The White Princess

by Philippa Gregory

  “I just knew it,” I say. There is no point telling Henry or his mother about something that would frighten them, seeming like witchcraft. “You know how your mother hears God speak to her in prayer? I had something like that, and I knew.”

  “A godly vision?” he confirms.

  “Yes,” I lie.

  “I am so sorry for your loss, Elizabeth, I truly am. I know how much you loved her.”

  “Thank you,” I say quietly, and then I leave him at the grille and go into the confinement chamber and sit down. I know that he will be thinking her death makes him safer; he cannot help but be glad that she has died. Even as he puts on mourning his heart will be singing with relief. Alive, my mother was a figurehead for the York rebels, and any endorsement from her of a pretend boy would make him as good as a real prince. Her recognition of any pretender as her son would invalidate Henry’s claim to the throne. She could always have destroyed his claim with one word. He could never be sure that she would not say that word. Her death is the best thing that could have happened for Henry and his hard-hearted mother.

  But not for me.

  As I wait in the quiet confinement room for my baby to come, I cannot imagine what my life will be without her. I understand that her death is the best thing that could have happened for Henry.

  But not for me.

  I have to give birth without her, knowing that she is not even in this world thinking of me. I try to comfort myself with the knowledge that wherever she is, she will be thinking of me; I try to comfort myself with the memory of the other births when she was with me, when she held my hands and whispered to me so soothingly that it was almost as if the pains floated away on her words; but I am aware all the time that my mother has gone and these pains, and all the other trials of my life, even the triumphs, will come to me without her, and I shall have to bear them without her to comfort me.

  And when the baby is born, after long hours of hard struggle, it grieves me all over again that my mother will never see her. She is such a beautiful baby, with dark, dark blue eyes and beautifully fair hair. But she will never be held by my mother, or rocked by her. She will never hear my mother sing. When they take her away to be washed and swaddled, I feel terribly bereft.

  They hold my mother’s funeral without me, while I am still confined, and read her will. They bury her, as she asked, beside the man she adored, her husband King Edward IV. She leaves nothing—my husband Henry paid her so small a pension, and she paid it out so readily, that she died as a poor woman, asking me and my half brother Thomas Grey to settle her debts and to pay for Masses to be said for her soul. She had none of the fortune that my father heaped on her, no treasures of England, not even personal jewels. The people who called her acquisitive, and said that she amassed a fortune with her wiles, should have seen her modest room and her empty wardrobe chests. When they brought her little box of papers and books to my confinement rooms I could not help but smile. Everything she had owned as Queen of England had been sold to finance the rebellions, first against Richard, and then against Henry. The empty jewelry box tells its own story of an unremitting battle to restore the House of York, and I am very sure that the missing boy is indeed wearing a silk shirt that was bought by my mother, and the pearls on the gold brooch in his hat are her gift too.

  Lady Margaret, the King’s Mother, comes in state to visit her new grandchild and finds her in my lap, rosy from washing, warm in a towel, unswaddled and beautifully naked.

  “She looks well,” she says, her pride in another Tudor baby overcoming her belief that the child should be strapped down on her board to ensure that her legs and arms grow straight.

  “She is a beauty,” I say. “A real beauty.”

  The baby looks at me with the unswerving questioning gaze of the newborn, as if she is trying to learn the nature of the world, and what it will be like for her. “I think she is the most beautiful baby we have ever had.”

  It is true, her hair is silver gilt, a white gold like my mother’s, and her eyes are a dark blue, almost indigo, like a deep sea. “Look at her coloring!”

  “That’ll change,” Lady Margaret says.

  “Perhaps she’ll be copper-brown like her father. She’ll be exquisite,” I say.

  “For a name, I thought we would call her—”

  “Elizabeth,” I say, interrupting rudely.

  “No, I had thought—”

  “She’s going to be Elizabeth,” I say again.

  My Lady the King’s Mother hesitates at my determination. “For St. Elizabeth?” she confirms. “It’s an odd choice for a second girl but—”

  “For my mother,” I say. “She would have come to me if she could, she would have blessed this baby as she blessed all the others. I had a hard confinement without her here and I expect to miss her for the rest of my life. This baby came into the world just as my mother left it, and so I am naming her for my mother. And I can tell you this—I am absolutely sure that a Tudor Elizabeth is going to be one of the greatest monarchs that England has ever seen.”

  She smiles at my certainty. “Princess Elizabeth? A girl as a great monarch?”

  “I know it,” I say flatly. “A copper-headed girl is going to be the greatest Tudor we ever make: our Elizabeth.”

  GREENWICH PALACE, LONDON, SUMMER 1492

  I come out of confinement to find that the court is filled with news of the boy who wears my mother’s silk shirts. The boy has written a beautiful letter to all the crowned heads of Christendom, explaining that he is my brother Richard, rescued from the Tower and kept in hiding for many years.

  I myself, at the age of about nine, was also delivered up to a certain lord to be killed. It pleased divine clemency that this lord, pitying my innocence, should preserve me alive and unharmed. However, he forced me first to swear upon the sacred body of Our Lord that I would not reveal name, lineage, or family to anyone at all until a certain number of years. Then he sent me abroad.

