Read an Excerpt
Sheriff Hutton Castle, Yorkshire,
Autumn 1485
I wish I could stop dreaming. I wish to God I could stop dreaming.
I am so tired; all I want to do is sleep. I want to sleep all the
day, from dawn until twilight that every evening comes a little
earlier and a little more drearily. In the daytime, all I think about
is sleeping. But in the night all I do is try to stay awake.
I go to his quiet shuttered rooms to look at the candle as it
gutters in the golden candlestick, burning slowly through the
marked hours, though he will never see light again. The servants
take a taper to a fresh candle every day at noon; each hour burns
slowly away, although time means nothing to him now. Time is
quite lost to him in his eternal darkness, in his eternal timelessness,
though it leans so heavily on me. All day long I wait for the
slow rolling in of the gray evening and the mournful tolling of
the Compline bell, when I can go to the chapel and pray for his
soul, though he will never again hear my whispers, nor the quiet
chanting of the priests.
Then I can go to bed. But when I get to bed I dare not sleep
because I cannot bear the dreams that come. I dream of him.
Over and over again I dream of him.
All day I keep my face smiling like a mask, smiling, smiling,
my teeth bared, my eyes bright, my skin like strained parch-
ment, paper-thin. I keep my voice clear and mellow, I speak
words that have no meaning, and sometimes, when required,
I even sing. At night I fall into my bed as if I were drowning
in deep water, as if I were sinking below the depths, as if the
water were possessing me, taking me like a mermaid, and for a
moment I feel a deep relief as if, submerged in water, my grief
can drain away, as if it were the river Lethe and the currents
can bring forgetfulness and wash me into the cave of sleep; but
then the dreams come.
I don’t dream of his death—it would be the worst of nightmares
to see him go down fighting. But I never dream of the
battle, I don’t see his final charge into the very heart of Henry
Tudor’s guard. I don’t see him hacking his way through. I don’t
see Thomas Stanley’s army sweep down and bury him under
their hooves, as he is thrown from his horse, his sword arm failing,
going down under a merciless cavalry charge, shouting:
“Treason! Treason! Treason!” I don’t see William Stanley raise
his crown and put it on another man’s head.
I don’t dream any of this, and I thank God for that mercy at
least. These are my constant daytime thoughts that I cannot escape.
These are bloody daytime reveries that fill my mind while I
walk and talk lightly of the unseasonal heat, of the dryness of the
ground, of the poor harvest this year. But my dreams at night are
more painful, far more painful than this, for then I dream that
I am in his arms and he is waking me with a kiss. I dream that
we are walking in a garden, planning our future. I dream that I
am pregnant with his child, my rounded belly under his warm
hand, and he is smiling, delighted, and I am promising him that
we will have a son, the son that he needs, a son for York, a son
for England, a son for the two of us. “We’ll call him Arthur,” he
says. “We’ll call him Arthur, like Arthur of Camelot, we’ll call
him Arthur for England.”
The pain, when I wake to find that I have been dreaming
again, seems to get worse every day. I wish to God I could stop
dreaming.
My dearest daughter Elizabeth,
My heart and prayers are with you, dear child; but now, of all
the times in your life, you must act the part of the queen that you
were born to be.
The new king, Henry Tudor, commands you to come to me at
the Palace of Westminster in London and you are to bring your
sisters and cousins. Note this: he has not denied his betrothal to
you. I expect it to go ahead.
I know this is not what you hoped for, my dear; but Richard
is dead, and that part of your life is over. Henry is the victor and
our task now is to make you his wife and Queen of England.
You will obey me in one other thing also: you will smile and
look joyful as a bride coming to her betrothed. A princess does
not share her grief with all the world. You were born a princess
and you are the heir to a long line of courageous women. Lift up
your chin and smile, my dear. I am waiting for you, and I will
be smiling too.
Your loving mother
Elizabeth R
Dowager Queen of England
I read this letter with some care, for my mother has never been
a straightforward woman and any word from her is always
freighted with levels of meaning. I can imagine her thrilling at
another chance at the throne of England. She is an indomitable
woman; I have seen her brought very low, but never, even when
she was widowed, even when nearly mad with grief, have I seen
her humbled.
I understand at once her orders to look happy, to forget that
the man I love is dead and tumbled into an unmarked grave, to
forge the future of my family by hammering myself into marriage
with his enemy. Henry Tudor has come to England, having spent
his whole life in waiting, and he has won his battle, defeated the
rightful king, my lover Richard, and now I am, like England itself,
part of the spoils of war. If Richard had won at Bosworth—and
who would ever have dreamed that he would not?—I would have
been his queen and his loving wife. But he went down under
the swords of traitors, the very men who mustered and swore to
fight for him; and instead I am to marry Henry and the glorious
sixteen months when I was Richard’s lover, all but queen of his
court, and he was the heart of my heart, will be forgotten. Indeed,
I had better hope that they are forgotten. I have to forget them
myself.
I read my mother’s letter, standing under the archway of the
gatehouse of the great castle of Sheriff Hutton, and I turn and
walk into the hall, where a fire is burning in the central stone
hearth, the air warm and hazy with woodsmoke. I crumple the
single page into a ball and thrust it into the heart of the glowing
logs, and watch it burn. Any mention of my love for Richard
and his promises to me must be destroyed like this. And I must
hide other secrets too, one especially. I was raised as a talkative
princess in an open court rich with intellectual inquiry, where
anything could be thought, said, and written; but in the years
since my father’s death, I have learned the secretive skills of a
spy.
