The Red Queen Read online

  It is the color that makes me hiss like a cat and step back so she cannot see my white, shocked face staring out of the window as she looks up and down at the house critically, as if she were valuing it for purchase. It is the bright redness of her dress that shocks me. I cannot even see her face yet, though I catch a glimpse of blond hair tucked away under the red velvet cap. It is that color that shakes me with irritation before she has even allowed my husband—my husband, smiling as I have never seen before—to lift her down from the saddle.

  Then it comes back to me with a rush. The year I went to court for the first time was the year that Margaret of Anjou, Henry VI’s queen, showed the world the new red: that very same bright scarlet. I remember Queen Margaret looking down the great hall of the court and overlooking me as if I were not worth her attention. I remember the towering height of her headdress and the scarlet of her gown. I remember feeling then, as I find I am feeling now, the seething resentment of someone who deserves the highest attention, the greatest respect, and yet is being overlooked. The Lady Elizabeth has not even stepped over my threshold, and yet she wears the color of a woman who wants to capture the attention of everyone. Before she has even set foot in my house I feel sure that she will draw every eye from me. But I am determined that she shall learn to respect me. She shall know who is her better; I swear it. The power of the Lord is mine; I have spent my life in prayer and study. She has spent her life in frivolity and ambition, and her mother is no more than a lucky witch. She shall honor me in God’s name. I shall make sure of it.

  My husband himself throws open the door for her and steps back to let her precede him into the great hall. I come forwards out of the shadows, and she immediately recoils as if I were a ghost. “Oh! My lady Margaret! You startled me! I did not see you there!” she cries, and she sweeps into a curtsey which is precisely judged—not as low as for a queen, low enough for the wife of a great lord of the realm, low enough for the woman who might be her mother-in-law, but a little raised, as if to remind me that I am in disgrace with this girl’s uncle and I am under house arrest on his word, and she is his favorite and he is king.

  I make the smallest, smallest movement of my head in return, and then I step towards my husband and we exchange our usual frosty kiss of greeting. “Husband, you are welcome,” I lie politely.

  “Wife, I give you joy,” he replies. For once his smile is bright; he is richly amused at bringing this blooming flower into the cold wasteland that is my home. “I am glad to bring you such a companion to cheer your solitude.”

  “I am happy in my own company, with my studies and my prayers,” I say at once, and then, as he raises an eyebrow at me, I have to turn to her: “But of course I am very glad of your visit.”

  “I will not intrude on you for long, I am sure,” she says, flushing a little at the rudeness of the icy welcome. “I am sorry to do so. But the king ordered it.”

  “We did not choose it, but it is a happy arrangement,” my husband says smoothly. “Shall we go to the privy chamber? And take some wine?”

  I nod to my steward of the household. He knows to fetch the best of the bottles; my husband is now acquainted with my cellar and is always served with the finest, now that he is master here. I lead the way, and I hear her light footsteps coming behind me, her high heels tapping on the paving stones of the hall, the very tempo of vanity. When we reach my room, I gesture that she may sit on a stool, and I take the carved chair and look down on her.

  She is beautiful, that much is undeniable. She has a heart-shaped face and a creamy pale complexion, straight eyebrows of brown, and gray, wide eyes. Her hair is fair, blond at the front and curling, to judge from the one lock that has escaped from the cap and falls in a ringlet to her shoulder. She is tall and has her mother’s grace, but she has an endearing charm that her mother never had. Elizabeth Woodville would turn a head in every crowd, but this girl would warm a heart. I see what my husband means about her radiance; she is tremendously engaging. Even now, as she pulls off her gloves and holds her hands to the warmth of the fire, unaware that I am looking her up and down as I would a horse that I might buy, she has a sort of vulnerable appeal. She is like a young animal that you cannot see without wanting to pet: like an orphan fawn, or a long-legged foal.

