Philippa Gregory - The White Queen

“Not the old king?”

“We never speak of it,” I say. “Ever.”

“Well, George is going to speak of it now. He looks like a man ready to say anything. You know he is claiming that Edward is not even a son of the House of York? That he is a bastard to Blaybourne the archer? So that George is the true heir?”

I nod. “Edward will have to silence him. This cannot go on.”

“Edward will have to silence him at once,” he warns me. “Or George will bring you, and the whole House of York, down. It is as I said. Your house’s emblem should not be the white rose but the old sign of eternity.”

“Eternity?” I repeat, hopeful that he is going to say something reassuring at this most dark time in our days.

“Yes, the snake which eats itself. The sons of York will destroy each other, one brother destroying another, uncles devouring nephews, fathers beheading sons. They are a house which has to have blood, and they will shed their own if they have no other enemy.”

I put my hands over my belly as if to shield the child from hearing such dark predictions. “Don’t, Anthony. Don’t say such things.”

“They are true,” he says grimly. “The House of York will fall whatever you or I do, for they will eat up themselves.”

I go into my darkened bedchamber for the six weeks of my confinement, leaving the matter still unsettled. Edward cannot think what can be done. A disloyal royal brother is no new thing in England, no new thing for this family, but it is a torment for Edward. “Leave it till I come out,” I say to him on the very threshold of my chamber. “Perhaps he will see sense and beg for a pardon. When I come out, we can decide.”

“And you be of good courage.” He glances at the shadowy room behind me, warm with a small fire, blank-walled, for they take down all images that might affect the shape of the baby waiting to be born. He leans forward. “I shall come and visit you,” he whispers.

I smile. Edward always breaks the prohibition that the confinement chamber should be the preserve of women. “Bring me wine and sweetmeats,” I say, naming the forbidden foods.

“Only if you will kiss me sweetly.”

“Edward, for shame!”

“As soon as you come out then.”

He steps back and formally wishes me well before the court. He bows to me, I curtsey to him, and then I step back and they close the door on the smiling courtiers and I am on my own with the nurses in the small suite of rooms, with nothing to do but wait for the new baby to come.

I have a long hard birth and at the end of it the treasure which is a boy. He is a darling little York boy, with scanty fair hair and eyes as blue as a robin’s egg. He is small and light, and when they put him in my arms, I have an instant pang of fear because he seems so tiny.

“He will grow,” says the midwife comfortingly. “Small babies grow fast.”

I smile and touch his miniature hand and see him turn his head and purse his mouth.

I feed him myself for the first ten days, and then we have a big-bodied wet nurse who comes in and gently takes him from me. When I see her seated in the low chair and the steady way she takes him to her breast, I am sure that she will care for him. He is christened George, as we promised his faithless uncle, and I am churched and I come out of my darkened confinement apartment into the bright sunshine of the middle of August to find that in my absence the new whore, Elizabeth Shore, is all but queen of my court. The king has given up drunken bouts and womanizing in the bathhouses of London. He has bought her a house near to the Palace of Whitehall. He dines with her as well as beds her. He enjoys her company and the court knows it.

“She leaves tonight,” I say briskly to Edward when, resplendent in a gown of scarlet embroidered with gold, he comes to my rooms.

“Who?” he asks mildly, taking a glass of wine at my fireside, no husband more innocent. He waves his hand and the servants whisk from the room, knowing well enough that there is trouble brewing.

“The Shore woman,” I say simply. “Did you not think that someone would greet me with the gossip as soon as I came out of confinement? The wonder is that they held their tongues for so long. I barely stepped out of the chapel door before they were stumbling over each other in their haste to tell me. Margaret Beaufort was particularly sympathetic.”

He chuckles. “Forgive me. I did not know that my doings were of such great interest.”

I say nothing to this untruth. I just wait.

“Ah beloved, it was a long time,” he says. “I know you were in your confinement and then in your time of travail, and my heart went out to you, but nonetheless a man needs a warm bed.”

“I am out of confinement now,” I say smartly. “And you will have an icy bed-it will be a pillow of frost, it will be a counterpane of snow for you-if she is not gone by tomorrow morning.”

He puts out his hand to me and I go to stand beside him. At once, the familiar touch and the scent of his skin when I bend down to kiss his neck overwhelm me.

“Say you are not angry with me, sweetheart,” he whispers to me, his voice a lulling coo.

“You know I am.”

“Then say you will forgive me.”

“You know I always do.”

“Then say we can go to bed and be happy to be together again. You have done so well to give us another boy. You are such a joy when you are plump and newly returned to me. I desire you so much. Say we can be happy.”

“No. You say something.”

His hand slides up my arm and circles my elbow under the sleeve of my nightgown. As always his touch is as intimate as lovemaking. “Anything. What would you have me say?”

“Say that she is gone tomorrow.”

“She is,” he says with a sigh. “But you know, if you would but meet her, you would like her. She is a joyful young woman, and well read and merry. She is a good companion. And one of the sweetest-natured girls that I have ever met.”

“She is gone tomorrow,” I repeat, ignoring the charms of Elizabeth Shore, as if I cared one way or another whether she was well read. As if Edward cared. As if he had the capacity to tell the truth about a woman. He chases after women like a randy dog after a bitch in heat. I swear he knows nothing about their reading or their temperament.

“First thing, my darling. First thing.”

In June, Edward has George arrested for treason, and brings him before the council. Only I know what it cost my husband to accuse his brother of plotting his death. His grief and his shame he kept hidden from everyone else. At the meeting of the Privy Council there is no evidence brought; there need be no evidence. The king himself declares that treason has been committed, and no one can argue with the king on such a charge. And indeed, there is not a man there who has not had the sleeve of his jacket held by George in some dark passageway as George whispered his insane suspicions. There is not a man who has not heard the promise of advancement if he will make a party against Edward. There is not a man who has not seen George refuse any food prepared in any kitchen ordered by me, or throw salt over his shoulder before he sits down to dine at our tables, or clench his fist in the sign against witchcraft when I go by. There is not a man who does not know that George has done everything but write his own accusation of treason and sign his own confession. But none of them, even now, know what Edward wants to do about it. They find him guilty of treason but they do not set a punishment. None of them knows how far this king will go against the brother he still loves.

We celebrate Christmas at Westminster, but it is an odd Christmas with George, Duke of Clarence, missing from his place in the hall, and his mother with a face like thunder. George is in the Tower, charged with treason, well served and well fed, drinking well-I don’t doubt-but his namesake is in our nursery, and his true place is with us. I have all my children around me, which gives me all the joy that I could wish: Edward home from Ludlow, Richard riding with him, Thomas returned from a visit to the court of Burgundy, the other children well and strong, the new baby George in the nursery.