“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.
And then I think of how my mother will take her loss, and that it will be me who has to tell her that he had a traitor’s death for fighting in my cause, after fighting all his life for the other side. I think of all of this, and I feel weary and sick to my soul, wearier and sicker than I have ever felt in all my life, even worse than when Father came home from the battle of Towton and said that our cause was lost, even worse than when my husband never came home at all from St. Albans and they told me he died bravely in a charge against the Yorks.
I feel worse than I have ever done before, because now I know that it is easier to take a country into war than to bring it to live at peace, and a country at war is a bitter place to live, a risky place to have daughters, and a dangerous place to hope for a son.
I am welcomed in London as a heroine, and the city is all for Edward; but it will make no difference if that butcher Warwick kills him in prison. I make my home for now in the well-fortified Tower of London with my girls and my Grey sons-they are obedient, scared as puppies now that they see that not every battle is won, and not every beloved son comes safe home. They are shaken by the loss of their uncle John and they ask every day for the safety of the king. We are all grieving: my girls have lost a good grandfather and a beloved uncle, and know that their father is in dreadful danger. I write to my kinsman the Duke of Burgundy and ask him to prepare a safe hiding place in Flanders for me, my Grey sons, and my royal girls. I tell him that we must find a little town, one of no importance, and a poor family who can pretend to take in English cousins. I must find somewhere for my daughters to hide that they will never be found.
The duke swears he will do more than this. He will support the City if they turn out for me and for York. He promises men and an army. He asks me what news I have of the king. Is he safe?
I cannot write to reassure him. The news of my husband is inexplicable. He is a king in captivity, just like the poor King Henry. How can such a thing be? How can such a thing continue? Warwick is still holding him at Middleham Castle, and persuading the lords to deny that Edward was ever king. There are those who say that Edward will be offered the choice: either to abdicate his throne for his brother, or climb the scaffold. Warwick will have either the crown or his head. There are those who say it is only days now before we hear that Edward is thrown down and fled to Burgundy; or dead. I have to listen to such gossip in the place of news, and I wonder if I am to be widowed in the same month that I have lost my father and my brother. And how shall I bear that?
My mother comes to me in the second week of my vigil. She comes from our old home at Grafton, dry-eyed and somehow bowed, as if she has taken a wound to her belly and is bent over the pain. The moment that I see her I know that I won’t have to tell her that she is a widow. She knows she has lost the great love of her life, and her hand rests on the knot of her girdle all the time, as if to hold in a mortal wound. She knows that her husband is dead, but no one has told her how he died, or why. I have to take her into my private room, close the door on the children, and find the words to describe the death of her husband and son. And it was a shameful death, for good men, at the hand of a traitor.