[FICATHON] Game of Roses, for lareinenoire
Title: Game of Roses
Author: mirabehn
Play: Henry VI part iii/Richard III
Recipient: lareinenoire
Character(s)/Pairing(s): Elizabeth Woodville, others
Warnings: none
Rating: PG
Notes: Thank-you to Puck for betaing, and apologies for the lateness!
Summary: Elizabeth looks back.
The needle drawn through the cloth, slowly. Thread whispered against the linen.
And beyond that, silence. Nowhere was more quiet than this. Most of the nuns were resting before Compline.
She was on edge too often these days. She missed laughter and raised voices and the rough skirl of politics. Clashing with the men who thought they could best her. That heady feeling she first had when she faced her clever little brother across a chessboard and for the seventh time that month she...
"Papa! Papa, Elizabeth is cheating again!"
Elizabeth's white knight had Anthony's red king as near as trapped. Two moves, she thought, satisfied. Two moves and I have him.
Sir Richard put down his goose-pen and came to crouch down beside them. He examined the board carefully for some moments, and then asked Elizabeth to show him the play she had made.
Her knight retreated and Anthony's second bishop miraculously came to life in its place. They danced over the last few moves in reverse, with their father watching silently from the side, thinking hard.
"Anthony, my son," he said after a while, "your sister has fourteen summers and you have nine, and I have never seen any sign that she has cheated playing this game with you. Why should you mind being beaten by her?"
"But she's a girl!" whined the boy, "and she's stupid! She doesn't read Latin! And she's a traitor," he added, "she said that the Queen and the Duke of Suffolk were… were…" He had forgotten the word, thankfully.
Sir Richard sighed and rubbed his forehead. "Elizabeth, come and talk with me," he said.
They walked out into the rose garden. All of the white blooms had been cut down the year before and the gaps were now filled with young pinks and reds.
"Your brother is young," said Sir Richard, "and he has yet to learn that there are other sorts of cleverness than those that come out of books."
"My brother dislikes me beating him because I am a woman," replied Elizabeth, tartly.
"Well, yes, there is that too," he rubbed his forehead again, and winced slightly. "Elizabeth," he said at last, "you are very intelligent. Not book-learned like your brother, but you reason, you think, and you make no secret of the fact that you do so. Rather like your mother, in fact," he smiled, "and look what has happened to her! From Duchess of Bedford to the wife of a poor Northamptonshire knight."
"And constantly in childbed! I'd rather not end up like that either."
"Well, that you may not have much of a say in," said her father. "My dear child, there are rare men in this life who like a clever woman. I am one of them. But I cannot guarantee to find you such a one for a husband, and you are maid-of-honour to the Queen. You will most likely be married within the year."
She bowed, stiffly, "And it likes my father, that likes me well."
"It does not like you at all," he said. "But it must be done, and soon. Your mother and I shall try to be choose you a man young and fair and pleasant and rich... Ah, you are smiling now! But you must promise us a thing too."
"Anything, father."
"Learn to conceal that cleverness of yours. Keep it with you as your second dearest treasure, after your virtue. Never let it go. But play the innocent and play the ignorant, and you shall wind men around your finger like a skein of thread around a spindle. At least until you find a man who is cleverer even than you. And then beware, Elizabeth, because that man will do you no good at all."
So her parents had found her Sir John Grey. Twenty years of age, sweet-natured, loyal, handsome. And stupid. Terribly, terribly stupid. She had made him her slave within a day of their marriage, and he never knew it. He only knew that she made him happy, happier than he had ever imagined, and he too had made her happy, happy enough to make their nine years together a blessing she had remembered all her life. And she had borne him two sons. And he had died fighting a royal Son of the House of York, the Sun in Splendour, whom she would marry.
The needle through the cloth again, and on, and on, and on as she mused. Red and white and red and white, husband of Lancaster, husband of York...
