The White Princess (Cousins' War)

by Philippa Gregory

  She looks at me as if I am dreaming, like the people who hope for King Arthur to rise again; but I have a very clear memory of the poor boy from the streets of the City, whose parents sold him to us, assured that we needed him for nothing more than a little playacting, that we would send him back safely to them. I put the cap on his little head myself, and I drew up the scarf around his face, and warned him to say nothing. We told the men who came for my brother Richard that the little boy was the prince himself, we said he was ill with a sore throat and had lost his voice. Nobody could imagine that we would dare to create such an imposter. Of course, they wanted to believe us, and the old archbishop himself, Thomas Bourchier, took him away and told everyone that Prince Richard was in the Tower with his brother.

  She does not glance to right or left; she knows that no one is nearby. But even alone with me, speaking in a whisper, she does not confirm or deny it either.

  “You sent a page boy into the Tower, and you sent my little brother away,” I whisper. “You told me to say nothing about it. Not to ask you, not to speak to anyone, not even to tell my sisters, and I never have. Only once you told me that he was safe. Once you told me that Sir Edward Brampton had brought him to you. I’ve never asked for more than that.”

  “He is hidden in silence,” is all she says.

  “Is he still alive?” I ask urgently. “Is he alive and is he going to come back to England for his throne?”

  “He is safe in silence.”

  “Is he the boy in Portugal?” I demand. “The boy that Uncle Edward has gone to see? Sir Edward Brampton’s page boy?”

  She looks at me as if she would tell me the truth if she could. “How would I know?” she asks. “How do I know who is claiming to be a prince of York? In Lisbon, so far away? I’ll know him when I see him, I can tell you that. I will tell you when I see him, I can promise you that. But perhaps I’ll never see him.”

  THE TOWER OF LONDON, SPRING 1487

  We move the court to the City that is buzzing like a beehive waking to spring. It feels as if everyone is talking about princes and dukes and the House of York rising up again like a climbing plant bursting into leaf. Everyone has heard for certain from someone that the Yorks have a boy, an heir, that he is on a ship coming into Greenwich, that he has been hiding in a secret chamber in the Tower under a stone stair, that he is marching from Scotland, that he is going to be put on the throne by his own brother-in-law, Henry, that his sister the queen has him at court and is only waiting to reveal him to her astounded husband. That he is a page boy with an Englishman in Portugal, a boatman’s son in Flanders, hidden by his aunt the Dowager Duchess of Burgundy, asleep on a distant island, living off apples in the loft of his mother’s old house at Grafton, hidden in the Tower with his cousin Edward of Warwick. Suddenly, like butterflies in springtime, there are a thousand pretend boys, dancing about like motes in the sunlight, waiting for the word to come together into an army. The Tudors who thought they had taken the crown on a muddy field in the middle of England, who thought they had secured their line by trudging up the road to London, find themselves besieged by will-o’-the-wisps, defied by faeries. Everyone talks of a York heir, everyone knows someone who has seen him and swears it is true. Everywhere Henry goes, people fall silent so that no whisper reaches his ears; but before and behind him there is a patter of sound like a warning drizzle before a storm of rain. The people of England are waiting for a new king to present himself, for a prince to rise like the spring tide and flood the world with white roses.

  We move to the Tower as if Henry no longer loves his country palace in springtime, as he swore that he did, only last year. This year, he feels the need of a castle that is easily defended, as if he wants his home to dominate the skyline, as if he wants to be in the heart of the city, unmistakably its lord; though everyone talks of another, from the drovers coming into Smithfield discussing a priceless white ram glimpsed on a dawn hillside, to the fisherwomen on the quay, who swear that one dark night, two years ago, they saw the watergate of the Tower slide up in silence and a little wherry come out under the dripping gate which carried a boy, a single boy, the flower of York, and it went swiftly downstream to freedom.