  She senses my eyes on her and she looks up. “I am sorry to disturb your studies, Lady Margaret,” she repeats. “I have written to my mother. It may be that I will be allowed to go and stay with her.”

  “Why are you sent from court at all?” I ask. I try to smile to encourage her to confide in me. “Did you get into some silly trouble? I am quite in disgrace for my support of my son, you know.”

  She shakes her head, and a little shadow goes over her face. “I think the king wanted me to be in a household where there could be no question against my reputation,” she says. “There has been some gossip—perhaps you have heard it?”

  I shake my head as if to imply that I live so quietly, so remotely, that I hear and know nothing.

  “The king is very kind to me and singles me out from the ladies of court,” she says, lying fluently as only beautiful girls know how. “There was gossip—you know how the court loves to gossip—and with Her Grace the queen dying so sadly, he wanted to make it clear that there was no cause. So he sent me to you. I am so grateful that you would take me in, thank you.”

  “And what was the gossip?” I ask, and watch her shift uncomfortably on her little stool.

  “Ah, Lady Margaret, you know how the world likes to whisper.”

  “And what did they whisper?” I press her. “If I am to repair your reputation, I should know at least what has been said against it.”

  She looks frankly up at me, as if she would have me for a friend and ally if she could. “They say that the king would have taken me for his wife,” she says.

  “And would you have liked that?” I ask steadily, but I can hear my own heart pounding in my ears for rage at the insult to my son and to our house.

  She blushes deep rose, as red as her cap. “It is not for me to decide,” she says quietly. “My mother must arrange my marriage. And besides, I am already betrothed to your son. Such things are for my mother and my guardians to decide.”

  “Your maidenly obedience does you credit, I am sure,” I say. I find I cannot keep the cold scorn from my voice, and she hears it and flinches back and looks at me again. She sees the anger in my face and her color drains away and she is white, as if she would faint.

  At that precise moment, my husband walks into the room followed by the steward with the wine and three glasses, takes in the situation in one second, and says urbanely: “Getting to know each other? Excellent.”

  He sends her off to her private chambers after she has drunk her glass of wine with us and tells her to rest after the rigors of the journey. Then he pours himself another measure, seats himself in a chair the match of mine, stretches out his boots towards the fire, and says: “You had better not bully her. If Richard defeats your son, he will marry her. The north won’t rebel against him once he has won a strong victory, and then she will be queen and you will never get out of this rathole.”

  “It is hardly a rathole, and I don’t bully,” I say. “I merely asked her why she had been sent to me, and she chose to tell me something of the truth and something of a lie, as any girl would, who does not know the one from another.”

  “She may be a liar, and indeed, in your terms, she may be a whore, but she will be the next Queen of England,” he says. “If your son comes in like a dragon from Wales—did you know there is a new ballad doing the rounds about the dragon from Wales?—then he will have to marry her to secure the York affinity, whatever her past has been. If Richard defeats your son, as seems most likely, then Richard will marry her for love. Either way, she will be Queen of England, and you would be wise not to make an enemy of her.”

  “I shall treat her with perfect courtesy,” I say.

  “Do that,” he recommends. “But listen to me, and do somet
hing more …”

  I wait.

  “Don’t take this opportunity to ride roughshod over her, in case, when the times change, she rides her horses over you. You have to appear to be on her side, Margaret. Don’t be a Beaufort filled with wounded pride—be a Stanley: get on the winning side.”

  MAY 1485

  I disregard my husband’s advice, and I watch Lady Elizabeth and she watches me. We live together in a state of armed silence, like two armies drawn up, pausing before battle.

  “Like two cats on a stable roof,” my husband says, much amused.