He wanted her; it was clear. And she wanted him about as much as she wanted a leprous beggar on the street, or that monstrous, crouched-back, spider brother of his. Dear stupid John was still a limb torn from her body and this king's raw arrogance and brutal sexual charisma was pathetic, even repellent. And yet her brain was working even as she knelt in front of him, alone and vulnerable with two young boys to support and no land or money with which to do it. Play the innocent and play the ignorant, said her father. Very well.
"Why stops my lord? Shall I not hear my task?"
"An easy task; 'tis but to love a king."
"That's soon perform'd, because I am a subject."
A strange game. Like chess, but also like sword-play. To return hit for hit, phrase for phrase, thought for thought, letting him believe he had won a point but then turn it against him. Or just the oldest hunt, to let him pursue her, to run ahead but not too far ahead. Let him believe that he was driving her, and not that she was leading him.
Her first idea was merely to tempt him with the prospect of her beauty, and then withdraw safely with both her lands and chastity intact. But the game was so enjoyable, and the poorly concealed amused sneers from the king's younger brothers oddly invigorating.
"Say that King Edward take thee for his Queen?"
And that was it. She nearly laughed. At that moment she thought nothing of her children, nothing of her lands. Certainly nothing of being a wife to this fair giant of a man, nor even of the riches he could bestow. But the power, the influence? The offer of a goal worthy of her own calculation and a chessboard as big as England and Ireland to play on. She displayed her reluctance as daintily as a maiden, but her mind? Her mind smiled.
How differently things would have been if she had refused in earnest. But how foolish a thought. How different her life would have been if she had not been the woman she was.
She grew to love Edward, first for what he could offer her, and then for what he could offer her family, and then, finally, for himself. She never loved his wilder humour or his whores (with the notable exception of pretty Jane Shore, she remembered, and she also remembered other things about Jane Shore which she would one day tell to her final confessor, but not yet, not yet). But his moments of kindness and of grandeur, and the times when she felt he knew her unwomanly cleverness and did not despise her for it, though he rarely seemed to listen to her all the same. Then she loved him indeed. Then she worshipped him.
And later, abed, she came to worship him anew. Elizabeth closed her eyes involuntarily. Her finger slipped and a single drop of blood splashed on to the dirty white of her work-apron. Red on white, red on white. She was the first Queen of the House of York, and she had brought down that house, bring down all of Edward's ambition for the sake of a Welsh upstart descended from the bastard son of a Duke of Lancaster. But it had not been her choice. Richard, she thought. It always came back to Richard.
"Stay, madam; I must talk a word with you."
Not now, oh no, not now. It was not that her eyes were sore and her heart pounding, but the loss of sleep was making her fingers prickle and her joints ache. She had come here to glower and to grieve and let the Duchess stand tall and do the talking. To frame words to express her hatred was not Elizabeth's gift. And her strength was gone. To reason with this monster was beyond her. This one she feared. This one had outthought them all, planned and acted with a devastating speed that had carried three sons and her favourite brother to their deaths. This, surely, was the cleverer man, the one her father had warned her of. And he had all but destroyed her.
She was beyond fear for herself. But her daughters… well. If all that stood between her daughters and ruin and death was her poor wit, they were ill-fated indeed. But she would not give up, not now.
For the first desperate moments of their conversation she held to her sanity on a knife's point. If she could not parley skilfully, she would fight and attack, and not let him speak. She tried to force her pain into her words but nothing was coming out right. She tried her wit again and parried well, but his words were nonsense, loving her daughter… loving her daughter?
And then he told her in plain terms that he wished to marry young Elizabeth and make her his queen. And she saw something in his eyes she had never noticed before.
How very, very scared he is. Beneath that confidence, that false charm, beneath all of his scheming, he is terrified. He is not a devil sent to ruin all, he is merely a clever madman whose mind is failing even as he believes he is close to conquering all. And now he wishes me to tell him how to woo my daughter, whose uncle he is and whose brothers and uncles he has killed. Oh, Richard, that is a lot of power to place in a wise woman's hands. You have no idea who you are dealing with.
