“When I have given birth you will have to let me out,” I say breathlessly. It is as if the room is airless and I am struggling to breathe. “Then I will see the king and tell him that I have been imprisoned in here.”

She sighs as if I am very foolish. “Really, Your Grace! You must be calm. We all agreed you were entering your confinement this evening, you knew full well that you were doing this today.”

“What about the dinner and bidding farewell to the court?”

“Your health was not strong enough. You said so yourself.”

I am so amazed by her lie that I gape at her. “When did I say that?”

“You said you were distressed. You said you were troubled. Here there is neither distress nor trouble. You will stay here, under my guidance, until you have safely given birth to the child.”

“I will see my mother, I will see her at once!” I say. I am furious to hear my voice tremble. But I am afraid of My Lady in this darkened room, and I feel powerless. My earliest memory is of being confined, in sanctuary, in a damp warren of cold rooms under the chapel at Westminster Abbey. I have a horror of confined spaces and dark places, and now I am trembling with anger and fear. “I will see my mother. The king said that I should see her. The king promised me that she would be with me in here.”

“She will come into confinement with you,” she concedes. “Of course.” She pauses. “And she will stay with you until you come out. When the baby is born. She will share your confinement.”

I just gape at her. She has all the power and I have none. I have been as good as imprisoned by her and by the convention of royal births which she has codified and to which I agreed. Now I am locked in one shadowy room for weeks, and she has the key.

“I am free,” I say boldly. “I’m not a prisoner. I am here to give birth. I chose to come in here. I am not held against my will. I am free. If I want to walk out, I can just walk out. Nobody can stop me, I am the wife of the King of England.”

“Of course you are,” she says, and then she goes out through the door and turns the key in the lock from the outside, and leaves me. I am locked in.

My mother comes in at dinnertime, holding Maggie’s hand. “We’ve come to join you,” she says.

Maggie is white as if she were deathly sick, her eyes red-rimmed from crying.

“What about Teddy?”

My mother shakes her head. “They took him to the Tower.”

“Why would they do that?”

“They shouted À Warwick when they fought Jasper Tudor in the North. They carried the standard of the ragged staff in London,” my mother says, as if this is reason enough.

“They were fighting for Teddy,” Maggie tells me. “Even though he didn’t ask them to—even though he would never ask them to. He knows not to say such things. I’ve taught him. He knows that King Henry is the king. He knows to say nothing about the House of York.”

“There’s no charge against him,” my mother says briefly. “He’s not charged with treason. Not charged with anything. The king says he is only acting to protect Teddy. He says that Teddy might be seized by rebels and used by them as a figurehead. He says that Teddy is safer in the Tower for now.”

My laughter at this extraordinary lie turns into a sob. “Safer in the Tower! Were my brothers safer in the Tower?”

My mother grimaces.

“I’m sorry,” I say at once. “Forgive me, I’m sorry. Did the king say how long he will keep Teddy there?”

Maggie goes quietly to the fireside and sinks down onto a footstool, her head turned away. “Poor child,” my mother says. To me she replies, “He didn’t say. I didn’t ask. They took Teddy’s clothes and his books. I think we have to assume that His Grace will keep him there until he feels safe from rebellion.”

I look at her, the only one of us who may know how many rebels are biding their time, waiting for a call to rise for York, seeing the last skirmish as a stepping-stone to another, and from that to another—not as a defeat. She is a woman who never sees defeat. I wonder if she is their leader, if it is her determined optimism that drives them on. “Is something going to happen?”

She shakes her head. “I don’t know.”










PRIOR’S GREAT HALL, WINCHESTER, 19 SEPTEMBER 1486

When my father came home, won two battles one after the other, saved us, rescued us like a knight in a storybook, we emerged from the crypt, out of the darkness like the risen Lord Himself coming into light. Then I swore to myself a childish oath that I would never be confined again.

This is fortune’s wheel—as my grandmother Jacquetta would say. Fortune’s wheel that takes you very high and then throws you very low, and there is nothing you can do but face the turn of it with courage. I remember clearly enough that as a little girl I could not find that courage.

When I was seventeen and the favorite of my father’s court, the most beautiful princess in England with everything before me, my father died and we fled back into sanctuary, for fear of his brother, my uncle Richard. Nine long months we waited in sanctuary, squabbling with one another, furious at our own failure, until my mother came to terms with Richard and I was freed into the light, to the court, to love. For the second time I came out of the dark like a ghost returning to life. Once again I blinked in the warm light of freedom like a hooded hawk suddenly set free to fly, and I swore I would never again be imprisoned. Once again, I am proved wrong.

My pains start at midnight. “It’s too early,” one of my women breathes in fear. “It’s at least a month too early.” I see a swift glance between those habitual conspirators, my mother and My Lady the King’s Mother. “It is a month too early,” My Lady confirms loudly for anyone who is counting. “We will have to pray.”

“My Lady, would you go to your own chapel and pray for our daughter?” my mother asks quickly and cleverly. “An early baby needs intercession with the saints. If you would be so good as to pray for her in her time of travail?”

My Lady hesitates, torn between God and curiosity. “I had thought to help her here. I thought I should witness . . .”

My mother shrugs at the room, the midwives, my sisters, the ladies-in-waiting. “Earthly tasks,” she says simply. “But who can pray like you?”

“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.”