The White Princess Page 8

  “All your family,” she corrects me.

  My mother gives her blandest smile. “And what about the York prince?” she asks.

  There is a sudden silence as if a snap frost has just iced the room. “The York prince?” Lady Margaret repeats slowly, and I can hear a tremor in her hard voice. She looks at my mother in dawning horror, as if something terrible is about to be revealed. “What d’you mean? What York prince? What are you saying? What are you saying now?”

  My mother blankly meets her gaze. “You have not forgotten the York prince?”

  Lady Margaret has blanched white as white. I can see her grip the arms of her chair, and her fingernails are bleached with the pressure of her panic-stricken grip. I glance at my mother; she is enjoying this, like a bear leader teasing the bear with a long-handled prod.

  “What d’you mean?” Lady Margaret says and her voice is sharp with fear. “You cannot be suggesting . . .” She breaks off with a little gasp, almost as if she is afraid of what she might say next. “You cannot be saying now . . .”

  One of her ladies steps forwards. “Your Grace, are you unwell?”

  My mother observes this with detached interest, as an alchemist might observe a transformation. The upstart king’s mother is riven with terror at the very name of a York prince. My mother enjoys the sight for a moment, then she releases her from the spell. “I mean, Edward of Warwick, the son of George, Duke of Clarence,” she says mildly.

  Lady Margaret gives a shuddering sigh. “Oh, the Warwick boy,” she says. “The Warwick boy. I had forgotten the Warwick boy.”

  “Who else?” my mother asks sweetly. “Who did you think I meant? Who else could I mean?”

  “I had not forgotten the Warwick children.” Lady Margaret grasps for her dignity. “I have ordered robes for them too. And gowns for your younger daughters also.”

  “I am so pleased,” my mother says pleasantly. “And my daughter’s coronation?”

  “Will follow later,” Lady Margaret says, trying to hide that she is gasping, still recovering from her shock, gulping for her words like a landed carp. “After the wedding. When I decide.”

  One of her ladies steps forwards with a glass of malmsey and she takes a sip and then another. The color comes back to her cheeks with the sweet wine. “After their wedding they will travel to show themselves to the people. A coronation will follow after the birth of an heir.”

  My mother nods, as if the matter is indifferent to her. “Of course, she’s a princess born,” she remarks, quietly pleased that being a princess born is far better than being a pretender king.

  “I wish any child to be born at Winchester, at the heart of the old kingdom, Arthur’s kingdom,” Lady Margaret states, struggling to regain her authority. “My son is of the house of Arthur Pendragon.”

  “Really?” my mother exclaims, all sweetness. “I thought he was from a Tudor bastard out of a Valois dowager princess. And that, a secret wedding, never proved? How does that trace back to King Arthur?”

  Lady Margaret pales with rage, and I want to tug my mother’s sleeve to remind her not to torment this woman. She had Lady Margaret on the run at the mention of a York prince, but we are supplicants at this new court and there is no benefit in making its greatest woman angry.

  “I don’t need to explain my son’s inheritance to you, whose own marriage and title was only restored by us, after you had been named as an adulteress,” Lady Margaret says bluntly. “I have told you of the arrangements for the wedding, I will not delay you further.”

  My mother keeps her head up and smiles. “And I thank you,” she says regally. “So much.”

  “My son will see Princess Elizabeth.” Lady Margaret nods to a page. “Take the princess to the king’s private rooms.”

  I have no choice but to go through the interconnecting room, to the king’s chambers. It seems the two of them are never more than a doorway apart. He is seated at a table that I recognize at once as one used in this palace by my lover Richard, made for my father, King Edward. It is so strange to see Henry seated in my father’s chair, signing documents on Richard’s table, as if he were king himself—until I remember that he is indeed the king himself, his pale, worried face the image that will be stamped on the coins of England.

  He is dictating to a clerk with a portable writing desk slung around his neck, a quill in one hand, another tucked behind his ear, but when Henry sees me, he gives me a broad welcoming smile, waves the man away, and the guards close the door on him and we are alone.

  “Are they spitting like cats on a barn roof?” He chuckles. “There’s no great love lost between them, is there?”

