The White Duchess - The White Queen

Château de Calais, Calais, France, Winter 1460

We spend Christmas and New Year's quietly together in the Citadel of Calais before I decide that a soldier's garrison is not a good place to raise my children and Edward moves us to the Château de Calais. I bring my ladies in waiting with me along with Anne Woodville and her husband while the Countess of Warwick insists on staying at the Citadel with her husband. I know that she would've much rather been in the Château but she's too prideful to share a house with me. I find the slight quite pathetic but I don't say anything. We are stuck together whether we like it or not I'd rather not make this experience worse than it already is.

Still, even though we are powerless and engaged in a struggle for the soul of our nation we become the living equivalent of life goes on. In December, shortly before Christmas, Anne gives birth to her child, a healthy baby girl that she and her husband name Cecily. To distinguish her from our Cis everyone calls her Lily. A little less than a month later Claire gives birth to her child, a healthy baby boy and heir to her husband whom they name George. You can even call it a joyous occasion when the Countess of Warwick gives birth to a fifth daughter who her husband also names Cecily after the aunt that we were forced to leave behind in England. She is the only baby at Calais with the name Cecily that we call by her full name.

But these babies are not the main event which is taking place in Calais. Everybody is serious or melancholy. I am both. I long for a son that will secure our fortunes yet Edward and I have barely have any time to spend together and so months and months goes by and I'm disappointed with my courses, and I know for certain that I am not with child. It does not help much that all my married friends have boys of their own now and I have none. It is also something the Countess of Warwick picks on me for as she knows that I have taken it hard that I have not provided my husband with an heir yet.

Her teasing is sometimes so cruel that her own husband has to put a stop to it but she'll simply shrug her shoulders and say as innocently as she can muster, "I was simply asking the Duchess of Devonshire when we might expect a York heir, that is all."

It doesn't help that some of the great lords who once served us are now turning their coats back to Lancaster. Norfolk, who is my husband's cousin has switched his coat. Some of the other minor barons have followed. It's enraged everybody at the fort when they hear the news but seeing as we are across the ocean and unable to do anything we must simply keep our mouths shut and anger amongst ourselves.

I distract myself from my melancholy by writing letters to the great lords of England, persuading those who did not pick a side during the beginning of the fighting to come over to ours. It is a hard deal to try to seal. For now it seems that York is losing and no Lord wants to be on the losing side of a Civil War. So I do what I do best. I successfully use mind games against them.

Margaret of Anjou didn't hesitate to attack the Earl of Warwick in front of the lords of Parliament, what makes you think that if you cross her that she wouldn't do the same to you and your children? I write to the Earl of Arundel. 

You are also a descendent of King Edward III, I write to the Earl of Kent. What makes you think that Margaret of Anjou won't come after you after she has killed off the York line? 

And so I plead with foreign heads of state and stir fear and discontent among England's neutral nobles. It is enough that they are communicating with me regularly feeding me information from Queen Margaret's makeshift court in the Midlands and telling me the make up of her army and promising a support if we are to land in England and invade. It becomes an  essential part of our invasion plan and Warwick and Edward and Salisbury have me writing letters to every nobleman they can think of that has a chance of being swayed. 

In the meantime Warwick focuses on taking down the defenses on England's southern coast. He has his men at Calais, who he pays out of his own pocket, go out and raid the towns promising them they can keep any plunder that they might discover there. For a bunch of men whose pay is very much sporadic this seems like a great deal.  It only takes a few weeks before we have captured several of Margaret's men and have stolen parts of the English fleet. It allows us a better hand at the negotiating table, if Margaret is ever smart enough to come to it, and shows that even though we are no longer on English soil we are still a threat to English territory.