The White Princess Read online

  Henry makes him go on foot, leading a broken-down old horse, with one of his followers in chains, mounted up. The man in the saddle, grim-faced, is the sergeant farrier who ran from Henry’s service to be with the boy. Now all of London can see him, head bowed, bruised, tied to the saddle like a Fool. Usually people would throw filth, and then laugh to see the rider and the humiliated groom spattered with mud from the gutters, showered with the contents of chamber pots flung from overhead windows. But the boy and his defeated supporter make a strangely silent pair as they go through the narrow streets to the Tower and then someone says, terribly clearly, into a sudden hush: “Look at him! He’s the spit of good King Edward.”

  Henry hears of this the moment the words are out of the man’s mouth; but too late to call the words back, too late to deafen the crowd. All he can do is make sure that the crowd never again sees the boy who looks so like a York prince.

  So that is to be the first and last time that the boy has to walk the streets of London inviting abuse. “You will confine him to the Tower,” My Lady orders her son.

  “In time. I wanted the people to see that he was nothing, no threat, an idle foolish boy. Nothing more than a little lad, the boy that I always called him—lighter than air.”

  “Well, they have seen him now. And they don’t call him lighter than air. They don’t know what to call him, though we have told them his name over and over again. And the name that they want to give him should never be spoken. Surely, now you will charge him and execute him?”

  “I gave him my word that he should not be killed when he surrendered to me.”

  “That’s not binding.” Anxiety makes her overrule him. “You’ve broken your word for less than this. You don’t have to keep your word to such as him.”

  His face is suddenly illuminated. “Yes, but I gave my word to her.”

  My Lady turns a furious glare on me, accusing me at once. “Her? She never had the nerve to ask for mercy for him?” she suddenly rages, her face filled with hatred. “She never soiled her mouth speaking for such a traitor? For what reason? What did she dare to say?”

  Coolly, I show her a mutinous face and silently I shake my head. “No, not me,” I say icily. “You are mistaken, again. I have not asked for mercy for him. I have not spoken for or against him. I have no opinion on the matter, and I never have done.” I wait while her anger curdles into embarrassment. “I think His Grace must mean another lady.”

  Horrified, My Lady turns back to her son as if he is betraying her, as if it is she who is suffering infidelity. “Who? What woman has dared to ask you for his life? Who do you listen to—instead of me, your own mother, who has guided every step of your way?”

  “Lady Katherine,” he says. He has a silly little smile on his face at her very name. “Lady Katherine. I have given my word of honor to the lady.”

  She sits in my room like a dignified widow, always in black, with her hands always filled with some work or another. We sew shirts for the poor and always she is hemming a sleeve or turning a collar, her head bowed over her work. The chatter and laughter of the women go on around her, all the time, and sometimes she raises her head and smiles at a joke, and sometimes she quietly replies, or adds her own story to the conversation. She speaks of her childhood in Scotland, she speaks of her cousin the King of Scotland and of his court. She is not lively, but she is courteous and pleasant company. She has charm; I sometimes find myself smiling when I look at her. She has poise. She is living in my court and my husband is visibly in love with her and yet she never shows, by so much as a sideways glance to me, that she is aware of this. She could taunt me, she could flaunt herself, she could embarrass me, but she never does.

  She never mentions her own husband, she never speaks of this last extraordinary year: the little ship that took them to Ireland, their lucky escape from the Spanish who would have captured them, their triumphant landing and victorious march from Cornwall into Devon, and then their defeat. She never speaks of her husband at all, and so she avoids giving his name. The great question—what is the true name of this young man who never walks past her without a smile—is never answered by her.

  He, himself, is like a nameless person. The Spanish ambassador addresses him once, in public, as Perkin Warbeck, and the young man turns his head slowly, like a playactor, like a dancer, and looks away, far away. It is a snub so confident, so graceful, that you would swear that only a prince could do it. The ambassador looks a fool, and the boy looks mildly regretful that he is forced to cause a moment’s embarrassment to a man who should have known how to behave.

  It is Henry the king who rescues the court from the scandalous sight of a paroled traitor snubbing the ambassador of our greatest ally. We expect him to reprimand the boy and send him out, but instead the king blunders off his throne, down the presence chamber in a hurry, turns towards my ladies, catches Lady Katherine’s hand, and says suddenly, “Let’s have some dancing!”

  The musicians strike up at once, and he takes both her hands and faces her. He is flushed, as if he is the one who has made a blunder, instead of the pretender and his wife. And she is as she always is, as cool as a stream in winter. Henry bows to start the dance, she curtseys, and then she smiles, like the sun coming out from behind a cloud. Radiant, she smiles at my husband and I can see his heart lift at that small, tiny approval.

  PALACE OF SHEEN, RICHMOND, CHRISTMAS 1497

  The Christmas season brings my children home to me. Henry, Margaret, and Mary return to us from Eltham Palace and Arthur comes from Ludlow with his guardian, Sir Richard Pole, and my darling Maggie. I run down to the stable yard to greet the troop from Ludlow as they come riding in, on an evening when the persistent cold rain of the day is just turning to swirling flakes of snow.

  “Thank heaven you are in before it got any colder!” I fall on Arthur as if I would save him from darkness itself. “But you’re so warm!” I stop myself exclaiming “and so lovely!” for my oldest boy is, as he always is, a revelation to me. In the few months of his absence he has grown a little taller. I can feel the wiry strength of his arms as he hugs me, he is a prince in every sense. I cannot believe this is the baby I held in my arms and the toddler whose steps I guided, when I see this coltish youth whose head now comes to my chin, and who steps back from my embrace to bow to me with all the elegance of his grandfather, my father, King Edward.

  “Of course I’m warm,” he says. “Sir Richard had us in a breakneck canter for the last half hour.”

  “I wanted to get in before nightfall,” Sir Richard explains and he dismounts and bows low to me. “He’s well,” he says shortly. “Healthy, strong, and learning something new every day. He’s very good in dealing with the people in Wales. Very fair. We’re making a king here. A good king.”

  Maggie tumbles down from her horse, curtseys to me, and then bounds up to hug me. “You’re looking well,” she observes, stepping back to scrutinize me. “Are you happy?” she asks doubtfully. “How is everything here? His Grace the King?”

  Something makes me turn and look towards the shadow of the doorway, to the open door. The torchlight is behind her, but I can see the silhouette of Katherine Huntly, her velvet dress black against the flickering darkness of the doorway. She is watching me greet my son, though her own baby boy is far away tonight and she is not allowed to see him. She is hearing my son’s guardian say that he is a good Prince of Wales though she thought her own son was born for that position, and he was always addressed with that title.

  I beckon her forwards. “You remember Lady Katherine Huntly,” I say to Sir Richard.

  Maggie curtseys to her and for a moment we three women stand still, as the drifting snow swirls around us as if we were untitled statues in a wintry garden. What should the names be on the bases of the statues? Are we two cousins and a sister-in-law, destined to live together in silence, never speaking the truth? Or are we two unlucky daughters of the defeated House of York and an imposter who has won her place with us by the low means of ch