The White Queen Read Online Free PDF Page A

right on their side.”
    “Nonetheless, if he sends, you will not go to court,” my father says. “This is a man
     who has worked his way through half the wives of London and is now working his way
     through the Lancastrian ladies too. This is not a holy man like the blessed King Henry.”
    Nor soft in the head like blessed King Henry, I think, but aloud I say, “Of course,
     Father, whatever you command.”
    He looks sharply at me, suspicious of this easy obedience. “You don’t think you owe
     him your favor? Your smiles? Worse?”
    I shrug. “I asked him for a king’s justice, not for a favor,” I say. “I am not a manservant
     whose service can be bought or a peasant who can be sworn to be a liege man. I am
     a lady of good family. I have my own loyalties and obligations that I consider and
     honor. They are not his. They are not at the beck and call of any man.”
    My mother drops her head to hide her smile. She is the daughter of Burgundy, the descendant
     of Melusina the water goddess. She has never thought herself obliged to do anything
     in her life; she would never think that her daughter was obliged to anything.
    My father glances from her to me and shrugs hisshoulders as if to concede the inveterate independence of willful women. He nods to
     my brother John and says, “I am riding over to Old Stratford village. Will you come
     with me?” And the two of them leave together.
    “You want to go to court? Do you admire him? Despite everything?” Anthony asks me
     quietly as my other brothers scatter from the room.
    “He is King of England,” I say. “Of course I will go if he invites me. What else?”
    “Perhaps because Father just said you were not to go, and I advised you against it.”
    I shrug. “So I heard.”
    “How else can a poor widow make her way in a wicked world?” he teases me.
    “Indeed.”
    “You would be a fool to sell yourself cheap,” he warns me.
    I look at him from under my eyelashes. “I don’t propose to sell myself at all,” I
     say. “I am not a yard of ribbon. I am not a leg of ham. I am not for sale to anyone.”
     
    At sunset I am waiting for him under the oak tree, hidden in the green shadows. I am relieved
     to hear the sound of only one horse on the road. If he had come with a guard, I would
     have slipped back to my home, fearing for my own safety. However tender he may be
     in the confines of my father’s garden, I don’t forget that he is the so-called king
     of the Yorkist army and thatthey rape women and murder their husbands as a matter of course. He will have hardened
     himself to seeing things that no one should witness; he will have done things himself
     which are the darkest of sins. I cannot trust him. However heart-stopping his smile
     and however honest his eyes, however much I think of him as a boy fired to greatness
     by his own ambition, I cannot trust him. These are not chivalrous times; these are
     not the times of knights in the dark forest and beautiful ladies in moonlit fountains
     and promises of love that will be ballads, sung forever.
    But he looks like a knight in a dark forest when he pulls up his horse and jumps down
     in one easy movement. “You came!” he says.
    “I cannot stay long.”
    “I am so glad you came at all.” He laughs at himself almost in bewilderment. “I have
     been like a boy today—couldn’t sleep last night for thinking of you, and all day I
     have wondered if you would come at all, and then you came!”
    He loops the reins of his horse over a branch of the tree and slides his hand around
     my waist. “Sweet lady,” he says into my ear. “Be kind to me. Will you take off your
     headdress and let down your hair?”
    It is the last thing I thought he would demand of me, and I am shocked into instant
     consent. My hand goes to my headdress ribbons at once.
    “I know. I know. I think you are driving me mad. All I have been able to think about
     all day is whether you would let me take down your