“Why the king’s brothers?”
“Your sons will disinherit them. Your influence will turn the king from them. They have been three fatherless boys together; they have fought side by side for their family. He called them the three sons of York; he saw a sign for the three of them in the heavens. But now he will want to be with you, not with them. And the grants of lands and wealth that he might have given to them will come to you and yours. George was the heir after Edward, Richard the heir after him. As soon as you have a boy they drop one place.”
“I am going to be Queen of England,” I protest. “You make it sound like a battle to the death.”
“It is a battle to the death,” she says simply. “That is what it means to be Queen of England. You are not Melusina, rising from a fountain to easy happiness. You will not be a beautiful woman at court with nothing to do but make magic. The road you have chosen will mean that you have to spend your life scheming and fighting. Our task, as your family, is to make sure you win.”
In the darkness of the forest he saw her, and whispered her name, Melusina, and at that summoning she rose out of the water and he saw that she was a woman of cool and complete beauty to the waist, and below that she was scaled, like a fish. She promised him that she would come to him and be his wife, she promised him that she would make him as happy as a mortal woman can, she promised him that she would curb her wild side, her tidal nature, that she would be an ordinary wife to him, a wife that he could be proud of; if he in return would let her have a time when she could be herself again, when she could return to her element of water, when she could wash away the drudgery of a woman’s lot and be, for just a little while, a water goddess once more. She knew that being a mortal woman is hard on the heart, hard on the feet. She knew that she would need to be alone in the water, under the water, the ripples reflected on her scaly tail now and then. He promised her that he would give her everything, everything she wanted, as men in love always do. And she trusted him despite herself, as women in love always do.
My father and all my brothers ride out of Reading to greet us, so I might enter the town with my kinsmen at my side. There are crowds along the road and hundreds watching my father pull off his hat as he rides towards me, and then dismounts and kneels to me in the dust, honoring me as queen.
“Get up, Father!” I say alarmed.
He rises slowly and bows again. “You must become accustomed, Your Grace,” he says to me, his head bent to his knees.
I wait till he comes up smiling at me. “Father, I don’t like to see you bow to me.”
“You are Queen of England, now, Your Grace. Every man but one must bow to you.”
“But you will still call me Elizabeth, Father?”
“Only when we are alone.”
“And you will give me your blessing?”
His wide smile assures me that everything is the same as ever. “Daughter, we have to play at being kings and queens. You are the newest and most unlikely queen to a new and unlikely house. I never dreamed that you would capture a king. I certainly never thought that this lad would capture a throne. We are making a new world here; we are forming a new royal family. We have to be more royal than royalty itself or nobody will believe us. I can’t say I quite believe it myself.”
My brothers all jump down from their horses, doff their caps, and kneel to me on the public highway. I look down at Anthony who called me a whore and my husband a liar. “You can stay down there,” I say. “Who is right now?”
“You are,” he says cheerfully, rising up, kissing my hand, and remounting his horse. “I give you joy of your triumph.”
My brothers come around me and kiss my hand. I smile down at them; it is as if we are all about to burst out laughing at our own presumption. “Who’d have thought it?” John says wonderingly. “Who would ever have dreamed it?”
“Where is the king?” I ask as we start our small procession through the gates of the town. The streets are lined on either side with townspeople, guildsmen, apprentices, and there is a cheer for my beauty and laughter at our procession. I see Anthony flush when he hears a couple of bawdy jokes, and I put my hand on his gloved fist, clenched on the pommel of his saddle. “Hush,” I say. “People are bound to make mock. This was a secret wedding, we cannot deny it, and we will have to live down the scandal. And you don’t help me at all if you look offended.”
At once he assumes the most ghastly simper. “This is my court smile,” he says out of the corner of his upturned mouth. “I use it when I talk to Warwick or the royal dukes. How d’you like it?”
“Very elegant,” I say, trying not to laugh. “Dear God, Anthony, d’you think we will get through this all right?”
“We will get through it triumphantly,” he says. “But we must stick together.”
We turn up the high street and now there are hastily made banners and pictures of saints held from the overhanging windows to welcome me to the city. We ride to the abbey; and there, in the center of his court and advisors, I see him, Edward, dressed in cloth of gold with a scarlet cape and a scarlet hat on his head. He is unmistakable, the tallest man in the crowd, the most handsome, the undoubted King of England. He sees me, and our eyes meet, and it is once again as if no one else is there. I am so relieved to see him that I give him a little wave, like a girl, and instead of waiting for me to halt my horse and dismount and approach him up the carpet, he breaks away from them all and comes quickly to my side and lifts me off my horse and into his arms.
There is a roar of delighted applause from the onlookers and a shocked silence from the court at this passionate breach of protocol.
“Wife,” he says in my ear. “Dear God, I am so glad to have you in my arms.”
“Edward,” I say. “I have been so afraid!”
“We have won,” he says simply. “We will be together forever. I shall make you Queen of England.”
“And I shall make you happy,” I say, quoting the marriage vows. “I shall be bonny and blithe at bed and board.”
“I don’t care a damn about dinnertime,” he says vulgarly, and I hide my face against his shoulder and laugh.
I still have to meet his mother; and Edward takes me to her private chambers before dinner. She was not present during my welcome from the court, and I am right to read this as her first snub, the first of many. He leaves me at her door. “She wants to see you alone.”
“How do you think she will be?” I ask nervously.
He grins. “What can she do?”
“That is the very thing I would like to know before I go in to face her,” I say dryly, and walk past him as they throw open the doors to her presence chamber. My mother and three of my sisters come with me as a makeshift court, my newly declared ladies-in-waiting, and we step forward with all the eagerness of a coven of witches dragged to trial.
The dowager Duchess Cecily is seated on a great chair covered by a cloth of estate, and she does not trouble herself to rise to greet me. She is wearing a gown encrusted with jewels at the hem and the breast, and a large square headdress that she wears proudly, like a crown. Very well, I am her son’s wife but not yet an ordained queen. She is not obliged to curtsey to me, and she will think of me as a Lancastrian, one of her son’s enemies. The turn of her head and the coldness of her smile convey very clearly that to her I am a commoner, as if she herself had not been born an ordinary Englishwoman. Behind her chair are her daughters Anne, Elizabeth, and Margaret, dressed quietly and modestly so as not to outshine their mother. Margaret is a pretty girclass="underline" fair and tall like her brothers. She smiles shyly at me, her new sister-in-law, but nobody steps forward to kiss me, and the room is as warm as a lake in December.