The Red Queen Read online

  “But you will keep my son,” I say, jealous as always.

  He nods. “I will keep him, even though Edmund and you are lost from me.”

  JANUARY 1458

  True to their word, my mother, Sir Henry Stafford, and the Duke of Buckingham come to Pembroke Castle in January, despite snow and freezing fog, to fetch me for my wedding. Jasper and I are beside ourselves trying to get in enough wood for big fires in every chamber, and to wrest enough meat from a hungry winter countryside to prepare a wedding feast. In the end we have to reconcile ourselves to the fact that there can be no more than three meat dishes and two sweetmeat courses, and that there are very few crystallized fruits and only a few marchpane dishes. It won’t be what the duke expects; but this is Wales in midwinter, and Jasper and I are united by a sort of rebellious pride that we have done what we can, and if it is not good enough for His Grace and my mother, then they can ride back to London where the Burgundian merchants arrive with a new luxury every day for those rich and vain enough to waste their money.

  In the end they hardly notice the poor fare for they stay for only two days. They have brought me a fur hood and gloves for the journey, and my mother agrees that I can ride Arthur for some of the way. We are to leave early in the morning, to catch as much as we can of the short winter daylight, and I have to be ready and waiting in the stable yard so as not to disoblige my new family and my silent husband-to-be. They will take me first to my mother’s house for our wedding, and then my new husband will take me to his house at Bourne in Lincolnshire, wherever that is. Another husband, another new house, another new country, but I never belong anywhere and I never own anything in my own right.

  When everything is ready, I run back upstairs and Jasper comes with me to the nursery for me to say good-bye to my son. Henry has grown out of his swaddling bands and even out of his cradle. He now sleeps in a little bed with high bars on either side. He is so near to walking alone that I cannot bear to leave him. He can stand, endearingly bowlegged, clinging onto a prayer seat or a low stool, then he eyes the next safe haven and flings himself towards it, taking one staggering step and collapsing on the way. If I am ready to play with him, he will take my hands and, with me bent double to support him, walk the length of the room and back again. When Jasper comes into the nursery, Henry crows like a cockerel, for he knows that Jasper will go up and down, and up and down, like an obedient beast turning the threshing wheel, tirelessly holding Henry’s little hands, while he pit-pats forwards on his fat little feet.

  But the magic moment when he walks alone has not yet happened, and I was praying he would do it before I have to leave. Now he will take his first step without me. And every step thereafter, I know. Every step of his life, and me not there to see him walk.

  “I will write to you the moment he does it,” Jasper swears to me.

  “And write to me if you can make him eat meat,” I say. “He can’t live his life on gruel.”

  “And his teeth,” he promises me. “I will write you as each new one comes in.”

  I pull at his arm, and he turns towards me. “And if he is ill,” I whisper, “they will tell you to spare me worry. But it won’t spare me worry if I think he is ill but nobody would tell me. Swear you will write to me if he is ill at all, or if he has a fall or any sort of accident.”

  “I swear,” he says. “And I will keep him as safe as I can.”

  We turn towards the high-sided bed, where Henry is holding the rail and beaming up at us. For a moment I catch a glimpse of the two of us reflected in the little lattice panes of the window behind him. I am nearly fifteen, and Jasper will be twenty-seven next birthday. In the darkened glass we look like the parents of our boy, we look like the handsome young parents of a beloved heir. “I will come to visit him as soon as I am allowed,” I say miserably.

  My baby Henry does not know that I have come to say good-bye. He holds up his arms to be lifted up. “I will bring you news of him whenever I am in England,” Jasper promises.

  He leans down and picks up our boy. Henry clings to him and puts his little face against Jasper’s neck. I step back and look at the both of them, trying to hold the picture of this boy of mine and his guardian, so that I can see it on my eyelids when I pray for them. I know I will see them at every office of prayer, five times a day. I know that my heart will ache for them both all through the day, every day, and at night, when I cannot sleep for longing for both of them.