  I’m so relieved to have an ally that for a moment I nearly respond to his warmth, then I check myself. “Your mother is ordering everything, as usual,” I say coldly.

  The merry smile is wiped from his face. He frowns at the least hint of criticism of her. “You have to understand that she has waited for this moment all her life.”

  “I am sure we all know this. She does tell everyone.”

  “I owe her everything,” he says frostily. “I can’t hear a word against her.”

  I nod. “I know. She tells everyone that too.”

  He rises from his chair and comes around the table towards me. “Elizabeth, you will be her daughter-in-law. You will learn to respect her and love and value her. You know, in all the years when your father was on the throne, my mother never gave up her vision.”

  I grit my teeth. “I know,” I say. “Everybody knows. She tells everyone that as well.”

  “You have to admire that in her.”

  I cannot bring myself to say that I admire her. “My mother too is a woman of great tenacity,” I say carefully. Privately I think: But I don’t worship her like a baby, she doesn’t speak of nothing but me as if she had nothing in her life but one spoiled brat.

  “I am sure they are filled with bile now, but before that they were friends and even allies,” he reminds me. “When we are married, they will join together. They’ll both have a grandson to love.”

  He pauses as if he hopes I will say something about their grandson.

  Unhelpfully, I stay silent.

  “You are well, Elizabeth?”

  “Yes,” I say shortly.

  “And your course has not returned?”

  I grit my teeth at having to discuss something so intimate with him. “No.”

  “That’s good, that’s so good,” he says. “That’s the most important thing!” His pride and excitement would be such a pleasure from a loving husband, but from him it grates on me. I look at him in blank enmity and keep my silence.

  “Now, Elizabeth, I just wanted to tell you that our wedding day is to be the feast of St. Margaret of Hungary. My mother has it all planned, you need do nothing.”

  “Except walk up the aisle and consent,” I suggest. “I suppose even your mother will concede that I have to give my consent.”

  He nods. “Consent, and look happy,” he adds. “England wants to see a joyful bride, and so do I. You will please me in this, Elizabeth. It is my wish.”

  St. Margaret of Hungary was a princess like me, but she lived in a convent in such poverty that she fasted to death. The choice of her day for my wedding by my mother-in-law does not escape me. “Humble and penitent.” I remind him of the motto his mother chose for me. “Humble and penitent like St. Margaret.”

  He has the grace to chuckle. “You can be as humble and penitent as you like.” He smiles and looks as if he would take my hand and kiss me. “You can’t exceed in humility for us, my sweetheart.”

  WESTMINSTER PALACE, LONDON, 18 JANUARY 1486

  I am a winter bride, and the morning of my wedding day is as bitterly cold as my heart. I wake to the flowers of frost on my windows, and Bess, coming into the room, begs me to stay in bed until she has the fire banked up and my linen laid out to warm before it.

  I step out of my bed and she pulls my nightgown over my head and then offers me my undergarments,
all new and trimmed with white silk embroidery on the white linen at the hem, then my red satin overgown slashed at the sleeves and opening at the front to show a black silk damask undergown. Fussing, she ties the laces under the arms while the two other maids-in-waiting tie those at the back. It is a little tighter than when it was first fitted on me. My breasts have grown fuller and my waist is thickening. I notice the changes, but nobody else does yet. I am losing the body that my lover adored, the girlish litheness that he used to wrap around his battle-hardened body. Instead I will be the shape that my husband’s mother wants: a rounded fertile pear of a woman, a vessel for Tudor seed, a pot.

  I stand like a child’s doll, being dressed as if I were made of lumpy straw stuffed in a sock, limp in their hands. The gown is darkly magnificent, making my hair shine golden, and my skin gleams coldly white against the rich deep fabric. The door opens and my mother comes in. She is already in her gown of cream, trimmed with green and silver and ribbons, with her hair tied loosely at the back; later she will twist it under her heavy headdress. For the first time, I notice that she has a fine scattering of gray hairs among the blond; she is a golden queen no more.

  “You look lovely,” she says, kissing me. “Does he know you are wearing red and black?”

