The White Princess (63 page)

“Do you think so?” Maggie asks her. “Don’t you think that it is the only way that he can touch her? And she touch him?”

I watch them more closely after that, and I believe Maggie is right. If he can pass something to her, he makes sure that their fingertips brush. If the court is riding he is quickly at the shoulder
of her horse to lift her into the saddle, and at the end of the day he is first into the stable yard, his own horse’s reins tossed to a groom so that he can lift her down, holding her for one moment before putting her gently on her feet. When they are playing cards their shoulders lean together at the table, when he is standing beside her horse and she is mounted high above him, he steps backwards until his fair head can brush against her saddle and her hand can drop from the reins to touch the nape of his neck.

She never rebuffs him, she does not avoid his touch. Of course, she cannot; while she is his wife she must be obedient to him. But clearly, there is a passion between them that they do not even try to hide. When they pour the wine at dinner he looks from his table over to hers and raises his glass to her and gets a quick half-hidden smile in return. When she walks past the young men playing at cards she pauses, just for a moment, to look at his hand, and sometimes leans down as if to see better, and he leans back and their cheeks brush, like a kiss. Throughout the court they move, two exceptionally beautiful young people, kept apart by the specific order of the king and yet going through the day in parallel; always with one eye on the other, like performers separated by the movement of a dance who are certain to come together again.

Now that it is safe to travel in England again, Arthur my son must go to Ludlow Castle and Maggie and his guardian Sir Richard Pole will attend him. I see them off from the stable yard, my half brother Thomas Grey at my side.

“I can’t bear to let him go,” I say.

He laughs. “Don’t you remember our mother when Edward had to go? Lord save her, she went with him, all that long way, even though she was pregnant with Richard. It is hard for you, and hard on the boy. But it is a sign that things are getting back to normal. You should be glad.”

Arthur, bright and excited high on his horse, waves his hand at me and follows Sir Richard and Maggie out of the stable yard. The guard falls in behind him.

“I don’t think I can be glad,” I say.

Thomas squeezes my hand. “He’ll be back for Christmas.”

Next day the king tells me he will take a small company to London to show the crowds Perkin Warbeck, the pretender.

“Who’s going with you?” I ask, as if I don’t understand.

Henry flushes slightly. “Perkin,” he says. “Warbeck.”

Finally they have settled on a name for him, and not just for him. They have named and described a whole family Warbeck with uncles and cousins and aunts and grandparents, the Warbecks of Tournai. But though this extensive family is established, at least on paper, all with occupations and addresses, none of them is summoned to see him. None of them writes to him with reproaches, or offers of help. Though there are so many of them, so well recorded, not one offers a ransom for his return. The king weaves them into the story of Perkin Warbeck and we never ask to see them, any more than one might ask to see a black cat or a crystal slipper or a magic spindle.

In London the boy gets a confused reception. The men, who have seen their taxes rise and rise and unlawful fines invade every part of their income, curse him for the expense that his invasions have caused, and groan at him as he rides by. The women, always quick to malice, start by catcalling and throwing dirt; but even they soften, they cannot help but admire his downturned face, his shy smile. He rides through the streets of London with the modest air of a boy who could not help himself, who was called and answered a call, who could not help but be himself. Some people rage against him, but many shout out that he is a fair boy, a rose.

Henry makes him go on foot, leading a broken-down old
horse, with one of his followers in chains, mounted up. The man in the saddle, grim-faced, is the sergeant farrier who ran from Henry’s service to be with the boy. Now all of London can see him, head bowed, bruised, tied to the saddle like a Fool. Usually people would throw filth, and then laugh to see the rider and the humiliated groom spattered with mud from the gutters, showered with the contents of chamber pots flung from overhead windows. But the boy and his defeated supporter make a strangely silent pair as they go through the narrow streets to the Tower and then someone says, terribly clearly, into a sudden hush: “Look at him! He’s the spit of good King Edward.”

Henry hears of this the moment the words are out of the man’s mouth; but too late to call the words back, too late to deafen the crowd. All he can do is make sure that the crowd never again sees the boy who looks so like a York prince.

So that is to be the first and last time that the boy has to walk the streets of London inviting abuse. “You will confine him to the Tower,” My Lady orders her son.

“In time. I wanted the people to see that he was nothing, no threat, an idle foolish boy. Nothing more than a little lad, the boy that I always called him—lighter than air.”

