The White Princess

by Philippa Gregory

  “In the future?”

  “Your maid-in-waiting or your charming sister, or even your agreeable mother, will admit me to your rooms. I shall come to you. You won’t ever be in the king’s bed again, so don’t think of it. You can tell your sister, or whoever it is who sleeps with you, that she must bed elsewhere. I will come every night before midnight at a time of my choosing. Some nights I might be later. You’ll have to wait up. You can tell your mother that this is your wish and mine.”

  “She’ll never believe me,” I say irritably, rubbing the tears from my face and nipping my lips to bring the color back to them. “She’ll never think I have summoned you for love.”

  “She’ll understand that I want a fertile bride,” he says shrewdly. “She’ll understand that you are to be carrying my child on your wedding day, or there will be no wedding. I won’t be such a fool as to be forced to marry a barren bride. We have agreed on this.”

  “We?” I repeat. “We don’t! I don’t agree to this! I never said I agreed to this! And my mother would never believe that I consented to be shamed by you, that we have decided this together. She’ll know at once that this is not my wish but yours, and that you forced me.”

  He smiles for the first time. “Ah no, you misunderstand me. I didn’t say ‘we’ meaning you and I. I can’t imagine speaking of you and me as ‘we.’ No; I meant me and my mother.”

  I stop fussing with my skirt and turn to face him, openmouthed. “Your mother agreed that you should rape me?”

  He nods. “Why not?”

  I stammer: “Because she said she would be my friend, because she said that she saw my destiny! Because she said that she would pray for me!”

  He is quite untroubled by this, seeing no contradiction in her tenderness to me and her command that I should be raped. “Of course she thinks it is your destiny,” he says. “All this”—his gesture takes in my bruised wrist, my red eyes, my humiliation, the rawness in my groin, and the ache in my heart—“All this is God’s will, as my lady mother sees it.”

  I am so horrified that I can do nothing but stare at him.

  He laughs, and stands to tuck his linen shirt back into his breeches and lace up the opening. “To make a prince for a Tudor throne is an act of God,” he says. “My mother would regard it almost as a sacrament. However painful.”

  Roughly, I rub the tears from my face. “Then you serve a hard God and a harder mother,” I spit at him.

  He agrees. “I know. It is their determination which has brought me here. It is the only thing I can count on.”

  He is as good as his word and he visits me, like a man visiting the apothecary for leeches or medicine, without fail but without pleasure, every night. My mother, tight-lipped, changes my bedroom to one nearer the privy stairs that go down to the gardens and the pier for his barge. She tells Cecily that she is to sleep with her sisters, and I am now to sleep alone. Her white-faced fury prevents any comment or questions, even from Cecily, who is wild with curiosity. My lady mother herself admits Henry by the unbolted outer door, and escorts him in icy silence to my room. She never says one word of welcome to him; she walks him to and from the door as an enemy, her head held high in scorn. She waits for him in the privy hall with one candle burning and the fire banked low. She says not one word of farewell as he leaves, but opens the door for him and locks it behind him in a silent rage. He must have a determination of iron to walk in and out of my room past my speechlessly hating mother with her gray gaze burning like branding rods into his thin back.

  In my room, I am silent too, but after the first few visits he becomes more assured, pausing for a glass of wine before he goes about his business, asking me what I have been doing during the day, telling me about his own work. He starts to sit in the chair by the fireside and eat some biscuits, cheese, and fruits before unlacing his breeches and taking me. While he is sitting, looking at the flames, he speaks to me as an equal, one who might have an interest in his day. He tells me the news of the court, the many men he is forgiving and hoping to bind to his rule, and his plans for the country. Despite myself, though I start the night in furious silence, I find that I volunteer what my father did in one county or another, or what Richard had planned to do in his reign. He listens with attention and sometimes says, “Good, thank you for telling me that, I didn’t know that.”