  Sometimes she asks me for news of my son—as if I would trust her with the humiliation he has had to suffer at the French court to raise funds and support for his attack on England! Sometimes I ask her if she has heard from her sisters, still at court, and she tells me that the court is to move to Nottingham, the dark castle at the heart of England, where Richard has chosen to wait for the attack that he knows is coming. The younger York girls are to be sent to Sheriff Hutton for safekeeping, and I know Elizabeth longs to be with them. She obeys the rules of my household without demur, and she is as silent in prayer and as still as I am myself. I have kept her for hours in my chapel without her breakfast, and she has never breathed one word of complaint. She just grows paler, more and more weary in the devotional silence of my private rooms, and I imagine that she finds the days very long. The rose that she was when she rode in through my gate in her red riding dress has now faded to a white rose indeed. She is still beautiful, but now she is again the silent girl that her mother raised in the shadowy sanctuary. She had only a little time of glory, poor little thing: a very brief moment when she was the unofficial queen of a merry court. Now she is in shadow and silence again.

  “But your mother must live as I do,” I remark one day to her. “She too lives alone in the country, and she has no lands to command and no people to supervise. She is robbed of her lands and alone as I am. She must be penitent and sad and quiet.”

  To my surprise, she laughs aloud, and then puts her hand over her mouth and apologizes. But her eyes are still dancing with the joke. “Oh no, my mother is a very merry woman,” she says. “She has music and dancing every evening, and the mummers come, and the players, and the tenants have their festivals, and she celebrates the saints’ days. She rides out with a hunt most mornings, and they often picnic in the woods. There is always something happening at her house, and she has many guests.”

  “It sounds like a little court,” I say. I can hear the jealousy in my own voice, and I try to smile to conceal it.

  “It is a little court,” she says. “Many people who loved her still remember the old days and are glad to visit her and see her in a lovely house and in safety again.”

  “But it’s not her house,” I insist. “And she once commanded palaces.”

  Elizabeth shrugs. “She doesn’t mind that,” she says. “Her greatest loss was my father and my brothers.” She looks away as she mentions them and swallows down her grief. “As for the rest of it all—the palaces and the clothes and the jewels matter less to her.”

  “Your mother was the most venal woman I have ever known,” I say rudely. “Whatever she pretends, this is her downfall, her poverty, her defeat. She is in exile from the royal court, and she is a nobody.”

  She smiles but says nothing in disagreement. There is something so utterly defiant in her smiling silence that I have to grip my hands on the arms of my chair. I should so like to slap her pretty face.

  “You don’t think so?” I say irritably. “Speak up, girl.”

  “My mother could have come to court at any time she wished, as the most honored guest of her brother-in-law King Richard of England,” she says quietly. “He invited her and promised she would be the second lady in the kingdom after the queen. But she didn’t want to. I think she has put worldly vanity behind her.”

  “No, it is I who have put worldly vanity behind me,” I correct her. “And this is a struggle of mastery over one’s greed and desire for fame, a goal only won by years of study and prayer. Your mother has never done such a thing. She isn’t capable of it. She has not surrendered worldly vanity; she just didn’t want to see Anne Neville in her place.”

  The girl laughs again, this time smiling at me. “You are quite right!” she exclaims. “And almost exactly the very thing she said! She said she couldn’t stand to see her lovely gowns cut down to fit Anne Neville! I truly believe she wouldn’t want to go back to court anyway, but you are quite right about the gowns. Poor Queen Anne.”

  “God rest her soul,” I say piously, and the girl has the face to say: “Amen.”

  JUNE 1485

  My son must come soon. Richard, from the castle at Nottingham, sends a commission to all the shires of England to remind them of their duty to him, and proclaiming the threat of Henry Tudor. He orders them to put aside all local disputes and be ready to muster in his cause.

  He orders Elizabeth to leave me and to go to Sheriff Hutton with her sisters, to join the orphaned children of George, Duke of Clarence, in a safe place. He is putting all the York children in the safest place he can find, his castle in the north, while he fights for their inheritance, against my son. I try to keep her with me—the men of York will only support my son if they think he is betrothed to her—but she packs in a moment, she is in the red riding dress in a second, she is ready to leave me within the hour, and when the escort comes for her, she all but dances out into the yard.