  “His mother watched them fit the gown,” I say dully. “She chose the material. Of course he knows. She knows everything and she tells him.”

  “They didn’t want green?”

  “Lancaster red,” I say bitterly. “Martyrdom red, whore’s red, blood red.”

  “Hush,” she commands. “This is your day of triumph.”

  At her touch, I find my throat is tightening, and the tears that have been blurring my view all morning spill down on my cheeks. Gently, she pushes them away with the heel of her hand, one cheek and then the other. “Now stop,” she orders softly. “There is nothing that can be done but obey and smile. Sometimes we win; sometimes we lose. The main thing is that we always, we always go on.”

  “We, the House of York?” I ask her skeptically. “For this wedding dissolves York into Tudor. This is no victory for us, but our final defeat.”

  She smiles her secretive smile. “We, the daughters of Melusina,” she corrects me. “Your grandmother was a daughter of the water goddess of the royal house of Burgundy and she never forgot that she was both royal and magical. When I was your age, I didn’t know whether she could summon up a storm or whether it was all just luck and pretence to get her own way. But she taught me that there is nothing in the world more powerful than a woman who knows what she wants and walks a straight road towards it.

  “It doesn’t matter if you call it magic or determination. It doesn’t matter if you make a spell or a plot. You have to make up your mind what you want, and have the courage to set your heart on it. You will be Queen of England, your husband is the king. Through you, the Yorks regain the throne of England that is their right. Walk through your sorrow, my daughter, it hardly matters as long as you walk to where you want to be.”

  “I have lost the man I love,” I say bitterly. “And this very day I am to marry the man who killed him. I don’t think I will ever walk to where I want to be. I don’t think that place exists in England anymore, I don’t think that place exists in this world anymore.”

  She could almost laugh aloud in her easy confidence. “Of course you think that now! Today you are to marry a man that you despise; but who knows what will happen tomorrow? I can’t foretell the future. You were born at the very heart of troubled times. Now you will marry one king, and perhaps you will see him challenged, and perhaps you will see him fall. Perhaps you will see Henry go down in the mud and die under the hooves of a traitor army. How can I know? No one can. But one thing I do know: today you can marry him and become Queen of England. You can make peace where he has made war. You can protect your friends and family and put a York boy on the throne. So go to your wedding with a smile.”

  He is standing at the chancel steps when I come in through the west door of Westminster Abbey to a sudden shout of silver trumpets. I walk alone; one of the ironies of this wedding is that if there was a man of my family to escort me, then Henry would not be King of England and waiting for me with a shy smile on his face. But my father the king is dead, my two York uncles are dead, my little brothers Edward and Richard are missing, presumed dead. The only York boy left for sure is little Edward of Warwick, who bobs his head to me in a funny regal gesture, as if granting his permission as I walk past the chairs of state where he stands, guarded by his sister, Margaret.

  Ahead of me Henry is a blaze of gold. His mother has decided to sacrifice elegance for ostentation, and he is wearing a complete suit of cloth of gold as if he is a newly minted statue, a new Croesus. She had thought he would look regal, a gilded god, and that I would look dull and dark and modest. But against his tawdry brightness my dark black and red gown glows with quiet authority. I can see his mother looking crossly from him to me, and puzzling as to why I seem royal and he looks like a mountebank.

  The gown is cut very full with a lot of material gathered at the front, and so nobody can yet see that my belly is bigger. I am a full month into my time, possibly more; but only the king, his mother, and my mother know. I render a silent prayer that they have told nobody.

  The archbishop is waiting for us, his prayer book open, his old face smiling down as we walk towards him to the chancel steps. He is my kinsman, Thomas Bourchier, and his hands tremble as he takes my hand and places it in Henry’s warm grip. He crowned my father nearly twenty-five years ago, and he crowned my mother, he crowned my darling Richard and his then-wife, Anne, and, if the baby I am carrying proves to be a son, then no doubt he will baptise the child Arthur and then crown me.

  His round, lined face shines on me with simple goodwill as I stand before him. He would have performed my wedding service with Richard, and I would have stood here in a white gown trimmed with white roses and been married and crowned in one beautiful ceremony and been a beloved bride and a merry queen.

