The Red Queen Read online

  Arthur goes at once to the old mounting block, and I dismount without help and let his reins go. He heads at once for his old stall, as if he were still Owen Tudor’s battle horse. The stable lad exclaims to see him, and I go quickly to the front door and the groom of the household flings it open before me, recognizes me though I have grown taller, bows to me, and says: “My lady.”

  “Where is my son?” I ask. “In his nursery?”

  “Yes,” he says. “I will have them bring him to you.”

  “I’ll go up,” I say, and without waiting I run up the stairs and burst into his nursery.

  He is eating his dinner. They have laid a table for him with a spoon and a knife, and he is seated at the head of the table and they are waiting on him as they should, as an earl should be served. He turns his little head as I come in, and he looks at me without recognition. His curly hair is brown, like a bright bay horse as Jasper said; his eyes are hazel. His face is baby-round still; but he is not a baby anymore, he is a boy, a little boy of four years old.

  He climbs down from his chair—he has to use the rungs of the chair as steps—and comes towards me. He bows; he has been well taught. “Welcome, madam, to Pembroke Castle,” he says. He has the slightest lilt of a Welsh accent in his clear, high voice. “I am the Earl of Richmond.”

  I drop to my knees so my face is level with his. I so long to snatch him into my arms, but I have to remember that to him I am a stranger.

  “Your uncle Jasper will have told you about me,” I say.

  His face lights up with joy. “Is he here? Is he safe?”

  I shake my head. “No, I am sorry. I believe he is safe, but he is not here.”

  His little mouth trembles. I am so afraid that he will cry, I put my hand out to him, but at once he straightens up and I see his little jaw square as he holds back tears. He nips his lower lip. “Will he come back?”

  “I am sure of it. Soon.”

  He nods, he blinks. One tear rolls down his cheek.

  “I am your mother, Lady Margaret,” I say to him. “I have come to take you to my home.”

  “You are my mother?”

  I try to smile, but I give a little choke. “I am. I have ridden for nearly two weeks to come to you to make sure you are safe.”

  “I am safe,” he says solemnly. “I am just waiting for my uncle Jasper to come home. I can’t come with you. He told me to stay here.”

  The door behind me opens, and Henry enters quietly. “And this is my husband, Sir Henry Stafford,” I say to my little son.

  The boy steps away from the table and bows. Jasper has taught him well. My husband, hiding his smile, bows solemnly in return.

  “Welcome to Pembroke Castle, sir.”

  “I thank you,” my husband says. He glances at me, taking in the tears in my eyes and my flushed face. “Is everything all right?”

  I make a helpless gesture with my hand as if to say—yes, everything is all right, except my son treats me as a polite stranger, and the only person he wants to see is Jasper, who is an attainted traitor and in exile for life. My husband nods as if he can understand all of this, and then turns to my son. “My men have ridden all the way from England, and they have extremely fine horses. I wonder if you would like to see them in their harness before the horses are put into the fields?”

  Henry brightens at once. “How many men?”

  “Fifty men-at-arms, a few servants and scouts.”

  He nods. This is a boy who was born into a country at war and was raised by one of the greatest commanders of our house. He would rather inspect a troop than eat his dinner.

  “I should like to see them. I will get my jacket.” He goes into his private chamber, and we can hear him calling for his nursemaid to fetch his best jacket as he is going to inspect his mother’s guard.

  Henry smiles at me. “Nice little fellow,” he says.

  “He didn’t recognize me.” I am holding back tears, but the quaver in my voice betrays me. “He has no idea who I am. I am a complete stranger to him.”

  “Of course, but he will learn,” Henry says soothingly. “He will come to know you. You can be a mother to him. He is only four; you have missed only three years, but you can start again with him now. And he has been well raised and well educated.”

  “He is Jasper’s boy through and through,” I say jealously.

  Henry draws my hand through his arm. “And now you will make him yours. After he has seen my men, you show him Arthur and tell him that he was Owen Tudor’s battle horse, but that you ride him now. You’ll see—he will want to know all about it, and you can tell him stories.”

