The White Princess

  “I think I’ll keep Arthur in the Tower.”

  “No!” I scream. I cannot contain my shock. “No, Henry. No! No! No!”

  “To keep him safe.”

  “No. I won’t consent. I can’t consent. He’s not to go into the Tower. Not like . . .”

  “Not like your brothers?” he asks, quick as a striking snake. “Not like Edward of Warwick? Because you think they are all the same? All boys who might hope to be king?”

  “He is not to go into the Tower like them. He is the proclaimed prince. He must live freely. I must be allowed to ride out with him. We cannot be in such danger in our own country that we are prisoners in our own castles.”

  His head is turned away from me so I cannot see his expression as he listens. But when he turns back I see his handsome face is twisted up with suspicion. He looks at me as if he would flay the skin from my face to see my thoughts.

  “Why are you so determined upon this?” he asks slowly. Almost, I can see his suspicions gathering. “Why are you so determined to keep your sons here? Are you riding out with Arthur to meet with them? Are you hoodwinking me with this talk of safety and riding out? Are you planning to take my son out to hand him over? Are you are working with the Yorks to steal my son from me? Have you made an agreement? Forged a deal? Your brother as king, Arthur as his heir? Will you put Arthur in his keeping now, and tell him to invade as soon as the wind turns against me and he can sail?”

  There is a long silence as I realize what he has said. Slowly, the horror of his mistrust opens like a chasm below my feet. “Henry, you cannot think that I am your enemy?”

  “I am watching you,” he says, not answering. “My mother is watching you. And you will not have my son and heir in your keeping. If you want to go anywhere with him, you will go with men that I can trust.”

  My rage leaps up and I round on him, shaking. “Men you can trust? Name one!” I spit. “Can you? Can you name even one?”

  He puts his hand to his heart as if I have rammed him in the chest. “What do you know?” he whispers.

  “I know that you can trust no one. I know that you are in a lonely hell of your own making.”

  NORTHAMPTON, AUTUMN 1493

  We move to Northampton and Henry receives the courtiers that he had sent to negotiate with my aunt, the dowager duchess. All trade is to be banned between England and Flanders, nobody can come and go, and Flanders shall have no English wool while the boy, the one boy, holds his little court, and the determined woman who claims he is her nephew writes urgently to other kings and queens, pressing his claims.

  Henry’s representatives gleefully report that they have insulted my aunt. At her very court, in her presence, they suggested that she scrapes the countryside of bastard boys to send against Henry Tudor. They made a scurrilous joke suggesting that the boy is her love child. They say she is like many older women: mad for sex, or maddened by sex, or simply mad because she is a woman and everyone knows that women’s grasp of reason is a weak one. They say that she is a mad woman from a mad family and so my grandmother Cecily Duchess of York, nearly eighty years old, and my dead mother and I, and all my sisters and my cousin Margaret are insulted too. Henry lets all these things be said by his ambassadors, and repeated in my hearing, as if he does not care what filth is thrown at York, as long as something sticks which besmirches the boy.

  I hear this gossip flinty-faced, I don’t demean myself to complain. Henry is stooping very low, he has lost all judgment. To insult the boy, to insult my aunt, he will say anything. I see his mother watching me, bright-eyed with her own delirious fears, and I turn my head away as if I do not want to see her, nor hear the abuse her son commands.

  But the ambassador William Warham did not waste his time in Flanders in slandering my aunt; he had his clerks and his men search the country for families who are missing a boy. Hundreds of people responded, people who now say that twenty years ago they lost a newborn from the cradle; could this be the boy? People who say that their child wandered off and never returned; did the duchess steal him? People whose beloved child fell into the river and was swept downstream and the body never found—is he alive and pretending to be Richard Duke of York? One applicant after another comes forwards to tell their sad stories of missing children; but there is nothing to link even one of them to the boy who behaves so courteously in his little palace, who speaks so warmly of his father, and who visits his aunt Margaret so comfortably.

