The White Princess (38 page)

I say the worst thing that I could say. “What d’you mean—that it is
I
who name him as a pretender? Who could he be if not a pretender?”

He stands at once and looks down on me, as if we were newly married and he still hated me. “Exactly. Who would he be if not a pretender? Sometimes, Elizabeth, you are so stupid that I find you quite brilliant.”

He walks out of the room, pale with resentment, and Maggie glances across at me and she looks afraid.

I come out of my
confinement to dazzlingly hot summer weather and find the court anxious despite the birth of a second son. Every day brings a new message from Ireland, and the worst of it is that nobody dares to speak of it. Sweating horses stand in the stable yard, men caked in dust are taken straight in to see the king, his lords sit with him to hear their report, but nobody remarks upon it. It is as if we are at war but nobody will say anything; we are under siege in silence.

To me it is clear that the King of France is taking revenge on us for our long, loyal support of Brittany against him. My uncle died to keep Brittany independent from France; Henry never forgets that he found a safe exile in the little dukedom. He is honor-bound to support his former hosts. There is every reason for us to see France as our enemy. But for some reason, though the privy council is all but a council of war, nobody speaks openly against France. They say nothing, as if they are ashamed. France has put an army into our kingdom of Ireland and yet nobody rages against them. It is as if the lords feel that it is our fault, the failure of Henry to be a convincing king, that is the real problem, and that the French invasion is just another sign of this.

“The French don’t care about me,” Henry says to me tersely. “France is the enemy of the King of England, whoever he may be, whatever the color of his jacket. They want Brittany for themselves, and they want to cause trouble for England. The shame that they bring on me, of two rebellions in four years, means nothing to them. If the House of York were on the throne, then it would be you that they were conspiring against.”

We are standing in the stable yard, and around us is the usual buzz of conversation, the horses led out of their stalls by the grooms, the ladies lifted into the saddles, the gentlemen standing by their stirrups, passing up a glass of wine, holding a glove, talking, courting, enjoying the sunshine. We should be happy, with three children in the nursery and a loyal court around us.

“Of course, France is always our enemy,” I reply comfortingly. “As you say. And we have
always resisted an invasion, and we have always won. Perhaps because you were in Brittany for all that long time, you learned to fear them overmuch? For look—you have your spies and your reporters, your posts to bring you news, and your lords who are ready to arm in an instant. We must be the greater power. We have the narrow seas between them and us. Even if they are in Ireland they cannot be a serious danger to us. You can feel safe now, can’t you, my lord?”

“Don’t ask me, ask your mother!” he exclaims, gripped with one of his sudden furies. “You ask your mother if I can feel safe now. And tell me what she says.”

PALACE OF SHEEN, RICHMOND, SEPTEMBER 1491

Henry comes to my rooms with his court before dinner and takes me to a window bay, out of the way of everyone. Cecily, my sister, newly returned to court after the birth of her second daughter, raises an eyebrow at Henry’s warm embrace of me and his publicly seeking to be alone with me. I smile at her taking notice.

“I want to talk to you,” he says.

I incline my head towards him and feel him draw me closer.

“We think it is time that your cousin Margaret was married.”

I cannot stop myself glancing over towards her. She is hand in hand with My Lady the King’s Mother, who is speaking earnestly to her. “It looks like more than a thought, it looks like a decision,” I observe.

His smile is boyish, guilty. “It
is
my mother’s idea,” he admits. “But I think it is a good match for her, and truly—sweetheart—she has to be settled with a man we can trust. Her name, and the presence of her brother, mean that she will always live uneasily under our rule. But we can change her name at least.”

“Who have you picked out for her?” I ask. “For Henry, I warn you, I love her like a sister, I don’t want her sent away to Scotland or”—I am suddenly suspicious—“bundled off to Brittany, or to France to make a treaty.”

He laughs. “No, no, everyone knows that she’s not a princess of York like you or your
sisters. Everyone knows that her husband must keep her safe and out of the way. She can’t be powerful, she can’t be visible, she must be kept quietly inside our house so that no one thinks she will support another.”

“And when she is married and quiet and safe, as you say—can her brother come out of the Tower then? Could he live with her and her safe husband?”

He shakes his head, taking my hand. “Truly, my love, if you knew how many men whisper about him, if you knew how many people plot for him, if you knew how our enemies send money for weapons for him—you would not ask it.”

“Even now?” I whisper. “Six years after Bosworth?”

“Even now,” he says. He swallows as if he can taste fear. “Sometimes I think that they will never give up.”

My Lady the King’s Mother comes towards us, leading Maggie by the hand. I can see that Maggie is not unhappy, she looks flattered and pleased by the attention, and I realize that this proposed marriage might give her a husband and a home and children of her own and free her from her constant vigil for her brother, and her endless anxious attendance on me. More than that, she might be lucky enough to be given a husband who loves her, she might have lands that she can watch grow and become fertile, she might have children who—though they can never have a claim to the throne—might be happy in England as children of England.

