The White Princess (39 page)

“She knows all about this boy already.”

I can say nothing. His suspicion of my mother is one of the troubles that runs through our marriage like a poisoned stream bleaching a meadow which might otherwise grow green. “I am sure she does not.”

“Are you? For I am quite sure she does. I am sure that what funds I pay her, and what gifts you have given her, are invested in the silk jacket which is on his back, and in the velvet bonnet which is on his head,” he says harshly. “Pinned with a ruby pin, if you please. With three pendant pearls. On his golden curls.”

For a moment I can see my brother’s curls, twisted around my mother’s fingers as he sits with his head in her lap. I can see him so vividly, it is as if I have conjured him, as Henry says the foolish people of Ireland have conjured this prince from death, from the unknown.

“He is a handsome boy?” I whisper.

“Like all your family,” Henry says grimly. “Handsome
and charming and with the trick of making people love him. I will have to find him and throw him down before he climbs up, don’t you think? This boy who calls himself Richard Duke of York?”

“I can’t help but wish he was alive,” I say weakly. I look over at my adorable brown-headed son, jumping up to the mounting block to his pony, bright with excitement, and I remember my golden-haired little brother who was as brave and as joyous as Arthur, raised in a court filled with confidence.

“Then you do yourself and your line a disservice. I can’t help but wish him dead.”

I excuse myself from the day’s hawking and instead I take the royal barge and go down the river to Bermondsey Abbey. Someone sees the barge coming in, and runs for my mother to tell her that her daughter the queen is on her way, so she is on the little pier as we land, and comes to meet me, walking through the rowers, who stand at attention, their oars raised in salute, as if she still commanded them, a little nod to one side and the other, a little smile, easy in her authority. She curtseys to me at the gangplank and I kneel for her blessing and bob up.

“I have to talk with you,” I say tersely.

“Of course,” she says. She leads the way into the abbey’s central garden, sheltered by the high warm walls, and gestures to a seat built into a corner, overhung with an old plum tree. Awkwardly I stand, but I nod that she should sit down. The autumn sun is warm; she has a light shawl around her shoulders as she sits before me, her hands clasped lightly in her lap, and listens.

“The king says that you will know all about it already; but there is a boy calling himself by the name of my brother, landed in Ireland,” I say in a rush.

“I don’t know
all
about it,” she says.

“You know something about it?”

“I know that much.”

“Is he my brother?” I ask her. “Please, Lady Mother, don’t put me off with one
of your lies. Please tell me. Is it my brother Richard in Ireland? Alive? Coming for his throne? For my throne?”

For a moment she looks as if she is going to prevaricate, turn the question aside with a clever word, as she always does. But she looks up at my white, strained face, and she puts out her hand to draw me down to sit beside her. “Is your husband afraid again?”

“Yes,” I breathe. “Worse than before. Because he thought it was over after the battle at Stoke. He thought he had won then. Now he thinks he will never win. He is afraid, and he is afraid of being afraid. He thinks he will always be afraid.”

She nods. “You know, words, once spoken, cannot be recalled. If I answer your question you will know things that you should tell your husband and his mother at once. And they will ask you these things explicitly. And once they know that you know them, they will think of you as an enemy. As they think me. Perhaps they would imprison you, as they have imprisoned me. Perhaps they would not allow you to see your children. Perhaps they are so hard-hearted that they would send you far away.”

I sink to my knees before her, and I put my face in her lap, as if I were still her little girl and we were still in sanctuary and certain to fail. “Am I not to ask?” I whisper. “He is my little brother. I love him too. I miss him too. Shall I not even ask if he is alive?”

“Don’t ask,” she advises me.

I look up at her face, still beautiful in this afternoon golden light, and I see that she is smiling. She is a happy woman. She does not look at all like a woman who has lost two beloved sons to an enemy, and knows that she will never see either of them again.

“But you hope to see him?” I whisper.

The smile she turns to me is filled with joy. “I know I will see him,” she says with absolute serene conviction.

“In Westminster?” I whisper.

“Or in heaven.”

Henry comes to my
rooms after dinner. He does not sit with his mother this evening, but comes directly to me and listens to the musicians play and watches the women dance, takes a hand at cards and rolls some dice. Only when the evening ends and the people make their bows and their curtseys and withdraw does he pull up his chair before the great fire in my presence chamber, snap his fingers for another chair to be placed beside him, and gesture that I shall sit with him, and that everyone but a servant, standing at the servery, shall leave us.

“I know that you went to see her,” he says without preamble.

The man pours a tankard of mulled ale and puts a small glass of red wine on a table beside me, and then makes himself scarce.

