Philippa Gregory - The White Queen

“As well they should know now as later,” he says smoothly, too smoothly.

“Why? I say. “Why should they know now, before the battle?”

“So that everyone knows it is the false king who gave the order,” he says. “So that Duke Richard has the blame. Your people will rise for revenge.”

I cannot think, I cannot think why this matters. I can sense a lie in here somewhere, but I cannot put my finger on it. Something is wrong, I know it.

“But who would doubt that it is King Richard who had them killed? As you say, the murderer of my kinsmen? Why would we declare our fears now, and confuse our people?”

“Nobody would doubt it,” he assures me. “No one else but Richard would do such a thing. No one else would benefit from such a crime.”

I jump to my feet in sudden impatience, and knock the table and overturn the candlestick.

“I don’t understand!”

He snatches at the candle and the flame bobs and throws a terrible shadow on his friendly face. For a moment he is as he was when I first saw him when Cecily came to tell me that Death was at the door. I gasp in fear and I step back from him as he puts the candle carefully back on the table and stands, as he should do, since I, the dowager queen, am standing.

“You can go,” I say disjointedly. “Forgive me, I am distressed. I don’t know what to think. You can leave me.”

“Shall I give you a draft to help you sleep? I am so sorry for your grief.”

“No, I will sleep now. I thank you for your company.” I take a breath. I push back the hair from my face. “You have calmed me with your wisdom. I am at peace now.”

He looks puzzled. “But I have said nothing.”

I shake my head. I cannot wait for him to leave. “You have shared my worries, and that is the act of a friend.”

“I shall see Lady Margaret first thing this morning and tell her of your fears. I shall ask her to put her men in the Tower to get news of your boys. If they are alive, we will find men to guard them. We will keep them safe.”

“At least Richard is safe,” I remark incautiously.

“Safer than his brother?”

I smile like a woman with a secret. “Doctor, if you had two precious rare jewels and you feared thieves, would you put your two treasures in the same box?”

“Richard was not in the Tower?” His voice is a breath, his blue eyes staring; he is all aquiver.

I put my finger to my lips. “Hush.”

“But two boys were killed in the bed…”

Were they? Oh were they? How are you so very sure of this? I keep my face as still as marble as he turns from me, and bows and goes to the door.

“Tell Lady Margaret I beg her to guard my son in the Tower as if he were her own,” I say.

He bows again and is gone.

When the children wake, I tell them I am ill and I keep to my chamber. Elizabeth I turn away at the door and tell her that I need to sleep. I don’t need sleep, I need to understand. I hold my head in my hands and walk up and down the room barefoot, so that they don’t hear that I am pacing, racking my brains. I am alone in a world of master conspirators. The Duke of Buckingham and Lady Margaret are working together, or perhaps they are working for themselves. They are pretending to serve me, to be allies, or perhaps they are loyal and I am wrong to mistrust them. My mind goes round and round and I pull the hair at my temples as if the pain could make me think.

I have ill-wished Richard, the tyrant, but his death can wait. He imprisoned my boys, but it is not he who is spreading the rumor that they are dead. He was holding them in prison against their will, against my will; but he was not preparing the people for their deaths. He has taken the throne and he has taken the title Prince of Wales by lies and deception. He does not need to kill them to get his own way. He is triumphant already, without murdering my son. He got all he wanted without blood on his hands, so there is no need for him to kill Edward now. Richard is safe on the throne, the council has accepted him, the lords have accepted him, he is on a royal progress in a country that greets him with joy. There is a rebellion in the making, of my making; but he thinks Howard has put it down. As far as he knows he is safe. He need only keep my boys imprisoned until I am ready to accept my defeat, as Elizabeth urges me to do.

But the Duke of Buckingham has a claim to inherit the throne that would follow that of Richard’s line-but only if my sons were dead. His claim is no good unless my sons are dead. If Richard’s sickly son were to die and Richard were to fall in battle and Buckingham were leading the victorious rebellion, then Buckingham could take the crown. Nobody would deny that he is the next heir-especially if everyone knew that my sons were already dead. Then Buckingham would do just as my Edward did when he claimed the crown; but there was a rival claimant in the Tower. When my Edward entered London at the head of a victorious army, he went straightaway with his two brothers into the Tower of London, where the true king was prisoner and they killed him, though Henry had no more strength than an innocent boy. When the Duke of Buckingham defeats Richard, he will march into London and into the Tower saying he will have the truth about my boys. Then there will be a pause, long enough for people to remember the rumors and start to fear, and Buckingham will come out, tragic-faced, and say that he has found my boys dead, buried under a paving stone, or hidden in a cupboard, murdered by their wicked uncle Richard. This is the truth of the rumor that he himself started. He will say that, since they are dead, he will take the throne and there will be nobody left alive to deny him.

And Buckingham is Constable of England. He has the keys to the Tower in his hands right now.

I nibble my finger and pause at the window. So much for Buckingham. Now let me consider my great friend Lady Margaret Stanley and her son Henry Tudor. They are the heirs of the House of Lancaster; she might think it time England turned to Lancaster again. She has to ally with Buckingham and with my followers; the Tudor boy cannot bring in enough foreign recruits to defeat Richard on his own. He has lived his life in exile: this is his chance to come back to England and come back as king. She would be a fool to take such a risk as rebelling against Richard for anything less than the throne. Her new husband is an essential ally of Richard’s; they are well placed in this new court. She has negotiated her son’s forgiveness and safe return to England with Richard. She has been allowed to hand her lands over to her son, as his inheritance. Would she throw all this into jeopardy for the pleasure of putting my son on the throne to oblige me? Why would she? Why ever would she take such a risk? Is she not more likely to be working for her own son to claim the throne? She and Buckingham together are preparing the country to learn that my sons are dead, at Richard’s hand.

Would Henry Tudor be hard enough of heart to march into the Tower declaring he is bent on rescue, strangle two boys, and come out with the dreadful news that the princes, for whom he was bravely fighting, are dead? Could he and his great friend and ally Buckingham divide up the kingdom together: Henry Tudor taking his fiefdom of Wales, Buckingham taking the north? Or if Buckingham was dead in battle, would Henry not be the uncontested heir to the throne? Would his mother send her servants into the Tower, not to save my boy, but to suffocate him as he sleeps? Could she bear to do that, saintly woman as she is? Would she countenance anything for her son, even the death of mine? I don’t know. I can’t know. All I can know for certain is that the duke and Lady Margaret are spreading the word, even while they are marching out to fight for the princes, that they believe the princes are already dead, and her ally lets slip that the two boys are killed in bed. The only man not preparing the world to mourn their deaths, the only man who does not benefit from their deaths, is the one whom I thought was my mortal enemy: Richard of Gloucester.