Three beautiful daughters, we have, one newborn, and we are hoping—with rising anxiety—for a son, when Edward gets news of a rebel in Yorkshire calling himself Robin. Robin of Redesdale, a fanciful name meaning nothing, a petty rebel hiding himself behind a legendary name, raising troops, slandering my family, and demanding justice and freedom and the usual nonsense by which good men are tempted from minding their fields to go to their deaths. Edward pays little attention at first, and I, foolishly, think nothing of it at all. Edward is on pilgrimage with my family, my Grey sons Richard and Thomas and his young brother Richard, showing himself to the people and giving thanks to God, and I am traveling to meet him with the girls and, though we write every day, we think so little of the uprising that he does not even mention it in his letters.
Even when my father remarks to me that someone is paying these men—they are not armed with pitchforks, they have good boots and they are marching in good order—I pay him no attention. Even when he says, a few days later, that these are men who belong to someone: peasants or tenants or men sworn to a lord, I hardly listen to his hard-won wisdom. Even when he points out to me that no man takes up his scythe and thinks he will go and fight in a war; someone, his lord, has to give the order. Even then, I pay him no attention. When my brother John says that this is Warwick’s country and most likely the rebels are raised by Warwick’s men, I still think nothing of it. I have a new baby and my world revolves around her carved gold-painted crib. We are on progress in southeast England where we are beloved, the summer is fine, and I think, when I think at all, that the rebels will most likely go home in time to bring in the harvest, and the unrest will go quiet of its own accord.
I am not concerned until my brother John comes to me, his face grave, and swears that there are hundreds, perhaps thousands of men in arms, and it has to be the Earl of Warwick about his old business of making mischief, as no one else could muster so many. He is kingmaking again. Last time he made Edward to replace King Henry; this time he wants to make George, Duke of Clarence, brother to the king, the son of no importance, to replace my husband Edward. And so to replace me and mine as well.
Edward meets me at Fotheringhay, as we had arranged, quietly furious. We had planned to enjoy the beautiful house and grounds in the midsummer weather and then travel on to the prosperous town of Norwich together, for a great ceremonial entry to this most wealthy city. Our plan was to knit ourselves into the pilgrimages and feasts of the country towns, to dispense justice and patronage, to be seen as the king and queen at the heart of their people—nothing like the mad king in the Tower and his madder queen in France.
“But now I have to go north and deal with this,” Edward complains to me. “There are new rebellions coming up like springs in a flood. I thought it was one discontented squire, but the whole of the north seems to be taking up arms again. It is Warwick, it must be Warwick, though he has said not a word to me. But I asked him to come to me, and he has not come. I thought that was odd—but I knew he was angry with me—and now this very day I hear that he and George have taken ship. They have gone to Calais together. Goddamn them, Elizabeth, I have been a trusting fool. Warwick has fled from England, George with him; they have gone to the strongest English garrison, they are inseparable, and all the men who say they are out for Robin of Redesdale are really paid servants of George or Warwick.”
I am aghast. Suddenly the kingdom that had seemed quiet in our hands is falling apart.
“It must be Warwick’s plan to use all the tricks against me that he and I used against Henry.” Edward is thinking aloud. “He is backing George now, as he once backed me. If he goes on with this, if he uses the fortress of Calais as his jumping point to invade England, it will be a brothers’ war as it was once a cousins’ war. This is damnable, Elizabeth. And this is the man I thought of as my brother. This is the man who all but put me on the throne.This is my kinsman and my first ally. This was my greatest friend!”
He turns from me so I cannot see the anger and the distress in his face, and I can hardly breathe at the thought of this great man, this tremendous commander of men, coming against us. You are sure? George is with him? And they have gone to Calais together? He wants the throne for George?”
