This is a king who has become a dark mystery to his people. He’s not like the kings of my house—open, joyful sensualists who ruled by agreement and made their way by charm. This king spies on his people, imprisons them on a word, tortures them so they accuse and counteraccuse each other and, when he has evidence of treason, amazingly he forgives them, releasing them with a pardon, but burdened by fines so terrible that they will never be free of service to him, not through half a dozen generations. This is a king driven by fear and ruled by greed.
My second cousin George Neville, my boys’ guardian, comes out of the Tower tight-lipped about a limp which looks as if his leg has been broken and left to set crooked, poorer by a fortune, but free. My other cousins are still imprisoned. George Neville tells no one what agreement he made inside those damp walls; silently he pays the king half of his income every quarter and never complains. He has fines so heavy that twenty-six of his friends have to serve as guarantors, and he is forbidden ever to go home to his beloved house in Kent, or to Surrey, Sussex, or Hampshire. He is an exile in his own country though he has been charged with nothing, and nothing has been proved against him.
None of the men who were arrested with him ever speaks of the contracts that each of them signed with the king in the darkened rooms underneath the Tower where the walls are thick and the doors are bolted and only the king stands in the corner of the chamber as his headsman turns a lever on the rack and the ropes bite tight. But people say that their agreements for huge debts are signed in their own blood.
My cousin George writes to me briefly.
You can safely leave your boys with me; they did not fall under any suspicion. I am a poorer man than I was, and banned from my home; but I can still house them. Better leave them with me until the fuss dies down. No point in having them lead people to you. You had better stay quietly there. Speak to no one and trust no one. These are hard times for the white rose.
I burn the letter and I do not reply.
SYON ABBEY, BRENTFORD, WEST OF LONDON, SPRING 1509
The king grows more mistrustful every year, retreating into the inner rooms of his palaces to sit with his mother, refusing to allow any strangers over the threshold, doubling the numbers of the yeomen of the guard who stand at his door, going endlessly, endlessly, through his book of accounts, binding men who were already loyalists to keep the peace with massive fines, taking their lands as sureties for good behavior, asking them for goodwill gifts, interfering with court cases and taking the fees. Justice itself can now be bought with a payment to the king. Safety can be bought with a fee to his treasury. Words can be written in the accounts for the price of a gift to the right servant, or erased for a bribe. Nothing is certain but that money offered to the royal treasury can buy anything. I believe that my cousin George Neville is all but ruined, paying for his freedom every quarter; but nobody dares to write and tell me so. I receive occasional letters from Arthur and Henry and they do not mention the arrest of their host and his return, a broken man, barred from the home that was his pride. They are only sixteen and fourteen years old but already they know that the men of our house should stay silent. They were born into the most talented, intellectual, questioning family in England, and they have been taught to hold their tongues for fear that they be cut out. They know that if you are of Plantagenet blood, you should have been born dumb and deaf too. I read their innocent letters and I burn them on reading. I do not dare to keep even these, my boys’ good wishes. None of us dares to own anything.
A widow for four years, with no prospect of help, barely enough money to eat, no roof to put over my children’s heads, no dowry for my daughter, no brides for my sons, no lover, no friends, no chance of remarriage since I never even see a man who is not a priest, I go on my knees eight hours a day every day alongside the nuns to observe the liturgy of the hours, and I watch my prayers change.
In the first year I prayed for help, in the second year for release. By the end of the third year I am praying for the death of King Henry and the damnation of his mother and the return of my House of York. In the silence I have grown into a bitter rebel. I damn the Tudors to hell and I come to hope that the curse that my cousin Elizabeth and her mother laid on them rings true, down through the long years to the end of the Tudors and the destruction of their line.
SYON ABBEY, BRENTFORD, WEST OF LONDON, APRIL 1509
I have the news first from the old porteress at the abbey who comes to the door of my cell and throws it open without knocking. Ursula is in her truckle bed and does not stir but Geoffrey sleeps in my narrow bed, held in my arms, and he pops up his little head as Joan bangs into the room and says: “The king is dead. Wake up, my lady. We are free. God is merciful. He has blessed us. God has saved us. The curse of the Red Dragon has passed over us. The king is dead.”
I was dreaming that I was in the court of my uncle Richard at Sheriff Hutton and my cousin Elizabeth was dancing with him in a swirl of gold and silver brocade. I sit up at once and say to her: “Hush. I won’t hear it.”
Her old wizened face is cracked open with a smile. I have never seen her beam before. “You’ll hear this!” she says. “And anyone can say it, and anyone can hear it. For the spymaster is dead and the spies are thrown out of employment. The king is dead and the bonny, bonny prince has come to his throne just in time to save us all.”
Just then the bell of the abbey starts to toll, a steady, deep, sonorous note, and Geoffrey scrambles to his knees and says: “Hurrah! Hurrah! Is Henry to be king?”
“Of course,” the old woman says, catching at his little hands and dancing him on the bed. “God bless him and the day he comes to the throne.”
“My brother Henry!” Geoffrey squeaks. “King of England!”
I am so horrified by this innocent speaking of treason that I snatch him to me, put my hand over his mouth, and turn to her in an agonized appeal for her silence. But she just shakes her head at him and laughs at his pride. “By rights—yes,” she says boldly. “It should be your brother Henry. But we have a bonny Tudor boy to come after the old sweat master, and Prince Harry Tudor will take the throne and the spies and the taxmen will be gone.”
I jump out of bed and start to pull on my clothes.
“Will she send for you?” Joan the porteress asks me, swinging Geoffrey from the bed and letting him dance around her. Ursula rises up and rubs her eyes and says: “What’s happening?”
“Who?” I am thinking of My Lady the King’s Mother, who has buried her grandson and will now bury her son, just as Elizabeth’s curse foretold. She will be a broken woman. She will believe, as I do, that the Tudors signed their own death warrant when they killed our princes in the Tower. She will think, as I do, that they are accursed murderers.
“Katherine, Dowager Princess of Wales,” Joan says simply. “Won’t he marry her and make her Queen of England as he promised to do? Won’t she send for you, her dearest friend? Won’t you be able to have your children with you at court and live as you were born to? Won’t it be like a miracle for you, like the stone rolling from the tomb and letting you all out?”
I stop short. I am so unaccustomed to hope that I hardly know what to say. I had not even thought of this.
“He might,” I say wonderingly. “He might marry her. And she might send for me. You know, if he does—she will.”
It is like a miracle, a release as powerful as spring after a cold, gray winter. It comes in springtime and ever after when I see the hawthorn blossom making the hedges as white as snow, or the daffodils leaning over in the wind, I think of that spring when the old Tudor king was dead and the Tudor boy took the throne and made everything right.