Well. Let the games begin.
She knew she would never dissemble better, but never in her life had she had such need to and she hoped she never would again. She abused him, and still he persisted, and the more she attacked and the finer her wit, the more desperate his need to win became and the more easily he was persuaded that she would bend. He loved this game as much as she did, but she was better at it. It was easy. Easier than winning Edward, easier than beating poor Anthony at chess even once he reached adulthood and had books printed and armies to lead and still occasionally accused her of cheating.
She smiled over her needlework. She had let Richard believe he had won, and then she had quietly written that letter to Henry of Richmond and offered him her daughter and her loyalty and the throne and crown of England, and as good as signed Richard's death warrant herself.
They told her that his corpse had been dismembered after death. The thought had brought her less satisfaction than she had hoped. At his end, she rather pitied him.
She drew a stitch in his memory. One little stitch to commemorate that twisted brute who had killed her children. A strange thought, but she had revenged herself on him at full. And what monsters we make of those whose gifts must be hidden from the world. Perhaps she and Richard were too alike.
Together, she thought idly, we should have been invincible.
She shivered slightly. Bad luck, to wish away present prosperity. Probably treason too.
She turned back to her work. She was embroidering a rose. The Tudor rose, they called it now. White and red. York and Lancaster, entwined together in the arms of her daughter and her son-in-law. Her very, very clever son-in-law.
"Well."
"Well."
She settled her skirts more comfortably about her and smiled at him.
"Madam... Mother. Thank you for agreeing to see me. It has been too long. So much has happened in the past months that I have had little time for you, my sweet benefactress."
Mother? Benefactress? Your mother, lad, would not be happy to hear you address me with either title. She is barely happy to allow my daughter the precedence of Queen Consort, and she despises me. Well, no matter for her. I am the one who put you where you are, and you are a good boy and you will be a good husband to my daughter and father to my grandchildren, I know it.
She curtseyed. "Your Majesty... son. I was honoured by your invitation."
He bowed. They sat. And talked, and talked, and talked. Of days past, of the days to come. She found herself telling him all about her childhood, about John, about Edward. Henry was so easy to talk to, charming, quick to laugh. Her description of Richard amused him mightily, and he applauded her silently as she told him of that final confrontation, of how convinced poor crookback was that he had won.
At length they settled into a companionable silence. A servant brought wine and soft cakes. Elizabeth ate and drank heartily. Her cold, slender beauty was no longer a prize, and she was looking forward to settling into a softer, more comfortable middle-age. The dear old Queen Mother, who had brought triumph for her family and triumph for England out of the bad old days of civil war and murderous kings.
And then she happened to look up, and she saw Henry's face.
It had taken only a few days for her to pack up her goods and say goodbye to her servants. Voluntary retirement to a convent, because when the King ordered it, what choice was there? Some of her daughters still visited her. Not young Elizabeth, though she still saw her sometimes at court. Hers was a luxurious prison, and one from which she could stray ever and anon, so she return there at last. So she remember where she belonged.
She had given up playing chess. She embroidered now and let her mind wander as she did so, over old days and old triumphs. She had given of her best, and in the end she had been beaten by the cleverer man. What regrets could she have?
The needle drawn through the cloth and the whisper of thread...
She was dying, she knew. A death of the spirit, which would kill her in the end. She had so little left to live for.
She looked down upon her handiwork. A fine blanket for her new little grandson with - she smiled - a border in red and white squares like a chessboard.
A younger son, this little Henry, but she knew, suddenly, that he was the one who would take the throne after his too-clever father.
May he also have wit, she prayed, as she made the last few stitches in gold to set off the red and the white. May he be great and glorious and may all England remember his name. And may he have a son who…
She pondered this.
And may he have a daughter who is greater yet and still more glorious, and may she be so clever and wise that she makes me look like a simple village idiot. And if it please You, oh God, may she bear my name.
She smoothed down the cloth and shook out a few stray tufts of embroidery thread. The bell had not yet rung for Compline.