  “You don’t know who he is,” I say flatly to Henry. “You have spent a small fortune and had Sir William pay half the mourning mothers in Christendom for their stories, and you still don’t know who he is. You have no idea who he is.”

  “I will have his history,” he says simply. “I will have his history even if I have to write it myself. I can tell you some of it already. He turns up somewhere, into some family somewhere, ten years ago. He’s with them for something like four years. Then Sir Edward Brampton happens by, and takes him to Portugal—Sir Edward admits that himself. In Portugal they call the boy Richard Duke of York, and he’s known in the Portuguese court as the missing prince. Then, he’s dismissed by Sir Edward, it doesn’t matter why, and the boy travels with Pregent Meno—Meno admits that too, I have it in writing. Meno takes him to Ireland, the Irish rise up for him, they call him Richard Duke of York—I have their confessions—and he escapes to France. King Charles of France accepts him as the York prince, but just when he is to be handed over to me, he escapes to your aunt.”

  “You have all this written down?” I ask.

  “I have signed reports from witnesses. I can trace him every moment of every day from Portugal,” Henry says.

  “But nothing before then. Nothing to show that he is born and bred into the family somewhere,” I point out. “You say yourself that he turns up there. He himself will say that he turns up there from England, rescued from the Tower. Everything that you have written down, sworn to for certain, does nothing to disprove his claim. Everything you have collected as evidence only confirms him as a son of York.”

  He crosses the room in one swift stride and snatches up my hand, holding it so tightly that the bones are crushed together. I flinch but I won’t cry out.

  “That’s all I have for now,” he says through gritted teeth. “As I said. What I don’t have I will write myself. I will write this boy’s parentage into his story, I will create it: common people, nasty people. The father a bit of a drunk, the mother a bit of a fool, the boy a bit of a runaway, a wastrel, a good-for-nothing. D’you think I can’t write this and get someone—a drunk married to a fool—to swear to it? Do you think I can’t set up as historian? As storyteller? D’you think I can’t write a history which years from now, everyone will believe as the truth? I am the king. Who shall write the record of my reign if not me?”

  “You can say anything you like,” I say levelly. “Of course you can. You’re the King of England. But it doesn’t make it true.”

  A few days later Maggie, my cousin, comes to me. Her husband has been made Arthur’s Lord Chamberlain, but they cannot take up residence in Wales while the west is threatened by a rival prince. “My husband, Sir Richard, tells me that the king has found a name for the boy.”

  “Found a name? What do you mean, found a name?”

  She makes a little face, acknowledging the oddness of the phrase. “I should have said, that the king now says he knows who the boy is.”

  “And?”

  “The king says he is to be called Perkin Warbeck, the son of a boatman. From Tournai, in Picardy.”

  “Does he say that the boatman is a drunk, married to a fool?”

  She does not understand me. She shakes her head. “He has nothing else but this name. He says nothing else.”

  “And is he sending the boatman and his wife to Duchess Margaret? So that the boy can be faced by his parents and forced to confess? Is he taking the boatman and his wife to the kings and queens of Christendom so that they can show who he truly is, and claim their son back f
rom these royal courts which have kept him for so long?”

  Margaret looks puzzled. “Sir Richard didn’t say.”

  “It’s what I’d do.”

  “It’s what anyone would do,” she agrees. “So why is the king not doing it?”

  Our eyes meet, and we say nothing more.

  WESTMINSTER PALACE, LONDON, WINTER 1493

  The Holy Roman Emperor has died and Henry sends ambassadors to pay the respects of England at his funeral. But when they get there, they find that they are not the only noblemen representing their country. For the Holy Roman Emperor’s son and heir, Maximilian, goes everywhere arm in arm with his new and dearest friend: Richard, son of Edward, King of England.

  “They said what?” Henry demands. He has ordered me into his presence chamber to hear this report from the returning ambassadors, but he does not greet me nor set a chair for me. I doubt he even sees me: he is blinded with rage. I sink down into my seat as he strides about, shaking with anger. The ambassadors throw a quick glance at me to see if I am going to intervene. I sit like a cold statue. I am going to say nothing.

