Philippa Gregory's Tudor Court 6-Book Boxed Set (401 page)

I tear my eyes from the sour, crinkled face of my great-aunt and concentrate on my own task. My job is to make sure that I stand beside Isabel, behind my mother, and do not step on her train: absolutely do not step on her train. I am only eight; I have to make sure that I do this right. Isabel, who is thirteen, sighs as she sees me look down and shuffle my feet so that my toes go under the rich brocade to make sure that there is no possibility of mistake. And then Jacquetta, the queen’s mother, the mother of a gannet, looks backwards, around her own children to see that I am in the right place. She looks around as if she cares for my comfort, and when she sees me, behind my mother, beside Isabel, she gives me a smile as beautiful as her daughter’s smile, a smile just for me, and then turns back and takes the arm of her handsome husband and follows her daughter in this, the moment of her utter triumph.

When we have walked through the great hall, through the hundreds of people who stand and cheer at the sight of the beautiful new queen to be, and everyone is seated, I can look at the adults again at the high table. I am not the only one staring at the new queen. She attracts everyone’s attention. She has the most beautiful slanty eyes of gray, and when she smiles she looks down as if she is laughing to herself about some delicious secret. Edward the king has placed her beside him on his right hand, and when he whispers in her ear, she leans towards him as close as if they were about to kiss. It’s very shocking and wrong but when I look at the new queen’s mother, I see that she is smiling at her daughter, as if she is happy that they are young and in love. She doesn’t seem to be ashamed of it at all.

They are a terribly handsome family; nobody can deny that they are as beautiful as if they had the bluest blood in their veins. And so many of them! Six of the Rivers family and the two sons from the new queen’s first marriage are children, seated at our table as if they were young people of royal blood and had a right to sit with us, the daughters of a countess. I see Isabel look sourly at the four beautiful Rivers girls from the youngest Katherine Woodville, who is only seven years old, to the oldest at our table Martha, who is fifteen. These girls, four of them, will have to be given husbands, dowries, fortunes; and there are not so very many husbands, dowries, fortunes to be had in England these days—not after a war between the houses of Lancaster and York, which has gone on now for ten years and killed so many men. These girls will be compared with us, they will be our rivals. It feels as if the court is flooded with new clear profiles, skin as bright as a new-minted coin, laughing voices, and exquisite manners. It’s as if we have been invaded by some beautiful tribe of young strangers, as if statues have come beautifully to life and are dancing among us, like birds flown down from the sky to sing or fish leapt from the sea. I look at my mother and see her flushed with high-bred disdain: she looks as hot and cross as a baker’s wife. Beside her, the queen glows like a playful angel, her head always tipped towards her young husband, her lips slightly parted as if she would breathe him in like cool air.

The grand dinner is an exciting time for me; for we have the king’s brother George at one end of our table and his youngest brother, Richard, at the foot. The queen’s mother, Jacquetta, gives the whole table of young people a warm smile, and I guess that she planned this—thinking it would be fun for us children to be together and an honor to have George at the head of our table. Isabel is wriggling like a sheared sheep at having two royal dukes beside her at once. She doesn’t know which way to look, she is so anxious to impress. And—what is so much worse—the two oldest Rivers girls, Martha and Eleanor, outshine her without effort. They have the exquisite looks of this beautiful family and they are confident and assured and smiling. Isabel is trying too hard, and I am in my usual state of anxiety with my mother’s critical gaze on me. But the Rivers girls act as if they are here to celebrate a happy event: they anticipate enjoyment, and they know that great marriages will be made for them. They are girls confident of themselves and disposed for amusement. Of course the royal dukes will prefer them to us. George has known us all his life: we are not strange beauties to him. Richard is one of my father’s wards; when we are in England he is among the half-dozen boys who live with us. Richard sees us three times a day. Of course he is bound to look at Martha Woodville, who is all dressed up, new to court, and a beauty like her sister the new queen. But it is irritating that he does not look at me at all.

