The White Princess Read online

  Henry whistles to his man and he comes over with a beautiful peregrine falcon, his breast like royal ermine, his back as dark as sable fur. Henry pulls on the gauntlet and takes the bird on his fist, looping the jesses around his fingers.

  “They have raised up their boy,” he repeats. “Another one.”

  I see the darkness in his face and I realize that this hawking trip, and the clatter of the court at play, and Henry’s new cape, and even the caress of his falcon are all part of a pretense. He is showing to the world that he is unconcerned. He is trying to look as if everything is all right. In reality, he is, as so often, embattled and afraid.

  “This time, they are calling him ‘prince.’ ”

  “Who is he?” I ask very quietly.

  “This time I don’t know, though I have had my men up and down every corner of England and in and out of every schoolroom. I don’t think there is one missing child that I haven’t identified. But this boy . . .” He breaks off.

  “How old is he?”

  “Eighteen,” he says simply.

  My brother Richard would be eighteen, if he were alive. I don’t remark on it. “And who is he?”

  “Who does he say he is?” he corrects me, irritably. “Why, he says he is Richard, your missing brother Richard.”

  “And what do people say he is?” I ask.

  He sighs. “The traitorous lords, the Irish lords who would run after anything in silk . . . they say he is Prince Richard, Duke of York. And they are arming for him, and rising for him, and I shall have the whole battle of Stoke to fight all over again, with another boy at the head of another army, with French mercenaries behind him and Irish lords sworn to his service, as if ghosts never lie down but come again and again against me.”

  The sun is still bright and warm but I am cold with horror.

  “Not again? Not another invasion?”

  Someone shouts from the far side of the yard and a little cheer goes up at some joke. Henry glances over, a bright smile at once on his face, and he laughs as if he knows what the joke was, like a child will laugh, trying to join in.

  “Don’t!” I say suddenly. It hurts me to see him, even now, trying to play at being a carefree king before a court that he cannot trust.

  “I have to smile,” he says. “There is a boy in Ireland very free with his smiles. They say he is all smiles, all charm.”

  I think what this new threat will mean to us—to Maggie, newly married and hoping that her brother might be released to live with her and her husband, to my mother enclosed at Bermondsey Abbey. Neither my mother nor my cousin will ever be free if there is someone pretending to be our Prince Richard, mustering troops in Ireland. Henry will never trust any of us if someone from the House of York is leading a French army against him. “May I write and tell my mother of this false boy?” I ask him. “It’s distressing to have Richard’s name taken once again.”

  His eyes grow cold at the mere mention of her name. His face slowly freezes, until he looks as if nothing will ever disturb him: a king of stone, a king of ice. “You can write and tell her whatever you wish,” he says. “But I think you’ll find your daughterly tenderness is misplaced.”

  “What d’you mean?” I have a sense of dread. “Oh, Henry, don’t be like this! What d’you mean?”

  “She knows all about this boy already.”

  I can say nothing. His suspicion of my mother is one of the troubles that runs through our marriage like a poisoned stream bleaching a meadow which might otherwise grow green. “I am sure she does not.”

  “Are you? For I am quite sure she does. I am sure that what funds I pay her, and what gifts you have given her, are invested in the silk jacket which is on his back, and in the velvet bonnet which is on his head,” he says harshly. “Pinned with a ruby pin, if you please. With three pendant pearls. On his golden curls.”

  For a moment I can see my brother’s curls, twisted around my mother’s fingers as he sits with his head in her lap. I can see him so vividly, it is as if I have conjured him, as Henry says the foolish people of Ireland have conjured this prince from death, from the unknown.

  “He is a handsome boy?” I whisper.

  “Like all your family,” Henry says grimly. “Handsome and charming and with the trick of making people love him. I will have to find him and throw him down before he climbs up, don’t you think? This boy who calls himself Richard Duke of York?”

  “I can’t help but wish he was alive,” I say weakly. I look over at my adorable brown-headed son, jumping up to the mounting block to his pony, bright with excitement, and I remember my golden-haired little brother who was as brave and as joyous as Arthur, raised in a court filled with confidence.

  “Then you do yourself and your line a disservice. I can’t help but wish him dead.”

  I excuse myself from the day’s hawking and instead I take the royal barge and go down the river to Bermondsey Abbey. Someone sees the barge coming in, and runs for my mother to tell her that her daughter the queen is on her way, so she is on the little pier as we land, and comes to meet me, walking through the rowers, who stand at attention, their oars raised in salute, as if she still commanded them, a little nod to one side and the other, a little smile, easy in her authority. She curtseys to me at the gangplank and I kneel for her blessing and bob up.

  “I have to talk with you,” I say tersely.

  “Of course,” she says. She leads the way into the abbey’s central garden, sheltered by the high warm walls, and gestures to a seat built into a corner, overhung with an old plum tree. Awkwardly I stand, but I nod that she should sit down. The autumn sun is warm; she has a light shawl around her shoulders as she sits before me, her hands clasped lightly in her lap, and listens.

  “The king says that you will know all about it already; but there is a boy calling himself by the name of my brother, landed in Ireland,” I say in a rush.

  “I don’t know all about it,” she says.

  “You know something about it?”

  “I know that much.”

  “Is he my brother?” I ask her. “Please, Lady Mother, don’t put me off with one of your lies. Please tell me. Is it my brother Richard in Ireland? Alive? Coming for his throne? For my throne?”

  For a moment she looks as if she is going to prevaricate, turn the question aside with a clever word, as she always does. But she looks up at my white, strained face, and she puts out her hand to draw me down to sit beside her. “Is your husband afraid again?”

  “Yes,” I breathe. “Worse than before. Because he thought it was over after the battle at Stoke. He thought he had won then. Now he thinks he will never win. He is afraid, and he is afraid of being afraid. He thinks he will always be afraid.”

  She nods. “You know, words, once spoken, cannot be recalled. If I answer your question you will know things that you should tell your husband and his mother at once. And they will ask you these things explicitly. And once they know that you know them, they will think of you as an enemy. As they think me. Perhaps they would imprison you, as they have imprisoned me. Perhaps they would not allow you to see your children. Perhaps they are so hard-hearted that they would send you far away.”

  I sink to my knees before her, and I put my face in her lap, as if I were still her little girl and we were still in sanctuary and certain to fail. “Am I not to ask?” I whisper. “He is my little brother. I love him too. I miss him too. Shall I not even ask if he is alive?”

  “Don’t ask,” she advises me.

  I look up at her face, still beautiful in this afternoon golden light, and I see that she is smiling. She is a happy woman. She does not look at all like a woman who has lost two beloved sons to an enemy, and knows that she will never see either of them again.

  “But you hope to see him?” I whisper.

  The smile she turns to me is filled with joy. “I know I will see him,” she says with absolute serene conviction.

  “In Westminster?” I whisper.

  “Or in heaven.”