  “The heralds called him ‘Richard, son of Edward, King of England,’ ” the man repeats.

  Henry rounds on me. “Do you hear this? Do you hear this?”

  I incline my head. On the other side of the king I notice My Lady, his mother, lean forwards so that she can see me, as if she expects me to weep.

  “Your dead brother’s name,” she reminds me. “Abused by this forger.”

  “Yes,” I say.

  “The new emperor, Maximilian, loves the ki—the boy,” the ambassador offers, flushing over the terrible slip. “They are together all the time. The boy represents the emperor when he meets with his bankers, speaks for him with his betrothed. He is the emperor’s principal friend and confidant. He is his only advisor.”

  “Oh, and what did you call him?” Henry asks, as if it does not much matter.

  “The boy.”

  “What d’you call him when you see him at the emperor’s court? When he’s at the emperor’s side? When he is, as you describe, so central to the emperor’s happiness, at the heart of his court? His only friend and advisor? When you greet this youth of such great importance? What do you call him at court?”

  The man shuffles, passes his hat from one hand to another. “It was important not to insult the emperor. He is young, and hotheaded, and he is the emperor, after all. He loves and respects the boy. He tells everyone of his miraculous escape from death, he constantly speaks of his high birth, of his rights.”

  “So what did you call him?” Henry asks quietly. “When you were all in the emperor’s hearing?”

  “Mostly I didn’t speak to him. We all avoided him.”

  “But when you did? On those rare occasions. Those very rare occasions. When you had to?”

  “I called him ‘my lord.’ I thought it was the safest thing to say.”

  “As if he was a duke?”

  “Yes, a duke.”

  “As if he was Richard, Earl of Shrewsbury and Duke of York?”

  “I never said Duke of York.”

  “Oh, who do you think he is?”

  This question is a mistake. Nobody knows who he is. The ambassador is silent, twisting the brim of his hat. He has not yet been primed with the story which we have learned by rote.

  “He is Warbeck, the son of a Tournai boatman,” Henry says bitterly. “A nobody. His father is a drunk, his mother is a fool. And yet you humbled yourself and bowed to him? Did you call him ‘Your Grace’?”

  The ambassador, uncomfortably aware that he will have been spied on in his turn, that the reports piled facedown on Henry’s table will include accounts of his meetings and conversations, flushes slightly. “I may have done. It’s how I would address a foreign duke. It wouldn’t mean that I respect his title. It wouldn’t indicate that I accept his title.”

  “Or a king. Because you would call a king ‘Your Grace’?”

  “I did not address him as a king, Sire,” the man says with steady dignity. “I never forgot that he is a pretender.”

  “But he’s a pretender now with a powerful backer,” Henry breaks out, suddenly furious. “A pretender living with an emperor and announced to the world as Richard, son of Edward, King of England.”

  For a moment everyone is too frightened to speak. Henry’s bulging gaze holds his frightened ambassador. “Yes,” the man concurs into the long silence. “That’s what everybody calls him.”

  “And you did not deny him!” Henry bellows.

  The ambassador is frozen like a statue of fear.

  Henry exhales a shuddering sigh, and stalks back to his seat, pauses with his hand on the high carved back, stands under the cloth of estate as if to indicate to everyone his greatness. “So if he is King of England,” Henry says with slow menace, “what do they call me?”

  Again the ambassador looks at me for help. I keep my eyes down. There is nothing I can do to divert Henry’s rage from him; it is all I can do to avoid being its target myself.

  The silence lasts, then Henry’s ambassador finds the courage to tell him the truth. “They call you Henry Tudor,” he says simply. “Henry Tudor, the pretender.”

  I am in my rooms, Elizabeth is quiet in the cradle beside me and my sewing is in my hand, but little work is being done. One of My Lady’s endless kinswomen is reading to us from a book of psalms, My Lady the King’s Mother nodding along to the well-known words as if they are somehow in her ownership, the rest of us silent, listening, our faces composed into expressions of pious reflection, our thoughts anywhere. The door opens and the commander of the yeomen of the guard stands there, his face grave.

