion against Richard.
Clearly they all had very different reasons for the risks they took. We have some
evidence of the go-betweens, and some idea of the plans, but the exact strategy and
command structure were secret and remain so. I looked at the surviving evidence and
the consequences of the plot and I suggest here how it may have been put together.
The supernatural element of the real-life rain storm is, of course, the fictional
and was a joy to imagine.

Equally, we don’t know even now (after hundreds of theories) exactly what happened
to the princes in the Tower. I speculate that Elizabeth Woodville would have prepared
a haven for her second son, Prince Richard, after her first son, Prince Edward, was
taken from her. I genuinely doubt that she would have sent her second son into the
hands of the man she suspected of imprisoning the first. The provocative suggestion,
by many serious historians, that Prince Richard might have survived, led me to speculate
that she might not have sent him to the Tower at all, but used a changeling to take
his place. But I have to warn the reader that there is no hard evidence for this.

Again, there is no definitive evidence as to how the boys met their deaths, if they
did, nor who gave the order; and, of course, there are still no bodies positively
identified as those of the princes. I suggest that King Richard would not have murdered
the boys, as there was little to gain and much to lose for him; and I don’t believe
that Elizabeth Woodville would have put her daughters in his care if she had thought
him the murderer of her sons. It seems also that she recalled her son Thomas Grey
from the court of Henry Tudor, which perhaps indicates that she was disenchanted with
the Tudor claim and allying with Richard. All this remains a genuine mystery and I
merely add my suggestion to the many others, proposed by historians, some of which
you can find in the books listed in the bibliography.

*  *  *

I am indebted to the scholar Professor David Baldwin, author of
Elizabeth Woodville: Mother of the Princes in the Tower,
both for his clear and sympathetic portrayal of the queen in his book and for his
advice on this novel, and I am grateful also to the many historians and enthusiasts
whose studies are based on their love for this period, which I now share, and I hope
you do too.

More information about the research and writing of this book can be found on my website,
Philippa Gregory.com, where there are also details of seminars on this book which
I gave on tour in the UK, the United States, and worldwide, and on regular webcasts.

Baldwin, David.
Elizabeth Woodville: Mother of the Princes in the Tower.
Stroud, Gloucestershire: Sutton Publishing, 2002.

———.
The Lost Prince: The Survival of Richard of York.
Stroud, Gloucestershire: Sutton Publishing, 2007.

Castor, Helen.
Blood & Roses: The Paston Family in the Fifteenth Century.
London: Faber and Faber, 2004.

Cheetham, Anthony.
The Life and Times of Richard III.
London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1972.

Chrimes, S. B.
Henry VII.
London: Eyre Methuen, 1972.

———.
Lancastrians, Yorkists, and Henry VII.
London: Macmillan, 1964.

Cooper, Charles Henry.
Memoir of Margaret: Countess of Richmond and Derby.
Cambridge University Press, 1874.

Crosland, Margaret.
The Mysterious Mistress: The Life and Legend of Jane Shore.
Stroud, Gloucestershire: Sutton Publishing, 2006.

Fields, Bertram.
Royal Blood: Richard III and the Mystery of the Princes.
New York: Regan Books, 1998.

Gairdner, James. “Did Henry VII Murder the Princes?”
English Historical Review
VI (1891): 444–464.

Goodman, Anthony.
The Wars of the Roses: Military Activity and English Society, 1452–97.
London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1981.

———.
The Wars of the Roses: The Soldiers’ Experience.
London: Tempus, 2005.

Hammond, P. W., and Anne F. Sutton.
Richard III: The Road to Bosworth Field.
London: Constable, 1985.

Harvey, Nancy Lenz.
Elizabeth of York, Tudor Queen.
London: Arthur Baker, 1973.

Hicks, Michael.
Anne Neville: Queen to Richard III.
London: Tempus, 2007.

———.
The Prince in the Tower: The Short Life & Mysterious Disappearance of Edward V.
London:
Tempus, 2007.

———.
Richard III.
London: Tempus, 2003.

Jones, Michael K., and Malcolm G. Underwood.
The King’s Mother: Lady Margaret Beaufort, Countess of Richmond and Derby.
Cambridge University Press, 1992.

Kendall, Paul Murray.
Richard the Third.
New York: W. W. Norton, 1975.

MacGibbon, David.
Elizabeth Woodville (1437–1492): Her Life and Times.
London: Arthur Baker, 1938.

Mancinus, Dominicus.
The Usurpation of Richard the Third: Dominicus Mancinus ad Angelum Catonem de occupatione
Regni Anglie per Ricardum Tercium Libellus,
translated and with an introduction by C.A.J. Armstrong. Oxford: Clarendon Press,
1969.

Markham, Clements, R. “Richard III: A Doubtful Verdict Reviewed,”
English Historical Review
VI
(1891): 250–283.

Neillands, Robin.
The Wars of the Roses.
London: Cassell, 1992.

Plowden, Alison.
The House of Tudor.
London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1976.

Pollard, A. J.
Richard III and the Princes in the Tower.
Stroud, Gloucestershire: Sutton Publishing, 2002.

Prestwich, Michael.
Plantagenet England, 1225–1360.
Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2005.

Read, Conyers.
The Tudors: Personalities and Practical Politics in Sixteenth Century England.
Oxford University Press, 1936.

Ross, Charles.
Edward IV.
London: Eyre Methuen, 1974.

———.
Richard III.
London: Eyre Methuen, 1981.

Seward, Desmond.
A Brief History of The Hundred Years War: The English in France, 1337–1453.
London: Constable and Company, 1978.

———.
Richard III, England’s Black Legend.
London: Country Life Books, 1983.

Simon, Linda.
Of Virtue Rare: Margaret Beaufort, Matriarch of the House of Tudor.
Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1982.

St. Aubyn, Giles.
The Year of Three Kings, 1483.
London: Collins, 1983.

Thomas, Keith.
Religion and the Decline of Magic: Studies in Popular Beliefs in Sixteenth and Seventeenth
Century England.
London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1971.