The White Queen

I give a little cry and turn on the pillow. The rich embroidery presses against my cheek and I sleep again; but again I wake to the image of Edward riding hard through darkness on a strange road.

I half wake, crying out against the picture in my mind, and as I drift between sleeping and wakefulness, I see a small fishing port, Edward, Anthony, William, and Richard hammering on a door, arguing with a man, hiring his boat, forever looking over their shoulders to the west, for their enemies. I hear them promise the ship’s master anything, anything! if he will launch his little ship and take them to Flanders. I see Edward strip off his great coat of furs and offer it as payment. “Take it,” he says. “It’s worth more than your boat twice over. Take it and I will think it a service.”

“No,” I say in my sleep. Edward is leaving me, leaving England, leaving me and breaking his word that he would be with me for the birth of our son.

The seas are high outside the harbor, the dark waves topped with white foam. The little ship rises and falls, rolling between the waves, water breaking over the bows. It seems impossible that it should climb to the top of the waves, and then it crashes down in the troughs. Edward stands at the stern, clutching to the side for support, thrown about by the movement of the boat, looking back at the country he called his own, watching for the flare of the torches of the men coming after him. He has lost England. We have lost England. He claimed the throne, and he was crowned king. He crowned me as queen, and I believed that we were established. He never lost a battle; but Warwick has been too much, too fast, too duplicitous for him. Edward is heading for exile, just as Warwick did. He is heading out into a vicious storm, just as Warwick did. But Warwick went straight to the King of France and found an ally and an army. I ca

Warwick is back in power, and now it is my husband and my brother Anthony and my brother-in-law Richard who are the fugitives, and God knows what wind will ever blow them back to England again. And the girls and I, and the baby in my belly, are the new hostages, the new prisoners. I may be in the royal apartments of the Tower for now, but soon I shall be in the rooms below, with the bars over the window, and King Henry will sleep in this bed again, and I shall be the one who people say should, for Christian charity, be released, so that I do not die in prison, without sight of the free sky.

“Edward!” I see him look up, almost as if he can hear me call for him in my sleep, in my dream. “Edward!” I ca

I scream out loud: “Edward! Don’t leave me!” and the terror in my voice starts me into full wakefulness, and next door my mother lights a candle from the fire, and opens the door. “Is he coming? The baby? Is he early?”

“No. I had a dream. Mother, I had a most terrible dream.”

“There, there, never mind,” she says, quick to comfort. She lights candles at my bedside; she stirs up the fire with a kick from her slippered foot. “There, Elizabeth. You’re safe now.”

“We’re not safe,” I say certainly. “That’s the very thing.”

“Why, what did you dream?”

“It was Edward, on a ship, in a storm. It was night, the seas were huge. I don’t even know if his ship will get through. It’s an ill wind that blows no good, Mother, and he was facing an ill wind. It was our wind. It was the gale we called up to blow George and Warwick away. We called it up, but it has not blown away. Edward is in a storm of our making. Edward was dressed like a servant, a poor man: he had nothing, nothing but the clothes he stood up in. He had given away his coat. Anthony was there; he didn’t even have his cape. William Hastings was with them, and Edward’s brother Richard. They were all that had survived, they were all that could run. They were…” I close my eyes trying to remember. “They were leaving us, Mother. Oh Mother, he’s left England, he’s left us. He’s lost. We’re lost. Edward has gone, Anthony too. I am sure of it.”

She takes my cold hands and rubs them in her own. “Perhaps it was just a bad dream,” she says. “Perhaps nothing but a dream. Women with child, near their time, have strange fancies, vivid dreams…”

I shake my head, I throw back the covers. “No. I am certain. It was a Seeing. He is defeated. He has run away.”

“D’you think he has gone to Flanders?” she asks. “To take refuge with his sister, the Duchess Margaret, and Charles of Burgundy?”

I nod. “Of course. Of course he has. And he will send for me, I don’t doubt him. He loves me, and he loves the girls, and he swore he would never leave me. But he has gone, Mother. Margaret of Anjou must have landed, and she will be marching here, to London, to free Henry. We have to go. I have to get the girls away. We can’t be here when her army comes in. They will imprison us forever if they find us here.”

My mother throws a shawl around my shoulders. “Are you sure? Can you travel? Shall I send a message to the docks and shall we take a ship?”

I hesitate. I am so afraid of the voyage when my baby is near to his time. I think of Isabel, crying out in pain on a rocking ship, and nobody to help her with the birth, the baby dying and not even a priest to christen him. I can’t face what she had to face, with the wind screaming in the rigging. I am afraid that the wind I whistled up is still blowing down the sea roads, its ill nature unsatisfied by the death of one baby, looking around the horizon for unsteady sails. If that wind sees me and my girls on the heaving sea, then we will be drowned.

“No, I can’t bear it. I don’t dare. I am too afraid of the wind. We’ll go into sanctuary. We’ll go to Westminster Abbey. They won’t dare hurt us there. We’ll be safe there. The Londoners love us still and Queen Margaret wouldn’t break sanctuary. If King Henry is in his wits, he would never let her break sanctuary. He believes in the power of God working in the world. He will respect sanctuary and make Warwick leave us alone. We’ll take the girls and my Grey sons and go into sanctuary. At least until my son is born.”