The White Princess by Philippa Gregory
I wait till the end of a chapter and for the girl to turn the manuscript page, and I say, “I will walk in the garden.”
My Lady looks out of the window where a gray full-bellied sky promises snow and says, “You had much better wait until the sun comes out.”
“I’ll wear my cloak, and my muff and my hat,” I say, and my ladies, after a little hesitating glance at My Lady the King’s Mother in case she is going to overrule me, fetch my things and wrap me as if I were a bulky parcel.
My Lady lets them do their work, as she has no appetite for countermanding me in my own rooms anymore. Since the death of Jasper she has aged a dozen years. I look at her now and sometimes I no longer see the powerful woman who dominated me and my husband, but instead a woman who spent all her life on a cause, sacrificed the love of her life for her son, and now waits to hear if the cause is lost and her son is on the run again.
“Margaret, will you give me your arm?” I ask.
Maggie rises with careful lack of interest, as if she had planned to stay indoors, and puts on her own cloak.
“You must have a guard,” My Lady rules. “And you three—” she points to the nearest women, barely looking to see who they are “—you three shall walk with Her Grace.”
They do not look very pleased at the thought of a cold walk with snow coming, but they rise and fetch their capes from their rooms and with a guard before and behind us, and ladies around us, finally Maggie and I are alone together and we can talk without being overhead.
“What?” I say tersely as soon as the guards are ahead and the women lagging behind. Maggie takes my arm to save me from slipping on the frosty ground. Beside us the gray, cold river is rimmed with white on the banks, while a seagull, no whiter than the frost, calls once overhead and then wheels away.
“He’s married,” she says shortly.
She never needs to say his name. Indeed, we maintain the convention that we have no name for him.
“Married!” At once I have a clutch of fear that he has married beneath himself, some sympathetic serving girl, some opportunistic widow who has loaned him money. If he has married badly, then Henry will crow with joy and scorn him, calling him Peterkin and Perkin all the more, the son of a drunkard and a drudge, now wedded to a slut. Everyone will say that it proves he is no prince, but a lowly pretender. Or they will say that he has learned common ways, vulgar ways, to be dazzled by the widow of some minor grandee and marry her for her dower money. If his bride is unchaste, some slattern in a hovel, he might as well give up and go home.
I stop still. “Oh, dear God, Maggie. Who is she?”
She is beaming. “A good marriage, even a great marriage. He has married Katherine Huntly, kinswoman to the King of Scotland himself, daughter of the Earl of Huntly, the greatest lord of Scotland.”
“The Earl of Huntly’s daughter?”
“And they say she is a beauty. She was given in marriage by King James himself. They were betrothed before Christmas, they are married now, and they are already saying that she is with child.”
“My little bro . . . Ri . . . he is married? The boy is married?”
“And his wife with child.”
I take her arm and we walk on. “Oh, if only my mother could have seen this.”
Maggie nods. “She would be so glad. So glad.”
I laugh aloud. “She would be delighted, especially if the girl is beautiful and has a fortune. But Maggie, do you know where they married? And how they looked?”
“She wore a gown of deepest red, and your bro . . . he wore a white shirt and black hose and a black velvet jacket. They held a great tournament to celebrate.”
“A tournament!”
“King James paid for everything, it was all done very well. They are saying it was as grand as our court, some say better. And now the king and the new couple have gone to his hunting palace at Falkland in Fife.”
“My husband knows all this.” I state the obvious.
“Yes. I know it from Sir Richard, who has to go to Lincoln to muster an army for war with Scotland. He had it from one of the king’s spies. The king is in his council right now, commanding the repair of the castles in the North of England and preparing for an invasion from Scotland.”
“An invasion led by the King of Scotland?”
“They say it is a certainty this spring, now that he is married into the royal family of Scotland. The King of Scotland is certain to put him on the throne of England.”
I think of my brother as I last saw him, a handsome little boy of ten with fair hair and bright hazel eyes and an impish smile. I think of the tremble of his lower lip when we kissed him good-bye and wrapped him up warmly and sent him out of sanctuary, all on his own, into the boat to go downriver, praying that the plan would work and that he would get overseas to our aunt Margaret the duchess and that she would save him. I think of him now, fully grown, a man on his wedding day dressed in black and white. I imagine him smiling his impish smile, and his bride beautiful at his side.
I put my hand to my belly, where I am growing a little Tudor, my brother’s enemy, the son of the man who usurped my brother’s throne.
“There’s nothing you can do,” Maggie says, seeing the smile die away from my face. “There is nothing either of us can do but hope to survive and pray that nobody puts the blame on us. And see what happens.”
In February I prepare for my confinement, leaving a court still subdued by mourning for Jasper, and still uneasy at the news from the youthful joyful court in Scotland where we hear that they spend their time hunting in the snow, and planning to invade our northern lands as soon as the weather is better.
Henry holds a grand dinner before I go into the darkened room, and the Spanish ambassador, Roderigo Gonzalva de Puebla, attends as an honored guest. He is a small man, dark and good-looking, and he bows low towards me and kisses my hand and then rises up to beam at me as if he is confident that I shall find him very handsome.