George at fifteen is as handsome as his older brother the king, fair headed and tall. He says, “This must be the first time you have dined in the Tower, Anne, isn’t it?” I am thrilled and appalled that he should take notice of me, and my face burns with a blush; but I say “yes” clearly enough.

Richard at the other end of the table is a year younger than Isabel and no taller than she, but now that his brother is King of England he seems much more handsome. Isabel, trying to make conversation with him, turns the talk to riding horses and asks him does he remember falling off our pony when he was a little boy living with us at Middleham Castle? He smiles at Martha Woodville and says he doesn’t. Isabel is trying to make out that we are friends, the very best of friends; but really, most of the time, he was taught with the other wards in one schoolroom, and we were with our mother in another room. We saw each other when we were allowed out hunting or at dinner. Isabel cannot really try to persuade the Rivers girls that we are one happy family and they are unwanted intruders.

Isabel can make faces all she wants, but I won’t be made to feel awkward. We have a better right to be seated at this table than anyone else, far better than the beautiful Rivers girls. We are the richest heiresses in England, and my father commands the narrow seas between Calais and the English coast. We are of the great Neville family, guardians of the north of England: we have royal blood in our veins. My father has been a guardian to Richard and a mentor and advisor to the king himself. We are as good as anybody in the hall, richer than anyone in this hall, richer even than the king and a great deal better born than the new queen. I can talk as an equal to any royal duke of the House of York because without my father, their house would have lost the wars, Lancaster would still rule, and George, handsome and princely as he is, would now be brother to a nobody and the son of a traitor.

It is a long dinner, though tomorrow, which is the queen’s coronation dinner, will be even worse. Tonight they serve thirty-two courses, and the queen sends some special dishes to our table, to honor us with her attention. George stands up and bows his thanks to her, and then serves all of us from the silver dish. He sees me watching him and he gives me a spoonful of extra sauce with a wink. Now and then my mother glances over at me like a watchtower beacon flaring out over a dark sea. Each time that I sense her hard gaze on me, I raise my head and smile at her. I am certain that she cannot fault me. I have one of the new forks in my hand; I have a napkin in my sleeve, as if I were a French lady, familiar with these new fashions. I have watered wine in the glass on my right, and I am eating as I have been taught to eat: daintily and without haste. If George, a royal duke, chooses to single me out for his attention, then I don’t see why he should not or why anyone should be surprised by it. Certainly, it comes as no surprise to me.

*   *   *

I share a bed, with Isabel, while we are guests of the king at the Tower on the night before the queen’s coronation as I do in our home at Calais, as I have done every night of my life. I am sent to bed an hour before her, though I am too excited to sleep. I say my prayers and then lie in my bed and listen to the music drifting up from the hall below. They are still dancing: the king and his wife love to dance. When he takes her hand, you can see that he has to stop himself from drawing her closer. She glances down, and when she looks, up he is still looking at her with his hot look and she gives him a little smile that is full of promise.

I can’t help but wonder if the old king, the sleeping king, is awake tonight somewhere in the wild lands of the north of England. It is a rather horrible to think of him, fast asleep but knowing in his very dreams that they are dancing and that a new king and queen have crowned themselves and put themselves in his place, and tomorrow a new queen will wear his wife’s crown. Father says I have nothing to fear: the bad queen has run away to France and will get no help from her French friends. Father is meeting with the King of France himself to make sure that he becomes our friend and the bad queen will get no help from him. She is our enemy; she is the enemy of the peace of England. Father will make sure that there is no home for her in France, as there is no throne for her in England. Meanwhile, the sleeping king without his wife, without his son, will be wrapped up warm in some little castle somewhere near Scotland, dozing his life away like a bee in a curtain all winter. My father says that he will sleep and she will burn with rage until they both grow old and die, and there is nothing for me to fear at all. It was my father who bravely drove the sleeping king off the throne and put his crown on the head of King Edward, so it must be right. It was my father who faced the terror that was the bad queen, a she wolf worse than the wolves of France, and defeated her. But I don’t like to think of the old king Henry, with the moonlight shining on his closed eyelids, while the men who drove him away are dancing in what was once his great hall. I don’t like to think of the bad queen, far away in France, swearing that she will have revenge on us, cursing our happiness and saying that she will come back here, calling it her home.