Time to begin work on another rose.
Author: mirabehn
Play: Henry VI part iii/Richard III
Recipient: lareinenoire
Character(s)/Pairing(s): Elizabeth Woodville, others
Warnings: none
Rating: PG
Notes: Thank-you to Puck for betaing, and apologies for the lateness!
Summary: Elizabeth looks back.
The needle drawn through the cloth, slowly. Thread whispered against the linen.
And beyond that, silence. Nowhere was more quiet than this. Most of the nuns were resting before Compline.
She was on edge too often these days. She missed laughter and raised voices and the rough skirl of politics. Clashing with the men who thought they could best her. That heady feeling she first had when she faced her clever little brother across a chessboard and for the seventh time that month she...
"Papa! Papa, Elizabeth is cheating again!"
Elizabeth's white knight had Anthony's red king as near as trapped. Two moves, she thought, satisfied. Two moves and I have him.
Sir Richard put down his goose-pen and came to crouch down beside them. He examined the board carefully for some moments, and then asked Elizabeth to show him the play she had made.
Her knight retreated and Anthony's second bishop miraculously came to life in its place. They danced over the last few moves in reverse, with their father watching silently from the side, thinking hard.
"Anthony, my son," he said after a while, "your sister has fourteen summers and you have nine, and I have never seen any sign that she has cheated playing this game with you. Why should you mind being beaten by her?"
"But she's a girl!" whined the boy, "and she's stupid! She doesn't read Latin! And she's a traitor," he added, "she said that the Queen and the Duke of Suffolk were… were…" He had forgotten the word, thankfully.
Sir Richard sighed and rubbed his forehead. "Elizabeth, come and talk with me," he said.
They walked out into the rose garden. All of the white blooms had been cut down the year before and the gaps were now filled with young pinks and reds.
"Your brother is young," said Sir Richard, "and he has yet to learn that there are other sorts of cleverness than those that come out of books."
"My brother dislikes me beating him because I am a woman," replied Elizabeth, tartly.
"Well, yes, there is that too," he rubbed his forehead again, and winced slightly. "Elizabeth," he said at last, "you are very intelligent. Not book-learned like your brother, but you reason, you think, and you make no secret of the fact that you do so. Rather like your mother, in fact," he smiled, "and look what has happened to her! From Duchess of Bedford to the wife of a poor Northamptonshire knight."
"And constantly in childbed! I'd rather not end up like that either."
"Well, that you may not have much of a say in," said her father. "My dear child, there are rare men in this life who like a clever woman. I am one of them. But I cannot guarantee to find you such a one for a husband, and you are maid-of-honour to the Queen. You will most likely be married within the year."
She bowed, stiffly, "And it likes my father, that likes me well."
"It does not like you at all," he said. "But it must be done, and soon. Your mother and I shall try to be choose you a man young and fair and pleasant and rich... Ah, you are smiling now! But you must promise us a thing too."
"Anything, father."
"Learn to conceal that cleverness of yours. Keep it with you as your second dearest treasure, after your virtue. Never let it go. But play the innocent and play the ignorant, and you shall wind men around your finger like a skein of thread around a spindle. At least until you find a man who is cleverer even than you. And then beware, Elizabeth, because that man will do you no good at all."
So her parents had found her Sir John Grey. Twenty years of age, sweet-natured, loyal, handsome. And stupid. Terribly, terribly stupid. She had made him her slave within a day of their marriage, and he never knew it. He only knew that she made him happy, happier than he had ever imagined, and he too had made her happy, happy enough to make their nine years together a blessing she had remembered all her life. And she had borne him two sons. And he had died fighting a royal Son of the House of York, the Sun in Splendour, whom she would marry.
The needle through the cloth again, and on, and on, and on as she mused. Red and white and red and white, husband of Lancaster, husband of York...
