The Red Queen

MARCH 1457

A parcel-taken from one place to another, handed from one owner to another, unwrapped and bundled up at will-is all that I am. A vessel, for the bearing of sons, for one nobleman or another: it hardly matters who. Nobody sees me for what I am: a young woman of great family with royal connections, a young woman of exceptional piety who deserves-surely to God! – some recognition. But no, having been shipped to Lamphey Castle in a litter, I now ride to Newport on a fat cob, seated behind a manservant, unable to see anything of the road ahead of me and glimpsing muddy fields and pale pasturelands only through the jogging ranks of the men-at-arms. They are armed with lances and cudgels and are wearing the badge of the Tudor crest at their collars. Jasper is leading the way on his warhorse, and he has warned them to be prepared for ambush from Herbert’s men, or trouble on the road from bands of thieves. Once we get closer to the sea there is also the danger of a marauding party of pirates. This is how I am protected. This is the country I live in. This is what a good king, a strong king, should prevent.

We ride under the portcullis of Greenfield House, and the gate slams shut behind us. We dismount in the courtyard before the house, and my mother comes out to greet me. I have not seen her for almost two years, not since my wedding day, when she told me there was nothing to fear. Now as she comes towards me and I kneel for her blessing I realize that she will see from my face that I know she was lying to me that day, for I have faced the very fear of death itself, and learned that she was prepared to sacrifice me for a grandson. There was nothing to fear for her-so she was right about that. But there was much to fear for me.

“Margaret,” she says quietly. She puts her hand on my head for a blessing and then raises me up and kisses me on both cheeks. “You’ve grown! And you are looking well!”

I long for her to hold me and hug me and tell me that she has missed me, but that would be to wish for a different sort of mother, and then I would have been a different girl. Instead, she looks at me with cool approval and then turns as the door of the house opens and the duke comes out.

“Here is my daughter,” she says. “Lady Margaret Tudor. Margaret, this is your kinsman the Duke of Buckingham.”

I make a low curtsey. This is a duke most particular about his position; they say that he took his order of precedence to parliament to get a ruling on who should walk behind him. He raises me up and kisses me on both cheeks. “You are welcome,” he says. “But you must be cold and tired from your journey. Come inside.”

The house is furnished with a luxury that I had almost forgotten, having spent these years in exile at Lamphey and Pembroke. Thick tapestries warm the stone walls, and the wooden beams above are gilded and brightly painted. Everywhere the duke’s crest is picked out in new gold. The rushes on the floor are fresh and sweet so that every room is scented lightly with herbs and lavender, and in every great stone fireplace there are blazing logs and a lad going round with a basket to bring in more firewood. Even the firewood boy wears the duke’s livery; they say that he has a small army always dressed and armed at his command. The boy even has boots. I think of the barefoot slovenliness of my husband’s home, and I feel a little better about this betrothal if it is going to take me into a house that is kept clean, with servants who are properly dressed.

The duke offers me a glass of small ale, which is mulled hot and sweet, to warm me from the chill of traveling. As I am sipping it, Jasper comes into the room with another older man, graying hair at his temples, lines in his face; he must be forty if he is a day. I look to Jasper to introduce this stranger, and when I see his grave face I realize. With a little gasp of shock I understand that this old man is Henry Stafford, and that I am before my new husband. He is not a boy of my age like John de la Pole, my first betrothed. He is not a young man like Edmund-and God knows he was too old and too hard for me. No, this time they have picked out a man old enough to be my father, old enough to be my grandfather, my ancestor. He is forty years old, fifty years old, probably sixty. I realize I am staring, and I quite fail to curtsey until my mother says sharply, “Margaret!” and I mumble, “Excuse me,” and sink down in a gesture of humility, to yet another man, who will make me live with him wherever he chooses, and will make another heir to the Lancaster line on me, whether I like it or not.

I see that Jasper is scowling down at his boots, but he raises his head to greet my mother with his usual courtesy and bows to the duke.

“I see you have kept my daughter safe through these most troubled times,” my mother says to him.

“I will keep the whole principality safe if I can,” he replies. “At last we seem to be gaining ground. I have recaptured the castles that the York party took, and William Herbert is on the run, in hiding. If he stays within Wales, I will catch him. We Tudors are well loved here; someone will betray him to me.”

