The Red Queen Read online

  “Why, Henry,” I say, and the little beam widens, as if he knows his name, as if he knows my name, as if he knows me as his mother, as if he believes we are lucky and that we have everything to play for, as if we might have a life that is filled with promise, in which I have more to hope for than the meanest survival.

  He beams for a moment longer and then something distracts him. I can see a surprised look cross his face, and in moments he is choking and crying, and his rockers come forwards and brush me aside to take him out of the cradle and carry him off to the wet nurse. I let them take him, and I go down to the great hall to tell Jasper that baby Henry has smiled at me too.

  Jasper waits for me in the stable yard. A big dark horse is standing beside him, its large head bowed, its tail swishing. “Is he for me?” I ask. I try not to sound anxious, but he is, undoubtedly, a very large horse indeed, and I have ridden only little ponies when led by the master of horse, or pillion behind a groom on long journeys.

  “This is Arthur,” Jasper says gently. “And he is big. But he is very calm and steady and a good horse for you to learn to ride. He was my father’s warhorse, but he is too old now for jousting. Yet he is afraid of nothing, and he will carry you safely anywhere you command.”

  The horse raises his head and looks at me, and there is something so trustworthy about the steady darkness of his gaze that I step forwards and hold out my hand. The big head comes down, the wide nostrils sniff at my glove, then gently, he lips at my fingers.

  “I shall walk beside you, and Arthur will go quietly,” Jasper promises me. “Come here and I will lift you up into the saddle.”

  I go to him and he lifts me up and helps me to sit astride. When I am safely in the saddle, he pulls down the hem of my gown so it falls evenly on either side of the horse and covers my boots. “There,” he says. “Now keep your legs still, but gently pressed against him. That way he knows you are there, and you hold yourself steady. Take up the reins.”

  I lift them, and Arthur’s big head comes up, alerted by my touch. “He won’t go off, will he?” I ask nervously.

  “Only when you give him a gentle kick, to tell him you are ready. And when you want him to stop, you make a gentle pull on the reins.” Jasper reaches up and moves my hands so the reins are threaded through my fingers. “Just let him walk two steps forwards so you know that you can make him start and stop.”

  Tentatively, I give a little kick with both heels, and I am startled by the first big rolling stride forwards, and I pull on the reins. Obediently, he stops at once. “I did it!” I say breathlessly. “He stopped for me! Did he? Did he stop because I told him?”

  Jasper smiles up at me. “He will do anything for you. You just have to give him a clear signal so he knows what it is that you want him to do. He served my father loyally. Edmund and I learned to joust on him, and now he will be your tutor. Perhaps he will live long enough and baby Henry will learn to ride on him. Now walk him out of the stable yard and into the courtyard before the castle.”

  More confidently, I give Arthur the signal to start, and this time I let him go on. His huge shoulders move forwards, but his back is so broad that I can sit firmly and steadily. Jasper walks at his head, but he does not touch the rein. It is me, and me alone, who makes the horse walk to the courtyard and then through the gate, and then out to the road that leads down to Pembroke.

  Jasper strolls beside me as if he is out to take the air. He does not look up at me, nor glance at the horse. He gives the impression of a man walking beside a perfectly competent horsewoman; he is just there for company. Only when we have gone some distance down the road does he say: “Would you like to turn him around now, and head for home?”

  “How does he turn?”

  “You turn his head by pulling it gently round. He will know what you mean. And you give him a little squeeze with your leg to tell him to go on walking.”

  I do no more than touch the rein and the big head turns and Arthur circles around and heads for home. It is easy to walk back up the hill, and then I steer him through the courtyard and to the stables, and without telling, he goes to stand beside the mounting block and waits for me to get off.

  Jasper helps me down and then slips me a heel of bread to give to the horse. He shows me how to keep my hand flat so Arthur can find his titbit with his gentle lips, and then he shouts for a stable boy to take the horse away.

