The White Princess (66 page)

“How did Warbeck ever get out of this alive?” Lady Margaret bluntly demands of Henry, as the three of us stand, looking at the ruin that was the king’s apartments, the charred roof beams open to the sky still smoking over our heads. “How could he survive it?”

“He says that his door caught fire and he was able to kick it open,” Henry says shortly.

“How could he?” she asks. “How could he not die of the smoke? How could he not be burned? Someone must have let him out.”

“At least no one was killed,” I say. “It’s a miracle.”

The two of them look at me, their faces like a mirror of suspicion and fear. “Someone must have let him out.” The king repeats his mother’s accusation.

I wait.

“I shall make inquiry among the servants,” Henry swears. “I will not have a traitor in my palace, in my own wardrobe rooms, I will not be betrayed under my own roof. Whoever is protecting the boy, whoever is defending him, should take warning. Whoever saved him from the fire is a traitor, as he is. I have spared him so far, I will not spare him forever.” Suddenly he turns on me. “Do you know where he was?”

I look from his flushed angry face to his mother’s white one. “You would do better to discover who set the fire,” I say. “For someone has destroyed our most valuable goods to burn the boy out. Who would want him dead? It was no accidental blaze in those rooms, someone must have heaped up clothes and kindling and put a flame to it. It could only be someone trying to kill the boy. Who would that be?”

It is the way that My Lady stammers that gives her away to me, listening for one of them to lie. “H—he h—has dozens of enemies, dozens,” she says flatly. “Everyone resents him as a traitor. Half the court would want to see him dead.”

“By fire? In his bed?” I say, and my voice is as sharp as an accusation. She drops her glance to the ground, unable to meet my eye.

“He’s a traitor,” she insists. “He is a lost soul, a brand fit for burning.”

Henry glances at his mother, uncertain as to what we are saying. “Nobody can think that I wanted him dead,” he says. “All I have ever said is that it would have been better for Lady Katherine if she had never married him. No more than that. Nobody could think that I wanted his death.”

His mother shakes her head. “Nobody could accuse you. But perhaps someone thought they were doing you a service. Protecting you from your own generosity. Saving you from yourself.”

“If he had died, then Lady Katherine would be a widow,” I say slowly. “And free to marry again.”

My Lady takes the cross at her belt firmly in her hands and holds it tightly, as if she is warding off temptation. I wait for her to speak but for once she chooses to be silent.

“Enough of this,” Henry says suddenly. “We should not be troubled amongst ourselves. We are the royal family, we should always be united. We have been saved from the flames and our household is safe too. It is a sign from God. I shall build a new palace.”

“Yes,” I agree. “We should rebuild.”

“I shall call it Richmond, after my title and my father’s title before me. I shall call it the Palace of Richmond.”

ON PROGRESS, SUMMER 1498

The boy continues to sleep in the rooms of the wardrobe in the different houses as we go on our summer progress along the coast of Kent following the pilgrim road to Canterbury, the high hills of the Weald spreading out around us. As the warm sunshine makes the hedges green and the apple trees bob with white and pink blossom, Lady Katherine allows the king to buy her new clothes, she stops wearing mourning black like a widow, like a woman who has lost her husband, and instead puts on the king’s choice for her, a gown of tawny medley, trimmed with black velvet, which sets off her creamy skin, flushed now with early-summer sunshine, and her dark shining hair that she wears under the bonnet of tawny velvet that he orders for her.

They ride together, quite alone, leading the court, and I and my ladies follow behind, the gentlemen of the court with us, the boy among them, sometimes riding near to me and smiling across.

Henry orders a new riding coat for himself, tawny velvet—like hers—and he and the young woman match perfectly as their horses go side by side down the trim lanes of Kent, cantering when the ground is soft, walking on the stony roads, always a discreet distance ahead of the rest of us, until we come in sight of the sea.

Henry talks to her now, he has found his voice, asking her about her childhood and her early years in Scotland. He never speaks of her husband, it is as if the two and a half years of her marriage never existed. They never speak of the boy, they never refer to him as they ride together. She is courteous, she never pushes herself forwards; but when the king orders a new saddle put on a new horse for her, she is obliged to ride with him and smile her thanks.

I see the boy as he watches this, and I see his brave smile and the set of his head, as if he were not watching the wife he loves being taken away from him. He rides behind them, noting how she leans towards Henry to hear something he says, how Henry puts his hand on her reins, as if to steady her horse. When the boy sees this, his chin comes up and his smile brightens, as if he had sworn to himself that he will be afraid of nothing.

