The White Princess (26 page)

I go to the nursery. I find My Lady the King’s Mother sitting in the big chair in the corner, watching the nurse changing the baby’s clout and wrapping him tight in his swaddling clothes. It is unusual for her to come here, but I see from her strained face and the beads in her hand that she is praying for his safety.

“Is it bad news?” I ask quietly.

She looks at me reproachfully, as if it is all my fault. “They say that the Duchess of Burgundy, your aunt, has found a general who will take her pay and do her bidding,” she says. “They say he is all but unbeatable.”

“A general?”

“And he is recruiting an army.”

“Will they come here?” I whisper. I look out of the window to the river and the quiet fields beyond.

“No,” she says determinedly. “For Jasper will stop them, Henry will stop them, and God Himself will stop them.”

On my way to my mother’s chambers, I hurry past the king’s rooms, but the door to the great presence chamber is still closed. He has most of the lords gathered together, and they will be
frantically trying to judge what new threat this presents to the Tudor throne, how much they should fear, what they should do.

I find I am quickening my pace, my hand to my mouth. I am afraid of what is threatening us, and I am also afraid of the defense that Henry will mount against his own people that might be more violent and deadly than an actual invasion.

My mother’s rooms are closed too, the doors tightly shut, and there is no servant waiting outside to swing open the doors for me. The place is quiet—too quiet. I push open the door myself, and look at the empty room spread out in front of me like a tableau in a pageant before the actors arrive. None of her ladies is here, her musicians are absent, a lute leaning against a wall. All her things are untouched: her chairs, her tapestries, her book on a table, her sewing in a box; but she is missing. It seems as if she has gone.

Like a child, I can’t believe it. I say, “Mother? Lady Mother?” and I step into the quiet sunny presence chamber and look all around me.

I open the door to her privy chamber and it is empty too. There is a scrap of sewing left on one of the chairs, and a ribbon on the window seat, but nothing else. Helplessly, I pick up the ribbon as if it might be a sign, I twist it in my fingers. I cannot believe how quiet it is. The corner of a tapestry stirs in the draft from the door, the only movement in the room. Outside a wood pigeon coos, but that is the only sound. I say again: “Mama? Lady Mother?”

I tap on the door to her bedroom and swing it open, but I don’t expect to find her there. Her bed is stripped of her linen, the mattress lies bare. The wooden posts are stripped of her bed curtains. Wherever she has gone, she has taken her bedding with her. I open the chest at the foot of her bed, and find her clothes have gone too. I turn to the table where she sits while her maid combs her hair; her silvered mirror has gone, her ivory combs, her golden hairpins, her cut-glass phial of oil of lilies.

Her rooms are empty. It is like an enchantment; she has silently disappeared, in the space of a morning, and all in a moment.

I turn on my heel at once and go to the best rooms, the queen’s rooms, where My Lady the King’s Mother spends her days among her women, running her great estates, maintaining her power while her women sew shirts for the poor and listen to readings from the Bible. Her rooms are busy with people coming and going; I can hear the buzz of happy noise through the doors as I walk towards them, and when they are swung open and I am announced, I enter to see My Lady, seated under a cloth of gold like a queen, while around her are her own ladies and among them my mother’s companions, merged into one great court. My mother’s ladies look at me wide-eyed, as if they would whisper secrets to me; but whoever has taken my mother has made sure that they are silent.

“My Lady,” I say, sweeping her the smallest of curtseys due to my mother-in-law and mother to the king. She rises and executes the tiniest of bobs, and then we kiss each other’s cold cheeks. Her lips barely touch me, as I hold my breath as if I don’t want to inhale the smoky smell of incense that always hangs in her veiled headdress. We step back and take the measure of the other.

“Where is my mother?” I ask flatly.

She looks grave as if she were not ready to dance for joy. “Perhaps you should speak with my son the king.”

“He is in his chambers with his council. I don’t want to disturb him. But I shall do so and tell him that you sent me, if that is what you wish. Or can you tell me where my mother is. Or don’t you know? Are you just pretending to knowledge?”

“Of course I know!” she says, instantly affronted. She looks around at the avid faces and gestures to me that we should go through to an inner chamber, where we can talk alone. I follow her. As I go by my mother’s ladies I see that some of them are missing; my half sister Grace, my father’s bastard, is not here. I hope she has gone with my mother, wherever she is.

My Lady the King’s Mother closes the door herself, and gestures that I should sit. Careful of protocol, even now, we sit simultaneously.

“Where is my mother?” I say again.

“She was responsible for the rebellion,” My Lady says quietly. “She sent money and servants to Francis Lovell, she had messages from him. She knew what he was doing and she advised and supported him. She told him which households would hide him and give him men and arms outside York. While I was planning the king’s royal progress, she was planning a rebellion against him, planning to ambush him on his very route. She is the enemy of your husband and your son. I am very sorry for you, Elizabeth.”

I bristle, hardly hearing her. “I don’t need your pity!”

“You do,” she presses on. “For it is you and your husband that your own mother is plotting against. It is your death and downfall she is planning. She worked for Lovell’s rebellion and now she writes secretly to her sister-in-law in Flanders urging her to invade.”