  “Don’t come down to see me off,” I say, anguished. “I will tell them that someone came and called you away. I can’t bear it.”

  He looks at me, his face strained. “Of course I will come down, and I will bring your son,” he says bleakly. “It would look most odd if I did not bid you farewell as your brother-in-law and the guardian of your son. You are betrothed now, Margaret; you must take care how you look to the world and how things appear to your future husband.”

  “You think I am going to consider him today, of all days?” I burst out. “When I have to leave you, when I have to say good-bye to my son? You think I care what he thinks of me when my heart is breaking?”

  But Jasper nods. “This day and every day. Consider him carefully. He will own all your property, all your land. Your good name is in his keeping, your son’s inheritance will be decided by him. If you cannot be a loving wife”—he lifts his hand to stop me arguing—“then be at least a wife of whom he can make no complaint. His family is one of the greatest in the land. He will inherit a fortune. If he dies, some of that will come to you. Be a wife of whom he can make no complaint, Margaret. That is the best advice I can give to you. You will be his wife; that is to be his servant, his possession. He will be your master. You had better please him.”

  I don’t step towards him, and I don’t touch him. After that time at dinner when I put my hand on his and he took his hand away I have never touched him. I may be a girl of fourteen, but I have my pride; and besides, some things are too powerful for words. “At least let me tell you this once that I don’t want to marry him, and I don’t want to leave here,” I say flatly.

  Over my son’s round head Jasper smiles at me, but his eyes are dark with pain. “I know,” he says. “And I can tell you that I shall be filled with grief when you are gone. I will miss you.”

  “You love me as a sister,” I insist, daring him to contradict me.

  He turns away, takes one step, and then comes back to me. Henry gurgles and reaches his arms out to me, thinking this is a game. Jasper stops short—just half a pace away from me, close enough for me to feel his warm breath on my cheek, close enough for me to step towards him, into his arms, if I only dared. “You know I can’t speak,” Jasper says tightly. “You will be Lady Stafford within a week. Go with the knowledge that I will think of you every time I lift your boy from his bed, every time I kneel for my prayers, every time I order my horse, every hour of every day. There are words that cannot in honor be said between the Earl of Pembroke and Lady Stafford, so I will not say them. You will have to be satisfied with this.”

  I rub my eyes hard, and my fists come away wet with tears. “But this is nothing,” I say fiercely. “Nothing to what I would say to you. Not at all what I want to hear.”

  “As it should be. This way you have nothing to confess, neither to a priest nor a husband. And neither do I.” He pauses. “Now go.”

  I lead the way down the stairs to the courtyard of the castle, where the horses are waiting. My betrothed gets down heavily from his saddle and lifts me onto my horse, and murmurs again that it is a long way and I might like to ride pillion, or take a litter, and I say, once more, that I have learned to ride, that I like to ride, and that Arthur, the horse that Jasper gave me as a wedding gift, will carry me steadily and safely all day.

  The guards are mounted; they line up and dip their banners to the Earl of Pembroke, with the little Earl of Richmond, my boy, in his arms. Sir Henry throws him a casual salute. Jasper looks at me and I look back at him for one unflinching moment, and then I turn
my horse’s head and I ride away from Pembroke, the castle, and its earl. I do not turn my head to see if he is looking after me; I know that he is.

  We go to my mother’s house at Bletsoe, and I am married in the little chapel with my half sisters in attendance. This time, I do not ask my mother if I can be spared the wedding, and she does not reassure me with false promises. I look sideways at my new husband and think that though he is twice my age perhaps he will be kinder to me than a younger man would be. As I kneel at the altar for my wedding blessing, I pray with all my heart that he is so old as to be impotent.

  They give us a wedding feast and put us to bed, and I kneel at the foot of the bed and pray for courage and that his strength may fail him. He comes into the room before I am finished and takes off his gown, letting me see him naked, as if there is no awkwardness at all. “What are you praying for?” he asks, bare-chested, bare-arsed, just utterly gross and shocking, and yet he speaks as if he did not know it.

