The White Princess Page 34

  From this, Henry hopes that his country will learn loyalty. But I recognize—knowing this country as I do, and he does not—that all the people will learn is that good men, wise men, wealthy men, men as privileged as Sir William Stanley, men as knowing and as cunning as the king’s own uncle, are ready to die for the boy. All they will judge from the many deaths and the festering body parts is that many, many good men believed in the boy, and were ready to die for him.

  Stanley goes to the scaffold in silence neither begging for mercy nor offering to unmask other traitors. There is no way that he could declare more loudly that he thinks the boy is the true king and that Tudor is a pretender, that Tudor was always a pretender, today as on the day of the battle of Bosworth Field. Nothing could ring out more clearly than Stanley’s silence, nothing publishes the boy’s claims more strongly than the grinning skulls of his adherents on the gates of every town of England, making everyone wonder at the cause for which these men died so terribly.

  Henry sends out commissions to seek for traitors in every county of England. He thinks they will root out treason. I think that all they will do, wherever they go, is prove to the people that the king thinks there is treason everywhere. All Henry tells the market towns when his yeomen of the guard march in and set up a hearing for the local gossips is that their king is afraid of everyone, even the tongue-waggers in the alehouses. All he demonstrates is that their king is afraid of almost everything, like a child dreading the darkness at bedtime who imagines threats everywhere.

  Jasper Tudor comes back to Westminster after scouring the country for treason, looking exhausted, gray with fatigue. He is a man of sixty-three, who thought he had brought his beloved nephew to the throne in a blaze of courage nearly a decade ago, and that the great task of his life was done. Now he finds that for every man who died on the battlefield fighting against them, there are ten enemies in hiding, twenty, a hundred. York was never defeated, it just stepped back into the shadows. For Jasper, who fought all his life against York, who suffered exile from his own beloved country for nearly twenty-five years, it is as if his great victory over the House of York has never happened. York is stepping forwards again and Jasper has to find his courage, find his power, and ready himself for another battle. But now he is an old man.

  His wife, my aunt Katherine, sends him out on his mission with an obedient curtsey and a hard face. Half the people he will arrest and see hanged are loyal servants of our house and personal friends to her. But My Lady the King’s Mother, who has loved him, I believe, ever since she was a young widow and he was her only friend, looks at him with hollow eyes, as if she would drop to her knees before him and beg him to save her boy again, as he has saved him so often before. They shrink into themselves, the king, his mother and his uncle, trusting no one else now.

  Thomas, Lord Stanley, whose loveless marriage to My Lady the King’s Mother brought him to greatness and brought an army to her son, is excluded from their councils, as if he shares a taint of treason with his dead brother. If they cannot trust the brother-in-law of My Lady the King’s Mother, if they cannot trust her husband, if they cannot trust their own kinsmen that they have loaded with honor and money, then who can they trust?

  They can trust no one, they fear everyone.

  Henry never comes to my rooms in the evenings anymore. Terrified of a boy, he cannot think of making another child. We have the heirs that he needs: our own boy and his little brother. Henry looks at me as if he cannot contemplate making another child on me, one that would be half York, one that would be half traitor by birth. All the warmth, all the tenderness that was growing between us is frozen out by his terror and mistrust. As his mother looks at me askance, as the king puts out his hand to lead me in to dinner but hardly touches my fingers, I walk like the traitor Sir William: with my head up, as if I refuse to feel shame.

  I see the eyes of the court upon me all the time, but I dare not meet their eyes and smile. I cannot judge who might smile at me, thinking that I am the cruelly treated wife of a husband who has lost once again his new habit of kindness, a man who has been told all his life that he should be king and now doubts it more than ever before. Or perhaps they are smiling at me because they are undetected, and think I am hidden too. Perhaps they are plotting treason and think I am with them. Perhaps they are smiling at me because they saw my mother’s seal in the traitor’s sack, and believe that my own seal was hidden away, lower down in the bag.