  “What d’you think?” Henry says grimly, dropping this smooth account into my lap as I sit in the nursery, admiring the new baby, who is feeding greedily from the sleepy wet nurse, one little hand patting the plump blue-veined breast, one little foot waving with pleasure.

  I read the letter. “Did he write this to you?” I put my hand on the cradle, as if I would protect her. “He didn’t write to me?”

  “He didn’t write this to me. But God knows, he’s written to everyone but us.”

  I can feel my heart thud. “He hasn’t written to us?”

  “No,” Henry says, suddenly eager. “That counts against him, doesn’t it? He should have written to you? To your mother? Wouldn’t a lost son, wanting to come home, have written to his mother?”

  I shake my head. “I don’t know.”

  Carefully neither of us remark that this boy almost certainly wrote to her, and she certainly replied.

  “Will anyone have told him that his—” I break off “—that my mother is dead?”

  “For sure,” Henry says grimly. “I don’t doubt he has many faithful correspondents from our court.”

  “Many?”

  He nods. I cannot tell if he is speaking from his darkest fears or from terrible knowledge of traitors who live with us and daily curtsey or bow and yet secretly write to the boy. In any case, the boy should know that my mother is dead, and I am glad that someone has told him.

  “No, this is his letter to the Spanish king and queen, Ferdinand and Isabella,” Henry goes on. “My men picked it up on the way to them and copied it and sent it on.”

  “You didn’t destroy it? To prevent them seeing it?”

  He grimaces. “He has sent out so many letters that destroying just one would make no difference. He tells a sad tale. He spins a good yarn. People seem to believe it.”

  “People?”

  “Charles VIII of France. He’s a boy himself, and all but a madman. But he believes this shadow, this ghost. He’s taken the boy in.”

  “In where?”

  “In
to his court, into France, into his protection.” Henry bites off his answer and looks angrily at me. I gesture to the wet nurse, commanding her to take the baby from the room, as I don’t want our little Princess Elizabeth to hear of danger, I don’t want her to hear the fear in our voices when she should be feeding peacefully.

  “I thought you had ships off Ireland to prevent him leaving?”

  “I had Pregent Meno offer him a safe voyage. I had ships off Ireland to capture him if he took another vessel. But he saw through the trap of Pregent Meno, and the French sent ships of their own and they smuggled him out.”

  “To where?”

  “Honfleur—does it make any difference?”

  “No,” I say. But it makes a difference to my imagining. It is as if I can see the dark sea, dark as my Elizabeth’s eyes, the swirling mist, the failing light, and the little boats slipping into an unknown Irish port and then the boy—the handsome young boy in his fine clothes—stepping lightly on the gangplank, turning his face into the wind, heading for France with his hopes high. In my imagining, I see his golden hair lift off his young forehead and I see his bright smile: my mother’s indomitable smile.

  GREENWICH PALACE, LONDON, SUMMER–AUTUMN 1492

  England is arming for war. The men are mustering at Greenwich in the fields around the palace, all of the lords are calling up their men, finding pikes and axes, clothing them in the livery of their house. Every day brings ships from the weapon-masters of London with loads of pikes, lances, and spears. When the wind blows from the west I can smell the hot arid scent of the forges at work, hammering blades, casting cannonballs. Ships laden with the carcasses of slaughtered beasts come downstream from Smithfield market, to be packed into salt or smoked, and the brewery at the palace and every alehouse within a radius of twenty miles is hard at work every day, and the warm powdery scent of yeast is heavy in the evening air.

  Brittany—the little independent dukedom that housed and hid Henry during his years when he was a penniless pretender to the throne—is at war with its mighty neighbor of France and has called on Henry for help. I cannot help but smile to see my husband in this quandary. He wants to be a great warrior king as my father was—but he has a great disinclination to go to war. He owes a debt of honor to Brittany—but war is the most costly undertaking and he cannot bear to waste money. He would be glad to defeat France in a battle—but Henry would hate to lose such a battle, and he cannot tolerate risk. I do not blame him for his caution. I saw our family destroyed by the outcome of a battle, I have seen England at war for most of my childhood. Henry is wise to be cautious; he knows that there is no glory on the battlefield.

  Even as he is arming and planning the invasion of France he is puzzling how to avoid it, but at the end of the summer he makes up his mind that it has to be done, and in September we leave the palace in a great procession, Henry in his armor on his great warhorse, the circlet of England fixed on his helmet as if it has never been anywhere else. It is the crown that Sir William Stanley wrenched from Richard’s helmet, when he dragged it from his battered head. I look at it now, and I fear for Henry, going to war wearing this unlucky crown.

  We leave the younger children with their nurses and teachers in Greenwich, but Arthur, who is nearly six years old, is allowed to ride out with us on his pony and watch his father set off for war. I leave the new baby, little Elizabeth, reluctantly. She is not thriving, not on the wet nurse’s milk nor on the sops of bread dipped in the juice of meat that the doctors say will strengthen her. She does not smile when she sees me, as I am sure Arthur did at her age, she does not kick and rage as Henry did. She is quiet, too quiet I think, and I don’t want to leave her.

  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.