“I am relieved,” he says to me when we are in our private room at the end of the day. “I cannot easily say how deeply I am relieved.”

“Because you won?” I ask. I am sitting at the window, looking east where the high spires of the cathedral pierce the low cloudy skies, but as he comes in my room I turn and look at his flushed complexion.

“Not just that,” he says. “Once I knew that we outnumbered them I thought we were almost certain to win, and the Irish were practically unarmed—when they turned and faced us they were all but naked. I knew they couldn’t stand against archery—they had no shields, they had no padded jackets, nobody had chain mail, poor fools—no, what made it so wonderful was capturing the boy.”

“The boy they said was my cousin Teddy?”

“Yes, because now I can show him. Now everyone can see that he is no heir to York. He’s a schoolboy, a lad of ten years old, name of Lambert Simnel, nothing special about him but his looks . . .” He glances at me. “Handsome, charming, like all the Yorks.”

I nod as if this is a reasonable complaint against us.

“And better than that.” He smiles to himself, he is all but hugging himself with joy. “No one else landed, no one else came. Even though they marched all the way across England, there was no one anchored off the east coast, there was no one waiting for them at Newark.”

“What d’you mean?”

He gets to his feet and stretches himself as if he would spread his arms to hug all of the kingdom. “If they had a pretender, a better likeness than the little schoolboy, they would have had him nearby, waiting. So that when they claimed victory they could produce him, exchange him for the little lad, and take him to London for a second coronation.”

I wait.

“Like with players!” He is almost laughing with joy. “When they make a switch in a play. Like the Easter play—there’s the body in the tomb, someone flicks a cape and there’s the risen Lord. You have to have your switch ready, you have to have your player in the wings. But when they didn’t have a boy waiting to take the place of the Simnel lad—that’s when I knew that they were defeated. They don’t have anyone!” He cracks into a laugh. “See? They don’t have anyone. Nobody was landed to meet them at Newark. Nobody came in from Flanders, nobody sailed up the Thames and arrived in London to wait for the triumphant procession. Nobody arrived in Wales, nobody came down from Scotland. Don’t you see?” He laughs in my face. “All they have is an impersonator, the schoolboy. They don’t have the real thing.”

“The real thing?”

In his relief he speaks his fear clearly for the first time. “They don’t have one of your brothers. They don’t have Edward Prince of Wales, they don’t have Richard Duke of York, his brother and heir. If they had either one of them, they would have had him ready, standing by to take the throne as soon as the battle was won. If either one of your brothers was alive they would have had him, ready to claim the throne, as soon as I was dead. But they don’t! They don’t!

“It’s all been gossip, and rumors, and false sightings and lying reports. They did all this for a bluff. They fooled me—I don’t mind telling you that they frightened me—but it was a May game, a nothing. They made rumors about a boy in Portugal, they whispered about a boy who got out of the Tower alive; but it was all nothing. I have had men hunting all over Christendom for a boy and now I see he is nothing more than a dream. I am content now, that it was all nothing.”

I register the color in his cheeks and the brightness of his eyes and realize that I am seeing my husband for the first time without his constant burden of fear. I smile at him; his relief is so powerful that I feel it myself. “We’re safe,” I say.

“We Tudors are safe at last,” he responds. He puts out his hand to me and I understand that he will stay in my bed tonight. I rise to my feet but I am not eager, I feel no desire. I am not unwilling, I am a faithful wife and my husband is safe home from a terrible battle, happier than I have ever seen him, and I cannot help but be glad that he is safe. I welcome him home, I even welcome him to my bed.

Gently, he unties the laces under my chin and takes off my nightcap. He turns me around and pulls my hair from the plait, unties the belt at my waist and the little ties at my shoulders, and drops my gown to the ground, so that I am naked before him, my hair tumbling down. He sighs and put his lips to my bare shoulder. “I shall crown you as Queen of England,” he says simply, and takes me into his arms.

We go on a progress to celebrate the king’s great victory. My Lady the King’s Mother rides a great warhorse, as if she were caparisoned for battle. I ride the horse that Richard gave me; I feel as if he and I have been through many journeys together, and always riding away from Richard, and never with him as he promised. Henry rides often at my side. I know that he wants to demonstrate to the people who come out to see us that he is married to the York princess, that he has unified the houses and defeated the rebels. But now there is more than this: I know that he likes to be with me. We even laugh together as we ride through the small villages of Lincolnshire and the people come tumbling out of their houses and run across their fields to see us go by.

“Smiling,” Henry says to me, beaming at half a dozen peasants whose opinions—surely—matter not at all, one way or the other.

“Waving,” I coach him, and take my hand from the reins and make a little gesture.

“How do you do it?” He stops his rictus grin at the crowd and turns to me. “That little wave, you look as if it’s easy. You don’t look practiced at all.”

I think for a moment. “My father used to say that you must remember they have turned out to see you, they want to feel that you are their friend. You are among friends and loyal supporters. A smile or a wave is a greeting to people who have only come to admire you. You might not know them—but they think they know you. They deserve to be greeted as friends.”

“But did he never think that they would turn out just as eagerly to greet his enemy? Did he not think that these are false smiles and hollow cheers?”

I consider this for a moment, and then I giggle. “To tell you the truth, I think it never occurred to him at all,” I say. “He was terribly vain, you know. He always thought that everybody adored him. And mostly, they did. He rode around thinking everyone loved him. He claimed the throne on his merits as a true heir. He always thought he was the finest man in England, he never doubted it.”

He shakes his head, and forgets to wave to someone who calls, À Tudor! It is only one voice, no one else takes up the call, and the cry just sounds wrong, strangely unconvincing. “He can’t have been told more often than I that he was born to be king,” he says. “Nobody in the world could be more sure than my mother that her son should be king.”

“He was fighting from boyhood,” I say. “At the age that you were in hiding, he was recruiting men and demanding their allegiance. It was very different for him. He was claiming the throne and drawing on the will of the people. He was the claimant: not his mother. Three suns appeared in the sky over his army. He was certain that he was chosen by God to be king. He was visible, he showed himself, at the same age, you were in hiding. He was fighting, you were running away.”

He nods. I think, but I don’t say, and he was blessed with bravery, he had a great natural courage and you are naturally fearful. And he had a wife that adored him, who married him for irresistible love, and her family embraced him, and his cause was their cause, and all of us—his daughters, his sons, his brothers-in-law, his sisters-in-law—we were all utterly loyal to him. He was at the center of a loving family and every one of them would have laid down their life for him. But you only have your mother and your uncle Jasper, and they are both cold of heart.

Someone ahead of us shouts “Hurrah!” and the yeomen of the guard raise their pikes and shout “Hurrah!” in full-throated reply, and I think that my father would never have created yeomen of the guard to lead the cheers for he always believed that everyone loved him, and he never had need of guarding.










WESTMINSTER PALACE, LONDON, AUGUST 1487

Archbishop John Morton is made Lord Chancellor, which only makes me and others wonder what assistance a Father of the Church could provide for a king that should lead to so great a reward.