The White Princess (29 page)

We stay on in Norwich after Corpus Christi and the court makes merry in the sunny weather; but I soon realize that Henry is planning something. He has men at every port along the coast appointed to warn him of foreign shipping. He organizes a series of beacons that are to be lit if a fleet is sighted. Every morning he has men brought into his room by a private covered way directly leading from the stable yard to the big plain room he has taken for his councils. Nobody knows who they are, but we all see sweat-stained horses in the stables, and men who will not stop to dine in the great hall, who have no time for singing or drinking but say that they will get their meat on the road. When the stable lads ask them, “Which road?” they won’t say.

Suddenly, Henry announces that he is going on a pilgrimage to the shrine of Our Lady of Walsingham, a full day’s ride north. He will go without me to this holy shrine.

“Is there something wrong?” I ask him. “Don’t you want me to come with you?”

“No,” he says shortly. “I’ll go alone.”

Our Lady of Walsingham is famous for helping barren women. I cannot think why Henry would suddenly want to make a pilgrimage there.

“Will you take your mother? I can’t understand why you would want to go.”

“Why shouldn’t I go to a holy shrine?” he asks irritably. “I’m always observing saints’ days. We’re a devout family.”

“I know, I know,” I placate him. “I just thought it was odd. Will you go quite alone?”

“I’ll take only a few men. I’ll ride with the Duke of Suffolk.”

The duke is my uncle, married to my father’s sister Elizabeth,
and the father of my missing cousin John de la Pole. This only makes me more uneasy.

“As a companion? You choose the Duke of Suffolk as your principal companion to go on pilgrimage?”

Henry shows me a wolfish smile. “What else but as my companion? He has always been so faithful and loyal to me. Why would I not want to ride with him?”

I have no answer to this question. Henry’s expression is sly.

“Is it to speak to him about his son?” I venture. “Are you going to question him?” I cannot help but be anxious for my uncle. He is a quiet, steady man who fought for Richard at Bosworth but sought and obtained a pardon from Henry. His father was a famous Lancastrian, but he has always been devoted to the House of York, married to a York duchess. “I am certain, I am absolutely certain that he knows nothing about his son John’s running away.”

“And what does John de la Pole’s mother know? And what does your mother know?” Henry demands.

When I am silent he laughs shortly. “You are right to be anxious. I feel that I can trust none of the York cousins. Do you think I am taking your uncle as a hostage for the good behavior of his son? D’you think I’m going to take him away from everyone and remind him that he has another son and that the whole family might easily go on from Walsingham to the Tower? And from there to the block?”

I look at my husband and fear this icy fury of his. “Don’t speak of the Tower and the block,” I say quietly. “Please don’t speak of such things to me.”

“Don’t give me cause.”

ST. MARY’S IN THE FIELDS, NORWICH, SUMMER 1487

Henry and my uncle Suffolk go on their pilgrimage and come home again, no worse for wear but certainly not visibly spiritually blessed. Henry says nothing about the journey and my uncle is similarly silent. I have to assume that my husband questioned and perhaps threatened my uncle, and he—a man accustomed to living in dangerous proximity to the throne—answered well enough to keep himself and his wife and other children safe. Where his eldest son, John de la Pole, has gone, what my handsome cousin is doing in exile, nobody knows for sure.

Then, one evening, Henry comes to my room, not dressed for bed but in his day clothes, his lean face compressed and dark. “The Irish have run mad,” he says shortly.

I am at the window, looking out over the darkening garden to the river. Somewhere out in the darkness I can hear the loving call of a barn owl, and I am looking for the flash of a white wing. His mate hoots in reply as I turn and take in the strain in my husband’s hunched shoulders, the grayness of his face. “You look so tired,” I say. “Can’t you rest at all?”

“Tired? I am driven half to my grave by these people. What d’you think they have done now?”

I shake my head, close the shutters on the peace of the garden, and turn to him. For a moment I feel a whisper of irritation that
he cannot be at peace, that we are always under siege from his fears. “Who? Who now?”

He looks at the paper in his hand. “Those I mistrusted—rightly as it turns out—and those that I had not even known about. My kingdom is cursed with English traitors. I hadn’t even thought about the Irish. I haven’t even had time to go among them and meet them; but already they are gone to the bad.”

“Who is treacherous?” I try to ask with a light voice, but I can feel my throat tightening with fear. My family have always been well loved in Ireland; it will be our friends and allies who are frightening Henry. “Who is treacherous and what are they doing?”

“Your cousin John de la Pole is false as I thought he was, though his father swore he was not. As we rode together he looked me straight in the eye and lied like a tinker. John de la Pole has done what his father swore he would not do. He went straight to the court of Margaret of York in Flanders and she is supporting him. Now he’s gone to Dublin.”

“Dublin?”

“With Francis Lovell.”

I gasp. “Francis Lovell again?”

Henry nods grimly. “They met at the court of your aunt. All of Europe knows she will support any enemy of mine. She is determined to see York back on the throne of England and she has the command of her stepdaughter’s fortune and the friendship of half of the crowned heads of Europe. She is the most powerful woman in Christendom, a terrible enemy for me. And she has no reason! No reason to persecute me . . .”

“John
did
go to her, then?”

“I knew at once,” Henry said.
“I have a spy in every port in England. Nobody can come or go without me knowing it within two days. I knew that his father was lying when he said he had probably run to France. I knew that your mother was lying when she said that she could not say. I knew that you were lying when you said you did not know.”

“But I didn’t know!”

He does not even hear me. “But there is worse. The duchess has put a great army at their disposal and someone has made them a pretender.”

“Made them?” I repeat.

“Like a mummer’s dummy. They’ve made a boy.” He looks at my aghast face. “She’s got herself a boy.”

