Philippa Gregory - The White Queen

In the morning when Anthony came downstairs to breakfast in his inn, he found the doors barred and his men ordered away. He found Richard and Henry Stafford, the Duke of Buckingham, armed for battle, their men standing stone-faced in the yard. And they took him away, with my boy Richard Grey, and Sir Thomas Vaughan accused of treason, though they all three were faithful servants of my boy the new king.

Anthony, in prison, awaiting his death in the morning, listens at the window for a moment, in case there is such a thing as the strong sweet song of Melusina, expecting to hear nothing, and then smiles when he hears a bell-like ringing. He shakes his head to clear the noise from his ears, but it stays, an unearthly voice that makes him, irreverently, chuckle. He never believed the legend of the girl who is half fish and half woman, the ancestor of his house; but now he finds he is comforted to hear her singing for his death. He stays at the window and leans his forehead against the cool stone. To hear her voice, high and clear, around the battlements of Pontefract Castle proves at last that his mother’s gifts and his sister’s gifts and her daughter’s gifts are real: as they always claimed, as he only half believed. He wishes he could tell his sister that he knows this now. They may need these gifts. Their gifts may be enough to save them. Perhaps to save all the family who named themselves Rivers to honor the water goddess who was the founder of their family. Perhaps even to save their two Plantagenet boys. If Melusina can sing for him, an unbeliever, then perhaps she can guide those who listen for her warnings. He smiles because the high clear song gives him hope that Melusina will watch over his sister and her boys, especially the boy who was in his care, the boy he loves: Edward the new King of England. And he smiles because her voice is that of his mother.

He spends the night not in praying, nor in weeping but in writing. In his last hours he is not an adventurer, nor a knight, nor even a brother or an uncle, but a poet. They bring his writings to me and I see that, at the end, at the very moment he was facing his death, and the death of all his hopes, he knew that it was all vanity. Ambition, power, even the throne itself that has cost our family so dear: at the end he knew it was all meaningless. And he did not die in bitterness at this knowledge, but smiling at the folly of man, at his own folly.

He writes:

Somewhat musing And more mourning, In remembering Th’ unsteadfastness; This world being Of such wheeling, Me, contrarying; What may I guess?

With displeasure, To my grievance, And no surance Of remedy; Lo, in this trance, Now in substance, Such is my dance, Willing to die

Methinks truly, Bounden am I, And that greatly, To be content; Seeing plainly Fortune doth wry All contrary From mine intent.

This is the last thing he does at dawn, and then they take him out and behead him on the orders of Richard, Duke of Gloucester, the new lord protector of England, who is now responsible for my safety, the safety of all my children, and especially the safety and future of my son Prince Edward, the rightful King of England.

I read Anthony’s poem later, and I think that I particularly like “Fortune doth wry/ All contrary/ From mine intent.” Fortune has gone against all us Riverses this season: he was right in that.

And I shall have to find a way to live without him.

Something has changed between my daughter Elizabeth and me. My girl, my child, my first baby, has suddenly grown up, grown away. The child who believed that I knew everything, that I commanded everything, is now a young woman who has lost her father, and doubts her mother. She thinks I am wrong to keep us in sanctuary. She blames me for the death of her uncle Anthony. She accuses me-though never saying a word-of failing to rescue her brother Edward, of sending her little brother Richard out, unprotected, into the gray silence of the evening river.

She doubts that I have secured a safe hiding place for Richard and that our plan of the changeling page will work. She knows that if I sent a false prince to keep Edward company, it is because I doubt my ability to get Edward home safe. She has no hopes of the uprising that my Grey son Thomas is organizing. She fears that we will never be rescued.

Ever since the morning when we heard the singing of the river, and then the afternoon when they brought us the news of Anthony and Richard Grey’s death, she has no faith in my judgment. She has not repeated her belief that we are cursed, but there is something about the darkness of her eyes and the pallor of her face that tells me she is hagridden. God knows, I have not cursed her, and I know no one who would do such a thing to such a girl of gold and silver, but it is true: she looks as if someone has put a dark thumbprint down on her and marked her out for a hard destiny.

Dr. Lewis comes again and I ask him to look at her and tell me if she is well. She has almost stopped eating and she is pale. “She needs to be free,” he says simply. “I tell you as a physician what I hope to see soon as an ally. All your children, you yourself, Your Grace, cannot stay here. You need to be out in the good air, enjoying the summer. She is a delicate girl-she needs exercise and sunshine. She needs company. She is a young woman-she should be dancing and courting. She needs to plan her future, to dream of her betrothal, not to be cooped up here, fearing death.”

“I have an invitation from the king.” I make myself say the title, as if Richard could ever deserve it, as if the crown on his head and the oil on his breast could make him anything more than the traitor and the turncoat he is. “The king is anxious that I take the girls to my house in the country this summer. He says the princes can be released to me there.”

“And will you go?” He is intent on my answer. He leans forward to hear.

“My boys must be released to me first. I have no guarantee of my safety or that of my girls unless my boys are returned to me, as he promised they would be.”

“Take care, Your Grace, take care. Lady Margaret fears he will play you false,” he breathes. “She says the Duke of Buckingham thinks that he will have your boys…” He hesitates as if he cannot bear to say the words. “Done to death. She says that the Duke of Buckingham is so horrified by this that he will rescue your boys for you, restore your sons to you, if you will guarantee his safety and his prosperity when you are back in power. If you will promise him your friendship, your undying friendship when you come to your own again. Lady Margaret says that she will bring him to make an alliance with you and yours. The three families: Stafford, Rivers, and the House of Lancaster, against the false king.

I nod. I have been waiting for this. “What does he want?” I ask bluntly.

“His daughter, when he has one, to marry your son, the young King Edward,” he says. “He himself to be named as regent and lord protector till the young king is of age. He himself to have the kingdom of the north-just as Duke Richard had. If you will make him as great a duke as your husband made Duke Richard, he will betray his friend and rescue your sons.”

“And what does she want?” I ask, as if I cannot guess, as if I do not know that she has spent every day of the last twelve years, ever since her son was exiled, trying to bring him safely back to England. He is the only child she has ever conceived, the only heir to her family fortune, to her dead husband’s title. Everything she achieves in her life will be nothing if she cannot get her son back to England to inherit.

“She wants an agreement that her son can take his title and inherit her lands, her brother-in-law Jasper restored to his lands in Wales. She wants them both free to return to England, and she wants to betroth her son Henry Tudor to your daughter Elizabeth, and to be named as heir after your boys,” he says in a rush.