Philippa Gregory - The Red Queen

For the first time in my life, I can think kindly of the woman I have served for nearly ten years, Elizabeth Woodville, who was Queen of England and one of the most beautiful and beloved queens that the country has ever had. Never beautiful to me, never beloved to me except now, fleetingly, in this moment of her utter defeat. I think of her in the damp dimness of the Westminster sanctuary, and I think that she will never triumph again, and for the first time in my life I can go on my knees and truly pray for her. All she has in her keeping now are her daughters; the life she reveled in has gone, and her two young sons are held by her enemy. I think of her defeated and afraid, widowed and fearing for her sons, and for the first time in my life I can feel my heart warm towards her: a tragic queen thrown down by no fault of her own. I can pray to Our Lady the Queen of Heaven to succor and comfort Her lost, miserable daughter in these days of her humiliation.

The oldest York girl, Princess Elizabeth, is of marriageable age and is only unmarried at the late age of seventeen years because of the shifting luck of her house. While I am on my knees, praying for the health and safety of the queen, I consider the pretty girl Elizabeth and think what a wife she would make for my son Henry. The son of Lancaster and the daughter of York would together heal the wounds of England and resolve the struggle of two generations. If Richard were to die after taking the throne, his heir would be a child, and a sickly Neville child at that, no more able to defend his claim than the York princes, and as easy to throw down as they have been. If my son were to take the throne then, and marry the York princess, the people would cleave to him as a Lancaster heir and the husband of the York heiress.

I send for my doctor, Dr. Lewis of Caerleon, a man as interested in conspiracy as medicine. The queen knows him as my physician, and she will admit him, knowing he is from me. I tell him to promise her our support, to tell her that Buckingham is ready to be persuaded against Duke Richard, that my son Henry could raise an army in Brittany. And I tell him before anything else to try to discover what plans she has, what her supporters are promising her. My husband may think that she has no hope, but I have seen Elizabeth Woodville come out of sanctuary once before, and take the throne with careless joy, forgetting all about the shame that the Lord had rightly sent her. I tell Lewis he is to say nothing of my husband being under house arrest, but he is to tell her, as a kindly friend, of the murder of Hastings, of the sudden visibility of Richard’s ambition, of the bastardizing of her sons, of the ruin of her name. He is to tell her with compassion that her cause is lost unless she acts. I have to get her to muster what friends she has, raise what army she can afford, and get her troops into battle against Richard. If I can encourage her into a long and bloody battle, then my son can land with fresh troops and take on the exhausted winner.

Lewis goes to her on a day when she will be desperate for a friend: the day that was set for her son’s coronation. I doubt that anyone will have warned her that he is not to be crowned at all. Lewis goes through the streets where doors are shut and windows barred and the people don’t linger at corners to talk, and then he returns to me almost at once. He is wearing his mask against plague, a long conical mask stuffed with herbs and scented with oils, which gives him a terrifying profile, an inhuman face, a white ghost-face. He removes it only when he is in my room with the door shut behind him, and he bows low.

“She is anxious for help,” he says without preamble. “She is a desperate woman; I would judge her half mad with desperation.” He pauses. “I saw the young Princess of York also …”

“And?”

“She was disturbed. She was prophetic.” He gives a little shiver. “She frightened me, and I am a physician who has seen everything.”

I ignore his boast. “How did she frighten you?”

“She came at me out of the darkness, her gown soaked with water from the river, trailing behind her like a tail as if she were half fish. She said that the river had already told her the news I was about to give her mother-that Duke Richard had claimed the throne by right of his legitimacy and that the young princes are proclaimed bastards.”

“She knew that already? They have spies out? I had no idea she could be well informed.”

“It wasn’t the queen; she didn’t know. It was the girl, and she said the river told her. She said the river told her of a death in the family, and the mother knew at once that it was her brother Anthony and her Grey son. They flung open the windows to listen to the river going by. They were like a pair of water witches in there. Any man would have been afraid.”

“She says that Anthony Rivers is dead?”

“They both seemed certain of it.”

I make the sign of the cross. Elizabeth Woodville has been accused of working with dark forces before now, but to speak true from the sanctuary of holy ground is surely the devil’s work.

“She must have spies working for her; she must be better prepared and armed than we realize. But how could she have got news from Wales before me?”

“She said another thing.”

“The queen?”

“The princess. She said that she was cursed to be the next Queen of England and take her brother’s throne.”

We look at each other in stunned incomprehension. “You are sure?”

“She was terrifying. She complained of her mother’s ambition and said that it was a curse laid on the family and that she would have to take her brother’s throne-and that that, at least, would please her mother, though it would disinherit her brother.”

“What could she mean?”

The doctor shrugs. “She didn’t say. She has grown to be a beautiful girl, but she is terrifying. I believed her. I have to say, I believed every word she said. It was like a prophet speaking true. I believe that somehow she will be Queen of England.”

I take a little breath. This is so aligned to my own prayers that it has to be the word of God, though speaking through a most sinful vessel. If Henry were to take the throne and she were to marry him, she would indeed be queen. How else could it come about?

“And there was one other thing,” Lewis says cautiously. “When I asked the queen what were her plans for the princes in the Tower, Edward and Richard, she said: ‘It’s not Richard.’”

“She said what?”

“She said: ‘It’s not Richard.’”

“What did she mean?”

“It was then that the princess came in, with her gown all wet from the river, and she knew everything: the acclamation for the duke, the disinheriting of the family. Then she said that she would be queen.”

“But did you ask the queen what she meant by ‘It’s not Richard’?”

He shakes his head, this man who has seen everything, but did not have the sense to ask the one key thing. “Did you not think it might be rather important?” I snap at him.

“I am sorry. The princess coming in was so … she was unearthly. And then her mother said that now they were in a dry spell but they would be in flood again. They were terrifying. You know what they say about their ancestry-that they come from a water goddess. If you had been there, you would have thought the water goddess about to rise from the Thames itself.”

“Yes, yes,” I say without sympathy. “I see they were frightening, but did she say anything else? Did the queen speak of her brothers who have got away? Did she say where they are or what they are doing? The two of them have the power to raise half the kingdom.”