The Red Queen (23 page)

And I cannot help myself. God knows, if I could reconcile myself to living with a man who is the embodiment of mediocrity, in a country under a usurper—with a queen so much my inferior in every way!—observing my God only as a once-a-day deity in my evening prayers, I would do so. But I cannot. I want a husband with the courage and determination to play his part in the rule of the country. I want my country ruled by my true king, and I have to pray to God for this in the five services of the day. It is how I am, I cannot deny myself.

William Herbert is King Edward’s man through and through, of course. In his house, my son, my own son, the flower of the House of Lancaster, learns to speak of the usurper with respect, to admire the so-called ravishing beauty of his hastily married wife, the commoner Elizabeth, and to pray for an heir for their accursed house. She is fertile as a stable cat, but every year she manages to give birth only to a girl. The joke is on her, for they say she married him by enchantment and comes from a long line of women who dabble in magic. Now all she can make are little witches for the burning; she cannot give him a prince, and her magical skills do not seem to help.

Indeed, if they had conceived an heir early on, then perhaps our story would be a different one; but they do not, and slowly but surely the notorious York disloyalty begins to split the
self-aggrandizing House of York against itself. Their great advisor and mentor, the Earl of Warwick, turns against the boy he helped to the throne, and the second son George, Duke of Clarence, turns against the brother he proclaimed as his king. Together they make an alliance as a pair of opportunists.

Envy, the family poison of York, flows through George’s veins like their second-rate blood. As Warwick grows away from the first York boy that he made king, the second York boy creeps closer, dreaming of the same favor, and Warwick begins to think he might play the same trick again: this time replacing a pretender king with a new pretender. Warwick marries his daughter Isobel to George and easily, like the serpent in Eden, Warwick tempts George, Duke of Clarence, to abandon his brother’s cause and dream of usurping the usurper’s throne. They snatch the new king as if he were the crown at the top of the maypole and hold him prisoner—and I think that a way is open to me.

I know all Yorkists are ambitious and disloyal in their very cradles. But the division in their house can only serve mine. I play my own hand in the middle of these plots. When the Yorks took everything, they stole my son’s title of Earl of Richmond, and George, Duke of Clarence, took it as his own. I send a message to George, through his confessor and mine, and promise my friendship and loyalty, if he will return the title of Earl of Richmond to my son. I indicate to him that the support of my house can be commanded by me; he knows, without my boasting of it, how many men I could muster. I indicate to him that if he will return the title to my son, he can name his price, and I will back him against his brother the king.

I keep this from my husband, and I think it has been done cleverly in secret until it becomes clear, as Edward escapes from his false friend and his false brother and returns in triumph to London, that we have fallen from the favor of the York court. The title Earl of Wiltshire should have come to my husband, but King Edward passes over him and instead honors his younger brother
John, who is made Earl of Wiltshire for his ostentatious loyalty to Edward. It seems we are not to rise under this new king. We are tolerated but not favored. It is an injustice, but it cannot be challenged. My husband will be nothing but “Sir” till the end of his days. He can give me no title but “Lady.” I shall never be a countess. He says nothing, and by his very silence I guess that he has heard of my meddling offer of friendship to George of Clarence, and blames me for disloyalty to him and to King Edward, and indeed, he is right.

But then—and who could have predicted it?—everything changes again. Queen Margaret, our precious Queen Margaret, in desperate exile in France, running out of money and lost without soldiers, agrees to an alliance with the snake Warwick, her old enemy, formerly our greatest adversary. Amazingly, she lets her precious son Edward, Prince of Wales, marry Warwick’s younger daughter Anne, and the two parents agree to invade England together, to give the young people a bloodbath for a honeymoon and put the Lancaster son and the Warwick girl on the throne of England.

The end for York comes as swift as sunset; Warwick and George land together and march north. William Herbert calls out his men to join with the king, but before they can meet with the main force of York, Herbert sights the enemy outside Banbury, at Edgecote Hill. He did nothing more than his duty when he took my son with him that day, but I will never forgive him. As a nobleman should, he took his ward into battle to give him a taste of violence and a lesson in real fighting, as he should, as he should; but this is my son, my precious son, my only son. Even worse—I cannot bear to think it, but it is true—my son first put on his armor, first took a lance in his hand and then rode out to fight for York, against a Lancaster army. He fought for our enemy, at the side of our enemy, against our own house.

It was over quickly, as God’s will is sometimes done in battle.
The York troops were overpowered, and Warwick took a feast of prisoners, including William Herbert himself. Warwick, already stained in blood, already a turncoat, did not add uncertainty to his crimes. He had Herbert beheaded on the spot, and my son’s guardian died that day, perhaps as my son watched.

I am glad of it. I never had a moment of pity for him. He took my son from me and then he raised him so well that Henry loved him as a father. I never forgave him for either, and I was glad to hear he was dead.

“We have to fetch Henry,” I say to my husband, Sir Henry, as the news comes to us in snippets of gossip and gales of rumor. “God knows where he is. If Warwick has him, he will surely keep him safe; but if Warwick had him, surely he would have sent us a message? Perhaps my boy is in hiding, or perhaps he is injured …” I break off. The rest of my sentence, “perhaps he is dead,” is as clear as if it were written on the air between us.

“We’ll get news soon,” my husband says calmly. “And be sure that if he were dead or injured, we would have heard straightaway. See, we have the news of Herbert’s death quick enough.”

“We have to fetch Henry,” I repeat.