  “I daresay we will meet again when all this is over,” I remark, as she comes to make her farewell curtsey to me. I let her come to me in the great hall, and I stay seated in my chair and make her stand before me, like a servant being dismissed.

  She says nothing, she just looks at me with her beautiful gray eyes as if she is waiting for me to finish my sermon and release her.

  “If my son comes in like a dragon from Wales and defeats King Richard, then he will be King of England. He will take you as his wife, and you will be queen. It will be in his gift,” I say. “You have no name now; he will give you one if he chooses to do so. You have no title; he can make you Queen of England. He will be your savior; he will rescue you from shame and from being a nothing.”

  She nods, as if shame is not a curse for a woman.

  “But if Richard defeats my son Henry, then Richard will take you, his whore, and wash your reputation clean with a late marriage. You will be queen but wed to the man who killed your uncle and your brothers, who betrayed your father’s will, your enemy. A shameful fate. It would be better if you had died with your brothers.”

  For a moment I think she has not heard me, for her eyes are on the floor and she does not flinch at this prospect. She is quite unmoved by the threat of being married to a young man who must hate her, or a man who is blamed for the murder of her family. Then slowly, she looks up at me, and I see that she is smiling, beautifully smiling, as if she were happy.

  “Either way you will be disgraced,” I say harshly. “You should be aware of it. Shamed in public for all to see.”

  But the bright happiness in her face does not falter. “Yes, but either way, shamed or not, I shall be Queen of England, and this is the last time you will sit in my presence,” she says shockingly. Her confidence is extraordinary, her impertinence unforgivable, her words terribly true.

  Then she sweeps me a curtsey, turns her back on me with absolute disdain, and walks out of my great hall and into the yard where the soldiers are waiting in the sunshine to take her to safety far away.

  I have to say, she leaves me stunned into silence.

  My husband comes home, his face grim. “I can’t stay,” he says. “I have come to muster my army. I am calling out my tenants, and I am taking them out to war.”

  I can hardly breathe. “Whose side?” is all I can ask.

  He glances at me. “D’you know, that is the very question that King Richard asked of me,” he says. “He doubts me so much that he has taken my son as a hostage. He let me go out to rec
ruit only if George is in my place as a pledge. I had to agree. I have to get my affinity out into the field. This will be a battle which will decide the next King of England, the Stanley banner has to be there.”

  “But on which side?” I ask.

  He smiles at me, as if to reassure me after such a long time of waiting. “Ah, Margaret,” he says. “What man could resist having his stepson as King of England? Why do you think I married you, all that long time ago, if not to be here today? Arming my thousands of men to put your son on the throne.”

  I can feel my color rising in the warmth of my cheeks. “You will bring out your army for Henry?” I ask. The Stanley army will be many thousands of men, enough to determine the course of a battle. If Stanley will fight for Henry, then Henry is certain to win.

  “Of course,” he says. “Could you ever have doubted me?”

  “I thought you would only take the winning side?” I ask.

  For the first time in our marriage, he opens his arms to me and I step willingly towards him. He holds me warmly for a moment and then smiles down into my face. “If I am fighting for him, then Henry will be the winning side,” he says. “Is that not your wish, my lady?”

  “My wish, and God’s will,” I say.

  “Then God’s will be done,” he confirms.

  JULY 1485

  The network of spies and reporters that I had around me during the rebellion slowly emerges again, and my husband sends me word that I can meet with whomever I want, at my own risk. Dr. Lewis returns from Wales with a promise that the Welsh will be loyal to the name of Tudor; Pembroke Castle will throw open its doors to its old ruler, Jasper Tudor. Rhys ap Thomas, the greatest chieftain in Wales, has given his word to Richard, but he will play him false; Rhys ap Thomas will rise up for Henry. My man Reginald Bray goes quietly around the great houses of England promising that Henry Tudor will bring an unbeatable army, and that he will take the throne and bring justice at last to the House of Lancaster and reconciliation with York.