The White Princess Read Free

waving from the window of the Garden Tower. Nobody knows for sure; but everyone thinks they are dead. What I know, I keep a close secret, and I don’t know much.
    “I’m sorry,” she says awkwardly. “I didn’t mean to distress you . . .”
    “It’s all right,” I say, as if to speak of the disappearance of my brothers is not pain on pain. “Do you fear that Henry Tudor will take your brother into the Tower as King Richard took both of mine? And that he won’t come out either?”
    She twists her hand in her gown. “I don’t even know if I should be taking him to London,” she exclaims. “Should I try to get a ship and take him away to our aunt Margaret in Flanders? But I don’t know how. I don’t have any money to hire a ship. And I don’t know who to ask. D’you think we should do that? Get Teddy away? Aunt Margaret would guard and keep him for love of the House of York. Should we do that? Would you know how to do it?”
    “King Henry won’t hurt him,” I say. “Not right now, at any rate. He might later on, when he’s established as king and secure on the throne, and people aren’t watching him and wondering how he’s going to act. But in the next few months he’ll be seeking to make friends everywhere. He’s won the battle, now he has to win the kingdom. It’s not enough to kill the previous king, he has to be acclaimed by the people and crowned. He won’t risk offending the House of York and everyone who loves us. Why, the poor man might even have to marry me to please them all!”
    She smiles. “You’d make such a lovely queen! A really beautiful queen! And then I could be sure that Edward would be safe, for you could make him your ward, couldn’t you? You’d guard him, wouldn’t you? You know he’s no danger to anyone. We’dboth be faithful to the Tudor line. We’d both be faithful to you.”
    “If I’m ever made queen I will keep him safe,” I promise her, thinking how many lives depend on me to make Henry honor his betrothal. “But in the meantime, I think you can come to London with us and we will be safe with my mother. She’ll know what to do. She’ll have a plan ready.”
    Maggie hesitates. There was bad blood between her mother Isabel and mine, and then she was raised by Richard’s wife Anne, who hated my mother as a mortal enemy. “Will she care for us?” she asks very quietly. “Will your mother be kind to Teddy? They always said she was my family’s enemy.”
    “She has no quarrel with either you or with Edward,” I say reassuringly. “You are her niece and nephew. We’re all of the House of York. She will protect you as she does us.”
    She is reassured, she trusts me, and I don’t remind her that my mother had two boys of her own, Edward and Richard, that she loved more than life itself; but she couldn’t keep them safe. And nobody knows where my little brothers are tonight.

WESTMINSTER PALACE, LONDON, AUTUMN 1485

    There is no welcome party as we ride into London, and when one or two apprentices and market women catch sight of us in the narrow streets and cheer for the children of York, our escort closes up around us, to drive us as fast as they can into the courtyard of the royal Palace of Westminster, where the heavy wooden gates close behind us. Clearly, the new king Henry wants no rivals for the hearts of the city that he is calling his own. My mother is on the entrance steps, before the great doors, waiting for us with my little sisters, six-year-old Catherine and four-year-old Bridget, on either side of her. I tumble down from my horse and find myself in her arms, smelling her familiar perfume of rosewater and the scent of her hair, and as she holds me and pats my back, I find myself suddenly in tears, sobbing for the loss of the man I loved so passionately, and the future I had planned with him.
    “Hush,” my mother says firmly, and sends me indoors while she greets my sisters and my cousins. She comes in after me, with Bridget on one hip