For me, it is a curious pain to watch my husband of more than twelve years ride away from me with another woman, a beautiful young woman, at his side. I have never seen Henry in love before; now I see him shy, charming, eager, and it is like seeing him anew. The court is discreet, forever coming between me and the king and his constant companion, falling back to ensure they are uninterrupted, entertaining me so that I don’t watch them. It reminds me of Queen Anne, whose health was failing even then, silently watching her husband seek me out, and how I danced with him before her. I knew I was breaking her heart, I knew that she had lost her son to death and was now losing her husband to me, but I was too dazzled and too entranced to care. Now I know what it is to be a queen and see the young men of the court write poems and send letters to another woman, see someone else be named as the most beautiful woman of the court, the queen of everyone’s choice, and see your husband run after her too.

It is a humbling experience, but I don’t feel humbled. I feel as if I understand something that I did not know before. I feel that now I have learned that love does not follow merit; I did not love Henry because he impressed me as a conquerer of England, as
a victor of battle. I loved him because I first came to understand him, and then I pitied him, and then my love just flowered for him. And now that he does not love me, it makes no difference to how I feel. I love him still for I see him being, as he often is, mistaken, ill-judging, fearful, and this does not make me jealous but, on the contrary, it makes me tender towards him.

And I am not even angry towards Lady Katherine for her part in this. When she dismounts from her expensive new horse at the end of a beautiful day and Henry puts her husband aside with one touch on his shoulder, so that she has to slide from her saddle into Henry’s arms, she sometimes looks over at me as if this is no joy but a trouble to her. Then I am not angry with her, but I am sorry for her, and for me. I think that no one could understand how I feel but another woman, no one could understand her dilemma but me.

Lady Katherine comes to my rooms at the end of the day, to sit with my ladies, and finds that I smile at her gently, patiently, just as Queen Anne used to smile at me. I know she cannot prevent what is happening, just as I could not help myself with Richard. If the king honors a woman with his attention, then she is powerless under his admiration. What I don’t know is how she feels. I fell in love with Richard, who was King of England and the only man who could rescue me and my family from our descent into obscurity. What she feels for the King of England, married as she is to a declared traitor who is living on borrowed time, I can’t imagine.

THE TOWER OF LONDON, SUMMER 1498

We come back to London and Henry rules that we will spend a week in the Tower before going to Westminster. The boy rides in under the portcullis, as taut as a bowstring. His eyes flick across to me just once and meet mine, blank to blank, and then he looks away.

As usual, the lords who have homes in London go to their great houses and only a small court lives with us, the royal household, within the precincts of the Tower. The king, My Lady the King’s Mother and I are housed in our usual rooms in the royal apartments. The Lord Chamberlain’s office puts the boy in the Lanthorn Tower, with the other young men of the court, and I see him make a little gesture with his hand, as he turns towards the stone arch of the perimeter wall, and his smile grows brighter, the set of his head indomitable, as if he refuses to see ghosts.

Edward of Warwick is in the Garden Tower, where the lost princes were once kept. Sometimes I see his face at the window when we are crossing the green, just as people used to say they saw my little brothers. I am not allowed to visit him; the king rules that it would distress him, and would upset me. I will be allowed to go later—in some unspecified better time. The boy never glances towards the face at the window, never strays towards the dark doorway and the tight spiral stone staircase that leads to the
rooms over the archway. He walks around the Tower and the gardens and the chapel as if he were blind to the old buildings, as if he cannot and will not see the place where William Hastings was beheaded on a log of wood for loyalty to his old master my father, the place where the uncrowned King Edward used to play on the green, where the boy they called the little Prince Richard used to shoot arrows at the butts before they went inside to the darkness, and never came out again.

WESTMINSTER PALACE, LONDON, SUMMER 1498

We come back to Westminster Palace early in the summer to celebrate Trinity Sunday in the abbey. In the morning when we go to chapel I look around for Lady Katherine, who is missing from my ladies. Her husband, the boy, is not in his usual place among the king’s favored companions. I lean towards Cecily in her dark dress, in double mourning for her husband and daughter, who died this spring, and say tersely: “In God’s name, where are they?”

Dumbly, she shakes her head.

Then, while Henry, My Lady, and I are breakfasting in the king’s privy chamber after chapel, two servants come in and kneel before the breakfast table, their heads down, saying nothing.

“What is it?” Henry asks, though surely it is obvious to all of us that something has happened to the boy. I drop a piece of bread onto my plate, half rise to my feet, with a sense of sudden dread of what is going to come next.

“Forgive me, Your Grace. But the boy has got away.”

“Got away?” Henry repeats the words almost as if they have no meaning. “How do you mean: got away?”

His mother glances at him sharply, as if she hears like me the detachment in his voice like a man repeating words he has prepared.

“The boy?” she demands. “The Warbeck boy?”

“Escaped,” one of them says.

“How could he escape? He’s not imprisoned?” I ask.

They bow their heads at the incredulity in my voice. “He had a key cut to fit the lock.” One of them looks up to tell me. “His companions were asleep, perhaps drugged, they slept so heavily. He opened the door and walked out.”