Philippa Gregory - The White Princess

He shifts his feet, looking away from me. “We’re going in procession to Mass next Sunday,” he says. “All of us.”

“What d’you mean, all of us?”

His discomfort increases. “The royal family . . .”

I wait.

“Your cousin Edward is going to walk with us.”

“What has Teddy to do with this?”

He takes my arm and leads me away from my ladies-in-waiting, who are entering the rooms and remarking on the tapestries, unpacking their sewing and packs of cards. Someone is tuning a lute, the twanging chords echoing loudly. I am the only one who hates this bleak castle; to everyone else it is a familiar home. Henry and I go out into the long gallery, where the scent of the fresh strewing herbs is heady in the narrow room.

“People are saying that Edward has escaped from the Tower and is raising an army in Warwickshire.”

“Edward?” I repeat stupidly.

“Edward of Warwick, your cousin Teddy. So he’s going to process in state with us to St. Paul’s so that everyone can see him and know that he lives with us as a valued member of the family.”

I nod. “He walks with us. You show him.”

“Yes.”

“And when everyone has seen him, they know that he is not raising his standard in Warwickshire.”

“Yes.”

“They know that he is alive.”

“Yes.”

“And these rumors die down . . .”

Henry waits.

“Then after that he can live with us as a member of our family,” I rule. “He can be as he seems to be. We can show him as our beloved cousin and he can be our beloved cousin. We show him going to Mass with us freely, he can live with us freely. We can turn the show into the reality. That’s what you want to do, as king. You show yourself as king and then you hope to be accepted as king. If I take part in this play, in this masque of Teddy being beloved and living with us, then you will make it true.”

He hesitates.

“It is my condition,” I say simply. “If you want me to act as if Teddy is our beloved cousin freely living with us, then you have to make the act into reality. I’ll walk with you in procession on Sunday to show that Teddy and all the Yorks are loyal supporters. And you will treat me, and all my family, as if you trust us.”

He hesitates for a moment and then, “Yes,” he says. “If our procession persuades everyone, and the rumors die down and everyone accepts that Teddy lives at court, as a loyal member of the family, he can come out of the Tower and live freely at court.”

“Free and trusted like my mother,” I insist. “Despite what anyone says.”

“Like your mother,” he agrees. “If the rumors die down.”

Maggie is at my side before dinner, rosy with joy at having spent all afternoon with her brother. “He has grown! He is taller than me! Oh! I have missed him so much!”

“Does he understand what he has to do?”

She nods. “I have told him carefully, and we practiced, so that he should make no mistake. He knows that he is to walk behind you and the king, he knows that he has to kneel to pray at Mass. I can walk beside him, can’t I? And then I can make sure he does it right?”

“Yes, yes, that would be best,” I say. “And if anyone cheers for him, he’s not to wave or shout a reply, or anything.”

“He knows,” she says. “He understands. I have explained to him why they want him to be seen.”

“Maggie, if he shows that he is a loyal member of the family, I believe that he can come back to live with us. It is essential that he does this right.”

Her mouth, her whole face trembles. “Could he?”

I take her in my arms and find that she is shaking with hope. “Oh, Maggie, I will try my best for him.”

Her tearstained face looks up at me. “He has to come out of here, Your Grace, it’s destroying him. He’s not doing his lessons in here, he sees no one.”

“Surely the king has provided tutors for him?”

She shakes her head. “They don’t come to him anymore. He spends his day lying in his bed reading the books that I send him, or staring at the ceiling, and looking out of the window. He is allowed out once a day to walk in the gardens. But he’s only eleven, he’s twelve this month. He should be at court, doing his lessons, playing games, learning how to ride. He should be growing into a man, with boys of his own age. But he is here, quite alone, seeing no one but the guards when they bring him his meals. He tells me that he thinks he is forgetting how to speak. He said that one day he spent all day trying to remember my face. He says that a whole day goes by and he cannot remember it has passed. So now he makes a mark on the wall for every day, like a prisoner. But then he fears he has lost count of the months.

“And he knows our father was executed in here, and he knows your brothers disappeared from here—boys just like him. He is bored and afraid at the same time, and he has no one to talk to. His guards are rough men, they play cards with him and win his few shillings off him, they swear in front of him and drink. He can’t stay here. I have to get him out.”

“I am horrified. “Oh, Maggie . . .”

“How is he to grow up as a royal duke if he is treated as a child traitor?” she demands. “This is destroying him, and I swore to my father that I would take care of him!”

I nod. “I’ll speak with the king again, Maggie. I will do what I can. And once people stop talking about him all the time, then I’m sure Henry will let him out.” I pause. “It’s as if our name is both our greatest pride and our curse,” I say. “If he were Edward of nowhere and not Edward of Warwick he would be living with us now.”

“I wish we were all no one of nowhere,” she says bitterly. “If I could choose I would have the name of Nobody and never come to court at all.”

My husband calls a meeting of the privy council to ask them for their advice on how to silence the rumors of the coming of a prince of York. They all know, they have all heard of a duke of York, even a bastard of York, coming to England to take the throne. John de la Pole, the son of my aunt Elizabeth of York, advises the king to keep a steady nerve, that the whispers will stop. His father, the Duke of Suffolk, tells Henry to be assured that there is no division between York and Tudor. Once the people see Edward walking with his family, they will be quiet again. John asks that Teddy might be released from the Tower—so that everyone can see that the Houses of York and Tudor are united. “We should show that we have nothing to fear,” he says, smiling at the king. “That’s the best way to scotch the rumors: show that we fear nothing.”

“That we are as one,” Henry says.

John reaches out to him and the king warmly clasps his hand. “We are as one,” he assures him.

The king sends for Edward, and Maggie and I bustle him into a new jerkin and comb down his hair. He is pale, with the terrible pallor of a child who never gets outside, and his arms and legs are thin though he should be growing strong. He has the York charm and good looks in his little-boy face but he is nervous, as my brothers never were. He reads so much and talks so little that he stammers when he has to speak, and will break off in the middle of a sentence to try to recall what he means to say. Living alone among rough men, he is desperately shy; he smiles only at Maggie and only with her can he talk fluently and without hesitation.

Maggie and I walk with him to the closed door of the privy council chamber, where the yeomen of the guard stand with their pikes crossed, shutting everyone out. He stops, like a young colt refusing a jump.