“I am sure of nothing,” he shouts in exasperation. “This is my first and foremost friend and with him is my own brother. We have been shoulder to shoulder on the battlefield; we have been brothers in arms as well as kinsmen. At the Battle of Mortimer’s Cross, there were three suns in the sky—I saw them myself, three suns: everyone said that was a sign from God for me and for George and for Richard, the three sons of York. How can one son leave the others? And who else betrays me with him? If I cannot trust my own brother, who will stand by me? My mother must know of this: George is her darling. He will have told her he is plotting against me and she has kept his secret. How can he betray me? How can she?”
“Your mother?” I repeat. “Your mother, backing George against you? Why would she do such a thing?”
He shrugs. “The old story. Whether I am my father’s son. Whether I am legitimate, born and bred a York. George is saying that I am a bastard, and that makes him the true heir. God knows why she would support this. She must hate me for marrying you and taking your part more than I even dreamed.”
“How dare she!”
“I can trust no one but you and yours,” Edward exclaims. Everyone else I trust is cut out from under my feet, and now I hear that this Robin in Yorkshire has a list of demands that he wants me to meet, and that Warwick has announced to the people that he thinks they are reasonable. Reasonable! He promises that he and George will land with an army to remonstrate with me. Remonstrate! I know what he means by that! Is this not the very thing we did to Henry? Do I not know how a king is destroyed? Did Warwick’s father not take my very own father to remonstrate with King Henry, planning to cut him from his wife and from his allies? Did he not teach my father how to cut off a king from his wife, from his allies? And now he thinks to destroy me with the same trick. Does he think that I am a fool?”
“And Richard?” I ask anxiously, thinking of his other brother, the shy boy who has become a quiet and thoughtful young man. “Where are Richard’s loyalties? Does he side with his mother?”
It is his first smile. “My Richard stays true to me, thank God,” he says briefly. “Richard is always true to me. I know you think him an awkward, sulky boy. I know your sisters laugh at him, but he is honest and faithful to me. Whereas George can be bribed to left or to right. He is a greedy child, not a man. God only knows what Warwick has promised him.”
“I can tell you that,” I reply fiercely. “It’s easy. Your throne. And my daughters’ inheritance.”
“I shall keep them all.” He takes my hands and kisses them. “I swear I shall keep them all. You go to the city of Norwich as we planned. Do your duty, play the queen, look as if you are untroubled. Show them a smiling and confident face. And I will go and scotch this snakes’ plot before it gets out of the ground.”
“Do they admit that they hope to overthrow you? Or do they insist they just want to remonstrate with you?”
He grimaces. “It is more that they will overthrow you, sweetheart. They want your family and your advisors exiled from my court. Their great complaint is that I am ill advised and that your family are destroying me.”
I gasp. “They are slandering me?”
“It is a cover, a mumming,” he says. “Don’t regard it. It is the usual song of this not being a rebellion against the king but against his evil advisors. I sang this song myself as did my father, as did Warwick against Henry. Then, we said that it was all the fault of the queen and the Duke of Somerset. Now, they say it is your fault and your family around you. It is easy to blame the wife. It is always easier to accuse the queen of being a bad influence than to declare yourself against the king. They want to destroy you and your family, of course. Then, once I am alone before them, without friends and family, they will destroy me. They will force me
to declare our marriage a sham, our girls all bastards. They will make me name George as my heir, perhaps to cede my throne to him. I have to drive them to open opposition, where I can defeat them. Trust me, I will keep you safe.”
I put my forehead to his. “I wish I had given you a son,” I say very low. “Then they would know that there could be only one heir. I wish I had given you a prince.”
“Time enough for that,” he says steadily. “And I love our girls. A son will come, I don’t doubt it, beloved. And I will keep the throne safe for him. Trust me.”
I let him go. We both have work to do. He rides out from Fotheringhay behind a harshly rippling standard and surrounded by a guard ready for battle to go to Nottingham to the great castle there, and wait for the enemy to show himself. I go on to Norwich with my daughters, to act as if England is all mine, as if it is all still a fair garden for the rose of York, and I fear nothing. I take my Grey sons with me. Edward offered to have them ride with him, for a first taste of battle, but I am fearful for them and I take them with me and the girls. So I have two very sulky young men, aged fifteen and thirteen, as I make my progress to Norwich, and nothing will please them, as they are missing their first battle.