He wanted her; it was clear. And she wanted him about as much as she wanted a leprous beggar on the street, or that monstrous, crouched-back, spider brother of his. Dear stupid John was still a limb torn from her body and this king's raw arrogance and brutal sexual charisma was pathetic, even repellent. And yet her brain was working even as she knelt in front of him, alone and vulnerable with two young boys to support and no land or money with which to do it. Play the innocent and play the ignorant, said her father. Very well.
"Why stops my lord? Shall I not hear my task?"
"An easy task; 'tis but to love a king."
"That's soon perform'd, because I am a subject."
A strange game. Like chess, but also like sword-play. To return hit for hit, phrase for phrase, thought for thought, letting him believe he had won a point but then turn it against him. Or just the oldest hunt, to let him pursue her, to run ahead but not too far ahead. Let him believe that he was driving her, and not that she was leading him.
Her first idea was merely to tempt him with the prospect of her beauty, and then withdraw safely with both her lands and chastity intact. But the game was so enjoyable, and the poorly concealed amused sneers from the king's younger brothers oddly invigorating.
"Say that King Edward take thee for his Queen?"
And that was it. She nearly laughed. At that moment she thought nothing of her children, nothing of her lands. Certainly nothing of being a wife to this fair giant of a man, nor even of the riches he could bestow. But the power, the influence? The offer of a goal worthy of her own calculation and a chessboard as big as England and Ireland to play on. She displayed her reluctance as daintily as a maiden, but her mind? Her mind smiled.
How differently things would have been if she had refused in earnest. But how foolish a thought. How different her life would have been if she had not been the woman she was.
She grew to love Edward, first for what he could offer her, and then for what he could offer her family, and then, finally, for himself. She never loved his wilder humour or his whores (with the notable exception of pretty Jane Shore, she remembered, and she also remembered other things about Jane Shore which she would one day tell to her final confessor, but not yet, not yet). But his moments of kindness and of grandeur, and the times when she felt he knew her unwomanly cleverness and did not despise her for it, though he rarely seemed to listen to her all the same. Then she loved him indeed. Then she worshipped him.
And later, abed, she came to worship him anew. Elizabeth closed her eyes involuntarily. Her finger slipped and a single drop of blood splashed on to the dirty white of her work-apron. Red on white, red on white. She was the first Queen of the House of York, and she had brought down that house, bring down all of Edward's ambition for the sake of a Welsh upstart descended from the bastard son of a Duke of Lancaster. But it had not been her choice. Richard, she thought. It always came back to Richard.
"Stay, madam; I must talk a word with you."
Not now, oh no, not now. It was not that her eyes were sore and her heart pounding, but the loss of sleep was making her fingers prickle and her joints ache. She had come here to glower and to grieve and let the Duchess stand tall and do the talking. To frame words to express her hatred was not Elizabeth's gift. And her strength was gone. To reason with this monster was beyond her. This one she feared. This one had outthought them all, planned and acted with a devastating speed that had carried three sons and her favourite brother to their deaths. This, surely, was the cleverer man, the one her father had warned her of. And he had all but destroyed her.
She was beyond fear for herself. But her daughters… well. If all that stood between her daughters and ruin and death was her poor wit, they were ill-fated indeed. But she would not give up, not now.
For the first desperate moments of their conversation she held to her sanity on a knife's point. If she could not parley skilfully, she would fight and attack, and not let him speak. She tried to force her pain into her words but nothing was coming out right. She tried her wit again and parried well, but his words were nonsense, loving her daughter… loving her daughter?
And then he told her in plain terms that he wished to marry young Elizabeth and make her his queen. And she saw something in his eyes she had never noticed before.
How very, very scared he is. Beneath that confidence, that false charm, beneath all of his scheming, he is terrified. He is not a devil sent to ruin all, he is merely a clever madman whose mind is failing even as he believes he is close to conquering all. And now he wishes me to tell him how to woo my daughter, whose uncle he is and whose brothers and uncles he has killed. Oh, Richard, that is a lot of power to place in a wise woman's hands. You have no idea who you are dealing with.
Well. Let the games begin.
