The Red Queen Page 10

  Then, in July, everything my husband had warned about the Calais garrison becomes terribly true, as York launches a fleet, lands in Sandwich, halfway to London, and marches on the capital city, without a shot being fired against him, without a door slammed shut. God forgive the men of London, they fling open the gates for him and he marches in to acclaim, as if he is freeing the city from a usurper. The king and the court are at Coventry, but as soon as they hear the news, the call goes out across the country that the king is mustering and summoning all his affinity. York has taken London; Lancaster must march.

  “Are you going now?” I demand of my husband, finding him in the stable yard, checking over the harness and saddles of his horses and men. At last, I think, he sees the danger to the king and knows he must defend him.

  “No,” he replies shortly. “Though my father is there, God keep him safe in this madness.”

  “Will you not even go to be with your father in danger?”

  “No,” he says again. “I love my father, and I will join him if he orders me; but he has not commanded me to his side. He will unfurl the standard of Buckingham; he doesn’t want me under it, yet.”

  I know that my anger flares in my face, and I meet his glance with hard eyes. “How can you bear not to be there?”

  “I doubt the cause,” he says frankly. “If the king wants to retake London from the Duke of York, I imagine he only has to go to the city and discuss terms. He does not need to attack his own capital; he has only to agree to speak with them.”

  “He should cut York down like a traitor, and you should be there!” I say hotly.

  He sighs. “You are very quick to send me into danger, wife,” he remarks with a wry smile. “I must say, I would find it more agreeable if you were begging me to stay home.”

  “I beg you only to do your duty,” I say proudly. “If I were a man, I would ride out for the king. If I were a man, I would be at his side now.”

  “You would be a very Joan of Arc, I am sure,” he says quietly. “But I have seen battles and I know what they cost, and right now, I see it as my duty to keep these lands and our people in safety and peace while other men scramble for their own ambition and tear this country apart.”

  I am so furious I cannot speak, and I turn on my heel and walk away to the loose box, where Arthur, the old warhorse, is stabled. Gently he brings his big head down to me, and I pat his neck and rub behind his ears and whisper that he and I should go together, ride to Coventry, find Jasper, who is certain to be there, and fight for the king.

  JULY 10, 1460

  Even if Arthur and I had ridden out, we would have got there too late. The king had his army dug in outside Northampton, a palisade of sharpened stakes before them to bring down the cavalry, their newly forged cannon primed and ready to fire. The Yorks, led by the boy Edward, Earl of March, the traitors Lord Fauconberg and Warwick himself in the center, came on in three troops in the pouring rain. The ground churned into mud under the horses’ hooves, and the cavalry charge got bogged down. God rained down on the rebels, and they looked likely to sink in the quagmire. The boy Edward of York had to dig deep to find the courage to lead his men through ground that was a marsh, against a hail of Lancaster arrows. He would surely have failed and his young face would have gone down in the mud; but the leader on our right, Lord Grey of Ruthin, turned traitor in that moment, and pulled the York forces up over the barricade and turned on his own house in bitter hand-to-hand fighting, which pushed our men back toward the River Nene, where many drowned, and let Warwick and Fauconberg come on.

  In victory they were merciless. They let the common men go, but anyone in armor was killed without offer of ransom. Worst of all, they marched into our camp and found the king’s own tent, His Grace inside, sitting thoughtfully, as peaceful as if he were praying in his own chapel, waiting for them to capture him as the great prize of the battle.

  Terribly, treasonously, they take him.

  Two nights later my husband comes to me in my chamber as I am dressing for dinner. “Leave us,” he says abruptly to my lady-in-waiting, and she glances at me and then, seeing the darkness in his face, flicks out of the room.

  “My father is dead,” he says, without preparation. “I have just had word. England has lost a great duke in the mud of Northampton, and I have lost a dear father. His heir, my nephew, little Henry Stafford, has lost his grandfather and protector.”

  I gasp as if the air has been knocked out of me. “I am sorry. I am so sorry, Henry.”

  “They cut him down in a muddy field while he was trying to get to his horse,” he continues, sparing me nothing. “He, and the Earl of Shrewsbury, Lord Beaumont, Lord Egremont—dear God, the list is endless. We have lost a generation of noblemen. It seems that the rules of war are changed and there is no capture and ransom in England anymore. There is no offer of surrender. It is the rule of the sword, and every battle must be to the death. It is the rule of savagery.”

  “And the king?” I breathe. “They have not dared to hurt him?”

  “The king is captive, and they have taken him as their prisoner to London.”

  “Prisoner?” I cannot believe my ears.

  “As good as.”

  “And the queen?”

  “Missing with her son.”

  “Missing?”

  “Not dead. I believe run away. In hiding. What a country this is becoming. My father …”

  He swallows his grief and turns to look out of the window. Outside the trees are rich and fat and green, and the fields beyond are turning golden. It is hard to imagine a field of churned mud and my father-in-law, that vain aristocrat, clubbed down while running away.

  “I shall not dine in the hall tonight,” my husband says tightly. “You can go in, or be served in your rooms as you like. I will have to ride to Northampton and fetch his body home. I shall leave at dawn.”