  As his kind eyes fall on my face I can feel myself slipping into a reverie, almost fainting, as if I have entered one of my dreams, standing here at the chancel steps on my wedding day, just as I hoped I would be. In a daze, I take Henry’s hand and repeat the words that I thought I would say to another man. “I, Elizabeth, take thee, H . . . H . . . H . . .” I stumble. It is as if I cannot speak this wrong name, I cannot wake to this awkward reality.

  It is awful, I cannot say another word, I cannot catch my breath, the terrible fact that I am not pledging myself to Richard has stuck in my throat. I am starting to choke, in a moment I will retch. I can feel myself sweating, I can feel myself sway, my legs weakening under me. I cannot bring myself to say the name of the wrong man, I cannot make myself promise myself to anyone but Richard. I try again. I get as far as “I, Elizabeth, take thee . . .” before I choke into silence. It is hopeless, I cannot say it. I give a little whooping cough and raise my eyes to his face. I cannot help myself, I hate him like an enemy, I cannot stop myself dreaming of his enemy, I cannot say his name, I cannot possibly marry him.

  But Henry, prosaic and real, understands exactly what is happening, and gives me a sharp corrective pinch with his fingers in the soft palm of my hand. He uses his nails, he digs into my flesh, I yelp at the pain, and his hard brown gaze emerges from the mist and I see his scowl. I snatch at a gasp of air.

  “Say it!” he mutters furiously.

  I master myself and say again, correctly this time, “I, Elizabeth, take thee, Henry . . .”

  The wedding banquet is held at Westminster Palace and I am served on bended knee as if I were a queen, though My Lady the King’s Mother mentions once or twice, as if in passing, that although I am the king’s wife, I am not yet crowned. After the feast there is dancing and a little play put on by some skilled actors. There are tumblers, music from the choristers, the king’s fool tells some bawdy jokes, and then my mother and sisters come to escort me to the bedroom.

&n
bsp; It is warm with a long-established fire of smoldering logs and scented pinecones in the hearth, and my mother gives me a drink of specially brewed wedding ale.

  “Are you nervous?” Cecily asks, her tone as sweet as mead. We still don’t have a date for her wedding day, and she is anxious that no one forget that she must come next. “I am sure that I will be nervous, on my wedding night. I shall be a nervous bride, I know, when it is my turn.”

  “No,” I say shortly.

  “Why don’t you help your sister into bed?” my mother suggests to her, and Cecily turns back the covers and gives me an upward push into the high bed. I settle myself against the pillows and swallow down my apprehension.

  We can hear the king and his friends approaching the door. The archbishop comes in first, to sprinkle holy water and pray over the marriage bed. Behind him comes Lady Margaret, a big ivory crucifix tightly in her hands, and behind her comes Henry, looking flushed and smiling among a band of men who slap him on the back and tell him that he has won the finest trophy in all of England.

  One freezing look from Lady Margaret warns everyone that there are to be no bawdy jests. The page boy turns back the covers, the king’s men in waiting take off his thick bejeweled robe, Henry in his beautifully embroidered white linen nightshirt slips between the sheets beside me, and we both sit up and sip our wedding ale like obedient children at bedtime while the archbishop finishes his prayers and steps back.

  Reluctantly, the wedding guests go out, my mother gives me a quick farewell smile and shepherds my sisters away. Lady Margaret is the last to leave and as she goes to the door I see her look back at her son, as if she has to stop herself from coming back in to embrace him once more.

  I remember that he told me of all the years when he went to sleep without her kiss or her blessing, and that she loves now to see him to his bed. I see her hesitating at the threshold as if she cannot bear to leave him, and I give her a smile, and I stretch out my hand and rest it lightly on her son’s shoulder, a gentle proprietorial touch. “Good night, Lady Mother,” I say. “Good night from us both.” I let her see me take her son’s fine linen collar in my fingers, the collar she embroidered herself in white-on-white embroidery, and I hold it as if it were the leash of a hunting dog who is wholly mine.