Philippa Gregory - The White Princess

“A new white rose, a white rosebud. A new son of York.”

“Where is he? In Edinburgh?”

“They say that he’s living with his wife in Falkland, at a royal hunting lodge. They live quietly together with their baby. They say she is very, very beautiful and that he is happy to stay with her, they are so much in love.”

“He won’t invade?”

She shrugs. “It’s not the season, but perhaps he wants to live quietly. Newly married, with a beautiful wife and a baby in her arms? Perhaps he thinks this is the best that he can get.”

“If I could write to him . . . if I could just tell him . . . oh, if I could tell him that this is the best.”

Slowly, she shakes her head. “Nothing goes across the border but the king knows of it,” she says. “If you sent so much as one word to the boy, the king would see it as the greatest betrayal in the world. He would never forgive you, he would doubt you forever, and he would think you have been his hidden enemy all along.”

“If only someone could tell the boy to stay where he is, to find joy and keep it, that the throne won’t bring him the happiness he has now.”

“I can’t tell him,” Maggie says. “I’ve found that truth for myself: a good husband and a place that I can call my home at Ludlow Castle.”

“Have you really?”

Smilingly, she nods. “He’s a good man, and I am glad to be married to him. He’s calm and he’s quiet and he is loyal to the king and faithful to me. I’ve seen enough excitement and disloyalty; I can think of nothing better to do in my life than to raise my own son and to help yours to become a prince, to run Ludlow Castle as you would wish, and to welcome your son’s bride into our home, when she comes.”

“And Arthur?” I ask her.

She smiles at me. “He is a prince to be proud of,” she says. “He is generous, and fair. When Sir Richard takes him to watch the judges at their work his desire is to be merciful. He rides well and when he goes out he greets people as his friend. He is everything that you would want him to be. And Richard is teaching him all that he knows. He’s a good guardian for your boy. Arthur will make a good king, perhaps even a great king.”

“If the boy does not claim his throne.”

“Perhaps the boy will think that loving a woman and loving his child is enough,” Maggie says. “Perhaps he will understand that a prince does not have to become a king. Perhaps he will think that it is more important to be a man, a loving man. Perhaps when he sees his wife with the child in her arms he will know that this is the greatest kingdom a man can wish for.”

“If I could tell him that!”

“I can’t get a letter to my own brother, just down the river in the Tower of London. How could we ever get a letter to yours?”

THE TOWER OF LONDON, SUMMER 1497

The Cornishmen start by grumbling that the king is taxing them too hard, and then that he has stolen their rights to the tin that they mine. They are a hardworking, bitter set of men who face danger daily, in the tiny cramped conditions underground, speaking their own strange language, living more like barbarians than Christian men. Far away from London, in the utmost west of the country, they are easily persuaded by dreams or rumors. They believe in kings and angels, in appearances and miracles. My father always said that they were Englishmen like no others, Cornishmen, not of English stock at all, and that they had to be ruled with kindness, as if they were the mischievous elves that live alongside them.

In days, in moments, they are agreed and furious; they go through the west like a summer fire, blazing up, jumping a field or two, raging on faster than a galloping horse. Soon they have the whole of Cornwall up in arms, and then the other western counties join with them, equally angry. They form separate armies led by men from Somerset, Wiltshire, and Cornwall under the command of a Cornish blacksmith, Michael Joseph, An Gof, a man said to be ten feet high who has sworn that he will not be ruined by a king whose father was no king, who is trying new ways, Tudor ways, Welsh ways against good Cornishmen.

But it is not just a rebellion of ignorant men: yeomen turn out for them, fishermen, farmers, miners, and then, worst of all, a nobleman, Lord Audley, offers to lead them.

“I’ll leave you and my mother and the children here,” Henry says tersely to me, his horse waiting at the head of his yeomen of the guard, who are arrayed in battle order outside the White Tower, the gates closed, the cannons rolled up to the walls, everything ready for a war. “You’ll be safe here, you can hold out against a siege for weeks.”

“A siege?” I hold Mary on my hip, as if I were a peasant woman seeing a husband off to battle, her own future desperately uncertain. “Why, how close are they going to get to London? They’re coming all the way from Cornwall! They should have been contained in the West Country! Are you leaving us with enough troops? Is London going to stay loyal?”

“Woodstock, I’m going to Woodstock. I can muster troops there and cut off the rebels as they come up the Great West Way. I have to get my troops back from Scotland, as soon as I can. I sent them all north to face the boy and the Scots, I wasn’t expecting this from the southwest. I’m recalling Lord Daubney and his force, I’ve sent orders for them to turn back south at once. I’ll get them back here, if the messenger finds them in time.”

“Lord Daubney is a Somerset man,” I observe.

“What d’you mean by that?” Henry shouts at me in his desperation, and Mary flinches at his raised voice and wails pitifully. I tighten my grip on her little plump body and rock her, stepping from one foot to the other.

I keep my voice low so as not to disturb her, and not to unsettle Henry’s bodyguard, who are lining up grim-faced. “I mean only that it will be hard for his lordship to attack his fellow countrymen,” I say. “He will have to fire on his neighbors. The whole county of Somerset has joined with the Cornishmen, and he will have known Lord Audley from boyhood. I don’t suggest that he will fail you, I just mean that he is a man from the west and he is bound to sympathize with his people. You should put other men round him. Where are your other lords? His kinsmen and peers that would keep him to your side?”

Henry makes a sound, almost a moan of distress, and puts his hand on his horse’s neck as if he needs the support. “Scotland,” he whispers. “I have sent almost everyone north, the whole army and all my cannon and all my money.”

For a moment I am silent, seeing the danger that we are in. All my children including Arthur are in the Tower as the rebels march on London, the army is too distant to recall; if Henry’s small force cannot stop them on the road we will be besieged. “Be brave,” I say, though I am sick with fear myself. “Be brave, Henry. My father was captured once and driven from his kingdom once and he still was a great king of England and died in the royal bed.”

He looks at me bleakly. “I’ve sent Thomas Howard the Earl of Surrey to Scotland. He was against me at Bosworth and I kept him in the Tower for more than three years. Do you think that will have made a friend of him? I have to gamble that marriage to your sister makes him a safe ally for me. You tell me that Daubney is a Somerset man and will sympathize with his neighbors as they march against me. I didn’t even know that. I don’t know any of these men. None of them knows me or loves me. Your father was never alone like me, in a strange land. He married for love, he was followed by men with a passion. He always had people that he could trust.”