  “Would you like to ride again tomorrow?” he asks. “I could come out with you on my horse; they could go side by side and we could go farther. Perhaps down to the river.”

  “I should like that,” I say. “Are you going to the nursery now?”

  He nods. “He is usually awake about now. They will let me undo the swaddling and he can kick for a bit. He likes it when he is free.”

  “You do like him very much, don’t you?”

  He nods shyly. “He is all I have left of Edmund,” he says. “He is the last of us Tudors. He is the most precious thing in the castle. And who knows? One day he might be the most precious thing in Wales, even in England itself.”

  In Henry’s nursery I see that Jasper is a welcome and regular visitor. He has his own chair where he sits and watches the baby being slowly unwrapped from the swaddling bands. He does not flinch from the smell of the dirty clout nor turn his head away. Instead, he leans forwards and inspects the baby’s bottom carefully for any signs of redness or soreness, and when they tell him they have greased the baby with the oil from the sheep fleeces as he ordered, he nods and is satisfied. Then when the baby is cleaned, they put a warm woolen blanket on Jasper’s knees, and he lays the baby on his back and tickles his little feet and blows on his bare tummy, and the baby kicks and squirms with joy at his freedom.

  I watch this like a stranger, feeling odd and out of place. This is my baby, but I don’t handle him easily like this. Awkwardly, I go to kneel beside Jasper so I can take one of the little hands and look at the tiny fingernails and the creases in the fat little palm, the exquisite little lines around his plump wrist. “He is beautiful,” I say wonderingly. “But are you not afraid of dropping him?”

  “Why would I drop him?” Jasper asks. “If anything, I am most likely to spoil him with too much attention. Your lady governess says a child should be left alone and not played with every day.”

  “She’d say anything that meant she could sit longer over her dinner or sleep in her chair,” I say acidly. “She persuaded my mother that I should not have a tutor for Latin because she knew it would make more work for her. I won’t have her tutoring him.”

  “Oh no,” Jasper says. “He’ll have a proper scholar. We’ll get someone from one of the universities, Cambridge probably. Someone who can give him a good grounding in everything he’ll need to know. The modern subjects as well as the classics: geography and mathematics as well as rhetoric.”

  He leans forwards and plants a smacking kiss on Henry’s warm little belly. The baby gurgles with pleasure and waves his little hands.

  “He’s not likely to inherit, you know,” I remind him, denying my own belief. “He doesn’t need the education of a prince. There is the king on the throne and Prince Edward to come after him; and the queen is young, she can easily have more children.”

  Jasper hides the baby’s face with a little napkin and then whisks it away. The baby gives a little shout of surprise and delight. Jasper does it again, and again, and again. Clearly, the two of them could play this game all day.

  “He may never be more than a royal cousin,” I repeat. “And then your care of him and his education will all have gone to waste.”

  Jasper holds the baby close to him, warmed in his blanket. “Ah no. He is precious on his own account,” he says to me. “He is precious as my brother’s child and the grandson of my father, Owen Tudor, and my mother, God bless her, who was Queen of England. He is precious to me as your child—I don’t forget your sufferings as you gave birth to him. And he is precious as a Tudor. As for the rest—we will learn the future as God wills.
But if they ever call for Henry Tudor, then they will find that I have kept him safe and prepared him so that he is ready to rule.”

  “Whereas they will never call for me, and I won’t be fit for anything but to be a wife, if I am even alive,” I say irritably.

  Jasper looks at me and does not laugh. He looks at me and it is as if, for the first time in my life, someone has seen me and understood me. “You are the heir whose bloodline gives Henry his claim to the throne,” he says. “You, Margaret Beaufort. And you are precious to God. You know that, at least. I have never known a woman more devout. You are more like an angel than a girl.”

  I glow, the way a lesser woman would blush if someone praised her beauty. “I didn’t know you had even noticed.”

  “I have, and I think you have a real calling. I know that you can’t be an abbess, of course not. But I do think you have a calling to God.”

