The White Princess Page 23

  My coronation is the signal for a rash of betrothals, as Henry, in his methodical way, exploits my sisters one by one as players for the House of Tudor, and makes political matches to his own advantage. Even my mother is brought into play again. He allows me to visit her at Bermondsey with my sisters, and take her the news that she is so far forgiven by the Tudors that they have revived the idea of her marriage, and she is to go to James III of Scotland.

  I am afraid that the abbey will be cold and unwelcoming but I find my mother before a roaring fire of applewood, which gives a smoky scent to her presence chamber, my half sister, Grace, seated beside her, and two ladies-in-waiting working on their sewing.

  My mother rises up as I come in with my sisters and kisses us all. “How lovely to see you.” She curtseys to me. “I should have said “Your Grace.’ ” She steps back to see me. “You look very well.”

  She holds open her arms for Bridget and Catherine, who rush to hug her, and she smiles at Anne over their bobbing heads. “And you, Cecily, what a pretty gown, and what a fine brooch in your bonnet. Your husband is kind to you?”

  “He is,” Cecily says stiffly, well aware of the suspicions against my mother. “And he is very highly regarded by His Grace the King and My Lady the King’s Mother. He is famous for his loyalty, and so am I.”

  My mother smiles as if it does not matter much to her either way, and sits back down again, drawing my little sisters, seven-year-old Bridget and eight-year-old Catherine, onto her knee. Anne takes a footstool beside them and my mother rests her hand on her shoulder and looks expectantly at me.

  “We’re to be married!” Catherine bursts out, unable to wait any longer. “All of us but Bridget.”

  “Because I am a bride of Christ,” Bridget says, solemn as a moppet can be.

  “Of course you are.” My mother gives her a hug. “And who are the lucky men to be? Staunch Tudors, I expect?”

  Cecily bristles at the reference to her husband. “You’re betrothed as well,” she says spitefully.

  My mother is completely unmoved. “James of Scotland again?” she asks me, smiling.

  I realize that she knows of this already. Her spy network must still be in place and serving her as well here, where she is supposed to be isolated and secluded, as it did in the royal court where she was supposed to be surrounded by loyalists.

  “You knew?”

  “I knew the king had sent ambassadors to Scotland and was forging a peace with them,” she says smoothly. “Of course he would make it binding with a wedding. And since he had thought of me earlier, I imagined he would return to the plan.”

  “Do you mind?” I ask urgently. “Because if you want to refuse, I could perhaps . . .”

  Gently she reaches forwards and takes my hand. “I don’t think you could,” she says. “If you can’t prevent him from keeping your cousin Edward in the Tower, nor persuade him that I need not be behind these walls, then I doubt you can influence his policy with Scotland. He has made you queen, but though you carry the scepter, you have no power.”

  “That’s what I always say,” Cecily adds. “She can’t do anything.”

  “Then I am sure you are right.” My mother smiles at her. To me she says quietly: “And you should not reproach yourself. I know you do the best that you can. A woman always has only as much power as she can win, and you are not married into a family which trusts you with authority.”

  “But I am to be married to a Scottish prince!” Catherine squeaks, unable to hold back the news any longer. “The younger one. So I shall go to Scotland with you, Lady Mother, and I can be in your rooms, I can be your lady-in-waiting.”

  “Ah, how glad I shall be to have you with me.” My mother leans forward and drops a kiss on Catherine’s white-lace-capped head. “It will be so much easier if we are together. And we can make great state visits to your sister. We can ride to London in a procession and she can put on a banquet for us royal ladies of Scotland.”

  “And I am to marry the heir, the next King of Scotland,” Anne says quietly. She is less exuberant than Catherine. At twelve she knows well enough that to marry your country’s enemy in an attempt to hold him to an alliance is no great treat.

  My mother looks at her with silent compassion. “Well, we will all be together, that’s one good thing,” she says. “And I can advise you, and help you. And to be a queen of Scotland is no small part to play, Anne.”