“No. She would not.”

“We have proof,” she says. “There’s no doubt. I am sorry for it. This is a great shame to fall on you and your family. A disgrace to your family name.”

“Where is she?” I ask. My greatest fear is that they have taken her to the Tower, that she will be kept where her sons were held, and that she won’t come out either.

“She has retired from the world,” Lady Margaret says solemnly.

“What?”

“She has seen the error of her ways and gone to confess her sins and live with the good sisters at Bermondsey Abbey. She has chosen to live there. When my son put the evidence of her conspiracy before her, she accepted that she had sinned and that she would have to go.”

“I want to see her.”

“Certainly, you can go to see her,” Lady Margaret says quietly. “Of course.” I see a little hope flare in her veiled eyes. “You could stay with her.”

“Of course I’m not going to stay in Bermondsey Abbey. I shall visit her, and I shall speak with Henry, as she must come back to court.”

“She cannot have wealth and influence,” Lady Margaret says. “She would use it against your husband and your son. I know that you love her dearly, but, Elizabeth—she has become your enemy. She is no mother to you and your sisters anymore. She was providing funds to the men who hope to throw down the Tudor throne; she was giving them advice, sending them messages. She was plotting with Duchess Margaret, who is mustering an army. She was living with us, playing with your child, our precious prince, seeing you daily, and yet working for our destruction.”

I rise from my chair and go to the window. Outside the first swallows of summer are skimming along the surface of the river, twisting and turning in flight, their bellies a flash of cream as if they are glad to be dipping their beaks into their own reflections, playing with the sweet water of the Thames. I turn back. “Lady Margaret, my mother is not dishonorable. And she would never do anything to hurt me.”

Slowly she shakes her head. “She insisted that you marry my son,” she says. “She demanded it, as the price of her loyalty. She was present at the birth of the prince. She was honored at his christening, she is his godmother. We have honored her and housed her and paid her. But now she plots against her own grandson’s inheritance and strives to put another on his throne. This is dishonorable, Elizabeth. You cannot deny that she is playing a double game, a shameful game.”

I put my hands over my face, so that I can shut out her expression. If she looked triumphant I would simply hate her, but she looks horrified, as if she feels, like me, that everything we have been trying to do is going to be pulled apart.

“She and I have not always agreed.” She appeals to me. “But
I did not see her leave court with any pleasure. This is a disaster for us as well as for her. I hoped we would make one family, one royal family standing together. But she was always pretending. She has been untrue to us.”

I can’t defend her; I bow my head and a little moan of horror escapes through my gritted teeth.

“She’s not at peace,” Lady Margaret concludes. “She is going on and on fighting the war that you Yorks have lost. She’s not made peace with us, and now she’s at war with you, her own daughter.”

I give a little wail and sink down in the window seat, my hands hiding my face. There is a silence as Lady Margaret crosses the room and seats herself heavily beside me.

“It’s for her son, isn’t it?” she asks wearily. “That’s the only claim she would fight for in preference to yours. That’s the only pretender that she would put against her grandson. She loves Arthur as well as we do, I know that. The only claim she would favor over his would be that of her own son. She must think that one of her boys, Richard or Edward, is still alive and she hopes to put him on the throne.”

“I don’t know, I don’t know!” I am crying now, I can hardly speak. I can hardly hear her through my sobs.

“Well, who is it?” she suddenly shouts, flashing out into rage. “Who else could it be? Who could she put above her own grandson? Who can she prefer to our Prince Arthur? Arthur that was born at Winchester, Arthur of Camelot? Who can she prefer to him?”

Dumbly, I shake my head. I can feel the hot tears pooling in my icy hands and making my face wet.

“She would throw you down for no one else,” Lady Margaret whispers. “Of course it is one of the boys. Tell me, Elizabeth. Tell me all that you know so that we can make your son, Arthur, safe in his inheritance. Does your mother have one of her boys hidden somewhere? Is he with your aunt in Flanders?”

“I don’t know,” I say helplessly. “She would never tell me
anything. I said I don’t know, and truly, I don’t know. She made sure that there was never anything that I could tell you. She did not want me ever to have an inquisition like this. She tried to protect me from it, so I don’t know.”

Henry comes to my rooms with his court before dinner, a tight, unconvincing smile on his face, playing the part of a king, trying to hide his fear that he is losing everything.

“I’ll talk with you later,” he says in a hard undertone. “When I come to your room tonight.”

“My lord . . .” I whisper.

“Not now,” he says firmly. “Everyone needs to see that we are united, that we are as one.”

“My mother cannot be held against her will,” I stipulate. I think of my cousin in the Tower, my mother in Bermondsey Abbey. “I cannot tolerate my family being held. Whatever you suspect. I will not bear it.”

“Tonight,” he says. “When I come to your rooms. I’ll explain.”

My cousin Maggie gives me one single aghast look and then comes behind me, picks up my train, and straightens it out as my husband takes my hand and leads me into dinner before the court, and I smile, as I must do, to the left and to the right, and wonder what my mother will have for her dinner tonight, while the court, that once was her court, is merry.