  I take a seat in silence in the nursery as they prepare him for bed. The mistress of the nursery is still the woman that Jasper appointed when my son was born; she has cared for him all his life, and I find myself burning with envy at her easy way with him, at the companionable way she hauls him to her knee and strips off his little shirt, at the familiar way that she tickles him as she pulls on his nightshirt and scolds him for wriggling like a Severn eel. He is deliciously at ease with her; but now and then he remembers that I am there and shoots me a little shy smile, as a polite child at a stranger.

  “Would you like to hear him say his prayers?” she asks me, as he goes through to his bedroom.

  Resentfully, in second place, I follow her to see him kneel at the foot of his tester bed, fold his hands together, and recite the Lord’s Prayer and the prayers for the evening. She hands me a badly transcribed prayer book, and I read the collect for the day and the prayer for the evening and hear his soprano “Amen.” Then he crosses himself and rises up and goes to her for her blessing. She steps back and gestures to him that he should kneel to me. I see his little mouth turn down; but he kneels before me, obediently enough, and I put my hand on his head and say: “God bless you and keep you, my son.” Then he rises up and takes a great run and a leap into his bed and bounces until she folds back the sheet and tucks him up and bends and kisses him in one thoughtless gesture.

  Awkwardly, a stranger in his nursery, uncertain of my welcome, I go to his bedside and lean over him. I kiss him. His cheek is warm, the smell of his skin like a new-baked bread roll, firm as a warm peach.

  “Good night,” I say again.

  I step back from the bed. The woman moves the candle away from the curtains and pulls up her chair to the fire. She is going to sit with him till he sleeps, as she does every night, as she has done every night since his birth. He has gone to sleep with the creak of the treadles of her rocking chair and the reassuring sight of her beloved face in the firelight. There is nothing for me to do here; he has no need of me at all. “Good night,” I say again, and I go quietly from his room.

  I close the outer door of his presence chamber and pause at the head of the stone stairs. I am just about to go down in search of my husband when I hear a door above me, high up in the tower, quietly open. It is a door that goes out to the roof where Jasper used to sometimes go to gaze up at the stars or, during troubled times, look out across the country for an enemy army. My first thought is that Black Herbert has got someone into Pembroke Castle and he is coming down the stairs with his knife drawn, ready to let in his troop through the sally port. I press myself back against Henry’s bedroom door, ready to fling myself into his room and lock the door behind me. I must keep him safe. I can raise the alarm from his bedroom window. I would lay down my life for him.

  I hear a quiet footstep, and then the closing of the roof door, and then the turning of the key, and I hold my breath so that there shall be no sound but another quiet step, as whoever it is comes silently down the spiral stone stairs of the tower.

  And at once, as if I could recognize him by his footstep, I know it is Jasper, and I step out from the shadow and say quietly, “Jasper, oh Jasper!” and he takes the last three steps in a bound and has his arms around me and is holding me tightly to him, and my arms are around his broad back and we are gripping each other as if we cannot bear to let each other go. I pu
ll myself back so I can look up at him, and at once his mouth comes down on mine and he kisses me, and I am shot through with such desire and such longing that it is like being at prayer when God answers in flame.

  That thought of prayer makes me pull away from him and gasp, and he releases me at once.

  “I am sorry.”

  “No!”

  “I thought you would be at dinner or in the solar. I meant to come to you and your husband quietly.”

  “I was with my boy.”

  “Was he pleased to see you?”

  I make a little gesture. “He is more concerned with you. He is missing you. How long have you been here?”

  “I have been in the area for nearly a week. I didn’t want to come to the castle for fear of Herbert’s spies. I didn’t want to bring him down on us. So I have been hiding out in the hills, waiting for you to come.”

  “I came as soon as I could. Oh, Jasper, do you have to go away?”