  “What about me?” Bridget asks.

  My mother’s gaze flicks to my face. “Perhaps you will be allowed to come with me to Scotland,” she says. “I would think the king would grant that.”

  “And if not, I’ll come here,” Bridget says with satisfaction, looking round at my mother’s beautiful rooms.

  “I thought you wanted to be a nun,” Cecily says crushingly. “Not live like a pope.”

  My mother giggles. “Oh Cecily, d’you really think I live like a pope? How quite wonderful. Do you think I have rooms full of hidden cardinals who serve me? And eat off gold plates?”

  She gets to her feet and puts out her hands to the two little ones. “Come, Cecily reminds me that we must go and dine. You can say grace for the Sisters, Bridget.”

  As we go out she draws me close to her. “Don’t fret,” she says quietly. “There are many slips between a betrothal and a wedding, and holding the Scots to a peace treaty is a miracle that I have yet to witness. Nobody is riding up the Great North Road just yet.”

  PALACE OF SHEEN, RICHMOND, SPRING 1488

  My uncle Edward comes home from the crusades as brown as a Moor himself, but missing all his front teeth. He’s cheerful about this and says that God can now see more clearly into his heart, but it gives him a lisp that I cannot help but find comical. I am so pleased to see him that I fall into his arms and hear him sweetly lisp over my head, “Bleth you, bleth you!” and this makes me laugh and cry at once.

  I expect him to be appalled at the news that his sister is enclosed at Bermondsey, but his shrug and smile tell me that he sees this as a temporary setback in a life which has been filled with defeats and victories. “Is she comfortable?” he asks, as if it is the only question.

  “Yes, she has lovely rooms and she’s well served. Clearly, they all adore her,” I reply. “Grace is with her, and the porteress calls her ‘the queen’ as if nothing had changed.”

  “Then she will no doubt organize her life just as she wants,” he says. “She usually does.”

  He is full of news of the crusade in Granada, of the beauty and elegance of the Moorish empire, of the determination of the Christian kings to drive the Moors completely from Spain. And he tells me stories about the Portuguese court, and their adventures. They are exploring far south down the coast of Afric, and he says there are mines of gold there, and markets full of spices, and a treasure house of ivory to be picked up by anyone who dares to go far enough as the sky gets hotter and the seas more stormy. There is a kingdom where the fields are made of gold and any man can have a fortune if he picks up the pebbles. There are strange animals and rare beasts—he has seen the hides, spotted and striped and gold as a noble—and perhaps there is a place ruled by a white Christian in the very heart of the great land, perhaps there is a kingdom of black men, devoted to a white Christian hero called Prester John.

  Henry has no interest in news of magical kingdoms, but he takes Uncle Edward into his privy chamber the minute he arrives and they are locked together for half a day before Edward comes out with his toothless grin and Henry’s arm around his shoulders and I know that whatever he has reported, it has set Henry’s anxious mind at rest.

  Henry trusts him so much that he is to lead a defense of Brittany. “When will you go?” I ask him.

  “Almost at once,” he says. “There’s no time to lose and—” he grins his toothless smile “—I like to be busy.”

  I take him immediately to the nursery at Eltham Palace to show him how much Arthur has grown. He can stand up now and walk alongside a chair or a stool. His greatest pleas
ure is to hold my fingers and take wavering steps across the room, turn around with his little feet pigeon-toed, and forge back again. He beams when he sees me and reaches out for me. He is starting to speak, singing like a little bird, though he has no words yet, but he says “Ma,” which I take to mean me, and “Boh,” which means anything that pleases him. But he giggles when I tickle him and drops anything that he is given in the hope that someone will pick it up and return it to him, so that he can drop it again. His greatest joy is when Bridget gives him a ball to drop, and flies after it as if they were playing tennis and she has to recover it before it bounces too often; it makes him gurgle and crow to see her run. “Is he not the most beautiful boy you have ever seen?” I ask Uncle Edward, and am rewarded by his toothless beam.