I have a state entry and choirs singing and flowers thrown down before me, and plays extolling my virtue and welcoming my girls. Edward bides his time in Nottingham, summoning his soldiers again, waiting for his enemy to land.
While we wait, playing our different parts, wondering when our enemies will come, and where they will land, we hear more news. In the city of Calais, with special permission from the pope—which must have been sought and gained in secret by our own archbishops—George has married Warwick’s daughter, Isabel Neville. He is now Warwick’s son-in-law and, if Warwick can put George on Edward’s throne, Warwick will make his own daughter queen, and she will take my crown.
I spit like a cat at the thought of our turncoat archbishops writing to the pope in secret to aid our enemies, of George before the altar with Warwick’s girl, and of Warwick’s long slow-burning ambition. I think of the pale-faced girl, one of the only two Neville girls, for Warwick has no son of his own and cannot seem to get any more children, and I swear that she will never wear the crown of England while I live. I think of George, turning his coat like the spoiled boy he is, and falling in with Warwick’s plans like the stupid child he is, and I swear vengeance on them both. I am so certain that it will come to a battle, and a bitter battle between my husband and his former tutor in war Warwick, that I am taken by surprise, just as Edward is taken by surprise, when Warwick lands without warning, and meets and smashes the gathering royal army at Edgecote Moor near Banbury, before Edward is even out of Nottingham Castle.
It is a disaster. Sir William Herbert, the Earl of Pembroke, lies dead on the field, a thousand Welshmen around him, his ward the Lancaster boy Henry Tudor left without a guardian. Edward is on the road to London, riding as fast as he can to arm the city for siege, about to warn them that Warwick is in England, when armed figures block the road before him.
Archbishop Neville, Warwick’s kinsman appointed by us, steps up and takes Edward his own king prisoner, telling him, as he is surrounded, that Warwick and George are already in the kingdom, and the royal army has already been defeated. It is over, Edward is beaten, even before battle is declared, even before he had his warhorse harnessed. The wars, which I thought had ended in peace, our peace, are over with our defeat, without Edward even drawing his sword, and the House of York will be founded on the puppet plaything George and not on my unborn son.
I am at Norwich, pretending to confidence, pretending to queenly grace, when they bring me a mud-stained messenger from my husband. I open the letter:
Dearest wife,
Prepare yourself for bad news.
Your father and your brother were taken at a battle near Edgecote fighting for our cause and Warwick has them. I too am a prisoner, held atWarwick’s castle of Middleham. They took me on the road on my way to you. I am unhurt, as are they.
Warwick has named your mother as a sorceress and he says that our marriage was an act of witchcraft by you and her. So be warned: both of you are in grave danger. She must leave the country at once: they will have her strangled as a witch if they can. You too should prepare for exile.
Get yourself and our daughters to London as fast as you can, arm the Tower for a siege, and raise the city. As soon as the city is set for siege you must take the girls and go to safety to Flanders. The charge of witchcraft is very grave, beloved. They will execute you if they think they can make it stick. Keep yourself safe above anything else.
If you think it best, send the girls away at once, secretly, and place them with humble people in hiding. Don’t be proud, Elizabeth, choose a refuge where no one will look. We have to live through this if we want to fight to claim our own again.
I am more grieved at bringing you and them into danger than anything else in the world. I have written to Warwick to demand to know the ransom that he wants for the safe return of your father and your brother John. I don’t doubt he will send them back to you and you can pay whatever he demands from the Treasury. Your husband,
The one and only King of England,
Edward
A knock at the door of my presence chamber and the flinging open of the door makes me leap to my feet, expecting, I don’t know, the Earl of Warwick himself, with a bundle of greenwood stakes for burning my mother and me; but it is the Mayor of Norwich, who greeted me with such rich ceremony only days before.
“Your Grace, I have urgent news,” he says. “Bad news. I am sorry.”
I take a little breath to steady myself. “Tell me.”