“I will go,” he says. “You can’t come with me; the roads will be filled with men running from the battle and those seeking plunder. Warwick has brought danger and turmoil back into York’s England. God knows where this will all end. You will have to stay here. I will even have to leave you with an extra guard in case any of the armed bands come through this way.”

“But my son—”

“Herbert will have told him what to do in the event of the battle going against them. He will have appointed someone to take care of him. I’ll go first to Lady Herbert and see what news she has, then I’ll go to Edgecote. Trust me, I will find your boy.”

“And when you find him, bring him here.”

He hesitates. “Depends who his new guardian is to be. We can’t just take him.”

“But who will decide that now? If York is defeated?”

He smiles. “Lancaster, I suppose. You have victory, remember? Your house will now decide everything. Warwick will put King Henry back on the throne just as he took him off; then I imagine Warwick will rule the country until the prince is of age, and possibly thereafter.”

“We have won?” I ask uncertainly. With my son missing and his guardian dead, it does not feel like victory, it feels like more danger.

“We have won,” my husband says, and there is no gladness in his voice at all. “At any rate, Lancaster has won, and that is us, once more, apparently.”

On the very morning that my cautious husband is about to set out, we have a letter in Jasper’s familiar scrawl.

It is like a dream, a dream as bright as those I used to have as a child when I prayed myself into visions. We are in the Stafford barge sailing down the Thames, the rowers keeping their pace with the low thudding of the drum, my boy gazing at the people on the riverbank who cheer to see our standards flying, and to glimpse my boy in the prow of the boat, a prince-in-waiting. We go past Westminster, and I look at the low buildings that huddle down by the river’s edge. Somewhere in the sanctuary of the abbey is the former queen, Elizabeth Woodville, the King of York’s famously beautiful wife, hiding from her enemies and wondering if she will ever see her husband again. She is thrown down and alone, and I am up high. I wonder
if she is looking out from those dark little windows, if her eyes are on my standard even now. I shiver, as if I could feel a baleful glance on me; but I shrug it off. I am the chosen daughter of God, of His chosen house. She can stay there till she rots for all I care, and her beautiful daughters with her.

From the prow of the boat, my son Henry turns back to me with a shy smile, and I say: “Wave to them, wave at your people. They are glad to see our family back in honor, back in power. Show them that you are glad to be here.”

He makes a little gesture, and then he steps back to where I am seated under the Stafford canopy, the red rose of Lancaster embroidered overall.

“Lady Mother, you were right all along,” he says shyly. “I must beg your pardon. I did not understand.”

I put my hand to my heart to feel it thud. “Right about what?”

“We are a great family, and the King Henry is the true king. I didn’t know. When you told me it, I didn’t understand. But I understand now.”

“I am guided by God,” I say earnestly. “I look beyond the fleeting days, to the wisdom of God. Will you be guided by me in the future?”

He gives a solemn little bow. “I shall be your son and your liege man,” he says formally.

I turn my head so he cannot see the triumph in my face. Henry the King has won England, and I have won my son. Thirteen years old and he swears fealty to me. He is mine for life! I feel the tears well up into my eyes. “I accept your service,” I say quietly. Then the barge noses up to the pier, the gangplank is run aboard, and Henry my son shows his beautiful Herbert manners and gives me a hand to help me ashore. We walk through the garden where everyone is smiling in joy that the country has come to its senses and we can all be in our rightful places again. And here is our king, back on his throne, his face so bright with happiness that I hardly see the five
years of pallor from his imprisonment. Here is the royal canopy over his head, embroidered with the red rose of Lancaster in full bloom; here are his courtiers around him. It is as if I were a child again and he about to assign me to the Tudors as my guardians. It is as if my childhood joys have come back to me again and the world can start anew.

And here is my son, my boy, his short-cropped hair as bright as a chestnut mane, his shoulders broad, grown taller yet again, standing beside his uncle Jasper, a handsome boy from a handsome family. We are restored. England is returned to its senses, Jasper is Earl of Pembroke once more, my son is in my keeping.

“You see?” I demand of him quietly. “You see now? I was keeping my faith to this king, my cousin, and here he is restored to his throne. God has me in His special keeping, as He has you. I knew that the York reign would be short; I knew that we would all be restored to our true places.” I glance past my son and see that the king has nodded to Jasper to bring him forwards. “Go,” I prompt him. “The king wants you, his cousin.”

My son gives a little jump, but then straightens his shoulders and goes forward to the throne with an air of real grace and quiet confidence. He carries himself so well that I cannot stop myself whispering to my husband, Sir Henry: “See how he walks?”

“Both feet,” my husband commends wryly. “One after the other. Miraculous.”

“Like a nobleman, like a prince,” I correct him. I lean forwards to listen.

“And this is young Henry Tudor, my cousin?” the king asks Jasper.

Jasper bows. “My brother Edmund’s son and his mother is now Lady Margaret Stafford.”

Henry kneels before the king, who leans down and puts his hand on the brown curly head in his royal blessing.

“There,” I say to my husband. “The king himself favors Henry. I expect the king can foretell he will have a great future. He will know that this is a special boy. He has the vision of a saint; he will see the grace in Henry, as I do.”

The storm, which blew away the little boat of the usurper Edward and his runaway companions after their defeat at Edgecote Hill, blows around the coast for almost all the winter. Our lands are flooded both in Surrey and elsewhere, and we have to lay out on ditching and even build dykes against the rising rivers. The tenants are late with their rents, and the crops are sodden in the fields. My husband is pessimistic about the state of the country, as if the loss of the usurper House of York brings rain and discontent.