  He is awkwardly conscious that he has spent his life in exile, speaks English with a foreign accent—part Breton, part French—and he knows nothing of the country that he calls his own except what he has been taught by his devoted uncle Jasper and the tutors that he hired. He has a vivid affectionate memory of Wales from when he was a little boy and the ward of William Herbert, one of my father’s greatest friends; but everything else he knows from teachers, from his uncle Jasper, and from the confused and badly drawn maps of exiles.

  He has one powerful memory that he relates like a fable, of going to the mad king’s court, when my father was the king in exile, and my mother and my sisters and I were trapped in the dark cold of sanctuary for the first time. He remembers it as the pinnacle of his childhood, when his mother was sure that they would all be restored and would be the royal family forever, and he suddenly believed her, and knew that God was guiding her to the Beaufort destiny and that she was right.

  “Oh, we watched you go by on your barge,” I say, remembering. “I saw you on the sunlit river, sailing by to the court, while we were all locked up and sick of the darkness.”

  He says that he knelt and was blessed by Henry VI and felt, at that brush of the royal hand on his head, that he had been touched by a saint. “He was more of a holy man than a king,” he says to me urgently, like a preacher who wants someone to believe. “You could feel it in him, he was a saint, he was like an angel.” Then he suddenly falls silent, as if remembering that this is the man who was murdered in his sleep by my own father, when the mad king was as foolish as a little child trusting to the unreliable honor of the House of York. “A saint and a martyr,” he says accusingly. “He died after he had said his prayers. He died in a state of grace. At the hand of those who were little more than heretics, traitors, regicides.”

  “I suppose so,” I mutter.

  Every time we speak we seem to remind each other of a conflict; our very touch smudges blood prints between us.

  He is conscious that he has done a most vile thing by declaring his reign from the day before the battle that killed Richard. Everyone who fought on the side of the anointed king that day can now be named as a traitor and legally put to death. It is to set justice upside down and to start his reign as a tyrant.

  “No one has ever done such a thing before,” I remark. “Even the York and Lancaster kings accepted that it was a rivalry between two houses and that a man might choose one side or the other with honor. What you have done is to name men who have done nothing worse than suffer as traitors. You make them traitors for doing nothing worse than losing. You are saying that whoever wins is in the right.”

  “It looks harsh,” he concedes.

  “It looks like double-dealing. How can they be named traitors when they were defending the ordained king against an invasion? It’s contrary to the law, and common sense. It must be against God’s will too.”

  He smiles as if nothing matters more than that the Tudor reign is established, without question. “Oh no, it’s certainly not against the will of God. My mother is a most holy woman, and she doesn’t think so.”

  “And is she to be the only judge?” I ask sharply. “Of God’s will? Of the law in England?”

  “Certainly, hers is the only judgment I trust,” he replies. He smiles. “Certainly I would take her advice before yours.”

  He takes a glass of wine and then he beckons me to the bed with a cheerful briskness that I begin to think hides his own discomfort at what he is doing. I lie on my back as still as a stone. I never remove my gown, I never even help him when he pulls it up out of his way. I allow him to take me without a word of protest, and I turn my fac
e to the wall so that the first time, the very first time, that he leans down to kiss my cheek, it falls on my ear, and I ignore it as if it were the brush of a buzzing fly.

  WESTMINSTER PALACE, LONDON, THE DAYS OF CHRISTMAS, 1485

  After three long weeks of this, I go to my mother.

  “I have missed my course,” I say flatly. “I suppose that’s a sign.”

  The delight in her face is answer enough. “Oh! My dear!”

  “He has to marry me at once, I won’t be publicly shamed by them.”

  “He’ll have no reason to delay. This is what they wanted. Fancy you being so fertile! But I was just the same and my mother was too. We are women blessed with children.”

  “Yes,” I say. I can’t put any joy in my voice. “I don’t feel blessed. It’s not as if this is a baby conceived in love. Not even in wedlock.”

