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e816923
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never see them again. Surely, a couple so young, so
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Philippa Gregory |
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5eb0a47
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We were a quartet of idiots trying to look suave.
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Philippa Gregory |
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b15b90a
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She had no idea, no better than my kitten, as to how she would survive in this kingdom of her enemies. She must have thought that George was her savior. But not for long. Nobody knows quite what happened after that; but something went wrong with George's agreeable plan to own both Neville girls and keep their enormous fortune to himself. Some say that Richard, visiting George's grand house, met Anne again--his childhood acquaintance--and th..
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Philippa Gregory |
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b31601f
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At dusk, on the last day of April, I hear a calling noise, like a white-winged barn owl, and I go to my window and push open the shutters and look out. There is a waning moon rising off the horizon, white against a white sky; it too is wasting away, and in its cold light I can hear a calling, like a choir, and I know it is not the music of owls, nor singers nor nightingales, but Melusina. Our ancestor goddess is calling around the roof of t..
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Philippa Gregory |
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8097d70
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The moonlight on the water outside the chamber window throws the reflection of ripples onto the whitewashed ceiling of the room, so they look as if they are underwater, floating with Melusina in the fountain. But I know that they are both gone from me, and our water mother is singing them on their journey down the sweet river to the deep springs of home.
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Philippa Gregory |
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85dde1c
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who are sent to
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Philippa Gregory |
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dcd059a
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For these are true boys and they draw dirt to them as if by magic.
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Philippa Gregory |
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f218f4e
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scowling with worry. "Come at once, he's"
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Philippa Gregory |
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2b34252
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He was such a happy boy, and happiness is not memorable.
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Philippa Gregory |
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f699ce0
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kinds of disguises and dance to all sorts of tunes to make myself Harry's addiction. If he had not been fatally flawed, early corrupted by the brutality of his school, I should never have been able to keep him from Celia. I knew I was a hundred times more beautiful than she, a hundred times stronger. But I could not always remember that, when I saw the quiet strength she drew on when she believed she was morally right. And I could not be ce..
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Philippa Gregory |
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d3ad178
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There is nothing that sickens a country more than its own people fighting against one another. It destroys families; it is killing us daily.
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Philippa Gregory |
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72a5fda
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Where will you go?" "To the safest place in London," he says with a rueful smile. "A place that loved your husband and will never forgive Duke Richard for betraying him. The only honest business in London." "Where d'you mean?" "The whorehouse," he says with a grin."
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Philippa Gregory |
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43f344d
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It felt as if we were fighting something worse than Anne, some demon that possessed her, that possessed all of us Boleyns: ambition - the devil that had brought us to this little room and brought my sister to this insane distress, and us to this savage battle.
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Philippa Gregory |
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933f623
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I feel worse than I have ever done before, because now I know that it is easier to take a country into war than to bring it to live at peace, and a country at war is a bitter place to live, a risky place to have daughters, and a dangerous place to hope for a son.
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Philippa Gregory |
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a33c00a
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As soon as they are gone and the door closed behind them, we fall into a frenzy about my dress. "Dark green," my mother says. "It has to be dark green." It is our only safe color. Dark blue is the royal color of mourning, but I must not, for one moment, look as if I am grieving for my royal lover and the true king of England. Dark red is the color of martyrdom, but also sometimes, contradictorily, worn by whores to make their complexions ap..
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Philippa Gregory |
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13a5c77
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You are a son of Melusina," I say, trying to smile. "You sound like her when she had to be free to go into the water."
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Philippa Gregory |
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3fa29fb
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You are lucky in your looks," she says. "Your mother was always a beauty and you are very like her: fair, slender, skin like a rose petal and that wonderful hair, gold and bronze all at once. Undoubtedly you will have beautiful children. I suppose you are still proud of your looks? I suppose you are still vain?" I"
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Philippa Gregory |
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f320a5c
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It is as I said. Your house's emblem should not be the white rose but the old sign of eternity." "Eternity?" I repeat, hopeful that he is going to say something reassuring at this most dark time in our days. "Yes, the snake which eats itself. The sons of York will destroy each other, one brother destroying another, uncles devouring nephews, fathers beheading sons. They are a house which has to have blood, and they will shed their own if the..
