The White Princess Read online

  He storms out. I hear the bang in the outer presence chamber as they ground their pikes as he tears open the door, and then the scuffle as his guard hastily fall in behind him to follow him. By tomorrow, the whole court will know that he called Margaret a York bitch and me a York traitor, that he said my rooms were a foul traitors’ nest. And in the morning everyone will know why: the boy who calls himself my brother has disappeared again.

  WESTMINSTER PALACE, LONDON, SPRING 1493

  We stay in London for the spring, so that Henry can be at the center of his spy network, receiving reports first from Antwerp and then from the city of Malines of the miracle at my aunt’s court in Flanders. Everyone is talking of the moment when her nephew came to her from France, escaped by the intervention of angels, knelt at her feet, and looked up into her face and she recognized, with an outburst of joy, her lost nephew Richard.

  She writes to everyone, in an explosion of gladness, telling them that the age of miracles is not over, for here is her nephew who was given up for dead, walking among us like an Arthur awakened from sleep and returned to Camelot.

  The monarchs of Christendom reply to her. It is extraordinary, but if she recognizes her nephew, then who can deny him? Who could know better than his own aunt? Who would dare to tell the Dowager Duchess of Burgundy that she is mistaken? Anyway, why should she be mistaken? She sees in this boy the certain features of her nephew, and she tells everyone that she knows him for her brother’s son. None of her dear friends, the Holy Roman Emperor, the King of France, the King of Scotland, the King of Portugal, and the monarchs of Spain, deny him for a moment. And the boy himself: everyone reports that he is princely, handsome, smiling, composed. Dressed in the best clothes that his wealthy aunt can have made for him, creating his own court from the increasing numbers of men who join him, he speaks sometimes of his childhood and refers to events that only a child at my father’s court could know. My father’s servants, my mother’s old friends escape from England as if it is now an enemy country. They make their way to Malines to see him for themselves. They put to him the questions they have composed to test him. They scan his face for any resemblance to the pretty little prince that my mother adored, they try to entrap him with false memories, with chimeras. But he answers them confidently, they believe him too, and they stay with him. They all are satisfied with their own tests. Every single one of them, even those who set out to disprove him, even those who were paid by Henry to embarrass him, are convinced. They fall to their knees, some of them weep, they bow to him, as to their prince. It is Richard, back from the dead, they write back to England in delight. It is Richard, snatched from the very jaws of death, the rightful King of England restored to us once more, returned to us once more, the son of York shining again.

  More and more people start to slip away from the households of England. William, the king’s favorite farrier, is missing from the forge. Nobody can understand why he would leave the favor of the court, the shoeing of the finest horses in the kingdom, the patronage of the king himself—but the fire is out and the forge is dark and the whisper is that William has gone to shoe the horses of the true King of England, and won’t stay with a Tudor pretender any longer. A group of neighbors who live near to my grandmother Duchess Cecily disappear from their handsome homes in Hertfordshire, and travel in secret to Flanders, almost certainly with her blessing. Priests go missing from their chapels, their clerks forward letters to known sympathizers, couriers take money from houses in England to the boy. Then, worst of all, Sir Robert Clifford, a lifelong courtier for York, a man trusted by Henry to be his envoy to Brittany, packs his bags with Tudor treasures and goes. His place is empty in our chapel, his table is not prepared for dinner in our hall. Shockingly, unbelievably, our friend Sir Robert with his entire household has disappeared; and everyone knows he has gone to the boy.

  Then it is we who look like a court of pretenders. The boy looks and sounds like the real thing while we pretend to confidence; but I see the strain in the face of My Lady the King’s Mother and the way that Jasper Tudor stalks the halls like an old warhorse, nervously, his hand drifting towards his belt where his sword should be, always watching the hall when he eats, always alert to the opening of a door. Henry himself is gray with fatigue and fear. He starts his working day at dawn, and all day men come into the small room in the center of the palace where he meets his advisors and his spies with a double guard on the door.

  The court is hushed; even in the nursery where there should be spring sunshine and laughter, the nurses are quiet and they forbid the children to shout or run around. Elizabeth is sleepy and still in her cradle. Arthur is all but silent; he does not know what is happening but he senses that he is living in a palace under siege, he knows that his place is threatened, but he has been told nothing about the young man whose nursery this was, who did his lessons at this very table. He does not know of a Prince of Wales who preceded him, who was studious and thoughtful and the darling of his mother, too.

  His sister Margaret is guarded. She is quiet as they order her to be as if she knows that something is wrong, but does not know what to do.

  Their little brother Harry is starting to insist on having his own way, a stout little boy with a shouting laugh and a love of games and music; but even he is quietened by the haste and anxiety of the palace. Nobody has time to play with him anymore, nobody will pause to talk with him as they move swiftly through the great hall, busy with secret business. He looks around in bewilderment at the people who only a few months ago would always stop and swing him up to the ceiling, or toss a ball for him, or take him down to the stable to see a horse, but who now frown and hurry past.

  “S’ William!” he calls to Thomas Stanley’s brother as he walks by. “Harry too!”

