He has the best of tutors, the finest musicians, and the best horsemen to teach him all the arts and skills of a young prince. My cousin his mother ensures that he is a scholar and tries to teach him that a king cannot have everything his own way; but My Lady insists that he must never be exposed to any danger.
He must never go near a sick person, his rooms must be constantly cleaned, he must be attended always by a physician. He must ride wonderful horses, but they must be broken by his horsemaster and guaranteed safe for their most precious rider. He can ride at the quintain, but he may never face an opponent in the joust. He can row on the river but never if it looks like rain. He can play tennis, though nobody ever beats him, and sing songs and make music, but he must never be overexcited or flushed too hot, or strain himself. He is not taught to rule, he is not even taught to rule himself. The boy, already indulged and spoiled, is now the only Tudor stepping-stone to the future. If they were to lose him, they would lose everything they have fought and plotted and worked for. Without a son and heir to follow the Tudor king there is no Tudor dynasty, no House of Tudor. With the death of his brother, Harry is now the only son and heir. No wonder they wrap him in ermine and serve him off gold.
They cannot see him take a step without being dizzily aware that he is their only boy. The Tudor family is so few: our queen facing the ordeal of childbirth, a king who is plagued with quinsy and cannot draw a breath without pain, his old mother, two girls, and only one boy. They are few and they are fragile.
And nobody remarks it, but we Plantagenets in the House of York are so many. They call us the demon’s brood and indeed we breed like the devil. We are rich in heirs, headed by my cousin Edmund, gaining followers and power all the time at the court of the Emperor Maximilian, his brother Richard, and scores of kinsmen and cousins. Plantagenet blood is fertile; they named the family for the Planta genista, the broom shrub, which is never out of flower, which grows everywhere, in the most unlikely soil, which can never be uprooted and even when it is burned out will thrive and grow again the very next spring, yellow as gold though it is rooted in the blackest charcoal.
They say that when you behead one of the Plantagenets, there is another that springs up, fresh in the green. We trace our line back to Fulk of Anjou, husband to a water goddess. We always bear a dozen heirs. But if the Tudors lose Harry, they have nothing to replace him with but the baby my cousin carries low and heavy in her belly that drains her face of color and makes her sick every morning.
Since Prince Harry is so rare, since he is their singular precious heir, he has to be married, and they succumb to the temptation of Spanish wealth, Spanish power, and the convenience of Katherine, obedient and helpful, waiting for the word in her London palace. They promise Harry in marriage to her, and so she has her way. I laugh out loud when my husband comes back from London and tells me the news, and he looks at me curiously and asks me what is so amusing.
“Just say it again!” I demand.
“Prince Harry has been betrothed to the Dowager Princess of Wales,” he repeats. “But I don’t see what’s so funny about that.”
“Because she had set her heart on it, and I never thought that they would consent,” I explain.
“Well, I’m surprised that they did. They’ve got to get a dispensation and negotiate a settlement, and then they can’t marry for years. I’d have thought that nothing but the best would have been good enough for Prince Harry. Not his brother’s widow.”
“Why not, if the marriage was never consummated?” I venture.
He looks at me. “That’s what the Spanish are saying, it’s all around court. I didn’t contradict it, though I had eyes in my head at Ludlow. I don’t know the truth of it and I didn’t know what to say.” He looks sheepish. “I didn’t know what My Lady the King’s Mother would want to hear. Until she tells me, I’ll say nothing.”
STOURTON CASTLE, STAFFORDSHIRE, FEBRUARY 1503
Elizabeth my cousin the queen prayed that she was carrying another boy, prayed that the curse she had recited as a young woman of seventeen was nothing but words on the cold wind, prayed that the Tudor line would not die out. But she was brought to bed and she had a girl, a worthless girl, and it cost her her life, and the baby died too.
“I am sorry,” my husband says gently to me, the letter sealed with black wax trailing black satin ribbons in his hand. “I am sorry. I know how much you loved her.”
I shake my head. He does not know how much I loved her, and I cannot tell him. When I was a little girl and my world was all but destroyed by the Tudor victory, she was there, pale and afraid like me but determined that we Plantagenets would survive, determined that we would share in the Tudor spoils, determined that we would lead the Tudor court, determined that she would be queen and that the House of York would still rule England even if she had to marry the invader.
When I was sick with fear and utterly at a loss as to how I would keep my brother safe from the new king and his mother, it was Elizabeth who reassured me, who promised me that she and her mother would guard us. It was Elizabeth who barred the way of the yeomen of the guard when they came to arrest my little brother, Teddy, and Elizabeth who swore that they should not take him. It was Elizabeth who spoke to her husband time after time, begging him for Teddy’s release, and it was Elizabeth who held me and cried with me when, finally, the king brought himself to do that one terrible act and kill my brother, Teddy, for the crime of being Edward Plantagenet, for carrying his name, our name, the name that Elizabeth and I shared.
“Will you come with me to her funeral?” Richard asks.
I don’t know that I can bear it. I buried her son, and now I have to bury her. One died of the Tudor disease, the other of Tudor ambition. My family is paying a high price to keep the Tudors safe on their throne.
“They want you there,” he says shortly, as if that simply settles the matter.
“I’ll come,” I say; because it does.
WESTMINSTER PALACE, LONDON, SPRING 1503
My Lady the King’s Mother rules how the funeral of a queen is to be done, as she rules all the great ceremonials of this great court. Elizabeth’s coffin is drawn through the streets of London by eight black horses, followed by two hundred paupers carrying lit candles. Dressed in black, I follow the coffin with her ladies, while the gentlemen of the court ride behind us, robed and hooded in black, through streets that are blazing with torches and filled with mourners, all the way to Westminster Abbey.
London turns out for the York princess. London has always loved the Yorks, and as I go by, following her coffin, there is a whisper that follows me down the cobbled street, “À Warwick,” like a blessing, like an offer. I keep my eyes and head down, as if I cannot hear my grandfather’s battle cry.
The king is not here; he has gone upriver to the beautiful palace that he built for her, Richmond; gone into the privy chamber at the heart of the palace, and closed the door, as if he cannot bear to live without her, as if he dare not look to see what friends he has left, now that the princess of the House of York has gone. He always swore that she did not bring him England, he took it on his own account. Now she is gone, he can see what his own account really is: what friends he has, what he holds without her; he can see how safe he feels among her people.