The White Queen

I wish I could know where he will land. But I doubt that he knows himself. They will untie fore and aft, they will throw the lines on board, they will raise the sails, and the half dozen ships will nose their way out of shelter of the port. As they get to the sea the sails will billow, the sheets crack, and the boats rise and fall on the choppy waves, but then they will steer as best they can. They might head for the south coast-rebels always get a good welcome in Cornwall or Kent-or they might head for Wales, where the name of Tudor can bring out thousands. The wind will catch them and take them, and they will have to hope for the best, and when they see land, calculate where they have arrived, and then beat up the coast to find their safest haven.

Richard is no fool-he knew this would come as soon as the winter storms died down. He is in his great castle at Nottingham, at the center of England, calling out his reserves, naming his lords, prepared for the challenge that he knew would come this year, as it would have come last year but for the rain that Elizabeth and I blew up to keep Buckingham from London and away from my boy.

This year, Henry comes with a following wind: the battle has to be met. The Tudor boy is of the House of Lancaster, and this is the final battle in the cousins’ war. There is no doubt in my mind that York will win, as York mostly does. Warwick has gone-even his daughters A

And I expect to see Margaret Beaufort don black to mourn the death of her son.

Her sorrow will be the start of a new life for me and mine. At last, I think I can send for my son Richard. I think it is time.

I have been waiting to set this part of my plan in motion for two years, ever since I had to send my boy away. I write to Sir Edward Brampton, loyal Yorkist, great merchant, man of the world, and sometime pirate. Certainly a man who is not afraid of a little risk and who relishes an adventure.

He arrives on the very day that Cook is gabbling the news that Henry Tudor has landed. Tudor’s ships were blown ashore to Milford Haven and he is marching through Wales recruiting men to his standard. Richard is levying men and marching out of Nottingham. The country is at war once more, and anything could happen.

“Troubled times again,” Sir Edward says to me urbanely. I meet him far from the house, on the banks of the river, where a willow copse shields us from the passing track. Sir Edward’s horse and mine crop the short grass companionably as we stand, both of us looking for the flicker of brown trout in the clear water. I am right to keep us out of sight: Sir Edward is a striking man, richly dressed, black-haired. He has always been a favorite of mine, a godson of Edward my husband, who sponsored his baptism out of Jewry. He always loved Edward for being his godfather; and I would trust him with my life, or with something more precious than life itself. I trusted him when he commanded the ship to take Richard away, and I trust him now, when I hope he will bring him back.

“Times that I think might be to the good of me and mine,” I observe.

“I am at your service,” he says. “And the country is so distracted by the summoning of the levies that I think I might do anything for you, unobserved.”

“I know.” I smile at him. “I don’t forget that you served me once before, when you took a boy on board your ship to Flanders.”

“What can I do for you this time?”

“You can go the town of Tournai, in Flanders,” I say. “To the St. Jean Bridge. The man who keeps the water gate there is called Jehan Werbecque.”

He nods, committing the name to his memory. “And what will I find there?” he asks, his voice very low.

I can hardly speak the secret that I have held in silence for so long. “You will find my son,” I say. “My son Richard. You will find him and bring him to me.”

His grave face lifts to me, his brown eyes shining. “It is safe for him to return? He will be restored to his father’s throne?” he asks me. “You have made an agreement with King Richard and Edward’s boy will be king in his turn?”

“God willing,” I say. “Yes.”

Melusina, the woman who could not forget her element of water, left her sons with her husband, went away with her daughters. The boys grew to be men, Dukes of Burgundy, rulers of Christendom. The girls inherited their mother’s Sight and her knowledge of things unknown. She never saw her husband again, she never ceased to miss him; but at the hour of his death, he heard her singing for him. He knew then, as she knew always, that it does not matter if a wife is half fish, if a husband is all mortal. If there is love enough, then nothing-not nature, not even death itself-can come between two who love each other.

It is midnight, the time we agreed, and I hear the quiet knock at the kitchen door and go down with my candle shielded by my hand to open the door. The fire casts a warm glow over the kitchen; the servers are asleep in the straw in the corners of the room. The dog lifts his head as I go by, but no one else sees me.

The night is warm, it is still, the candle does not flicker as I open the door and pause to see a big man and a boy, an eleven-year-old boy, on the doorstep.

“Come in,” I say quietly. I lead them into the house, up the wooden stairs to my privy chamber, where the lamps are lit and the fire is burning brightly and there is wine poured, waiting in the glasses.

Then I turn, and put down my candle with trembling hands, and look at the boy that Sir Edward Brampton has brought to me. “Is it you? Is it really you?” I whisper.

He has grown, his head comes up to my shoulder, but I would know him anywhere for his hair, bronze like his father’s, and his eyes, hazel. He has his familiar crooked smile and a boyish way of hanging his head. When I reach for him, he comes into my arms as if he were still my little boy, my second son, my longed-for boy, who was born into peace and plenty and always thought the world an easy place.

I sniff at him as if I were a mother cat finding a lost kitten. His skin smells the same. His hair is scented with someone else’s pomade, and his clothes are salty-smelling from the voyage, but the skin of his neck and behind his ears has the smell of my boy, my baby. I would have known him anywhere for my boy.

“My boy,” I say, and I can feel my heart heave with love for him. “My boy,” I say again. “My Richard.”

He puts his arms around my waist and hugs me tightly. “I have been on ships, I have been all over, I can speak three languages,” he says, muffled, his face against my shoulder.

“My boy.”

“It’s not so bad now. It was strange at first. I have learned music and rhetoric. I can play the lute quite well. I have written a song for you.”

“My boy.”

“They call me Piers. That’s Peter in English. They call me Perkin as a nickname.” He pulls back from me and looks into my face. “What will you call me?”

I shake my head. I ca

“Your Lady Mother will call you Piers for the time being,” Sir Edward rules from the fireplace, where he is warming himself. “You are not restored to your own yet. You have to keep your Tournai name for now.”

He nods. I see that his identity has become like a coat to him; he has learned to put it on or off. I think of the man who made me send this little prince into exile and made him hide in a boatman’s house, and sent him to school as a scholarship boy, and I think that I will never forgive him, whoever he may be. My curse is on him, and his firstborn sons will die, and I will have no remorse.