“Well, they have seen him now. And they don’t call him lighter than air. They don’t know what to call him, though we have told them his name over and over again. And the name that they want to give him should never be spoken. Surely, now you will charge him and execute him?”

“I gave him my word that he should not be killed when he surrendered to me.”

“That’s not binding.” Anxiety makes her overrule him. “You’ve broken your word for less than this. You don’t have to keep your word to such as him.”

His face is suddenly illuminated. “Yes, but I gave my word to her.”

My Lady turns a furious glare on me, accusing me at once. “Her? She never had the nerve to ask for mercy for him?” she
suddenly rages, her face filled with hatred. “She never soiled her mouth speaking for such a traitor? For what reason? What did she dare to say?”

Coolly, I show her a mutinous face and silently I shake my head. “No, not me,” I say icily. “You are mistaken, again. I have not asked for mercy for him. I have not spoken for or against him. I have no opinion on the matter, and I never have done.” I wait while her anger curdles into embarrassment. “I think His Grace must mean another lady.”

Horrified, My Lady turns back to her son as if he is betraying her, as if it is she who is suffering infidelity. “Who? What woman has dared to ask you for his life? Who do you listen to—instead of me, your own mother, who has guided every step of your way?”

“Lady Katherine,” he says. He has a silly little smile on his face at her very name. “Lady Katherine. I have given my word of honor to the lady.”

She sits in my room like a dignified widow, always in black, with her hands always filled with some work or another. We sew shirts for the poor and always she is hemming a sleeve or turning a collar, her head bowed over her work. The chatter and laughter of the women go on around her, all the time, and sometimes she raises her head and smiles at a joke, and sometimes she quietly replies, or adds her own story to the conversation. She speaks of her childhood in Scotland, she speaks of her cousin the King of Scotland and of his court. She is not lively, but she is courteous and pleasant company. She has charm; I sometimes find myself smiling when I look at her. She has poise. She is living in my court and my husband is visibly in love with her and yet she never shows, by so much as a sideways glance to me, that she is aware of this. She could taunt me, she could flaunt herself, she could embarrass me, but she never does.

She never mentions her own husband, she never speaks of this
last extraordinary year: the little ship that took them to Ireland, their lucky escape from the Spanish who would have captured them, their triumphant landing and victorious march from Cornwall into Devon, and then their defeat. She never speaks of her husband at all, and so she avoids giving his name. The great question—what is the true name of this young man who never walks past her without a smile—is never answered by her.

He, himself, is like a nameless person. The Spanish ambassador addresses him once, in public, as Perkin Warbeck, and the young man turns his head slowly, like a playactor, like a dancer, and looks away, far away. It is a snub so confident, so graceful, that you would swear that only a prince could do it. The ambassador looks a fool, and the boy looks mildly regretful that he is forced to cause a moment’s embarrassment to a man who should have known how to behave.

It is Henry the king who rescues the court from the scandalous sight of a paroled traitor snubbing the ambassador of our greatest ally. We expect him to reprimand the boy and send him out, but instead the king blunders off his throne, down the presence chamber in a hurry, turns towards my ladies, catches Lady Katherine’s hand, and says suddenly, “Let’s have some dancing!”

The musicians strike up at once, and he takes both her hands and faces her. He is flushed, as if he is the one who has made a blunder, instead of the pretender and his wife. And she is as she always is, as cool as a stream in winter. Henry bows to start the dance, she curtseys, and then she smiles, like the sun coming out from behind a cloud. Radiant, she smiles at my husband and I can see his heart lift at that small, tiny approval.

PALACE OF SHEEN, RICHMOND, CHRISTMAS 1497

The Christmas season brings my children home to me. Henry, Margaret, and Mary return to us from Eltham Palace and Arthur comes from Ludlow with his guardian, Sir Richard Pole, and my darling Maggie. I run down to the stable yard to greet the troop from Ludlow as they come riding in, on an evening when the persistent cold rain of the day is just turning to swirling flakes of snow.

“Thank heaven you are in before it got any colder!” I fall on Arthur as if I would save him from darkness itself. “But you’re so warm!” I stop myself exclaiming “and so lovely!” for my oldest boy is, as he always is, a revelation to me. In the few months of his absence he has grown a little taller. I can feel the wiry strength of his arms as he hugs me, he is a prince in every sense. I cannot believe this is the baby I held in my arms and the toddler whose steps I guided, when I see this coltish youth whose head now comes to my chin, and who steps back from my embrace to bow to me with all the elegance of his grandfather, my father, King Edward.