  “You can’t,” Sir William says shortly, and he looks at Harry coldly, and goes on to the stables, so the child stops short and looks around for his nurse.

  “It’s all right,” I say, smiling at him. “Sir William is just in a hurry.”

  But he frowns. “Why no play Harry?” he asks simply, and I have no answer that I can give him. “Why no play Harry?”

  The king deploys the whole court against the news from Malines; there is nothing more important. Lords and councillors go to Ireland at his command and speak to the Irish lords and beg them to remember their true loyalty, and not to run after a false prince again. Traitors are forgiven in a rush of generosity, and released from prison, sworn anew to loyalty with us. Old forgotten alliances are reforged. Ireland must be made secure, the people of that country must turn their hearts away from a darling boy of York and cleave only to Tudor. One of Henry’s small trusted circle goes to Bristol and starts to muster ships for a fleet to patrol the narrow seas. They have to look for ships coming from France, from Flanders, from Ireland, even from Scotland. The boy seems to have friends and allies everywhere.

  “You are expecting an invasion?” I ask him incredulously.

  There is a new line on his face, a deep groove between his eyebrows. “Of course,” he says shortly. “The only thing I don’t know is when. Of course the other thing I don’t know is where, nor how many they will be. Those are, of course, the only important things. And I don’t know them.”

  “Your spies don’t tell you?” Despite myself, my voice has a touch of scorn as I speak of his spies.

  “Not yet, no,” he says defensively. “There are secrets being well kept by my enemies.”

  I turn to go to the nursery, where a physician is coming to see Elizabeth.

  “Don’t go,” he says. “I need . . .”

  I turn back, my hand on the latch; I want to ask the physician if the better weather will make Elizabeth stronger. “What?”

  He looks helpless. “No one has tried to speak to you? You would tell me if anyone had spoken to you?”

  My mind is on my sick child, I genuinely don’t understand him. “Speak to me of what? What d’you mean?”

  “Of the boy . . .” he says. “Nobody ha
s spoken to you of him?”

  “Who would do so?”

  His dark look is suddenly intent, suspicious. “Why, who do you think might speak of him?”

  I spread my hands. “My lord. I really don’t know. Nobody has spoken to me of him. I cannot think why anyone would speak to me. Your unhappiness is clear enough for everyone to see. Nobody is going to talk to me about the thing that is driving my husband . . .” I bite off the rest of the phrase.

  “Driving me mad?” he asks.

  I don’t respond.

  “Somebody in my court is receiving orders from him,” he says as if the words are wrenched from him. “Somebody is planning to overthrow me and put him in my place.”

  “Who?” I whisper. His fears are so powerful that I glance over my shoulder to see that the door behind me is shut tight and step towards him, so that nobody can hear us. “Who is plotting against us in our own court?”

  He shakes his head. “One of my men picked up a letter but it had no names.”

  “Picked it up?”

  “Stole it. I know there are a few men, come together for love of the House of York, hoping to restore the boy. Maybe more than a few. They worked with your mother as their secret leader, they even work with your grandmother. But there are more than these—men who pass daily as friends or comrades or servants of mine. Someone who is as close to me as a brother. I don’t know who to trust—I don’t know who is my true friend.”

  I have a sudden chilling sense, Henry’s daily experience, that outside the closed door, beyond the carved panels of thick polished wood, there are people, perhaps hundreds of people, who smile at us as we go into dinner but write secret letters, store up secret weapons, and have a plan to kill us. We have a large busy court, what if a quarter of them are against us? What if half of them are against us? What if they turn against my boys? What if they are poisoning my little daughter? What if they turn against me?

  “We have enemies in the very heart of this very court,” he whispers. “They may be the ones who turn down our beds, they may be the ones who serve our food. They may be the ones who taste our food and assure us that it is safe to eat. Or they may ride alongside us, play cards with us, dance holding your hand, see us to bed at night. We may call them cousin, we may call them dearest. I don’t know who to trust.”

  I don’t promise him my loyalty, since there is no comfort to be had in words anymore. My name and my house are his enemies, my affinity may be massing against him; mere words will not overcome that. “You do have people you can trust,” I assure him. I list them for him, as if I am singing hymns against darkness. “Your mother, your uncle, the Earl of Oxford, your stepfather and all his kin, the Stanleys, the Courtenays, my half brother Thomas Grey—all the people who stood by you at Stoke will stand by you again.”

  He shakes his head. “No, because they weren’t all beside me at Stoke. Some of them found an excuse to stay away. Some of them said they would come but delayed and were not there in time. Some of them promised their love and loyalty but flatly refused to come. Some of them pretended to illness, or could not leave their homes. Some were even there, but on the other side, and begged for my forgiveness afterwards. And anyway, even of those who were there—they won’t stand by me again, not again and again. They won’t stand by me against a boy under the white rose, not one who they believe is a true prince.”

  He goes back to the table where his letters and his secret ciphers and his seals are carefully laid out. He never writes a letter now, he always composes code. He hardly ever writes so much as a note, it is always a secret instruction. It is not the writing table of a king but of a spymaster. “I won’t detain you,” he says shortly. “But if someone says so much as one word to you—I expect you to tell me. I want to hear anything, everything—the slightest whisper. I expect this of you.”

