The White Princess (9 page)

WESTMINSTER PALACE, LONDON, DECEMBER 1485

Again the royal herald comes to the door with the news that the king proposes the pleasure of a visit with us. But this time he intends to dine, and about twenty of his court will come with him. My mother commands the groom of the servery, the groom of the kitchens, and the groom of the ewery to present themselves to her with a menu of dishes and wines that can be prepared and served this very day, and sets them to work. She has commanded banquets with scores of dishes served to hundreds of people when she was queen in this very palace and my father the most beloved King of England. She takes a pleasure in being able to show Henry, a man who spent fifteen years hanging on the fringes of the little court of Brittany, exiled from England and in fear of his life, how a truly great palace should be run.

The firewood boy toils up the stairs with another bath, and the Warwick children are banished to their rooms and told not to come downstairs, nor even to be seen at the windows.

“Why not?” Margaret asks me, slipping into my room behind the maids carrying an armful of warm linen and a bottle of rosewater for me to rinse my hair. “Does your lady mother think that Teddy is not quick enough to meet the king?” She flushes. “Is she ashamed of us?”

“Mother doesn’t want the king distracted by the sight of a York boy,” I say shortly. “It’s nothing to do with you, or Edward. Henry knows about you both, of course, you can be sure that his mother, in her careful audit of everything that England holds, has not forgotten you. She has made you her wards; but you’re safer out of sight.”

She pales. “You don’t think the king would take Teddy away?”

“No,” I say. “But there’s no need for them to dine together. It’s better if we don’t throw them together, surely. Besides, if Teddy tells Henry that he is expecting to be king, it would be awkward.”

She gives a little laugh. “I wish no one had ever told him that he was next in line for the throne,” she says. “He took it so much to heart.”

“He’s better out of the way until Henry is accustomed to everything,” I say. “And Teddy is a darling, but he can’t be trusted not to speak out.”

She glances around at the preparations for my bath, and the laying out of my new gown, brought from the City this very day by the dressmaker, in Tudor green with love knots at the shoulders. “Do you mind very much, Elizabeth?”

I shrug my shoulders, denying my own pain. “I am a princess of York,” I say. “I have to do this, I would always have had to marry someone to suit my father’s plans. I was betrothed in the cradle. I have no choice; but I never expected to have a choice—except once, and that feels like an enchanted time now, like a dream. When your time comes, you will have to marry where you are ordered too.”

“Does it make you sad?” she asks, she is such a dear serious girl.

I shake my head. “I feel nothing,” I tell her the truth. “That’s perhaps the worst thing. I don’t feel anything at all.”

Henry’s court arrives on time, handsomely dressed, with shy half-hidden smiles. Half of his court is composed of old friends of ours; most of us are related by marriage if not by blood. There are many things left unsaid as the lords come in and greet us, just as they used to do when we were the royal family, entertaining them here, at the palace.

My cousin John de la Pole, who Richard named as his heir before Bosworth, is there with his mother, my aunt Elizabeth. She and all her family are now loyal Tudors and greet us with careful smiles.

My other aunt, Katherine, now carries the name of Tudor, and walks on the arm of the king’s uncle Jasper; but she curtseys to my mother as low as she always did, and rises up to kiss her warmly.

My uncle Edward Woodville, my mother’s own brother, is among the Tudor court, an honored and trusted friend of the new king. He has been with Henry since he went into exile, and he fought in his army at Bosworth. He bows low over my mother’s hand, then kisses her on both cheeks as her brother, and I hear his whisper: “Good to see you back in your rightful place, Lizzie-Your-Grace!”

Mother has arranged an impressive feast with twenty-two courses, and after everyone has eaten and the plates and the trestle tables have been cleared away, my sisters Cecily and Anne dance before the court.

“Please, Princess Elizabeth, dance for us,” the king says briefly to me.

I look to my mother; we had agreed that I would not dance. Last time I danced in these rooms it was the Christmas feast and I was wearing a dress of silk as rich as Queen Anne’s own, made to the same pattern as the queen’s, as if to force a comparison between her and me—her junior by ten years; and her husband the king, Richard, could not take his eyes off me. The whole court knew that he was falling in love with me and that he would leave his old sick wife to be with me. I danced with my sisters, but he
saw only me. I danced before hundreds of people, but only for him.

“If you please,” Henry says, and I meet his straight hazel gaze and see that I can make no excuse.

I rise from my seat and put out my hand to Cecily, who will have to be my partner, whether she likes it or not, and the musicians strike up a saltarello. Cecily has danced with me many times before King Richard, and I can see by the sharp twist of her mouth that she is thinking of that too. She may feel like a slave having to amuse a sultan but, in this instance, I am the one most humiliated—and this is a comfort to her. It’s a fast dance, with a hop or a skip at the end of each step, and we are both quick-footed and graceful. We whirl round the room, partnering each other and then dance off to other partners and meet back again in the center. The musicians end with a flourish and we curtsey to the king and to each other and go back to stand beside my mother, a little rosy and damp and breathless, as the musicians take to the floor and play for the king.

He listens with attention, one hand tapping out the rhythm on the arm of his chair. Clearly he has a love of music and when they close with a flourish, he rewards them with a piece of gold, an adequate reward; but far from princely. Watching him, I understand that he is as careful with money as his mother—this is not a young man raised to think that the world owed him a throne. This is not a young man accustomed to a king’s fortune who spends it gladly. Not a man like my Richard, who understood that a nobleman must live like a lord and spread his good fortune among his people. Then they play for general dancing and the king leans to my mother and says that he would like some time with me, alone.

