The White Princess Read online

  As we watch, they finally get the yule log dragged into the fireplace and rolled over into the hot embers, and then the fire boys shovel the red-hot coals around it. The ivy that is binding the trunk crisps, smokes, and flares, and then the whole thing settles into the ashes and starts to glow. A little flicker of flame licks around the bark. The yule log is alight, the Christmas celebrations can begin.

  The musicians start to play and I nod to my ladies that they can dance. I take pleasure in a court of beautiful, well-behaved ladies-in-waiting, just as my mother did when she was queen. I am watching them as they go through their paces, when I see my uncle Edward Woodville, my mother’s brother, stroll into the room from a side door, and come over to my mother with a little smile. They exchange a kiss on each cheek, and then they turn together, as if they would speak privately. It’s nothing, no one but me would notice it, but I watch as he speaks briefly but intently to her, as she nods as if in agreement. He bows over her hand, and comes across to me.

  “I must bid you farewell, my niece, and wish you a happy Christmas and good health for you and the prince.”

  “Surely you are staying at court for Christmas?”

  He shakes his head. “I am going on a journey. I’m going on a great crusade as I have long promised I would.”

  “Leaving court? But where are you going, my lord uncle?”

  “To Lisbon. I’m taking a ship out of Greenwich tonight, and from there to Granada. I will serve under the most Christian kings and help them drive the Moors from Granada.”

  “Lisbon! And then Granada?”

  At once I glance towards My Lady the King’s Mother.

  “She knows,” he reassures me. “The king knows. Indeed, I am going at his bidding. She is delighted at the thought of an Englishman on crusade against the heretic, and he has a few little tasks for me on the way.”

  “What tasks?” I cannot stop myself lowering my voice to a whisper. My uncle Edward is one of the few members of our family trusted by the king and his mother. He was in exile with Henry, a sworn friend when Henry had few sworn friends. He escaped from my uncle Richard with two ships of his fleet, and was among the first to join Henry in Brittany. My uncle’s constant, reliable presence at the exiled little court assured Henry that we, the fallen royal family scuffling in sanctuary, were his allies. As Richard took the throne and made himself king, Henry, the pretender, was encouraged to trust us by the steady presence of my uncle Edward, fiercely loyal to his sister, the former queen.

  He was not the only York loyalist who made his way to Henry’s court of turncoats and exiles. My half brother Thomas Grey was there too, keeping our claim before Henry, reminding him of his promises to marry me. I can only imagine Henry’s horror when he woke one morning and his scant servants at his tiny court told him that Thomas Grey’s horse was gone from the stables and his bed was untouched and he realized that we had changed sides and were for Richard. Henry and Jasper sent riders after Thomas Grey and they captured him. They held him as a prisoner for my mother’s goodwill—fearing that nothing could guarantee her goodwill—and they still hold him in France, a guest of honor with a promise to return but still without a horse to ride home.

  My uncle Edward played a longer game, a deeper game. He stayed with Henry and invaded with him at Bosworth, and served beside him at the battle. He serves him still. Henry never forgets his friends, nor does he forget those who changed their minds during his time of exile. I think he will never again trust my brother Thomas, but he loves my uncle Edward and calls him his friend.

  “He is sending me on a diplomatic mission,” my uncle says.

  “To the King of Portugal? Surely Lisbon is not on the way to Granada?”

  He spreads his hand and smiles at me, as if I might share a joke, or a secret. “Not directly to the King of Portugal. He wants me to see something that has arisen, appeared at the Portuguese court.”

  “What sort of thing?”

  He drops on his knee and kisses my hand. “A secret thing, a precious thing,” he says gleefully, then he rises up and goes. I look around for my mother and see her smiling at him as he works his way through the laughing, dancing, celebrating court. She watches his swift bow to Henry and the king’s discreet acknowledgment, and then my uncle slips through the great doors of the hall, as quiet as any spy.

  That night Henry comes to my bed. He will come every single night only excepting the week of my course, or the nights of holy fasts or saints’ days. We have to conceive another child, we have to have another son. One is not enough to ensure the safety of the line. One is not enough to keep a new king steady on his throne. One son does not demonstrate powerfully enough the blessing of God on the new family.

  It is an act without desire for me, from which I get no pleasure, part of my work as wife to the king. I face it with a sort of resigned weariness. He takes care not to hurt me, he keeps his weight off me, he does not kiss or caress me, which I would hate; he is as quick and as gentle as he can be. He takes care not to disgust me, washing before he comes to me, wearing clean linen. I don’t ask for any more.

  But I find that I enjoy his company, the quiet peaceful time alone with him at the end of a day that is always crowded with people. He and I sit before the fire and we talk about the baby, how he is feeding today, how he is starting to smile when he sees me. I am certain that he knows me from all others, and knows Henry too, and that this proves his remarkable intelligence and promise. I can speak of our baby like this to no one else. Who but his father would linger over the exact width of his gummy little smile or the blueness of his eyes, or the sweetness of his little lick of tawny hair on his forehead? Who but his father would speculate with me as to whether he will be a scholar prince, or a warrior prince, or a prince like my father, who loved learning and was a commander of men above all others?

  The servants leave us with mulled wine, bread and cheese, nuts and candied fruits, and we have a supper, cozy in our night robes, side by side in our chairs, my feet tucked under me for warmth, his bare feet proffered to the glowing fire. We look like a happy couple in easy companionship. Sometimes I forget myself, and think this is what we are.

  “You said good-bye to your uncle?”

  “Yes, I did,” I say cautiously. “He said he was going on crusade, and to serve you.”

  “Did your mother tell you what he is doing for me?”

  I shake my head.

  “You’re a discreet family.” Henry smiles. “Anyone would think you had been raised to be spies.”

  I shake my head at once. “You know we were not. We were raised as royals.”

  “I know. But now that I am a king it sometimes seems to me that it’s the same thing. There’s a rumor reached me that there is some page boy in Portugal pretending to be a bastard son of your father, saying that he should be recognized as a royal duke of England.”

  I am watching the flames and I keep facing the fire and only slowly turn to my husband. I meet an intense brown glare. He is watching me closely, and I have a sense of an unexpected interrogation, something keen and unfriendly in the warmth of the evening room. I am aware of my expression, of keeping my face absolutely impassive. I am suddenly aware of everything. “Oh, really? Who is he?”

  “Of course your father had more bastards than anyone could count,” he says carelessly. “I suppose we should expect to find one or two every year.”

  “Yes he did,” I say. “And I hope that God forgives him, for my mother never did.”

  He laughs at that, but it only diverts him for a moment. “Did she not? How did he dare to defy her?”

  I smile. “He would laugh at her and kiss her and buy her earrings. And besides, she was almost always with child, and he was king. Who could say no to him?”

  “It’s inconvenient. It leaves a scattering of bastard half brothers and sisters,” Henry points out. “More Yorks than any man needs.”

  “Especially if he’s not York himself,” I observe. “But we know most of them. Grace, in my