  “Yes, but Jasper, what good is it being devout, if I am not to be an example to the world? If all that they will allow for me is a marriage to someone who hardly cares for me at all, and then an early death in childbed?”

  “These are dangerous and difficult times,” he says thoughtfully, “and it is hard to know what one should do. I thought that my duty was to be a good second to my brother, and to hold Wales for King Henry. But now my brother is dead, it is a constant battle to hold Wales for the king, and when I go to court the queen herself tells me that I should be commanded by her and not by the king. She tells me that the only safety for England is to follow her and she will lead us to peace and alliance with France, our great enemy.”

  “So how do you know what to do?” I ask. “Does God tell you?” I think it most unlikely that God would speak to Jasper, whose skin is so very freckled, even now in March.

  He laughs. “No. God does not speak to me, so I try to keep the faith with my family, with my king, and with my country in that order. And I prepare for trouble and hope for the best.”

  I draw close to speak to him quietly. “Do you think that Richard of York would dare to take the king’s throne, if the king were to be ill for very long?” I ask. “If he does not get better?”

  He looks bleak. “I would think it a certainty.”

  “So what am I to do if I am far from you and a false king takes the throne?”

  Jasper looks consideringly at the baby. “Say that our King Henry dies and then the prince, his son.”

  “God forbid.”

  “Amen. Say that they die the one after the other. On that day this baby is the next in line to the throne.”

  “I know that well enough.”

  “Do you not think that this might be your calling? To keep this child safe, to teach him the ways of kingship, to prepare him for the highest task in the land—to see him ordained as king and take the holy oil on his breast and become more than a man, a king, a being almost divine?”

  “I dreamed of it,” I tell him very quietly. “When he was first conceived. I dreamed that to carry him and give birth to him was my vocation, as to bring the French king to Rheims was Joan’s. But I have never spoken of it to anyone but God.”

  “Say you were right,” Jasper goes on, his whisper binding a spell around us both. “Say that my brother did not die in vain, for his death made this boy the Earl of Richmond. His seed made this boy a Tudor and so half nephew to the King of England. Your carrying him made him a Beaufort and next in direct line to the King of England. Say this is your destiny, to go through these difficult times and bring this boy to the throne. Do you not think this? Do you not feel it?”

  “I don’t know,” I say hesitantly. “I thought I would have a higher calling than this. I thought I would be a mother superior.”

  “There is no more superior mother in the world,” he said, smiling at me. “You could be the mother of the King of England.”

  “What would they call me?”

  “What?” He is distracted by my question.

  “What would they call me if my son was King of England but I was not crowned as a queen?”

  He thinks. “They would probably call you ‘Your Grace.’ Your son would make your husband a duke, perhaps? Then you would be ‘Your Grace.’”

  “My husband would be a duke?”

  “It’s the only way you could be a duchess. As a woman you could hold no title in your own right, I don’t think.”

  I shake my head. “Why should my husband be ennobled, when it will be me who has done all the work?”

  Jasper chokes back a laugh. “What title would you have?”

  I think for a moment. “Everyone can call me ‘My Lady, the King’s Mother,’” I decide. “They can call me ‘My Lady, the King’s Mother,’ and I shall sign my letters ‘Margaret R.’”

  “‘Margaret R’? You would sign yourself ‘Margaret Regina’? You would call yourself a queen?”

  “Why not?” I demand. “I shall be the mother of a king. I shall be all but Queen of England.”

  He bows with mock ceremony. “You shall be My Lady, the King’s Mother, and everyone will have to do whatever you say.”

  SUMMER 1457

  We do not speak of my destiny again, nor of the future of England. Jasper is too busy. He is gone from the castle for weeks and weeks at a time. In the early summer he comes back with his force in tatters and his own face bruised, but smiling. He rode down and captured William Herbert; the peace of Wales is restored; and the rule of Wales is again in our hands. Wales is held by a Tudor for the House of Lancaster, once more.