  His arm is around my waist again, and I cannot stop myself leaning against him. I have grown taller, my head rests against his shoulder. I feel as if I fit him, as if his body were a piece of fretwork, hammered to interlock with mine. I feel as if I will ache all my life if we are not fitted together.

  “Margaret, my own love, I have to go,” he says simply. “There is a price on my head and bad blood between Herbert and me. But I will be back. I will go to France or Scotland and recruit for the true king, and I will return with an army. You can be sure of it. I will come back, and this will be my castle once more, when Lancaster is on the throne again and we have won.”

  I find I am clinging to him, and I unclench my hands from where I am holding his jacket, step back, and force myself to let him go. The space that I make between us, no more than a foot or so, is an unbearable void.

  “And you, are you well?” His direct blue eyes scan my face, run frankly down my body. “No child?”

  “No,” I say shortly. “It doesn’t seem to happen. I don’t know why.”

  “He treats you well?”

  “He does. He lets me have the chapel as I wish it, and he lets me study. He gives me an allowance from my lands that is generous. He even gets me books and helps me with Latin.”

  “A treat indeed,” he says solemnly.

  “Well, it is for me,” I say defensively.

  “And how will he stand with King Edward?” he asks. “Are you in any danger?”

  “I think not. He rode out for King Henry at Towton …”

  “He went to war?”

  I nearly giggle. “He did, and I don’t think he liked it much. But he has been pardoned, and his pardon should cover me. We’ll take Henry home with us and live quietly. When the true king comes into his own again, we will be ready. I doubt that York will trouble himself with us. Surely, he has greater enemies? Sir Henry does not play a big part in the affairs of the world; he likes to stay at home, quietly. Surely, he has made himself so unimportant that nobody will bother with us?”

  Jasper grins, a young man born to play a part in the great affairs of the world and quite incapable of staying at home quietly. “Perhaps. At any rate, I am glad he will keep you and the boy safe while I am away.”

  I cannot resist stepping forwards and taking hold of the lapel of his jacket again so I can look up earnestly into his face. His arm comes around my waist and holds me closer. “Jasper, how long will you be gone?”

  “As soon as I can muster an army that can retake Wales for the king, I’ll be back,” he promises me. “These are my lands and my cause. My father died for them, my brother died for them; I won’t let their deaths be in vain.”

  I nod. I can feel the heat of his body through his jacket.

  “And don’t you let them persuade you that York is the true king,” he warns me in an urgent whisper. “Bow your knee and bend your head and smile, but know always that Lancaster is the royal house and while the king is alive we have a king. While Prince Edward is alive we have a Prince of Wales, and while your son is alive we have an heir to the throne. Stay true.”

  “I do,” I whisper. “I always will. There will never be anyone for me but …”

  A clattering sound from lower down the well of the stair startles us both and reminds me that I should be at dinner. “Will you come to eat with us?” I ask.

  He shakes his head. “I’d rather not be seen. The moment Herbert knows I am here he will have the castle surrounded, and I don’t want you and the boy exposed to danger. I’ll get some food sent up to the nursery, and I will meet you and your husband in the solar after dinner, and tomorrow morning I leave.”

  I tighten my grip on him. “So soon? You won’t go so soon? I have hardly seen you! Henry will want to see you!”

  “I have to go, and the longer I stay, the more danger you are in, and the more likely I am to be caught. Now that the boy is in your keeping, I can leave him with a clear conscience.”

  “And you can leave me?”

  He smiles his crooked smile. “Ah, Margaret, all the time I have known you, you have been the wife of another man. I am a courtly lover, as it turns out. A troubadour to a distant mistress. I don’t ask for more than a smile and to be in your prayers. I love from afar.”

  “But this is going to be very far,” I say childishly.

  Silently, he puts a gentle finger to my cheek and wipes away a single tear.

  “How shall I live without you?” I whisper.

  “I can’t do anything to dishonor you,” he says gently. “Really, Margaret, I could not. You are my brother’s widow and your son carries a great name. I have to love and serve you, and for now, I serve you best by going away and mustering an army to take your son’s lands back into my keeping, and to defeat those who would deny his house.”

