The Red Rose of Anjou (50 page)

It was all too late now, although they could have lived together. No, they would never live in harmony. Better to be lonely and at peace.

She supposed she could not complain of Edward’s treatments. He was now securely on the throne, popular with the people, still possessed of that charm even though he had grown obese and was as lecherous in his maturity as he had been in his youth.

She recognized now that there was a kingliness about him which Henry had lacked. Poor ineffectual Henry! How ironical of fate to give
her
such a husband.

She had stayed in the Tower only a short time and she believed it was Queen Elizabeth Woodville who had prevailed on the King to make life easier for her so that she passed from the care of one great lady to another and spent her captivity as a guest in their stately homes. Then the King of France paid Edward a ransom for her and after five years of wandering captivity she sailed from Sandwich.

How strange it had been to say farewell to the land to which she had come full of hope and ambition all those years ago—it must have been thirty; and stranger still and sad to return to her native country.

Freedom. That was a wonderful feeling. For a brief period she had wondered whether she could start again; whether she could snatch something from the tumbled ruin of her life. She would go to Paris to thank Louis for helping her to return to her country and buying her freedom. When his reply came that he would not be in Paris and she would do well to go to her father, she understood.

She was of no importance now. Her husband was dead...murdered, she thought fiercely, and the name of Richard Duke of Gloucester had been mentioned in that connection. But it was Edward of course, Edward who had asked for his death...as Henry the Second had asked for that of Thomas à Becket.

But what did it all matter, now that her beautiful son was dead?

René had provided her with the Château de Reculée near Angers and here she lived in utter melancholy.

Yolande had said she must make a new life but she quarrelled continually with her sister, who did not understand what it meant to know that her husband had been murdered and the greatest tragedy possible had befallen her—she had lost her beloved son.

Nothing could comfort her. Even her beauty was lost, for continual weeping and the violence of her passions which she seemed to find some satisfaction in letting loose had made her hollow-eyed and worse still her skin had grown dry and so scaly that those about her believed she was suffering from a form of leprosy.

She would see no one. This was the final affliction for one who had been beautiful and accepted her beauty as a natural right.

Her father died and she felt then that she had lost everything she cared about.

She herself was only waiting for death.

Just after René had died she decided to make a pilgrimage to Dampierre and, heavily veiled to hide her disability, she set out.

She reached Dampierre and rested at the château there and while she was there she was overcome by such a lassitude that she could not rise from her bed.

‘Praise God,’ she said, I think I am done with my troubles.’

Her premonition proved correct. In the fifty-first year of her life, eleven years after the death of her son and husband, Margaret of Anjou closed her eyes for the last time.

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