My eyes are filling with tears from the smoke of the fire, but I
know that there is no point in weeping. I rub my face and go to
find the children in the big chamber at the top of the west tower
that serves as their schoolroom and playroom. My sixteen-yearold
sister Cecily has been singing with them this morning, and
I can hear their voices and the rhythmic thud of the tabor as I
climb the stone stairs. When I push open the door, they break
off and demand that I listen to a round they have composed.
My ten-year-old sister Anne has been taught by the best masters
since she was a baby, our twelve-year-old cousin Margaret can
hold a tune, and her ten-year-old brother Edward has a clear
soprano as sweet as a flute. I listen and then clap my hands in
applause. “And now, I have news for you.”
Edward Warwick, Margaret’s little brother, lifts his heavy
head from his slate. “Not for me?” he asks forlornly. “Not news
for Teddy?”
“Yes, for you too, and for your sister Maggie, and Cecily and
Anne. News for all of you. As you know, Henry Tudor has won
the battle and is to be the new King of England.”
These are royal children; their faces are glum, but they are
too well trained to say one word of regret for their fallen uncle
Richard. Instead, they wait for what will come next.
“The new King Henry is going to be a good king to his loyal
people,” I say, despising myself as I parrot the words that Sir
Robert Willoughby said to me as he gave me my mother’s letter.
“And he has summoned all of us children of the House of York
to London.”
“But he’ll be king,” Cecily says flatly. “He’s going to be king.”
“Of course he’ll be king! Who else?” I stumble over the question
I have inadvertently posed. “Him, of course. Anyway, he
has won the crown. And he will give us back our good name and
recognize us as princesses of York.”
Cecily makes a sulky face. In the last weeks before Richard
the king rode out to battle, he ordered her to be married to Ralph
Scrope, a next-to-nobody, to make sure that Henry Tudor could
not claim her as a second choice of bride, after me. Cecily, like
me, is a princess of York, and so marriage to either of us gives a
man a claim to the throne. The shine was taken off me when gossip
said that I was Richard’s lover, and then Richard demeaned
Cecily too by condemning her to a lowly marriage. She claims
now that it was never consummated, now she says that she does
not regard it, that Mother will have it annulled; but presumably
she is Lady Scrope, the wife of a defeated Yorkist, and when we
are restored to our royal titles and become princesses again, she
will have to retain his name and her humiliation, even if no one
knows where Ralph Scrope is today.
“You know, I should be king,” ten-year-old Edward says, tugging
at my sleeve. “I’m next, aren’t I?”
I turn to him. “No, Teddy,” I say gently. “You cannot be
king. It’s true that you are a boy of the House of York and Uncle
Richard once named you as his heir; but he is dead now, and the
new king will be Henry Tudor.” I hear my voice quaver as I say
“he is dead,” and I take a breath and try again. “Richard is dead,
Edward, you know that, don’t you? You understand that King
Richard is dead? And you will never be his heir now.”
He looks at me so blankly that I think he has not understood
anything at all, and then his big hazel eyes fill with tears, and he
turns and goes back to copying his Greek alphabet on his slate.
I stare at his brown head for a moment and think that his dumb
animal grief is just like mine. Except that I am ordered to talk all
the time, and to smile all the day.
“He can’t understand,” Cecily says to me, keeping her voice
low so his sister Maggie cannot hear. “We’ve all told him, over
and over again. He’s too stupid to believe it.”
I glance at Maggie, quietly seating herself beside her brother
to help him to form his letters, and I think that I must be as
stupid as Edward, for I cannot believe it either. One moment
Richard was marching at the head of an invincible army of the
great families of England; the next they brought us the news that
he had been beaten, and that three of his trusted friends had sat
on their horses and watched him lead a desperate charge to his
death, as if it were a sunny day at the joust, as if they were spectators
and he a daring rider, and the whole thing a game that could
go either way and was worth long odds.
I shake my head. If I think of him, riding alone against his enemies,
riding with my glove tucked inside his breastplate against
his heart, then I will start to cry; and my mother has commanded
me to smile.
“So we are going to London!” I say, as if I am delighted at the
prospect. “To court! And we will live with our Lady Mother at
Westminster Palace again, and be with our little sisters Catherine
and Bridget again.”
The two orphans of the Duke of Clarence look up at this.
“But where will Teddy and me live?” Maggie asks.
“Perhaps you will live with us too,” I say cheerfully. “I expect
so.”
“Hurrah!” Anne cheers, and Maggie tells Edward quietly that
we will go to London, and that he can ride his pony all the way
there from Yorkshire like a little knight at arms, as Cecily takes
me by the elbow and draws me to one side, her fingers nipping
my arm. “And what about you?” she asks. “Is the king going to
marry you? Is he going to overlook what you did with Richard?
Is it all to be forgotten?”
“I don’t know,” I say, pulling away. “And as far as we are
concerned, nobody did anything with King Richard. You, of
all people, my sister, would have seen nothing and will speak of
nothing. As for Henry, I suppose whether he is going to marry
me or not is the one thing that we all want to know. But only he
knows the answer. Or perhaps two people: him—and that old
crone, his mother, who thinks she can decide everything.”
