The Red Queen (39 page)

“You will have to summon your courage,” I say briskly. “Be brave, you are doing God’s work. You have to go back to her and tell her to be of stout heart. Tell her that I am certain that the princes are alive. Remind her that when we attacked the Tower, we heard the guards taking them back from the door. They were alive then, why would Richard kill them now? Richard has taken the throne without killing them, why would he put them to death now? Richard is a man who does his own work, and he is hundreds of miles away from them now. Tell her that I will double my people in the Tower and that I swear to her, on my honor, that I will protect them. Remind her that the uprising will start next month. As soon as we defeat Richard the king, we will set the boys free. Then, when she is reassured, when she is in her first moment of relief, when you see the color come to her face and you have convinced her—in that moment quickly ask her if she has her son Prince Richard in safety already. If she has him hidden away somewhere.”

He nods, but he is pale with fear. “And are they safe?” he asks. “Can I truly assure her that those poor boys are safe and we will rescue them? That the rumors, even in your own household, are false? Do you know if they are alive or dead, Lady Margaret? Can I tell their mother that they are alive and speak the truth?”

“They are in the hands of God,” I reply steadily. “As are we all. My son too. These are dangerous times, and the princes are in the hands of God.”

That night we hear news of the first uprising. It is mistimed; it comes too early. The men of Kent are marching on London, calling on the Duke of Buckingham to take the throne. The county
of Sussex gets up in arms, believing they cannot delay a moment longer, and the men of Hampshire beside them rise up too as a fire will leap from one dry woodland to another. Richard’s most loyal commander, Thomas Howard, the brand-new Duke of Norfolk, marches down the west road from London and occupies Guildford, fighting skirmishes to the west and to the east, but holding the rebels down in their own counties, and sending a desperate warning to the king: the counties of the south are up in the name of the former queen and her imprisoned sons, the princes.

Richard, the battle-hardened leader of York, marches south at the fast speed of a York army, makes his center of command at Lincoln, and raises troops in every county, especially from those who greeted his progress with such joy. He hears of the betrayal of the Duke of Buckingham when men come from Wales to tell him that the duke is already on the march, going north through the Welsh marches, recruiting men and clearly planning to cross at Gloucester, or perhaps Tewkesbury, to come into the heart of England with his own men and his Welsh recruits. His beloved friend, Henry Stafford, is marching out under his standard, as proudly and as bravely as once he did for Richard; only now he is marching against him.

Richard goes white with rage, and he grips his right arm, his sword arm, above the elbow, as if he were shaking with rage, as if to hold it steady. “A man with the best cause to be true,” he exclaims. “The most untrue creature living. A man who had everything he asked for. Never was a false traitor better treated; a traitor, a traitor.”

At once he sends out commissions of array to every county in England demanding their loyalty, demanding their arms and their men. This is the first and greatest crisis of his new reign. He summons them to support a York king; he demands the loyalty that they gave to his brother, which they have all promised to him. He warns those who cheered when he took the crown less than sixteen weeks
ago that they must now stand by that decision, or England will fall to an unholy alliance of the false Duke of Buckingham, the witch queen, and the Tudor pretender.

It is pouring with rain, and there is a strong wind blowing hard from the north. It is unnatural weather, witch’s weather. My son must set sail now if he is to arrive while the queen’s supporters are up and while Buckingham is marching. But if it is so foul here, in the south of England, then I fear the weather in Brittany. He must come at exactly the right moment to catch the weary victor of the first battle and make them turn and fight again, while they are sick of fighting. But—I stand at my window and watch the rain pouring down, and the wind lashing the trees in our garden—I know he cannot set sail in this weather, the wind is howling towards the south. I cannot believe he will even be able to get out of port.

The next day the rains are worse and the river is starting to rise. It is over our landing steps at the foot of the garden, and the boatmen drag the Stanley barge up the garden to the very orchard, out of the swirling flood, fearing that it will be torn from its moorings by the current. I can’t believe that Henry can set sail in this, and even if he were to get out of harbor, I can’t believe that he could safely get across the English seas to the south coast.

