The White Princess (20 page)

“I’ll get the priest, and the choir,” My Lady says. “Send me news throughout the night. I’ll get them to wake the archbishop. Our Lady will hear my prayers.”

They open the door for her and she goes out, excited by her mission. My mother does not even smile as she turns back to me and says, “Now, let’s get you walking.”

While My Lady labors on her knees, I labor all the night, until at dawn I turn my sweating face to my mother and say, “I feel strange, Lady Mother. I feel strange, like nothing I have felt before. I feel as if something terrible is about to happen. I’m afraid, Mama.”

She has laid aside her headdress, her hair is in a plait down her back, she has walked all the night beside me and now her tired face beams. “Lean on the women,” is all she says.

I had thought it would be a struggle, having heard all the terrible stories that women tell each other about screaming pain and babies that have to be turned, or babies that cannot be born and sometimes, fatally, have to be cut out; but my mother orders two of the midwives to stand on either side of me to bear me up, and she takes my face in her cool hands and looks into my eyes with her gray gaze and says quietly, “I am going to count for you. Be very still, beloved, and listen to my voice. I am
going to count from one to ten and as I count you will find your limbs get heavier and your breathing gets deeper and all you can hear is my voice. You will feel as if you are floating, as if you are Melusina on the water, and you are floating down a river of sweet water and you will feel no pain, only a deep restfulness like sleep.”

I am watching her eyes and then I can see nothing but her steady expression and hear nothing but her quiet counting. The pains come and go in my belly, but it feels like a long way away and I float, as she promised that I would, as if on a current of sweet water.

I can see the steadiness of her gaze, and the illumination of her face, and I feel that we are in a time of unreality, as if she is making magic around us with her reliable quiet count which seemed to go slowly and take an eternity.

“There is nothing to fear,” she says to me softly. “There is never anything to fear. The worst fear is of fear itself, and you can conquer that.”

“How?” I murmur. It feels as if I am talking in my sleep, floating down a stream of sleep. “How can I conquer the worst fear?”

“You just decide,” she says simply. “Just decide that you are not going to be a fearful woman and when you come to something that makes you apprehensive, you face it and walk towards it. Remember—anything you fear, you walk slowly and steadily towards it. And smile.”

Her certainty and the description of her own courage make me smile even though my pains are coming and then easing, faster now, every few minutes or so, and I see her beloved beam in reply as her eyes crinkle.

“Choose to be brave,” she urges me. “All the women of your family are as brave as lions. We don’t whimper and we don’t regret.”

My stomach seems to grip and turn. “I think the baby is coming,” I say, and I breathe deeply.

“I think so too,” she says, and turns to the midwives who hold me up, one under each arm, while the third kneels before me and listens with her ear against my straining belly.

“Now,” she says.

My mother says to me: “Your baby is ready, let him come into the world.”

“She needs to push,” one of the midwives says sharply. “She needs to struggle. He has to be born in travail and pain.”

My mother overrules her. “You don’t need to struggle,” she says. “Your baby is coming. Help him come to us, open your body and let him come into the world. You give birth, you don’t force birth or besiege it. It’s not a battle, it’s an act of love. You give birth to your child and you can do it gently.”

I can feel the sinews of my body opening and stretching. “It’s coming!” I say, suddenly alert. “I can feel . . .”

And then there is a rush and a thrust and an inescapable sense of movement, and then the sharp crying noise of a child and my mother smiling, though her eyes are filled with tears, and she says to me: “You have a baby. Well done, Elizabeth. Your father would be proud of your courage.”

They release me from the grip they have taken on my arms, and I lie down on the day bed and turn to where the woman is wrapping a little wriggling bloody bundle and I hold out my arms, saying impatiently: “Give me my baby!” I take it, with a sense of wonder that it is a baby, so perfectly formed, with brown hair and a rosy mouth open to bellow, and a cross flushed face. But my mother pulls back the linen that they have wrapped it in, and shows me the perfect little body.

“A boy,” she says, and there is neither triumph nor joy in her voice, just a deep wonder, though her voice is hoarse with weariness. “God has answered Lady Margaret’s prayers again. His ways are mysterious indeed. You have given the Tudors what they need: a boy.”

The king himself has been waiting all night outside the door for the news, like a loving husband who cannot wait for a messenger. My mother throws her robe over her stained linen shift and goes out to tell him of our triumph, her head high with pride. They send word to My Lady the King’s Mother in the chapel that her prayers have been answered and God has secured the Tudor line. She comes in as the women are helping me into the great state bed to rest, and washing and swaddling the baby. His wet nurse curtseys and shows him to My Lady, who reaches for him greedily, as if he were a crown in a hawthorn bush. She snatches him up and holds him to her heart.

“A boy,” she says like a miser might breathe “God.” “God has answered my prayers.”

I nod. I am too tired to speak to her. My mother holds a cup of spiced hot ale to my lips and I smell the sugar and the brandy and drink deep. I feel as if I am floating, dreamy with exhaustion and the ending of pain, drunk on the birthing ale, triumphant at a successful birth, and dizzy with the thought that I have a baby, a son, and that he is perfect.