  She ignores the bleakness in my voice, and the strain in my pale face. She draws me to her and puts her hand on my belly, which is as slim and flat as ever. “It is a blessing,” she assures me. “A new baby, perhaps a boy, perhaps a prince. It doesn’t matter that he was conceived under duress; what matters is that he grows strong and tall and that we make him our own, a rose of York on the throne of England.”

  I stand quietly under her touch, like an obedient brood mare, and I know that she is right. “Will you tell him or shall I?”

  At once she is planning: “You tell him,” she says. “He will be happy hearing it from you. It will be the first good news that you can bring him.” She smiles at me. “The first of many, I hope.”

  I can’t smile back. “I suppose so.”

  That evening he comes early, and I serve him his wine and put up my hand to him in refusal as he goes to lead me to the bed.

  “I have missed my course,” I say quietly. “I may be with child.”

  There is no mistaking the joy in his face. His color flushes up, he takes my hands and draws me closer to him, almost as if he would wrap his arms around me, almost as if he wants to hold me with love. “Oh, I am glad,” he says. “Very glad. Thank you for telling me, it makes my heart lighter. God bless you, Elizabeth. God bless you and the child you carry. This is great news. This is the best news.” He takes a turn to the fire and comes back to me again. “This is such good news! And you so beautiful! And so fertile!”

  I nod, my face like stone.

  “And d’you know if it will be a boy?” he asks.

  “It is too early to know anything,” I say. “And a woman can miss her course from unhappiness or shock.”

  “Then I hope you are not unhappy or shocked,” he says cheerfully, as if he wants to forget that I am heartbroken and raped. “And I hope that you have a Tudor boy in there.” He pats my belly as if we were married already, a proprietorial touch. “This means everything,” he says. “Have you told your mother?”

  I shake my head, taking a small defiant pleasure in lying to him. “I saved the happy news for you first.”

  “I’ll tell my mother when I get home tonight.” He is quite deaf to my grim tone. “There’s nothing I could say that would be better. She’ll turn out the priest for a Te Deum.”

  “You’ll be late home,” I say. “It’s after midnight now.”

  “She waits up for me,” he says. “She never sleeps before I get in.”

  “Why ever not?” I say, diverted.

  He has the grace to blush. “She likes to see me to my bed,” he admits. “She likes to kiss me good night.”

  “She kisses you good night?” I query, thinking of the hard heart of the woman who could send her son to rape me and then wait up to kiss him good night.

  “There were so many years when she couldn’t kiss me before I slept,” he says quietly. “There were so many years when she didn’t know where I slept, or even if I was safely asleep at all. She likes to mark my forehead with the sign of a cross and kiss me good night. But tonight when she comes to bless me I will tell her that you are with child and I am hoping for a son!”

  “I think I am with child,” I say cautiously. “But it is early days. I can’t be sure. Don’t tell her that I said I was sure.”

  “I know, I know. And you will think I have been selfish, my mind only on the Tudor house. But if you have a boy, your family is of the royal house of England and your son will be king. You are in the position you were born to hold, and the wars of the cousins are ended forever, with a wedding and a baby. This is how it should be. This is the only happy ending that there can be, for this war and this country. You will have brought us all to peace.” He looks at me as if he wants to take me in his arms and kiss me. “You have brought us to peace and a happy ending.”

  I hunch my shoulder against him. “I had thought of other endings,” I say, remembering the king that I loved, who had wanted me to have his son, and who said that we would call him Arthur, in honor of Camelot, a royal heir who was not made in cold determination and bitterness, but with love in warm secret meetings.

  “Even now there could be other endings,” he says cautiously, taking my hand and holding it gently. He lowers his voice as if there could be eavesdroppers in this, our most private room. “We still have enemies. They are hidden but I know they are there. And if you have a girl it’s no good to me, and all this will have been for nothing. But we will work and pray that it is a Tudor boy that you are carrying. And I will tell my mother that she can arrange our wedding. At least we know that you are fertile. Even if you fail and have a girl this time, we know that you can bear a child. And next time perhaps we’ll get a boy.”