  “I am sorry,” I say again, weakly.

  “There will be hundreds of sons making the same journey,” he says. “All of us riding with broken hearts, all of us thinking of vengeance. This is what I feared would come; this is what I have dreaded. It is not very bright and honorable as you have always thought it; it is not like a ballad. It is a muddle and a mess, and a sinful waste, and good men have died and more will follow.”

  I hide my fears from my husband till he leaves for the journey on the high road south, but of course I am in utter terror for Jasper’s safety. He will have been where the fighting was the worst; there is no doubt in my mind that anyone going to the king’s tent will have had to get past Jasper. He cannot be alive if the king has been captured. How can he still live, when so many are dead?

  I get my answer even before my husband returns home again.

  Sister,

  I have taken a very great lady and her son to safety and they are in hiding with me. I will not tell you where, in case this letter falls into traitors’ hands. I am safe and your son is safe as I left him. The lady will be safe with me until she can get away. It is a reverse for us, but it is not over, and she is full of courage and ready to fight again.

  —J.

  It takes me a moment to realize that he has the queen in safekeeping, that he spirited her from the battle and has her in hiding in Wales. Of course, the king may be imprisoned, but while she is still free we have a commander; while her son is free we have an heir to the throne. Jasper has guarded our cause, has guarded the most precious heart of our cause, and there is no doubt in my mind that she will be safe with him. He will have her in hiding at Pembroke or Denbigh Castle. He will keep her close, I don’t doubt, and she will be grateful for his protection. He will be like a knight errant to her; he will serve her on bended knee and she will ride behind him, her slim hands on his belt. I have to go to the chapel and confess to the priest that I am filled with the sin of jealousy, but I don’t say exactly why.

  My husband comes home in somber mood, having buried his father and delivered up his nephew to his new guardian. Little Henry Stafford, the new
Duke of Buckingham, is only five years old, poor child. His father died fighting for Lancaster when he was only a baby, and now he has lost his grandfather too. My husband is stunned at this blow to his house, but I cannot sympathize; for who should be blamed for our defeat but him and all those who chose to stay at home, though their queen summoned them and we were in the utmost danger? My father-in-law died because he was defeated in the battle. Whose fault is that but that of the son who would not ride beside him? Henry tells me that the Duke of York entered London with the king riding alongside him, as his prisoner, and was greeted by a stunned silence. The citizens of London turn out to be only halfhearted traitors, and when York put his hand on the marble throne to claim kingship for himself, there was no support for him.

  “Well, how could there be?” I ask. “We have a king already. Even the faithless men of London know that.”

  My husband sighs as if he is tired of my convictions, and I notice how weary and old he looks, a deep groove between his eyebrows. Grief sits heavy on him with the responsibility for his house. If our king is a prisoner, and our power is thrown down, then someone will take the little duke from us and have him as their ward for the profit of his lands. If my husband were great with either Lancaster or York, he might have had a say in the disposition of his nephew, the future head of our family. If he had exerted himself, he would now be one of the great men. But since he chose to stay home, he is of no account to anyone. He has made himself as nothing. The great decisions of the world will be made without him, and he cannot even guard his own, as he said he would.

  “They have put together an agreement.”

  “What agreement?” I ask him. “Who has agreed?”

  He throws his traveling cape to one of the household men. He drops into a chair and beckons a page boy to pull off his boots. I wonder if he is ill—he looks so gray and weary. Of course he is very old to have made such a great journey: he is thirty-five years old. “The king is to keep the throne till his death, and then the next king is to be York,” he says shortly. He glances at my face and then looks away. “I knew you wouldn’t like it. There’s no need to trouble yourself, it probably won’t hold.”

  “The Prince of Wales is to be robbed of his rights?” I can hardly frame the words, I am so shocked. “How can he be Prince of Wales and not become king? How can anyone think that they can pass over him?”

  Henry shrugs. “You are all to be robbed, you who were in the line of succession. You, yourself, are no longer of the ruling house now. Your son is no longer related to a king, nor is he one of the heirs to the throne. It will be York; York, and his line. Yes,” he repeats to my stunned face. “He has won for his sons what no one would give to him. It is York’s sons who will come after the king. The new royal line is to be the House of York. The Lancasters are to be the royal cousins. That is what they have agreed. That is what the king has sworn to follow.”

  He rises up in his stockinged feet and turns for his rooms.

  I put a hand on his arm. “But this is just what Joan saw!” I exclaim. “When her king was put aside, and his inheritance given to another. This is just what she saw when she took her king to be crowned in Rheims, despite a blasphemous agreement that he should not be crowned. She saw that the order of God was put aside, and she fought for the true heir. This is what inspired her to be great. She saw the true heir, and she fought for him.”

  He cannot muster his usual smile for me. “And so what? Do you think you can take Edward, Prince of Wales, to London and have him crowned despite his defeat, despite this agreement? Will you lead a beaten army? Will you be England’s Joan?”

  “Someone has to be,” I cry out passionately. “The prince cannot be robbed of the throne. How could they agree to this? How could the king agree to this?”