“It is your father and your brother.”
I know what he is going to say. Not from foreknowledge, but from the way his round face is creased with worry at the thought of the pain he is bringing me. I know it from the way that the men behind him gather together, awkward as people who bring the worst tidings. I know it from the way that my own ladies-in-waiting sigh like a breeze of mourning and gather behind my chair.
“No,” I say. “No. They are prisoners. They are held by Englishmen of honor. They must be ransomed.”
“Shall I leave you?” he asks. He looks at me as if I am sick. He does not know what to say to a queen who came into his town in glory and will leave it in mortal danger. “Shall I go, and come back later, Your Grace?”
“Tell me,” I say. “Tell me now, the worst there is, and I will bear it somehow.”
He glances at my women for help, and then his dark eyes come back to me. “I am sorry, Your Grace. Sorrier than I can rightly say. Your father Earl Rivers and your brother Sir John Woodville were taken in battle—a new battle between new enemies—the king’s army against the king’s own brother George, the Duke of Clarence. The duke seems to be in alliance now with the Earl of Warwick against your husband—perhaps you knew? In alliance against your gracious husband and you. Your father and brother were taken fighting for Your Grace, and they have been executed. They were beheaded.” He snatches one quick look at me. “They would not have suffered,” he volunteers. “I am sure it was quick.”
“The charge?” I can hardly speak. My mouth is numb, as if someone had punched me in the face. “They were fighting for an ordained king against rebels. What could anyone say against them? What could be the charge?”
He shakes his head. “They were executed on the word of Lord Warwick,” he says quietly. “There was no trial, there was no charge. It seems my lord Warwick’s own word is now law. He had them beheaded without trial or sentence, without justice. Shall I give the orders for you to be escorted to London? Or shall I arrange for a ship? Will you go overseas?”
“I am to go to London,” I say. “It is my capital city, it is my kingdom. I am not a foreign queen to run to France. I am an Englishwoman. I live and die here.” I correct myself. “I will live and fight here.”
“May I offer you my deepest condolences? To you and to
the king?”
“Do you have news of the king?”
“We were hoping that your gracious self could reassure us?”
“I have heard nothing,” I lie. They will not learn from me that the king is a prisoner in Middleham Castle, that we are defeated. “I will leave this afternoon, within two hours, tell them. I will ride to claim my city of London and then we will reclaim England. My husband has never lost a battle. He will defeat his enemies and bring all traitors to trial and justice.”
He bows, they all bow, and go out backwards. I sit on my chair like a queen, the gold cloth of estate over my head, until the door has closed on them and then I say to my ladies, “Leave me. Prepare for our journey.”
They flutter and they hesitate. They long to pause and pet me, but they see the grimness in my face and they trail away. I am alone in the sunlit room and I see that the chair that I am sitting on is chipped, the carving under my hand is faulty. The cloth of estate over my head is dusty. I see that I have lost my father and my brother, the kindest most loving father that a daughter ever had, and a good brother. I have lost them for a chipped chair and a dusty cloth. My passion for Edward and my ambition for the throne put us, all of us, into the very forefront of the battle and cost me this first blood: my darling brother and the father I love.
I think of my father putting me on my first pony and telling me to lift up my chin and keep my hands down, to keep tight hold of the reins, to tell the pony who is master. I think of his cupping my mother’s cheek in his hand and telling her that she is the cleverest woman in England and he will be guided by none but her; and then going his own way. I think of his falling in love with her when he was her first husband’s squire and she his lady, who should never even have looked at him. I think of his marrying her the moment she was widowed, in defiance of all the rules, and their being called the handsomest couple in England, married for love, which nobody but the two of them would have dared to do. I think of him at Reading, as Anthony described him, pretending to know everything and with his eyes rolling in his head. I could even laugh for love of him, thinking of his telling me that he can call me Elizabeth only in private, now I am queen, and that we must become accustomed. I think of how he puffed out his chest when I told him that I was marrying his son to a duchess, and that he himself would be an earl.