She knew she would never dissemble better, but never in her life had she had such need to and she hoped she never would again. She abused him, and still he persisted, and the more she attacked and the finer her wit, the more desperate his need to win became and the more easily he was persuaded that she would bend. He loved this game as much as she did, but she was better at it. It was easy. Easier than winning Edward, easier than beating poor Anthony at chess even once he reached adulthood and had books printed and armies to lead and still occasionally accused her of cheating.
She smiled over her needlework. She had let Richard believe he had won, and then she had quietly written that letter to Henry of Richmond and offered him her daughter and her loyalty and the throne and crown of England, and as good as signed Richard's death warrant herself.
They told her that his corpse had been dismembered after death. The thought had brought her less satisfaction than she had hoped. At his end, she rather pitied him.
She drew a stitch in his memory. One little stitch to commemorate that twisted brute who had killed her children. A strange thought, but she had revenged herself on him at full. And what monsters we make of those whose gifts must be hidden from the world. Perhaps she and Richard were too alike.
Together, she thought idly, we should have been invincible.
She shivered slightly. Bad luck, to wish away present prosperity. Probably treason too.
She turned back to her work. She was embroidering a rose. The Tudor rose, they called it now. White and red. York and Lancaster, entwined together in the arms of her daughter and her son-in-law. Her very, very clever son-in-law.
"Well."
"Well."
She settled her skirts more comfortably about her and smiled at him.
"Madam... Mother. Thank you for agreeing to see me. It has been too long. So much has happened in the past months that I have had little time for you, my sweet benefactress."
Mother? Benefactress? Your mother, lad, would not be happy to hear you address me with either title. She is barely happy to allow my daughter the precedence of Queen Consort, and she despises me. Well, no matter for her. I am the one who put you where you are, and you are a good boy and you will be a good husband to my daughter and father to my grandchildren, I know it.
She curtseyed. "Your Majesty... son. I was honoured by your invitation."
He bowed. They sat. And talked, and talked, and talked. Of days past, of the days to come. She found herself telling him all about her childhood, about John, about Edward. Henry was so easy to talk to, charming, quick to laugh. Her description of Richard amused him mightily, and he applauded her silently as she told him of that final confrontation, of how convinced poor crookback was that he had won.
At length they settled into a companionable silence. A servant brought wine and soft cakes. Elizabeth ate and drank heartily. Her cold, slender beauty was no longer a prize, and she was looking forward to settling into a softer, more comfortable middle-age. The dear old Queen Mother, who had brought triumph for her family and triumph for England out of the bad old days of civil war and murderous kings.
And then she happened to look up, and she saw Henry's face.
It had taken only a few days for her to pack up her goods and say goodbye to her servants. Voluntary retirement to a convent, because when the King ordered it, what choice was there? Some of her daughters still visited her. Not young Elizabeth, though she still saw her sometimes at court. Hers was a luxurious prison, and one from which she could stray ever and anon, so she return there at last. So she remember where she belonged.
She had given up playing chess. She embroidered now and let her mind wander as she did so, over old days and old triumphs. She had given of her best, and in the end she had been beaten by the cleverer man. What regrets could she have?
The needle drawn through the cloth and the whisper of thread...
She was dying, she knew. A death of the spirit, which would kill her in the end. She had so little left to live for.
She looked down upon her handiwork. A fine blanket for her new little grandson with - she smiled - a border in red and white squares like a chessboard.
A younger son, this little Henry, but she knew, suddenly, that he was the one who would take the throne after his too-clever father.
May he also have wit, she prayed, as she made the last few stitches in gold to set off the red and the white. May he be great and glorious and may all England remember his name. And may he have a son who…
She pondered this.
And may he have a daughter who is greater yet and still more glorious, and may she be so clever and wise that she makes me look like a simple village idiot. And if it please You, oh God, may she bear my name.
She smoothed down the cloth and shook out a few stray tufts of embroidery thread. The bell had not yet rung for Compline.
Time to begin work on another rose.