My web of informers, spies, and plotters are stunned by the ferocity of the rain, which is like a weapon against us. The roads into London are all but impassable; no one can get a message through. A horse and rider cannot get from London to Guildford, and as the river rises higher, there is news of flooding and drowning upstream and down. The tides are unnaturally high, and every day and night the floods from the river pour down to the inrushing tide and there is a boiling surge of water that wipes out riverside houses, quays,
piers, and docks. Nobody can remember weather like this, a rain storm that lasts for days, and the rivers are bursting their banks all around England.

I have no one to talk to but my God, and I cannot always hear His voice, as if the rain is blotting out His very face, and the wind blowing away His words. This is how I know for sure that it is a witch’s wind. I spend my day at the window overlooking the garden, watching the river boil over the garden wall and come up through the orchard, lap by lap, till the trees themselves seem to be stretching up to the heavy clouds for help. Whenever one of my ladies comes to my side, or Dr. Lewis comes to my door, or any of the plotters in London ask for admittance, they all want to know what is happening: as if I know any more than them, when all I can hear is rain; as if I can foretell the future in the gale-ripped sky. But I know nothing, anything could be happening out there; a waterlogged massacre could be taking place even half a mile away, and none of us would know—we would hear no voices over the sound of the storm, no lights would show through the rain.

I spend my nights in my chapel, praying for the safety of my son and the success of our venture, and hearing no answer from God but only the steady hammer of the torrent on the roof and the whine of the wind lifting the slates above me, until I think that God Himself has been blotted from the heavens of England by the witch’s wind, and I will never hear Him again.

Finally, I get a letter from my husband at Coventry.

I have been on my knees all night, but I don’t know if God can hear me through the hellish noise of the rain. My son sets sail from Brittany with fifteen valuable ships and an army of five thousand men and loses them all in the storm at sea. Only two ships struggle ashore on the south coast, and they learn at once that Buckingham has been defeated by the rising of the river, his rebellion washed away by the waters, and Richard is waiting, dry-shod, to execute the survivors.

My son turns his back on the country that should have been his and sails for Brittany again, flying like a faintheart, leaving me here, unprotected, and clearly guilty of plotting his rebellion. We are parted once more, my heir and I, this time without even meeting, and this time it feels as if it is forever. He and Jasper leave me to face the king, who marches vengefully on London like an invading enemy, mad with anger. Dr. Lewis vanishes off to Wales; Bishop Morton takes the first ship that can sail after the storms and goes to France; Buckingham’s men slip from the city in silence and under lowering skies; the queen’s kin make their way to Brittany and to the tattered remains of my son’s makeshift court; and my husband arrives in London in the train of King Richard, whose handsome face is dark with the sullen rage of a traitor betrayed.

“He knows,” my husband says shortly as he comes to my room,
his traveling cape still around his shoulders, his sympathy scant. “He knows you were working with the queen, and he will put you on trial. He has evidence from half a dozen witnesses. Rebels from Devon to East Anglia know your name and have letters from you.”

“Husband, surely he will not.”

“You are clearly guilty of treason, and that is punishable by death.”

“But if he thinks you are faithful—”

“I
am
faithful,” he corrects me. “It is not a matter of opinion but of fact. Not what the king thinks—but what he can see. When Buckingham rode out, while you were summoning your son to invade England, and paying rebels, while the queen was raising the southern counties, I was at his side, advising him, loaning him money, calling out my own affinity to defend him, faithful as any northerner. He trusts me now as he has never done before. My son raised an army for him.”

“Your son’s army was for me!” I interrupt.

“My son will deny that, I will deny that, we will call you a liar, and nobody can prove anything, either way.”

I pause. “Husband, you will intercede for me?”

He looks at me thoughtfully, as if the answer could be no. “Well, it is a consideration, Lady Margaret. My King Richard is bitter; he cannot believe that the Duke of Buckingham, his best friend, his only friend, should betray him. And you? He is astonished at your infidelity. You carried his wife’s train at her coronation, you were her friend, you welcomed her to London. He feels you have betrayed him. Unforgivably. He thinks you as faithless as your kinsman Buckingham, and Buckingham was executed on the spot.”