“And then?” the Duke of Buckingham asks him. “What then?”

Jasper shrugs. He knows it is not a question about the fate of William Herbert, nor even of Wales. It is the question that every Englishman asks himself these days: What then? How can we go on with a court so unpopular it dare not even live in London? How can we go on with a king who slips away into dreams without warning, and leaves a queen hated by so many? How can we face the future when their heir is just one little weak boy? How can we be safe when the kingdom slides into the keeping of our enemies: the House of York?

“I have tried to reason with Richard of York, and his advisor the Earl of Warwick,” Jasper says. “You know how hard I have tried to persuade them to work with the queen. I have talked and talked with the queen. But she is terrified of them and fearful that they will attack her and her son at the next illness of the king. And in their turn, they fear that she will destroy them when the king is well enough to do her bidding. I can’t see a resolution.”

“If they could be sent from the country?” Buckingham suggests. “One of them to Calais? Perhaps we could send York to Dublin?”

Jasper shrugs. “I wouldn’t sleep easy in my bed at night knowing that they were off our coasts with their own armies,” he says. “From Calais they command the narrow seas; no southern port would be safe. From Dublin, Richard of York could raise an army and come against us. And the Irish love York like a king already.”

“Perhaps the king will stay well this time,” my mother suggests hopefully.

I realize how gravely ill His Grace has become from the awkward silence that greets this remark. “Perhaps,” the duke says.

They waste no time on courtship between Henry Stafford and me. They waste no time on giving us even a moment to meet. Why should they? This is a matter for the lawyers and the officers of the household who manage the wealth. It would not matter if Henry Stafford and I hated each other on sight. It matters not at all that I do not want to marry, that I am afraid of the wedding, afraid of consummating the marriage, afraid of childbirth, afraid of everything about being a wife. Nobody even asks if I have lost my childhood sense of vocation, if I still want to be a nun. Nobody cares what I think at all. They treat me like an ordinary young woman, bred for wedding and bedding, and since they do not ask me what I think, nor observe what I feel, there is nothing that gives them pause at all.

They draw up the contracts, and we sign them. We go to the chapel, and before witnesses and before the priest we swear to marry each other in January so that I have a year to mourn my first marriage, which brought me so little joy and ended so soon. I will be fourteen years old, and he will be not exactly forty, but still an old man to me: thirty-three years old.

After the betrothal we go back to the house, and my mother and I sit in the solar, where there is a fire burning, with our ladies around us, listening to the musicians play. I draw my stool a little closer to her so that we can speak privately for once.

“Do you remember what you said before I was married to Edmund Tudor?” I ask her.

She shakes her head and glances away as if she would avoid this conversation. I am very sure she does not want to be reproached for telling me there was nothing to fear, when she instructed my own lady governess to let me die. “No, I don’t remember,” she says quickly. “It feels like years ago.”

“You said that I could not take the coward’s way out, my father’s way out.”

She flinches from me even naming the man who has been buried in silence for so long. “Did I?”

“Yes.”

“I can’t imagine what I was thinking of.”

“So what did he do?”

She turns away with a false laugh. “Have you waited all this time to ask me to explain a silly thing I said at the church door?”

“Yes.”

“Oh, Margaret, you are so …” She breaks off, and I wait to hear what I am that makes her toss her head like this and frown. “You are so very serious.”

“Yes.” I nod. “That is true. I am very serious, Lady Mother. I would have thought you would have known that by now. I have always been a serious person, a studious person. And you said something about my father that I think I have a right to understand. I take it seriously.”

She gets up and walks to the window, looking out as if admiring the dark evening. She shrugs her shoulders at the awkwardness of this daughter, her only Beaufort child. Her lady-in-waiting looks up at her in case she needs anything and I see the glance that passes between them. It is as if I am known to be a difficult girl, and I flush with embarrassment.

“Oh,” sighs my mother. “It’s such a long time ago now,” she says. “How old are you now? Thirteen? For heaven’s sake, it is twelve years ago.”

“Then you can tell me. I am old enough to know. And if you don’t, then someone is bound to tell me something. You surely don’t want me to ask the servants?”

The flush that comes to her face tells me that she does not want me to ask the servants, that they have been warned never to discuss this matter with me. Something happened twelve years ago that she wanted to forget, that she wanted me never to know. Something shameful happened.