“Of course, Your Grace.” She is about to walk away from us and take the girls with her, leaving us on our own at the end of the great hall.

“Alone and undisturbed.” He stops her with a gesture of his hand. “In a private room.”

She hesitates, and I can almost see her calculating. Firstly, he is the king. Secondly, we are betrothed; and then finally her decision: he cannot, in any case, be refused. “You can be quite alone in the private chamber behind the great table,” she says. “I will see that you are not disturbed.”

He nods and rises to his feet. The musicians stop playing, the court sweeps down into a hundred bows and then rises up avidly to watch us as King Henry holds out his hand to me and, with my mother leading the way, escorts me from the raised dais and the great table where we took our dinner, through the arched doorway at the back of the great hall, into the private rooms. Everyone is rapt as we leave the court and the dancing. At the door to the chamber, my mother steps back and with a small shrug lets us go in, and it is as if we were playactors stepping off a stage into private life, into life without a playscript.

Once inside the room, he closes the door. Outside, I can hear the musicians start up again, the sound muffled through the thick wood. As if it were a matter of course, he turns the great key in the lock.

“What?” I say, startled from good manners. “What d’you think you are doing?”

He turns towards me and puts his hand firmly around my waist, locking me to his side with an irresistible grip. “We are going to become better acquainted,” he says.

I don’t shrink back from him like a fearful maid. I stand my ground. “I should like to go back to the hall.”

He sits on a chair as big as a throne, and pulls me down so I am perched uncomfortably on his knee, as if he were a drunk and I a doxy in a tavern, and he had just paid for me. “No. I told you. We are going to become better acquainted.”

I try to pull away from him, but he holds me firmly. If I struggle or fight with him I will be raising my hand against the King of England, and that is an act of treason. “Your Grace . . .” I say.

“It seems that we have to be married,” he says, a harder
note coming into his voice. “I am honored by the interest that Parliament takes in the matter. Your family still has many friends, it seems. Even among those who profess to be my friends. I understand from them that you are insisting on the wedding. I’m flattered, thank you for the attention. As we both know, we have been betrothed for two long years. So now we are going to consummate our betrothal.”

“What?”

He sighs as if I am wearisomely stupid. “We are going to consummate our betrothal.”

“I will not,” I say flatly.

“You will have to do this on our wedding night. What is the difference now?”

“Because this is to dishonor me!” I exclaim. “You do this in my mother’s rooms, with my sisters just a footstep through that door, in my mother’s own palace, before our wedding, to dishonor me!”

His smile is cold. “I don’t think you have much honor to defend, do you, Elizabeth? And please—don’t be afraid that I will discover that you are not a virgin. I have lost count of the number of people who wrote to me, especially to tell me that you were King Richard’s lover. And those who took the trouble to come all the way from England just to say that they saw you walking hand in hand with him in the gardens, that he came to your rooms every night, that you were his wife’s lady-in-waiting but you spent all your time in his bed. And there were many who said that she died of poison and that it was you who passed her the physic in the glass. Your mother’s Italian powders were courteously served to yet another victim. The Rivers flow sweetly over yet another obstacle.”

I am so horrified I can hardly speak. “I never,” I swear. “I never would have hurt Queen Anne.”

He shrugs his shoulders as if it does not matter whether or not I am a murderess and a regicide. “Oh, who cares now? I daresay
we have both done things we would rather not remember. She’s dead, and he’s dead, your brothers are dead, and you are betrothed to me.”

“My brothers!” I exclaim, suddenly intent.

“Dead. There is no one left but us.”

“How do you know this?”

“I know it. Here, lean closer.”

“You speak of my dead brothers and you want to shame me?” I can hardly speak, I am choking with emotion.

He leans back and laughs as if he is genuinely amused. “Really! How could I shame a girl like you? Your reputation precedes you by miles. You are utterly shamed already. I have thought of you for this last year as little more than a murderous whore.”

I am breathless as he insults me while his hard hands hold my waist, pinning me on his bony knees, like an unwilling child in a forced caress. “You cannot desire me. You know that I don’t desire you.”

“No indeed. Not at all. I’m not very fond of spoiled meats, I don’t want another man’s leavings. I particularly don’t want a dead man’s leavings. The thought of Richard the Usurper pawing you about and you fawning on him for the crown makes me quite sick.”

“Then let me go!” I shout and pull away, but he holds me tightly down.

“No. For, as you see, I have to marry you; your witch of a mother has made sure of that. The Houses of Parliament have made sure of that. But I do insist on knowng that you’re fertile. I want to know what I’m getting. Since I am forced to marry you, I must insist on a fertile wife. We have to have a Tudor prince. It would be a waste of everything if you turned out to be barren.”

I struggle in earnest now, trying to stand, trying to pull away, trying to unwind his hard hands, pulling his fingers off my waist; but he is inescapable, his hands gripping me as if he would strangle me. “Now,” he says, a little breathlessly, “am I to force you? Or will you lift that pretty gown for me and we can get the business
done and return to your mother’s dinner? Perhaps you will dance for us again? Like the slut that you are?”