The White Princess (15 page)

“I have to have her with me!” It is a wail like that of a child. “You wouldn’t send your own mother away. She has to be with you all the time! You keep her close enough!”

“She serves our house,” he says. “I am asking your mother to serve our house too. And she is a beautiful woman still, and she knows how to be queen. If she were Queen of Scotland, we would all be safer.”

He stands. He puts his hands on either side of my thickening waist and looks down into my troubled face. “Ah, Elizabeth, I would do anything for you,” he says gently. “Don’t be troubled, not when you are carrying our son. Please don’t cry. It’s bad for you. It’s bad for the baby. Please—don’t cry.”

“We don’t even know if it is a son,” I say resentfully. “You say it all the time, but it doesn’t make it so.”

He smiles. “Of course it is a boy. How could a beautiful girl like you make anything for me but a handsome firstborn son?”

“I have to have my mother with me,” I stipulate. I look up into his face and catch a glimpse of an emotion I never expected to see. His hazel eyes are warm, his mouth is tender. He looks like a man in love.

“I need her in Scotland,” he says, but his voice is soft.

“I cannot give birth without her here. She has to be with me. What if something goes wrong?”

It is my greatest card, a trump.

He hesitates. “If she is with you for the birth of our boy?”

Sulkily I nod my head. “She must be with me till he is christened. I will be happy in my confinement only if she is with me.”

He drops a kiss on the top of my head. “Ah, then I promise,” he says. “You have my word. You bend me to your will like the enchantress you are. And she can go to Scotland after the birth of your baby.”

WESTMINSTER PALACE, LONDON, MARCH 1486

His mother is beside herself, planning and commanding the royal progress. My mother, veteran of progresses, pageants, and visitations, observes but says nothing as My Lady the King’s Mother disappears into the royal wardrobe with tailors, seamstresses, shoemakers, and hatmakers for days at a time, trying to create a wardrobe of clothes for her son which will dazzle the Northerners into accepting him as a king. Like any usurping family, uncertain of their worth, she wants him to look every inch the part. He has to play the king; mere being is not enough. To the sly amusement of my mother and myself, Lady Margaret has only the example of my father to go on, and this leaves her utterly at a loss. My father was exceptionally tall and exceptionally handsome, and he only had to walk into a room to dominate the assembly of people. He revelled in the latest fashions and the most beautiful rich cloths and color. He was infallibly attractive to women, unable to help himself, greedy for their attention; and God knows they could not restrain their desires. A room full of women was always half in love with my father, and their husbands torn between admiration and envy. Best of all, he had my exceptionally beautiful mother always at his side and a quiverful of exquisite daughters trailing behind him. We were always a stained-glass window in motion, an icon
of beauty and grace. My Lady the King’s Mother knows that we were a royal family beyond compare: regal, fruitful, beautiful, rich. She was at our court as a lady-in-waiting and she saw for herself how the country saw us, as fairy-tale monarchs. She is driving herself quite mad trying to make her awkward, paler, quieter son match up.

She solves the problem by drowning him in jewels. He never goes out without a precious brooch in his hat, or a priceless pearl at his throat. He never rides without gloves encrusted with diamonds, or a saddle with stirrups of gold. She bedecks him in ermine as if she were decorating a relic for an Easter procession; and still he looks like a young man stretched beyond his abilities, living beyond his means, ambitious and anxious all at once, his face pale against purple velvet.

“I wish you could come with me,” he says miserably one afternoon when we are in the stable yards of Westminster Palace, choosing the horses he will ride.

I am so surprised that I look twice at him to see if he is mocking me.

“You think I am joking? No. I really wish you could come with me. You’ve done this sort of thing all your life. Everyone says that you used to open the dancing at your father’s court and talk to the ambassadors. And you have been all round the country, haven’t you? You know most of the cities and towns?”

I nod. Both my father and Richard were well loved, especially in the northern counties. We rode out of London to visit the other cities of England every summer, and were greeted as if we were angels descending from heaven. Most of the great houses of every county celebrated our arrival with glorious pageants and feasts; most cities gave us purses of gold. I couldn’t count how many mayors and councillors and sheriffs have kissed my hand from when I was a little girl on my mother’s lap to when I could give a thank-you speech in faultless Latin on my own.

“I have to show myself everywhere,” he says apprehensively. “I have to inspire loyalty. I have to convince people that I will
bring them peace and wealth. And I have to do all this with nothing more than a smile and wave as I ride by?”

I can’t help but laugh. “It does sound impossible,” I say. “But it’s not so bad. Remember, everyone on the roadside has come out just to see you. They want to see a great king, that’s the show they’ve turned out for. They’re expecting a smile and a wave. They are hoping for a happy lord. You just have to look the part and everyone is reassured. And remember that they have nothing else to look at—really, Henry, when you know England a little better you will see that almost nothing ever happens here. The crops fail, it rains too much in spring, it’s too dry in summer. Offer the people a well-dressed and smiling young king and you will be the most wonderful thing they have seen in many years. These are poor people without entertainment. You will be the greatest show they have ever seen—especially since your mother is exhibiting you like a holy icon, wrapped in velvet and studded with jewels.”

“It all takes so long,” he grumbles. “We have to stop at practically every house and castle on the road, to hear a loyal address.”

