The White Princess (43 page)

I say none of these thoughts to Henry and he will not speak of fear. Instead, we go as if we are traveling on a wonderful progress through the county of Kent where the apples are thick in the orchards and the oasthouses are free with ale. We travel with musicians who play for us when we stop to dine in exquisite embroidered tents set up beside rivers, on beautiful hillsides or deep in the greenwood. Behind us comes an enormous cavalry—sixteen hundred horses and knights, and after them come the footsoldiers, twenty-five thousand of them, and all of them well shod and sworn to Henry’s service.

It reminds me of when my father was King of England and he would lead the court on a great progress around the grand houses and priories. For this short time we look like my parents’ heirs: we are young and blessed with good luck and wealth. In the eyes of everyone
we are as beautiful as angels, dressed in cloth of gold, riding behind waving standards. Beside us is the flower of England; all the greatest men are Henry’s commanders, and their wives and daughters are in my train. Behind them is a great army, mustered for Henry against an enemy they all hate. The summer weather smiles on us, the long sunny days invite us to ride out early and rest in the midday heat beside the glorious rivers or in the shade of the greenwood. We look like the king and queen that we should be, the center of beauty and power in this beautiful and powerful land.

I see Henry’s head rise up with dawning pride as he leads this mighty army through the heart of England; I see him start to ride like a king going to war. When we go through the little towns on the way and people call out for him, he lifts his gauntleted hand and waves, smiling back in greeting. At last he has found his pride in himself, at last he has found his confidence. With a greater army behind him than this part of England has ever seen, he smiles like a king who is firm on his throne, and I ride beside him and feel that I am where I should be: the beloved queen of a powerful king, a woman as richly blessed as my own lucky mother.

At night he comes to my room in an abbey or in a great house on the way, and he wraps his arms around me as if he is sure of his welcome. For the first time in our marriage I turn my head towards him, not away, and when he kisses me I put my arms on his broad shoulders and hold him close, offering him my mouth, my kiss. Gently, he puts me down on the bed and I don’t turn my face to the wall but I wrap my arms around him, my legs around him, and when he enters me, I ripple with the sensation of pleasure and welcome his touch for the first time in our marriage. In Sandwich Castle, for the first time ever, he comes naked to me and I move with him, consenting, and then inviting, and then finally begging him for more and he feels me melt beneath him as I hold him and cry out in pleasure.

We make love all night, as if we were newly married and newly discovering the beauty
of each other’s body. He holds me as if he will never leave me, and in the morning he carries me over to the window, wrapped in a fur, and kisses my neck, my shoulders, and finally my smiling lips, as we watch the Venetian galleys slicing their oars through the harbor water as they come in, to take his troops to France.

“Not so soon, not today! I can’t bear to let you go,” I whisper.

“That you should love me like this now!” he exclaims. “I have been waiting for this ever since I first met you. I have dreamed that you might want me, I have come to your bed night after night longing for your smile, hoping that there would come a night when you would not turn away.”

“I’ll never turn away again,” I swear.

The joy in his face is unmistakable, he looks like a man in love for the first time.

“Come back safely to me, you must come back safe,” I whisper urgently.

“Promise me that you won’t change. Promise me that I will come back and find you like this? Loving like this?”

I laugh. “Shall we swear an oath? You shall swear to come home safe, and I will promise that you will find me loving?”

“Yes,” he says. “I so swear,” and he puts one hand on his heart and the other in mine, and though I am laughing at the two of us, flushed from bed, handclasped, swearing to be true to each other like new lovers, I hold his hand and I promise to welcome him home as warmly as now when I see him set out.

“Because you love me at last,” he says, wrapping me in his arms, his lips to my hair.

“Because I love you at last,” I confirm. “I did not think that I ever would, I did not think that I ever could. But I do.”

“And you are glad of it,” he presses.

I smile and let him draw me back to the bed though the bugles outside are calling. “And I am glad of it,” I say.

Henry appoints our
son Arthur as Regent of England in his father’s absence: a solemn ceremony on the deck of his ship the
Swan.
Arthur is only six years old, but he will not hold my hand, he stands alone, as a prince must, while his father reads out the Latin proclamation of regency, and the lords all around him go down on one knee and swear that they will accept Arthur’s rule until Henry comes home safe again.

Arthur’s little face is grave, his hazel eyes serious. He is bareheaded, his brown hair with just a glint of copper lifting a little from his face in the breeze from the sea. He replies to his father in perfect Latin; he has learned the speech from his schoolmaster, and practiced it every day with me, and there are no mistakes. I can see that the lords are impressed with him, with his learning and with the set of his shoulders and the proud stance. He has been raised to be Prince of Wales and one day King of England, and he will be a good prince and a compelling king.

Behind him I see Henry’s uncle Jasper, filled with pride, seeing his own long-lost brother in this boy’s chestnut hair and grave face. Beside him is My Lady the King’s Mother, the linen of her wimple flapping slightly in the wind, her eyes fixed on her son’s face, not even looking at her grandson Arthur. For her, Henry going to war with France is as terrifying as if she were going defenseless into battle herself. She will be in an agony of anxiety until he comes home again.