  “And the boy you went to see?” I ask quietly, taking Arthur against my shoulder and gently patting his back. He is heavy on my shoulder and warm against my cheek. I have a sudden fierce desire that nothing shall ever threaten his peace or his safety. “Henry told me that he sent you to look at a boy in Portugal? I have heard nothing of him since you left.”

  “Then the king will tell you that I saw a page boy in the service of Sir Edward Brampton,” my uncle says, his lisp endearing. “Some mischief-maker thought that he looked like my poor lost nephew Richard. People will make trouble over nothing. Alas, that they have nothing better to do.”

  “And does he look like him?” I press.

  Edward shakes his head. “No, not particularly.”

  I glance around. There is no one near but the baby’s wet nurse and she has no interest in anything but eating enormous meals and drinking ale. “My lord uncle, are you sure? Can you speak to my Lady Mother about him?”

  “I won’t speak to her of this lad because it would distress her,” he says firmly. “It was a boy who looked nothing like your brother, her son. I am sure of it.”

  “And Edward Brampton?” I persist.

  “Sir Edward is to come on a visit to England as soon as he can leave his business in Portugal,” he says. “He is letting his handsome page go out of his service. He does not want to cause any embarrassment to us or to the king with such a forward boy.”

  There is more here than I can understand. “If the boy is nothing, a braggart, then how could such a nothing make such a loud noise in Lisbon that we can hear him in London? If he is a nothing, why did you go all the way to Portugal to see him? It’s nowhere near Granada. And why is Sir Edward coming to England? To meet with the king? Why would he be so honored, when he was known to be loyal to York and he loved my father? And why is he dismissing his page if the boy is a nobody?”

  “I think the king would prefer it,” Edward says lightly.

  I look at him for a moment. “There is something here that I don’t understand,” I say. “There is a secret here.”

  My uncle pats my hand as I hold the baby’s warm body to my heart. “You know, there are always secrets everywhere; but it is better sometimes that you don’t know what they are. Don’t trouble yourself, Your Grace,” he says. “This new world is filled with mysteries. The things they told me in Portugal!”

  “Did they speak of a boy returned from the dead?” I challenge him. “Did they speak of a boy who was hidden from unknown killers, smuggled abroad, and waiting for his time?”

  He does not flinch. “They did. But I reminded them that the King of England has no interest in miracles.”

  There is a little silence. “At least the king trusts you,” I say as I hand Arthur back to his wet nurse and watch him settle on her broad lap. “At least he is sure of you. Perhaps you can speak to him of my Lady Mother and she can come back to court. If there is no boy, then he has nothing to fear.”

  “He’s not naturally a very trusting man,” my uncle observes with a smile. “I was followed all the way to Lisbon and my hooded companion noted everyone that I met. Another man followed me home again too, to make sure that I did not call on your aunt in Flanders on my way.”

  “Henry spied on you? His own messenger? His spy? He spied on his spy?”

  He nods. “And there will be a woman in your household who tells him what you say in your most private moments. Your own private confessor is bound to report to his Father in God, the Archbishop of Canterbury, John Morton. John Morton is the greatest friend of My Lady the King’s Mother. They plotted together against King Richard, together they destroyed the Duke of Buckingham. They meet every day and he tells her everything. Don’t ever dream that the king trusts any of us. Don’t ever think that you’re not watched. You are watched all the time. We all are.”

  “But we’re doing nothing!” I exclaim. I lower my voice. “Aren’t we, Uncle? We are doing nothing?”

  He pats my hand. “We’re doing nothing,” he assures me.

