Read Online The White Queen by Philippa Gregory - Free Book Online

triumph, but I am instantly disappointed.
    “Dear God, he has fooled you,” he says, anguished. He takes me into his arms and presses
     my head against his chest. “My poor sister, my poor fool.”
    I struggle free. “Let me go, I am nobody’s fool. What are you saying?”
    He looks at me with sorrow, but his mouth is twisted into a bitter smile. “Let me
     guess, was this a secret wedding, in a private chapel? Did none of his friends and
     courtiers attend? Is Lord Warwick not to be told? Is it to be kept private? Are you
     to deny it, if asked?”
    “Yes. But—”
    “You are not married, Elizabeth. You have been tricked. It was a pretend service that
     has no weight in the eyes of God nor of man. He has fooled you with a trumpery ring
     and a pretend priest so that he could get you into bed.”
    “No.”
    “This is the man who hopes to be King of England. He has to marry a princess. He’s
     not going to marry some beggarly widow from the camp of his enemy, who stood out on
     the road to plead with him to restore her dowry. If he marries an Englishwoman at
     all, she will be one of the great ladies of the Lancaster court, probably Warwick’s
     daughter Isabel. He’s not going to marry a girl whose own father fought against him.
     He’s more likely to marry a great princess of Europe, an infanta from Spain, or a
     princesse from France. He has to marry to set himself more safely on the throne, to
     makealliances. He’s not going to marry a pretty face for love. Lord Warwick would never
     allow it. And he is not such a fool as to go against his own interests.”
    “He doesn’t have to do what Lord Warwick wants! He’s the king.”
    “He is Warwick’s puppet,” my brother says cruelly. “Lord Warwick decided to back him,
     just as Warwick’s father backed Edward’s father. Without the support of Warwick, neither
     your lover nor his father would have been able to make anything of his claim to the
     throne. Warwick is the kingmaker, and he has made your lover into King of England.
     Be very sure he will make the queen too. He will choose who Edward is to marry, and
     Edward will marry her.”
    I am stunned into silence. “But he didn’t. He can’t. Edward married me.”
    “A play, a charade, mumming, nothing more.”
    “It wasn’t. There were witnesses.”
    “Who?”
    “Mother, for one,” I say eventually.
    “Our mother?”
    “She was witness, along with Catherine, her lady-in-waiting.”
    “Does Father know? Was he there?”
    I shake my head.
    “There you are then,” he says. “Who are your many witnesses?”
    “Mother, Catherine, the priest, and a boy singer,” I say.
    “Which priest?”
    “One I don’t know. The king commanded him there.”
    He shrugs. “If he was a priest at all. He is more likely some fool or mummer pretending
     as a favor. Even if he is ordained, the king can still deny that the marriage was
     valid and it is the word of three women and a boy against the King of England. Easy
     enough to get you three arrested on some charge and held for a year or so until he
     is married to whatever princess he chooses. He has played you and Mother for fools.”
    “I swear to you that he loves me.”
    “Maybe he does,” he concedes. “As maybe he loves each and every one of the women he
     has bedded, and there are hundreds of them. But when the battle is over and he is
     riding home and sees another pretty girl by the roadside? He will forget you within
     a sennight.”
    I rub my hand against my cheek and find that my cheeks are wet with tears. “I’m going
     to tell Mother what you said,” I say weakly. It is the threat of our childhood; it
     didn’t frighten him then.
    “Let’s both go to her. She won’t be happy when she realizes that she has been fooled
     into pushing her daughter into dishonor.”
    We walk in silence through the woods and then over the footbridge. As we go by the
     big ash tree I glance at the trunk. The looped thread has gone; there is no