The White Princess Read online

  I hug his arm. “My son, some things are safer left unsaid.”

  He turns to face me, his innocent face puzzled. “Lady Mother, if Mr. Warbeck is indeed who he said he was, if he is being allowed the run of the court for that reason, then he has a greater right to the throne than my father. He has a greater right to the throne than me.”

  “And that is exactly why we will never have this conversation,” I reply steadily.

  “If he is who he says he is, then you must be glad he is alive,” he pursues, with all the doggedness of a young man in pursuit of the truth. “You must be glad to see him. It must be as if he were snatched from death, almost as if he were risen from the dead. You must be happy to see him here, even if he never sits on the throne. Even if you pray that he never sits on the throne. Even if you want the throne for me.”

  I close my eyes so that he does not see the glow of my happiness. “I am,” I say shortly; and he is a wise young prince, for he does not speak of this again.

  We have dancing and celebrating, a joust and players. We have a choir sing most beautifully in the royal chapel, and we give away sweetmeats and gingerbread to two hundred poor children. The broken meats from the feast feed hundreds of men and women at the kitchen door for the twelve days. Henry and I lead out the dancers on the first day of Christmas, and I look behind me, down the line and see that Lady Katherine is dancing with her husband, and they are handclasped, both flushed, the handsomest couple in the room.

  Every day provides a new entertainment. We have a masque hunt led by a great giant of a man playing the Spirit of the Greenwood on a big bay horse, we have mummers and a performance of strange tall men, Egyptians, who eat live coals and are so terrifying that Mary ducks her head into my lap and Margaret cries and even Harry leans back in his little chair to feel my comforting hand on his shoulder. And all through the dancing and masquing and jockeying for position, there is Lady Katherine Huntly, the most beautiful woman at court, in her black velvet. There is my husband, quite unable to take his eyes off her, there is her husband always half a pace to the left or the right of her, always with her, but only rarely her partner, exchanging one swift unreadable glance with her before she goes forwards to the king, in obedience to his beckoning wave, and curtseys to him and waits, composed and lovely, for him to make awkward conversation.

  I see that in this season of celebration he prefers to watch entertainers with her, or ride beside her, or dance with her, or listen to music, anything where he does not have to find words to say. He cannot speak to her. For what could he say? He cannot court her: she is the wife of his prisoner, a proclaimed traitor. He cannot flirt with her: there is something very sobering about her dark black gown and her luminously pale face; he cannot fall to his knees and declare his love for her, though truly I think this is what he would most naturally do, because that would be to dishonor her since she is in his keeping, to dishonor me, his faultless wife, and to dishonor his own name and position.

  “Shall I take her to one side and simply tell her that she must demand to go back to Scotland?” Maggie asks me directly. “Shall I tell her that she has to free you from this constant insult?”

  “No,” I say, taking a careful stitch of a plain shirt. “For I am not insulted.”

  “The whole court sees the king looking hound-eyed at her.”

  “Then they see a king making a fool of himself; he is not making one of me,” I say sharply.

  Maggie gasps at my daring to speak against the king.

  “It’s not her at fault,” I continue. We both glance across the sunny chamber to where Lady Katherine is sitting, hemming a collar for a poor man’s shirt, her dark head bowed over the task.

  “She has the king dancing to her tune like she was a tuppenny fiddle player,” Maggie says bluntly.

  “She does nothing to encourage him. And it keeps her husband safe. While the king is besotted with her, he will not kill her husband.”

  “It’s a price you’re prepared to pay?” Maggie whispers, shocked. “To keep the boy safe?”

  I cannot help but smile. “I think it’s a price that both she and I are paying. And I would do so much more than this, to keep this young man safe.”

  Maggie sees me to bed as if she were still my chief lady-in-waiting instead of a beloved visitor, and blows out the candle by my bedside before leaving the room. But I am wakened by the tolling of the chapel bell, and someone hammering on my door and then bursting into the room. My first thought is that despite his passive appearance, the boy has raised a secret army and is coming against Henry, and there is an assassin with a naked blade in the palace. I jump out of bed and grab at my robe and scream: “Where is Arthur? Where is the Prince of Wales? Guards! To the prince!”

  “Safe.” Maggie comes running in, her hair down in its nighttime plait, barefooted, wearing only her nightgown. “Richard has him safe. But there is a fire, you must come at once.”

  I throw a robe over my gown and hurry out of the door with her. There is a babel of noise and confusion, the bell ringing and men shouting and people running from one place to another. Without needing to say a word, Maggie and I dash side by side to the rooms of the royal nursery and there, thanks to God, are Harry, Margaret, and Mary, the two older ones tumbling down the stairs with their nursemaids shrieking to them to go as fast as they can but to be careful, and Mary big-eyed in the arms of her nursemaid. I drop to my knees and hold the oldest two to me, feeling their warm little bodies, feeling my heart thud with relief that they are safe. “There is a fire in the palace,” I tell them. “But we are not in danger. Come with me and we will go outside and watch them put it out.”

  A guard of yeomen go running past me, carrying flails and buckets of water. I tighten my grip on my children’s hands. “Come on,” I say. “Let’s go outside and find your brother and your father.”

  We are halfway down the gallery to the great hall when the door to Lady Katherine’s room flies opens and she dashes out, her black cape flung over her white nightgown, her dark eyes wide, her hair a rich tumble around her face. When she sees me she halts. “Your Grace!” she says and curtseys low and stays down, waiting for me to go past her.

  “Never mind that, come at once,” I say. “There is a fire, come at once, Lady Katherine.”

  She hesitates.

  “Come!” I command. “And all your household with you.”

  She pulls her hood over her hair and hurries to walk behind me. As I go on with my children I just glimpse, out of the corner of my eye, the young man that is called Perkin Warbeck, wrapped in a cloak, slide from Lady Katherine’s inner private room and fall in behind us, with my household.

  I glance back to be sure, and he meets my gaze, his smile warm and confident. He shrugs and spreads his hands, a gesture wholly French, completely charming. “She is my wife,” he says simply. “I love her.”

  “I know,” I say, and hurry onwards.

  The front doors are wide open and they have made a line of people passing pails of water up the stairs. Henry is in the stable yard, making them hurry, drawing water from the well, urging the lad to work harder at the pump. It is painfully slow, we can smell the acrid hot smoke on the wind and the bell tolls loudly as the men shout for more water and say that the flames are taking hold. Arthur is there with Sir Richard, his guardian, wearing nothing but his breeches and a cape over his bare shoulders.

  “You’ll freeze to death!” I scold him.

  “Go and get a jacket from our traveling carts,” Maggie orders him. “They’re not unpacked yet.”

  Arthur ducks his head in obedience to her and goes to the stables.

  “It’s a terrible fire, in the wardrobe rooms, you’ll lose your gowns, and God knows how many jewels!” Henry shouts at me above the noise. I can hear a crack as the expensive window glass shatters in the heat and then there is a noise like a blast as one of the roof beams caves in and the flames shoot upwards like an explosion.

  “Is everyone out of the building?” I shout.