Rebellion (41 page)

‘Nothing too alarming,' Sir Richard said.
‘How would you like to return to Wales with your uncle?'

‘He's only just returned here,' Margaret
said, but Sir Richard spoke across her to Henry.

‘Your uncle has been given a commission from
the king,' he said, ‘to settle his affairs in south Wales and the Severn Valley. He
could use an able young knight as his helper.'

‘What does that mean?' she asked
sharply.

Sir Richard looked at her in surprise.
‘Well, to restore law and order – administer justice and so on. He would be stepping
into his father's role.'

‘The role that killed him,' she said.

‘It would not come to that,' said Sir
Richard, and Jasper said, ‘There should be no question of battle. It will be a largely
administrative role.'

Sir Richard was leaning towards Henry again.
‘Wales was your father's country,' he said. ‘One day you might be overlord of it as he
should have been. What do you think, eh? It would be good for you to see how Welsh
affairs are managed.'

‘Can they not be managed without my son?'
she said. Sir Richard barely glanced at her.

‘The Welsh do not like having an English
king,' he said. ‘But
your son was born there. And they loved his
father. And his grandfather too.'

She was about to speak but he carried on.
‘The king has little enough family, Countess. He must make use of what he has.'

He spoke gently, but with a warning edge,
and Jasper said, ‘It's right for him to take on Edmund's role.'

They had cooked this up between them, she
thought. It had not come from the king – he would do what they suggested. She thought
briefly, wildly, of appealing to the king herself, but she was hardly in a position to
do that. Not when her husband had fought on the opposing side.

And her husband wasn't looking at her. He
sat slightly hunched with a concentrated frown on his forehead.

‘But we're talking as if the lad wasn't
here,' Sir Richard said. ‘Let him speak for himself.'

Margaret couldn't look at her son. She
willed him, with all her heart, to say that he would stay with her.

‘I think I would like to go back to Wales,'
he said.

‘Then that is settled,' Sir Richard said. He
sat back beaming and she bowed her head in defeat.

When Sir Richard left she spoke to Jasper
alone. ‘So you will take him away from me again,' she said.

‘It's time for him to enter the king's
service,' Jasper said inexpressively. ‘It goes without saying that you can visit him
whenever you like – and he you. I realize there has been some difficulty about this in
the past –'

‘I've hardly seen him at
all
.'

‘But that's over now. There will be no
obstacles to seeing him. He will be with his own family – and I'll take as good care of
him as if he were my son.'

‘He is not your son,' she said, and a look
of exasperation crossed Jasper's face, but he said, ‘He is Edmund's son. It's what
Edmund would have wanted.'

That silenced her, because
it was true. Edmund would have wanted him to take on his role. Even if Edmund had
survived, she would still not have seen much of her son.

Into her silence Jasper said, ‘I realize
that you would have wanted things to turn out differently – we could all say that.'

Yes
,
she thought. She
would have wanted Edmund to live. And to have loved her.

‘But at least the situation is different now
– at least now his uncle is king.'

‘King in name,' she said, and he looked at
her sharply. ‘I imagine he will have others speaking for him – sending my son to
Wales.'

‘What do you want for him?' Jasper said.

He knew what she wanted, of course. To keep
Henry with her, until he married, eventually, and had children. And he would still live
near her, so that she would have family she could belong to. That was what she wanted –
and for there to be no war.

At the same time she knew that it could
never be given back to her – all the years of his infancy, his childhood, the experience
of being a mother.

She could feel her throat tightening. But
she had vowed to herself that she would never cry in front of this man ever again. When
she did not answer, he said, ‘He can stay with you, of course, for the time being.'

Her throat worked. ‘How long?' she said.
Jasper shifted restlessly then pulled his nose. ‘I must be in Wales by the end of the
month,' he said. ‘And we should see the king before we leave. So – two weeks,
perhaps?'

Two weeks.

After all these years of waiting. She could
feel her hopes shedding, like leaves from a tree.

She managed to speak with only minimal
bitterness. ‘That is good of you,' she said.

The queen that was, and the Duchess
of Bedford [remain] in sanctuary at Westminster.

Paston Letters

In right great trouble, sorrow and
heaviness …

The Arrivall

In the greatest jeopardy that ever
they stood.

Jean de Waurin

In the last days of her pregnancy the former
queen increasingly insisted on being alone. Especially after the arrival of Lady Scrope.
For King Henry had sent the wife of one of his greatest supporters to act as midwife to
her,
of his great kindness.

She was a sharp-featured, soft-voiced woman;
unfailingly resourceful. She helped to entertain the children when they grew fretful
from being cooped in, read to them in the evenings, ran errands to the Sanctuary shops
and brought back news from the streets.

‘They say that Queen Margaret will sail any
time now with her son the prince. And the Earl of Warwick will go to meet them.'

‘They say that the prince is a very handsome
young man. And quite the warrior.'

She would finish these
statements with a little naughty look, as if suddenly aware that she had spoken out of
turn, or said the wrong thing in the present company. But soon she would start
again.

‘King Henry rode through the city today –
you should have seen the crowds. They are like children whose father has come home.'

At this comment Elizabeth rose suddenly and
left the room.

Her mother hurried after her. ‘Elizabeth,'
she said.

‘What is she doing here?' she asked, barely
lowering her voice.