“A boy?”

“A boy of the right age, and the right looks. A boy that can serve.”

“Serve as what?”

“A York heir.”

I can feel myself grow weak at the knees. I steady myself on the stone windowsill and feel the chill under the palm of my sweating hand. “Who? What boy?”

He comes behind me as if he wants to hold me with love. He wraps his arms around my waist and holds me close, my back pressed to him, bending his head to whisper against my hair as if he would inhale the smell of treason on my breath. “A boy who calls himself Richard. A boy who says he is your missing brother: Richard of York.”

My knees give way and he holds me up for a moment and then lifts me like a lover, but dumps me, ungently, on the bed. “It’s not possible,” I stammer, struggling to sit upright. “How is it possible?”

“Don’t tell me you didn’t know, you little traitor!” He explodes into one of his sudden rages. “Don’t look at me with your beautiful innocent face and tell me you knew nothing of this. Don’t look at me with those clear eyes and lie to me from that pretty mouth. When I look at you I think that you must be an honorable woman, I think that no one as beautiful as a saint could be such a spy. D’you really expect me to believe that your mother didn’t tell you? That you don’t know?”

“Know what? I don’t know anything,” I say urgently. “I swear that I know nothing.”

“Anyway, he’s changed his tune.” Henry abruptly drops into a chair by the fireside and puts his hand to shade his eyes. He looks exhausted by his own outburst. “He was your brother Richard only for a few days. Now he says he’s Edward. It’s like being challenged by a shape-shifter. Who is he anyway?”

I have a sudden pang of wild hope. “Edward? Edward, my brother? Edward, Prince of Wales?”

“No. Edward of Warwick, your cousin. It’s a pity you have such a big family.”

My head swims, and for a moment I close my eyes and take a breath. When I look up I see he is watching me, as if he would read every secret that I know, by staring at my face.

“You think that Edward your brother is alive!” he accuses me, his voice hard with suspicion. “All this time you have been hoping that he will come. When I spoke of a pretender then, you thought it might be him!”

I fold my lips together, shaking my head. “How could he be?”

He is horrified. “I was asking you.”

I draw a breath. “Surely, no one can think that this boy is my cousin, Edward of Warwick. Everyone knows that Edward of Warwick is in the Tower. We showed him to everyone. You made sure that he was seen by all of London.”

He smiles grimly. “Yes. I had him walk side by side with John de la Pole, my friend and ally. But now John de la Pole who knelt at Mass beside the real Edward has taken a boy he claims is Edward to Ireland. The very show that we put on to tell everyone that Edward of Warwick was in London they are repeating, to tell everyone that he is in Ireland, summoning an army. John de la Pole walked with this boy to Dublin Cathedral, Elizabeth. They took him to the cathedral and they crowned him king of Ireland, England, and France. They have taken a boy and made him king. They put the crown on his head. They have set up a rival king to me and they have touched him with the sacred oil. They have crowned a new King of England. A York king. What d’you think of that?”

I grip the embroidered cover on the bed as if to hold myself in the real world and not drift away into this illusion laid upon illusion. “Who is he? In real life? This boy?”

“It’s not your brother Edward. And it’s not your brother Richard, if that’s what you’re hoping,” he says spitefully. “I have spies all over this country. I found the true birth of this boy ten days ago. He’s a nothing, a common lad that some priest has coached for the part, for spite. The priest will be some sort of malevolent old trickster who longs for the old days again, who wants the Yorks back. Your mother must see ten of them a day and give half of them the pension that I pay to her. But this one matters. He’s not acting alone. Someone has paid him to put this lad up as a pretend prince so that the people will rise for him. When he wins, they bring out the real prince, and he takes the throne.”

“When he wins?” I repeat the betraying words.

“If he wins.” He shakes his head as if to resist the dangerous vision of defeat. “It’ll be close. He has a good-sized army paid for by your aunt the duchess and by others of your family: your mother of course, your aunt Elizabeth I suspect, your grandmother for certain. He has mustered the Irish clans and my uncle Jasper tells me they are wild fighters. And, we shall see: he may have the support of the people of England. Who knows? When he raises the standard of the ragged staff they may turn out for him. When he cries,
À
Warwick, they may answer for old times’ sake. They may be all for him. Perhaps they have tried me and find me wanting; now they want a return to the familiar, like a dog eating its vomit.” He looks at me, as I sit in a heap on the bed. “What d’you think? What would your mother say? Can a York pretender command England still? Will they all turn out for a counterfeit prince under the standard of the white rose?”

“They will bring out the real prince?” It is what he said. It is what he himself said. “The real prince?”

He doesn’t even answer me, his mouth twisted in a sort of snarl, as if he has no means to explain what he has just said.

We fall silent for a moment.

“What will you do?” It comes out as a whisper.

“I shall have to muster all the troops I can, and get ready for another battle,” he says bitterly. “I thought I had won this country but—rather like being married to you, perhaps—a man can never be quite sure that the job is done. I won a great battle and was crowned king here, and now they have crowned another and I have to fight again. It seems I can be sure of nothing in this country of mists and cousins.”

“And what will they do?” I whisper.

He looks at me as if he hates me, me and all of my unreliable family. “When they win, they’ll change boys.”

“Change boys?”

“This pretender will slip away, and a real boy will take his place, step up to the throne. A boy who is safe in hiding now, biding his time, waiting to be embodied.”

“Embodied?”

“Out of thin air. Back from the dead.”

“Who?”

Spitefully, he mimicks my horrified whisper, “Who?” and goes to the door of my room. “Who d’you think? Or should that be, who do you know?” When I say nothing he laughs shortly, with no humor. “So I will bid you farewell now, my beautiful wife, and hope that I will return to your warm bed as King of England.”