“I took the royal barge,” I say. “It was no secret.”

“And you told her of the boy?”

“I did.”

“And did she know already?”

I hesitate. “I think so. But she could have learned it from gossip. People are starting to talk, even in London, about the boy in Ireland. I heard about it in my own rooms tonight; everyone is talking, again.”

“And does she believe that this is her son, returned from the dead?”

Again I pause. “I think that she may do. But she is never clear with me.”

“She is unclear because she is engaged in treason against us? And does not dare to confess?”

“She is unclear because she has a habit of discretion.”

He laughs abruptly. “A lifetime of discretion. She killed the sainted King Henry in his sleep, she killed Warwick on the battlefield shrouded in a witch’s mist, she killed George in the Tower of London drowned in a barrel of sweet wine, she killed Isabel his wife and Anne, the wife of Richard, with poison. She has never been accused
of any of these crimes, they are still secret. She is indeed discreet, as you say. She’s murderous and discreet.”

“None of that is true,” I say steadily, disregarding the things that I think may be true.

“Well, at any rate . . .” He stretches his boots towards the fire. “She did not tell you anything that would help us? Where the boy comes from? What are his plans?”

I shake my head.

“Elizabeth . . .” His voice is almost plaintive. “What am I to do? I can’t keep fighting for England. The men who came out for me at Bosworth didn’t all turn out for me at the battle of Stoke. The men who risked their lives at Stoke won’t come out for me again. I can’t go on fighting for my life, for our lives, year after year. There is only one of me, and there are legions of them.”

“Legions of who?” I ask.

“Princes,” he says, as if my mother had given birth to a monstrous dark army. “There are always more princes.”

WESTMINSTER PALACE, LONDON, DECEMBER 1491

As the court sets about the task of the twelve days of merrymaking for Christmas, Henry sends out a force to Ireland, in ships that sail for him from the loyal port of Bristol. They land the soldiers and bring back his spies, who ride to London and tell him that the boy is beloved of everyone who meets him. The moment that he set foot on the quayside the people caught him up and carried him round the town at shoulder height, greeting him like a hero. He has the charm of a young god, he is irresistible.

He is spending the Christmas celebrations as the guest of the Irish lords in one of their faraway castles. There will be feasting and dancing, they will toast to their victory. He will feel invincible as they drink to his health and swear that they cannot fail.

I think of a golden-haired boy with a ready smile and I pray for him, that he does not come against us, that he enjoys his fame and glory, that he decides on a quieter life and returns to wherever he came from. And as Henry escorts me back from the chapel, I take a moment while we are walking alone together to tell him that I think I am with child again.

I see the shadow lift from his face. He is glad for me, at once ordering that I must rest, that I must not think of riding out with the court, that when we move to Sheen or Greenwich I must go by barge and by litter, but I can see he is partly distracted. “What are you thinking?” I ask, hoping that
he will tell me he is planning a new bedroom for me in Westminster, better rooms now, since I will be spending more time indoors.

“I am thinking that I have to make us safe on the throne,” he says quietly. “I want this baby, I want all our children, to have a secure inheritance.”

As my cousin Maggie dances with her new husband, denying her name and gladly answering to “Lady Pole,” my husband the king slips away from the court and goes down to the stable yard for an earnest conversation with a man who rides in from Greenwich, with news from France. The French king, who was already arming Ireland against Henry, is now known to be taking an interest in the boy who wears silks in that country. The French king has said that though Henry came to the throne with an army paid by France, anyone now can see that there was a York prince who should have had the throne all along. Most ominously, the French king is said to be gathering ships for an invasion force to bring the boy in the silk coat to his home: England.

My husband comes back from his secret meeting in the shadowy stable yard and his face is grim. I see his mother glance at him, and her quiet word to Jasper Tudor. Then they both look across the dancing court at me. Unsmiling, they both look at me.

PALACE OF SHEEN, RICHMOND, FEBRUARY 1492

We move to Sheen to see in the spring, but the season is a long time coming and the wind seems to howl up the Thames valley, bringing wintry rain and sometimes hard chips of hail. The snowdrops are out in the garden but they get beaten down into the frozen earth, their little white faces mud-splashed. I order big fires to be built in my rooms and I wear my new Christmas gown of red velvet. My Lady the King’s Mother comes in to sit with me and looks at the fire, piled high with logs, and says, “I wonder you can afford such wood in your rooms,” as if it is not she who sets the allowance that the king pays me, as if she does not know that I am paid far less than my mother was given when she was Queen of England, as if everyone does not know that I cannot afford great fires in my rooms but will have to scrimp and save for this luxury when the summer weather comes.