  I think of the boy in Malines, the boy with golden-brown hair and hazel eyes, and imagine him walking like me, with his head up, as we children of York were taught to do. I think of him learning of the loss of the treasure, of the sack of seals; a crushing blow to his plans, the betrayal of his allies. They say that he expressed regret that Sir Robert had betrayed him, but that he did not curse or swear. He did not gulp as if he might be sick, and order everyone from the room. He behaved like a boy who was taught by a loving mother that the wheel of fortune may well turn against you, and there is no point in railing against it, or wishing it otherwise. He took the bad news like a prince of York, not like a Tudor.

  WORCESTER CASTLE, SUMMER 1495

  Nobody will tell me what is happening. I walk in a circle of silence, as if I am held like a leech in a jar of thick glass. Henry comes to my rooms but hardly speaks to me. He gets into my bed and does his duty as if he were visiting a brothel, a stewhouse; we have lost all the love that was growing between us. Now he wants to make another Tudor to have as a reserve against the boy. He has consulted astronomers and they think that a third Tudor prince would make his throne more secure. It seems that two heirs and one of them proclaimed as the Duke of York is not enough for him. We need to hide behind a wall of babies, and Henry will get them on me for necessity but not for love.

  In July I tell him that I have missed my course and am with child again, and he nods silently; even this news cannot bring him joy. He stops coming to my room as a man released from a duty and I am glad to sleep with the companionship of one of my sisters, or with Margaret, who is at court while her husband scours the east of England for hidden traitors. I have lost the desire to lie with my husband, his touch is cold and his hands are bloody. His mother looks at me as if she would call the yeomen of the guard to arrest me for nothing more than my name.

  Jasper Tudor is never here at court anymore, but is always riding to get reports from the east coast, where they are certain that the boy will land, from the North, where they think the Scots will invade with the white rose on their banners, or from the west, where Henry’s attempts to crush the Irish has rebounded on him and the people are angrier and more rebellious than ever before.

  I spend most of my time in the nursery with my children. Arthur studies with his schoolmasters and every afternoon is ordered out into the tilt yard to master his horse and to learn his skills with lance and sword. Margaret is quick with her lessons and quick in her temper; she will snatch a book from her brothers and run and lock herself in a room before they can shout and chase after her. Elizabeth is as light as a feather, a little baby as pale as snow. They tell me she will fatten up soon, she will be as strong as her brothers and sister, but I don’t believe them. Henry is preparing a betrothal for her, he is desperate to make an alliance with France and will use this little treasure, this child of porcelain, to make a treaty. He will use her as fresh bait to catch the boy. I don’t argue with him. I cannot worry now about her wedding in twelve years’ time, I can only think that this day she has eaten nothing but a little bread and some milk, some fish at dinnertime, no meat at all.

  My little boy Henry is bright and willing, quick to learn but easily distracted, a child born for play. He is to go into the Church, and I seem to be the only one who thinks this is ridiculous. My Lady the King’s Mother plans he will be a cardinal like her great friend and ally John Morton. She prays that he will rise through the Church and become a pope, a Tudor pope. It is pointless to tell her that he is a worldly child who loves sport and play and music and foo
d with a most unclerical relish. It does not matter to her. With Arthur as King of England and Henry as Pope in Rome she will have this world and the next in the hands of Tudors and God will have fulfilled the promise he made her when she was a frightened little girl who feared that her son would never rule anything but a couple of castles in Wales and would shortly be driven, by my father, from them.

  Her great friend John Morton stays in the south of England, as we spend our summer here in the center of the country, far from the dangerous coast, close to Coventry Castle. Morton is guarding the south coast for My Lady’s fearful son, who goes to and from the court without warning, as if he is riding his own patrols, as if he cannot even trust his spies anymore, but has to see everything for himself. We never know if he will attend dinner, we never know if he will sleep in his own bed; and when his throne is empty the courtiers look around as if for another king who could be seated there. Now the Tudors trust no one but the handful of people who fled with them into exile long ago. Their world has shrunk to the tiny court that hid with them in Brittany; it is as if all the allies and the friends they made, and all the guards and soldiers they recruited after the battle of Bosworth, had never joined them, as if they have no support at all.

