Philippa Gregory - The White Queen

“My son, Prince Edward,” he says.

I laugh, thinking of the silver spoon that I drew out of the silvery river on midwinter’s eve. “How do you know that his name will be Edward?”

“Of course it will. I have been determined on it for years.”

“Your son, Prince Edward,” I repeat. “So make sure you are home safely, in time for his birth.”

“Do you know when?”

“In the autumn.”

“I will come home safely to bring you peaches and salt cod. What was it you wanted so much when you were big with Cecily?”

“Samphire,” I laugh. “Fancy you remembering! I could not have enough of it. Make sure you come home to bring me samphire and anything else I crave. This is a boy, this is a prince; he must have whatever he desires. He will be born with a silver spoon.”

“I shall come home to you. And you are not to worry. I don’t want him born with a frown.”

“Then you beware of Warwick and your brother. I don’t trust them.”

“Promise to rest and be happy and make him strong in your belly?”

“Promise to come back safe and make him strong in his inheritance,” I counter.

“It is a promise.”

He was wrong. Dear God, Edward was so wrong. Not, thank God, about winning the battle: for that was the battle that they called Losecoat Field, when the barefooted fools fighting for a lack-wit king were in such a rush to run away that they dropped their weapons and even their coats to escape from the charge led by my husband, who was fighting his way through them, to keep his promise to me, to come home in time to bring me peaches and samphire.

No, he was wrong about the loyalty of Warwick and George, his brother, who-it turned out-had planned and paid for the uprising and had decided this time to be certain of Edward’s defeat. They were going to kill my Edward and put George on the throne. His own brother and Warwick, who had been his best friend, had decided together that the only way to defeat Edward was to stab him from behind on the battlefield, and they would have done it too; but for the fact that he rode so fast in the charge that no man could catch him.

Before the battle had even begun Lord Richard Welles, the petty leader, had gone down on his knees to Edward, confessed the plan, and showed Warwick’s orders and George’s money. They paid him to lead an uprising in the name of King Henry, but in truth it was only a feint to draw Edward into battle and to kill him there. Warwick had learned his lesson truly. He had learned that you cannot hold a man like my Edward. He has to be dead to be defeated. George, his own brother, had overcome his fraternal affection. He was ready to slit his brother’s throat on the battlefield and to wade through his blood to get to the crown. The two of them had bribed and ordered poor Lord Welles to raise a battle to bring Edward into danger, and then found once again that Edward was too much for them. When Edward saw the evidence against them, he summoned them as kinsmen, the friend who had been an older brother to him and the youth who was his brother indeed; and when they did not come, he knew what to think of them at last, and he summoned them as traitors to answer to him: but they were long gone.

“I shall see them dead,” I say to my mother as we sit before an open window in my privy chamber at Westminster Palace, spinning wool and gold thread to make yarn for a costly cloak for the baby. It will be purest lambswool and priceless gold, a cloak fit for a little prince, the greatest prince in Christendom. “I shall see the two of them dead. I swear it, whatever you say.”

She nods at the spindle in her hand and the wool I am carding. “Don’t put ill-wishing into his little cape,” she says.

I stop the wheel and put the wool to one side. “There,” I say. “The work can wait; but the ill-wishing cannot.”

“Did you know: Edward promised a safe conduct to Lord Richard Welles if he would confess his treason and reveal the plot; but when he did so, he broke his word and killed him?”

I shake my head.

My mother’s face is grave. “Now the Beaufort family are in mourning for their kinsman Welles, and Edward has given a new cause to his enemies. He has broken his word, too. No one will trust him again; no one will dare to surrender to him. He has shown himself a man who cannot be trusted. As bad as Warwick.”

I shrug. “These are the fortunes of war. Margaret Beaufort knows them as well as I. And she will have been unhappy anyway, since she is the heir to the House of Lancaster and we summoned her husband Henry Stafford to march out for us.” I give a hard laugh. “Poor man, caught between her and our summons.”

My mother can’t hide her smile. “No doubt she was on her knees all the while,” she says cattily. “For a woman who boasts that she has the ear of God, she has little benefit to show for it.”

“Anyway, Welles doesn’t matter,” I say. “Alive or dead. What matters is that Warwick and George will be heading for the court of France, speaking ill of us, and hoping to raise an army. We have a new enemy, and this one is in our own house, our own heir. What a family the Yorks are!”

“Where are they now?” my mother asks me.

“At sea, heading for Calais, according to Anthony. Isabel is big with child, on board ship with them, and no one to care for her but her mother, the Countess of Warwick. They will be hoping to enter Calais and raise an army. Warwick is beloved there. And if they put themselves in Calais, we will have no safety at all with them waiting just over the sea, threatening our ships, half a day’s sail away from London. They must not enter Calais; we have to prevent it. Edward has sent the fleet to sea, but our ships will never catch them in time.”

I rise to my feet and lean out of the open window into the sunshine. It is a warm day. The River Thames below me sparkles like a fountain; it is calm. I look to the southwest. There is a line of dark clouds on the horizon as if there might be dirty weather at sea. I put my lips together and I blow a little whistle.

Behind me, I hear my mother’s spindle laid aside, and then I hear the soft sound of her whistle also. I keep my eye on the line of clouds and I let my breath hiss like the wind of a storm. She comes to stand behind me, her arm around my broad waist. Together we whistle gently into the spring air, blowing up a storm.

Slowly but powerfully the dark clouds pile up, one on top of another, until there is a great thunderhead of threatening dark cloud, south, far away, over the sea. The air freshens. I shiver in the sudden chill, and we turn from the cooler, darkening day and close the window on the first scud of rain.

“Looks like a storm out at sea,” I remark.

A week later my mother comes to me with a letter in her hand. “I have news from my cousin in Burgundy. She writes that George and Warwick were blown off the coast of France and then nearly wrecked in terrible seas off Calais. They begged the fort to let them enter for the sake of Isabel, but the castle would not admit them and they had the chain up across the entrance to the port. A wind got up from nowhere and the seas nearly drove them on to the walls. The fort would not let them in; they could not land the boat in high seas. Poor Isabel went into labor in the middle of the storm. They were tossed about for hours, and her baby died.”

I cross myself. “God bless the poor little one,” I say. “Nobody would have wished that on them.”

“Nobody did,” my mother says robustly. “But if Isabel had not taken ship with traitors, then she would have been safe in England with midwives and friends to care for her.”

“Poor girl,” I say, a hand on my own big belly. “Poor girl. She has had little joy from her grand marriage. D’you remember her at court at Christmas?”