White Princess

Book : The Plantagenet and Tudor Novels

by Philippa Gregory

Genres: Women's Fiction

Synopsis

The newest novel from #1 New York Times best-selling author and "queen of royal fiction" ( USA Today) Philippa Gregory tells the passionate story of Elizabeth of York, daughter of the White Queen, who gets caught in the middle of a battle for the crown of England. The White Princess opens as the news of the battle of Bosworth is brought to Princess Elizabeth of York, who will learn not only which rival royal house has triumphed, Tudor or York, but also which suitor she must marry: Richard III her lover, or Henry Tudor her enemy. A princess from birth, Elizabeth fell in love with Richard III, though her mother made an arranged betrothal for her with the pretender to the throne: Henry Tudor. When Henry defeats Richard against all odds, Elizabeth has to marry the man who murdered her lover in battle, and create a new royal family with him and his ambitious mother: Margaret Beaufort, The Red Queen. But, while the new monarchy can win, it cannot, it seems, hold power in an England which remembers the House of York with love. The new king’s greatest fear is that somewhere, outside England, a prince from the House of York is waiting to invade and re-claim the throne for the house of York. Fearing that none of his new allies can be trusted, Henry turns to his wife to advise him, all the time knowing that her loyalties must be divided. When the young man who would be king finally leads his army and invades England, it is for Elizabeth to decide whether she recognizes him as her brother and a claimant to the throne, or denies him in favor of the husband she is coming to love....

Release date: March 28, 2017

Publisher: Atria Books

Print pages: 544

Sample

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.”