  Henry and I are lodged in the royal rooms in the White Tower, overlooking the lower building that housed the two boys: my brother Edward awaiting his coronation but expecting death, and the page boy that my mother and I sent in place of Richard. Henry sees my pallor as we enter the royal rooms that are bright with wood fires, and hung with rich tapestries, and presses my hand, saying nothing. The baby comes in behind me, in the arms of his nursemaid, and I say flatly: “Prince Arthur is to sleep next door, in my privy chamber.”

  “My Lady Mother put your crucifix and prie-dieu in there,” he says. “She has made a pretty privy chamber for you, and prepared his nursery on the next floor.”

  I don’t waste time arguing. “I’m not staying in this place unless our baby sleeps next door to me.”

  “Elizabeth . . .” he says gently. “You know we are safe here, safer here than anywhere else.”

  “My son sleeps beside me.”

  He nods. He doesn’t argue or even ask me what I fear. We have been married little more than a year and already there is a terrible silence around some subjects. We never speak of the disappearance of my brothers—a stranger listening to us would think it was a secret between us, a guilty secret. We never speak of my year at Richard’s court. We never speak of the conception of Arthur and that he was not, as My Lady so loudly celebrates, a honeymoon child conceived in sanctified love on the very night of a happy wedding. Together we hold so many secrets in silence, after only a year. What lies will we tell each other in ten years?

  “It looks odd,” is all he says. “People will talk.”

  “Why are we even here and not in the country?”

  He shifts his feet, looking away from me. “We’re going in procession to Mass next Sunday,” he says. “All of us.”

  “What d’you mean, all of us?”

  His discomfort increases. “The royal family . . .”

  I wait.

  “Your cousin Edward is going to walk with us.”

  “What has Teddy to do with this?”

  He takes my arm and leads me away from my ladies-in-waiting, who are entering the rooms and remarking on the tapestries, unpacking their sewing and packs of cards. Someone is tuning a lute, the twanging chords echoing loudly. I am the only one who hates this bleak castle; to everyone else it is a familiar home. Henry and I go out into the long gallery, where the scent of the fresh strewing herbs is heady in the narrow room.

  “People are saying that Edward has escaped from the Tower and is raising an army in Warwickshire.”

  “Edward?” I repeat stupidly.

  “Edward of Warwick, your cousin Teddy. So he’s going to process in state with us to St. Paul’s so that everyone can see him and know that he lives with us as a valued member of the family.”

  I nod. “He walks with us. You show him.”

  “Yes.”

  “And when everyone has seen him, they know that he is not raising his standard in Warwickshire.”

  “Yes.”

  “They know that he is alive.”

  “Yes.”

  “And these rumors die down . . .”

  Henry waits.

  “Then after that he can live with us as a member of our family,” I rule. “He can be as he seems to be. We can show him as our beloved cousin and he can be our beloved cousin. We show him going to Mass with us freely, he can live with us freely. We can turn the show into the reality. That’s what you want to do, as king. You show yourself as king and then you hope to be accepted as king. If I take part in this play, in this masque of Teddy being beloved and living with us, then you will make it true.”

  He hesitates.

  “It is my condition,” I say simply. “If you want me to act as if Teddy is our beloved cousin freely living with us, then you have to make the act into reality. I’ll
walk with you in procession on Sunday to show that Teddy and all the Yorks are loyal supporters. And you will treat me, and all my family, as if you trust us.”

  He hesitates for a moment and then, “Yes,” he says. “If our procession persuades everyone, and the rumors die down and everyone accepts that Teddy lives at court, as a loyal member of the family, he can come out of the Tower and live freely at court.”

  “Free and trusted like my mother,” I insist. “Despite what anyone says.”

  “Like your mother,” he agrees. “If the rumors die down.”

  Maggie is at my side before dinner, rosy with joy at having spent all afternoon with her brother. “He has grown! He is taller than me! Oh! I have missed him so much!”

  “Does he understand what he has to do?”

  She nods. “I have told him carefully, and we practiced, so that he should make no mistake. He knows that he is to walk behind you and the king, he knows that he has to kneel to pray at Mass. I can walk beside him, can’t I? And then I can make sure he does it right?”

