The White Princess

by Philippa Gregory

  “He was not plotting!” I say urgently. “You say yourself it was your plot. It was not him and Teddy! He was innocent of anything but what you set men to do to him. He did nothing but agree to your plan.”

  “He threatens me by breathing,” Henry says flatly. “His broken smile is my undoing. Even in prison with a smashed face, he is a handsome prince. There is nothing for him but death.”

  WESTMINSTER PALACE, LONDON, AUTUMN 1499

  Henry summons the council of all his lords to listen to the charges of treason against Teddy; they call him “Edward naming himself of Warwick” as if no one has a name that can be trusted anymore. They call the boy Perkin Warbeck and list dozens of named others. Alarmed, frightened into obedience, the council commands the sheriffs to pick out a jury from the citizens of London who will hear the evidence and choose a verdict.

  Lady Katherine comes to my rooms, her face whiter than the lace she has in her hand. She is making a trim for a man’s collar and the bright beads for the lace making tremble on the cushion.

  She kneels on the floor before me; slowly she removes her headdress and her hair tumbles down. She bows low, almost to my feet. “Your Grace, I beg for mercy,” she says.

  I look at her bowed head, the lustrous dark hair. “I have no power,” I say.

  “Mercy for my husband!”

  I shake my head. I lean forwards and touch her shoulder. “Truly, I have no power in this court. I had hoped that you would speak to the king for them both.”

  “He promised me,” she says, her voice a little whisper of sound. “He promised me this summer. But now my husband is to be tried before a jury.”

  I don’t offer her a lie that perhaps they will not convict, nor suggest that the evidence will not be damning.

  “Could you not persuade the king as you did once before?” I ask her. “Could you not find a smile for him, could you not allow him—allow him whatever he wants?”

  Her dark eyes flicker up to mine in one long look, as if to acknowledge the irony that I should urge her to seduce my husband to save the boy. We know what the boy means to both of us.

  “I paid my side of the bargain this summer, when he said my husband would be safe,” she says. “His Grace said that if he stayed quietly in prison he could be released, later. I gave the king what he wanted in return. I have nothing more to bargain with.”

  I roll back my head and close my eyes for a moment. I am beyond weariness, both of kings and the bargains they make and the women who have to find ways to please them. “You have lost your influence?”

  She nods, looking me straight in the eye and admitting her shame. “I have nothing left to tempt him.” She pauses to apologize to me. “I am sorry. I did not know what else I could do this summer when they told me that my husband was in prison and taking a beating. I had nothing else to offer.”

  I sigh. “I will speak with him,” I say. “But I have nothing to offer him either.”

  I send my chamberlain to request an audience with the king and I am shown into his privy chamber. His mother stands behind the throne and does not move when I enter. The groom of the chamber sets a seat for me and I face Henry across the polished dark table, his mother standing like a sentry against the world, behind him.

  “We know why you are here,” My Lady says briefly. “But there is nothing that can be done.”

  I ignore her and look at my husband. “My lord, I don’t come to plead for the two of them. I am here because I am afraid that you are putting us in danger,” I say softly.

  At once he is alert. This is a man always ready to be alert to danger.

  “We are in danger every day that the boy lives,” he replies.

  “Aside from that. There is a danger that you don’t know.”

  “You have come to warn us?” Lady Margaret asks scornfully.

  “I have.”

  Henry looks at me for the first time. “Has someone spoken to you? Has someone tried to recruit you?”

  “No, of course not. I am known to be completely faithful to you.” I look at his hard-faced mother. “Everyone at court but the two of you knows I am completely faithful.”

  “What is it then? Speak.”

  I draw a breath. “Years ago, when my mother and all my sisters and I were in sanctuary, Richard came to us to tell us that the princes were missing. Mother and I swore an oath against the man who had killed them,” I say.

  “That was Richard himself,” My Lady insists quickly.

  Henry’s hand stirs slightly as if to silence her.

  “Richard put them to death,” she repeats, as if repetition will make it so.

  I ignore her, and go on. “We swore that whoever had taken them and put them to death would himself see his own son die in childhood. And his grandson would die young also. And his line would end with a girl and she would have no heir.”

  “Richard’s son died, as soon as they named him Prince of Wales,” My Lady reminds her silent son. “It is proof of his guilt.”

  He turns and glances at her. “You knew of this curse?”

  She blinks like an old reptile, and I know that John Morton reported my words to My Lady as promptly as he prayed to God.

  “You did not think you should warn me?” Henry asks.

  “Why should anyone warn you?” she asks, knowing that neither of them can answer such a question. “We had nothing to do with their deaths. Richard killed the boys in the Tower,” she asserts steadily. “Or it was Henry Stafford, the Duke of Buckingham. Richard’s line is ended, the young Duke of Buckingham is not strong. If this curse has any power it will fall on him.”

  Henry returns his hard gaze to me. “So what is your warning?” he asks me. “What is our danger? What can it possibly be to do with us?”

  I slide off my chair and I kneel before him as if he might judge me too. “This boy,” I say, “the one who claims to be Prince Richard of York . . . If we put him to death, that curse might fall on us.”

  “Only if he is the prince,” Henry says acutely. “Are you recognizing him? Do you dare to come here and tell me that you recognize him now? After all that we have been through? After claiming to know nothing all the time?”

  I shake my head and bow lower. “I don’t recognize him, and I never have. But I want us to take care. I want us to take care for our children. Husband, my lord, we might lose our son in his youth. We might lose a grandson in his youth. Our line might end with a girl and then with nothing. Everything that you have done, everything that we have endured might end with a Virgin Queen, a barren girl, and then . . . nothing.”

  Henry does not sleep that night at all, not in my bed nor in his own. He goes to the chapel and he kneels beside his mother on the chancel steps, and the two of them pray, their faces buried in their hands—but nobody knows what they pray for. That is between them and God.

  I know they are there, for I am in the royal gallery in the chapel, on my knees, Lady Katherine beside me. Both of us are praying that the king will be merciful, that he will forgive the boy and release him and Teddy, that this reign which began in blood with the sweat might continue with forgiveness. That the long Cousins’ War might end with reconciliation, and not continue to another generation. That the Tudor way might be merciful and the Tudor line not die out in three generations.

  As if he fears losing his nerve, Henry will not wait for the jury to take their places in the capital’s Guildhall. Impulsively, he summons his Knight Marshall and the Marshall of the Household to Whitehall in Westminster to give sentence. There is no evidence brought against the boy; oddly, they don’t even call him into court by name. Though Henry worked so hard to give the boy the dishonorable name of a poor drunk man on the watergate in Tournai, they do not use it on this one important document. Though they find him guilty, they do not inscribe the name of Perkin Warbeck on the long roll of the treasonous plotters. They leave his name a blank. Now, as they sentence him to death, they give him no name at all, as if nobody knows who he is anymore, or as if they know
his name but dare not say it.

  They rule that he shall be drawn on a hurdle through the city of London to the gallows at Tyburn, hanged, cut down while still living, and his innards torn out of his stomach and burned before his face. Then he shall be beheaded and his body divided into four parts, the head and quarters to be placed where the king wishes to put them.

  Three days later they try my cousin Teddy before the Earl of Oxford in the great hall at Westminster. They ask him nothing, he confesses to everything that they put to him, and they find him guilty. He says that he is very sorry.

  WESTMINSTER PALACE, LONDON, SATURDAY, 23 NOVEMBER 1499

  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 lif
e 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.