  “To be spared,” I blurt out, and at once clap my hand to my mouth in horror. “I am so sorry, I beg your pardon. I meant to be spared from fear.”

  Amazingly, he shows no flare of temper. He does not even seem to be angry. He laughs as he gets into bed, still naked. “Poor child,” he says. “Poor child. You have nothing to fear from me. I will try not to hurt you, and I will always be kind to you. But you must learn to mind your tongue.”

  I flush scarlet with misery and get into the bed. He gently pulls me towards him and puts his arm around me and holds me to his shoulder, as if it were the most natural thing in the world. No man has ever held me before, and I am rigid with fear at his touch and at the smell of him. I am waiting for the rough lunge that Edmund always made, but nothing happens. He does not move, and his quiet breathing makes me think he is asleep. Little by little I dare to breathe, and then I feel myself rest into the softness of the bed and the fineness of the linen. He is warm, and there is something comforting about his bulk and quietness, lying beside me. He reminds me of Arthur the horse, so strong and large and gentle. I realize that God has answered my prayers and that my new husband must be so old at thirty-three as to be completely impotent. Why else would he lie still and quiet, his hand just gently stroking my back? Lady Mother be praised! He is unmanned, and lying beside him feels like being safe and warm and even beloved. He does not move; he makes no noise but a quiet sigh, and as my anxiety slips away, I fall asleep in his arms.

  SUMMER 1459

  I have been married a year and a half before I see my brother-in-law Jasper again, and as I wait for him, in the hall of our grand manor in Lincolnshire, I feel strangely embarrassed, as if I am ashamed of the easy comfort of my life with my husband, Sir Henry. I expect Jasper will find me much changed, and I know that I am changed. I am less haunted than the girl who swore she did not want to marry anyone; I am far happier than the girl who railed against her mother for saying there was no future for her but wedding and bedding. In the past eighteen months I have learned that my husband is not impotent, but on the contrary very kind and very gentle to me. His tenderness and sweetness have taught me tenderness in return, and I would have to admit to being a happy and satisfied wife.

  He gives me much freedom in our life together, allowing me to attend chapel as often as I wish; I command the priest and the church that adjoins our house. I have ordered the services to run to the daily order of a monastery, and I attend most of them, even the offices of the night on holy days, and he makes no objection. He gives me a generous allowance and encourages me to buy books. I am starting to create my own library of translations and manuscripts, and occasionally he sits with me in the evenings and reads to me from the gospel in Latin, and I follow the words in an English translation that he has had copied for me, which I am slowly coming to understand. In short, this man treats me more as his young ward than his wife, and provides for my health, my education, and my religious life.

  He is kind and considerate for my comfort; he makes no complaint that a baby has not yet been conceived, and he does his duty gently.

  And so, waiting for Jasper, I feel strangely ashamed, as if I have found a safe haven and ignobly run away from the danger and fears of Wales. Then I can see the cloud of dust on the road, hear the hoofbeats and the clatter of the arms, and Jasper and his men rattle into the stable yard. He is with fifty mounted horsemen, all of them carrying weapons, all of them grim-faced as if ready for a war. Sir Henry is at my side as we step forwards to greet Jasper, and any hope that I had that he might have taken my hand, or kissed my lips, vanishes when I see that Sir Henry and Jasper are anxious to talk to each other, and neither of them need me there at all. Sir Henry grasps Jasper’s elbows in a hard embrace. “Any trouble on the road?”

  Jasper slaps him on the back. “A band of brigands wearing the white rose of York but nothing more,” he says. “We had to fight them off, and then they ran. What’s the news around here?”

  Sir Henry grimaces. “The county of Lincolnshire is mostly for York; Hertfordshire, Essex; and East Anglia for him or for his ally Warwick. South of London, Kent is half rebel as usual. They suffer so much from the French pirates and the blockade of trade that they see the Earl of Warwick in Calais as their savior and they will never forgive the French queen for her birth.”

