“You have all this written down?” I ask.

“I have signed reports from witnesses. I can trace him every moment of every day from Portugal,” Henry says.

“But nothing before then. Nothing to show that he is born and bred into the family somewhere,” I point out. “You say yourself that he turns up there. He himself will say that he turns up there from England, rescued from the Tower. Everything that you have written down, sworn to for certain, does nothing to disprove his claim. Everything you have collected as evidence only confirms him as a son of York.”

He crosses the room in one swift stride and snatches up my hand, holding it so tightly that the bones are crushed together. I flinch but I won’t cry out.

“That’s all I have for now,” he says through gritted teeth. “As I said. What I don’t have I will write myself. I will write this boy’s parentage into his story, I will create it: common people, nasty people. The father a bit of a drunk, the mother a bit of a fool, the boy a bit of a runaway, a wastrel, a good-for-nothing. D’you think I can’t write this and get someone—a drunk married to a fool—to swear to it? Do you think I can’t set up as historian? As storyteller? D’you think I can’t write a history which years from now, everyone will believe as the truth? I am the king. Who shall write the record of my reign if not me?”

“You can say anything you like,” I say levelly. “Of course you can. You’re the King of England. But it doesn’t make it true.”

A few days later Maggie, my cousin, comes to me. Her husband has been made Arthur’s Lord Chamberlain, but they cannot take up residence in Wales while the west is threatened by a rival prince. “My husband, Sir Richard, tells me that the king has found a name for the boy.”

“Found a name? What do you mean, found a name?”

She makes a little face, acknowledging the oddness of the phrase. “I should have said, that the king now says he knows who the boy is.”

“And?”

“The king says he is to be called Perkin Warbeck, the son of a boatman. From Tournai, in Picardy.”

“Does he say that the boatman is a drunk, married to a fool?”

She does not understand me. She shakes her head. “He has nothing else but this name. He says nothing else.”

“And is he sending the boatman and his wife to Duchess Margaret? So that the boy can be faced by his parents and forced to confess? Is he taking the boatman and his wife to the kings and queens of Christendom so that they can show who he truly is, and claim their son back from these royal courts which have kept him for so long?”

Margaret looks puzzled. “Sir Richard didn’t say.”

“It’s what I’d do.”

“It’s what anyone would do,” she agrees. “So why is the king not doing it?”

Our eyes meet, and we say nothing more.










WESTMINSTER PALACE, LONDON, WINTER 1493

“They said what?” Henry demands. He has ordered me into his presence chamber to hear this report from the returning ambassadors, but he does not greet me nor set a chair for me. I doubt he even sees me: he is blinded with rage. I sink down into my seat as he strides about, shaking with anger. The ambassadors throw a quick glance at me to see if I am going to intervene. I sit like a cold statue. I am going to say nothing.

“The heralds called him ‘Richard, son of Edward, King of England,’ ” the man repeats.

Henry rounds on me. “Do you hear this? Do you hear this?”

I incline my head. On the other side of the king I notice My Lady, his mother, lean forwards so that she can see me, as if she expects me to weep.

“Your dead brother’s name,” she reminds me. “Abused by this forger.”

“Yes,” I say.

“The new emperor, Maximilian, loves the ki—the boy,” the ambassador offers, flushing over the terrible slip. “They are together all the time. The boy represents the emperor when he meets with his bankers, speaks for him with his betrothed. He is the emperor’s principal friend and confidant. He is his only advisor.”

“Oh, and what did you call him?” Henry asks, as if it does not much matter.

“The boy.”

“What d’you call him when you see him at the emperor’s court? When he’s at the emperor’s side? When he is, as you describe, so central to the emperor’s happiness, at the heart of his court? His only friend and advisor? When you greet this youth of such great importance? What do you call him at court?”

The man shuffles, passes his hat from one hand to another. “It was important not to insult the emperor. He is young, and hotheaded, and he is the emperor, after all. He loves and respects the boy. He tells everyone of his miraculous escape from death, he constantly speaks of his high birth, of his rights.”