“Bring him here,” I command.

She does as I tell her and hands him to me. He is tiny, small as a doll, but every detail of him is perfect as if he has been handcrafted with endless care. He has hands like plump little starfish and tiny fingernails like the smallest of shells. As I hold him he opens his eyes of the most surprising dark blue, like a sea at midnight. He looks at me gravely, as if he too is surprised. He looks at me as if he understands all that is to be, as if he knows that he has been born to a great destiny and must fulfill it.

“Give him to the wet nurse,” My Lady prompts.

“In a moment.” I don’t care what she tells me to do. She may have command of her son, but I shall have command of mine. This is my baby, not hers, this is my son, not hers; he is an heir to the Tudors but he is my beloved.

He is the Tudor heir that makes the throne safe, that will start a dynasty that will last forever. “We will call him Arthur,” My Lady declares. I knew this was coming. They dragged me to Winchester for the birth so that we could claim the legacy of Arthur, so the baby could be born all but on the famous Round Table of the knights of Camelot, so the Tudors could claim to be the heirs of that miraculous kingdom, the greatness of England revived, and the beautiful chivalry of the country springing again from their noble line.

“I know,” I say. I have no objection. How can I? It was the very name that Richard had chosen for a son with me. He too dreamed of Camelot and chivalry, but unlike the Tudors he really tried to make a court of noble knights; unlike the Tudors he lived his life by the precepts of being a perfect gentle knight. I close my eyes at the ridiculous thought that Richard would have loved this baby, that he chose his name, that he wished him into being with me, that this is our child.

“Prince Arthur,” My Lady rules.

“I know,” I say again. It is as if everything I do with my husband, Henry, is a sad parody of the dreams I had with my lover, Richard.

“Why are you crying?” she demands impatiently.

I lift the sheet of my bed and wipe my eyes. “I’m not,” I say.

PRIOR’S GREAT HALL, WINCHESTER, 24 SEPTEMBER 1486

The christening of the flower of England, the rose of chivalry, is as grand and exaggerated as a regime newly come to power can devise. My Lady has been planning it for the past nine months, everything is done as ostentatiously as possible.

“I think they are going to dip him in gold and serve him on a platter,” my mother says sarcastically with a hidden smile at me, as she lifts the baby from his cradle early in the morning of his grand christening day. The rockers stand obediently behind her, watching her every move with the suspicion of professionals. The wet nurse is unlacing her bodice, impatient to feed the baby. My mother holds her grandson to her face and kisses his warm little body. He is sleepy, making a little snuffling noise. I hold out my arms, yearning for him, and she gives him to me and hugs us both.

As we watch, he opens his mouth in a little yawn, compresses his tiny face, flaps his arms like a fledgling, and then wails to be fed. “My lord prince,” my mother says lovingly. “Impatient as a king. Here, I’ll give him to Meg.”

The wet nurse is ready for him, but he cries and fusses and cannot latch on.

“Should I feed him?” I ask eagerly. “Would he feed from me?”

The rockers, the wet nurse, even my mother, all shake their heads in absolute unison.

“No,” my mother says regretfully. “That’s the price you pay for being a great lady, a queen. You can’t nurse your own child. You have won him a golden spoon and the best food in the world for all his life, but he cannot have his mother’s milk. You can’t mother him as you might wish. You’re not a poor woman. You’re not free. You have to be back in the king’s bed as soon as you are able and give us another baby boy.”

Jealously, I watch as he nuzzles at another woman’s breast and finally starts to feed. The wet nurse gives me a reassuring smile. “He’ll do well on my milk,” she says quietly. “You need not fear for him.”

“How many boys do you need?” I demand irritably of my mother. “Before I can stop bearing them? Before I can feed one?”

My mother, who gave birth to three royal boys and has none of them today, shrugs her shoulders. “It’s a dangerous world,” is all she says.

The door opens without a knock and My Lady comes in. “Is he ready?” she asks without preamble.

“He’s feeding.” My mother rises to her feet. “He’ll be ready in a little while. Are you waiting for him?”

Lady Margaret inhales the sweet, clean smell of the room as if she is greedy for him. “It’s all ready,” she says. “I have ordered it to the last detail. They are lining up in the Great Hall, waiting only for the Earl of Oxford.” She looks around for Anne and Cecily, and nods approval at their ornate gowns. “You are honored,” she says. “I have allowed you two the most important positions: carrying the chrism, carrying the prince himself.” She turns to my mother. “And you, named as godmother to a prince, a Tudor prince! Nobody can say that we have not united the families. Nobody can declare for York anymore. We are all one. I have planned today to prove it.” She looks at the wet nurse as if she would snatch the baby from her. “Will he be ready soon?”

My mother hides a smile. It is very clear that My Lady may know everything about christening princes but nothing about babies. “He will be as long as he needs,” she rules. “Probably less than an hour.”