The White Princess (23 page)

“Who’s his master? A Portuguese?”

“Oh, I don’t know,” he says vaguely, but his gaze on my face never wavers. “I can’t remember. Is it Edward Brampton? D’you know of him? Ever heard of him?”

I frown as if I am trying to recall, though his name strikes a chord in my mind so loud that I think Henry must hear it like a tolling bell. Slowly, I shake my head. I swallow, but my throat is dry and I take a sip of wine. “Edward Brampton?” I query. “I recognize the name. I think he served my father? I’m not sure. Is he an Englishman?”

“A Jew,” Henry says contemptuously. “A Jew that was in England, converted to serve your father, indeed your father stood as his sponsor into the Church. So you must have heard of him, though you’ve forgotten him. He must have come to court. He’s not been in England since I came to the throne, and now he lives everywhere and nowhere, so he’s probably still a heretic
Jew, reverted to his heresy. He has this lad in his keeping, making claims, causing trouble for no reason. Your uncle will speak to him, I don’t doubt. Your uncle will prevail upon him to silence the lad. Your uncle Edward is very eager to serve me.”

“He is,” I agree. “We all want you to know that we are loyal to you.”

He smiles. “Well, here’s a little claimant whose loyalty I don’t want. Your uncle will no doubt silence him one way or another.”

I nod as if I am not much interested.

“You don’t want to see the lad?” he asks idly, as if offering me a treat. “This imposter? What if he is a bastard child of your father’s? Your half brother? Don’t you want to see him? Shall I tell Edward to bring the lad to court? You could take him into your household? Or shall I say he must be silenced where he is, overseas, far away?”

I shake my head. I imagine that the boy’s life depends upon what I say. I gamble that Henry is keenly watching me, expecting me to ask for the boy to be brought home. I think his little life may depend upon my appearance of indifference. “He’s of no interest to me,” I say, shrugging. “And it would irritate my mother. But you do what you think best.”

There is a little silence, in which I sip my wine. I offer to pour him another cup. The chink of silver jug against silver cup makes a noise like the counting of coins, of thirty pieces of silver.

The boy may be of no interest to me; but it seems he is of interest to others. In London there are the wildest rumors that both my brothers Edward and Richard escaped from imprisonment in the Tower years ago, almost as soon as our uncle Richard was crowned, and are making their way home from their hiding place, to claim the throne. The sons of York will walk in the garden of England again, this bitterly cold winter will turn to spring
with their coming, the white roses will bloom, and everyone will be happy.

Someone pins a ballad on my saddle when I am about to ride. I scan the lines; it is predicting the sun of York shining on England again and everyone being happy. At once I rip it from the pommel and take it to the king, leaving my horse waiting in the stable yard.

“I thought you should see this. What does it mean?” I ask Henry.

“It means that there are people who are prepared to print treason as well as tell lies,” he says grimly. He twitches it out of my hand. “It means there are people wasting their time setting treason to music.”

“What are you going to do with it?”

“Find the man that printed it and slit his ears,” he says bleakly. “Cut out his tongue. What are you going to do?”

I shrug as if I am quite indifferent to the poet who sang of the House of York, or the printer who published his poem. “Shall I go riding?” I ask him.

“You don’t care about this—” he gestures to the ballad in his hand “—this dross?”

I shake my head, my eyes wide. “No. Why should I? Does it matter at all?”

He smiles. “Not to you, it seems.”

I turn away. “People will always talk nonsense,” I say indifferently.

He catches my hand and kisses it. “You were right to bring it to me,” he says. “Always tell me whatever nonsense you hear, however unimportant it seems to you.”

“Of course,” I say.

He walks with me to the stable yard. “At least it reassures me about you.”

Then my own maid whispers to me that there was a great stir in the meat market of Smithfield when someone said that Edward, my little cousin Teddy, was escaped from the Tower and was planting his standard in Warwick Castle, and the House of York was rallying to his cause.

“Half the butcher apprentices said they should take their meat cleavers and march to serve him,” she says. “The others said they should march on the Tower and free him.”

I dare not even ask Henry about this, his face is so grim. We are all trapped inside the palace by the icy winds and sleet and snow that fall every day. Henry rides out on frozen roads in a quiet fury, while his mother spends all her time on her knees on the cold stone floors of the chapel. Every day brings more and more stories of stars that have been seen to dance in the cold skies, prophesying a white rose. Someone sees a white rose made from the frost on the grass at Bosworth at dawn. There are poems nailed to the door of Westminster Abbey. A gang of wherry boys sings carols under the windows of the Tower, and Edward of Warwick swings open his window and waves to them, and calls out “Merry Christmas!” The king and his mother walk stiffly as if they are frozen with horror.

“Well, they
are
frozen with horror,” my mother confirms cheerfully. “Their great fear is that the battle of Bosworth turns out not to be the end of the war but just another battle, just one of the many, many battles that have been. So many battles that people are forgetting their names. Their great fear is that the Cousins’ War goes on, only now with the House of Beaufort against York instead of Lancaster against York.”

“But who would fight for York?”

“Thousands,” my mother says shortly. “Tens of thousands. Nobody knows how many. Your husband has not made himself very beloved in the country, though God knows that he has tried. Those people who served him and had their rewards are looking for more than he can bring himself to give. Those that he has pardoned find they have to pay fees to him for their good behavior,
and then more fines as surety. This king’s pardon is more like a punishment for life than a true forgiveness. People resent it. Those who opposed him have seen no reason to change their minds. He’s not a York king like your father. He’s not beloved. He does not have a way with people.”