“How did he die?” I ask.

“By his own hand,” she says quickly and quietly. “If you must know. If you insist on knowing his shame. He left you and he left me, and he died by his own hand. I was with child, a baby that I lost. I lost a baby in my shock and my grief, a baby that might have been a son for the House of Lancaster; but he didn’t think about that. It was days before your first birthday; he didn’t care enough for either of us even to wait to see you into your second year. And that is why I have always told you that your future lies in your son. A husband can come and go; he can leave on his own account. He can go to war or get sick or kill himself; but if you make your son your own, your own creation, then you are safe. A boy is your guardian. If you had been a boy, I would have poured my life into you. You would have been my destiny.”

“But since I was a girl you did not love me, and he did not wait to see my birthday?”

She looks at me honestly and repeats the dreadful words. “Since you were a girl, of course not. Since you were a girl you could only be the bridge to the next generation; you could be nothing more than the means by which our family gets a boy.”

There is a short silence while I absorb my mother’s belief in my unimportance. “I see. I see. I am lucky to be valued by God, since I am not valued by you. I was not valued by my father.”

She nods as if it does not matter much. Still she does not understand me. She will never understand. She will never think that I am worth the effort of understanding. To her I am, as she so frankly tells me, a bridge.

“So why did my father kill himself?” I return to her first revelation. “Why would he do such a thing? His soul will have gone to hell. They must have told a string of lies to get him buried in holy ground.” I correct myself. “You must have told a string of lies.”

My mother comes back and sinks onto the bench by the warm fire. “I did what I could to protect our good name,” she says quietly. “As anyone of a great name would do. Your father came back from France with stories of victory, but then people started to whisper. They said he had done nothing of any value, indeed he had taken the troops and money that his commander Richard of York-the great hero-needed to hold France for England. Richard of York was making progress, but your father set it back. Your father set siege to a town, but it was the wrong town, owned by the Duke of Brittany, and he had to return it to them. We nearly lost the alliance with Brittany through his folly. That would have cost the country dear, but he did not think of it. He set a tax to raise money in the defeated areas of France, but it was illegal; and worse, he kept all the revenue for himself. He said he had a great campaign plan; but he led his men round in circles and then brought them home again without either victory or plunder, so they were bitter against him and said that he was a false lord to them. He was dearly loved by our king, but not even the king could pretend that he had done well.

“There would have been an inquiry in London about his conduct; he escaped that shame only by his death. There might even have been an excommunication from the pope. They would have come for your father and accused him of treason, and he would have paid with his life on the block, and you would have lost your fortune, and we would have been attainted and ruined; he spared us that, but only by running away into death.”

“An excommunication?” I am more horrified by this than anything else.

“People wrote ballads about him,” she says bitterly. “People laughed at his stupidity and marveled at our infamy. You cannot imagine the shame of it. I have shielded you from it, from the shame of him, and I get no thanks for it. You are such a child you don’t know that he is notorious as the great example of his age of the change of fortune, of the cruelty of the wheel of fortune. He could not have been born with better prospects and better opportunities; but he was unlucky, fatally unlucky. In his very first battle in France, when he rode out as a boy, he was captured, and he was left in captivity for seventeen years. It broke his heart. He thought that nobody cared enough to ransom him. Perhaps that is the lesson that I should have taught you-never mind your studies, never mind your nagging for books, for a tutor, for Latin lessons. I should have taught you never to be unlucky, never to be unlucky like your father.”

“Does everyone know?” I ask. I am horrified at the shame I have inherited, unknowingly. “Jasper, for instance? Does Jasper know I am the daughter of a coward?”

My mother shrugs. “Everyone. We said that he was exhausted by campaigning, and died of his service to the king. But people will always gossip about their betters.”

“And are we an unlucky family?” I ask her. “Do you think I have inherited his bad luck?”

She will not answer me. She gets to her feet and smooths the skirt of her gown as if to brush away smuts from the fire, or to sweep away ill fortune.

“Are we unlucky?” I ask. “Lady Mother?”

“Well, I am not,” she says defensively. “I was born a Beauchamp, and after your father’s death I married again and changed my name from his. Now I am a Welles. But you might be unlucky. The Beauforts may be. But perhaps you will change the luck,” she says indifferently. “You were lucky enough to have a boy, after all. Now you have a Lancaster heir.”