  It is the court of a frightened pretender and there is no majesty or pride or confidence about it. Working alone, I can do nothing, when I process on my own to dinner with my head held high, smiling around at friends and suspects alike, trying on my own to overcome the impression that the king is afraid and his court are uncertain.

  Then, one evening, John Kendal, the Bishop of Worcester, stops me on my way to my rooms with a kindly smile, and asks me, as a man offering to show a rainbow or a pretty sunset: “Have you seen the light from the beacons, Your Grace?”

  I hesitate. “Beacons?”

  “The sky is quite red.”

  I turn to the arrow-slit window in the castle and look out. To the south the sky is quite rosy, and as far as I can see there is a light on a hill, and then another, and then another behind and behind one after another all the way until I can see nothing more.

  “What is it?”

  “The king commanded beacons to warn him of the landing of Richard of York,” John Kendal says.

  “You mean the pretender,” I remind him. “The boy.”

  In the glow of the lights I catch his hidden smile and I hear his low laugh. “Of course. I forgot his name. These are the beacons. He must have landed.”

  “Landed?”

  “These are his beacons. The boy is coming home.”

  “The boy is coming home?” I repeat like a fool. It cannot be that I have mistaken the bishop’s delight in the rosy light of the beacons. He is illuminated with joy as if the beacons were welcoming flares to guide ships safely into port. He smiles at me to share his delight that the Plantagenet boy is homeward bound.

  “Yes,” he says. “They are lighting his way home at last.”

  Next day Henry thunders out of the castle surrounded by his guard, without a word of farewell to me, riding west to raise troops, visiting castles in the Stanley areas, desperate to keep them loyal, uncertain of them all. He does not even say good-bye to the children in the nursery or go to his mother for her blessing. She is horrified by his sudden departure and spends all her time on her knees on the stone floor of the chapel at Worcester, not even coming to breakfast, for she is fasting, starving herself to draw down a blessing on her son. Her thin neck at the top of her gown is red and raw, as she is wearing a hair shirt against her skin to mortify her paper-thin flesh. Jasper Tudor rides beside Henry, like a tired old warhorse that does not know how to stop and rest.

  Confused rumors come back to us. The boy has landed in the east of the country, coming into England through Hull and York, as my father did when he returned in triumph from his exile. The boy is following in King Edward’s footsteps as his true son and heir.

  Then we hear that the winds blew the boy off course and he has landed in the south of England and there is nobody there to defend the coast but the archbishop and some local bands. What shall prevent the boy from marching on London? There is no one to block the road, there is no one who will deny him.

  Henry’s guard rides into the stable yard without warning, and the grooms brush down the exhausted horses and the men stained with mud from the road take the back stairs to their rooms in silence. They don’t shout for ale or boast of their journey, they return to the court like men silent with grim determination, afraid of defeat. Henry dines with the court for two nights, hard-faced, as if he has forgotten all his lessons about being a smiling king. He comes to my rooms to lead me in to dinner and greets me curtly.

  “He landed.” He spits out the words as he leads me to the top table. “He got a few men onshore. But he saw the defense and sheered off like a coward. My men killed a few hundred of them, but like fools they let his ship get away. He fled like a boy and they let him go.”

  I don’t remind my husband that once he too came to the coast and saw that there was a trap and sailed away without landing. We called him a coward then, too. “So where is he now?”

  He looks at me coldly, as if measuring whether it is safe to tell me. “Who knows? Perhaps he’s gone to Ireland? The winds were blowing west, so I doubt he’ll have landed in Wales. Wales at least should be faithful to a Tudor. He’ll know that.”

