The White Queen

JUNE 17, 1483

They send my kinsman, Cardinal Thomas Bourchier, and half a dozen other lords from the Privy Council to reason with me, and I greet them as a queen, draped in the royal diamonds looted from the treasury, seated on a grand chair for my throne. I hope I look queenly and dignified; in truth I feel murderous. These are the lords of my Privy Council. They have the positions that my husband gave them. He made them what they are today, and now they dare come to me and tell me what Duke Richard requires of me. Elizabeth stands behind me, and my other four daughters in a row. None of my sons or brothers are present, They don’t remark that my son Thomas Grey is escaped from sanctuary and is on the loose in London, and I certainly don’t draw attention to his absence.

They tell me that they have proclaimed Duke Richard protector of the realm, regent, and governor of the prince, and they assure me that they are preparing for the coronation of my son Prince Edward. They want my younger son Richard to join his brother in the royal rooms in the Tower.

“The duke will be protector for only a matter of days, only till the coronation,” Thomas Bourchier explains to me, his face so earnest that I must trust him. This is a man who has spent his life trying to bring peace to this country. He crowned Edward as king and me as queen because he believed that we would bring peace to this country. I know that he is speaking from his heart. “As soon as the young king is crowned, then all the power reverts to him and you are dowager queen and mother of the king,” he says. “Come back to your palace, Your Grace, and attend the coronation of your son. The people wonder that they don’t see you, and it looks odd to the foreign ambassadors. Let us do as we all swore to the king on his deathbed-put your son on the throne and all work together leaving aside enmity. Let the royal family be housed in the royal apartments in the Tower, and let them come out in their power and their beauty for their boy’s coronation.”

For a moment I am persuaded. More, I am tempted. Perhaps everything can end happily. Then I think of my brother Anthony and my son Richard Grey imprisoned together in Pontefract Castle, and I hesitate. I have to pause and think. I have to keep them safe. While I am in sanctuary, my safety and my son Richard’s safety balances their imprisonment like the weights in a pair of scales. They are hostages for my good behavior, but equally Duke Richard dare not touch them for fear of enraging me. If Richard wants to rid himself of Riverses he has to have all of us in his power. By keeping out of his reach, I protect those of us he does have, as well as those who are free. I have to keep my brother Anthony safe against his enemies. I have to. This is my crusade: like the one I would not let him ride. I have to keep him safe to be the light in the world that he is.

“I cannot release Prince Richard to you,” I say, my voice filled with false regret. “He has been so ill lately, I cannot bear anyone should care for him but me. He is not yet well, he has lost his voice, and if he were to have a relapse, it could be worse than his first illness. If you want him and his brother to be together, then send Edward to join us here, where I can care for them both and know that they are not in danger. I long to see my oldest son by King Edward, and know that he is safe. I pray you, send him to me, to safety. He can be crowned from here, as well as from the Tower.”

“Why, madam,” says Thomas Howard, bristling like the bully that he is. “Can you name any reason why they should be in danger?”

I look at him for a moment. Does he really think that he is likely to trap me into confessing my enmity to the Duke Richard? “All the rest of my family are either run away or imprisoned,” I say flatly. “Why should I think that I and my sons are secure?”

“Now, now,” the cardinal interrupts, nodding at Howard to silence him. “Anyone in prison will be tried before a court of their peers as they should be, and the truth of any accusation will be proved or denied. The lords have ruled that no charge of treason can be brought against your brother Anthony, Earl Rivers. That should satisfy you that we come in good faith. You cannot imagine that I, I myself, should come to you in anything other than good faith?”

“Ah, my lord cardinal,” I say. “I don’t doubt you.”

“Then trust me when I give you my word, my personal word, that your boy will be safe with me,” he says. “I shall take him to his brother and no harm will come to either of them. You distrust the Duke Richard, and he suspects you-this is a sorrow to me, but you both have your reasons-but I will swear that neither the duke nor any other will harm your boys and they will be safe together, and Edward will be crowned king.”

I sigh as if I am overwhelmed by his logic. “And if I refuse?”

