“No,” I say. “Don’t.”
Prayers cannot stop him slipping away, the leeches, the herbs, the oils, and the charred heart of a sparrow tied on his chest cannot hold him. He is dead by the time the clock strikes seven. I go to his bedside and straighten his collar, as I used to do when he was alive, and close his dark, unseeing eyes, pulling the embroidered coverlet straight across his chest as if I were tucking him up for the night, and I kiss his cold lips. I whisper: “God bless you. Good night, sweet prince,” and then I send for the midwives to lay him out and I leave the room.
To Her Grace the Queen of England
Dear Cousin Elizabeth,
They will have told you already, so this is a letter between us: from the woman who loved him as a mother, to the mother who could not have loved him more. He faced his death with courage, as the men of our family do. His sufferings were short and he died in faith.
I do not ask you to forgive me for failing to save him because I will never forgive myself. There was no sign of any cause but the Sweat and there is no cure for that. You need not reproach yourself, there was no sign of any curse on him. He died like the beloved brave boy he was from the disease that his father’s armies unknowingly brought into this poor country.
I will bring his widow, the princess, to you in London. She is a young woman with a broken heart. They had come to love one another and her loss is very great.
As is yours, my dear.
And mine.
Margaret Pole
LUDLOW CASTLE, WELSH MARCHES, SUMMER 1502
The queen, my cousin, sends her private litter for the widow to make the long journey to London. Katherine travels shocked and mute, and every night on the road goes to bed in silence. I know she prays that she will not wake in the morning. I ask her, as I am bound to do, whether she thinks she might be with child and she shakes with rage at the question as if I am intruding on the privacy of her love.
“If you are with child, and that child is a boy, then he will be the Prince of Wales and much later King of England,” I say to her gently, ignoring her tremulous fury. “You would become a woman as great as Lady Margaret Beaufort, who created her own title: My Lady the King’s Mother.”
She can hardly bring herself to speak. “And if I am not?”
“Then you are the dowager princess, and Prince Harry becomes the Prince of Wales,” I explain. “If you have no son to take the title, then it goes to Prince Harry.”
“And when the king dies?”
“Please God, that day is long coming.”
“Amen. But when it does?”
“Then Prince Harry is king and his wife—whoever she is—will be queen.”
She turns away from me and goes to the fireplace but not before I see the swift expression of scorn that crosses her face at the mention of Prince Arthur’s little brother. “Prince Harry!” she exclaims.
“You have to accept the position in life that God gives you,” I remind her quietly.
“I do not.”
“Your Grace, you have suffered a great loss, but you have to accept your fate. God requires us all to accept our fate. Perhaps God commands that you are resigned?” I suggest.
“He does not,” she says firmly.
WESTMINSTER PALACE, LONDON, JUNE 1502
I leave the Dowager Princess of Wales, as she is now to be called, at Durham House on the Strand and I go to Westminster where the court is in deep mourning. I walk through the familiar halls to the queen’s rooms. The doors stand open to her presence chamber, which is crowded with the usual courtiers and petitioners, but everyone is subdued and talking quietly, and many are wearing black trim on their jackets.
I pass through, nodding to one or two people whom I know; but I don’t stop. I don’t want to talk. I don’t want to have to say, yet again: “Yes. It is a very sudden disease. Yes, we did try that remedy. Yes, it was a terrible shock. Yes, the princess is heartbroken. Yes, it is a tragedy that there is no child.”
I tap on the inner door and Lady Katherine Huntly opens it and looks at me. She is the widow of the pretender who was executed with my brother and there is no great love lost between us. She steps back and I go by her without a word.
The queen is kneeling before her prie-dieu, her face turned up to the golden crucifix, her eyes closed. I kneel beside her and I bow my head and pray for the strength to talk to our prince’s mother about the loss of him.
She sighs and glances at me. “I have been waiting for you,” she says quietly.
I take her hands. “I am sorrier than I can say.”
“I know.”
We kneel, hand-clasped in silence, as if there is nothing more that needs saying. “The princess?”
“Very quiet. Very sad.”
“There’s no chance that she could be with child?”
“She says not.”
My cousin nods as if she were not hoping for a grandchild to replace the son she has lost.
“Nothing was left undone . . .” I begin.
She puts her hand gently on my shoulder. “I know you will have cared for him as you would have cared for your own,” she says. “I know you loved him from babyhood. He was a true York prince, he was our white rose.”
“We still have Harry,” I say.
“Yes.” She leans on my shoulder as she rises to her feet. “But Harry wasn’t raised to be Prince of Wales, or king. I’ve spoiled him, I’m afraid. He’s flighty and vain.”
I am so surprised to hear her say so much as one word against her beloved son that for a moment I cannot answer her. “He can learn . . .” I stumble. “He will grow.”
“He’ll never be another Prince Arthur,” she says, as if measuring the depth of her loss. “Arthur was the son that I made for England. Anyway,” she continues. “God be praised, I think I am with child again.”
“You are?”
“It’s early days yet, but I pray so. It would be such a comfort, wouldn’t it? Another boy?”
She is thirty-six, she is old for another childbirth. “It would be wonderful,” I say, trying to smile. “God’s favor to the Tudors, mercy after sacrifice.”
I go with her to the window and we look out at the bright gardens and the people playing at bowls on the green below us. “He was such a precious boy, coming as he did, so early in our marriage, like a blessing. And he was such a happy baby, d’you remember, Margaret?”
“I remember,” I say shortly. I won’t tell her that my sorrow is that I feel I have forgotten so much, that his years with me have just slipped through my fingers as if they were nothing more than uneventful sunny days. He was such a happy boy, and happiness is not memorable.
She does not sob, though she constantly brushes tears from both of her cheeks with the back of her hands.
“Will the king send Harry to Ludlow?” I ask. If my husband has to be guardian to another prince, then I will have to care for him too, and I don’t believe I can bear to see another boy, not even Harry, in Prince Arthur’s place.
She shakes her head. “My Lady forbids it,” she says. “She says he is to stay with us, at court. He will be educated here and trained for his new calling under her eye, under our constant supervision.”
“And the dowager princess?”
“She will go home to Spain, I suppose. There’s nothing for her here.”
“Nothing, poor child,” I agree, thinking of the white-faced girl in the big palace.