The White Queen

Anthony stands beside me as the king rides away, his hand raised in a salute, a false smile on his face. “Not going with him?” he asks sarcastically. “Not going to London to buy new clothes? Not going to be presented at court? Not attending the thanksgiving Mass as queen?”

“He has to tell Lord Warwick,” I say. “He has to explain.”

“It will be Lord Warwick who will explain to him,” my brother says bluntly. “He will tell him that no King of England can afford to marry a commoner, no King of England would marry a woman who is not a proven virgin. No King of England would marry an Englishwoman of no family and no fortune. And your precious king will explain that it was a wedding witnessed by no lord nor court official, that his new wife has not even told her family, that she wears her ring in her pocket; and they will both agree it can be ignored as if it had never happened. As he has done before, so he will do again, as long as there are foolish women in the kingdom-and that is to say forever.”

I turn to him and at the pain on my face he stops taunting me. “Ah, Elizabeth, don’t look like that.”

“I don’t care if he doesn’t acknowledge me, you fool,” I flare out. “It’s not a question of wanting to be queen; it’s not even a question of wanting honorable love anymore. I am mad for him, I am madly in love with him. I would go to him if I had to walk barefoot. Tell me I am one of many. I don’t care! I don’t care for my name or for my pride anymore. As long as I can have him once more, that’s all I want, just to love him; all I want to be certain of is that I will see him again, that he loves me.”

Anthony folds me in his arms and pats my back. “Of course he loves you,” he says. “What man could not? And if he does not, then he is a fool.”

“I love him,” I say miserably. “I would love him if he were a nobody.”

“No, you wouldn’t,” he says gently. “You are your mother’s child through and through; you don’t have the blood of a goddess in you for nothing. You were born to be queen and maybe everything will come out well. Maybe he loves you and will stand by you.”

I tilt my head back to scan his face. “But you don’t believe it.”

“No,” he says honestly. “To tell you the truth, I think you have seen the last of him.”

SEPTEMBER 1464

He sends me a letter. He addresses me as Lady Elizabeth Grey and inside he writes “my love” he does not say “wife,” so he gives me nothing that can prove our marriage if he should deny it. He writes that he is busy but will send for me shortly. The court is at Reading, he will speak to Lord Warwick soon. The council is meeting, there is so much to do. The lost king, Henry, has still not been captured; he is out somewhere in the hills of Northumberland; but the queen has fled to her homeland of France demanding help, so an alliance with France is more important than ever before, to cut her out of the French councils, and make sure she ca

The same messenger brings a summons for my father to attend the court at Reading. It is a standard letter, every nobleman in the country will have had the same. My brothers Anthony, John, Richard, Edward, and Lionel are to go with him. “Write and tell me everything about it,” my mother commands my father as we watch them mount up. They make a little army themselves, my mother’s fine brood of sons.

“He will be calling us to a

My mother does not even blink at the prospect of Edward’s French bride. “Write and tell me at once,” she says. “And God go with you, my husband, and keep you safe.”

He leans down from the saddle to kiss her hand and then turns his horse’s head down the road to the south. My brothers twirl their whips, raise their hats, bellow a farewell. My sisters wave, my sister-in-law Elizabeth curtseys to Anthony, who raises his hand to her, my mother, and to me. His face is grim.

But it is Anthony who writes to me two days later, and it is his manservant who rides like a madman to bring me his letter.

Sister, This is your triumph, and I am glad to my heart for you. There has been an earthshaking quarrel between the king and Lord Warwick, for my lord brought a marriage contract to the king for him to marry Princess Bona of Savoy, as everyone was expecting. The king, with the contract before him and the pen in his hand, raised his head and told his lordship that he could not marry the Princess for-actually-he was already married.You could have heard a feather fall; you could hear the angels gasp. I swear I heard Lord Warwick’s very heart pound as he asked the king to repeat what he had said. The king was white as a girl but he faced Lord Warwick (which I would not want to do myself) and told him that all his plans and all his promises were as nothing. His lordship took the king by the arm as if he were a boy and hustled him from the room into a privy chamber, leaving the rest of us boiling with gossip and amazement like neeps seething in a stew. I took the chance to pin our father into the corner and tell him that I thought the king might a