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“Do they name another man?” I ask him. He looks at me, his dark eyes quite without guile. “I don’t know,” he says, though he does know. “I don’t think it matters,” he says, though it does matter. “And anyway, there is no evidence.” This at least is true. Please God there is no evidence of any wrongdoing. “But the Duke of York has stirred up the council, and so the baby has to be seen and at least held by the king.”
the room is empty, horribly bare but for a great table laid with the tools of the physicians’ trade: bowls for cupping, lances, a big jar of wriggling leeches, some bandages, some ointments, a big box of herbs, a record book with daily entries of painful treatments, and some boxes holding spices and shavings of metals. There is a heavy chair with thick leather straps on the arms and legs where they bind the king to keep him still while they force drinks down his throat, or lance his thin arms.
He is well dressed in a gown of blue with a surcoat of red, and his thin dark hair has been combed to his shoulders. He has been shaved, but they have nicked him, and there is a drop of blood on his throat. With his head lolling it looks as if they are bringing out a murdered man, his wounds bleeding in the presence of his killers. He is held steady in the chair by a band around his waist and another strap around his chest; but his head sags to one side, and when they put the chair down, it falls to his chest and he nods like a doll. Gently, the doctor raises him up and positions his head
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This is not an illness of this world: this has to be a curse laid on him. He looks like the wax image of a king whom they lay on the coffin at a royal funeral, not a living man.
Does he even dream?” “He never says anything,” Dr. Faceby volunteers. “But I think he dreams. Sometimes you can see his eyelids moving; sometimes he twitches in his sleep.” He glances at me. “Once he wept.”
still, looking at their patient, hoping for a miracle; the duchess waiting; the duke with one hand holding the baby on the king’s unmoving knees, the other on the king’s shoulder, squeezing him, hard and then harder, so his strong fingers are digging into the king’s bony shoulder, pinching him cruelly. I am silent, standing still.
in a cold blue sky, and as it rises and the mist swirls off the river, I see the most extraordinary sight: not one sun but three. I see three suns: one in the sky and two just above the water, reflections of mist and water, but clearly three suns. I blink and then rub my eyes, but the three suns blaze at me as I pull on the thread and I find it comes lightly, too lightly, into my hand. I don’t have the thread with the white ribbon that would mean the king would come back to us in winter, nor even the green, which would mean the king would come back to us in spring. I pull on one thread after
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“You hear this, Jacquetta. He is my enemy; he is my enemy, and I will destroy him. I will get Edmund out of the Tower, and I will put my son on the throne of England. And neither Richard, Duke of York, nor anyone else will stop me.”
The dark nights grow shorter, but the king does not recover. Some alchemists predict that the sunshine will bring him to life as if he were a seed in the darkness of the earth, and they wheel him to an eastern window every morning and make him face the gray disc of the wintry sun. But nothing wakes him.
know what they are saying,” she declares boldly. “They are saying that he is my lover and that the prince is his son, and this is why my husband the king has not acknowledged him.” “Reason enough not to visit him,” I caution. “I have to see him.” “Your Grace—” “Jacquetta, I have to.”
“What has to be done?” I ask as soon as we are outside, walking down the stone stairs towards the watergate. We came in a barge without flags and standards; I was anxious that as few people as possible knew that she was meeting the man accused of treason and named as her lover. She is alight with excitement. “I am going to tell the Parliament to appoint me as regent,” she says. “Edmund says the lords will support me.”
woman be a regent in England? Your Grace, this is not Anjou. I don’t think a woman can be a regent here. I don’t think a woman can reign in England.”
The queen’s demand to be regent of England and rule the country with all the rights and wealth of the king during the illness of her husband does not resolve the whole problem as she and Edmund Beaufort confidently predicted. Instead, there is uproar. The people now know that the king is sick, mysteriously sick, and utterly disabled. The rumors of what ails him range from the black arts of his enemies, to poison given to him by his wife and her lover. Every great lord arms his men, and when he comes to London marches them into his house, for his own protection, so the city is filled with
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“Why do they keep going?” the queen demands, seeing the barges come back to the steps at the palace, and the great men in their furred robes helped ashore by their liveried servants.
