The Lady of the Rivers (The Plantagenet and Tudor Novels, #1)

by Philippa Gregory

She is kind to him in a way that I thought she could never be. She sees him as a wounded animal, and when his eyes grow vague or he looks about him, trying to remember a word or a name, she puts her hand gently on his and prompts him, as sweetly as a daughter with a father in his dotage.

I fall asleep in his arms like a mermaid diving into dark water, but in the night something wakes me.

I gaze up at the comet, yellow in color, not white and pale like the moon, but golden, a gilt saber pointed at the heart of my country. There is no doubt in my mind that it foretells war and fighting

The saber hangs in the sky above us all, like a sword waiting to fall. I look at it for a long time, and think that this star should be called the widow maker;

the number and the smartness of the household show that she has manned a castle here, not staffed a home.

I had warned him several times, but he had not realized that the king had become a prince, a boy, a babe.

“They say that he has to be weak as the kingdom is weak; but that they will see him reborn, he will be as new again, and the kingdom will be as new again. They say he will go through fire and be made as pure as a white rose.”

She shakes her head. “They don’t mean York. They mean as pure as a white moon, as pure as white water, driven snow—it doesn’t matter.” I bow my head, but I think it probably does matter.

I will not be turned on the wheel of fortune, I will not fall down. I will rule this country, and make the king well, and see my son inherit.”

“Are they really saying that I ordered them to come?” she exclaims to Richard. “Are they mad? Why would I order the French to attack Sandwich?” “The attack was led by a friend of yours, Pierre de Brézé,” my husband points out dryly. “And he had maps of the shoals and the riverbed: English maps. People ask how did he get them if not from you?

“She is not protecting us against France; she is arming her men in London,” he says. “I think she plans to charge the Earl of Warwick, the Earl of Salisbury, and the Duke of York with treason and bring them to London to stand trial.”

The queen is calling for the Earl of Warwick to be impeached for treason, but the king wants him forgiven as a repentant sinner. The whole of London is like a keg of dynamite with a dozen boys striking sparks around it,

“I want you to come with me to an alchemist.” I freeze, like a deer scenting danger. “Your Grace, Eleanor Cobham consulted alchemists, and Eleanor Cobham was imprisoned for eleven years and died in Peel Castle.” She looks at me blankly. “And so?” “One of the fixed plans of my life is not to end as Eleanor Cobham.”

“Your Grace, every woman is a mad ugly bad old witch, somewhere in her heart. The task of my life is to conceal this. The task of every woman is to deny this.” “What do you mean?” “The world does not allow women like Eleanor, women like me, to thrive. The world cannot tolerate women who think and feel. Women like me. When we weaken, or when we get old, the world falls on us with the weight of a waterfall. We cannot bring our gifts to the world.

The world we live in will not tolerate things that cannot be understood, things that cannot be easily explained. In this world, a wise woman hides her gifts. Eleanor Cobham was an inquiring woman. She met with others who sought the truth. She educated herself, and she sought masters with whom to study. She paid a terrible price for this. She was an ambitious woman. She paid the price for this too.” I wait to see if she has understood, but her round pretty face is puzzled. “Your Grace, you will put me in danger if you ask me to use my gifts.”

“I will come with you. But if I think your alchemist is a charlatan, I will have no truck with him.”

There is a moment when my head seems to swim, and then I look up, and there is the scrying mirror, but I cannot see my own reflection. My image has disappeared, and in my place there is a swirl of snow, and white flakes falling like the petals of white roses. It is the battle I saw once before, the men fighting uphill, a swaying bridge that falls, throwing them into the water, the snow on the ground turning red with blood, and always the swirling petals of the white snow. I see the iron gray of wide, wide skies; it is the north of England, bitterly cold, and out of the snow comes a young man like a lion.

I see a small room, a dark room, a hidden room. It is hot and stuffy, and there is a sense of terrible menace in the warm silent darkness. There is only one arrow slit of a window in the thick stone walls. The only light comes from the window; the only brightness in the darkness of the room is that single thread of light. I look towards it, drawn by the only sign of life in the black. Then it is blocked as if by a man standing before it, and there is nothing but darkness. I hear the alchemist sigh behind me, as if I have whispered my vision to him and he has seen it all. “God bless,” he says quietly. “God bless him and keep him.”

When a man wants a mystery, it is generally better to leave him mystified. Nobody loves a clever woman.

“Some processes call for the touch of a woman,” he says quietly. “Some of the greatest alchemy has been done by a husband and wife, working together.” He gestures to the bowl of warm water that is over the charcoal stove. “This method was invented by a woman and named for her.”