‘The king wishes to be kind,' her mother
whispered.

‘He is not the king,' said Elizabeth. ‘And I
do not need this kindness.'

‘We can't afford to offend him,' said her
mother.

This was true. The king had tried to help
them. He had arranged for a butcher to supply them with meat. Her old physician, Dr
Serigo, was allowed to visit and the Sanctuary midwife, Margery Cobbe, had been paid to
nurse her child once he or she was born. It was more mercy than her husband would have
shown in similar circumstances, but Elizabeth felt ensnared. She did not suspect the
king of anything other than his usual aggravating piety, but any decision he took would
have to be ratified by the council. Meaning Warwick.

She pulled a chair to the window and sat in
it.

‘What are you doing?' her mother said. ‘You
can't stay here.'

‘I will stay here as long as she is there,'
Elizabeth said. Then as her mother started to protest, she said, ‘Why have they sent
her? To report back to them on everything we say or do. They are hoping, perhaps, that
my husband will send a message.'

‘The king said that she was to help you in
your confinement,' her mother said.

‘I don't need her help,' said Elizabeth.
This was her sixth confinement. She was not anticipating any difficulty. Her mother had
joined them as soon as she could when the riots were over. And
Old
Mother Cobbe, as she was known, had famously nursed more children than anyone in
England.

‘They will want to know immediately if I
have a son,' she said. ‘And maybe they will want her to take him to them – or dispose of
him in some other way.'

Her mother sank down on the edge of the bed.
‘The king would not do such a wicked thing,' she said.

‘Not the
king
, as you call him,'
her daughter said. ‘But why would Warwick allow my son to live?'

Her mother pressed her lips together. Since
the murder of her husband and son, her mind, like her daughter's, had opened on to
darker possibilities. She had aged in that time. She was no longer as fiercely in
control of her daughter – indeed, it seemed as though her daughter was more formidable
now.

Elizabeth turned towards her in her chair.
‘Promise me,' she said, ‘promise me that you will not let her take my son. She must not
be alone with him at any time – promise me that.'

Her mother went to her and clasped her hands
and said that she must not distress herself – she would guard this grandchild with her
life. No one else would take him. But Elizabeth should come back with her into the other
room and sit with them.

‘I'm staying here,' her daughter said,
turning back to the window. ‘You may make what excuses you like.'

So the duchess, familiar with her daughter's
implacable temper, left her by the window and returned to the inquisitive eyes of Lady
Scrope, saying that her daughter was tired, that was all. It was only to be expected,
this late in her pregnancy. She needed to rest, and to be left alone.

Elizabeth stayed in her room, though it was
hardly reasonable in the circumstances that she should demand one of the three rooms
available to them for her sole use, since it meant that the rest of her household – her
mother, her three daughters and Lady Scrope –were crammed into the other two. But she
reasoned that so late in her pregnancy she might be expected to
dictate the terms of her own confinement. Besides, she was tired of all of them, and
of female company in general: her squabbling daughters, the endless conversations about
needlework, the weather and the price of fish. She preferred to sit alone and brood
about her situation: her husband who had left her and had not even told her where he was
(though she'd heard by now that he was in Holland), and Warwick, who was the source of
this evil.

Warwick the Kingmaker. Destroyer of
queens.

This thought reminded her of that other
queen, Margaret of Anjou, who, according to Lady Scrope, was poised and waiting to
invade.

They were enemies now, inevitably, because
of the situation. It had not always been so. Elizabeth had entered Queen Margaret's
service when she was very young, as one of her attending ladies. She had not disliked
the queen then. She'd admired her, in fact, her dignity and sense of style. And the
queen had been kind. When Elizabeth was fifteen she'd had to leave the court to marry
her first husband, Sir John Grey. The other ladies had gathered round her, teasing her
with alarming tales of marriage, but the queen, seeing the look on her face, had sent
them all away.

‘You are worried, I think,' she said, when
they were alone. Elizabeth did not reply and she said, ‘I don't blame you – it is
worrying.'

Elizabeth knew she was remembering her own
turbulent voyage away from everything she had ever known, to a husband she'd never
met.

‘But remember this,' she said, coming
closer. ‘Whatever else happens, you must act with pride.'

She had looked for a moment as if there was
much more that she could say, but all she said was, ‘That is all that matters.' And she
turned away.

Elizabeth saw that she was working something
free from the coronet of marguerites that lay on her table. She tucked one of them into
Elizabeth's hair. ‘There,' she said. ‘Now you are perfectly beautiful. He is lucky to
have you.'

Now Elizabeth felt a
certain instability inside, because of everything that had happened since that time.

But there was no point in crying about it –
any of it. It was past and gone. She folded it away in her memory along with the
memories of her first husband, who'd been part of her life for nearly nine years, but
whom she hardly thought of either. It seemed to her that sanity depended on the ability
to select one's thoughts.

It was pregnancy that was disturbing these
memories which were usually submerged so that they stirred and squirmed like the infant
in its enclosed and constricted world.

But in the last days of her pregnancy most
of these disturbances disappeared, along with the habitual feelings of anxiety and
dread. As the November light turned sombre she was overtaken by a kind of numbness, in
which she felt that nothing was quite real. Everything seemed muffled or at a distance,
as if the dullness of immobility had anaesthetized her soul.