I see Lord Warwick’s barge, the most beautiful on the river, his rowers going in time to the beat of the drummer in the stern, moving swiftly against the tide as if nothing can stop his onward progress, not even the flow of the river. I even make him out, standing in the prow of the boat as if he would rule the very water of the river, his hat pulled off and held in his hand so that he can feel the cold air in his dark hair. I purse my lips to whistle up a wind, but I let him go. It makes no difference.
Warwick’s older daughter Isabel may be hand in hand with my brother-in-law George in the seats at the back of the barge as they go past my subterranean prison. Perhaps she remembers the Christmas that she came to court as an unwilling bride and I was kind to her, or perhaps she prefers to forget the court where I was the Queen of the White Rose. George will know I am here, the wife of his brother, the woman who stayed loyal when he did not: living in poverty, living in half darkness. He will know I am here; he may even feel me watching him, my narrowed eyes overlooking him-this man who was once George of the House of York, and is now a favored kinsman at the court of Lancaster.
My mother puts her hand on my arm. “Don’t ill wish them,” she warns me. “It comes back on you. It is better to wait. Edward is coming. I don’t doubt it. I don’t doubt him for a moment. This time will be like a bad dream. It is as Anthony says: shadows on the wall. What matters is that Edward musters an army big enough to defeat Warwick.”
“How can he?” I say, looking out at the city that now declares itself all for Lancaster. “How can he even begin?”
“He has been in touch with your brothers, and with all our kinsmen. He is raising his forces, and he has never lost a battle.”
“He has never fought Warwick. And Warwick taught him everything he knows about war.”
“He is king,” she says. “Even if they now say that it meant nothing. He was crowned, he is divinely ordained, he has had the holy oil on his breast-they cannot deny that he is king. Even if another crowned and ordained king sits on the throne. But Edward is lucky, and Henry is not. Perhaps it comes down only to that: if you are a lucky man. And the Yorks are a lucky house.” She smiles. “And of course he has us. We can wish him well, no harm in a little spell for good luck. And if that does not improve his chances, then nothing will.”
SPRING 1471
My mother brews up tisanes and leans from the window and pours them into the river, whispering words that no one can hear, throws powder on the fires to make them burn green and smoke. She never stirs the children’s porridge without whispering a prayer, turns her pillow over twice before she gets into bed, claps her shoes together before putting them on to rid them of bad luck.
“Does any of it mean anything?” my son Richard asks me, one eye on his grandmother, who is twisting a plait of ribbon and whispering over it.
I shrug. “Sometimes,” I say.
“Is it witchcraft?” he asks nervously.
“Sometimes.”
Then in March my mother tells me, “Edward is coming to you. I am sure of it.”
“You have foreseen it?” I ask.
She giggles. “No, the butcher told me.”
“What did the butcher tell you? London is filled with gossip.”
“Yes, but he had a message from a man in Smithfield who serves the ships that go to Flanders. He saw a little fleet sailing northwards in the worst weather, and one of them was flying the Sun in Splendor: the badge of York.”
“Edward is invading?”
“Perhaps at this very moment.”
In April, in the early hours of the night, I hear the sound of cheering from the streets outside and I jump from my bed and go to the window to listen. The abbey serving girl pounds on the door and comes running into the room and babbles, “Your Grace! Your Grace! It is him. It is the king. Not King Henry, the other king. Your king. The York king. King Edward!”
I draw my nightgown around me and put my hand to the plait of my hair. “Here now? Are they cheering for him?”
“Cheering for him now!” she exclaims. “Lighting torches to guide him on his way. Singing and throwing down gold coins before him. Him, and a band of soldiers. And he must be coming here!”
“Mother! Elizabeth! Richard! Thomas! Girls!” I call out. “Get up! Get dressed! Your father is coming. Your father is coming to us!” I seize the serving girl by the arm. “Get me hot water to wash in and the best gown I have. Leave the firewood, it doesn’t matter. Who’s going to sit by that paltry fire ever again?” I push her from the room to fetch the water, and I pull my hair out of the nighttime plait as Elizabeth comes running into my room, her big eyes wide. “Is it the bad queen coming? Lady Mother, is the bad queen here?”
“No, sweetheart! We are saved. It is your own good father coming to visit us. Can’t you hear them cheering?”
I stand her up on a stool to the grille in the door, then I splash water on my face and twist my hair up under my headdress. The girl brings me my gown and ties it up, fumbling with the ribbons, and then we hear the thunder of his knock at the door and Elizabeth screams and jumps down to open it, and then falls back as he comes in, taller and graver than she remembers him, and in a moment I have run to him, barefoot as I am, and I am in his arms again.
“My son,” he demands after he has held me and kissed me and rubbed his rough chin against my cheek. “Where is my son? Is he strong? Is he well?”
“He is strong and well. He is five months old this month,” my mother says as she brings him in, swaddled tightly, and sweeps Edward a great curtsey. “And you are welcome home, son Edward, Your Grace.”
Gently he puts me aside and goes swiftly to her. I had forgotten that he could move so lightly on his feet, like a dancer. He takes his son from my mother’s arms, and though he whispers “Thank you,” he does not even see her: he is quite distracted. He takes the baby over to the light of the window, and Baby Edward opens his dark-blue eyes and yawns, his rosebud mouth opening wide, and he looks into the face of his father as if to return the intense gray-eyed scrutiny.
“My son,” he says quietly. “Elizabeth, forgive me, that you had to give birth to him here. I would not have had that for the world.”
I nod in silence.
“And he is baptized and named Edward as I wanted?”
“He is.”
“And he thrives?”
“We are just starting to feed him solid food,” my mother says proudly. “And he is taking to it. He sleeps well and he is a bright, clever boy. Elizabeth has nursed him herself, and no one could have been a better wet nurse to him. We have made you a little prince here.”
Edward looks at her. “Thank you for his care,” he says. “And for staying with my Elizabeth.” He looks down. His daughters, Elizabeth, Mary, and Cecily, are gathered around him, gazing up at him as if he were some strange beast, a unicorn perhaps, who has suddenly cantered into their nursery.
Gently he kneels so that he does not tower above them, still holding the baby in the crook of his arm. “And you are my girls, my princesses,” he says quietly to them. “Do you remember me? I have been away a long time, more than half a year; but I am your father. I have been away from you for far too long, but there was never a day when I did not think of you and your beautiful mother and swear that I would come home to you and set you in your rightful places again. Do you remember me?”