We wait as they take the boy, and file from the room. When they are gone, the scent of their clothes lingers. It is the smell of the outdoors, horse sweat, cooked meats, a fresh breeze blowing over cut grass.
Elizabeth turns to me and her face is pale. “You sent the page boy for you think it is not safe for our boy to go to the Tower,” she observes.
“Yes,” I say.
“So you must think that our Edward is not safe in the Tower.”
“I don’t know. Yes. That is my fear.”
She takes an abrupt step to the window and for a moment she reminds me of my mother, her grandmother. She has the same determination-I can see her puzzling away at the best course. For the first time I think that Elizabeth will make a woman to be reckoned with. She is not a little girl anymore.
“I think you should send to my uncle and ask him for an agreement,” she says. “You could agree that we give him the throne, and he names Edward as his heir.”
I shake my head.
“You could,” she says. “He is Edward’s uncle, a man of honor. He must want a way out of this as much as we do.”
“I will not give up Edward’s throne,” I say tightly. “If Duke Richard wants it, he will have to take it, and shame himself.”
“And what if he does that?” she asks me. “What happens to Edward then? What happens to my sisters? What happens to me?”
“I don’t know,” I say cautiously. “We may have to fight; we may have to argue. But we don’t give up. We don’t surrender.”
“And that little boy,” she says, nodding to the door where the page boy has gone, his jaw tied up with flannel so he does not speak. “Did we take him from his father, and bathe him and clothe him and tell him to be silent as we sent him to his death? Is that how we fight this war, using a child as our shield? Sending a little boy to his death?”
SUNDAY, JUNE 25, 1483: CORONATION DAY
“What?” I spit at the quiet dawn sky like an angry cat whose kittens have been taken away for drowning. “No royal barges? No booming cannon from the Tower? No wine flowing in the fountains of the city? No banging of drums, no ’prentice boys howling out the songs of their guilds? No music? No shouting? No cheering along the procession route?” I swing open the window that looks over the river and see the usual river traffic of barges and wherries and rowing boats, and I say to my mother and to Melusina, “Clearly, they don’t crown him today. Is he to die instead?” I think of my boy as if I were painting his portrait. I think of the straight line of his little nose still rounded at the tip like a baby, and the plump roundness of his cheeks and the clear innocence of his eyes. I think of the curve of the back of his head that used to fit my hand when I touched him, and the straight pure line of the nape of his neck when he was bent over his books in study. He was a brave boy, a boy who had been coached by his uncle Anthony to vault into a saddle and ride at the joust. Anthony promised that he would be fearless by learning to face fear. And he was a boy who loved the country. He liked Ludlow Castle, for he could ride into the hills and see the peregrine falcons soaring high above the cliffs, and he could swim in the cold water of the river. Anthony said he had a sense of landscape: rare in the young. He was a boy with the most golden future. He was born in wartime to be a child of peace. He would have been, I don’t doubt, a great Plantagenet king, and his father and I would have been proud of him.
I speak of him as if he is dead, for I have little doubt that since he is not crowned today, he will be killed in secret, just as William Hastings was dragged out and beheaded on Tower Green on a baulk of wood with the axeman hurriedly wiping his hands from his breakfast. Dear God, when I think of the nape of the neck of my boy and I think of the headsman’s axe, I feel sick enough to die myself.
I don’t stay at the window watching the river that keeps flowing indifferently, as if my boy were not in danger of his life. I dress and pin up my hair and then I prowl about our sanctuary like one of the lionesses in the Tower. I comfort myself with plotting: we are not friendless, I am not without hope. My son Thomas Grey will be busy, I know, meeting in secret at hidden places those who can be convinced to rise for us, and there must be many in the country, in London too, who are beginning to doubt exactly what Duke Richard means by a protectorate. Margaret Stanley is clearly working for us: her husband Lord Thomas Stanley warned Hastings. My sister-in-law Duchess Margaret of York will be working for us in Burgundy. Even the French should take an interest in my danger, if only to cause trouble for Richard. There is a safe house in Flanders, where a well-paid family is greeting a little boy and teaching him to disappear into the crowd of Tournai. The duke may have the upper hand now, but there are as many who will hate him, as hated us Riverses, and many more will be thinking fondly of me, now I am in danger. Most of all there will be the men who want to see Edward’s son and not his brother on the throne.
I hear the rush of hurried footsteps, and I turn to face new danger as my daughter Cecily comes running down the crypt and throws opens the door to my chamber. She is white with fright. “There is something at the door,” she says. “Something horrible at the door.”
“What is at the door?” I ask. At once, of course, I think it is the headsman.
“Something as tall as a man, but looking like Death.”
I throw a scarf over my head and I go to the door and slide open the grille. Death himself seems to be waiting for me. He is in black gaberdine with a tall hat on his head and a long white tube of a nose hiding all his face. It is a physician with the long cone of his nose mask stuffed with herbs to protect him from the airs of the plague. He turns the glittery slits of his eyes on me, and I feel myself shiver.
“There is none with plague in here,” I say.
“I am Dr. Lewis of Caerleon, the Lady Margaret Beaufort’s doctor,” he says, his voice echoing weirdly from the cone. “She says you are suffering from woman’s maladies, and would benefit from a physician.”
I open the door. “Come in, I am not well,” I say. But as soon as the door is closed to the outside world, I challenge him. “I am perfectly well. Why are you here?”
“The Lady Beaufort-Lady Stanley, I should say-is well too, God be praised for her. But she wanted to find a way to speak with you, and I am of her affinity, and loyal to you, Your Grace.”
I nod. “Take off your mask.”
He takes the cone from his face and pushes back the hood from his head. He is a small dark man with a smiling, trustworthy face. He bows low. “She wants to know if you have devised a plan to rescue the two princes from the Tower. She wants you to know both she and her husband the Lord Stanley are yours to command, and she wants you to know that the Duke of Buckingham is filled with doubt as to where the Duke Richard’s ambition is leading him. She thinks the young duke is ready for turning.”
“Buckingham has done everything to put the duke where he sits now,” I say. “Why would he change his mind on this day of their victory?”
“Lady Margaret believes that the Duke of Buckingham could be persuaded,” he says, leaning forward to speak only into my ear. “She thinks he is starting to have doubts as to his leader. She thinks he would be interested in other, greater rewards than those the Duke Richard can offer him, and he is a young man, not yet thirty years old, easily swayed. He is afraid that the duke plans to take the throne for himself; he is afraid for the safety of your sons. You are his sister-in-law, these are his nephews too. He is concerned for the future of the princes, his little kinsmen. Lady Margaret bids me say to you that she thinks that the servants in the Tower can be bribed, and she wants to know how she can serve you in what plans you have to restore the Princes Edward and Richard to freedom.”