“I understand. I will send for you only if I cannot manage to work for the queen without you. And you are right to hide your light. This is a world that does not understand a skilled woman; it is a world that fears the craft. We all have to do our work in secret, even now, when the kingdom needs our guidance so much.”

“You think he will meet his death in the Tower?” “Not just him.” I am filled with a sudden urgency. “I feel—I don’t know why—it is as if one of my own children were in there. A boy of mine, perhaps two of my boys. I see it, but I’m not there, I can’t prevent it. I can’t save the king, and I can’t save them either. They will go into the Tower and not come out.”

It is very rare that I lie to Margaret of Anjou. I love her, and besides, I am sworn to follow her and her house. But I would not name my beautiful daughter to her as the girl who holds the ring of England in her hand.

Her smile is radiant. “Don’t you see? This is the solution for us? The king can step aside for his son,” she says. “This is my way forwards. The swan is my boy. I will put Prince Edward on the throne of England.”

the king returns to London from his retreat and declares a love day—a day when we shall all walk together, hand in hand, and all will be forgiven. “The lion shall lie down with the lamb,” he says to me. “Do you see?”

The love day peace lasts only for eight months.

“He got away?” the queen ignores Richard to ask me, as if this is all that matters. “He got away,” I say. “I should think he will get away all the way to Calais, and you will have a powerful enemy in a fortified castle off your shores,” Richard says bitterly. “And I can tell you that not one town in a hundred can be defended against attack on the south coast. He could sail up the Thames and bombard the Tower, and now he will think himself free to do so. You have broken his alliance for nothing and put us all in danger.” “He was our enemy at any time,” young Somerset remarks. “He was our enemy before this.” “He was bound by a truce,” Richard insists. “And by his oath of allegiance to the king. He honored it. Attacking him in the council chamber releases him from both.”

The queen is like a woman possessed by a vision. She takes the court with her to Coventry,

She enters Coventry with all the ceremony of a reigning king, and they bow to her as if she were the acknowledged ruler of the country. No one has seen a Queen of England like this before.

“They are kissing the ground,” I say. There is something terrible about the doomed men putting their lips to the earth that they think will be their deathbed. “They are kissing the ground where they will be buried. They know they will be defeated, and yet they are not running away.”

They have tricked us off our good position, into the river, and our men can’t get out.” It is a terrible sight. Our men in battle armor on their metal-plated horses go plunging into the water, and then struggle to get up the other side of the stream, where they are battered by the York men-at-arms, wielding great swords, war axes, and pikes. The knights fall from their horses, but cannot get to their feet to defend themselves, the horses’ hooves crash down through the water to crush them as they struggle to rise, or weighed down by their flooded breastplates they drown, scrambling in the churning waters of the stream.

“Why don’t they attack?” Margaret demands, her teeth bared, her hands gripped tight together. “Why don’t they attack again?” “They’re regrouping,” I say. “God spare them, they are regrouping to charge again.”

“What are they doing?” the queen demands incredulously. “What are they doing?” “We are losing,” I say. I hear the words in my own voice, but I cannot believe it, not for a moment. I cannot believe that I am here, high as an eagle, remote as a soaring gull, watching my husband’s defeat, perhaps watching my son’s death. “We are losing. Our men are running away; it is a rout. We thought we were unbeatable, but we are losing.”

“We have to go,” I say suddenly. She does not move, staring into the grayness of the twilight. “I think we’re winning,” she says. “I think that was another charge and we broke through their line.” “We’re not winning, and we didn’t break through, we are running away, and they are chasing us,” I say harshly. “Margaret, come on.”

“Put them on backwards,” she snaps. “Eh?” he says. She gives him a silver coin from her pocket. “Backwards,” she says. “Put them on backwards. Hurry. A couple of nails to each shoe.” To me she says: “If they want to follow me, they will have no tracks. They will see only the horses coming here, they won’t realize I was going away.” I realize I am staring at her, the queen of my vision, who had her horseshoes on backwards.