It is as if they think the country is cursed and the Duke of York is the only man who can unsheathe his sword and stand in the doorway against an invisible enemy, and hold the post until the king awakes.
The queen’s mistake is to claim the power and the title. The lords cannot bear the thought of a woman’s rule; they cannot bear to even think that a woman can rule. It is as if they want to put her back into the confinement chamber. It is as if the king, her husband, by falling asleep, has set her free, free to command the kingdom; and that the duty of all the other great men is to return her to him. If they could put her to sleep like him, I think they would.
Grafton, sending a message to Richard when the baby is safely born. She is a girl, a beautiful girl, and I call her Margaret, for the queen, who is beating against the times we live in, like a bird against a window.
Calais is formidably fortified. It has been England’s outpost in Normandy for generations, and now the soldiers have control of the fort; when they see the sails of York’s fleet, they place the chain across the mouth of the harbor and turn the guns of the castle to the seaward side. York finds himself staring down the barrel of his own cannon, refused entry to his own city.
him. As far as I am concerned he has just seized power. He is a usurper, and your husband should have shot him as soon as he was in range. Your husband failed to shoot him. He should have killed him when he could.” Again the king makes a little noise. I go to his side. “Did you speak, Your Grace?” I ask him. “Do you hear us talking? Can you hear me?”
Amazingly, for a moment, he stirs. Truly, he does. For the first time in more than a year, he turns his head, opens his eyes, and sees. I know he does: he sees our absolutely amazed faces, and then he gives a little sigh, closes his eyes, and sleeps again.
He looked just like himself, only coming from a deep sleep. Do you think he will wake now?”
But things are changing. In the king’s rooms I think he is beginning to stir. They have been watching over him, and feeding him and washing him, but they had given up trying to cure him, as nothing that they did seemed to make any difference. Now we are starting to hope again that in his own time and without any physic, he is coming out of his sleep. I have taken to sitting with him for the morning,
I am almost certain that he can hear what we say. Of course, I start to wonder what he will know, when he comes out of his sleep. More than a year ago he saw a sight so shocking that he closed his eyes and went to sleep so that he should see it no more.
just a few days after Christmas Day, the king wakes, and this time, he stays awake. It is a miracle. He just opens his eyes and yawns, and looks around him, surprised to be seated in a chair in his privy chamber in Windsor,
I press my lips together to hold back an outburst. “It was a long time. But we are so pleased you are better now. If you sleep now, you will wake up again, won’t you, Your Grace? You will try to wake up again?” I really fear he is going back to sleep. His head is nodding, and his eyes are closing. “I am so tired,” he says like a little child, and in a moment he is asleep again.
We are waiting for him to ask after the baby, but clearly, he is not going to ask after the baby. His head nods as if he is drowsy. He gives a tiny little snore. Margaret glances at me.
The queen rises up, takes Edward from me, and proffers the sleeping child to the king. He shrinks away. “No, no. I don’t want to hold it. Just tell me. Is this a girl or a boy?” “A boy,” the queen says, her voice quavering with disappointment at his response. “A boy, thank God. An heir
Why, how long have I been asleep?” “Eighteen months, Your Grace,” I say quietly. “A year and a half. It has been a long time; we were all of us very afraid for your health. It is very good to see you well again.”
asleep?” I ask him quietly, hating myself. “Not at all!” he chuckles. “Only last night. I can only remember falling asleep last night. I hope when I sleep tonight that I wake up again in the morning.”
He does not seem to understand that he has been abandoned by his court, that the only people here are his doctors and nurses and us, his fellow prisoners. “I shall try not to do it again.”