They serve dinner very late; the Duke of Buckingham keeps court hours and is not troubled by the cost of candles. At least the meat is better cooked and there are more side dishes of pastries and sweetmeats than at Pembroke Castle. I see that at this table where everything is so beautiful, Jasper’s manners are positively courtly, and I understand for the first time that he lives as a soldier when he is in his border castle on the very frontiers of the kingdom, but he is a courtier when he is in a great house. He sees me watching him, and he winks at me as if we two share the secret of how we manage our lives when we do not have to be on our best behavior.

We eat a good dinner and afterwards there is an entertainment, some fools, a juggler, and a girl who sings. Then my mother nods to me and sends me to bed as if I were a child still, and before the grand company I can do nothing but curtsey for her blessing and go. I glance at my future husband as I leave. He is looking at the girl singer with his eyes narrowed, a little smile on his mouth. I don’t mind walking out after I see that look. I am more sick of men, all men, than I dare to acknowledge to myself.

Next day, the horses are in the stable yard, and I am to be sent back to Pembroke Castle until my year of mourning is finished and I can be married again to the smiling stranger. My mother comes to bid me farewell and watches the manservant lift me onto the pillion saddle behind Jasper’s master of horse. Jasper himself is riding ahead with this troop of guards. The rear file are waiting for me.

“You will leave your son in the care of Jasper Tudor when you marry Sir Henry,” my mother remarks, as if this arrangement has just occurred to her this minute, as I am leaving.

“No, he will come with me. Surely, he will come with me,” I blurt out. “He must come with me. He is my son. Where should he be, but with me?”

“It’s not possible,” she says decidedly. “It is all agreed. He is to stay with Jasper. Jasper will care for him and keep him safe.”

“But he is my son!”

My mother smiles. “You are little more than a child yourself. You cannot look after an heir to our name, and keep him safe. These are dangerous times, Margaret. You should understand that by now. He is a valuable boy. He will be safer if he is at some distance from London, while the Yorks are in power. He will be safer in Pembroke than anywhere else in the country. Wales loves the Tudors. Jasper will guard him as his own.”

“But he is my own! Not Jasper’s!”

My mother comes closer and puts her hand on my knee. “You own nothing, Margaret. You yourself are the property of your husband. Once again I have chosen a good husband for you, one near to the crown, kinsman to the Nevilles, son of the greatest duke in England. Be grateful, child. Your son will be well cared for, and then you will have more, Stafford boys this time.”

“I nearly died last time,” I burst out, careless of the man seated before me on the horse, his shoulders squared, pretending not to listen.

“I know,” my mother says. “And this is the price of being a woman. Your husband did his duty and died. You did yours and survived. You were lucky this time; he was not. Let’s hope you take your luck onwards.”

“What if I am not so lucky next time? What if I have the Beaufort luck, and next time the midwives do as you ordered them and let me die? What if they do as you command and drag a grandson out of your daughter’s dead body?”

She does not even blink. “The baby should always be saved in preference to the mother. That is the advice of the Holy Church, you know that. I was only reminding the women of their duty. There is no need to make everything so personal, Margaret. You make everything into your own tragedy.”

“I think it is my tragedy, if you are telling my midwives to let me die!”

She all but shrugs as she steps back. “These are the chances that a woman faces. Men die in battle; women die in childbirth. Battle is more dangerous. The odds are with you.”

“But what if the odds are against me, if I am unlucky? What if I die?”

“Then you will have the satisfaction of knowing that you made at least one son for the House of Lancaster.”

“Mother, before God,” I say, my voice shaking with tears, “I swear that I have to believe that there is more for me in life than being wife to one man after another, and hoping not to die in childbirth!”

She shakes her head, smiling at me as if my sense of outrage is like a little girl shouting over her toys. “No, truly, my dear, there is nothing more for you,” she says. “So do your duty with an obedient heart. I will see you in January, at your wedding.”