  “Will I get to London unscathed, d’you think? I want to go the day after tomorrow. Are there many armed bands raiding the highway? Should I ride cross-country?”

  “As long as Warwick stays in Calais, you will only face the usual rogues. But they say he could land at any time, and then he would march to meet York at Ludlow, and your paths could cross on the way. Better send scouts ahead of you and keep a party following behind. If you meet Warwick, you will find yourself pitched into battle, perhaps the first of a war. Are you going to the king?”

  They turn and walk into the house together, and I follow, the mistress of the house only in name. Sir Henry’s household servants always have everything prepared. I am little more than a guest.

  “No, the king has gone to Coventry, God bless and keep him, and he will summon the York lords to meet with him there and acknowledge his rule. It is their test. If they refuse to go, then they will be indicted. The queen and the prince are with the king for their own safety. I am commanded to invest Westminster Palace and hold London for the king. I am to be ready for a siege. We are preparing for war.”

  “You’ll get no help from the merchants and the City lords,” my husband warns him. “They are all for York. They cannot do business while the king cannot keep the peace, and that’s all they think of.”

  Jasper nods. “That’s what I heard. I will overrule them. I am ordered to recruit men and build ditches. I will turn London into a walled town for Lancaster, whatever the citizens want.”

  Sir Henry takes Jasper into an inner room; I follow, and we close the door behind us so that they can speak privately. “There are few in the whole country who could deny that York has just cause,” my husband says. “You know him yourself. He is loyal to the king, heart and soul. But while the king is ruled by the queen and while she conspires with the Duke of Somerset, there will be no peace and no safety for York nor any of his affinity.” He hesitates. “No peace for any of us in truth,” he adds. “What Englishman can feel safe if a French queen commands everything? Will she not hand us over to the French?”

  Jasper shakes his head. “But still she is Queen of England,” he says flatly. “And mother to the Prince of Wales. And the chief lady of the House of Lancaster, our house. She commands our loyalty. She is our queen, whatever her birth, whatever friends she keeps, whatever she commands.”

  Sir Henry smiles his crooked smile, which I know, from a year of his company, means that something strikes him as overly simple. “Even so, she should not rule the king,” he says. “She should not advise him instead of his council. He should consult York and Warwick. They are the greatest men of his kingdom; they are leaders of men. They must advise him.”

  “We can deal wit
h the membership of the royal council when the threat from York is over,” Jasper says impatiently. “There is no time to discuss it now. Are you arming your tenants?”

  “I?”

  Jasper shoots a shocked look at me. “Yes, Sir Henry, you. The king is calling on all his loyal subjects to prepare for war. I am recruiting men. I have come here for your tenants. Are you coming with me to defend London? Or will you march to join your king at Coventry?”

  “Neither,” my husband says quietly. “My father is calling up his men, and my brother will ride with him. They will muster a small army for the king, and I would think that is enough from one family. If my father orders me to accompany him, I will go, of course. It would be my duty as his son. If York’s men come here, I will fight them, as I would fight anyone marching over my fields. If Warwick tries to ride roughshod over my land, I will defend it; but I won’t be riding out this month on my own account.”

  Jasper looks away, and I blush with shame to have a husband who stays by the fireside when the call to battle is heard. “I am sorry to learn it,” Jasper says shortly. “I took you for a loyal Lancastrian. I would not have thought this of you.”

  My husband glances towards me with a little smile. “I am afraid my wife also thinks the less of me, but I cannot, in conscience, go out and kill my own countrymen to defend the right of a young, foolish Frenchwoman to give her husband bad advice. The king needs the best of men to advise him, and York and Warwick are the best of men, proven true. If he makes them into his enemies, then York and Warwick may march against him, but I am sure that they intend to do no more than force the king to listen to them. I am certain they will do nothing more than insist on being in his council and having their voices heard. And since I think that is their right, how can I, in conscience, fight against them? Their cause is just. They have the right to advise him, and the queen has not. You know that as well as I.”