The White Princess Read online

  There are Yorkists in every great house in the land now, and every profitable business or place or tax is in their gift. Their boy-king is on the throne, and his supporters form the new court. We, the defeated, are paupers in our own houses and strangers in our own country, our king an exile, our queen a vengeful alien plotting with our old enemy of France. We have to make terms with the tyrant of York, while praying that God turns against him and our true king sweeps south with an army for yet another battle.

  In the meantime, like many a woman with a husband dead and a father defeated, I have to piece my life together like a patchwork of scraps. I have to regain my fortune somehow, though it seems that neither kinsman nor friend can make any headway for me. We are all known as traitors. We are forgiven but not beloved. We are all powerless. I shall have to be my own advocate, and make my own case to a boy who respects justice so little that he would dare to take an army against his own cousin: a king ordained. What can one say to such a savage that he could understand?

  My boys, Thomas, who is nine, and Richard, who is eight, are dressed in their best, their hair wetted and smoothed down, their faces shining from soap. I have tight hold of their hands as they stand on either side of me, for these are true boys and they draw dirt to them as if by magic. If I let them go for a second, then one will scuff his shoes and the other rip his hose, and both of them will manage to get leaves in their hair and mud on their faces, and Thomas will certainly fall in the stream. As it is, anchored by my grip, they hop from one leg to another in an agony of boredom, and straighten up only when I say, “Hush, I can hear horses.”

  It sounds like the patter of rain at first, and then in a moment a rumble like thunder. The jingle of the harness and the flutter of the standards, the chink of the chain mail and the blowing of the horses, the sound and the smell and the roar of a hundred horses ridden hard is overwhelming and, even though I am determined to stand out and make them stop, I can’t help but shrink back. What must it be to face these men riding down in battle with their lances outstretched before them, like a galloping wall of staves? How could any man face it?

  Thomas sees the bare blond head in the midst of all the fury and noise and shouts “Hurrah!” like the boy he is, and at the shout of his treble voice I see the man’s head turn, and he sees me and the boys, and his hand snatches the reins and he bellows “Halt!” His horse stands up on its rear legs, wrenched to a standstill, and the whole cavalcade wheels and halts and swears at the sudden stop, and then abruptly everything is silent and the dust billows around us.

  His horse blows out, shakes its head, but the rider is like a statue on its high back. He is looking at me and I at him, and it is so quiet that I can hear a thrush in the branches of the oak above me. How it sings. My God, it sings like a ripple of glory, like joy made into sound. I have never heard a bird sing like that before, as if it were caroling happiness.

  I step forward, still holding my sons’ hands, and I open my mouth to plead my case, but at this moment, this crucial moment, I have lost my words. I have practiced well enough. I had a little speech all prepared, but now I have nothing. And it is almost as if I need no words. I just look at him and somehow I expect him to understand everything—my fear of the future and my hopes for these my boys, my lack of money and the irritable pity of my father, which makes living under his roof so unbearable to me, the coldness of my bed at night, and my longing for another child, my sense that my life is over. Dear God, I am only twenty-seven, my cause is defeated, my husband is dead. Am I to be one of many poor widows who will spend the rest of their days at someone else’s fireside trying to be a good guest? Shall I never be kissed again? Shall I never feel joy? Not ever again?

  And still the bird sings as if to say that delight is easy, for those who desire it.

  He makes a gesture with his hand to the older man at his side, and the man barks out a command and the soldiers turn their horses off the road and go into the shade of the trees. But the king jumps down from his great horse, drops the reins, and walks towards me and my boys. I am a tall woman but he overtops me by a head; he must be far more than six feet tall. My boys crane their necks up to see him; he is a giant to them. He is blond haired, gray eyed, with a tanned, open, smiling face, rich with charm, easy with grace. This is a king as we have never seen before in England: this is a man whom the people will love on sight. And his eyes are fixed on my face as if I know a secret that he has to have, as if we have known each other forever, and I can feel my cheeks are burning but I cannot look away from him.

  A modest woman looks down in this world, keeps her eyes on her slippers; a supplicant bows low and stretches out a pleading hand. But I stand tall, I am aghast at myself, staring like an ignorant peasant, and find I cannot take my eyes from his, from his smiling mouth, from his gaze, which is burning on my face.

  “Who is this?” he asks, still looking at me.

  “Your Grace, this is my mother, Lady Elizabeth Grey,” my son Thomas says politely, and he pulls off his cap and drops to his knee.

  Richard on my other side kneels too and mutters, as if he cannot be heard, “Is this the king? Really? He is the tallest man I have ever seen in my life!”

  I sink down into a curtsey but I cannot look away. Instead, I gaze up at him, as a woman might stare with hot eyes at a man she adores.

  “Rise up,” he says. His voice is low, for only me to hear. “Have you come to see me?”

  “I need your help,” I say. I can hardly form the words. I feel as if the love potion, which my mother soaked into the scarf billowing from my headdress, is drugging me, not him. “I cannot obtain my dowry lands, my jointure, now I am widowed.” I stumble in the face of his smiling interest. “I am a widow now. I have nothing to live on.”

  “A widow?”

  “My husband was Sir John Grey. He died at St. Albans,” I say. It is to confess his treason and the damnation of my sons. The king will recognize the name of the commander of his enemy’s cavalry. I nip my lip. “Their father did his duty as he conceived it to be, Your Grace; he was loyal to the man he thought was king. My boys are innocent of anything.”

  “He left you these two sons?” He smiles down at my boys.

  “The best part of my fortune,” I say. “This is Richard and this is Thomas Grey.”

  He nods at my boys, who gaze up at him as if he were some kind of high-bred horse, too big for them to pet but a figure for awestruck admiration, and then he looks back to me. “I am thirsty,” he says. “Is your home near here?”

  “We would be honored . . .” I glance at the guard who rides with him. There must be more than a hundred of them. He chuckles. “They can ride on,” he decides. “Hastings!” The older man turns and waits. “You go on to Grafton. I will catch you up. Smollett can stay with me, and Forbes. I will come in an hour or so.”

  Sir William Hastings looks me up and down as if I am a pretty piece of ribbon for sale. I show him a hard stare in reply, and he takes off his hat and bows to me, throws a salute to the king, shouts to the guard to mount up.

  “Where are you going?” he asks the king.

  The boy-king looks at me.

  “We are going to the house of my father, Baron Rivers, Sir Richard Woodville,” I say proudly, though I know the king will recognize the name of a man who was high in the favor of the Lancaster court, fought for them, and once took hard words from him in person when York and Lancaster were daggers drawn. We all know of one another well enough, but it is a courtesy generally observed to forget that we were all loyal to Henry VI once, until these turned traitor.

  Sir William raises his eyebrow at his king’s choice for a stopping place. “Then I doubt that you’ll want to stay very long,” he says unpleasantly, and rides on. The ground shakes as they go by, and they leave us in warm quietness as the dust settles.

  “My father has been forgiven and his title restored,” I say defensively. “You forgave him yourself after Towton.”

  “I remember your father and your mother,