The Red Queen Read online

  “You’ll have to come before King Edward and surrender yourself,” the stranger said.

  “King Edward,” Stafford repeated. “That’s the first time I have heard the boy of York called king.”

  “This is the new king,” the man said certainly. “And I will ask him to forgive you and release you to your home. He will be merciful, though if it were the other way round and you took me to your queen and to your prince, I swear I would not survive them. She kills unarmed prisoners—we don’t. And her son is a thing of horror.”

  “Come on then,” Stafford said, and the two of them fell into line with the Lancaster soldiers waiting to beg pardon of the new king and promise never to raise arms against him again. Before them were Lancaster families that Stafford had known all his life, among them Lord Rivers and his son Anthony, their heads bowed, silent under the shame of defeat. Stafford cleaned his sword while he waited and readied himself to offer it up. It was still snowing, and the wound in his leg was throbbing as he walked slowly up to the crest of the ridge where the empty pole for the royal standard still stood at the peak with the Lancaster standard-bearers dead all around it and the York boy standing tall.

  My husband does not come back from the war like a hero. He comes quietly, with no stories of battle and no tales of chivalry. Twice, three times, I ask him what it was like, thinking that it might have been like Joan’s battles: a war in the name of God for the king ordained by God, hoping that he might have seen a sign from God—like the three suns over the York victory—something that would tell us that God is with us despite the setback of defeat. But he says nothing, he will tell me nothing; he behaves as if war is not a glorious thing at all, as if it is not the working out of God’s will by ordeal.

  All he will tell me, briefly, is that the king and the queen got safely away with the prince, the head of my house, Henry Beaufort, with them. They have fled to Scotland and will, no doubt, rebuild their shaken army, and that Edward of York must have the luck of the hedgerow rose of his badge, for he fought in grief and mist at Mortimer’s Cross, uphill in snow at Towton, and won both battles, and is now crowned King of England by public acclaim.

  We spend the summer quietly, almost as if we are in hiding. My husband may have been pardoned for riding out against the new King of England, but no one is likely to forget that we are one of the great families of the Lancaster connection, and that I am the mother of a boy in line to the lost throne. Henry goes up to London to gather news and brings me back a beautifully copied manuscript of The Imitation of Christ in French that he thinks I might translate into English, as part of my studies. I know he is trying to keep my mind from the defeat of my house, and the despair of England, and I thank him for his consideration and start to study; but my heart is not in it.

  I wait for news from Jasper, but I imagine he is lost in the same sorrow that greets me on waking, every morning, before I am even fully awake. Every day I open my eyes and realize, with such a sick pang in my heart, that my cousin the king is in exile—who knows where?—and our enemy is on his throne. I spend days on my knees, but God sends me no sign that these days are only to test us and that the true king will be restored. Then, one morning, I am in the stable yard, when a messenger comes riding in, muddy and travel-stained, on a little Welsh pony. I know at once that he brings me word, at last, from Jasper.

  As usual, he is brusque.

  William Herbert is to be given all of Wales, all my lands and my castles, as prize for turning his coat back to York. The new king has made him a baron also. He will hunt me down as I hunted him, and I doubt that I will get a pardon from a tender king as he did. I will have to leave Wales. Will you come and fetch your boy? I will meet you at Pembroke Castle within the month. I won’t be able to wait longer than that.

  —J.

  I round on the stable lad. “Where is my husband, where is Sir Henry?”

  “He is riding the fields with his land steward, my lady,” the boy says.

  “Saddle my horse, I must see him,” I say. They bring Arthur from his stall and he catches my impatience and tosses his head while they fiddle with the bridle, and I say: “Hurry, hurry.” As soon as he is ready, I am in the saddle and riding out towards the barley fields.

  I can see my husband riding the margins of the field, talking to his land steward, and I kick Arthur into a rolling canter and come up to him in a rush that makes his own horse sidle and curvet in the mud.