I ride back to Pembroke Castle in a surly silence, and none of the signs of the coming spring down the greening lanes give me any pleasure at all. I turn my head away from the wild daffodils that make the high meadows a blaze of silver and gold, and I am deaf to the insistent, joyous singing of the birds. The lapwing soaring blunt-winged over a plowed field and calling out his sharp whistle means nothing to me, for everything means nothing to me. The snipe diving downwards making a sound like a roll of drums does not call to me. My life will not be dedicated to God, will not be special in any way. I shall sign myself Margaret Stafford-I won’t even be duchess. I shall live like a hedge sparrow on a twig until the sparrowhawk kills me, and my death will be unnoticed and unmourned by any. My mother herself has told me that there is nothing in my life that is worth doing, and the best I can hope is to avoid an early death in childbirth.

Jasper spurs on ahead as soon as he sees the high towers of Pembroke, and so greets me at the castle gates with my baby in his arms, beaming with joy. “He can smile!” he exclaims before the horses even come to a standstill. “He can smile. I saw it. I leaned over his cradle to pick him up, and he saw me, and he smiled. I am sure it was a smile. I did not think he would smile so early. But it was a smile for sure. Perhaps he will smile at you.”

We both wait expectantly, looking into the dark blue eyes of the little baby. He is still strapped up as if ready for the coffin; only his eyes can move, he cannot even turn his head. He is swaddled into immobility.

“Perhaps he will smile later,” Jasper says consolingly. “There! Did he then? No.”

“It doesn’t matter, since I am to leave him within a year anyway, since I have to go and marry Sir Henry Stafford. Since I now have to give birth to Stafford boys, even if I die in the trying. Perhaps he has nothing to smile about; perhaps he knows he is to be an orphan.”

Jasper turns with me towards the front door of the castle, walking beside me, my baby resting comfortably in his arms. “They will let you visit him,” he says consolingly.

“But you are to keep him. I suppose you knew. I suppose you all planned this together. You, and my mother, and my father-in-law, and my old husband-to-be.”

He glances down at my tearful face. “He is a Tudor,” he says carefully. “My brother’s son. The only heir to our name. You could choose no one better to care for him than me.”

“You are not even his father,” I say irritably. “Why should he stay with you and not with me?”

“Lady Sister, you are little more than a child yourself, and these are dangerous times.”

I round on him and stamp my foot. “I am old enough to be married twice. I am old enough to be bedded without tenderness or consideration. I am old enough to face death in the confinement room and be told that my own mother-my own mother-has commanded them to save the child and not me! I think I am a woman now. I have a babe in arms, and I have been married and widowed and now betrothed again. I am like a draper’s parcel to be sent about like cloth and cut to the pattern that people wish. My mother told me that my father died by his own hand and that we are an unlucky family. I think I am a woman now! I am treated as a woman grown when it suits you all, you can hardly make me a child again!”

He nods as if he is listening to me and considering what I have to say. “You have cause for complaint,” he says steadily. “But this is the way of the world, Lady Margaret; we cannot make an exception for you.”

“But you should!” I exclaim. “This is what I have been saying since my childhood. You should make an exception for me. Our Lady speaks to me, the holy Joan appears to me, I am sent to be a light to you. I cannot be married to an ordinary man and sent away to God knows where again. I should be given a nunnery of my own and be an abbess! You should do this, Brother Jasper; you command Wales. You should give me a nunnery, I want to found an order!”

He holds the baby close and turns away from me a little. I think he is moved to tears by my righteous anger, but then I see his face is flushed and his shoulders are shaking because he is laughing. “Oh, my lord,” he says. “Forgive me, Margaret, but oh, my lord. You are a child, a child. You are a baby like our Henry here, and I shall care for both of you.”

“Nobody shall care for me,” I shout. “For you are all mistaken about me, and you are a fool to laugh at me. I am in the care of God, and I am not going to marry anyone! I am going to be an abbess.”

He catches his breath, his face still bright with laughter. “An abbess. Certainly. And will you be dining with us tonight, Reverend Mother?”

I scowl at him. “I shall be served in my rooms,” I say crossly. “I shall not dine with you. Possibly I shall never dine with you again. But you can tell Father William to come to me. I will have to confess trespassing against those who have trespassed against me.”

“I will send him,” Jasper says kindly. “And I will send the best of the dishes to your room. And tomorrow I hope you will meet me in the stable yard and I will teach you to ride on your own. A lady of your importance should have her own horse; she should ride a beautiful horse well. When you go back to England, I think you should go on your own fine horse.”

