The White Princess (72 page)

Lady Katherine comes to my bedroom like a woman heading for refuge. I hear her quick tread approach the outer door, and the slap of her leather slippers running rapidly through my privy chamber, where the conversation of my ladies-in-waiting is suspended as she goes by, then she taps on my door and my maid opens it a crack.

“You can come in,” I say shortly. I am alone, seated on a chair at the window, looking outwards to the river that my mother loved, listening to the low buzz of talk from my rooms behind me, and the distant cry of the seagulls over the water as they swoop and wheel, their white wings very bright against the gray of the sky.

She looks around the empty room for a companion and sees that I am solitary, though a queen is never on her own.

“Can I sit with you?” she asks, her pale face like a desolate child’s. “Forgive me, I cannot bear to be alone.”

She is wearing black again, anticipating widowhood. I feel a swift unfair pang of envy; she can show her grief, but I, about to lose a cousin and the boy who said he was my brother, have to maintain the illusion of normality in a Tudor-green dress with a smiling face. I cannot recognize the boy in death any more than I could in life.

“Come in,” I say.

She enters and pulls up a stool to sit beside me. She has her lace making with her, his beautiful white collar is almost complete, but for once her hands are still. The collar is nearly made but the throat that it was going to encircle will wear a rope halter instead. She looks from her work to me and she sighs, and leaves it aside.

“Lady Margaret Pole has arrived,” she remarks.

“Maggie?”

She nods. “She went straight to the king to ask for mercy for her brother.”

I don’t ask her what the king said. We wait until I hear the challenge at the presence chamber door, the opening of the inner doors, the embarrassed silence that falls as Margaret crosses my privy chamber and the women watch her pass by to my bedroom door. No one can find anything to say to a woman whose brother is to be executed for treason. Then she taps on the door, and I rise up and in a moment we are holding each other, clinging together and looking into the other’s strained face.

“His Grace says there is nothing he can do,” Margaret remarks. “I went down on my knees to him. I laid my face on his shoe.”

I put my wet cheek against hers. “I asked him too, Lady Katherine as well. He is decided. I don’t see what we can do but wait.”

Margaret releases me and sinks to a stool beside me. Nobody says anything, there is nothing to say.
The three of us, still hoping like fools, clasp hands and say nothing.

It grows dark, but I don’t call for candles; we let the gray light seep into the room and we sit in the twilight. Then I hear a knock on the outer door, and the ring of riding boots on the floor, and one of my ladies peeps around the bedroom door to say: “Will you see the Marquis of Dorset, Your Grace?”

I rise to my feet as my half brother, Thomas Grey, great survivor that he is, comes into the room and looks around at the three of us. “I thought you would want to know at once,” he says without introduction.

“We do,” I say.

“He’s dead,” he says, before we have time to build any false hopes. “He died well. He confessed and died in Christ.”

Lady Katherine makes a little choking noise and puts her face in her hands. Margaret crosses herself.

“Did he confess the imposture?” I ask.

“He said that he was not the boy that he had pretended to be,” Thomas says. “He had been commanded, if he wanted a merciful death, to tell the crowd, to tell everyone that there was no hope of a living York prince. So he told them that: he was not the boy.”

I can feel a little scream of laughter growing inside me, bubbling in my throat. “He told them he was not the boy that he had pretended to be?”

Thomas looks at me. “Your Grace, he swore he would leave no one in any doubt. The king allowed him to be hanged and not gutted, but only if he made everything clear.”

I can’t help myself, my peal of laughter fights its way out of my grim lips and I laugh aloud. Katherine looks shocked. “He admitted he was not the boy that he had said? When earlier, at Exeter, in his written confession, they made him say that he was the boy Perkin!”

“It was clear to everyone what he meant, if you had been there—” my half brother checks for we all know I could not have been there “—but if you
had
been there you would have seen him penitent.”

“And what name did they call him?” I ask, recovering myself. “As they led him to the scaffold?”

Thomas shakes his head. “They didn’t name him, not that I heard.”

“He died without being given or acknowledging a name?”

Thomas nods. “That’s how it was.”

I rise to my feet and open the shutters to look out over the dark
river. A few lights are bobbing, reflected on the water, as I listen to hear any noise, any singing. It is the feast of St. Clement, and I can hear a choir, very faintly in the distance, a sweet sad singing like a lament.

“Was he in pain?” Lady Katherine rises to her feet, white-faced. “Did he suffer?”

Thomas faces her. “He went up to the scaffold with courage,” he said. “His hands were tied behind his back and they helped him gently up the ladder. There were hundreds there, thousands, pushing to see, they had built the scaffold very high so that everyone could see him. But there was no one catcalling or shouting. It was as if they were sorry. Or curious. Some people were crying. It wasn’t like a traitor’s execution at all.”

