Philippa Gregory - The White Princess

“There is the boy,” the ambassador remarks. “And Warwick.”

Henry snaps his fingers.

WESTMINSTER PALACE, LONDON, SUMMER 1499

We return to London and Henry retires into his private rooms with his mother to review all the reports that have gathered in his absence. Within a day there is a stream of men coming and going by the private stair, almost unobserved by the court. Only I watch them and wonder at so many yeomen of the guard coming from their duty at the Tower to speak privately with the king.

That evening, when the young men of the court visit my rooms to dance with my ladies and to flirt in the hour before dinner, Henry is grim and gray-faced.

“You have had some bad news,” I say as he glances back at the court lining up behind us.

He shoots a hard look at me. “Do you know what it is?” he demands. “Have you known all this time?”

I shake my head. “Truly, I know nothing. I have seen people reporting to you all the day and now I see you looking ill, you are so weary.”

He takes my hand in a painfully tight grip. “You are missing a cousin,” he says.

At once my thoughts go to Teddy in the Tower. “My cousin? He’s gone?”

“Edmund de la Pole,” he says, spitting out the words. “Another false York. Son of your aunt Elizabeth. The one that she swore to me I could trust.”

“Edmund?” I repeat.

“He’s run away,” Henry says shortly. “Did you know?”

“No, of course not.”

The court is ready. Henry glances over his shoulder as if he always fears who is behind him. “I am sick,” he says. “Sick to my belly.”

He sits at the head of the great table and they bring him the best that the kingdom can supply, but I can see as he takes a small portion from one dish and then another that he tastes nothing. The meat has lost its savor and the marchpane its sweetness. He glances down the table to Lady Katherine, seated at the head of my ladies, and she looks back at him and gives him her sweet, promising smile. He looks at her not as if she is a woman that he desires, but a puzzle that he cannot solve, and the smile dies on her lips as she swallows and turns her face down.

After dinner he goes to his privy rooms with his mother, and they send out for sweet wine and biscuits and cheese and talk into the night. It is long after midnight when he comes to my bedroom and sits heavily on the chair before the fire, and looks into the embers.

“What’s the matter?” I ask. I was half-asleep but I slide from the bed and take a stool to sit beside him. “What is the matter, husband?”

Slowly, his head drops till he is resting it on his hand and then even lower so that his hands are over his face. “It’s the boy,” he says, muffled. “It’s the damned boy.”

The flames flicker quietly in the little room. “The boy?” I repeat.

“I set people about him that were entrusted to lead him into danger,” he says, his head still down, his face hidden from me. “I thought I would entrap him into plotting his freedom.”

“To kill him,” I say steadily.

“To execute him for a crime,” he corrects me. “Breaking his word of surrender. I had some villains come to him and promise they would get him free, they would help him escape. He consented. Then I had them go to Warwick . . .”

I clap my hand over my mouth to stop myself crying out. “Not Teddy!”

“Warwick too. It has to be done. And it has to be done now. The two young fools have cut a hole in the vaulting between their rooms and they whisper to each other.”

“They talk to each other? Teddy and the boy?” There is something unbearably tender about the thought of those two, whispering hopes and cheer to each other. “He talks to Teddy?”

“I sent them a plan of escape. The boy agreed, Warwick too once they explained it to him. I sent them a plan that they should take England, raise an army, kill me.”

“They must have known it was hopeless . . .”

“The boy knows, but he is desperate to be free. And then—all of a sudden—it is not hopeless.” He pauses and chokes as if vomit is rising unstoppably in his throat. “Elizabeth, there was my little plot, half a dozen conspirators, a code book, a message to the duchess, plans for an uprising, enough to see a man hanged, all planned and controlled by me, and . . . and . . .” He stops as if he cannot bear to continue. “And then . . .”

I rise from my stool and put my hand on his bowed shoulder. It is like touching the back of the chair, he is rigid with fear. “What then? What happened then, my dear?”

“They have been joined by others. Others that I had not instructed. Others that are supposed to be loyal to me. They are getting messages from all over the country. Men who will risk their lives and their fortunes to get Warwick out of the Tower, men who will put their families and their livelihoods and their property at risk to set the boy free. There is another rebellion brewing, another rebellion after all we have gone through! I have no idea how many men are ready to rise, I have no idea who is faithless and ready to betray me. But it is starting all over again. England wants the boy. They want the boy on the throne, and they are ready to throw me down.”

“No,” I say. I can’t believe what I am hearing as Henry leaps up, shrugging off my hand from his shoulder, gone from despair to sudden rage.

“It’s the Yorks!” he shouts at me. “Your family again! Edmund de la Pole missing! Your cousin at the heart of plots! The white rose painted on every street corner! Your family and your retainers and your servants and your damned charm and family loyalty and magic—God knows what it is that works for you. God knows why it works for him. He has lost his looks, he is beaten to ugliness, I saw to that. He has lost his charm—he can’t smile with no teeth. He has lost his fortune and his ruby brooch, and his wife is in my keeping, but still they flock to him. Still they would turn out for him, still I am threatened by him. There he is, imprisoned in the Tower, no friends but the ones I allow him, no companions but the scum that I send to him, and still he musters an army against me and I have to defend myself, and defend you and defend our sons.”

I sink down before his rage; almost, I could kneel before him. “My lord—”

“Don’t speak to me,” he says furiously. “This is his death warrant. I can do nothing now but have him killed. Wherever he is, whatever shape he takes, whatever name he goes by, they seek him out, they believe in him, they want him as King of England.”

“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.