“A pretender. Of course, that is all that he could possibly be.”
Henry stays in London only long enough to assure everyone that his victory over the rebels was total, that he was never in any danger, and that the crowned king that they paraded in Dublin is now a frightened boy in prison; then he takes his most trusted lords and goes north again, to one great house after another where he holds inquiries and learns which lords failed to secure the roads, who whispered to someone else that there was no need to support the king, those who looked the other way while the rebel army stormed by, and those who saddled up, sharpened their swords, and treasonously went out to join them. Relentlessly, dealing in details and whispers, gatepost gossip and alehouse insults, Henry tracks down every single man whose loyalty wavered when the cry went up for York. He is determined that those men who joined the rebels should be punished, some put to death as traitors but most fined to the point of ruin, and the profit paid to the royal treasury. He ventures as far north as Newcastle, deep into the York heartlands, and sends ambassadors to the court of James III of Scotland with proposals for a peace treaty and for marriages to make the treaties hold firm. Then he turns and rides home to London, a conquering hero, leaving the North reeling with death and debt.
He summons the boy Lambert Simnel to his presence chamber and commands the attendance of his whole court: My Lady the King’s Mother, an eager spectator of her son’s doings; myself with my ladies headed by my two sisters, my cousin Maggie at my side; my aunt Katherine, smilingly accompanying her victorious husband, Jasper Tudor; all the faithful lords and those who have managed to pass as faithful. The double doors slam open, and the yeomen guard ground their pikes with a bang and shout the name, “John Lambert Simnel!” and everyone turns to see a skinny boy, frozen in the doorway until someone pushes him inwards and he takes a few steps into the room and then sinks on his knees to the king.
My first thought is that he does indeed look very like my brother looked, when I last saw him. This is a blond, pretty boy of about ten years old, and when my mother and I smuggled my brother out of sanctuary that dark evening, he was as bright and as slender as this. Now, if he is alive somewhere, he would be about fourteen, he would be growing into a young man. This child could never have passed for him.
“Does he remind you of anybody?” The king takes my hand and leads me from my chair beside his to walk down the long room to where the boy is kneeling, his head bowed, the nape of his neck exposed, as if he expects to be beheaded here and now. Everyone is silent. There are about a hundred people in the privy chamber and everyone turns to look at the boy as Henry approaches him, and the child droops lower and his ears burn.
“Anyone think he looks familiar?” Henry’s hard gaze rakes my family, my sisters with their heads down as if they are guilty, my cousin Maggie with her eyes on the little boy who looks so like her brother, my half brother Thomas who is gazing around indifferently, determined that no one shall see him flinch.
“No,” I say shortly. He is slight like my brother Richard and has cropped blond hair like his. I can’t see his face but I caught a glimpse of hazel eyes like my brother’s, and at the back of his head there are a few childish curls on the nape of the neck, just like Richard’s. When he used to sit at my mother’s feet, she would twist his curls around her fingers as if they were bright golden rings, and she would read to him until he was sleepy and ready for bed. The sight of the little boy, on his knees, makes me think once more of my brother Richard, and of the page that we sent into the Tower to take his place, of my missing brother Prince Edward, and of my cousin Edward of Warwick—Maggie’s brother—in the Tower alone. It is as if there is a succession of boys, York boys, all bright, all charming, all filled with promise; but nobody can be sure where they are tonight, or even if they are alive or dead, or if they are unreal, flights of fancy and pretenders like this one.
“Does he not remind you of your cousin Edward of Warwick?” Henry asks me, speaking clearly so that the whole court can hear.
“No, not at all.”
“Would you ever have mistaken him for your dead brother Richard?”
“No.”
He turns from me, now that this masque has been played out and everyone can say that the boy knelt before us and I looked at him and denied him. “So anyone who thought that he was a son of York was either deceived or a deceiver,” Henry rules. “Either a fool or a liar.”
He waits for everyone to understand that John de la Pole, Francis Lovell, and my own mother were fools and liars, and then he goes on: “So, boy, you are not who you said you were. My wife, a princess of York, does not recognize you. She would say if you were her kinsman as you claim. But she says you are not. So who are you?”