  I say nothing. We both know that he can trust nowhere to be faithful to a Tudor. I hold out my hands and the groom of the ewery pours warm water on my fingers and holds out a scented towel.

  Henry rubs his hands and throws the towel at a page boy. “I captured some of his men,” he says with sudden energy. “I have about a hundred and sixty of them, Englishmen and foreigners, all traitors and rebels.”

  I don’t need to ask what will happen to the men who sailed with the boy for England. We take our seats and face our court.

  “I shall send them round the country and have them hanged in groups in every market town,” Henry says with sudden cold energy. “I shall show people what happens to anyone who turns against me. And I shall try them for piracy—not treason. If I name them as pirates I can kill the foreigners as well. Frenchman and Englishman can hang side by side and everyone will look at their rotting bodies and know that they dare not question my rule no matter where they were born.”

  “You won’t forgive them?” I ask, as they pour a glass of wine. “Not any of them? You won’t show mercy? You always say that it is politic to show mercy.”

  “Why in hell’s name should I forgive them? They were coming against me, against the King of England. Armed and hoping to overthrow me.”

  I bow my head under his fury and know that the court is watching Henry’s rage.

  “But the ones that I execute in London will die as pirates do,” he says with sudden harsh relish. His temper vanishes, he beams at me.

  I shake my head. “I don’t know what you mean,” I say wearily. “What have you advisors been telling you now?”

  “They’ve been telling me how pirates are punished,” he says with a cruel joy. “And this is how I will have these men killed. I will have them tied down by St. Katherine’s Wharf at Wapping. They are traitors and they came against me by sea. I shall find them guilty of piracy and they will be tied down and the tide will come in and slowly, slowly, creep over them, lapping up their feet and their legs till it splashes into their mouths and they will drown inch by inch in a foot of water. D’you think that will teach the people of England what happens to rebels? Do you think that will teach the people of England not to defy me? Never to come against a Tudor?”

  “I don’t know,” I say. I am trying to catch my breath as if it is me staked out on the beach with the rising tide splashing against my closed lips, wetting my face, slowly rising. “I hope so.”

  Days later, when Henry is gone again on his restless patrolling of the Midlands, we hear that the boy has landed in Ireland and set siege to Waterford Castle. The Irish are flocking to his standard and Hen
ry’s rule in Ireland is utterly overthrown.

  I rest in the afternoons; this baby is sitting heavily on my belly and makes me too weary to walk. Margaret sits with me, sewing at my side, and whispers to me that Ireland has become ungovernable, the rule of the English is overthrown, everyone is declaring for the boy. Her husband, Sir Richard, will have to go to that most dangerous island; Henry has commanded him to take troops to fight the boy and his adoring allies. But before Sir Richard has even ordered the ships to transport his troops, the siege is lifted without warning, and the elusive boy is gone.

  “Where is he now?” I ask Henry as he prepares to ride out, his yeomen of the guard behind him, armed and helmeted as if they are on campaign, as if he expects an attack on the highways of his own country.

  His face is dark. “I don’t know,” he says shortly. “Ireland is a bog of treachery. He is hiding in the wetlands, he is hiding in the mountains. My man in Ireland, Poynings, has no command, he has lost all control, he knows nothing. The boy is like a ghost, we hear of him but we never see him. We know they are hiding him but we don’t know where.”

  WESTMINSTER PALACE, LONDON, AUTUMN 1495

  The king does not come to my bedroom at night, not even to sit and talk with me; he has not come for months. The days when we were friends and lovers seem very far away now. I do not let myself grieve for the loss of his love, I sense that he is fighting a battle in his own heart as well as constantly patrolling the roads of England. His fear and hatred consume him, he cannot even take pleasure at the thought of another child in my belly. He cannot sit beside my fire and talk quietly with me, he is too restless, hagridden by his constant fear. Out in the darkness, somewhere in England, in Ireland, or in Wales, the boy is awake, and Henry cannot sleep quietly at my side.