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Philippa Gregory |
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06f73bd
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Richard told me I was the most beautiful girl that had ever been born, that one glance from me set him on fire with desire, that my skin was perfect, that my hair was his delight, that he never slept so well as with his face buried in my blond plait. I don't expect to hear such words of love ever again. I don't expect to feel beautiful ever again. They buried my joy and my girl's vanity with my lover, and I don't expect to feel either ever ..
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Philippa Gregory |
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5c5192b
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I am the daughter of a water goddess. I am a woman with water in her veins and power in her breeding. I am a woman who makes things happen, and I am not defeated yet. I am not defeated by a boy with a newly won crown, and no man will ever walk away from me certain that he won't walk back.
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Philippa Gregory |
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eeb544c
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For the first time it strikes me that it must be hard to spend your life in exile and finally win your kingdom by a thread, by the action of a turncoat in battle, and to know that most of the country does not celebrate your luck, and the woman that you have to marry is in love with someone else: your dead enemy and the rightful king. I have been thinking of him as triumphant; but here I see a man burdened by an odd twist of fate, coming to ..
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Philippa Gregory |
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71f2de0
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Jacquetta, Duchess of Bedford--grandmother to the White Princess. When I started my research, there was no biography of her at all. I had to find her through her husbands, her family, and by tracing her through royal service and her relationship with her daughter, the White Queen. Yet she was a woman whose life and work were outside the home and whose impact was far from the domestic. If she had been a man, we would surely have a biography ..
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Philippa Gregory |
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048b9b1
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You're a girl from the House of Lancaster. You cannot fall in love with the heir to the House of York unless he is king victorious, and there is some profit in love for you. These are hard days we are living in. Death is our companion, our familiar. You need not think you can keep Him at arm's length. You will find He bears you close company. He has taken your husband; hear me: He will take your father and your brothers and your sons.
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Philippa Gregory |
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baf8984
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It is hard to tell the story of Elizabeth of York without her farbetter-known husband, Henry VII, as the hero. Henry himself, Jasper Tudor, and Thomas Stanley are all described as powerful coherent agents of their own lives, but the enemies that Henry feared--Margaret, Dowager Duchess of Burgundy, and Elizabeth Woodville--are written off as harpies filled with pointless malice, or as women crazed by grief. His greatest supporter, the leader..
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Philippa Gregory |
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6d912ca
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But the misogynistic view of history explains women's motives as neurotic, even psychotic. It is the get-out clause for lazy historians who cannot account for active, powerful women. Margaret Beaufort; Margaret, Dowager Duchess of York; Elizabeth Woodville; and Jacquetta Rivers have all been labeled as religious fanatics, hysterics, or witches. But in fact they were formidable and persistent politicians, deploying the weapons they had avail..
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Philippa Gregory |
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cb29bf1
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I feel I owe it to the women that their stories should be told fully by us--the descendants and heirs to their very real struggles and genuine victories. And so I hope very much that you will find this novel is a gateway to take you closer to the lives of your inheritance, your forebears: these real women and their world.
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Philippa Gregory |
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bb38368
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All the people speak of a hero like a ghost or a sleeping saint, or a pretender. It would almost make you believe that there is an heir of York hidden out in the hills, a king waiting for the call to battle, sleeping like the true Arthur of England, ready to rise. People love to dream, so how should anyone contradict them?
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Philippa Gregory |
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cc952a8
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So he left her, because in his heart he feared that she was a woman with a divided nature--and he did not realize that all women are creatures of divided nature.
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Philippa Gregory |
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445052e
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Each hour burns slowly away, although time means nothing to him now. Time is quite lost to him in his eternal darkness, in his eternal timelessness, though it leans so heavily on me. All day long I wait for the slow rolling in of the gray evening and the mournful tolling of the Compline bell, when I can go to the chapel and pray for his soul, though he will never again hear my whispers, nor the quiet chanting of the priests. Then I can go t..