  WINDSOR CASTLE, SUMMER 1488

  But my aunt Margaret is not doing nothing. Her Grace the Dowager Duchess of Flanders, sister to my father, is certainly not idle. Constantly, she writes to James III of Scotland, even sending him an envoy of York loyalists. “She is trying to persuade him to make war on us,” Henry says wearily. I have stepped into his privy chamber in the great castle, and found him with two clerks at either end of a great table and a salt-stained paper before him. I recognize my aunt’s great red wax seals and the trailing ribbons; she uses the sun in splendor, the great York crest created by my father. “But she won’t succeed. We have an alliance, we will have betrothals. James is sworn to be loyal to me. He’ll hold fast for Tudor England. He won’t turn backwards to York.”

  But though Henry may be right and James is loyal in his heart, he can’t persuade his countrymen to support England. His country, his lords, even his heir are all against Tudor England, whatever the opinions of the king, and it is the country that wins. They turn against him rather than stomach an alliance with the Tudor arriviste, and James has to defend his friendship with England and even his throne. I receive a hastily scribbled note from my mother, but I don’t understand what she means:

  So you see, I am not riding up the Great North Road.

  I know that Henry will have seen this, almost as soon as it was written, so I take it at once to him to demonstrate my loyalty; but as I enter the royal privy chamber I stop, for there is a man with him that I think I know, though I cannot put a name to his darkly tanned face. Then as he turns towards me I think I had better forget everything I have ever known about him. This is Sir Edward Brampton, my father’s godson, the man that my uncle saw at the court in Portugal with the forward page boy. He turns and bows low to me, his smile quietly confident.

  “You know each other?” my husband says flatly, watching my face.

  I shake my head. “I am so sorry . . . you are?”

  “I am Sir Edward Brampton,” he says pleasantly. “And I saw you once when you were a little princess, too young to remember an unimportant old courtier like me.”

  I nod and turn my entire attention to Henry, as if I have no interest in Sir Edward at all. “I wanted to tell you that I have a note from Bermondsey Abbey.”

  He takes it from my hand and reads it in silence. “Ah. She must know that James is dead.”

  “Is that what she means? She writes only that she won’t be riding up the Great North Road. How did the king die? How could such a thing happen?”

  “In battle,” Henry says shortly. “His country supported his son against him. It seems that some of us cannot even trust blood kin. You cannot be sure of your own heir, never mind another.”

  Carefully I do not look towards Sir Edward. “I am sorry if this causes us trouble,” I say evenly.

  Henry nods. “At any rate, we have a new friend in Sir Edward.”

  I smile slightly, Sir Edward bows.

  “Sir Edward is to come home to England next year,” Henry says. “He was a loyal servant of your father’s and now he is going to serve me.”

  Sir Edward looks cheerful at this prospect and bows again.

  “So when you reply to your mother, you can tell her th
at you have seen her old friend,” Henry suggests.

  I nod and go towards the door. “And tell her that Sir Edward had a forward page boy, who made much of himself, but that he has now left his service and gone to work for a silk merchant. Nobody knows where he is now. He may have gone trading to Afric, perhaps to China, no one knows.”

  “I’ll tell her that, if you wish,” I say.

  “She’ll know who I mean,” Henry smiles. “Tell her that the page boy was an insolent little lad who liked to dress in borrowed silks but now he has a new master—a silk merchant as it happens, so he will be well suited in his work, and the boy has gone with him, and is quite disappeared.”

  GREENWICH PALACE, LONDON, CHRISTMAS 1488

  The anxious Tudor scrutiny of the unreliable world around them ceases for the Christmas feast, as if it is finally possible that days can go by and small events happen, notes be written and received, without Henry having to see everything and know everything. With the disappearance of the invisible boy into the unknown it seems that there is nothing left to watch for, and the spies at the ports and the guardians on the roads can rest. Even My Lady the King’s Mother loses her frown and regards the arrival of the yule log, the jesters, the players, the mummers, and the choir with a small smile. Margaret is allowed to visit her brother in the Tower and comes back to Greenwich happier than she has been for some time.