The White Princess Read online

  “Mother, I would swear on my life that Richard didn’t hurt them,” I say earnestly. “I know that Richard would have told me if he had done so. You know it. You were convinced on the night when he came to you to ask if it was you who had stolen them both away, weren’t you? He didn’t know where they were, or what had become of them. He thought you might have had them. I would swear that he never knew. Actually, it tormented him that he didn’t know. At the very end, he didn’t know who to name as his heir. He was desperate to be sure.”

  My mother’s gaze is hard. “Oh, I believe that Richard didn’t kill the boys. Of course I know that. I would never have released you and your sisters into his care if I had thought he could bring himself to harm his own brother’s children. But for sure, he kidnapped our Prince Edward on the road to London. He killed my brother Anthony who tried to defend him. He took Edward into the Tower and did all he could to take my younger boy Richard too. It wasn’t him who killed them in secret, but he put them where a killer could find them. He defied your father’s will and he took your brother’s throne. He might not have killed them; but they should both have been left safe in my keeping. Richard of Gloucester took Edward from me, and he would have taken my son Richard too. He took the throne, and he killed my brother Anthony and my son Richard Grey. He was a usurper and a murderer, and I will never forgive him for those crimes. I don’t need to lay others at Richard’s door, he will go to hell for these, and I will never forgive him for these.”

  Miserably, I shake my head that my mother should say this of the man I love. I can’t defend him, not to her, who lost her two boys and still does not know what has become of them. “I know,” I whisper. “I know. I’m not denying that he had to act in terrible times, he did terrible things. He confessed them to his priest and he prayed for forgiveness for them. You have no idea how tortured he was by the things he had to do. But I’m certain that he didn’t order the death of my brothers.”

  “Then Henry will find nothing in his search of the Tower,” she observes. “If Richard did not kill them, there will be no bodies for Henry to bring out. Perhaps they are both alive, hidden somewhere in the Tower or in the houses nearby.”

  “And what would Henry do then? If he found them alive?” I am breathless at this speculation. “What would he do if someone came forward and said they had them hidden, safely hidden away, our boys, for all this long time?”

  My mother’s smile is as sad and as slow as a falling tear. “Why, he’d have to kill them,” she says simply. “If he were to find my sons alive now, he would kill them at once, and blame it on Richard. If he found my sons alive, he would have to kill them, to take the throne, just as your father killed old King Henry to take the throne. Of course he would. We all know that.”

  “And would he do it, do you think? Could he do such a terrible thing?”

  She shrugs. “I think he would make himself do it. He would have no choice. Otherwise, he would have risked his life and his army for nothing. His mother would have spent her life plotting and even marrying for nothing. Yes, if Henry ever finds your brother Edward alive he would kill him in that moment. If he finds your brother Richard he would have to put him to death. It would be nothing more to him than continuing the work he did at Bosworth. He’d find some way of settling his conscience. He’s a young man who has lived under the shadow of the sword from the moment when he fled England as a boy of fourteen to the day when he rode home to fight for his claim. Nobody knows better than he that any claimant to the throne has to be killed at once. A king cannot let a pretender live. No king can allow a pretender to live.”

  Henry’s court goes with him to the Tower, and more and more men flock to the Tudor standard now that it is triumphant. We hear, through gossip from the city streets, of the round of rewards that comes from the Tudor throne as Henry hands out the spoils of Bosworth in the days before his coronation. His mother has all her lands and wealth returned to her; she enters a greatness that she always claimed but never enjoyed before now. Her husband, Thomas, Lord Stanley, is made Earl of Derby and High Constable of England, the greatest position in the realm, as reward for his great courage in looking both ways at once, the two-faced traitor that he is. I know, for I heard him swear the oath, that he promised his loyalty, his absolute fealty, to my Richard; I saw him go down on his knees and promise his love, even offering his son as a pledge of his loyalty. He swore that his brother, his whole family, were Richard’s true men.

  But that morning at Bosworth Field he and Sir William sat on their horses with their mighty armies behind him, and waited to see which way the battle would go. When they saw Richard charge into the heart of the fighting, on his own, aimed like a spear at Henry himself, the Stanleys, Lord William and Sir Thomas, acting as one, swept down on him from behind, with swords raised. They rescued Henry in that moment, and cut Richard down to the ground when he was just moments away from putting his sword through Henry Tudor’s heart.

  Sir William Stanley picked up my Richard’s helmet from the mud, tore off the battle coronet, and handed the gold circlet to Henry: the most vile piece of work of a villainous day. Now, in puppyish gratitude, Henry makes Sir William his chamberlain, kisses him on both cheeks, declares that they are the new royal family. He surrounds himself with Stanleys, he cannot thank them enough. He has found his throne and his family in one triumph. He is inseparable from his mother, Margaret, and always, half a step behind her, is her devoted husband, Lord Thomas Stanley, and half a step behind him is his brother Sir William. Henry lolls in the lap of these newfound kinsmen who have put their boy on the throne and knows he is safe at last.

  His uncle Jasper, who shared his exile and kept faith with the Tudor cause since Henry’s birth, is there too, rewarded for a lifetime of loyalty with his share of the spoils. He gets his title back, and his lands returned; he will have his pick of the posts of government. And he gets even more than this. Henry writes to my aunt Katherine, the widow of the traitorous Duke of Buckingham, and tells her to prepare for remarriage. Jasper is to have her and the Buckingham fortune. It seems that all the Rivers women are part of the spoils of war. She brings the letter in her hand when she comes to see my mother as we are sitting in the second-best rooms at Westminster Palace.

  “Is he mad?” she asks my mother. “Was it not enough that I was married to a boy, to the young duke who hated me, but I now have to marry another enemy of our family?”

  “D’you get a fee?” my mother asks dryly, since she has her own letter to show her sister. “For see, here is our news. I am to be paid a pension. Cecily is to be married to Sir John Welles, and Elizabeth is to be betrothed to the king.”

  “Well, thank God for that at least!” my aunt Katherine exclaims. “You must have been anxious.”

  My mother nods. “Oh, he would have reneged on his vow if he could have done. He was looking for another bride, he was trying to get out of it.”

  I look up from my sewing at this, but my mother and her sister are intent on their letters, their heads together.

  “When will it be? The wedding?”

  “After the coronation.” My mother points to the paragraph. “Of course, he won’t want anyone to say that they are joint king and queen. He’ll want to be seen to take the throne on his own merits. He won’t want anyone saying she takes the queen’s crown on her own account. He can’t have anyone saying that he’s got the crown through her.”

  “But we’ll all go to his coronation?” my aunt Katherine asks. “They’ve left it very late but—”

  “Not invited,” my mother says shortly.

  “It’s an insult! He must have Elizabeth there!”

  My mother shrugs her shoulders. “What if they cheered for her? What if they called for us?” she says quietly. “You know how people would cheer for her, if they saw her. You know how Londoners love the House of York. What if the people saw us and called for my nephew Edward of Warwick? What if they booed the House of Tudor and called for the House of York? At his coronation? H