“Here,” the blacksmith says kindly, coming out of his little cottage to put a dirty mug in my hand. “What are you going to do, lady?” I shake my head. There is no pursuing force to misdirect; the York men are not coming through this way, just the broken remnants of our army. I fear that my husband is dead, but I don’t know where to look for him. I am weak with fear and with a sense of my own lack of heroism. “I don’t know,” I say. I feel utterly lost. The last time I was lost and alone was in the forest when I was a girl in France, and Richard came for me then. I cannot believe that Richard will not come for me now. “Better come in with us,” the blacksmith says. “Can’t stay out here all night. And you can’t go to the battlefield, my lady; there are thieves working the place, and they’d stab you as soon as look at you. You’d better come in with us.”

mud. I think that these are the people we should be fighting for; these are the people who live in a rich country, where land is fertile and water is clean, where there are more acres to grow than farmers to harvest. This is a country where wages should be high and markets should be rich and busy. And yet it is not. It is a land where no one can sleep safely in their bed at night for fear of raids or brigands or thieves, where the king’s justice is bought and paid for by the king’s friends, where an honest workingman is tried for treason and hanged if he asks for his rights, and where we cannot seem to stop a French courtier landing in our own ports and laying them waste.

The girl, the woman, and I cower like frightened children together: this is what it is like to live in a country at war. There is nothing of the grace of the joust or even the inspiration of great principles—it is about being a poor woman hearing a detachment of horse thunder down your street and praying that they do not stop to hammer on your frail door.

I am sorry that they work hard and yet cannot rise from the poverty of their home; I am sorry that I have slept on linen all my life and seldom thought of those who sleep on straw.

“Don’t look at me, I must smell,” I say, suddenly remembering my clothes and my hair and the raised welts of flea bites on my skin. “I am ashamed of myself.” “You should never have stayed there,” he says, glancing at the queen. “You should never have been there. You should never have been left there.”

When our army pours into the town of Ludlow and starts to strip away everything they can carry, she is standing there, with the keys of the castle in her hand, waiting for the queen. She, who has always been a proud woman, married to a royal lord, is most terribly afraid. I can see it on her white face; and I, who had to wait in Mucklestone for their victorious army to sweep by, take no pleasure in seeing such a proud woman brought down so low.

Ludlow is paying the price for the flight of their lord, the Duke of York.

“The queen is confident,” I say. The queen is tremendously confident. November comes, and still she does not return to London, hating London and blaming the London ballad makers and chap-book sellers for her unpopularity in the kingdom. Their tales and songs describe her as a wolf, a she-wolf who commands a Fisher King—a man reduced to a shell of what he should be. The most bawdy rhymes say she cuckolded him with a bold duke and popped their bastard in the royal cradle. There is a drawing of a swan with the face of Edmund Beaufort, waddling towards the throne. There are songs and alehouse jokes about her. She hates London and the apprentices who laugh at her.

We have been in the town little more than a week when I am suddenly frightened from sleep by the loud clanging of the tocsin bell. For a moment I think it is the goose bell that rings in the darkness of five o’clock every morning, to wake the goose girls, but then I realize that the loud constant clanging of the bell means a raid.

No one is going to rescue us. We will have to get out of this alive, by our own wits. We are quite alone.”

All we have to think about now is how to get out of this alive. And we are going to do this by speaking sweetly, biding our time, and keeping out of a rage. More than anything, my son, I want you to be polite, surrender if you have to, and come out of this alive.”

“Don’t you dare move, or I will stab you myself!” I say furiously. “Don’t you dare say a thing or do a thing. Stand still, boy!”

“I see what they are doing; they’re hoping you will lose your temper,” I tell him. “They are hoping you will attack them and then they can cut you down. Remember what your father said. Stay calm.” “They insult you!” Anthony is sweating with rage. “Look at me!” I demand. He darts a fierce glance at me and then hesitates. Despite my hasty words to him, my face is utterly calm. I am smiling. “I was not the woman left in Ludlow marketplace when my husband ran away,” I say to him in a rapid whisper. “I was the daughter of the Count of Luxembourg when Cecily Neville was nothing more than a pretty girl in a northern castle. I am the descendant of the goddess Melusina. You are my son. We come from a line of nobles who trace their line back to a goddess. They can say what they like behind my back; they can say it to my face. I know who I am. I know what you were born to be. And it is more, far more, than they.”

“Your own mother is well,” I say to Edward gently. “She was very distressed at Ludlow, to be left on her own in such danger, but my husband, Lord Rivers, took her and your sister Margaret and your brothers George and Richard to safety. My husband, Lord Rivers, protected them when the army was running through the town. He made sure that no one insulted them. The king is paying her a pension, and she is in no hardship. I saw her myself a little while ago, and she told me she prays for you and for your father.” It shocks him into silence. “You have my husband to thank for her safety,” I repeat.

My head is whirling at the speed of this rout. “Where are you going?” “To Jasper Tudor in Wales to start with. If we can invade from there, I will, if not France, or Scotland. I will win back my son’s inheritance, this is just a setback.”