  “Yes, yes, that would be best,” I say. “And if anyone cheers for him, he’s not to wave or shout a reply, or anything.”

  “He knows,” she says. “He understands. I have explained to him why they want him to be seen.”

  “Maggie, if he shows that he is a loyal member of the family, I believe that he can come back to live with us. It is essential that he does this right.”

  Her mouth, her whole face trembles. “Could he?”

  I take her in my arms and find that she is shaking with hope. “Oh, Maggie, I will try my best for him.”

  Her tearstained face looks up at me. “He has to come out of here, Your Grace, it’s destroying him. He’s not doing his lessons in here, he sees no one.”

  “Surely the king has provided tutors for him?”

  She shakes her head. “They don’t come to him anymore. He spends his day lying in his bed reading the books that I send him, or staring at the ceiling, and looking out of the window. He is allowed out once a day to walk in the gardens. But he’s only eleven, he’s twelve this month. He should be at court, doing his lessons, playing games, learning how to ride. He should be growing into a man, with boys of his own age. But he is here, quite alone, seeing no one but the guards when they bring him his meals. He tells me that he thinks he is forgetting how to speak. He said that one day he spent all day trying to remember my face. He says that a whole day goes by and he cannot remember it has passed. So now he makes a mark on the wall for every day, like a prisoner. But then he fears he has lost count of the months.

  “And he knows our father was executed in here, and he knows your brothers disappeared from here—boys just like him. He is bored and afraid at the same time, and he has no one to talk to. His guards are rough men, they play cards with him and win his few shillings off him, they swear in front of him and drink. He can’t stay here. I have to get him out.”

  “I am horrified. “Oh, Maggie . . .”

  “How is he to grow up as a royal duke if he is treated as a child traitor?” she demands. “This is destroying him, and I swore to my father that I would take care of him!”

  I nod. “I’ll speak with the king again, Maggie. I will do what I can. And once people stop talking about him all the time, then I’m sure Henry will let him out.” I pause. “It’s as if our name is both our greatest pride and our curse,” I say. “If he were Edward of nowhere and not Edward of Warwick he would be living with us now.”

  “I wish we were all no one of nowhere,” she says bitterly. “If I could choose I would have the name of Nobody and never come to court at all.”

  My husband calls a meeting of the privy council to ask them for their advice on how to silence the rumors of the coming of a prince of York. They all know, they have all heard of a duke of York, even a bastard of York, coming to England to take the throne. John de la Pole, the son of my aunt Elizabeth of York, advises the king to keep a steady nerve, that the whispers will stop. His father, the Duke of Suffolk, tells Henry to be assured that there is no division between York and Tudor. Once the people see Edward walking with his family, they will be quiet again. John asks that Teddy might be released from the Tower—so that everyone can see that the Houses of York and Tudor are united. “We should show that we have nothing to fear,” he says, smiling at the king. “That’s the best way to scotch the rumors: show that we fear nothing.”

  “That we are as one,” Henry says.

  John reaches out to him and the king warmly clasps his hand. “We are as one,” he assures him.

  The king sends for Edward, and Maggie and I bustle him into a new jerkin and comb down his hair. He is pale, with the terrible pallor of a child who never gets outside, and his arms and legs are thin though he should be growing strong. He has the York charm and good looks in his little-boy face but he is nervous, as my brothers never were. He reads so much and talks so little that he stammers when he has to speak, and will break off in the middle of a sentence to try to recall what he means to say. Living alone among rough men, he is desperately shy; he smiles only at Maggie and only with her can he talk fluently and without hesitation.

  Maggie and I walk with him to the closed door of the privy council chamber, where the yeomen of the guard stand with their pikes crossed, shutting everyone out. He stops, like a young colt refusing a jump.

  “They don’t want me to go in,” he says anxiously, looking at the big blank-faced men who stare past the three of us. “You have to do what they say. You always have to do what they say.”

  The quaver of fear in his voice reminds me of the day that the men in this very livery carried him down the stairs and I could not save him.

