Philippa Gregory - The White Queen

I walk home. My mother is waiting for me by the carp lake, gazing down at her own reflection inverted in the water, silver in the grayness of the dusk. Her image looks like a long silver fish rippling in the lake, or a swimming woman. The sky behind her is barred with cloud, like white feathers on pale silk. The moon is rising, a waning moon now. The water is running high tonight, lapping at the little pier. When I stand beside her and look down into the water, you would think we were both rising from the water, like the spirits of the lake.

“You do it every evening?” she asks me. “Pull the line?”

“Yes.”

“Good. That’s good. Has he sent you any token? Any word?”

“I don’t expect anything. He said he would never see me again.”

She sighs. “Oh well.”

We walk back towards the house. “They say he is mustering troops at Northampton,” she says. “King Henry is gathering his forces in Northumberland and will march south on London. The queen will join him with a French army landed at Hull. If King Henry wins, then it will not matter what Edward says or thinks, for he will be dead, and the true king restored.”

My hand flies out to catch her sleeve in instant contradiction. Swift as a striking viper, my mother snatches my fingers. “What’s this? You can’t bear to hear of his defeat?”

“Don’t say it. Don’t say that.”

“Don’t say what?”

“I can’t bear to think of him defeated. I can’t bear to think of him dead. He asked me to lie with him as a soldier facing death.”

She gives a sharp laugh. “Course he did. What man going off to war has ever resisted the opportunity to make the most of it?”

“Well, I refused. And if he doesn’t come back, I shall regret that refusal for the rest of my life. I regret it now. I will regret it forever.”

“Why regret?” she taunts me. “You have your land restored either way. Either you get it back by order of King Edward, or he is dead and King Henry is king and he will restore your land to you. He is our king, of the true House of Lancaster. I would have thought we would wish him victory, and death to the usurper Edward.”

“Don’t say it,” I repeat. “Don’t ill-wish him.”

“Never mind what I say, you stop and think,” she counsels me harshly. “You’re a girl from the House of Lancaster. You cannot fall in love with the heir to the House of York unless he is king victorious, and there is some profit in love for you. These are hard days we are living in. Death is our companion, our familiar. You need not think you can keep Him at arm’s length. You will find He bears you close company. He has taken your husband; hear me: He will take your father and your brothers and your sons.”

I put out both hands to stop her. “Hush, hush. You sound like Melusina warning her house of the death of the men.”

“I do warn you,” she says grimly. “You make me a Melusina when you walk about smiling as if life is easy, thinking you can dally with a usurper. You were not born in an untroubled time. You will live your life in a country divided. You will have to make your way through blood, and you will know loss.”

“Nothing good for me?” I demand through gritted teeth. “Do you, as a loving mother, foresee nothing good at all for your daughter? There is no point cursing me, for I am ready to weep already.”

She stops, and the hard face of the seer dissolves into the warmth of the mother whom I love. “I think you will have him, if that is what you want,” she says.

“More than life itself.”

She laughs at me but her face is gentle. “Ah, don’t say that, child. Nothing in the world matters more than life. You have a long road to walk and a lot of lessons to learn if you don’t know that.”

I shrug and take her arm and, walking in step, we turn for home.

“When the battle is over, whoever wins, your sisters must go to court,” my mother says. She is always planning. “They can stay with the Bourchiers, or the Vaughns. They should have gone months ago, but I could not bear the thought of them far from home and the country in uproar, and never knowing what might happen next, and never able to get news. But when this battle is over, perhaps life will be as it was, only under York instead of Lancaster, and the girls can go to our cousins for their education.”

“Yes.”

“And your boy Thomas will be old enough to leave home soon. He should live with his kinsmen; he should learn to be a gentleman.”

“No,” I say with such sudden emphasis that she turns and looks at me.

“What’s wrong?”

“I will keep my sons with me,” I say. “My boys are not to be taken from me.”

“They will need a proper education; they will need to serve in the household of a lord. Your father will find someone, their own godfathers might-”

“No,” I say again. “No, Mother, no. I cannot consider it. They are not to leave home.”

“Child?” She turns my face to the moonlight so that she can see me more clearly. “It’s not like you to take a sudden whim over nothing. And every mother in the world has to let her sons leave home and learn to be men.”

“My boys are not to be taken from me.” I can hear my voice tremble. “I am afraid…I am afraid for them. I fear…I fear for them. I don’t even know what. But I cannot let my boys go among strangers.”

She puts her warm arm around my waist. “Well, it is natural enough,” she says gently. “You lost your husband; you are bound to want to keep your boys safe. But they will have to go someday, you know.”

I do not yield to her gentle pressure. “It is more than a whim,” I say. “It feels more…”

“Is it a Seeing?” she asks, her voice very low. “Do you know that something could happen to them? Have you come into the Sight, Elizabeth?”

I shake my head and the tears come. “I don’t know, I don’t know. I can’t tell. But the thought of them going from me, and being cared for by strangers, and me waking in the night and not knowing that they are under my roof, waking in the morning and not hearing their voices, the thought of them being in a strange room, served by strangers, not able to see me-I can’t bear it. I can’t even bear the thought of it.”

She gathers me into her arms. “Hush,” she says. “Hush. You need not think of it. I will speak to your father. They need not go until you are happy about it.” She takes my hand. “Why, you are icy cold,” she says, surprised. She touches my face with sudden certainty. “This is not a whim when you are both hot and cold in moonlight. This is a Seeing. My dear, you are warned of danger to your sons.”

I shake my head. “I don’t know. I can’t be sure. I just know that no one should ever take my boys from me. I should never let them go.”

She nods. “Very well. You have convinced me, at least. You have seen some danger for your boys if they are taken from you. So be it. Don’t cry. You shall keep your boys close at hand and we will keep them safe.”

Then I wait. He told me clearly enough that I would never see him again, so I wait for nothing, knowing full well that I am waiting for nothing. But somehow I cannot help but wait. I dream of him: passionate, longing dreams that wake me in the darkness, twisted up in the sheet, sweaty with desire. My father asks me why I am not eating. Anthony shakes his head at me in mocking sorrow.

My mother snaps one bright-eyed glance at me and says, “She is well. She will eat.”

My sisters whisper to ask me if I am pining for the handsome king, and I say sharply, “There would be little point in that.”

And then I wait.

I wait for another seven nights and another seven days, like a maiden in a tower in a fairy tale, like Melusina bathing in the fountain in the forest, waiting for a chevalier to come riding the untrodden ways and love her. Each evening I draw up the loop of thread a little closer until on the eighth day there is a little chink of metal against stone and I look into the water and see a flash of gold. I bend down to pull it out. It is a ring of gold, simple and pretty. One side is straight, but the other is forged into points, like the points of a crown. I put it on the palm of my hand, where he left his kiss, and it looks like a miniature coronet. I slip it on my finger, on my right hand-I tempt no misfortune by putting it on my wedding finger-and it fits me perfectly and suits me well. I take it off with a shrug, as if it were not the highest-quality Burgundian-forged gold. I tuck it into my pocket, and I walk home with it safe in my keeping.