He draws close to me and speaks low. “I fear that he will break sanctuary and take you and all your family out of here,” he says very quietly. “And all the lords think he would be right to do so. No one defends your right to be in here, Your Grace. This is a shell around you, not a castle. Let the little Prince Richard out and they will leave you here, if that is your wish. Keep him here and you will all be pulled out, like leeches from a glass jar. Or they can smash the jar.”

Elizabeth, who has been looking out of the window, leans forward and whispers, “Lady Mother, there are hundreds of Duke Richard’s barges on the river. We are surrounded.”

For a moment I do not see the cardinal’s worried face. I do not see the hard expression of Thomas Howard. I do not see the half dozen men who have come with him. I see my husband going into the sanctuary at Tewkesbury with his sword drawn, and I know that from that moment sanctuary was no longer safe. Edward destroyed his son’s safety that day-and he never knew. But I know it now. And thank God I have prepared for it.

I put my handkerchief to my eyes. “Forgive a woman’s weakness,” I say. “I cannot bear to part with him. Can I be spared this?”

The cardinal pats my hand. “He has to come with us. I am sorry.”

I turn to Elizabeth and I whisper, “Fetch him, fetch my little boy.”

Elizabeth leaves in silence, her head bowed.

“He has not been well,” I say to the cardinal. “You must keep him wrapped up warm.”

“Trust me,” he says. “He will come to no harm in my care.”

Elizabeth comes back with the changeling page boy. He is in my Richard’s clothes, a scarf tied round his throat, muffling the lower part of his face. When I hold him to me, he even smells of my own boy. I kiss his fair hair. His little-boy frame is delicate in my arms, and yet he holds himself bravely, as a prince should do. Elizabeth has taught him well. “Go with God, my son,” I say to him. “I shall see you again at your brother’s coronation in a few days.”

“Yes, Lady Mother,” he says like a little parrot. His voice is scarcely more than a whisper but audible to them all.

I take him by the hand and I lead him to the cardinal. He has seen Richard at court, at a distance, and this boy is hidden by the jeweled cap on his head and the flannel round his throat and his jaw. “Here is my son,” I say, my voice trembling with emotion. “I resign him into your hands. I do here deliver him and his brother into your safekeeping.” I turn to the boy and say to him, “Farewell, mine own sweet son, the Almighty be your protector.”

He turns his little face to me, all wrapped in the concealing scarf, and for a moment I feel a sweep of real emotion as I kiss his warm cheek. I may be sending this child into danger instead of my own, but he is still a child, and it is still danger. There are tears in my eyes when I put his little hand in the big soft palm of Cardinal Bourchier, and I say to him over the little head, “Guard this boy, my boy, please, my lord. Keep this boy safe.”

We wait as they take the boy, and file from the room. When they are gone, the scent of their clothes lingers. It is the smell of the outdoors, horse sweat, cooked meats, a fresh breeze blowing over cut grass.

Elizabeth turns to me and her face is pale. “You sent the page boy for you think it is not safe for our boy to go to the Tower,” she observes.

“Yes,” I say.

“So you must think that our Edward is not safe in the Tower.”

“I don’t know. Yes. That is my fear.”

She takes an abrupt step to the window and for a moment she reminds me of my mother, her grandmother. She has the same determination-I can see her puzzling away at the best course. For the first time I think that Elizabeth will make a woman to be reckoned with. She is not a little girl anymore.

“I think you should send to my uncle and ask him for an agreement,” she says. “You could agree that we give him the throne, and he names Edward as his heir.”

I shake my head.

“You could,” she says. “He is Edward’s uncle, a man of honor. He must want a way out of this as much as we do.”

“I will not give up Edward’s throne,” I say tightly. “If Duke Richard wants it, he will have to take it, and shame himself.”

“And what if he does that?” she asks me. “What happens to Edward then? What happens to my sisters? What happens to me?”

“I don’t know,” I say cautiously. “We may have to fight; we may have to argue. But we don’t give up. We don’t surrender.”

“And that little boy,” she says, nodding to the door where the page boy has gone, his jaw tied up with flannel so he does not speak. “Did we take him from his father, and bathe him and clothe him and tell him to be silent as we sent him to his death? Is that how we fight this war, using a child as our shield? Sending a little boy to his death?”