  I am about to say of course I would tell him, what else does he think I would do? I am his wife, his heirs are my beloved sons, there are no beings in the world that I love more tenderly than his own daughters—how can he doubt that I would come to him at once? But then I see his dark scowl and I realize that he is not asking for my help; he is threatening me. He is not asking for reassurance but warning me of his expectation that must not be disappointed. He does not trust me, and, worse than that, he wants me to know that he does not trust me.

  “I am your wife,” I say quietly. “I promised to love you on our wedding day and since then I have come to love you. Once we were glad that such love had come to us; I am still glad of it. I am your wife and I love you, Henry.”

  “But before that, you were his sister,” he says.

  KENILWORTH CASTLE, WARWICKSHIRE, SUMMER 1493

  Once again Henry moves the court to Kenilworth Castle, the safest in England, centrally placed so that he can march out to any coast to meet an invasion, easily defended if everything goes wrong and an invasion sweeps inland to him. This time there is not even the pretence of being a carefree court in summertime; everyone is afraid, certain that they are attached to a king who is facing invasion for the second time in only eight years, convinced that a better claimant to the throne is gathering his forces against Henry Tudor: a pretender now as he always has been.

  Jasper Tudor, grim-faced, rides out to the West Country and Wales to uncover the dozens of local conspiracies that are joining together to welcome an invasion. None of the people of the west is for Tudor, they are all looking for the prince over the water. Henry himself opens other inquiries, riding from one place to another, chasing whispers, trying to find those who are behind the constant flow of men and funds to Flanders. Everywhere from Yorkshire to Oxfordshire, from the east to the central counties, Henry’s appointed men hold inquiries trying to root out rebels. And still the reports of treasonous groups, hidden meetings, and musters after dark come in every day.

  Henry closes the ports. No one shall set sail to any destination for fear that they are going to join the boy; even merchants have to apply for a license before they can send out their ships. Not even trade is trusted. Then Henry passes another law: no one is to travel any great distance inland either. People may go to their market towns and back home again, but there is to be no mustering and marching. There are to be no summer gatherings, no haymaking parties, no shearing days, no dancing or beating of the parish bounds, no midsummer revels. The people are not to come together for fear that they make a crowd and raise an army, they are not to raise a glass for fear that they drink a toast to the prince whose family’s court was a byword for merrymaking.

  My Lady the King’s Mother is bleached with fear. When she whispers the prayers of the rosary her lips are as pale as the starched wimple around her face. She spends all her time with me, leaving the best rooms, the queen’s apartments, empty all day. She brings her ladies and the members of her immediate family as the only people that she can trust, and she brings her books and her studies, and she sits in my rooms as if she is seeking warmth or comfort or some sort of safety.

  I can offer her nothing. Cecily, Anne, and I barely speak to one another, we are so conscious that everything we say is being noted, that everyone is wondering if our brother will come to rescue us from this Tudor court. Maggie, my cousin, goes everywhere with her head down and her eyes on her feet, desperate that no one will say if one York boy is on the loose, then at least the other one could be put to death and so secure the Tudor line from his threat. The guards on Teddy have been doubled and doubled again, and Maggie is sure that he does not get his letters from her. She never hears from him and now she is too afraid to ask after him. We all fear that one day they will get the order to go into his room while he is asleep and strangle him in his bed. Who would countermand the order? Who would stop them?

  The ladies in my rooms read and sew, play music and games, but everything is muted and nobody speaks quickly or laughs or makes a joke. Everyone examines everything they say before they let one word out of their mouths. Everyone is watching their own words for fear of saying something that
could be reported against them, everyone is listening to everyone else, in case there is something that they should report. Everyone is silently attentive to me, and whenever there is a loud knock at my door, there is an indrawn breath of terror.

  I hide from these terrible afternoons in the children’s nursery, taking Elizabeth onto my lap and stretching out her little hands and feet, singing softly to her, trying to persuade her to show me her faint, enchanting smile.

  Arthur, who has to stay with us until we can be certain of the safety of Wales, is torn between his studies and the view from the high window, where he can see his father’s army growing in numbers, drilling every day. Every day too he sees messengers coming from the west, bringing news from Ireland or from Wales, or from the south—from London, where the streets are buzzing with gossip and the apprentices are openly wearing white roses.

  In the afternoons I take him riding with me but after a few days Henry forbids us to go out without a fully armed guard. “If they were to snatch Arthur then my life wouldn’t be worth a groat,” he says bitterly. “The day that he and Harry die is the day of my death sentence and the end of everything.”

  “Don’t say that!” I put out my hand. “Don’t ill-wish them!”

  “You’re tenderhearted,” he says grudgingly, as if it is a fault. “But foolish. You don’t think, you don’t realize what danger you are in. You cannot take the children out of the castle walls without a guard. I am beginning to think that they should be housed separately—so that anyone coming for Arthur couldn’t get Henry.”

  “But my lord husband,” I say. I can hear the quaver in my voice, I can hear the whine of reasonableness against the clarity of a madman.