  “What would you have done if I had not conceived a child?” I ask curiously. “If you had taken me but no baby had come?” I begin to realize that this man and his mother have a plan for everything, they are always in readiness.

  “Your sister,” he says shortly. “I would have married Cecily.”

  I gasp in shock. “But you said she was to marry Sir John Welles?”

  “Yes. But if you were barren I would still need to marry a woman who could give me a son from the House of York. It would have had to be her. I would have canceled her wedding to Sir John, and had her for my wife.”

  “And would you have raped her too?” I spit, pulling my hand away. “First me and then my sister?”

  He raises his shoulders and spreads out his hands, a gesture entirely French, not like an Englishman at all. “Of course. I would have had no choice. I have to know that any wife can give me a son. Even you must see that I’m not taking the throne for myself, but to make a new royal family. I am not taking a wife for myself but to make a new royal family.”

  “Then we are like the poorest country people,” I say bitterly. “They only marry when a baby is on the way. They always say you only buy a heifer in calf.”

  He chuckles, not at all abashed. “Do they? Then I’m an Englishman indeed.” He ties the laces at his belt and laughs. “In the end I am an English peasant! I shall tell my Lady Mother tonight and she’ll be sure to come and see you tomorrow. She has prayed for this every night that I have been doing my business here.”

  “She prayed while you were raping me?” I ask him.

  “It isn’t rape,” he says. “Stop saying that. You’re a fool to call it that. Since we’re betrothed, it cannot be rape. As my wife you cannot refuse me. I have a right to you, as your betrothed husband. From now, till your death, you will never be able to refuse me. There can be no rape between us, only my rights and your duty.”

  He looks at me and watches the protest die on my lips.

  “Your side lost at Bosworth,” he reminds me. “You are the spoils of war.”

  COLDHARBOUR PALACE, LONDON, CHRISTMAS FEAST, 1485

  To celebrate the days of Christmas I am invited to visit my betrothed at his court and am taken to the finest rooms of the palace of Coldharbour, where his mother holds her court. As I enter, with my mother and two sisters walking behind me, a hush spreads through the room. A lady-in-waiting, reading from the Bible, looks up and sees me, trails off
, and there is silence. Lady Margaret, seated on a chair under a canopy of state as if she were a queen crowned, looks up and calmly regards us as we come forwards.

  I sweep her a curtsey; behind me I see my mother’s carefully judged sinking down and rising up again. We have practiced this most difficult movement in my mother’s rooms, trying to determine the exact level of deference. My mother has a steely dislike for Lady Margaret now, and I will never forgive her for telling her son to rape me before our wedding. Only Cecily and Anne curtsey with uncomplicated deference, as a pair of minor princesses to the king’s all-powerful mother. Cecily even rises with an ingratiating smile, since she is Lady Margaret’s goddaughter and counting on this most powerful woman’s goodwill to make sure that her wedding goes ahead. My sister does not know, and I will never tell her, that they would have taken her, as coldly as they took me, if I had failed to conceive, and she would have been raped in my place while this flint-faced woman prayed for a baby.

  “You are welcome to Coldharbour,” Lady Margaret says, and I think it is well named, for it is a most miserable and unfriendly haven. “And to our capital city,” she goes on, as if we girls had not been brought up here in London while she was stuck with a small and unimportant husband in the country, her son an exile and her house utterly defeated.

  My mother looks around the rooms, and notes the second-rate cloth cushions on the plain window seat, and that the best tapestry has been replaced by an inferior copy. Lady Margaret Beaufort is a most careful housekeeper, not to say mean.

  “Thank you,” I say.

  “I have the arrangements for the wedding all in hand,” she says. “You can come to be fitted for your gown in the royal wardrobe next week. Your sisters and your mother also. I have decided that you will all attend.”

  “I am to attend my own wedding?” I ask dryly, and see her flush with annoyance.