For a moment I think the child is so afraid that he has lost the power of speech. But then, keeping his head down and his eyes on the ground, he whispers: “John Lambert Simnel, if it please Your Grace. Sorry,” he adds awkwardly.
“John Lambert Simnel.” Henry rolls the name around his tongue like a bullying schoolmaster. “John. Lambert. Simnel. And how ever have you got from your nursery, John, to here? For it has been a long journey for you, and a costly and time-consuming trouble for me.”
“I know, Sire. I’m very sorry, Sire,” the child says.
Someone smiles in sympathy at the little treble voice, and then catches Henry’s furious look and glances away. I see Maggie’s face is white and strained and Anne is shaking and slips her hand into Cecily’s arm.
“Did you take the crown on your head though you knew you had no right to it?”
“Yes, Sire.”
“You took it under a false name. It was put on your head but you knew your lowborn head did not deserve it.”
“Yes, Sire.”
“The boy whose name you took, Edward of Warwick, is loyal to me, recognizing me as his king. As does everyone in England.”
The child has lost his voice; only I am close enough to hear a little sob.
“What d’you say?” Henry shouts at him.
“Yes, Sire,” the child quavers.
“So it meant nothing. You are not a crowned king?”
Obviously, the child is not a crowned king. He is a lost little boy in a dangerous world. I nip my lower lip to stop myself from crying. I step forwards and I gently put my hand in Henry’s arm. But nothing will restrain him.
“You took the holy oil on your breast but you are not a king, nor did you have any right to the oil, the sacred oil.”
“Sorry,” comes a little gulp from the child.
“And then you marched into my country, at the head of an army of paid men and wicked rebels, and were completely, utterly defeated by the power of my army and the will of God!”
At the mention of God, My Lady the King’s Mother steps forwards a little, as if she too wants to scold the child. But he stays kneeling, his head sinks lower, he almost has his forehead on the rushes on the floor. He has nothing to say to either power or God.
“What shall I do with you?” Henry asks rhetorically. At the startled look on the faces of the court, I realize that they have suddenly understood, like me, that this is a hanging matter. It is a matter for hanging, drawing, and quartering. If Henry hands this child over to the judge, then he will be hanged by his neck until he is faint with pain, then the executioner will cut him down, slide a knife from his little genitals to his breastbone, pull out his heart, his lungs, and his belly, set light to them before his goggling eyes, and then cut off his legs and his arms, one by one.
I press Henry’s arm. “Please,” I whisper. “Mercy.”
I meet Maggie’s aghast gaze and see that she too has realized that Henry may take this tableau through to a deathly conclusion. Unless we play another scene altogether. Maggie knows that I can perform one great piece of theater and that I may have to do this. As the wife of the king, I can kneel to him publicly and ask for clemency for a criminal. Maggie will come forwards and take off my hood, and my hair will tumble down around
my shoulders, and then she will kneel, all my ladies will kneel behind me.
We in the House of York have never done such a thing, as my father liked to deal out punishment or mercy on his own account, having no time for the theater of cruelty. We in the House of York never had to intercede for a little boy against a vindictive king. They did it in the House of Lancaster: Margaret of Anjou on her knees for misled commoners before her sainted husband. It is a royal tradition, it is a recognized ceremony. I may have to do it to save this little boy from unbearable pain. “Henry,” I whisper. “Do you want me to kneel for him?”
He shakes his head. And at once, I am so afraid that he does not want me to intercede for mercy because he is determined to order the child to be executed. I grip his hand again. “Henry!”
The boy looks up. He has bright hazel eyes just like my little brother. “Will you forgive me, Sire?” he asks. “Out of your mercy? Because I’m only ten years old? And I know that I shouldn’t have done it?”
There is a terrible silence. Henry turns from the boy and conducts me back to the dais. He takes his seat and I sit beside him. I am conscious of a sudden deep throbbing in my temples as I rack my brains as to what I can do to save this child.
Henry points at him. “You can work in the kitchens,” he says. “Spit lad. You look like you could be lively in my kitchens. Will you do it?”
