The Red Queen

SEPTEMBER 1471

I look disbelievingly over the bright water of the harbor at Tenby. The sunshine sparkles, and there is a light wind blowing; it is a day to sail for pleasure, surely not for me to stand here, amid the smell of fish, with my heart breaking.

This tiny village is heart and soul for Jasper, and the fishwives and the men are clattering in their rough wooden pattens down the cobbled street that leads to the quay where bobs the little boat that is waiting to take my son away from me. Some of the women are red-eyed at their lord’s exile; but I do not cry. Nobody would know from looking at me that I could weep for a week.

My boy has grown again; he is now as tall as me, a youth of fourteen, starting to thicken around his shoulders, his brown eyes level with mine, and he is pale though his summertime freckles are speckled on his nose like the markings on a warm bird’s egg. I stare at him, seeing both the child that has grown to a man and now the boy who should be king. The glory of majesty has come down to him. King Henry and his son Prince Edward are both dead. This boy, my boy, is heir to the House of Lancaster. This is no longer my boy, the child in my possession: this is England’s rightful king.

“I will pray for you every day and write to you,” I say quietly. “Make sure that you reply to me; I shall want to know how you are. And make sure you say your prayers and attend to your studies.”

“Yes, Lady Mother,” he says obediently.

“I’ll keep him safe,” Jasper says to me. For a moment our eyes meet, but we exchange nothing except a grim determination to get this parting over, to get this exile under way, to keep this precious boy safe. I suppose that Jasper is the only man whom I have loved, perhaps he is the only man whom I will ever love. But there has never been time for words of love between us; we have spent most of our time saying good-bye.

“Times can change,” I say to Henry. “Edward looks as if he is secure on the throne now with our king in his grave and our prince dead too but I don’t give up. Don’t you give up either, my son. We are of the House of Lancaster, we are born to rule England. I said it before, and I was right. I will be right again. Don’t forget it.”

“No, Lady Mother.”

Jasper takes my hand and kisses it, bows, and goes towards the little boat. He throws his few bundles of goods down to the master and then, holding his sword carefully aloft, steps down into the fishing smack. He, who commanded half of Wales, is going away with almost nothing. This is indeed defeat. Jasper Tudor leaves Wales like a convict on the run. I can feel my belly burn with resentment at the York usurpers.

My son kneels before me, and I put my hand on his soft, warm head and say, “God bless you and keep you, my son,” and then he rises up and in just a moment he is gone, light-footed over the dirty cobbles. He jumps down the harbor steps like a deer, and is in the boat, and they are casting off before I can say another word. He is gone before I have advised him how to behave in France; he is gone before I can warn him of the perils of the world. It is too fast, too fast, and too final. He has gone.

They push off from the wall and spread the sails; the wind flutters the canvas, and they reef it in tightly. There is a creaking noise as the mast and the sheets take the strain, and then the boat starts to move, slowly at first, and then more quickly away from the harbor wall. I want to shout, “Come back!” I even want to shout, “Don’t leave me! Don’t leave without me!” like a child. But I cannot call them back to danger, and I cannot run away myself. I have to let him go, my son, my brown-headed son, I have to let him go across the sea into exile, not even knowing when I will see him again.

I come home-dulled by the journey and my constant muttered prayers on every step of the way, my back aching from the jolting of the horse and my eyes dry and sore-to find the physician once again in attendance on my husband. It is a long journey, and I am exhausted by the road and wearied by grief at the loss of my son. Every step of the way I have wondered where he is now, and when I shall see him, indeed if I shall see him ever again. I cannot find it in myself even to pretend an interest when I see the physician’s horse in the stable and his servant waiting in the hall. Since we came home from the battle of Barnet, one nurse or another-or the physician or the apothecary or the barber surgeon-have been constant presences in our house. I assume that he has come to deal with my husband’s usual complaint of pain from his wound. The slash across his belly has long healed, leaving a ridged scar, but he likes to make much of it, talking of his suffering in the wars, and the moment when the sword came down, the dreams he still has at night.

I am accustomed to ignoring his complaints, or suggesting a soothing drink and going to bed early, so when the groom of the bedchamber stops me as I walk into the hall, all I can think is that I am longing to wash and change out of my dirty clothes. I would brush past him, but he is urgent, as if something were really wrong. He says the apothecary is grinding herbs in our still room, the physician is with my husband; perhaps I should prepare myself for bad news. Even then, as I sit in the chair and snap my fingers for the page boy to pull off my riding boots, I am barely listening. But the man goes on fretting. Now they think that the wound went deeper than we realized, and is unhealed, perhaps bleeding into his belly. He has never eaten well since the battle, his groom reminds me mournfully-but still he eats far more than me, who fasts every saint’s day and every Friday. He cannot sleep except for snatches of rest-but still he sleeps more than me, who gets up twice in the night, every night, for my prayers. In short it is something and nothing as usual. I wave at him to leave and tell him I will come at once, but still he hovers around me. This is not the first time that they have run around my husband, thinking him near to death, and found that he had eaten too ripe fruit or drunk too much wine, and I am very sure it will not be the last.

