“And I’m musical,” Harry reminds us.
“Very talented,” I commend him with a smile.
“And I ride, on big horses, not just little ponies, and I can handle a hawk too. I have my own hawk, a goshawk called Ruby.”
His mother and I exchange a rueful smile over the bobbing copper head.
“You are undoubtedly a true prince,” I say to him.
“I should come to Ludlow,” he tells me. “I should come to Ludlow with you and your husband and learn the business of running a country.”
“You would be most welcome.”
He pauses in his prancing around the room and comes to kneel up on the stool before me, and takes my face in both of his hands. “I mean to be a good prince,” he says earnestly. “I do, indeed. Whatever work my father gives me. Whether it is to rule Ireland or command the navy. Wherever he wants to send me. You wouldn’t know, Lady Margaret, because you’re not a Tudor, but it is a calling, a divine calling to be born into the royal family. It is a destiny to be born royal. And when my bride comes to England, I will ride to greet her, and I will be in disguise, and when she sees me she will say—Oh! Who is that handsome boy on that very big horse? And I will say—It’s me! And everyone will say—Hurrah!”
“It didn’t go very well at all,” Arthur tells his mother glumly. He comes into the queen’s bedroom where she is dressing for dinner. I am holding her coronal, watching the maid-in-waiting brush her hair.
“We got there, and she was already in bed, and she sent out word that she could not see us. Father would not take a refusal and consulted with the lords who were with us. They agreed with him . . .” He glances down, and both of us can see his resentment. “Of course they did, who would disagree? So we rode in the pouring rain to Dogmersfield Palace and insisted that she admit us. Father went into her privy chamber, I think there was a row, and then she came out looking furious, and we all had dinner.”
“What was she like?” I ask into the silence, when nobody else says anything.
“How would I know?” he demands miserably. “She hardly spoke to me. I just dripped all over the floor. Father commanded her to dance and she did a Spanish dance with three of her ladies. She wore a heavy veil over her headdress so I could hardly see her face. I expect she hates us, making her come out to dinner after she had refused. She spoke Latin, we said something about the weather and her voyage. She had been terribly seasick.”
I nearly laugh aloud at his glum face. “Ah, little prince, be of good heart!” I say, and I put my arm around his shoulders to give him a hug. “It’s early days. She will come to love and value you. She will recover from seasickness, and learn to speak English.”
I feel him lean towards me for comfort. “She will? Do you really think so? She truly did look very angry.”
“She has to. And you will be kind to her.”
“My lord father is very taken with her,” he says to his mother as if he is warning her.
She smiles wryly. “Your father loves a princess,” she says. “There’s nothing he likes more than a woman born royal in his power.”
I am in the royal nursery playing with Princess Mary when Harry comes in from his riding lesson. At once he comes to me, elbowing his little sister to one side.
“Be careful with Her Grace,” I remind him. She giggles; she is a robust little beauty.
“But where is the Spanish princess?” he demands. “Why is she not here?”
“Because she’s still on her way,” I say, offering Princess Mary a brightly colored ball. She takes it and carefully tosses it up and catches it. “Princess Katherine has to make a progress through the country so that people can see her, and then you will ride out to greet her and escort her into London. Your new suit is ready, and your new saddle.”
“I hope I do it right,” he says earnestly. “I hope that my horse behaves, and that I make my mother proud.”
I put my arm around him. “You will,” I assure him. “You ride beautifully, you will look princely, and your mother is always proud of you.”
I feel him square his little shoulders. He is imagining himself in a cloth-of-gold jacket, high up on his horse. “She is,” he says with the vanity of a well-loved little boy. “I’m not the Prince of Wales, I’m only a second son, but she is proud of me.”
“What about Princess Mary?” I tease him. “The prettiest princess in the world? Or your big sister, Princess Margaret?”
“They’re just girls,” he says with brotherly scorn. “Who cares about them?”
I am watching to make sure that the queen’s new gowns are properly powdered, brushed, and hung in the wardrobe rooms when Elizabeth comes in and closes the door behind her. “Leave us,” she says shortly to the mistress of the robes, and by this I know that something is very wrong, for the queen is never abrupt with the women who work for her.
“What is it?”
“It’s Edmund, Cousin Edmund.”
My knees go weak at the mention of his name. Elizabeth pushes me onto a stool, then goes to the window and throws it open so that cool air comes into the room and my head steadies. Edmund is a Plantagenet like us. He is my aunt’s son, Duke of Suffolk, and high in the king’s favor. His brother was a traitor, leading the rebels against the king at the battle of Stoke, killed on the battlefield; but in utter contrast Edmund de la Pole has always been fiercely loyal, the Tudor king’s right-hand man and friend. He is an ornament to the court, the leader of the jousters, a handsome, brave, brilliant Plantagenet duke, a joyous signal to everyone that York and Tudor live alongside each other as a loving royal family. He is a member of the innermost royal circle, a Plantagenet serving a Tudor, a collar that has been turned, a flag that billows the other way, a new rose of red and white, a signpost for all of us.
“Arrested?” I whisper my greatest fear.
“Run away,” she says shortly.
“Where?” I ask, horrified. “Oh God. Where has he gone?”
“To the Holy Roman Emperor Maximilian, to raise an army against the king.” She chokes as if the words are sticking in her throat, but she has to ask me. “Margaret, tell me—you knew nothing of this?”
I shake my head, I take her hand, I meet her eyes.
“Swear it,” she demands. “Swear it.”
“Nothing. Not a word. I swear it. He did not confide in me.”
We are both silent as we think of those that he usually does confide in: the queen’s brother-in-law, William Courtenay; our cousin Thomas Grey; our cousin William de la Pole; my second cousin George Neville; our kinsman Henry Bourchier. We are a well-recorded, well-known network of cousins and kinsmen tightly interwoven by marriage and blood. The Plantagenets spread across all England, a thrusting, courageous, seemingly endless family of ambitious boys, warrior men, and fertile women. And against us—only four Tudors: one old lady, her anxious son, and their heirs Arthur and Harry.
“What’s going to happen?” I ask. I get to my feet and walk across the room to close the window. “I’m all right now.”
She stretches out her arms to me and we hold each other close for a moment, as if we were still young women waiting for the news from Bosworth, filled with dread.
“He can never come home,” she says unhappily. “We’ll never see Cousin Edmund again. Never. And the king’s spies are certain to find him. He employs hundreds of watchers now, wherever Edmund is, they’ll find him . . .”
“And then they’ll find everyone whom he has ever spoken with,” I predict.
“Not you?” she confirms again. She drops her voice to a whisper. “Margaret, really—not you?”
“Not me. Not one word. You know I am deaf and dumb to treason.”