The boy flushes with relief and the tears fill his eyes and spill down his rosy cheeks. “Oh, yes, Sire!” he says. “You are very good. Very merciful!”
“Do as you are bid and perhaps you will work your way up to be a cook,” Henry commends him. “Now go to work.” He snaps his fingers to a waiting servant. “Take Master Simnel to the kitchen with my compliments and tell them to set him to work.”
There is a rustle of applause and then suddenly a gale of laughter sweeps the court. I take Henry’s hand, and I am laughing too, the relief at his decision is so great. He is smiling, he is smiling at me. “You never thought that I would make war on such a child?”
I shake my head, and there are tears in my own eyes from laughter and relief. “I was so afraid for him.”
“He did nothing, he was their little standard. It is the ones behind him that I must punish. It is the ones who set him up that deserve the scaffold.” His eyes rove down the court as they talk among themselves and share their relief. He looks at my aunt, Elizabeth de la Pole, who has lost her son, who has tight hold of Maggie’s hands and they are both crying. “The real traitors will not get off so lightly,” he says ominously. “Whoever they are.”
GREENWICH PALACE, LONDON, NOVEMBER 1487
I dress for my coronation and reflect that it is a different task preparing to be queen than it was preparing to be a bride. This time, laced into a gown of white and gold, with lacings of gold trimmed with royal ermine, I am not shivering with unhappiness. I know what to expect from my husband and we have found a way to be together which skirts the secrets of the past and shields our gaze from the uncertainty in our future. I have given him a son for us to love, he is giving me a crown. His mother’s preference for him above all other and her fierce enmity to my family is a feature of my life that I have come to accept. The mystery of my absent brother and Henry’s fear of my family is something that we live with daily.
I have learned to recognize his temper, his sudden rush into rage; I have learned that it is always caused by his fear that despite the victory, despite the support of his mother, despite her declaration that God Himself is on the side of the Tudors, he will fail her and God and be cut from the throne as cruelly and as unjustly as the king he saw killed at his feet.
But I have also learned his tenderness, his love of his son, his dutiful powerful obedient submission to his mother, and—growing every day—his warmth towards me. When I disappoint him, when he suspects me, it is as if his whole world is uncertain once again. More and more he wants to love and trust me; and more and more I find that I want him to.
There is much to give me joy today. I have a son in the nursery and a husband who is secure on his throne. My sisters are safe and I am no longer haunted by dreams or ill with grief. But still, I have much to regret. Although it is my coronation day, my family are defeated. My mother is missing, enclosed in Bermondsey Abbey, my cousin John de la Pole is dead. My uncle Edward is high in the king’s trust, but is far away in Granada on crusade against the Moors, and my half brother Thomas is so careful around the king that every day he performs a sort of relentless dance on tiptoe to ensure that he doesn’t alert Henry’s suspicions. Cecily is a girl of York no longer, married to a Tudor supporter, never speaking a word without her husband’s sanction, and all my other sisters will be earmarked by My Lady the King’s Mother for Tudor loyalists; she won’t risk any one of them being made a focus for rebellion. Worst of all, worse than everything, is that Teddy is still held in the Tower and the surge of confidence that Henry felt after the battle of East Stoke has not led him to release the boy, though I have asked for it, even asked for Teddy’s freedom as a coronation day gift. His sister Maggie’s white face among my ladies is a constant reproach to me. I said that she and Teddy could come to London and that they would be safe. I said that my mother could keep them safe. I said that I would be Teddy’s guardian but I was powerless, my mother herself is enclosed, My Lady the King’s Mother has Teddy as her ward and has taken his fortune into her keeping. I did not allow for Henry’s secret terror. I did not think that a king would persecute a boy.
There have been triumphs for the House of York. Henry may have won at the battle of East Stoke but it was not a heroic campaign; and though most of his lords brought their men, very few of them actually joined the battle. A troubling number of them did not even attend. Henry has the crown on his head and an heir in his nursery but one of his kingdoms offered their crown to someone else—an unknown boy—in preference to him; and there is a constant continuing whisper about another heir, another heir somewhere in hiding, waiting his turn.