“The ambassador is proposing a marriage for Prince Arthur,” Henry tells me quietly. “The youngest Spanish princess, the Infanta Katherine of Aragon.”
I look from Henry’s smiling face to the smug ambassador and understand that I am to be pleased. “What a good idea,” I say. “But they are still so young!”
“A betrothal, to indicate the friendship between our countries,” Henry says smoothly. He nods to the ambassadors and leads me to the top table out of earshot. “It’s not just to link Spain to our interests, a constant ally against France, it’s to get the boy. They have promised me if Arthur is betrothed, that they’ll tempt the boy to visit them with the promise of an alliance. They’ll get him to Granada and hand him over to us.”
“He won’t go,” I say certainly. “Why would he leave his wife in Scotland and go to Spain?”
“Because he wants the support of Spain for his invasion,” Henry says shortly. “But they will stand as our ally. They will give us their infanta in marriage, and they will capture our traitor to make sure that she marries the only heir to the throne. Their interests become our interests. And they are newly come to their thrones themselves. They know what it is like to fight for their kingdom. When they betroth their princess to our prince they sign a death warrant for the boy. They will want him dead just as we do.”
The court rise to their feet and acknowledge us, bowing low to me, and the server of the ewery comes to me with the golden bowl filled with warm water. I dip my fingers in the scented water and wipe them on the napkin. “But, husband—”
“Never mind,” Henry says shortly. “When you have had our new baby and come back to court we will talk of these things. Now you must receive the good wishes of the court, go to your confinement, and think about nothing but a good birth. I am hoping for another boy from you, Elizabeth.”
I smile, as if I am reassured, and I glance down the court where the ambassador de Puebla is seated, above the saltcellar, an honored guest, and I wonder if he could be a man so two-faced, so inveterate in his own am
PALACE OF SHEEN, RICHMOND, MARCH 1496
I enter my confinement with a heavy heart, still missing my little girl Elizabeth, and this labor is long and hard. My sister Anne laughs and says she will study how it is done as she is with child, but what she sees makes her fearful. They give me strong birthing ale after some hours, and I wish I had my mother with me to fix me with her cool gray gaze, and to whisper to me of the river and rest, and help me through the pain. At about midnight I can feel the urgency of the baby and I squat like a peasant woman and bear down and then I hear the little faint cry and I cry too, for joy that I have had another child, for sheer exhaustion, and I find I am sobbing as if heartbroken, missing the brother that I fear I will never see, and his wife that I will never meet, and their baby, a cousin to this child, who will never play with her.
Even with the new baby girl in my arms, even wrapped up in my great bed with my ladies praising my courage and bringing me warmed ale and sweetmeats, I feel haunted by loneliness.
Maggie is the only one who sees my tears and she wipes them from my face with a scrap of linen. “What’s wrong?”
“I feel like the last of my line, I feel as if I am utterly alone.”
She does not rush to comfort me, nor even disagree with me and point to my sisters, exclaiming over the baby as she is swaddled and bound and put to the wet nurse’s breast. She looks grim, tired as I am from staying up all the night, her cheeks wet with tears like mine. She does not disagree with me. She makes the pillows comfortable behind me and then she speaks.
“We are the last,” she says quietly. “I cannot give you false words of comfort. We are the last of the Yorks. You, your sisters, me and my brother, and perhaps England will never see the white rose again.”
“Have you heard anything from Teddy?” I ask.
She shakes her head. “I write, but he doesn’t reply. I am not allowed to visit. He is lost to me.”
We call the new baby Mary, in honor of Our Lady, and she is a dainty pretty little girl, with eyes of the darkest blue and hair of jet black. She feeds well and she grows strong and though I don’t forget her pale, golden-headed sister, I find I am comforted by this new baby in the cradle, this new Tudor for England.
I emerge from confinement to find the country mustering for war. Henry comes to the nursery to see the new baby, but he does no more than glance at her in my arms. He does not even hold her. “There’s no doubt that the King of Scotland will invade, and at the head of his army will be the boy,” Henry says bitterly. “I have to recruit troops in the North and half of them are saying that though they’ll fight against the Scots, they will lay down their arms if they see the white rose. They will defend against the Scots, but they will join a son of York. This is a kingdom of traitors.”
I am holding Mary in my arms, and I feel as if I am offering her as a sop to his temper. There may be a son of York in Scotland, arming and readying his men, but here at our favorite palace of Sheen I have given Henry a Tudor princess, and he will not even look at her.
“Is there nothing we can do to persuade King James not to ally himself with . . . with the boy?”
Henry shoots me a secretive glance. “I have offered him an alliance,” he confesses. “It doesn’t matter if you don’t like it. I doubt that it will stick. We’ll probably never have to send her.”
“Send who?”
He looks furtive. “Margaret. Our daughter Margaret.”
I look at him as if he is mad. “Our daughter is six years old.” I state the obvious. “Do you think to marry her to the King of Scotland, who is—what?—more than twenty?”
“I think to offer her,” he says. “When she is of marriageable age he will only be in his thirties, it’s not a bad match.”