  “Steady,” my husband says, drawing rein. “What’s the matter?”

  In reply, I thrust the letter at him and wave the land steward out of earshot. “We have to fetch Henry,” I say. “Jasper will meet us at Pembroke Castle. He has to go. We have to go there.”

  He is infuriatingly slow. He takes the letter and reads it, then he turns his horse’s head for home and reads it again, as he rides.

  “We have to leave at once,” I say.

  “As soon as it is safe to do so.”

  “I must fetch my son. Jasper himself tells me to fetch him!”

  “Jasper’s judgment is not of the best, as perhaps you can now see, since his cause is lost and he is running away to France or Brittany or Flanders and leaving your son without a guardian.”

  “He has to!”

  “Anyway, he is going. His advice is not material. I will muster a suitable guard, and if the roads are safe enough, I will go and fetch Henry.”

  “You will go?” I am so anxious for my son that I forget to hide the scorn in my voice.

  “Yes. I, myself. Did you think me too decrepit to ride to Wales in haste?”

  “There may be soldiers on the way. William Herbert’s army will be on the road. You are likely to cross their path.”

  “Then we shall have to hope that my ancient years and gray hairs protect me,” he says with a smile.

  I don’t even hear the joke. “You have to get through,” I say, “or Jasper will leave my boy alone at Pembroke, and Herbert will take him.”

  “I know.”

  We come into the stable yard, and he has a quiet word with Graham, his master of horse, and next thing all the men-at-arms are tumbling from our house and from the stable yard, and the chapel bell is tolling to call the tenants to muster. It is all done at such speed and efficiency that for the first time I see that my husband has command of his men.

  “Can I come too?” I ask. “Please, husband. He is my son. I want to bring him safely home.”

  He looks thoughtful. “It will be a hard ride.”

  “You know I am strong.”

  “There might be danger. Graham says that there are no armies near here, but we are going to have to cross most of England and nearly all of Wales.”

  “I am not afraid, and I will do as you order.”

  He pauses for a moment.

  “I beg you,” I say. “Husband, we have been married three and a half years, and I have never asked you for anything.”

  He nods. “Oh, very well. You can come too. Go and pack your things. You can bring only a saddle bag, and tell them to put a change of clothes up for me. Tell them to pack provisions for fifty men.”

  If I commanded the house, I would do it myself, but I am still served as a guest. So I get off my horse and go to the groom of the servery and tell him that his master, and I, and the guard are going on a journey and we will need food and drink. Then I tell my maid and Henry’s servant to pack a bag for us both, and I go back to the stable yard to wait.

  They are ready within the hour, and my husband comes out of the house with his traveling cloak carried on his arm. “D’you have a thick cloak?” he asks me. “No, I thought not. You can have this, and I will use an old one. Take it, strap it to your saddle.”

  Arthur is steady as I mount him, as if he knows that we have work to do. My husband draws up his horse beside mine. “If we see an army, then Will and his brother will ride away with you. You are to do as they order. They are commanded to ride with you for home, or for the nearest house of safety, as fast as they can. Their ta
sk is to keep you safe; you are to do as they say.”

  “Not if it is our army,” I point out. “What if we meet the queen’s army on the road?”

  He grimaces. “We won’t see the queen’s army,” he says shortly. “The queen could not pay for an archer, let alone a troop. We will not see her again until she can make an alliance with France.”

  “Well anyway, I promise,” I say. I nod at Will and his brother. “I will go with them when you tell me I must.”

  My husband nods, his face grim, and then turns his horse so he is at the head of our little guard—about fifty mounted men armed with nothing but a handful of swords and a few axes—and leads us west for Wales.