I have never reproached him for sacrificing his health to put a usurper on the throne, and I have nursed him with care as a good wife should: no fault can be laid at my door. But he knows I blame him for the defeat of my king, and he will know that I will blame him for the loss of my son too.

I brush the groom to one side and go to wash my face and hands and change my travel-stained gown, and so it is nearly an hour before I go to my husband’s rooms and enter quietly.

“I am glad you are come at last, Lady Margaret, for I don’t think he has long,” the physician says softly to me. He has been waiting for me, in the antechamber to my husband’s bedroom.

“Long?” I ask. My mind is so filled with my son, my ears listening for the sound of a storm that could blow them off course, or even-please God spare him-sink the little boat, that I don’t understand what the man means.

“I am sorry, Lady Margaret,” he says, thinking me stupid with wifely concern. “But I am afraid I can do no more.”

“No more?” I repeat again. “Why, what is the matter? What are you saying?”

He shrugs. “The wound goes deeper than we thought, and he cannot take food at all now. I fear his stomach was severed inside and has not healed. I am afraid he has not long to live. He can only drink small ale and wine and water; we cannot feed him.”

I look at him uncomprehendingly, and then I brush past him, open the door to my husband’s bedroom, and stride inside. “Henry?”

His face is ashen on the pillow, gray against the white. His lips are dark. I see how thin and gaunt he has become in the few weeks that I have been absent.

“Margaret,” he says, and he tries to smile. “I am so glad you are come home at last.”

“Henry …”

“Is your boy safely away?”

“Yes,” I say.

“That’s good, that’s good,” he says. “You will be glad to know that he is safe. And you can apply for his return later, you know. They will not be ungenerous to you, when they know about me …”

I pause. It is suddenly clear to me that he means I will be a widow, applying for favor to the king whose service has cost the life of my husband.

“You have been a good wife,” he says kindly. “I would not have you grieve for me.”

I press my lips together. I have not been a good wife, and we both know it.

“And you should marry again,” he says, his breath coming short. “But this time, choose a husband who will serve you in the wider world. You need greatness, Margaret. You should marry a man high in the favor of the king, this king, the York king-not a man who loves his hearth and his fields.”

“Don’t speak of it,” I whisper.

“I know I have disappointed you,” he continues in his rasping voice. “And I am sorry for it. I was not suited to these times.” He smiles his crooked, sad smile. “You are. You should have been a great commander; you should have been a Joan of Arc.”

“Rest,” I say weakly. “Perhaps you will get better.”

“No, I think I am done for. But I bless you, Margaret, and your boy, and I think you will bring him home safely again. Surely, if anyone can do it, then you will. Make peace with the Yorks, Margaret, and you will be able to bring your boy home. That’s my last word of advice for you. Forget your dreams of kingship for him; that’s all over, you know. Settle to seeing him safe home, that’s the best thing for him, and for England. Don’t bring him home for another battle. Bring him home for peace.”

“I will pray for you,” I say quietly.

“Thank you,” he says. “I think I will sleep now.”

I leave him to sleep, and I go out quietly, closing the door behind me. I tell them to call me if he gets any worse, or if he asks for me, and I go to the chapel and get to my knees on the hard stone floor before the altar. I don’t even use a kneeler, and I pray to God to forgive me for my sins to my husband, and to receive him into His holy kingdom where there is no war and no rival kings. It is only when I hear the bell start to toll over and over in the tower above my head that I realize it is dawn and I have been on my knees all the night, and that my husband of thirteen years died without asking for me.

Only a few weeks later, with masses being said daily for my husband’s soul in our little chapel, a messenger wearing a black ribboned hat comes from my mother’s house to say that she has died, and I understand that now I am all alone in the world. The only family I have left is Jasper in exile, and my son with him. I am orphaned and widowed, and my child is far away from me. They were blown off course, and instead of landing in France as we had planned, they landed in Brittany. Jasper writes to me that this is luck running our way at last, for the Duke of Brittany has seen them and promises them safety and hospitality in his dukedom, and that they will perhaps be safer in Brittany than in France, where Edward is certain to make a peace treaty, since all he wants now is peace, and cares nothing for the honor of England. I reply at once.

My dear brother Jasper,

I write to tell you that my husband, Sir Henry Stafford, has died of his wounds, and so I am now a widow. I apply to you as the head of the Tudor house to advise me what I should do.

I pause. I write: “Shall I come to you?” And then I cross it out and throw away the piece of paper. I write: “May I come to see my son?” Then I write: “Please, Jasper …”

In the end I write, “I await your advice,” and I send it by messenger.

Then I wait for the reply.

I wonder if he will send for me? I wonder if at last he will say that we can be together, with my boy?