Philippa Gregory - The White Princess

My mother’s rooms are closed too, the doors tightly shut, and there is no servant waiting outside to swing open the doors for me. The place is quiet—too quiet. I push open the door myself, and look at the empty room spread out in front of me like a tableau in a pageant before the actors arrive. None of her ladies is here, her musicians are absent, a lute leaning against a wall. All her things are untouched: her chairs, her tapestries, her book on a table, her sewing in a box; but she is missing. It seems as if she has gone.

Like a child, I can’t believe it. I say, “Mother? Lady Mother?” and I step into the quiet sunny presence chamber and look all around me.

I open the door to her privy chamber and it is empty too. There is a scrap of sewing left on one of the chairs, and a ribbon on the window seat, but nothing else. Helplessly, I pick up the ribbon as if it might be a sign, I twist it in my fingers. I cannot believe how quiet it is. The corner of a tapestry stirs in the draft from the door, the only movement in the room. Outside a wood pigeon coos, but that is the only sound. I say again: “Mama? Lady Mother?”

I tap on the door to her bedroom and swing it open, but I don’t expect to find her there. Her bed is stripped of her linen, the mattress lies bare. The wooden posts are stripped of her bed curtains. Wherever she has gone, she has taken her bedding with her. I open the chest at the foot of her bed, and find her clothes have gone too. I turn to the table where she sits while her maid combs her hair; her silvered mirror has gone, her ivory combs, her golden hairpins, her cut-glass phial of oil of lilies.

Her rooms are empty. It is like an enchantment; she has silently disappeared, in the space of a morning, and all in a moment.

I turn on my heel at once and go to the best rooms, the queen’s rooms, where My Lady the King’s Mother spends her days among her women, running her great estates, maintaining her power while her women sew shirts for the poor and listen to readings from the Bible. Her rooms are busy with people coming and going; I can hear the buzz of happy noise through the doors as I walk towards them, and when they are swung open and I am announced, I enter to see My Lady, seated under a cloth of gold like a queen, while around her are her own ladies and among them my mother’s companions, merged into one great court. My mother’s ladies look at me wide-eyed, as if they would whisper secrets to me; but whoever has taken my mother has made sure that they are silent.

“My Lady,” I say, sweeping her the smallest of curtseys due to my mother-in-law and mother to the king. She rises and executes the tiniest of bobs, and then we kiss each other’s cold cheeks. Her lips barely touch me, as I hold my breath as if I don’t want to inhale the smoky smell of incense that always hangs in her veiled headdress. We step back and take the measure of the other.

“Where is my mother?” I ask flatly.

She looks grave as if she were not ready to dance for joy. “Perhaps you should speak with my son the king.”

“He is in his chambers with his council. I don’t want to disturb him. But I shall do so and tell him that you sent me, if that is what you wish. Or can you tell me where my mother is. Or don’t you know? Are you just pretending to knowledge?”

“Of course I know!” she says, instantly affronted. She looks around at the avid faces and gestures to me that we should go through to an inner chamber, where we can talk alone. I follow her. As I go by my mother’s ladies I see that some of them are missing; my half sister Grace, my father’s bastard, is not here. I hope she has gone with my mother, wherever she is.

My Lady the King’s Mother closes the door herself, and gestures that I should sit. Careful of protocol, even now, we sit simultaneously.

“Where is my mother?” I say again.

“She was responsible for the rebellion,” My Lady says quietly. “She sent money and servants to Francis Lovell, she had messages from him. She knew what he was doing and she advised and supported him. She told him which households would hide him and give him men and arms outside York. While I was planning the king’s royal progress, she was planning a rebellion against him, planning to ambush him on his very route. She is the enemy of your husband and your son. I am very sorry for you, Elizabeth.”

I bristle, hardly hearing her. “I don’t need your pity!”

“You do,” she presses on. “For it is you and your husband that your own mother is plotting against. It is your death and downfall she is planning. She worked for Lovell’s rebellion and now she writes secretly to her sister-in-law in Flanders urging her to invade.”

“No. She would not.”

“We have proof,” she says. “There’s no doubt. I am sorry for it. This is a great shame to fall on you and your family. A disgrace to your family name.”

“Where is she?” I ask. My greatest fear is that they have taken her to the Tower, that she will be kept where her sons were held, and that she won’t come out either.

“She has retired from the world,” Lady Margaret says solemnly.

“What?”

“She has seen the error of her ways and gone to confess her sins and live with the good sisters at Bermondsey Abbey. She has chosen to live there. When my son put the evidence of her conspiracy before her, she accepted that she had sinned and that she would have to go.”

“I want to see her.”

“Certainly, you can go to see her,” Lady Margaret says quietly. “Of course.” I see a little hope flare in her veiled eyes. “You could stay with her.”

“Of course I’m not going to stay in Bermondsey Abbey. I shall visit her, and I shall speak with Henry, as she must come back to court.”

“She cannot have wealth and influence,” Lady Margaret says. “She would use it against your husband and your son. I know that you love her dearly, but, Elizabeth—she has become your enemy. She is no mother to you and your sisters anymore. She was providing funds to the men who hope to throw down the Tudor throne; she was giving them advice, sending them messages. She was plotting with Duchess Margaret, who is mustering an army. She was living with us, playing with your child, our precious prince, seeing you daily, and yet working for our destruction.”

I rise from my chair and go to the window. Outside the first swallows of summer are skimming along the surface of the river, twisting and turning in flight, their bellies a flash of cream as if they are glad to be dipping their beaks into their own reflections, playing with the sweet water of the Thames. I turn back. “Lady Margaret, my mother is not dishonorable. And she would never do anything to hurt me.”

Slowly she shakes her head. “She insisted that you marry my son,” she says. “She demanded it, as the price of her loyalty. She was present at the birth of the prince. She was honored at his christening, she is his godmother. We have honored her and housed her and paid her. But now she plots against her own grandson’s inheritance and strives to put another on his throne. This is dishonorable, Elizabeth. You cannot deny that she is playing a double game, a shameful game.”

I put my hands over my face, so that I can shut out her expression. If she looked triumphant I would simply hate her, but she looks horrified, as if she feels, like me, that everything we have been trying to do is going to be pulled apart.

“She and I have not always agreed.” She appeals to me. “But I did not see her leave court with any pleasure. This is a disaster for us as well as for her. I hoped we would make one family, one royal family standing together. But she was always pretending. She has been untrue to us.”

I can’t defend her; I bow my head and a little moan of horror escapes through my gritted teeth.