The White Princess Read online

  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