The Duke of York obeys the summons and resigns his position as Protector of the Realm, and finds his other title, that of Constable of Calais, is to be lost too. It is given back once more to Edmund Beaufort, Duke of Somerset, out of jail and gloriously returned to greatness.
I put out my hand to her. “Your Grace …” But she is too delighted with the thought of revenge to hear a word of caution.
Now I do interrupt. “Your Grace, surely this is going to send the Duke of York into outright rebellion? He is bound to defend himself against such charges. He will demand that the council renew the charges against the Duke of Somerset, and then it will be the two of you and yours, against him and his.”
waist and clutch at my hips.
“You saw the king?” He glances around, as if he fears that people might overhear his words. “He was struck in the neck by an arrow,” he says.
“Which duke?” I insist. I can feel my knees are shaking. “Which duke died as he came out of the tavern?” “Somerset,” he says.
when a king shows himself to his people in his coronation crown again. It is done to tell the world that the king has returned to them, that he is in his power. But this is going to be different. This will show the world that he has lost his power. He is going to show the world that the Duke of York holds the crown but lets him wear it. “He is going to allow the duke to crown him?” “And we are all to know that their differences have been resolved.”
“Nobody can think that this is a lasting peace,” I say quietly. “Nobody can think that the differences are resolved. It is the start of bloodshed, not the end of it.” “They had better think it, for it is going to be treason even to talk about the battle,” he says grimly. “They say we must forget about it. As I came away, they passed a law that we were all to say nothing. It is to be as if it never was. What d’you think of that, eh? They passed a law to say we must be silent.”
She does not scream or sob; she just moans behind her gritted teeth, as if she is trying to muffle the sound, but it is unstoppable, like her grief.
I see that in holding back the sobs, she is choking on her own grief. She dares make no sound, for if she spoke she would scream.
I send an urgent note to Richard by a wool merchant that I have trusted before. I tell him that the Yorks are in command again, that he must prepare himself for them to try to take the garrison, that the king is in their keeping, and that I love and miss him.
We have to get him away from the duke and his men. If we hold the king in our keeping, at least we know he is safe. We have to have possession of the king.”
She can see, as I can see, that we have lost him again. At this crucial moment, when we so badly need a king to command us, he has slipped away.
I take permission from the queen to leave court and go to my daughter’s home at Groby Hall. The queen laughingly remarks that she could stop a cavalry charge more easily than she could deny me permission to go. My Elizabeth is with child, her first baby, and it is due in November. I too am expecting a baby, a child made from our day and night of lovemaking when Richard came home and went again. I expect to see Elizabeth safely out of childbed and then I will go to my own home and confinement.
“And mine for me,” I say, staking my claim with relish, there being no doubt in my mind that this will be my daughter’s son, my grandson, and Melusina’s descendant. All that he will have of the Grey family will be the name, and I have paid for that already with Elizabeth’s dowry.
As I enter, my daughter rises up from the day bed, and I see in her the little girl whom I loved first of all my children and the beautiful woman she has become.
I put the ring on the chain, wondering a little that I should be so blessed as to be dowsing for my daughter, to see what her baby will be.
“Thomas the survivor,” I say. She is instantly curious. “Why d’you call him that? What is he going to survive?” I look at her beautiful face, and for a moment it is as if I am seeing her in a stained-glass window, in a shadowy hall, and she is years away from me. “I don’t know,” I say. “I just think he will have a long journey and survive many dangers.”
I go into my confinement in December, and the night before the baby is born I dream of a knight as brave and as bold as my husband, Sir Richard, and a country dry and hot and brown, a flickering standard against a blazing sun, and a man who is afraid of nothing. When he is born, he is just a tiny crying baby, and I hold him in my arms and wonder what he will be. I call him Edward, thinking of the little prince, and I feel certain that he will be lucky.
The queen has learned to control her temper, and it has been very sweet to see her discipline herself
