Philippa Gregory - The White Princess

“Does he not remind you of your cousin Edward of Warwick?” Henry asks me, speaking clearly so that the whole court can hear.

“No, not at all.”

“Would you ever have mistaken him for your dead brother Richard?”

“No.”

He turns from me, now that this masque has been played out and everyone can say that the boy knelt before us and I looked at him and denied him. “So anyone who thought that he was a son of York was either deceived or a deceiver,” Henry rules. “Either a fool or a liar.”

He waits for everyone to understand that John de la Pole, Francis Lovell, and my own mother were fools and liars, and then he goes on: “So, boy, you are not who you said you were. My wife, a princess of York, does not recognize you. She would say if you were her kinsman as you claim. But she says you are not. So who are you?”

For a moment I think the child is so afraid that he has lost the power of speech. But then, keeping his head down and his eyes on the ground, he whispers: “John Lambert Simnel, if it please Your Grace. Sorry,” he adds awkwardly.

“John Lambert Simnel.” Henry rolls the name around his tongue like a bullying schoolmaster. “John. Lambert. Simnel. And how ever have you got from your nursery, John, to here? For it has been a long journey for you, and a costly and time-consuming trouble for me.”

“I know, Sire. I’m very sorry, Sire,” the child says.

Someone smiles in sympathy at the little treble voice, and then catches Henry’s furious look and glances away. I see Maggie’s face is white and strained and Anne is shaking and slips her hand into Cecily’s arm.

“Did you take the crown on your head though you knew you had no right to it?”

“Yes, Sire.”

“You took it under a false name. It was put on your head but you knew your lowborn head did not deserve it.”

“Yes, Sire.”

“The boy whose name you took, Edward of Warwick, is loyal to me, recognizing me as his king. As does everyone in England.”

The child has lost his voice; only I am close enough to hear a little sob.

“What d’you say?” Henry shouts at him.

“Yes, Sire,” the child quavers.

“So it meant nothing. You are not a crowned king?”

Obviously, the child is not a crowned king. He is a lost little boy in a dangerous world. I nip my lower lip to stop myself from crying. I step forwards and I gently put my hand in Henry’s arm. But nothing will restrain him.

“You took the holy oil on your breast but you are not a king, nor did you have any right to the oil, the sacred oil.”

“Sorry,” comes a little gulp from the child.

“And then you marched into my country, at the head of an army of paid men and wicked rebels, and were completely, utterly defeated by the power of my army and the will of God!”

At the mention of God, My Lady the King’s Mother steps forwards a little, as if she too wants to scold the child. But he stays kneeling, his head sinks lower, he almost has his forehead on the rushes on the floor. He has nothing to say to either power or God.

“What shall I do with you?” Henry asks rhetorically. At the startled look on the faces of the court, I realize that they have suddenly understood, like me, that this is a hanging matter. It is a matter for hanging, drawing, and quartering. If Henry hands this child over to the judge, then he will be hanged by his neck until he is faint with pain, then the executioner will cut him down, slide a knife from his little genitals to his breastbone, pull out his heart, his lungs, and his belly, set light to them before his goggling eyes, and then cut off his legs and his arms, one by one.

I press Henry’s arm. “Please,” I whisper. “Mercy.”

I meet Maggie’s aghast gaze and see that she too has realized that Henry may take this tableau through to a deathly conclusion. Unless we play another scene altogether. Maggie knows that I can perform one great piece of theater and that I may have to do this. As the wife of the king, I can kneel to him publicly and ask for clemency for a criminal. Maggie will come forwards and take off my hood, and my hair will tumble down around my shoulders, and then she will kneel, all my ladies will kneel behind me.

We in the House of York have never done such a thing, as my father liked to deal out punishment or mercy on his own account, having no time for the theater of cruelty. We in the House of York never had to intercede for a little boy against a vindictive king. They did it in the House of Lancaster: Margaret of Anjou on her knees for misled commoners before her sainted husband. It is a royal tradition, it is a recognized ceremony. I may have to do it to save this little boy from unbearable pain. “Henry,” I whisper. “Do you want me to kneel for him?”

He shakes his head. And at once, I am so afraid that he does not want me to intercede for mercy because he is determined to order the child to be executed. I grip his hand again. “Henry!”

The boy looks up. He has bright hazel eyes just like my little brother. “Will you forgive me, Sire?” he asks. “Out of your mercy? Because I’m only ten years old? And I know that I shouldn’t have done it?”

There is a terrible silence. Henry turns from the boy and conducts me back to the dais. He takes his seat and I sit beside him. I am conscious of a sudden deep throbbing in my temples as I rack my brains as to what I can do to save this child.

Henry points at him. “You can work in the kitchens,” he says. “Spit lad. You look like you could be lively in my kitchens. Will you do it?”

The boy flushes with relief and the tears fill his eyes and spill down his rosy cheeks. “Oh, yes, Sire!” he says. “You are very good. Very merciful!”

“Do as you are bid and perhaps you will work your way up to be a cook,” Henry commends him. “Now go to work.” He snaps his fingers to a waiting servant. “Take Master Simnel to the kitchen with my compliments and tell them to set him to work.”

There is a rustle of applause and then suddenly a gale of laughter sweeps the court. I take Henry’s hand, and I am laughing too, the relief at his decision is so great. He is smiling, he is smiling at me. “You never thought that I would make war on such a child?”

I shake my head, and there are tears in my own eyes from laughter and relief. “I was so afraid for him.”

“He did nothing, he was their little standard. It is the ones behind him that I must punish. It is the ones who set him up that deserve the scaffold.” His eyes rove down the court as they talk among themselves and share their relief. He looks at my aunt, Elizabeth de la Pole, who has lost her son, who has tight hold of Maggie’s hands and they are both crying. “The real traitors will not get off so lightly,” he says ominously. “Whoever they are.”

GREENWICH PALACE, LONDON, NOVEMBER 1487

I dress for my coronation and reflect that it is a different task preparing to be queen than it was preparing to be a bride. This time, laced into a gown of white and gold, with lacings of gold trimmed with royal ermine, I am not shivering with unhappiness. I know what to expect from my husband and we have found a way to be together which skirts the secrets of the past and shields our gaze from the uncertainty in our future. I have given him a son for us to love, he is giving me a crown. His mother’s preference for him above all other and her fierce enmity to my family is a feature of my life that I have come to accept. The mystery of my absent brother and Henry’s fear of my family is something that we live with daily.

I have learned to recognize his temper, his sudden rush into rage; I have learned that it is always caused by his fear that despite the victory, despite the support of his mother, despite her declaration that God Himself is on the side of the Tudors, he will fail her and God and be cut from the throne as cruelly and as unjustly as the king he saw killed at his feet.