By the time that Isabel finally comes in I am kneeling up at the narrow window to look at the moonlight, shining on the river, thinking of the king dreaming in its glow. “You should be asleep,” she says bossily.

“She can’t come for us, can she?”

“The bad queen?” Isabel knows at once the horror of Queen Margaret of Anjou who has haunted both our childhoods. “No. She’s defeated—she was utterly defeated by Father at Towton. She ran away. She can’t come back.”

“You’re sure?”

Isabel puts her arm around my thin shoulders. “You know I am sure. You know we are safe. The mad king is asleep and the bad queen is defeated. This is just an excuse for you to stay awake when you should be asleep.”

Obediently, I turn around and sit up in bed, pulling the sheets up to my chin. “I’m going to sleep. Wasn’t it wonderful?”

“Not particularly.”

“Don’t you think she is beautiful?”

“Who?” she says, as if she really doesn’t know, as if it is not blindingly obvious who is the most beautiful woman in England tonight.

“The new queen, Queen Elizabeth.”

“Well I don’t think she’s very queenly,” she says, trying to sound like our mother at her most disdainful. “I don’t know how she will manage at her coronation, and at the joust and the tournament—she was just the wife of a country squire and the daughter of a nobody. How will she ever know how to behave?”

“Why? How would you behave?” I ask, trying to prolong the conversation. Isabel always knows so much more than me, five years older than me, our parents’ favorite, a brilliant marriage ahead of her, almost a woman while I am still nothing but a child. She even looks down on the queen!

“I would carry myself with much more dignity than her. I would not whisper with the king and demean myself as she did. I wouldn’t send out dishes and wave to people like she did. I wouldn’t trail all my brothers and sisters into court like she did. I would be much more reserved and cold. I wouldn’t smile at anyone, I wouldn’t bow to anyone. I would be a true queen, a queen of ice without family or friends.”

I am so attracted by this picture that I am halfway out of my bed again. I pull off the fur cover from our bed. I hold it up to her. “Like what? How would you be? Show me, Izzy!”

She takes it like a cape around her shoulders, throws her head back, draws herself up to her four feet six inches, and strides around the little chamber with her head very high, nodding distantly to imaginary courtiers. “Like this,” she says. “
Comme ça,
elegant and unfriendly.”

I jump out of bed and snatch up a shawl, throw it over my head, and follow her, mirroring her nod to right and left, looking as regal as Isabel. “How do you do?” I say to an empty chair. I pause as if listening to a request for some favor. “No, not at all. I won’t be able to help you. I am so sorry, I have already given that post to my sister.”

“To my father, Lord Rivers,” Izzy adds.

“To my brother Anthony—he’s so handsome.”

“To my brother John and a fortune to my sisters. There is nothing left for you at all. I have a large family,” Isabel says being the new queen in her haughty drawl. “And they all must be accommodated.”

“All of them,” I supplement. “Dozens of them. Did you see how many of them came into the great hall behind me? Where am I to find titles and land for all of them?”

We walk in grand circles and pass each other as we go by, inclining our heads with magnificent indifference. “And who are you?” I inquire coldly.

“I am the Queen of England,” Isabel says, changing the game without warning. “I am Queen Isabel of England and France, newly married to King Edward. He fell in love with me for my beauty. He is mad for me. He has run completely mad for me and forgotten his friends and his duty. We married in secret, and now I am to be crowned queen.”

“No, no,
I
was being the Queen of England,” I say, dropping the shawl and turning on her. “I am Queen Anne of England. I am the Queen of England. King Edward chose me.”

“He never would—you’re the youngest.”

“He did! He did!’ I can feel the rise of my temper, and I know that I will spoil the game, but I cannot bear to give her precedence once again, even in a game in our own chamber.

“We can’t both be Queen of England,” she says reasonably enough. “You be the Queen of France, you can be the Queen of France. France is nice enough.”

“England! I am the Queen of England. I hate France!”