I hesitate. “I cannot be tempted by vanity,” I warn him. “I am going to be an abbess, and nothing will divert me. You shall see. You will all see. You shall not treat me as a thing for trading and selling. I shall command my own life.”

“Certainly,” he says pleasantly. “It is very wrong that you should feel we think of you like that, for I love and respect you, as I promised I would. I shall find you an expensive horse and you will look beautiful on his back and everyone will admire you, and it can all mean nothing to you at all.”

I sleep in a dream of white-washed cloister walls and a great library, where illuminated books are chained to the desks and I can go every day and study. I dream of a tutor who will lead me through Greek and Latin and even Hebrew, and that I will read the Bible in the tongue which is closest to the angels, and I will know everything. In my dream, my hunger for learning and my desire to be special is quieted, soothed. I think that if I could be a scholar, I could live in peace. If I could wake every day to the discipline of the offices of the day, and spend my days in study, I think I would feel that I was living a life that was pleasing to God and to me. I would not care whether people thought I was special, if my life was truly special. It would not matter to me that people could see me as pious, if I could truly live as a woman scholar of piety. I want to be what I seem to be. I act as if I am specially holy, a special girl; but this is what I really want to be. I really do.

In the morning, I wake and dress, but before I go for my breakfast I go to the nursery to see the baby. He is still in his cradle, but I can hear him cooing, little quiet noises like a duckling quacking to itself on a still pond. I lean over his cradle to see him, and he smiles. He does. There is an unmistakable recognition in his dark blue eyes, and the funny, gummy, triangular grin that makes him at once less like a pretty doll, and tremendously like a little person.

“Why, Henry,” I say, and the little beam widens, as if he knows his name, as if he knows my name, as if he knows me as his mother, as if he believes we are lucky and that we have everything to play for, as if we might have a life that is filled with promise, in which I have more to hope for than the meanest survival.

He beams for a moment longer and then something distracts him. I can see a surprised look cross his face, and in moments he is choking and crying, and his rockers come forwards and brush me aside to take him out of the cradle and carry him off to the wet nurse. I let them take him, and I go down to the great hall to tell Jasper that baby Henry has smiled at me too.

Jasper waits for me in the stable yard. A big dark horse is standing beside him, its large head bowed, its tail swishing. “Is he for me?” I ask. I try not to sound anxious, but he is, undoubtedly, a very large horse indeed, and I have ridden only little ponies when led by the master of horse, or pillion behind a groom on long journeys.

“This is Arthur,” Jasper says gently. “And he is big. But he is very calm and steady and a good horse for you to learn to ride. He was my father’s warhorse, but he is too old now for jousting. Yet he is afraid of nothing, and he will carry you safely anywhere you command.”

The horse raises his head and looks at me, and there is something so trustworthy about the steady darkness of his gaze that I step forwards and hold out my hand. The big head comes down, the wide nostrils sniff at my glove, then gently, he lips at my fingers.

“I shall walk beside you, and Arthur will go quietly,” Jasper promises me. “Come here and I will lift you up into the saddle.”

I go to him and he lifts me up and helps me to sit astride. When I am safely in the saddle, he pulls down the hem of my gown so it falls evenly on either side of the horse and covers my boots. “There,” he says. “Now keep your legs still, but gently pressed against him. That way he knows you are there, and you hold yourself steady. Take up the reins.”

I lift them, and Arthur’s big head comes up, alerted by my touch. “He won’t go off, will he?” I ask nervously.

“Only when you give him a gentle kick, to tell him you are ready. And when you want him to stop, you make a gentle pull on the reins.” Jasper reaches up and moves my hands so the reins are threaded through my fingers. “Just let him walk two steps forwards so you know that you can make him start and stop.”

Tentatively, I give a little kick with both heels, and I am startled by the first big rolling stride forwards, and I pull on the reins. Obediently, he stops at once. “I did it!” I say breathlessly. “He stopped for me! Did he? Did he stop because I told him?”

Jasper smiles up at me. “He will do anything for you. You just have to give him a clear signal so he knows what it is that you want him to do. He served my father loyally. Edmund and I learned to joust on him, and now he will be your tutor. Perhaps he will live long enough and baby Henry will learn to ride on him. Now walk him out of the stable yard and into the courtyard before the castle.”