  It takes us more than ten days of hard riding every day to get there. We go west on poor roads, skirting the town of Warwick and going cross-country wherever we can, for fear of meeting an army: any army, friend or foe. Every night we have to go to a village, an alehouse, or an abbey and find someone who can guide us for the next day. This is the very heart of England, and many people know no farther than their parish boundaries. My husband sends scouts a good mile ahead of us with orders that if there is any sign of outriders from any army, they are to gallop back to warn us, and we will turn off the road and get into hiding in the forest. I cannot believe that we must hide, even from our own army. We are Lancaster, but the Lancaster army that the queen has brought down on her country is out of all control. Some nights the men have to sleep in a barn while Henry and I beg hospitality in a farmhouse. Some nights we take a room at an inn on the road, one night in an abbey where they have dozens of guest rooms and are used to serving small armies of men marching from one battle to another. They don’t even ask us which lord we serve, but I see that there is no gold and silver on show in the church. They will have buried their treasures in some hiding place and are praying for peaceful times to come again.

  We don’t go to the big houses nor to any of the castles that we can sometimes see on the hills overlooking the road, or sheltered by great woods. The victory of York has been so complete that we don’t dare advertise that we are riding to save my son, an heir to the House of Lancaster. I understand now what Henry my husband tried to tell me before, that the country is blighted not only by war, but by the constant threat of war. Families who have been friends and neighbors for years avoid each other in fear, and even I, riding towards land that belonged to my first husband, whose name is still beloved, am fearful of meeting anyone who might remember me.

  On the road, when I am exhausted and aching in every bone in my body, I learn that Henry Stafford cares for me, without ever making a fuss over me, or suggesting that I am a weak woman and should not have come. He lifts me down from my horse when we take a rest, and he sees that I have wine and water. When we stop for dinner, he gets my food himself, even before he is served, and then he spreads out his own cloak for my bed, and covers me up and makes me rest. We are lucky with the weather, and it does not rain on our journey. He rides beside me in the mornings and teaches me the songs that the soldiers sing: bawdy songs for which he invents new words for me.

  He makes me laugh with his nonsense songs, and he tells me of his own childhood, as a younger son of the great House of Stafford, and how his father meant him for the church until he begged to be excused. They would not release him from their plan until he told the priest that he feared he was possessed by the devil, and they were all so anxious about the state of his soul that they gave up the idea of the priesthood for him.

  In return, I tell him how I wanted to be a saint, and how glad I was when I found I had saints’ knees, and he laughs out loud at that and puts his hand over mine on my reins, and calls me a darling child, and his very own.

  I had thought him a coward when he would not go to war and when he came back so silent from the battlefield; but I was wrong. He is a very cautious man, and he believes wholeheartedly in nothing. He would not be a priest for he could not give himself wholly to God. He was glad that he was not born the oldest, for he did not want to be duke and head of such a great house. He is of the House of Lancaster, but he dislikes and fears the queen. He is enemy to the House of York, but he thinks highly of Warwick and admires the courage of the boy of York, and surrendered his sword to him. He would not dream of going into exile like Jasper; he likes his home too much. He does not align himself with any lord but thinks for himself, and I see now what he means when he says he is not a hound to yelp when the huntsman blows the horn. He considers everything in the light of what might be right, and what would be the best outcome for himself, for his family, his affinity, and even for his country. He is not a man to give himself easily. Not like Jasper. He is not a man for these times of passion and hot temper.

  “A little caution.” He smiles at me as Arthur splashes stolidly through the great river crossing of the Severn, the gateway to Wales. “We have been born into difficult times, when a man or even a woman has to choose their own way, has to choose their loyalties. I think it is right to go carefully and to think before acting.”

  “I have always thought one should do the right thing,” I say. “And nothing but that.”

  “Yes, but then you wanted to be a saint.” He smiles. “Now you are the mother of a child; now you have to consider not only what is the right thing to do, but if it is likely to keep you and your son safe. You will want to keep your son safe more than anything in the world. The safety of your son may matter to you more than the will of God.”

  For a moment I am puzzled by this. “But it must be the will of God that my son is safe,” I say. “My son is without sin, and he is of the royal line. He is of the only true royal house. God must want him to be safe to serve the House of Lancaster. What I wish and what God wishes must be the same.”