She nods rapidly, swallowing tears.

“He spoke very briefly, saying he was not who he had pretended to be, then he went up the ladder and they put the noose around his neck. He looked around for a moment, just for a moment, as if he thought something might happen . . .”

“Was he hoping for a pardon?” she breathes, her face agonized. “I could not get him a pardon. Did he think he might be pardoned?”

“Perhaps a miracle,” Thomas suggests. “He looked around and then he bent his head and prayed and they took the ladder out from under his feet and he dropped.”

“Was it quick?” Margaret whispers.

“It took an hour, or perhaps more,” Thomas said. “No one was allowed close to him, so nobody could drag hold of his feet and break his neck to make it quicker. But he hung quietly enough, and then he was gone. He died like a brave man, and the people at the front of the scaffold were praying for him, all the time.”

Lady Katherine drops to her knees and bows her head in prayer, Margaret closes her eyes. Thomas looks from one to another of us, three grieving women.

“So it’s over,” I say.
“This whole long joust of fear and playacting and deception and deceit is over.”

“Except for Teddy,” Margaret says.

Margaret and I go together to the king to try to save Teddy but he will not see us. Margaret’s husband, Sir Richard, comes to me in my rooms and begs me not to intercede for his wife’s only brother. “Better for us all if he is put to the death than returned to that prison,” he says bluntly. “Better for us all if the king does not think of Margaret as a woman of the House of York. Better for us all if the young man dies now, without a rebellion forming around him again. Please, Your Grace, teach Margaret to see this with patience. Please, teach her to let her brother go. It’s been no life for him, not since he was a little boy. Let it end here, and then perhaps people will forget that my son is of the House of York and he, at least, will be safe.”

I hesitate.

“The king is hunting Edmund de la Pole,” he says. “The king wants all of the House of York sworn to his service or dead. Please, Your Grace, tell Margaret to give up her brother that she may keep her son.”

“Like me?” I whisper, too low for him to hear.

WESTMINSTER PALACE, LONDON, 28 NOVEMBER 1499

On the day of Teddy’s execution there is a great storm which thunders over the palace, and the fury of lightning makes us close the shutters and gather around the fires. It pours down on Tower Green, making the grass wet and treacherous in the afternoon as Teddy walks unsteadily along the path to the scaffold of wood, where the black-masked headsman waits with his axe. There is a priest with him, and witnesses before the scaffold, but Teddy sees no friendly face though he looks around for someone to wave at. He was always taught to smile and wave when he saw a crowd, he remembers that one of the House of York must always smile and acknowledge their friends.

There is a clap of lightning that makes him stop in his tracks like a nervous colt. He has never been out in a storm. For thirteen years, he has not felt rain on his face.

My half brother Thomas Grey tells me that he thinks that Teddy did not know what was going to happen to him. He confesses his little sins and gives a penny to the headsman when they tell him to do so. He was always obedient, always trying to please. He puts his fair York head down on the block and he stretches out his arms in the gesture of assent. But I don’t think he ever knew that he was agreeing to the scything down of the axe and the end of his little life.

Henry will not dine in the great hall of Westminster that night, his mother is at prayer. In their absence, I have to walk in alone, at the head of my ladies, Katherine behind me in deepest black, Margaret wearing a gown of dark blue. The hall is hushed, the people of our own household quiet and surly, as if some joy has been taken from us, and we will never get it back.

There is something different about the hall as I walk through the silent court and when I am seated, and can look around, I see what has changed. It is how they have seated themselves. Every night the men and women of our extensive household come in to dine and sit in order of precedence and importance, men on one side, women on the other of the great hall. Each table seats about twelve diners and they share the common dishes that are placed in the center of the table. But tonight it is different; some tables are overcrowded, some have empty places. I see that they have grouped themselves regardless of tradition or precedent.

Those who befriended the boy, those who were of the House of York, those who served my mother and father or whose fathers served my mother and father, those who love me, those who love my cousin Margaret and remember her brother Teddy—they have chosen to sit together; and there are many, many tables in the great hall where they are seated in utter silence, as if they have sworn a vow never to speak again, and they look around them saying nothing.

The other tables are those that have taken Henry’s side. Many of them are old Lancastrian families, some of them were in his mother’s household or serve her wider family, some came over with him to fight at Bosworth, some, like my half brother Thomas Grey or my brother-in-law Thomas Howard, spend every day of their lives trying to show their loyalty to the new Tudor house. They are trying to appear as usual, leaning across the half-empty tables, talking unnaturally loudly, finding things to say.

Almost without trying to, the court has sorted itself into those who are in mourning tonight, wearing gray or black or navy ribbons pinned to their jerkins or carrying dark gloves, and those who are trying, loudly and cheerfully, to behave as if nothing has happened.