  “The king himself wants to see you,” I tell him. “They will open the door as you walk towards them. The doors will open as you get close.”

  He glances up at me, his shy smile lighting up his face with sudden hope. “Because I’m an earl?”

  “You are an earl,” I say quietly. “But they will open the door because it is the king’s wish. It is the king who matters, not us. What you must remember to say is that you are loyal to the king.”

  He nods emphatically. “I promised,” he says. “I promised just as Maggie said I should.”

  The procession from the Tower of London to St. Paul’s Cathedral is deliberately informal, as if the royal family strolled to church in their capital city every day. The yeomen of the guard walk with us, beside, behind, and in front, but more as if they were members of the household, leading the way to church, than guards. Henry goes in front with my mother, to signal to everyone the unity of this king with the former queen, and My Lady chooses to go hand in hand with me, showing everyone that the Princess of York is embedded in the House of Tudor. Behind us come my sisters, Cecily with her new husband, so that everyone can see that there is no princess of York of marrying age to form the focus of dissent, and behind her comes Edward our cousin, walking alone so that people waiting both on the right and left can see him clearly. He is well dressed, but he looks awkward and stumbles once as he starts to walk. Maggie walks behind him with my sisters Anne, Catherine, and Bridget, and she has to hold herself back from her little brother and not take his hand, as she used to do. This is a walk he has to do alone, this is a walk where he has to show himself alone, without any supporter, without any coercion, freely following in the train of the Tudor king.

  When we get into the deep vaulted gloom of the church we all stand at the chancel steps for the Mass, and sense the crowds of London in the vast space behind us. Henry puts a hand on Edward’s shoulder and whispers in his ear and the boy obediently falls to his knees on the prie-dieu, rests his elbows on the velvet shelf, and raises his eyes to the altar. All the rest of us step back a little, as if to leave him in prayer, but in truth to make sure that everyone sees Edward of Warwick is devout, loyal, and, above everything else, in our keeping. He is not at Warwick Castle raising his standard, he is not in Ireland raising an army, he is not with his a
unt the Duchess of Burgundy in Flanders creating a conspiracy. He is where he ought to be, with his loving royal family, on his knees to God.

  After the service we dine with the clergy of St. Paul’s and then start to walk down to the river. Edward makes better progress and smiles and talks to my sisters. Then Henry orders him to walk beside John de la Pole, the two York cousins together. John de la Pole has been loyal to Henry since the first day of his reign, is constantly in his company, and serves him on the privy council, the inner circle of advisors. He is well known for his loyalty to the king and it sends a strong message to the crowds who line our way, and who lean out of the windows above our heads. Everyone can see that this is the real Edward of Warwick, beside the real John de la Pole, everyone can see that they are talking together and strolling home from church, as cousins do. Everyone can see that they are happy with their Tudor family; as I am, as Cecily is, as my mother is.

  Henry waves to the citizens of London who are massing on the riverbank to see us all, and he summons me to stand beside him, and Edward beside me, so that everyone can see that we are as one, that Henry Tudor has done what some people swore was impossible: brought peace to England and an end to the wars of the cousins.

  Then some fool in the crowd shouts loudly, “À Warwick!” the old rallying cry, and I flinch and look to my husband, expecting to see him furious. But his smile never falters, his hand raised in a lordly wave does not tremble. I look back at the crowd, and I see a small scuffle at the rear, as if the man who shouted has been knocked to the ground and is being pinned down. “What’s happening?” I ask Henry nervously.

  “Nothing,” he says. “Nothing at all,” and turns and goes to his great throne in the stern of the boat, beckons us all on board, and sits down, kingly in every way, and gives the signal to cast off.

  PALACE OF SHEEN, RICHMOND, SPRING 1487

  But not even the evidence of their own eyes convinces people who are determined to believe the opposite. Only days after our walk through the streets of London, with the boy smiling in our midst, there are people swearing that Edward of Warwick escaped from the Tower while walking to church and is hiding in York, biding his time to come against the tyrant of the red dragon, the pretender to the throne, Henry the usurper, the false claimant.