  Jasper sends Herbert to London as a proclaimed traitor, and we hear that he is tried for treason and held in the Tower. I shudder at that, thinking of my old guardian, William de la Pole, who had been in the Tower when I, a little girl, had been forced to declare myself free of him.

  “It doesn’t matter,” Jasper tells me, hardly able to speak for yawning over dinner. “Forgive me, sister, I am exhausted. I shall sleep for all of tomorrow. Herbert won’t go to the block as he deserves. The queen herself warned me that the king will pardon and release Herbert, and he will live to attack us again. Mark my words. Our king is an expert at forgiveness. He will forgive the man who raises a sword against him. He will forgive the man who raises England against him. Herbert will be released, and in time he will come back to Wales, and he and I will fight all over again for the same handful of castles. The king forgives the Yorks and thinks they will live with him in charity. This is a mark of his greatness, really, Margaret—you strive for sainthood and it must run in your family, for I think he has it. He is filled with the greatest of kindness and the greatest of trust. He cannot bear a grudge; he sees every man as a sinner striving to be good, and he does what he can to help him. You cannot help but love and admire him. It is a mark of his enemies that they take his mercy as a license to go on as they wish.” He pauses. “He is a great man, but perhaps not a great king. He is beyond us all. It just makes it very hard for the rest of us. And the common people only see weakness where there is greatness of spirit.”

  “But he is well now, surely? And the court is back in London. The queen is living with the king again, and you hold Wales for him. He may stay well, their son is strong, they might have another child. Surely the Yorks will settle themselves to live as great men, under a greater king. They must know that this is their place?”

  He shakes his head and spoons himself another bowl of stewed beef and a slice of manchet bread. He is hungry; he has been riding with his men for weeks. “Truly, Margaret, I don’t think the Yorks can settle. They see the king, they do their best sometimes to work with him; but even when he is well he is weak, and when he is ill, he is entranced. If I were not his man, bound heart and soul, I would find it hard to be loyal to him. I would be filled with doubt as to what comes next. I cannot in my heart blame them for hoping to control what comes next. I never doubt Richard of York. I think he knows and loves the king, and knows that he is of the royal line but not a king ordained. But Richard Neville, the Earl of Warwick, I would trust no further t
han I could see an arrow flight. He is so accustomed to ruling all the north, he will never see why he cannot rule a kingdom. Both of them, thank God, would never touch an ordained king. But every time the king is ill it leaves the question: When will he get better? And what shall we do until he is better? And the question nobody asks out loud: What shall we do if he never gets better at all?

  “Worst of all is that we have a queen who is a law to herself. When the king is gone, we are a ship without a tiller and the queen is the wind that can blow in any direction. If I believed that Joan of Arc was not a holy girl but a witch, as some say, I would think she had cursed us with a king whose first loyalty is to his dreams and a queen whose first loyalty is to France.”

  “Don’t say it! Don’t say it!” I object to the slight on Joan and put my hand quickly on his, to silence him. For a moment we are hand-clasped, and then gently he moves his hand from under mine, as if I may not even touch him, not even like this, like sister and brother.

  “I speak to you now, trusting that it all goes no further than your prayers,” he said. “But when you are married, this January, I will talk to you only of family business.”

  I am hurt that he should take his hand from my touch. “Jasper,” I say quietly. “From this January, I will have nobody in the world who loves me.”

  “I will love you,” he says quietly. “As a brother, as a friend, as the guardian of your son. And you can always write to me and I can always reply to you, as a brother and a friend and the guardian of your son.”

  “But who will talk to me? Who will see me as I am?”

  He shrugs. “Some of us are born to a solitary life,” he says. “You will be married, but you may be very much alone. I shall think of you: you in your grand house in Lincolnshire with Henry Stafford, while I live here without you. The castle will seem very quiet and very strange without you here. The stone stairs and the chapel will miss your footstep, the gateway will miss your laughter, and the wall will miss your shadow.”