She and I stand side by side on the harbor wall, demonstrating the unity of the houses of Lancaster and York as the sailors loose the ropes on the quayside and the barges either side of the great ship take the strain, and then we hear the roll of the drum and the rowers lean into the work and the barges and the ship move slowly away from the quay. Henry holds out his hand in a salute, taking care to look determined and kingly as the ship slides from the quayside out into the water of the harbor, and then into the channel, where we can hear the waves slap against the sides, and the sails ripple as they are unfurled and fill with wind. The Venetian galleys, heavily
loaded with his men, follow behind, their oars cleaving swiftly through the water.

“He’s going like a hero,” My Lady says passionately. “To defend Brittany and all of Christendom against the greed and wickedness of France.”

I nod as Arthur’s little hand creeps into mine, and I smile down into his grave face. “He will come home, won’t he?” he whispers.

“Oh yes,” I say. “See what a great army he has to lead? They’re certain to win.”

“He’ll be in terrible danger,” My Lady corrects me at once. “He will be at the forefront, I know it, and France is strong and a dangerous enemy.”

I don’t say that if that is the case it will be the first battle of his life where he has been anywhere near the front of the fighting, but I squeeze Arthur’s hand and say, “There’s no need for you to worry, anyway.”

There is no need for any of us to worry. Not me, not Maggie, whose husband rides with Henry, not Cecily, whose husband goes too; before they even land in France they are greeted by an envoy to negotiate a peace, and though Henry marches to Boulogne and sets a siege against the mighty walls, he never really expects to recapture the city for England, nor any of the old English lands in France. It was more of a gesture of chivalry towards his old ally of Brittany, and of warning to the King of France, than the first step of an invasion; but it frightens the French into a serious treaty and a promise of lasting peace.

GREENWICH PALACE, LONDON, WINTER 1492

Henry comes home to a triumph of his own ordering. He is welcomed as a hero into London and then sails down to Greenwich as a victor. There are many who think that he should have fought at least one pitched battle, since he went all that way with such a mighty army. The common soldiers were spoiling for a fight and wanted the profits of a victorious campaign. The lords were dreaming of regaining their lost lands in France. There are many to say that nothing was achieved but a handsome payment from France into the king’s growing treasury—a fortune for the king but nothing at all for the people of England.

I expect him to be angered by charges of cowardice or money-grubbing. But the man who comes home to me at Greenwich is suddenly careless about his reputation. He has won what he wanted, and it is not the safety of Brittany. He does not seem to care that he did not save Brittany from the French; surprisingly, he does not even care about the cost of taking out the army and bringing them home again. He is filled with a secret joy that I cannot understand.

The royal barge comes alongside the pier that stretches out into the green waters of the river, as smartly as ever. The rowers ship their oars and raise them high in salute. There is a roll of the drum on the barge and a shout from the trumpets on land.
Henry nods to the commander of the vessel and steps onshore. He smiles at the salutes from his court, puts a fatherly hand in blessing on Arthur’s little head, and kisses me on both cheeks and then on the lips. I can taste his triumph in his wine-sweet mouth.

“I have the boy,” he says in my ear. He is almost laughing with glee. “That’s what I wanted. That’s what I’ve achieved, that’s all that matters. I have the boy.”

I feel my smile of welcome dying on my face. Henry looks exultant, like a man who has won a great battle. But he did not fight a great battle, he fought nothing at all. He waves at the crowds who have gathered to see him, at the bobbing boats on the water, the cheering boatmen and waving fishermen. He takes my hand in his arm and we walk together down the pier and along the path through the garden, where his mother waits to greet him. He even walks with a new swagger, like a commander returned in triumph.

“The boy!” he repeats.

I look at our own boys, Arthur walking solemnly ahead in black velvet and Harry, just starting to toddle with his nursemaid holding his hand and veering around the path as he goes to left or right or stops abruptly for a leaf or a piece of gravel. If he takes too long she will scoop him up; the king wants to walk unimpeded. The king must stride along, his two boys going ahead of him to show that he has an heir, two heirs, and his house is established.

“Elizabeth is not very well,” I tell him. “She lies too quietly, and she does not kick or cry.”

“She will,” he says. “She’ll grow strong. Dear God, you have no idea what it means to me, that I have the boy.”

“The boy,” I say quietly. I know that he is not speaking of either of our boys. He means the boy who haunts him.

“He’s at the French court, treated like a lord,” Henry says bitterly. “He has his own court around him, half of your mother’s friends and many of the old York royal household have joined him. He’s housed with honor, good God! He sleeps in the same
room as Charles, the King of France, bedfellow to a king—why not, since he is known everywhere as Prince Richard? He rides out with the king, dressed in velvets, they hunt together, they are said to be the greatest of friends. He wears a red velvet cap with a ruby badge and three pendant pearls. Charles makes no secret of his belief that the boy is Richard. The boy carries himself like a royal duke.”