The Red Queen

AUTUMN 1470

It is not one dark winter, it is nearly ten winters before God releases me and my house from the misery of defeat in our days and exile in our own country. For nine long years I live with a husband with whom I share nothing but our new house at Woking in the country. House, land, and interest we share, and yet I am lonely, longing for my son, raised by my enemy whom I have to pretend is my friend. Together, Stafford and I conceive no child, which I think is the fault of the midwives at the birth of my son Henry, and I have to endure my husband’s generous acceptance that I will not give him an heir. He does not reproach me, and I have to bear his kindness as best I can. We both have to endure the power of the Yorks, who wear the ermine collar of monarchy as if they were born to it. Edward, the young king, marries a nobody in the first years of his reign, and most people think she enchanted him by witchcraft with the help of her witch mother Jacquetta, the great friend of our queen, who has turned her coat and now rules the York court. My husband’s nephew, the little duke Henry Stafford, is snatched up by the greedy siren Elizabeth, who calls herself queen. She takes him from us, his family, and betrothes him to her own sister, Katherine Woodville, a girl born and bred only to raise hens in Northampton, and so the Woodville girl becomes the new duchess and head of our house. My husband does not protest against this kidnap of our boy; he says it is part of the new world, and we have to become accustomed. But I do not. I cannot. I will never become accustomed.

Once a year I visit my boy in the ostentatious luxury of the Herbert household and see him grow taller and stronger; see him at ease in among the Yorks, beloved of Anne Devereux, the wife of Black Herbert; see him affectionate and comfortable with their son William, his dearest friend, his playmate, and his companion in his studies; and gentle with their daughter Maud, who clearly they have picked out for him as a wife, without a word to me.

Every year I visit faithfully and speak to him of his uncle Jasper in exile, and of his cousin the king imprisoned in the Tower of London, and he listens, his brown head inclined to me, his brown eyes smiling and obedient. He listens for as long as I speak, politely attentive, never disagreeing, never questioning. But I cannot tell if he truly understands even one word of my earnest sermon: that he must hold himself in waiting, that he is to know that he is a boy chosen for greatness, that I, his mother, heiress to the Beauforts and to the House of Lancaster, nearly died in giving birth to him, that the two of us were saved by God for a great purpose, that he was not born to be a boy glad of the affection of such as William Herbert. I do not want a girl like Maud Herbert as my daughter-in-law.

I tell him he must live with them like a spy; he must live with them like an enemy in their camp. He must speak politely but wait for his revenge. He must bend the knee to them but dream of the sword. But he will not. He cannot. He lives with them like an openhearted boy of five, then six, then seven; he lives with them until he is thirteen; he grows into a young man under their care, not mine. He is a boy of their making, not mine. He is like a beloved son to them. He is not a son to me, and I will never forgive them for this.

For nearly nine years I whisper poison in his little ear against the guardian that he trusts, and against his guardian’s wife that he loves. I can see him flourishing in their care, I can see him growing under their tuition. They hire masters of swordsmanship, of French, of mathematics, of rhetoric for him. They spare no fee that would teach him skills or encourage him to learn. They give him the education of their own son; the two boys study side by side as equals. I have no cause to complain. But I stifle a silent howl of resentment and anger that I can never release: that this is my boy, that this is an heir to the throne of England, that this is a boy of Lancaster-what in the name of God is he doing, flourishing and happy, in a House of York?

I know the answer to this. I know just what he is doing in one of the loyal houses of York. He is growing into a Yorkist. He loves the luxury and comfort of Raglan Castle; I swear he would prefer it to the holy plainness of my new home at Woking, if he had ever been allowed to see my home. He warms to the gentle piety of Anne Devereux; my demand that he know every collect of the day and honor every saint’s day is too much for him, I know it is. He admires the courage and dash of William Herbert, and while he loves Jasper still, and writes to tell him so, boyish letters filled with boasting and affection, he is learning to admire his uncle’s enemy and adopt him as a very model of a chivalrous, honorable knight and landlord.