It is not my mother but Maggie who brushes out my hair and straightens it over my shoulders where it falls down my back, almost to my waist. Cecily puts the gold net over my head, and on top of that I will wear a gold circlet with diamonds and rubies. There are a lot of rubies, they signify a virtuous woman, and this will be my principal role for the rest of my life—a virtuous woman and a Tudor queen whose motto is “humble and penitent.” It does not matter that in my heart I am passionate and independent. My true self will be hidden and history will never speak of me except as the daughter of one king, the wife of another, and the mother of a third.
The royal barge is to take me upriver to Westminster and the Mayor of London and all the guilds will come in their liveried ships with music and singing to escort me. Yet again my mother will look from her window and see a royal procession going along the river to a coronation; but this time it will be her daughter in the barge that rows past her prison. I know that she will look out of the abbey windows to see me go by, and I hope she will take a pleasure in knowing that this plan of hers, at least, has come to fruition. She has put me on the throne of England and though the gilded barge is being rowed upstream past her without acknowledgment—and it is the fourth coronation procession without her on board—this time at least she has put her daughter on the golden throne and the people lining the riverbank will call À York.
I walk down to the pier with my ladies holding my train high to stop it sweeping on the damp carpet, and they help me on board the ship. It is magnificent, decked out for the day with flags and flowers, escorted by decorated barges and vessels of all sorts. They play music as I come on board, and a choir sings an anthem to my virtues. I take my place in the stern, a cloth of gold over my head, the gold throne cushioned with velvet. My ladies gather around me. We are a famously beautiful court and today every woman is dressed in her very best. The rowers take the beat from the drum, the other barges assemble before and behind us. I pin a smile on my face as the oars dig deep in the water and we set off.
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One of the accompanying barges has a figurehead in the shape of a dragon’s head, and a coiled tail fixed on the stern. It is a Tudor dragon and every so often they light a flame in its mouth and it breathes fire over the water, so that the people on the riverbank scream and cheer. They call À York to me, in defiance of all the evidence that this is a Tudor celebration. I cannot help but smile at the faithful love that people have for my house, even as the pennants flutter white and green and the Tudor dragon gives his little sputtering roar.
The royal barge is mid-river, moving easily on the inward tide, but as we get to Bermondsey and I see the brick and flint gatehouse of the abbey, the steersman sets a course for the opposite bank so that we are as far away as possible from my mother’s prison. I can see the people waiting by the sheltering perimeter walls of the abbey, but I cannot make out the figures. I raise my hand to shield my eyes and the gold crown scratches my fingers. I cannot see my mother among the crowd, we are too far out on the river and there are too many people for me to spot her. I want to see her, I so want to see her. I want her to know that I am looking for her. For a moment I wonder if she has been ordered to stay in her cell as the barge goes by. I wonder if she will be seated in her chair, in the cool whitewashed cell, listening to the music bawled across the water, smiling at the noisy roar of the dragon vomiting fire, but not knowing that I am looking for her.
And then, suddenly, as if by magic, I see her. There is a standard, uncurling and flapping in the breeze from the river. It is Tudor green, the new color of loyalty, Tudor green background embroidered with the Tudor rose of white and red, as every sensible person would show today. But this flag is different: it’s a white rose on the Tudor green and if there is a red center to the rose, it is stitched so small that it cannot be seen. At first glance, at closer glance, this is the white rose of York. And there, of course, is my mother standing under the standard of the husband she adored, and as I look towards her and raise my hand, she gives a girlish jump of joy that I have seen her and she waves both her hands above her head, shouting my name, exuberant, laughing, rebellious as ever. She starts to run along the riverbank, keeping pace with my distant barge, shouting, “Elizabeth! Elizabeth! Hurrah!” so clearly that I can hear her over the noise across the water. I rise up from my solemn throne, rush to the side of the boat, and lean out to wave back at her, quite without any dignity, and shout, “Lady Mother! Here I am!” and laugh aloud in delight that I have seen her, and that she has seen me, and that I am going to my coronation with her laughing, easy blessing.