“When will it be? The wedding?”

“After the coronation.” My mother points to the paragraph. “Of course, he won’t want anyone to say that they are joint king and queen. He’ll want to be seen to take the throne on his own merits. He won’t want anyone saying she takes the queen’s crown on her own account. He can’t have anyone saying that he’s got the crown through her.”

“But we’ll all go to his coronation?” my aunt Katherine asks. “They’ve left it very late but—”

“Not invited,” my mother says shortly.

“It’s an insult! He must have Elizabeth there!”

My mother shrugs her shoulders. “What if they cheered for her? What if they called for us?” she says quietly. “You know how people would cheer for her, if they saw her. You know how Londoners love the House of York. What if the people saw us and called for my nephew Edward of Warwick? What if they booed the House of Tudor and called for the House of York? At his coronation? He’s not going to risk it.”

“There’ll be York kinsmen there,” Katherine points out. “Your sister-in-law Elizabeth has turned her coat, as her husband the Duke of Suffolk has changed sides again. Her son, John de la Pole, that King Richard named as his heir, has begged Henry’s pardon and so they will be there.”

My mother nods. “So they should be,” she says. “And I am sure they will serve him loyally.”

My aunt Katherine gives a short snort of laughter and my mother cannot stop her smile.

I go to find Cecily. “You’re to be married,” I say abruptly. “I heard Mother and Aunt Katherine talking.”

She turns pale. “Who to?”

I understand at once that she is afraid that she is to be humiliated again by a marriage to some lowly supporter of the Tudor invasion. “You’re all right,” I say. “Lady Margaret is standing your friend. She’s marrying you to her half brother, Sir John Welles.”

She gives a shuddering sob and turns to me. “Oh, Lizzie, I was so afraid . . . I’ve been so afraid . . .”

I put my arm around her shoulders. “I know.”

“And there was nothing I could do. And when Father was alive, they all used to call me Princess of Scotland, as I was to marry the Scots king! Then to be pushed down to be Lady Scrope! And then to have no name at all! Oh, Lizzie, I’ve been vile to you.”

“To everyone,” I remind her.

“I know! I know!”

“But now you’ll be a viscountess!” I say. “And no doubt better. Lady Margaret favors her family above everyone else, and Henry owes Sir John a debt of gratitude for his support. They’ll give him another title and lands. You’ll be rich, you’ll be noble, you’ll be allied to My Lady the King’s Mother, you’ll be—what?—her half sister-in-law, and kinswoman to the Stanley family.”

“Anything for our sisters? What about our cousin Margaret?”

“Nothing yet. Thomas Grey, Mother’s boy, is to come home later.”

Cecily sighs. Our half brother has been like a father to us, fiercely loyal for all of our lives. He came into sanctuary with us, only breaking out to try to free our brothers in a secret attack on the Tower, serving at Henry’s court in exile, trying to maintain our alliance with him, and spying for us all the while. When Mother became sure that Henry was an enemy to fear, she sent for Thomas to come home, but Henry captured him as he was leaving. Since then, he has been imprisoned in France. “He’s pardoned? The king has forgiven him?”

“I think everyone knows he did nothing wrong. He was a hostage to ensure our alliance, Henry left him as a pledge with the French king, but now that Tudor sees that we’re obedient, he can release Thomas and repay the French.”

“And what about you?” Cecily demands.

“Apparently, Henry’s going to marry me, because he can’t get out of it. But he’s in no sort of hurry. Apparently, everyone knows that he has been trying to renege.”

She looks at me with sympathy. “It’s an insult,” she says.

“It is,” I agree. “But I only want to be his queen; I don’t want him as a man, so I don’t care that he doesn’t want me as his wife.”










WESTMINSTER PALACE, LONDON, 30 OCTOBER 1485

The rowers are all in livery of green and white, the Tudor colors, the oars painted white with bright green blades. Henry Tudor has commanded springtime colors in autumn; it seems that nothing in England is good enough for this young invader. Though the leaves fall from the trees like brown tears, for him everything must be as green as fresh grass, as white as May blossom, as if to convince us all that the seasons are upside down and we are all Tudors now.

A second barge carries My Lady the King’s Mother, seated in her triumph on a high chair, almost a throne, so that everyone can see Lady Margaret sailing into her own at last. Her husband stands beside her chair, one proprietorial hand on the gilded back, loyal to this king as he swore he was loyal to the previous one, and the one before that. His motto, his laughable motto, is “Sans changer,” which means “always unchanged,” but the only way the Stanleys never change is their unending fidelity to themselves.

The next barge carries Jasper Tudor, the king’s uncle, who will carry the crown at the coronation. My aunt Katherine, the prize for his victory, stands beside him, her hand resting lightly on his arm. She does not look up at our windows, though she will guess we are watching. She looks straight ahead, steady as an archer, as she goes to witness the crowning of our enemy, her beautiful face quite impassive. She was married once before for the convenience of her family, to a young man who hated her; she is accustomed to grandeur abroad and humiliation at home. It has been the price she has paid for a lifetime of being one of the beautiful Rivers girls, always so close to the throne that it has bruised her like a wound.

My mother puts her arm around my waist, watching the procession with me. She says nothing, but I know that she is thinking of the day that we stood in sanctuary in the dark crypt below the abbey chapel, watching the royal barges go down the river, when they crowned my uncle Richard and passed over the true heir, my brother Edward. I thought then that we would all die in the darkness and solitude. I thought that an executioner would come for us silently one night. I thought I might wake briefly with the weight of a pillow on my face. I thought that I would never see sunshine again. I was a young woman then, and I thought that sorrow as deep as mine could only lead to death. I was grieving for my father and frightened by the absence of my brothers, and I thought that soon I would die too.

I realize that this is the third victorious coronation barge to sail past my mother. When I was just a little girl and my brother Edward was not even born, she had to hide in sanctuary as my father the king was driven out of England. They brought back the old king and my mother stooped to look out of the low dirty window of the crypt under Westminster Abbey church to see Lady Margaret and her son Henry sail down the river in their pomp to celebrate the victory of the restored King Henry of Lancaster.

I was only a little girl then, and so I don’t remember the ships sailing by nor the triumphant mother and her little son on a barge decked with red roses; but I do remember the pervasive scent of river water and damp. I do remember crying myself to sleep at night, utterly bewildered as to why we were suddenly living like poor people, hiding in a crypt under the chapel instead of enjoying the most beautiful palaces of the kingdom.

“This is the third time you have seen Lady Margaret sail by in triumph,” I remark to my mother. “Once when King Henry was restored and she led the race to get to his court and introduce her son, once when her husband was high in Richard’s favor and she carried Queen Anne’s train at the coronation, and look, now she sails by you again.”