“But my lord—this is to chose all our children’s marriages with your eyes only on the one boy. You have already promised Arthur to Spain in return for them kidnapping him?”
“He won’t go. He’s too cunning.”
“And so, you would give up our little daughter to your enemy to buy the boy?”
“You would rather he was roaming free?” he snaps.
“No, of course not! But . . .”
Already, I have said too much and alerted Henry’s fears.
“I shall propose her as a wife for the King of Scotland, and in return he will give me the boy in chains,” Henry says flatly. “And whether you are thinking of sparing our little girl or of the boy when you say you don’t want such a marriage, it makes no difference. She is a Tudor princess, she must be married where she can serve our interests. She has to do her duty, as I have to do mine—every day. As every one of us has to do.”
I tighten my grip on our new baby. “And this child too? You’ve hardly looked at her. Is every one of our children only of value as a card for you to play? In this one game? In this single unstoppable disproportionate war against a boy?”
He is not even angry; his face is bitter as if his duty is hard for him, harder than anything he would propose for anyone else. “Of course,” he says flatly. “And if Margaret is the price for the death of the boy, then it is a good bargain for me.”
This summer, two new lines are graven on Henry’s face, which run from nose to mouth and mark how his lips are habitually downturned. An habitual scowl grooves his face as one report after another comes to him of the Scottish preparation for war and the weakness of the defenses of northern England. Half of the northern gentry have already crossed over the border of Scotland to be with the boy, and the families they have left behind are not stirring themselves to fight for Henry against their kinsmen.
Every evening after dinner Henry goes to his mother’s rooms and the two of them count, again and again, the names of those that they can trust in the North of England. My Lady has drawn up a list of those that they can be sure of and those that they doubt. I see both lists when I enter the rooms to bid her good night. The scroll of those they trust and that they judge to be able is weighted with an ink pot, a quill beside it, as if they are hoping to write more names, to add loyalists. The scroll of those they mistrust lolls over the table and unrolls itself towards the floor. Name after name is written with a query beside it. Nothing could exhibit more vividly that the king and his mother are afraid of their own countrymen and -women, that the king and his mother are counting their friends and finding the list too short, that the king and his mother are counting their enemies and seeing the numbers grow every day.
“What do you want?” Henry snaps at me.
I raise my eyebrows at his rudeness in front of his mother, but I curtsey to her, saying very low: “I come to bid you good night, Lady Mother.”
“Good night,” she says. She barely looks up, she is as distracted as her son.
“A woman stopped me on the way to chapel today, and she asked me if her debt to the king could be excused, or if she could be given longer to pay,” I say. “It seems that her husband was charged with a minor offense but he was given no choice of punishment. He has to pay a fine, a very heavy fine. She says they will lose their house and their land and be ruined. She says that he would have preferred to serve time in prison than see everything he has worked for broken up. His name is George Whitehouse.”
They both look at me as if I am speaking Greek. Both of them are utterly uncomprehending. “He is a loyal subject,” I say. “He just got into a brawl. It is hard that he should lose his family home for an alehouse brawl, because the fine is greater than he can pay. The fines were never so heavy before.”
“Do you understand nothing?” My Lady demands, and her tone is quietly furious. “Do you not see that we have to get every penny, every groat that we can, from everyone in the kingdom, so that we can raise armies and pay for them? Do you think we would excuse some alehouse drunkard his fine when it will buy us a soldier? Even if it buys us an arr
Henry is poring over his list, not even looking up, but I am certain that he is listening. “But this man is a loyal subject,” I protest. “If he loses his house and his family, if he is ruined because the king’s men sell it over his head to collect an impossible fine, then we lose his love and his loyalty. Then we have lost a soldier. The safety of the throne is built on those that love us—only on those that love us. We rule by the consent of the governed—we have to make sure that those who are loyal to us continue as loyal. That list . . .” I point to the names of those whose loyalty is in doubt. “That list will grow if you fine good men into bankruptcy.”
“It’s all very well for you to say such a thing—you who are loved, who have always been loved!” My Lady the King’s Mother suddenly bursts out. “You who come from a family who prided themselves on being so unendingly, so showily . . .” I am horrified, waiting for what she is going to say “. . . so unceasingly endearing!” she spits as if it were the gravest fault. “Endearing! D’you know what they say about the boy?”
I shake my head.
“They say that everywhere he goes he makes friends!” She is shouting, her voice raised, her face flushed, her anger quite out of control at the mere mention of the boy and his York charm. “They say that the emperor himself, the King of France, the King of Scotland simply fell in love with him. And so we see his alliances: with the emperor, with the King of France, with the King of Scotland, easy alliances that cost him nothing. Nothing! Though we have to pledge peace, or the marriage of our children, or a fortune in gold to earn their friendship! And now we hear that the Irish are mustering for him again. Though they get nothing for it. Not money—for we pay them a fortune to stay loyal—but him they serve for love. They run to his standard because they love him!”
I look past her at my husband, who keeps his head turned away. “You could be beloved,” I say to him.
For the first time he looks up, and meets my eyes. “Not like the boy,” he says bitterly. “Apparently I don’t have the knack of it. No one is beloved like the boy.”