“He has to establish his rule,” I protest. He spends half his time looking behind him to see if his allies are still with him.”

She gives me a funny sideways smile. “You defend him?” she asks incredulously. “To me?”

“I don’t blame him for being anxious,” I say. “I don’t blame him for not being the sweet herb of March. I don’t blame him for not having a white rose made of snow or three suns in the sky shining on him. He can’t help that.”

At once her face softens. “Truly, a king like Edward comes perhaps once in a century,” she says. “Everyone loved him.”

I grit my teeth. “Charm is not a measure of a king,” I say irritably. “He can’t be king based on whether he’s charming or not.”

“No,” she says. “And Master Tudor is certainly not that.”

“What did you call him?”

She claps her hand over her mouth and her gray eyes dance. “Little Master Tudor, and his mother, Madonna Margaret of the Unending Self-Congratulation.”

I cannot help but laugh but then I wave my hand to still her. “No, hush. He can’t help how he is,” I say. “He was raised in hiding, he was brought up to be a pretender to the throne. People can only be charming when they’re confident. He can’t be confident.”

“Exactly,” she says. “So no one has any confidence in him.”

“But who would lead the rebels?” I ask. “There’s no one of age, there are no York commanders. We don’t have an heir.” At her silence I press her. “We don’t have an heir. Do we?”

Her eyes slide away from my question. “Edward of Warwick is the heir, of course, and if you’re looking for another heir to the House of York, there is your cousin John de la Pole. There’s his younger brother Edmund. They are both Edward’s nephews just as much as Edward of Warwick.”

“Descended from my aunt Elizabeth,” I point out. “The female line. Not the son of a royal duke, but the son of a duchess. And John has sworn loyalty and he serves in the privy council. Edmund too. And Edward, poor Teddy, has sworn loyalty and is in the Tower. We have all promised that he would not turn against Henry and we have all taught him to be loyal. In truth, there are no sons of York who would lead a rebellion against Henry Tudor—are there?”

She shrugs. “I’m sure I don’t know. All the people speak of a hero like a ghost or a sleeping saint, or a pretender. It would almost make you believe that there is an heir of York hidden out in the hills, a king waiting for the call to battle, sleeping like the true Arthur of England, ready to rise. People love to dream, so how should anyone contradict them?”

I take her hands. “Mother, please, let’s have the truth between us for once. I don’t forget that night, long ago, when we sent a page boy into the Tower instead of my brother Richard.”

She looks at me as if I am dreaming, like the people who hope for King Arthur to rise again; but I have a very clear memory of the poor boy from the streets of the City, whose parents sold him to us, assured that we needed him for nothing more than a little playacting, that we would send him back safely to them. I put the cap on his little head myself, and I drew up the scarf around his face, and warned him to say nothing. We told the men who came for my brother Richard that the little boy was the prince himself, we said he was ill with a sore throat and had lost his voice. Nobody could imagine that we would dare to create such an imposter. Of course, they wanted to believe us, and the old archbishop himself, Thomas Bourchier, took him away and told everyone that Prince Richard was in the Tower with his brother.

She does not glance to right or left; she knows that no one is nearby. But even alone with me, speaking in a whisper, she does not confirm or deny it either.

“You sent a page boy into the Tower, and you sent my little brother away,” I whisper. “You told me to say nothing about it.
Not to ask you, not to speak to anyone, not even to tell my sisters, and I never have. Only once you told me that he was safe. Once you told me that Sir Edward Brampton had brought him to you. I’ve never asked for more than that.”

“He is hidden in silence,” is all she says.

“Is he still alive?” I ask urgently. “Is he alive and is he going to come back to England for his throne?”

“He is safe in silence.”

“Is he the boy in Portugal?” I demand. “The boy that Uncle Edward has gone to see? Sir Edward Brampton’s page boy?”

She looks at me as if she would tell me the truth if she could. “How would I know?” she asks. “How do I know who is claiming to be a prince of York? In Lisbon, so far away? I’ll know him when I see him, I can tell you that. I will tell you when I see him, I can promise you that. But perhaps I’ll never see him.”

THE TOWER OF LONDON, SPRING 1487

We move the court to the City that is buzzing like a beehive waking to spring. It feels as if everyone is talking about princes and dukes and the House of York rising up again like a climbing plant bursting into leaf. Everyone has heard for certain from someone that the Yorks have a boy, an heir, that he is on a ship coming into Greenwich, that he has been hiding in a secret chamber in the Tower under a stone stair, that he is marching from Scotland, that he is going to be put on the throne by his own brother-in-law, Henry, that his sister the queen has him at court and is only waiting to reveal him to her astounded husband. That he is a page boy with an Englishman in Portugal, a boatman’s son in Flanders, hidden by his aunt the Dowager Duchess of Burgundy, asleep on a distant island, living off apples in the loft of his mother’s old house at Grafton, hidden in the Tower with his cousin Edward of Warwick. Suddenly, like butterflies in springtime, there are a thousand pretend boys, dancing about like motes in the sunlight, waiting for the word to come together into an army. The Tudors who thought they had taken the crown on a muddy field in the middle of England, who thought they had secured their line by trudging up the road to London, find themselves besieged by will-o’-the-wisps, defied by faeries. Everyone talks of a York heir, everyone knows someone who has seen him and
swears it is true. Everywhere Henry goes, people fall silent so that no whisper reaches his ears; but before and behind him there is a patter of sound like a warning drizzle before a storm of rain. The people of England are waiting for a new king to present himself, for a prince to rise like the spring tide and flood the world with white roses.