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Philippa Gregory |
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cfd8efa
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Though the leaves fall from the trees like brown tears, for him everything must be as green as fresh grass, as white as May blossom, as if to convince us all that the seasons are upside down and we are all Tudors now. A
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Philippa Gregory |
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e279f68
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We have been married little more than a year and already there is a terrible silence around some subjects. We never speak of the disappearance of my brothers--a stranger listening to us would think it was a secret between us, a guilty secret. We never speak of my year at Richard's court. We never speak of the conception of Arthur and that he was not, as My Lady so loudly celebrates, a honeymoon child conceived in sanctified love on the very..
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Philippa Gregory |
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35158f0
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It's as if our name is both our greatest pride and our curse," I say."
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Philippa Gregory |
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ef603aa
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I thought then that we would all die in the darkness and solitude. I thought that an executioner would come for us silently one night. I thought I might wake briefly with the weight of a pillow on my face. I thought that I would never see sunshine again. I was a young woman then, and I thought that sorrow as deep as mine could only lead to death. I was grieving for my father and frightened by the absence of my brothers, and I thought that s..
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Philippa Gregory |
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364bc48
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The tragedy of Melusina, whatever language tells it, whatever tune it sings, is that a man will always promise more than he can do to a woman he cannot understand.
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Philippa Gregory |
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c2fa13b
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What if I don't want an unwilling bridegroom, a pretender to the crown, who won his throne through disloyalty and betrayal? What if I tell you that my heart is in an unmarked grave somewhere in Leicester?" She"
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Philippa Gregory |
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bff58fc
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Jane had gone to pray for the dead queen, Anne would dance on her grave. The
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Philippa Gregory |
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a7d940d
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Slowly, like a breeze going through treetops, they doff their hats and bow, and I realize that they are acknowledging me as queen, queen in the place of Margaret of Anjou, Queen of England, the greatest woman in the realm, and nothing in my life will ever be the same again. I
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Philippa Gregory |
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0ace594
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on what he wants to say. I step back. So it is just as his wife fears, and she was
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Philippa Gregory |
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d7b6022
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She prayed while you were raping me?" I ask him. "It isn't rape," he says. "Stop saying that. You're a fool to call it that. Since we're betrothed, it cannot be rape. As my wife you cannot refuse me. I have a right to you, as your betrothed husband. From now, till your death, you will never be able to refuse me. There can be no rape between us, only my rights and your duty." He"
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Philippa Gregory |
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9e13a1c
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The first go out to his brothers, George the golden young man, Duke of Clarence, and the youngest York boy, twelve-year-old Richard, Duke of Gloucester, who smiles shyly at me and dips his head when I send him some braised peacock. He is as unlike his brothers as is possible, small and shy and dark-haired, slight of build and quiet, while they are tall and bronze-headed and filled with their own importance. I like Richard on sight, and I th..
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Philippa Gregory |
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fb46b41
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Celia had ordered his favourite meal of wild duck cooked in limes, and I advised that we eat without him and save his portion for him to dine later. 'He
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Philippa Gregory |
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165621f
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We, the daughters of Melusina," she corrects me. "Your grandmother was a daughter of the water goddess of the royal house of Burgundy and she never forgot that she was both royal and magical. When I was your age, I didn't know whether she could summon up a storm or whether it was all just luck and pretence to get her own way. But she taught me that there is nothing in the world more powerful than a woman who knows what she wants and walks a..
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Philippa Gregory |
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cd65810
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It doesn't matter if you call it magic or determination. It doesn't matter if you make a spell or a plot. You have to make up your mind what you want, and have the courage to set your heart on it. You will be Queen of England, your husband is the king. Through you, the Yorks regain the throne of England that is their right. Walk through your sorrow, my daughter, it hardly matters as long as you walk to where you want to be.
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Philippa Gregory |
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bf5ddc9
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see her hesitating at the threshold as if she cannot bear to leave him, and I give her a smile, and I stretch out my hand and rest it lightly on her son's shoulder, a gentle proprietorial touch. "Good night, Lady Mother," I say. "Good night from us both." I let her see me take her son's fine linen collar in my fingers, the collar she embroidered herself in white-on-white embroidery, and I hold it as if it were the leash of a hunting dog who..
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Philippa Gregory |