Philippa Gregory - The White Queen

Three thousand noblemen and their ladies sit down to dine with me and each course has nearly twenty dishes. I put off my crown to eat, and put it back on again between every course. It is like a prolonged dance where I have to remember the steps and it goes on for hours. To shield me from prying eyes, the Countess of Shrewsbury and the Countess of Kent kneel to hold a veil before me when I eat. I taste every dish out of courtesy but I eat almost nothing. The crown presses down like a curse on my head and my temples throb. I know myself to have ascended to the greatest place in the land and I long only for my husband and my bed.

There is a moment at one point in the evening, probably around the tenth course, when I actually think that this has been a terrible mistake and I would have been happier back at Grafton, with no ambitious marriage and no ascent to the rank of royals. But it is too late for regrets, and even though the finest of dishes taste of nothing in my weariness, I must still smile and smile, and put my heavy crown back on, and send out the best dishes to the favorites of the king.

The first go out to his brothers, George the golden young man, Duke of Clarence, and the youngest York boy, twelve-year-old Richard, Duke of Gloucester, who smiles shyly at me and dips his head when I send him some braised peacock. He is as unlike his brothers as is possible, small and shy and dark-haired, slight of build and quiet, while they are tall and bronze-headed and filled with their own importance. I like Richard on sight, and I think he will be a good companion and playmate to my boys, who are only a little younger than him.

At the end of the dinner, when I am escorted back to my chambers by dozens of noblemen and hundreds of clergy, I hold my head high as if I am not weary, as if I am not overwhelmed. I know that I have become something more than a mortal woman today: I have become half a goddess. I have become a divinity something like my ancestress Melusina, who was born a goddess and became a woman. She had to forge a hard bargain with the world of men to move from one world to another. She had to surrender her freedom in the water to earn her feet so that she could walk beside her husband on the earth. I can’t help but wonder what I will have to lose in order to be queen.

They put me to bed in Margaret of Anjou’s bed, in the echoing royal bedchamber, and I wait, the cover of cloth of gold up to my ears, until Edward can get away from the feasting and join me. He is escorted into my bedroom by half a dozen companions and menservants, and they formally undress him and leave him only when he is in his nightgown. He sees my wide-eyed gaze and laughs as he closes the door behind them.

“We are royal now,” he says. “These ceremonies have to be endured, Elizabeth.”

I reach out my arms for him. “As long as you are still you, even underneath the crown.”

He throws off his gown and comes naked to me, his shoulders broad, his skin smooth, the muscles moving in thigh and belly and flank. “I am yours,” he says simply, and when he slides into the cold bed beside me, I quite forget that we are queen and king and think only of his touch and my desire.

The following day there is a great tournament and the noblemen enter the lists in beautiful costumes, with poetry bellowed by their squires. My boys are in the royal box with me, their eyes wide and their mouths open at the ceremony, the flags, the glamour and the crowds, the enormity of the first great joust they have ever seen. My sisters and Elizabeth-Anthony’s wife-are seated beside me. We are starting to form a court of beautiful women; already people are speaking of an elegance that has never before been seen in England.

The Burgundian cousins are out in force, their armor the most stylish, their poetry the best for meter. But Anthony, my brother, is superb: the court goes mad over him. He sits a horse with such grace and he carries my favor and breaks the lances of a dozen men. No one can match his poetry either. He writes in the romantic style of the southern lands; he tells of joy with a tinge of sadness, a man smiling at tragedy. He composes poems about love that can never be fulfilled, of hopes that summon a man across a desert of sand, a woman across a sea of water. No wonder every lady at court falls in love with him. Anthony smiles, picks up the flowers that they throw into the arena, and bows, hand on his heart, without asking any lady for her favor.

“I knew him when he was just my uncle,” Thomas remarks.

“He is the favorite of the day,” I say to my father, who comes to the royal box to kiss my hand.

“What is he thinking of?” he demands of me, puzzled. “In my day we killed an opponent, not made a poem about them.”

Anthony’s wife Elizabeth laughs. “This is the Burgundian way.”

“These are chivalrous times,” I tell my father, smiling at his broad-faced puzzlement.

But the winner of the day is Lord Thomas Stanley, a handsome man who lifts his visor and comes for his prize, pleased to have won. The motto of his family is shown proudly on his standard: “Sans Changer.”

“What does it mean?” Richard mutters to his brother.

“Without changing,” Thomas says. “And you would know if you studied rather than wasting your time.”

“And do you never change?” I ask Lord Stanley. He looks at me: the daughter of a family that has changed completely, turned from one king to another, a woman who has changed from being a widow into being a queen, and he bows. “I never change,” he says. “I support God and the king and my rights, in that order.”

I smile. Pointless to ask him how he knows what God wants, how he knows which king is rightful, how he can be sure that his rights are just. These are questions for peace, and our country has been at war too long for complicated questions. “You are a great man in the jousting arena,” I remark.

He smiles. “I was lucky not to be listed against your brother Anthony. But I am proud to joust before you, Your Grace.”

I bend from the queen’s box to give him the prize of the tournament, a ruby ring, and he shows me that it is too small for his big hand.

“You must marry a beautiful lady,” I tease him. “A virtuous woman, whose price is beyond rubies.”

“The finest lady in the kingdom is married and crowned.” He bows to me. “How shall we-who are neglected-bear our unhappiness?”

I laugh at this, it is the very language of my kinsmen, the Burgundians who have made flirtation a form of high art. “You must endeavor,” I say. “So formidable a knight should found a great house.”

“I will found my house, and you will see me win again,” he says, and at his words, for some reason, I feel a little shiver. This is a man who is not just strong in the jousting arena, I think. This is a man who would be strong on the battlefield. This is a man without scruple who will pursue his own interest. Formidable, indeed. Let us hope he is true to his motto and never changes from his loyalty to our House of York.

When the goddess Melusina fell in love with the knight he promised her that she would be free to be herself if she would only be his wife. They settled it that she would be his wife and walk on feet but once a month, she might go to her own chamber, fill a great bath with water, and, for one night only, be her fishy self. And so they lived in great happiness for many years. For he loved her and he understood that a woman cannot always live as a man. He understood that she could not always think as he thought, walk as he walked, breathe the air that he took in. She would always be a different being from him, listening to a different music, hearing a different sound, familiar with a different element. He understood that she needed her time alone. He understood that she had to close her eyes and sink beneath the glimmer of the water and swish her tail and breathe through her gills and forget the joys and the trials of being a wife-just for a while, just once a month. They had children together, and they grew in health and beauty; he grew more prosperous and their castle was famous for its wealth and grace. It was famous also for the great beauty and sweetness of its lady, and visitors came from far away to see the castle, its lord, and his beautiful mysterious wife.