  The trumpet call, which announces that dinner is ready to be served, echoes up the stone well of the stair, making me jump.

  “Go on,” Jasper says. “I will see you and your husband in the solar later. You can tell him I am here.”

  He gives me a little push, and I start down the stairs. As I look back I see that he has gone into the nursery. I realize that he trusts Henry’s nurse with his life, and he has gone to sit beside my sleeping boy.

  Jasper joins us in the solar after dinner. “I shall leave early tomorrow,” he says. “There are men here whom I can trust to take me to Tenby. I have a ship waiting there. Herbert is looking for me in the north of Wales; he can’t get here in time, even if he hears of me.”

  I glance at my husband. “Can we ride with you and see you leave?” I ask.

  Jasper politely waits for my husband to rule.

  “As you wish,” Sir Henry says levelly. “If Jasper thinks it safe. It might help the boy to see you safely away; he is likely to pine for you.”

  “It’s safe enough,” Jasper says. “I had thought Herbert was on my tail, but he has taken a false scent.”

  “At dawn then,” my husband says pleasantly. He rises to his feet and puts out a hand to me. “Come, Margaret.”

  I hesitate. I want to stay by the fireside with Jasper. He will go tomorrow, and we will have no time alone together at all. I wonder that my husband does not see this, does not understand that I might want some time alone with this friend of my childhood, this guardian of my son.

  His weary smile would have told me—if I had been looking at him—that he understood this completely, and much more. “Come, wife,” he says gently, and at that bidding Jasper gets to his feet and bows over my hand, so I have to go to bed with my husband, and leave my dearest friend, my only friend, sitting alone over the fire for his last evening in the home that we used to share.

  In the morning I see a different child in my boy Henry. His face is bright with happiness; he is his uncle’s little shadow, following him like an enthusiastic puppy. His manners are still beautiful, perhaps even better when he knows that his guardian is watching him, but there is a joy in every movement when he can look up and see Jasper’s approving smile. He serves him like a page boy, s
tanding behind him proudly holding his gloves, stepping forwards to take the reins of the great horse. Once, he stops a groom bringing a whip: “Lord Pembroke doesn’t like that whip,” he says. “Get the one with the plaited end,” and the man bows and runs to obey.

  Jasper and he walk side by side to inspect the guard who have assembled to ride with us to Tenby. Henry walks just as Jasper does, his hands clasped behind his back, his eyes intent on the faces of the men, though he has to look up as they tower above him. He stops, just as Jasper does, from time to time to remark on a well-honed weapon, or on a well-groomed horse. To see my little boy inspecting the guard, the very mirror of the great commander who is his uncle, is to watch a prince serving his apprenticeship.

  “What does Jasper think his future will be?” my husband wonders in my ear. “For he is training a little tyrant here.”

  “He thinks he will rule Wales as his father and grandfather did,” I say shortly. “At the very least.”

  “And what at the most?”

  I turn my head and I don’t answer, for I know the extent of Jasper’s ambition in the regal bearing of my son. Jasper is raising an heir to the throne of England.

  “If they had weapons, or even boots, this would be a little more impressive,” my husband the Englishman remarks quietly in my ear; and for the first time I notice that many of the guard are indeed barefoot, and many of them have only sickles or coppicing hooks. They are an army of country men, not professional soldiers. Most of Jasper’s battle-hardened, well-equipped guard died under the three suns of Mortimer’s Cross, the rest of them at Towton.

  Jasper reaches the end of the line of soldiers and snaps his fingers for his horse. Henry turns and nods to the groom as if to tell him to hurry. He is to ride before his uncle, and from the confident way that Jasper swings up into the big saddle and then bends down to offer Henry his hand, I can tell that they have done this often. Henry stretches up to reach Jasper’s big hand, and is hauled up to sit before him. He nestles back into his uncle’s firm grip and beams with pride.