More confidently, I give Arthur the signal to start, and this time I let him go on. His huge shoulders move forwards, but his back is so broad that I can sit firmly and steadily. Jasper walks at his head, but he does not touch the rein. It is me, and me alone, who makes the horse walk to the courtyard and then through the gate, and then out to the road that leads down to Pembroke.

Jasper strolls beside me as if he is out to take the air. He does not look up at me, nor glance at the horse. He gives the impression of a man walking beside a perfectly competent horsewoman; he is just there for company. Only when we have gone some distance down the road does he say: “Would you like to turn him around now, and head for home?”

“How does he turn?”

“You turn his head by pulling it gently round. He will know what you mean. And you give him a little squeeze with your leg to tell him to go on walking.”

I do no more than touch the rein and the big head turns and Arthur circles around and heads for home. It is easy to walk back up the hill, and then I steer him through the courtyard and to the stables, and without telling, he goes to stand beside the mounting block and waits for me to get off.

Jasper helps me down and then slips me a heel of bread to give to the horse. He shows me how to keep my hand flat so Arthur can find his titbit with his gentle lips, and then he shouts for a stable boy to take the horse away.

“Would you like to ride again tomorrow?” he asks. “I could come out with you on my horse; they could go side by side and we could go farther. Perhaps down to the river.”

“I should like that,” I say. “Are you going to the nursery now?”

He nods. “He is usually awake about now. They will let me undo the swaddling and he can kick for a bit. He likes it when he is free.”

“You do like him very much, don’t you?”

He nods shyly. “He is all I have left of Edmund,” he says. “He is the last of us Tudors. He is the most precious thing in the castle. And who knows? One day he might be the most precious thing in Wales, even in England itself.”

In Henry’s nursery I see that Jasper is a welcome and regular visitor. He has his own chair where he sits and watches the baby being slowly unwrapped from the swaddling bands. He does not flinch from the smell of the dirty clout nor turn his head away. Instead, he leans forwards and inspects the baby’s bottom carefully for any signs of redness or soreness, and when they tell him they have greased the baby with the oil from the sheep fleeces as he ordered, he nods and is satisfied. Then when the baby is cleaned, they put a warm woolen blanket on Jasper’s knees, and he lays the baby on his back and tickles his little feet and blows on his bare tummy, and the baby kicks and squirms with joy at his freedom.

I watch this like a stranger, feeling odd and out of place. This is my baby, but I don’t handle him easily like this. Awkwardly, I go to kneel beside Jasper so I can take one of the little hands and look at the tiny fingernails and the creases in the fat little palm, the exquisite little lines around his plump wrist. “He is beautiful,” I say wonderingly. “But are you not afraid of dropping him?”

“Why would I drop him?” Jasper asks. “If anything, I am most likely to spoil him with too much attention. Your lady governess says a child should be left alone and not played with every day.”

“She’d say anything that meant she could sit longer over her dinner or sleep in her chair,” I say acidly. “She persuaded my mother that I should not have a tutor for Latin because she knew it would make more work for her. I won’t have her tutoring him.”

“Oh no,” Jasper says. “He’ll have a proper scholar. We’ll get someone from one of the universities, Cambridge probably. Someone who can give him a good grounding in everything he’ll need to know. The modern subjects as well as the classics: geography and mathematics as well as rhetoric.”

He leans forwards and plants a smacking kiss on Henry’s warm little belly. The baby gurgles with pleasure and waves his little hands.

“He’s not likely to inherit, you know,” I remind him, denying my own belief. “He doesn’t need the education of a prince. There is the king on the throne and Prince Edward to come after him; and the queen is young, she can easily have more children.”

Jasper hides the baby’s face with a little napkin and then whisks it away. The baby gives a little shout of surprise and delight. Jasper does it again, and again, and again. Clearly, the two of them could play this game all day.

“He may never be more than a royal cousin,” I repeat. “And then your care of him and his education will all have gone to waste.”

Jasper holds the baby close to him, warmed in his blanket. “Ah no. He is precious on his own account,” he says to me. “He is precious as my brother’s child and the grandson of my father, Owen Tudor, and my mother, God bless her, who was Queen of England. He is precious to me as your child-I don’t forget your sufferings as you gave birth to him. And he is precious as a Tudor. As for the rest-we will learn the future as God wills. But if they ever call for Henry Tudor, then they will find that I have kept him safe and prepared him so that he is ready to rule.”

