The White Princess Read online

They take him away to be christened Edmund, which I take to be the morbid choice of My Lady, as he was a martyred king; but when it is time for me to be churched I find that I am unwilling to leave the confinement chamber. The heaviness and the weariness that came with the baby do not leave me, not even when they take him with his wet nurse to the palace at Eltham and Lady Margaret’s confessor, John Morton, puts aside his great cope and mitre as Archbishop of Canterbury and comes like a parish priest to the grille in my chamber and invites me to confess my sins, be blessed, and return to the world. I go slowly to the ironwork grille and rest my hands on the twisted Tudor roses, and I feel imprisoned like the boy, and unlikely to be freed.

  “I have a sin of fear,” I say to him, my voice very low so that he can only just hear me in the empty chamber.

  “What do you fear, my daughter?”

  “Years ago, a long, long time ago, I cursed a man,” I whisper.

  He nods. He will have heard worse things than this, I have to remember that he will have heard far worse things than this. I also have to remember that everything I say will almost certainly be reported to My Lady the King’s Mother. There is hardly a priest in England who does not come under her influence, and this is John Morton, whose life has intertwined with hers and who thinks her half a saint already.

  “Who was it you cursed, my child?”

  “I don’t know who it was,” I say. “My mother and I swore a curse against the man who killed the princes. We were so heartbroken when we heard they were missing. My mother especially . . .” I break off, not wanting to remember that night when she sank to her knees and put her head to the stone floor.

  “What curse was it?”

  “We swore that whoever had taken our boys would lose his own,” I say, the words barely audible, I am so ashamed now of what we did then. I am so fearful now of the consequences of the curse. “We swore that the murderer would be left with only a girl as his heir, and his line would die out. We said he would lose a son in one generation and a son in the next—he would lose a young son and then a young grandson in their boyhood.”

  The priest sighs at the magnitude of the curse, even as the politician in him calculates what this means. We kneel together in silence. He puts a hand on his ivory crucifix.

  “You regret this now?”

  I nod. “Father, I deeply regret it.”

  “You wish to lift this curse?”

  “I do.”

  He is silent, praying for a moment. “Who is it?” he asks. “Who killed the princes, your brothers? Who d’you think? Where will your curse fall?”

  I sigh and lean my forehead against the iron Tudor rose of the grille, feeling the forged petals bite into my skin. “Truly,” I say. “Before God, I don’t know for sure. I have suspected more than one; but still I don’t know. If it was Richard, the King of England, then he died without an heir, and he saw his son die before him.”

  He nods. “Does that not prove his guilt? Do you think it was him? You knew him well. Did you ask him?”

  I shake my head. “I don’t know,” I say fretfully. “He said it was not him, and I believed him then. That’s what I always tell everyone. I don’t know.”

  He pauses as a thought strikes him. “If the princes, or even one of them, had survived, then whoever kills him now will receive the curse.”

  I can feel him flinch as I glare at him through the screen, as he arrives so slowly at understanding. “Exactly,” I say. “That’s the very thing. I have to lift the curse. Before anything else happens. I have to do it now.”

  He is aghast at the prospect that is opening before him. “The curse would light on the man who ordered your brother’s death,” he says, as rapidly as prayer. “Even if it were a just death. Even if it were a legal execution. The curse would fall on he who ordered it?”

  “Exactly,” I say again. “It would take his son and his grandson when they were still children. It would mean that such an executioner would find his line ends after two generations, with a girl. If it were the man who killed my brother Edward he would be doubly cursed.”

  The archbishop is white. “You must pray,” he says fervently. “I will pray for you. We must give alms, set a priest to pray daily. I will give you spiritual exercises, prayers for every day. You must go on pilgrimage and I will tell you alms that you must give to the poor.”

  “And will that lift the curse?”

  He meets my eyes and I see my own terror reflected back at me, the Queen of England, mother to three precious beloved sons. “No one has power to curse,” he says staunchly, repeating the official belief of the Church. “No mortal woman. What you and your mother said was meaningless, the ravings of distressed women.”

  “So nothing will happen?” I ask.

  He hesitates and he is honest. “I don’t know,” he says. “I will pray on it. God may be merciful. But it may be that your curse is an arrow into the dark and you cannot stop its flight.”

  THE ISLE OF WIGHT, SUMMER 1499

  I come out of confinement to find a court intent on merrymaking. We are to make a long progress along the south coast, passing through Kent and Sussex and Hampshire as if they had never lifted a blade against the king, as if they had never mustered for the boy. At Portsmouth we are to take ship and go to the Isle of Wight, that dim blue mass on the horizon. We are going to be happy. Most important, we are going to be seen to be happy.

  Henry wears a smile like a mask. Lady Katherine is on his arm, everywhere he walks, her beautiful new horse, a black mare, goes shoulder to shoulder with his warhorse. He has taken to riding his warhorse again as if to remind everyone that he is a commander as well as a king. She inclines her head when he talks to her, she smiles as she listens. When he is merry we can hear her laugh, and when he asks her she sings for him, Scots songs, songs from the highlands, filled with melancholy for a land that is lost, until he says: “Lady Katherine, sing us something merry!” and she laughs and starts a round and the whole court joins in.

  I watch them as if I were gazing down from far away. I can see them walking together but only dimly hear what they say. I watch them as I know Queen Anne, wife to my Richard, watched me from her high window when we walked in the garden below and he put my hand in his arm and I leaned towards him, longing for his touch. I cannot blame Lady Katherine for ensnaring the King of England, for I did exactly the same. I cannot blame her for being young—she is eight years younger than me—and this summer I am as tired as if I were ninety years old. I cannot blame her for being beautiful—all courts are mad for beauty and she is a delight to watch. But most of all I cannot blame her for turning the king’s head away from me, his true wife, for I think she is doing the only thing she can do to save her husband.

  I don’t think she is taken with him as he—vividly—is taken with her. I think she is holding him just where she wants him to be: at arm’s length but within arm’s reach, just at the right proximity so that she can influence him, divert him, soothe him, and soften him, in order to keep her husband alive.

  She must have heard—who has not?—the rumors that there is to be a rescue of the boy. The Duchess Margaret sent her embassy to see her beloved protégé and nephew and everyone thinks that she had them whisper to him to wait, that help would come. Everyone knows she will try to save him. She has great influence in Europe, and the greatest kings still call themselves friends of the boy even though they are told he was an imposter. Support is gathering for the boy; if his wife can keep him alive for another season, someone will get him out.

  Still the king does not act against the boy but keeps him imprisoned, with constant visitors. Lady Katherine is always at Henry’s side, always there with a quick smile and a soft question to remind him to be merciful to the boy that she married in error. Quick to show him that she can forgive and perhaps—who knows?—one day she may go on to love another? The boy does not have to die to set her free for she is already considering an annulment. Henry, at her side every day, often suggests that she should write to