  “Who knows what he thinks, poor soul?” my husband says. “Who knows what he understands now, or even if he can stay awake? And if he goes to sleep or even dies and York takes the throne, at least York will be able to hold the country to peace.”

  “That’s not the point!” I shout at him. “York is not called by God. York is not of the senior line from Edward III. York is not of the royal house—we are! I am! My son is! This is my destiny that the king is giving away!” I give a shaking sob. “I was born for this; my son was born for this! The king cannot make us into royal cousins; we were born to be the royal line!”

  He looks down at me, and his brown eyes are for once not kindly, but dark with anger. “Enough,” he growls. “You are a stupid young woman of, what?—only seventeen years old, and you understand nothing, Margaret. You should be silent. This is not a ballad or a tale; this is not a romance. This is a disaster that is costing the men and women of England every day. This is nothing to do with Joan of Arc, nothing to do with you, and God Himself knows, nothing to do with Him.”

  He pulls away from me and he goes, treading carefully up the stairs to his room. He is stiff from his long ride and he hobbles, bowlegged. I watch him go with hatred, my hand over my mouth to stifle my sobs. He is an old man, an old fool. I know the will of God better than him, and He is, as He has always been, for Lancaster.

  WINTER 1460

  I am right in this, and my husband, for all that he is my husband and set over me, is wrong, and this is proved at Christmastide when the Duke of York, who is supposed to be so clever, so brilliant in battle, is caught outside his own castle walls of Sandal, with a small guard, among them his son Edmund, the Earl of Rutland, and both York and his boy are brutally killed by our forces. So much for the man who would be king and would claim the royal line!

  The queen’s army takes his hacked body and makes mock of him, and beheads the corpse and sticks his head above the gates of York with a paper crown on his head, so he can view his kingdom before the crows and buzzards peck out his dead eyes. This is a traitor’s death, and with it die the hopes of York, for who is left? His great ally the Earl of Warwick has only useless daughters, and the three remaining boys of York—Edward, George, and Richard—are too young to lead an army on their own account.

  I do not exult over my husband, for we have settled to living quietly together and are celebrating Christmas with our tenants, retainers, and servants, as if the world were not trembling with uncertainty. We do not speak of the divided kingdom, and though he has letters from merchants and tradesmen in London he does not tell me their news, nor that his family are constantly urging him to revenge the death of his father. And though he knows that Jasper writes to me from Wales, he does not ask of his newly won castle of Denbigh, and how Jasper so bravely reclaimed it.

  I send my son Henry a little cart on wooden wheels, that he can pull along, for his Christmas present, and my husband gives me a shilling to send to him for fairings. In return I give him a silver sixpence to send to the little Duke of Buckingham, Henry Stafford, and we do not speak of the war, or of the queen’s march south at the head of five thousand murderous, dangerous Scots, stained like eager huntsmen with the blood of the rebel York, or of my belief that our house has triumphed again and will come to victory next year, as it must since we are blessed by God.

  SPRING 1461

  I think, like everyone else of any sense, that with the death of the Duke of York the wars are over. His son Edward is only eighteen years old and all alone on the borders of Wales, where all the men follow Jasper and the House of Lancaster. His mother, the Duchess Cecily, knowing that this is her final defeat, wearing black in her widowhood, sends her two younger sons George and Richard into hiding in Flanders, with the Duke of Burgundy. Duchess Cecily must fear the arrival of the queen in London, at the head of her army of wild men, demanding vengeance for this second failed rebellion. Her oldest son she cannot save; Edward will most probably die in the borders of Wales, hopelessly outnumbered, fighting for his dead father’s lost cause.

  My brother-in-law Jasper will be defending his own; his father Owen Tudor marches with him. They cannot fail against an army led by a boy, who has just lost his brother, his fa
ther and commander, as Jasper confirms:

  We will have to kill the cub to scotch the family. Thank God that the lion is gone. My father and I are mustering against the new Duke of York, young Edward, and will meet him within days. Your son is safe in Pembroke Castle. This should be easily done. Fear nothing.

  “I think there may be another battle,” I say tentatively to my husband Henry when he comes to my bedroom. I am seated at the fireside. He drapes his gown on the end of the bed and slides between the sheets. “Your bed is always so comfortable,” he remarks. “Do you have better sheets than me?”

  I giggle, distracted for a moment. “I shouldn’t think so. It is your steward of the household who orders everything. My sheets came with me from Wales, but I can tell him to put them on your bed, if you think them finer.”

  “No, I like to enjoy them here, with you. Let’s not talk of the troubles of the country.”

  “But I have had a letter from Jasper.”

  “Tell me of it in the morning.”

  “I think it is important.”

  He sighs. “Oh, very well. What does he say?”

  I hand him my note, and he glances at it. “Yes. I knew this. I heard that they were mustering in Wales. Your old enemy William Herbert has changed his coat again.”

  “Never!”

  “He will wear a white rose once more and fight alongside the York boy. He was not a friend to Lancaster for long. It must rile Jasper that Herbert rides out against him once more.”

  “Herbert is quite without honor!” I exclaim. “And after the king himself pardoned him!”