“Father used to say that while the speeches were going on he looked over their heads at the numbers in the crowd and worked out what they could afford to lend him,” I volunteer. “He never listened to a word that anyone was saying, he counted the cows in the fields and the servants in the yard.”

Henry is immediately interested. “Loans?”

“He always thought it was better to go straight to the people than go to Parliament for taxes, where they would argue with him as to how the country should be run, or whether he might go to war. He used to borrow from everyone that he visited. And the more passionate the speech and the more exaggerated the praise, the greater the sum of money he asked for, after dinner.”

Henry laughs and puts an arm around my broad waist and draws me to him, in the stable yard, before everyone. “And did they always lend him money?”

“Almost always,” I say. I don’t pull away but neither do I lean
towards him. I let him hold me, as he has a right to do, as a husband can hold his wife. And I feel the warmth of his hand as he spreads his fingers over my belly. It’s comforting.

“I’ll do that then,” he says. “Because your father was right, it’s an expensive business trying to rule this country. Everything that I am granted in taxes from Parliament I have to give away in gifts to keep the loyalty of the lords.”

“Oh, don’t they serve you for love?” I ask nastily. I cannot stop my sharp tongue.

At once, he releases me. “I think we both know that they don’t.” He pauses. “But I doubt they loved your father that much, either.”

WESTMINSTER PALACE, LONDON, APRIL 1486

After weeks of preparation they are finally ready to leave. Lady Margaret is to ride out with her son for the first two days and then come back to London. If she dared, she would make the whole royal progress with him, but she is torn. She wants to be with him, she always wants to be with him, she can hardly bear to let him out of her sight; but at the same time, she cannot bear not to supervise my daily routine and keep me under constant control. She can trust no one else to order my food, to patrol my twice-daily walks, and provide me with uplifting books of sermons to read. No one but she can judge how much food or wine or ale should be served at my table, and only she can run the royal household as she wants it. It is unbearable to her that, in her absence, I might run it as I like. Or even worse—that the palace might be commanded once again by its former mistress: my mother.

Lady Margaret is so impressed with her own rule making, by the quality of her advice, that she starts to write down the orders that she gives out in my household, so that everything will always be done exactly as she has devised, for years in the future, even after her death. I imagine her, beyond the grave, still ruling the world as my daughter and my granddaughters consult the great book of the royal household, and learn that they are not to eat
fresh fruit, nor to sit too close to the fire. They are to avoid overheating and not to take a chill.

“Clearly, no one has ever had a baby before,” says my mother, who had twelve.

Henry writes to his mother every other day and reports how he is greeted on the road as he makes his slow progress north, what families he meets, and what gifts he receives on the way. To me, he writes once a week, telling me where he is staying that evening, that he is in good health, and that he wishes me well. I reply with a formal note, and give my unsealed letter to his mother, who reads it before folding it in her own packet to him.

In Lent, the court fasts, eating no meat, but My Lady the King’s Mother decides that this is not a rich enough diet for me. She sends a message to the Pope himself to request that I be allowed to eat meat throughout the season, to support the growth of the baby. Nothing is more important than a Tudor son and heir, not even her famous piety.

On the death of Thomas Bourchier, Lady Margaret names her favorite and former conspirator John Morton for the post of Archbishop of Canterbury, and he is swiftly appointed. I am sorry that my old kinsman will not christen my son or put my crown on my head. But John Morton is like a well-bred hound, always with us, never a nuisance. He sits hogging the best place by the fire and makes me feel that he is my guardian and I am lucky to have him there. He is everywhere in the court, listening to everyone, befriending everyone, smoothing over difficulties and—without a doubt—reporting everything back to My Lady. Wherever I go, he is there, interested in all my doings, quick with sympathetic spiritual advice, constantly alert to my needs and my thoughts, chatting with my ladies. It does not take me long to realize that he knows everything that is going on at court, and I don’t doubt that he reports it all to her. He has been My Lady’s confessor and greatest friend for years, and he assures her that I should eat red meat, well cooked, and that he himself will answer for the papal permission. He pats my hand and tells me that
nothing matters more than my health, nothing matters more to him than that I am well and strong, that the baby grows, and he assures me that God feels just the same.

Then, after Easter, while my mother and my two sisters are sewing baby clothes in My Lady the King’s Mother’s presence chamber, a messenger, covered with dust from the road, comes in all his dirt to the doorway, saying he has an urgent message from His Grace the King.

For once, she does not look down her long nose, insist on her own grandeur, and send him away to change his clothes. She takes one astounded look at his grave face and admits him at once into her private room, and goes in behind him, closing the door herself, so that no one can overhear the news that he brings.

My mother’s needle is suspended over her sewing as she raises her head and watches the man go by. Then she gives a little sigh, as a woman quietly contented with her world, and goes back to her work. Cecily and I exchange one anxious look.

“What is it?” I ask my mother, as soft as a breath.

Her gray eyes are downcast, on her work. “How would I know?”

The door to My Lady’s private room is closed for a long time. The messenger comes out, walks through all of us ladies as if he has been commanded to march by saying nothing, and still the door remains closed. Only at dinnertime does My Lady come out and take her seat on the great chair under the cloth of estate. Grim-faced, she waits in silence for the head of her household to tell her that dinner is served.