  My ladies gasp, and someone gives a little frightened scream. I rise slowly to my feet and look to my cousin Maggie. I see her lips working, as if she is about to speak, but she has lost her voice.

  Slowly, I rise to my feet and find that I am trembling so that I can barely stand. Maggie takes two steps towards me, putting her hand under my elbow, holding me up. Together we face the man responsible for my safety who looms in my doorway, neither coming in nor announcing a visitor. He is silent as if he cannot bear to speak either. I feel Maggie shudder and I know she is thinking, as I am, that he has come to take us to the Tower.

  “What is it?” I ask. I am glad that my voice is quiet and steady. “What is it, Commander?”

  “I have to make a report to you, Your Grace,” he says. He looks awkwardly around the room as if he is uncomfortable at speaking in front of all the ladies.

  The relief that he is not here to arrest me almost overwhelms me. Cecily, my sister, drops into her seat and gives a little sob. Maggie steps back and leans against my chair. My Lady the King’s Mother is unmoved. She beckons him in. “Enter. What is your report?” she says briskly.

  He hesitates. I step towards him so he can speak to me quietly. “What is it?”

  “It’s Yeoman Edwards,” he says. His face suddenly flushes as if he is ashamed. “I beg your pardon, Your Grace. It’s very bad.”

  “Is he sick?” My first fear is of plague.

  But My Lady has joined us and she is quicker than me. “Has he gone?”

  The captain nods.

  “To Malines?”

  He nods again. “He told no one he was going, nor where his loyalties lay; I’d have arrested him at once if I’d had so much as a whisper. He’s been under my command, guarding your door for half a year. I never dreamed . . . Forgive me, Your Grace. But I had no way of knowing. He left a note for his girl, and that’s how we know. We opened it.” Hesitantly, he proffers a scrap of paper.

  I have gone to serve Richard of York, true King of England. When I march in behind the white rose of York I will claim you for my bride.

  “Let me see that!” Lady Margaret exclaims, and snatches it from my hand.

  “You can keep it,” I say dryly. “You can take it to your son. But he won’t thank you for it.”

  The look she turns on me is quite h
orrified. “Your own yeoman of the guard,” she whispers. “Gone to the boy. And Henry’s own groom has gone.”

  “He has? I didn’t know.”

  She nods. “Sir Ralph Hastings’s steward has gone and taken all the family’s silver to Malines. And Sir Edward Poynings’s own tenants . . . Sir Edward, who was our ambassador in Flanders, can’t keep his own men here. There are dozens of men, slipping away—hundreds.”

  I glance back at my ladies. The reading has stopped and everyone is leaning forwards trying to hear what is being said; there is no mistaking the avidity on their faces, Maggie and Cecily among them.

  The commander of my guard dips his head in a bow and steps backwards and closes the door behind him. But My Lady the King’s Mother rounds on me in a fury, flinging a pointing finger to my kinswomen.

  “We married those girls—your sister and your cousin—to men we could trust, so that their interests would lie with us, to make them Tudors,” she hisses at me, as if it is my fault that they are eager for news. “Now we can’t be sure that their husbands aren’t hoping to rise as Yorks, and their interests go quite the other way. We married them to loyal nobodies, we gave men who had almost nothing a princess of York so that they would be true to us, so that they would be grateful. Now perhaps they think that they can take their makeshift wives and reach for greatness.”

  “My family is faithful to the king,” I say staunchly.

  “Your brother . . .” She swallows her accusation. “Your sister and your cousin have been established and enriched by us. Can we trust them? While everyone is running away? Or will they too use their fortune and their husbands against us?”

  “You chose their husbands,” I say dryly into her white anxious face. “There’s no point complaining to me if you fear that your handpicked men are faithless.”

  GREENWICH PALACE, LONDON, SUMMER 1494