And worst of all for me, he thinks of me as a woman who cannot reconcile herself to defeat; I know he thinks this. He thinks I am a woman who saw my king driven from his throne, and my husband killed and my brother-in-law run away, and he thinks that it is disappointment and failure that has made me seek solace in religion. He thinks I am a woman seeking consolation in God for the failure of her life. Nothing I can do can convince him that my life in God is my power and glory. Nothing I can do can convince him that I do not see our cause as lost, I don’t see myself as defeated, I don’t believe, not even now, that York will hold the throne. I think we will return, I think we will win. I can say this to him, I can say it over and over again; but I have no evidence to support my conviction, and the embarrassed smile, and the way he bows his head to me and murmurs, “Lady Mother, I am sure you are right,” tells me, as clearly as if he loudly contradicted me, that he thinks I am wrong and mistaken and-worse than that-irrelevant.

I am the woman who gave him birth, but I lived with him for only the first year of his life. Now he sees me once a year, and rarely more, and I spoil my time with him by trying to persuade him to be faithful to a cause that was lost nearly ten years ago. No wonder he does not cleave to me. Every year I must seem more of a fool.

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.

I have our boy; he was safe with Lady Herbert, staying with her late husband’s family. I will bring him to London to present him to our king. Will you meet us there, with our king on his throne again, at court? England is ours again, and your prayers are answered, thank God.

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.

The news gets out that the former queen, Elizabeth Woodville, who turns out to be so beloved of her king that he ran away and left her, is going to give birth to another child, even though she is in sanctuary in Westminster, on holy ground. Even this final act of grossness and folly is forgiven by our sainted king, who refuses to have her taken from her place of hiding, and instead sends her midwives and ladies to care for her. The attention that this woman attracts continues to amaze me. I managed to give birth to my boy Henry with no more than two midwives and they under instruction to let me die. Elizabeth Woodville has to have midwives and physicians and her own mother in attendance, when she is in hiding for treason.

She continues to attract admiration, even though nobody can see her fabled beauty. They say that the citizens of London and the farmers of Kent keep her supplied with food, and that her husband is in Flanders, raising an army to rescue her. The thought of her, reveling in all this attention, makes me grit my teeth. Why cannot people see that all she has done, in all her life, is use a pretty face, or the snare of her body or worse, to capture a king. This is neither noble nor holy-and yet people speak of her as beloved.

The worst news of all is that she has a boy. He cannot inherit the throne since his father has so thoroughly abandoned it, but a York son born just now is bound to have an influence on gullible people, who will see the hand of destiny in giving the York family an heir in prison.

If I were the king, I don’t think I would be so very scrupulous about respecting the laws of sanctuary for such a person. How can a woman who is widely regarded as a witch invoke the protection of the Holy Church? How can a baby claim sanctuary? How shall a treasonous family live untouchable in the very heart of London? Our king is a saint, but he should be served by men who can take worldly decisions; and Elizabeth Woodville and her mother Jacquetta, whom I now know to be truly a most notorious and proven witch and a turncoat, should be bundled onto a ship and sent off to Flanders; there they can weave their magic and practice their beauty, where they are likely to be better appreciated among foreigners.

My childish stunned regard for Elizabeth Woodville’s mother Jacquetta quickly changed when I learned what sort of woman she was, and when I saw her bump her daughter upwards to the throne. There is no doubt in my mind that the grace and beauty which caught my eye when I was a little girl at the court of King Henry was a mask over a most sinful nature. She allowed her daughter to stand at the roadside when the young king rode by, and she was one of the few witnesses at their secret wedding. She became chief lady-in-waiting and leader of the York court. No woman with any sense of loyalty or honor could do any of these things. She, who had served Margaret of Anjou, how could she bow the knee to her light-minded daughter? Jacquetta had been a royal duchess with the English army in France, and then she was widowed and married her husband’s squire, at most shocking speed. Our kindly king forgave her lustful indiscretion, so her husband, Richard Woodville, could call himself Lord Rivers, taking his title as a tribute to the pagan traditions of her family, who sprang from streams and name a water goddess as their ancestor. Since then, scandal and rumors of dealing with the devil have followed her as waters flow downhill. And this is the woman whose daughter thought she should be Queen of England! No wonder he is shamefully dead and they are cast down to little more than prison. She should use her black arts and fly away, or summon the river and swim to safety.