Philippa Gregory - The White Princess

Both Henry and his mother share a confident assumption that Jasper, who has always ridden hard and fought hard, who has always escaped danger and thrived in exile, will once again slide through the claws of death and dance at the Christmas feast. But after a few days they look more and more grave, and after a few more they are calling on the physicians to come and see him. A few days more, and Jasper insists on seeing a lawyer and making his will.

“His will?” I repeat to Henry.

“Of course,” he snaps. “He is a man of sixty-three. And devout, and responsible. Of course he is making his will.”

“He is very ill then?”

“What do you think?” He rounds on me. “Did you think that he had taken to his bed for the pleasure of a rest? He has never rested in his life; he has never been away from my side when I needed him; he has never spared himself, not for one day, not for one moment . . .” He breaks off and turns away from me so that I cannot see the tears in his eyes.

Gently, I go behind him, as he is seated in his chair, and put my arm around his back to hold him tightly; I lean down and rest my cheek against his for comfort. “I know how much you love him,” I say. “He has been like a father and more for you.”

“He has been my protector, and my teacher, my mentor and my friend,” he says brokenly. “He took me from England to safety and endured exile for my sake when I was only a boy. Then he brought me back to claim the throne. I wouldn’t even have made it to the battlefield without him. I couldn’t have found my way across England, I wouldn’t have dared to trust the Stanleys, God knows I wouldn’t have won the battle but for his teaching. I owe him everything.”

“Is there anything I can do?” I ask helplessly, for I know there will be nothing.

“My mother is doing everything,” Henry says proudly. “In your condition you can do nothing to help her. You can pray if you like.”

Ostentatiously, I take my ladies to chapel and we pray and command a sung Mass for the health of Jasper Tudor, uncle to the King of England, old irrepressible rebel that he is. Christmas comes to court but Henry commands that it be celebrated quietly; there is to be no loud music and no shouts of laughter to disturb the sickroom where Jasper lies sleeping, and the king and his mother keep their constant vigil.

Arthur is taken in to see his dying uncle, Harry goes in after him. Little Princess Margaret is spared the ordeal but My Lady insists that the boys kneel at the bedside of the greatest Englishman the world has ever known.

“Welshman,” I say quietly.

On Christmas Day we go to church and celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ and pray for the health of his most beloved son and soldier Jasper Tudor. But on the day after, Henry comes to my room unannounced early in the morning and sits on the foot of my bed as I sleepily rise up, and Cecily, who is sleeping with me, jumps up, curtseys, and scuttles out of the room.

“He’s gone,” Henry says. He does not sound grieved so much as amazed. “My Lady Mother and I were sitting with him and he stretched out his hand to her and he smiled at me, and then he lay back on his pillows and breathed out a long sigh—and then he was gone.”

There is a silence. The depth of his loss is so great that I know I can say nothing to comfort him. Henry has lost the only father he ever knew; he is as bereft as an orphan child. Clumsily, I get to my knees, my big belly making me awkward, and I stretch my arms out towards him to hold him. He has his back to me and he does not turn, he does not realize I am reaching out to him in pity. He is all alone.

For a moment I think he is absorbed in grief, but then I realize that the loss of Jasper only adds to his perennial fears.

“So who is going to lead my army against the boy and the Scots?” Henry asks, speaking to himself, cold with fear. “I am going to have to face the boy in battle, in the North of England, where they hate me. Who is going to command if Jasper has left me? Who will be at my side, who can I trust, now that my uncle is dead?”

PALACE OF SHEEN, RICHMOND, WINTER 1496

Maggie comes into my room with so rapid a step and with so fierce a glance towards me that I can tell, knowing her as I do, that she is desperate to speak with me. I am sitting with My Lady the King’s Mother, with sewing in my hands, listening to one of her women reading one of her eternal homilies on religion, reading aloud from a hand-copied manuscript, for God knows no one would bother to print such a dirge, and Maggie curtseys to us both and sinks to a stool and takes up some sewing and tries to look composed.

I wait till the end of a chapter and for the girl to turn the manuscript page, and I say, “I will walk in the garden.”

My Lady looks out of the window where a gray full-bellied sky promises snow and says, “You had much better wait until the sun comes out.”

“I’ll wear my cloak, and my muff and my hat,” I say, and my ladies, after a little hesitating glance at My Lady the King’s Mother in case she is going to overrule me, fetch my things and wrap me as if I were a bulky parcel.

My Lady lets them do their work, as she has no appetite for countermanding me in my own rooms anymore. Since the death of Jasper she has aged a dozen years. I look at her now and sometimes I no longer see the powerful woman who dominated me and my husband, but instead a woman who spent all her life on a cause, sacrificed the love of her life for her son, and now waits to hear if the cause is lost and her son is on the run again.

“Margaret, will you give me your arm?” I ask.

Maggie rises with careful lack of interest, as if she had planned to stay indoors, and puts on her own cloak.

“You must have a guard,” My Lady rules. “And you three—” she points to the nearest women, barely looking to see who they are “—you three shall walk with Her Grace.”

They do not look very pleased at the thought of a cold walk with snow coming, but they rise and fetch their capes from their rooms and with a guard before and behind us, and ladies around us, finally Maggie and I are alone together and we can talk without being overhead.

“What?” I say tersely as soon as the guards are ahead and the women lagging behind. Maggie takes my arm to save me from slipping on the frosty ground. Beside us the gray, cold river is rimmed with white on the banks, while a seagull, no whiter than the frost, calls once overhead and then wheels away.

“He’s married,” she says shortly.

She never needs to say his name. Indeed, we maintain the convention that we have no name for him.

“Married!” At once I have a clutch of fear that he has married beneath himself, some sympathetic serving girl, some opportunistic widow who has loaned him money. If he has married badly, then Henry will crow with joy and scorn him, calling him Peterkin and Perkin all the more, the son of a drunkard and a drudge, now wedded to a slut. Everyone will say that it proves he is no prince, but a lowly pretender. Or they will say that he has learned common ways, vulgar ways, to be dazzled by the widow of some minor grandee and marry her for her dower money. If his bride is unchaste, some slattern in a hovel, he might as well give up and go home.

I stop still. “Oh, dear God, Maggie. Who is she?”

She is beaming. “A good marriage, even a great marriage. He has married Katherine Huntly, kinswoman to the King of Scotland himself, daughter of the Earl of Huntly, the greatest lord of Scotland.”

“The Earl of Huntly’s daughter?”