  “Do you really think God, in his heaven with all the angels, there from the beginning of time and looking towards the Day of Judgment, really looks down on all the world and sees you and little Henry Tudor and says that whatever you choose to do is His will?”

  It sounds like blasphemy somewhere. “Yes, I do,” I say uncertainly. “Jesus Christ Himself promised that I am as precious as the lilies of the field.”

  “And so you are,” he says with a smile, as if he comforting me with a story.

  That silences me and makes me think for the rest of the ride. “So, do you think there are many men like you, who have not given their hearts to one side or another?” I ask as he helps me down from the saddle in the yard of a dirty little inn, on the road to Cardiff, that evening.

  He pats Arthur’s dark neck. “I think most men will choose to follow the house that can promise them peace and safety,” he says. “There is loyalty to the king, of course; no one can deny that King Henry is crowned King of England. But what if he is not fit to rule? What if he is ill again and can do nothing? What if he is commanded by the queen? What if she is ill advised? How can it be a crime to want the next heir in his place? If that claimant was of the royal line also? If he was as close as a cousin? If he has as good a claim to the throne as Henry?”

  I am so weary that I lean back against Arthur’s big comfortable shoulder, and then my husband draws me to him and holds me. “Don’t you worry about this now,” he says. “The main thing is that we get your boy and make sure he is safe. Then you can consider who God and you would prefer to rule the kingdom.”

  On the tenth morning of our journey, traveling now on tiny, stony lanes through high, mountainous country, my husband says to me, “We should be there by midday,” and I gasp at the thought of seeing my boy again so soon. We send scouts ahead to the castle to see if it is safe to approach. It looks as if everything is quiet. We wait out of sight, and my husband points out to me that the gates of the castle are open and the drawbridge down, and as we watch a girl comes out with a flock of geese and calls them down to the river.

  “Looks safe enough,” my husband says cautiously, and gets off his horse and helps me down, and the two of us go to the other side of the river. The geese are swimming
on the water, some are dabbling their yellow beaks in the mud; the girl is seated on the bank, fiddling about with some lace.

  “Girl, who is the master of the castle?” my husband asks her.

  She jumps at the sound of his voice and scrambles to her feet and bobs a curtsey. “It was the Earl of Pembroke, but he ran away to the wars,” she says, her accent so strong I can hardly make out what she is saying.

  “Anyone taken the castle since he left?”

  “Nay, we’re just hoping he’ll come back. D’you know where he is, sir?”

  “I don’t know. Is the little lad in the castle nursery?”

  “The little earl? Yes, he’s there. I keep the hens too, and I send in a good new-laid egg for him every morning.”

  “Do you?” I am unable to silence my delight. “Does he have a fresh-laid egg for his breakfast every day?”

  “Oh yes,” she says. “And they say he likes a slice of roast chicken too for his dinner.”

  “How many men-at-arms?” my husband interrupts.

  “A hundred,” she says. “But three times that rode out with Jasper Tudor and didn’t come back. They say it was a terrible defeat. They say that God set three suns in the sky to curse our boys, and now the three sons of York will curse our country.”

  My husband spins a coin across the river to her, and she catches it with snatching hands. We go back to where our men are hidden by the turn in the road, and we mount up. My husband orders them to unfurl our standard and to go forwards at slow walk and halt when he gives the word. “We don’t want a flight of arrows as our welcome,” he says to me. “You and Will and Stephen go to the rear of the ride, just to be safe.”

  I am desperate to ride into the castle that was once my home; but I do as he orders me, and we go slowly forwards until we hear the shouted challenge from the castle walls and at the same time we hear the roar of the chain and the great portcullis comes clanging down. My husband and his standard-bearer ride up to the gate and shout our name to the officer on the walls of the castle, and then the portcullis creaks up and we ride into the courtyard.