I step towards her, and look at My Lady. “You have a proposal for my dear cousin?”

“Sir Richard Pole.” She names the son of her half sister, a man so reliable and steady in my husband’s cause that he might as well be his warhorse. “Sir Richard has asked me for permission to address Lady Margaret and I have said yes.”

I overlook for a moment the fact that she has no right to say yes to a marriage to my cousin. I overlook that Sir Richard is nearly thirty to my cousin’s eighteen years, I even overlook that Sir Richard has nothing more than a respectable name, virtually no fortune, and my
cousin is an heir to the York throne of England and the Warwick fortune, because I can see Maggie is bright with excitement, her cheeks blushing, her eyes bright.

“You want to marry him?” I ask her quickly in Latin, which neither My Lady nor my husband can easily understand.

She nods.

“But why?”

“To be free of our name,” she says bluntly. “To be no longer a suspect. To be one of the Tudors and not one of their enemies.”

“Nobody thinks you are an enemy.”

“In this court you are either Tudor or enemy,” she says shrewdly. “I am sick of being under suspicion.”

WESTMINSTER PALACE, LONDON, AUTUMN 1491

We celebrate their wedding
as soon as we return to Westminster for the autumn, but their happiness is overshadowed by more bad news from Ireland.

“They have raised up their boy,” my husband says to me briefly. We are about to ride out, down to the riverside, and see if we can put up some duck for the hawks. The sunshine is bright in the yard, the court in a bustle calling for their horses. From the doorway of the mews the falconers bring out their birds, each one hooded with a brightly colored bonnet of leather, a little plume at the top. I notice one of the spit boys peering out of the kitchen door, looking longingly at the birds. Good-naturedly, one of the falconers beckons the boy over and lets him slip his hand in a gauntlet and try the weight of the bird on his fist. The boy’s smile reminds me of my brother—then I see that it is the spit boy, the little pretender, Lambert Simnel, changed and settled into his new life.

Henry whistles to his man and he comes over with a beautiful peregrine falcon, his breast like royal ermine, his back as dark as sable fur. Henry pulls on the gauntlet and takes the bird on his fist, looping the jesses around his fingers.

“They have raised up their boy,” he repeats. “Another one.”

I see the darkness in his face and I realize that this hawking trip, and the clatter of
the court at play, and Henry’s new cape, and even the caress of his falcon are all part of a pretense. He is showing to the world that he is unconcerned. He is trying to look as if everything is all right. In reality, he is, as so often, embattled and afraid.

“This time, they are calling him ‘prince.’ ”

“Who is he?” I ask very quietly.

“This time I don’t know, though I have had my men up and down every corner of England and in and out of every schoolroom. I don’t think there is one missing child that I haven’t identified. But this boy . . .” He breaks off.

“How old is he?”

“Eighteen,” he says simply.

My brother Richard would be eighteen, if he were alive. I don’t remark on it. “And who is he?”

“Who does he say he is?” he corrects me, irritably. “Why, he says he is Richard, your missing brother Richard.”

“And what do people say he is?” I ask.

He sighs. “The traitorous lords, the Irish lords who would run after anything in silk . . . they say he is Prince Richard, Duke of York. And they are arming for him, and rising for him, and I shall have the whole battle of Stoke to fight all over again, with another boy at the head of another army, with French mercenaries behind him and Irish lords sworn to his service, as if ghosts never lie down but come again and again against me.”

The sun is still bright and warm but I am cold with horror.

“Not again? Not another invasion?”

Someone shouts from the far side of the yard and a little cheer goes up at some joke. Henry glances over, a bright smile at once on his face, and he laughs as if he knows what the joke was, like a child will laugh, trying to join in.

“Don’t!” I say suddenly. It hurts me to see him, even now, trying to play at being a carefree king before a court that he cannot trust.

“I have to smile,” he says. “There is a boy in Ireland
very free with his smiles. They say he is all smiles, all charm.”

I think what this new threat will mean to us—to Maggie, newly married and hoping that her brother might be released to live with her and her husband, to my mother enclosed at Bermondsey Abbey. Neither my mother nor my cousin will ever be free if there is someone pretending to be our Prince Richard, mustering troops in Ireland. Henry will never trust any of us if someone from the House of York is leading a French army against him. “May I write and tell my mother of this false boy?” I ask him. “It’s distressing to have Richard’s name taken once again.”

His eyes grow cold at the mere mention of her name. His face slowly freezes, until he looks as if nothing will ever disturb him: a king of stone, a king of ice. “You can write and tell her whatever you wish,” he says. “But I think you’ll find your daughterly tenderness is misplaced.”

“What d’you mean?” I have a sense of dread. “Oh, Henry, don’t be like this! What d’you mean?”