Philippa Gregory - The White Princess

Someone ahead of us shouts “Hurrah!” and the yeomen of the guard raise their pikes and shout “Hurrah!” in full-throated reply, and I think that my father would never have created yeomen of the guard to lead the cheers for he always believed that everyone loved him, and he never had need of guarding.

WESTMINSTER PALACE, LONDON, AUGUST 1487

We go back to London to prepare for my coronation. Henry makes a royal entry into the city, and attends a service of thanksgiving for his victory in St. Paul’s. He rewards the faithful, even those who had little choice but to be faithful since they were locked up in the Tower, releasing Thomas Howard the Earl of Surrey and my half brother Thomas Grey from their imprisonment.

Archbishop John Morton is made Lord Chancellor, which only makes me and others wonder what assistance a Father of the Church could provide for a king that should lead to so great a reward.

“Spying,” Thomas Grey tells me. “Morton and My Lady the King’s Mother together run the greatest spy network that the world has ever seen, and not a man moves in and out of England but their son and protégé know of it.”

My half brother is seated with me in my presence chamber, and the music for dancing covers our words as my ladies practice new steps in one corner of the room and we talk in another. I hold up my sewing to cover my face so that no one can see my lips. I am so pleased to see him after so long that I cannot keep myself from beaming.

“Have you seen our Lady Mother?” I ask.

He nods.

“Is she well? Does she know I am to be crowned?”

“She’s well, quite happy at the abbey. She sent you her love and best wishes for your coronation.”

“I can’t get him to release her to court,” I admit. “But he knows he can’t hold her there forever. He has no cause.”

“Yes but he does have cause,” my half brother says with a wry smile. “He knows that she sent money to Francis Lovell and John de la Pole. He knows that she has united all of the Yorkists who plot against him. Under Henry’s nose, under your nose, she was running a spy network of her own, from Scotland to Flanders. He knows that she has been linking all of them, in turn, to Duchess Margaret in Flanders. But what drives him quite mad is that he can’t say that out loud. He can’t accuse her, because to do so would be to admit that there was a plot against him, inspired by our mother, funded by your aunt, and assisted by your grandmother, Duchess Cecily. He can’t admit to England that the surviving House of York is completely united against him. By exposing the conspiracy, he shows the threat they are. It looks far too much like a conspiracy of women in favor of a child of their household. It is overwhelming evidence for the one thing that Henry wants to deny.”

“What is that?” I ask.

Thomas leans his chin on his hand so his fingers cover his mouth. No one can read his lips as he whispers, “It looks as though those women are working together for a York prince.”

“But Henry says that since no York prince came to England, ready for the victory, he cannot exist.”

“Such a boy would be a precious boy,” Thomas objects. “You wouldn’t bring him to England until the victory was won and the coast secure.”

“A precious boy?” I echo. “You mean a pretend prince, a false token. A counterfeit.”

He smiles at me. Thomas has been under arrest in one place or another for two long years: in France since before the battle of Bosworth, and more recently in the Tower of London. He’s not going to say anything that will put him back behind bars again.

“A pretender. Of course, that is all that he could possibly be.”

Henry stays in London only long enough to assure everyone that his victory over the rebels was total, that he was never in any danger, and that the crowned king that they paraded in Dublin is now a frightened boy in prison; then he takes his most trusted lords and goes north again, to one great house after another where he holds inquiries and learns which lords failed to secure the roads, who whispered to someone else that there was no need to support the king, those who looked the other way while the rebel army stormed by, and those who saddled up, sharpened their swords, and treasonously went out to join them. Relentlessly, dealing in details and whispers, gatepost gossip and alehouse insults, Henry tracks down every single man whose loyalty wavered when the cry went up for York. He is determined that those men who joined the rebels should be punished, some put to death as traitors but most fined to the point of ruin, and the profit paid to the royal treasury. He ventures as far north as Newcastle, deep into the York heartlands, and sends ambassadors to the court of James III of Scotland with proposals for a peace treaty and for marriages to make the treaties hold firm. Then he turns and rides home to London, a conquering hero, leaving the North reeling with death and debt.

He summons the boy Lambert Simnel to his presence chamber and commands the attendance of his whole court: My Lady the King’s Mother, an eager spectator of her son’s doings; myself with my ladies headed by my two sisters, my cousin Maggie at my side; my aunt Katherine, smilingly accompanying her victorious husband, Jasper Tudor; all the faithful lords and those who have managed to pass as faithful. The double doors slam open, and the yeomen guard ground their pikes with a bang and shout the name, “John Lambert Simnel!” and everyone turns to see a skinny boy, frozen in the doorway until someone pushes him inwards and he takes a few steps into the room and then sinks on his knees to the king.

My first thought is that he does indeed look very like my brother looked, when I last saw him. This is a blond, pretty boy of about ten years old, and when my mother and I smuggled my brother out of sanctuary that dark evening, he was as bright and as slender as this. Now, if he is alive somewhere, he would be about fourteen, he would be growing into a young man. This child could never have passed for him.

“Does he remind you of anybody?” The king takes my hand and leads me from my chair beside his to walk down the long room to where the boy is kneeling, his head bowed, the nape of his neck exposed, as if he expects to be beheaded here and now. Everyone is silent. There are about a hundred people in the privy chamber and everyone turns to look at the boy as Henry approaches him, and the child droops lower and his ears burn.

“Anyone think he looks familiar?” Henry’s hard gaze rakes my family, my sisters with their heads down as if they are guilty, my cousin Maggie with her eyes on the little boy who looks so like her brother, my half brother Thomas who is gazing around indifferently, determined that no one shall see him flinch.

“No,” I say shortly. He is slight like my brother Richard and has cropped blond hair like his. I can’t see his face but I caught a glimpse of hazel eyes like my brother’s, and at the back of his head there are a few childish curls on the nape of the neck, just like Richard’s. When he used to sit at my mother’s feet, she would twist his curls around her fingers as if they were bright golden rings, and she would read to him until he was sleepy and ready for bed. The sight of the little boy, on his knees, makes me think once more of my brother Richard, and of the page that we sent into the Tower to take his place, of my missing brother Prince Edward, and of my cousin Edward of Warwick—Maggie’s brother—in the Tower alone. It is as if there is a succession of boys, York boys, all bright, all charming, all filled with promise; but nobody can be sure where they are tonight, or even if they are alive or dead, or if they are unreal, flights of fancy and pretenders like this one.