Philippa Gregory - The White Princess

Her great friend John Morton stays in the south of England, as we spend our summer here in the center of the country, far from the dangerous coast, close to Coventry Castle. Morton is guarding the south coast for My Lady’s fearful son, who goes to and from the court without warning, as if he is riding his own patrols, as if he cannot even trust his spies anymore, but has to see everything for himself. We never know if he will attend dinner, we never know if he will sleep in his own bed; and when his throne is empty the courtiers look around as if for another king who could be seated there. Now the Tudors trust no one but the handful of people who fled with them into exile long ago. Their world has shrunk to the tiny court that hid with them in Brittany; it is as if all the allies and the friends they made, and all the guards and soldiers they recruited after the battle of Bosworth, had never joined them, as if they have no support at all.

It is the court of a frightened pretender and there is no majesty or pride or confidence about it. Working alone, I can do nothing, when I process on my own to dinner with my head held high, smiling around at friends and suspects alike, trying on my own to overcome the impression that the king is afraid and his court are uncertain.

Then, one evening, John Kendal, the Bishop of Worcester, stops me on my way to my rooms with a kindly smile, and asks me, as a man offering to show a rainbow or a pretty sunset: “Have you seen the light from the beacons, Your Grace?”

I hesitate. “Beacons?”

“The sky is quite red.”

I turn to the arrow-slit window in the castle and look out. To the south the sky is quite rosy, and as far as I can see there is a light on a hill, and then another, and then another behind and behind one after another all the way until I can see nothing more.

“What is it?”

“The king commanded beacons to warn him of the landing of Richard of York,” John Kendal says.

“You mean the pretender,” I remind him. “The boy.”

In the glow of the lights I catch his hidden smile and I hear his low laugh. “Of course. I forgot his name. These are the beacons. He must have landed.”

“Landed?”

“These are his beacons. The boy is coming home.”

“The boy is coming home?” I repeat like a fool. It cannot be that I have mistaken the bishop’s delight in the rosy light of the beacons. He is illuminated with joy as if the beacons were welcoming flares to guide ships safely into port. He smiles at me to share his delight that the Plantagenet boy is homeward bound.

“Yes,” he says. “They are lighting his way home at last.”

Next day Henry thunders out of the castle surrounded by his guard, without a word of farewell to me, riding west to raise troops, visiting castles in the Stanley areas, desperate to keep them loyal, uncertain of them all. He does not even say good-bye to the children in the nursery or go to his mother for her blessing. She is horrified by his sudden departure and spends all her time on her knees on the stone floor of the chapel at Worcester, not even coming to breakfast, for she is fasting, starving herself to draw down a blessing on her son. Her thin neck at the top of her gown is red and raw, as she is wearing a hair shirt against her skin to mortify her paper-thin flesh. Jasper Tudor rides beside Henry, like a tired old warhorse that does not know how to stop and rest.

Confused rumors come back to us. The boy has landed in the east of the country, coming into England through Hull and York, as my father did when he returned in triumph from his exile. The boy is following in King Edward’s footsteps as his true son and heir.

Then we hear that the winds blew the boy off course and he has landed in the south of England and there is nobody there to defend the coast but the archbishop and some local bands. What shall prevent the boy from marching on London? There is no one to block the road, there is no one who will deny him.

Henry’s guard rides into the stable yard without warning, and the grooms brush down the exhausted horses and the men stained with mud from the road take the back stairs to their rooms in silence. They don’t shout for ale or boast of their journey, they return to the court like men silent with grim determination, afraid of defeat. Henry dines with the court for two nights, hard-faced, as if he has forgotten all his lessons about being a smiling king. He comes to my rooms to lead me in to dinner and greets me curtly.

“He landed.” He spits out the words as he leads me to the top table. “He got a few men onshore. But he saw the defense and sheered off like a coward. My men killed a few hundred of them, but like fools they let his ship get away. He fled like a boy and they let him go.”

I don’t remind my husband that once he too came to the coast and saw that there was a trap and sailed away without landing. We called him a coward then, too. “So where is he now?”

He looks at me coldly, as if measuring whether it is safe to tell me. “Who knows? Perhaps he’s gone to Ireland? The winds were blowing west, so I doubt he’ll have landed in Wales. Wales at least should be faithful to a Tudor. He’ll know that.”

I say nothing. We both know that he can trust nowhere to be faithful to a Tudor. I hold out my hands and the groom of the ewery pours warm water on my fingers and holds out a scented towel.

Henry rubs his hands and throws the towel at a page boy. “I captured some of his men,” he says with sudden energy. “I have about a hundred and sixty of them, Englishmen and foreigners, all traitors and rebels.”

I don’t need to ask what will happen to the men who sailed with the boy for England. We take our seats and face our court.

“I shall send them round the country and have them hanged in groups in every market town,” Henry says with sudden cold energy. “I shall show people what happens to anyone who turns against me. And I shall try them for piracy—not treason. If I name them as pirates I can kill the foreigners as well. Frenchman and Englishman can hang side by side and everyone will look at their rotting bodies and know that they dare not question my rule no matter where they were born.”

“You won’t forgive them?” I ask, as they pour a glass of wine. “Not any of them? You won’t show mercy? You always say that it is politic to show mercy.”

“Why in hell’s name should I forgive them? They were coming against me, against the King of England. Armed and hoping to overthrow me.”

I bow my head under his fury and know that the court is watching Henry’s rage.

“But the ones that I execute in London will die as pirates do,” he says with sudden harsh relish. His temper vanishes, he beams at me.

I shake my head. “I don’t know what you mean,” I say wearily. “What have you advisors been telling you now?”

“They’ve been telling me how pirates are punished,” he says with a cruel joy. “And this is how I will have these men killed. I will have them tied down by St. Katherine’s Wharf at Wapping. They are traitors and they came against me by sea. I shall find them guilty of piracy and they will be tied down and the tide will come in and slowly, slowly, creep over them, lapping up their feet and their legs till it splashes into their mouths and they will drown inch by inch in a foot of water. D’you think that will teach the people of England what happens to rebels? Do you think that will teach the people of England not to defy me? Never to come against a Tudor?”

“I don’t know,” I say. I am trying to catch my breath as if it is me staked out on the beach with the rising tide splashing against my closed lips, wetting my face, slowly rising. “I hope so.”