“Whereas they will never call for me, and I won’t be fit for anything but to be a wife, if I am even alive,” I say irritably.

Jasper looks at me and does not laugh. He looks at me and it is as if, for the first time in my life, someone has seen me and understood me. “You are the heir whose bloodline gives Henry his claim to the throne,” he says. “You, Margaret Beaufort. And you are precious to God. You know that, at least. I have never known a woman more devout. You are more like an angel than a girl.”

I glow, the way a lesser woman would blush if someone praised her beauty. “I didn’t know you had even noticed.”

“I have, and I think you have a real calling. I know that you can’t be an abbess, of course not. But I do think you have a calling to God.”

“Yes, but Jasper, what good is it being devout, if I am not to be an example to the world? If all that they will allow for me is a marriage to someone who hardly cares for me at all, and then an early death in childbed?”

“These are dangerous and difficult times,” he says thoughtfully, “and it is hard to know what one should do. I thought that my duty was to be a good second to my brother, and to hold Wales for King Henry. But now my brother is dead, it is a constant battle to hold Wales for the king, and when I go to court the queen herself tells me that I should be commanded by her and not by the king. She tells me that the only safety for England is to follow her and she will lead us to peace and alliance with France, our great enemy.”

“So how do you know what to do?” I ask. “Does God tell you?” I think it most unlikely that God would speak to Jasper, whose skin is so very freckled, even now in March.

He laughs. “No. God does not speak to me, so I try to keep the faith with my family, with my king, and with my country in that order. And I prepare for trouble and hope for the best.”

I draw close to speak to him quietly. “Do you think that Richard of York would dare to take the king’s throne, if the king were to be ill for very long?” I ask. “If he does not get better?”

He looks bleak. “I would think it a certainty.”

“So what am I to do if I am far from you and a false king takes the throne?”

Jasper looks consideringly at the baby. “Say that our King Henry dies and then the prince, his son.”

“God forbid.”

“Amen. Say that they die the one after the other. On that day this baby is the next in line to the throne.”

“I know that well enough.”

“Do you not think that this might be your calling? To keep this child safe, to teach him the ways of kingship, to prepare him for the highest task in the land-to see him ordained as king and take the holy oil on his breast and become more than a man, a king, a being almost divine?”

“I dreamed of it,” I tell him very quietly. “When he was first conceived. I dreamed that to carry him and give birth to him was my vocation, as to bring the French king to Rheims was Joan’s. But I have never spoken of it to anyone but God.”

“Say you were right,” Jasper goes on, his whisper binding a spell around us both. “Say that my brother did not die in vain, for his death made this boy the Earl of Richmond. His seed made this boy a Tudor and so half nephew to the King of England. Your carrying him made him a Beaufort and next in direct line to the King of England. Say this is your destiny, to go through these difficult times and bring this boy to the throne. Do you not think this? Do you not feel it?”

“I don’t know,” I say hesitantly. “I thought I would have a higher calling than this. I thought I would be a mother superior.”

“There is no more superior mother in the world,” he said, smiling at me. “You could be the mother of the King of England.”

“What would they call me?”

“What?” He is distracted by my question.

“What would they call me if my son was King of England but I was not crowned as a queen?”

He thinks. “They would probably call you ‘Your Grace.’ Your son would make your husband a duke, perhaps? Then you would be ‘Your Grace.’”

“My husband would be a duke?”

“It’s the only way you could be a duchess. As a woman you could hold no title in your own right, I don’t think.”

I shake my head. “Why should my husband be ennobled, when it will be me who has done all the work?”

Jasper chokes back a laugh. “What title would you have?”

I think for a moment. “Everyone can call me ‘My Lady, the King’s Mother,’” I decide. “They can call me ‘My Lady, the King’s Mother,’ and I shall sign my letters ‘Margaret R.’”

“‘Margaret R’? You would sign yourself ‘Margaret Regina’? You would call yourself a queen?”

“Why not?” I demand. “I shall be the mother of a king. I shall be all but Queen of England.”

He bows with mock ceremony. “You shall be My Lady, the King’s Mother, and everyone will have to do whatever you say.”