The Red Queen

WINTER 1471-72

I wear black for my husband and my mother, and I close down much of the house. As a widow I won’t be called on to entertain my neighbors, not in this first year of my loss; and even though I am a great lady of the House of Lancaster, I won’t be summoned to court, nor will this new king, this blanched rose king and his fecund wife, visit me in the twelve months of my mourning. I need not fear the honor of their favor. I expect they want to forget all about me, and the House of Lancaster. Especially, I doubt that she, who is so much older than him-thirty-four now! – would want him to meet me in the first year of my widowhood when he would see the twenty-eight-year-old heiress of the House of Lancaster, in possession of her fortune, ready to marry again. Perhaps he would regret choosing a nobody.

But no message comes from Jasper summoning me, calling me from the safety of England to the danger and challenge of life with him in Brittany. Instead, he writes that the Duke of Brittany has promised to give him and Henry protection. He does not tell me to come to him. He does not see that this is our chance, our only chance, and I understand his silence very well. He has dedicated his life to my son, to raising him to his name and his lands. He is not going to jeopardize this by marrying me and having all three of us in exile together. He has to keep me, holding Henry’s inheritance, managing his lands and pursuing his interests, in England. Jasper loves me, I know that; but it is, as he says, courtly love, from afar. He doesn’t seem to mind how far.

My dowry lands revert to me, and I start to gather the information about them and to summon the stewards so that they can explain to me the profits that can be made from them. At least my husband kept them in good heart; he was a good landlord, if no leader of men. A good English landlord, if no hero. I do not grieve for him as a wife, as Anne Devereux has grieved for her husband William Herbert. She promised him she would never remarry; she swore she would go to her grave hoping to meet him in heaven. I suppose they were in some sort of love, though married by contract. I suppose they found some sort of passion in their marriage. It is rare but not impossible. I do hope that they have not given my son ideas about loving his wife; a man who is to be king can marry only for advantage. A woman of sense would always marry only for the improvement of her family. Only a lustful fool dreams every night of a marriage of love.

Sir Henry may have hoped for more than dutiful affection from me; but my love was given over to my son, to my family, and to my God, long before we ever met. I wanted a celibate life from childhood, and neither of my husbands seduced me from my vocation. Henry Stafford was a man of peace rather than passion, and in his later years he was a traitor. But in all honesty, now he is gone, I find I miss him more than I would have imagined.

I miss his companionship. The house felt somehow warmer when he was home, and he was always at home, like a beloved dog at the fireside. I miss his quiet, dry humor, and his thoughtful common sense. And in the first months of my widowhood, I brood on his words of advice that I should reconcile myself to the son of York on the throne and his son in the royal cradle. Perhaps the wars are indeed over, perhaps we are finally defeated, perhaps it is my task in life to learn humility: to live without hope. I, who modeled myself on a fighting virgin, will perhaps have to learn to become a defeated widow. Perhaps this is God’s hard will for me, and I should learn to obey.

For a moment, for a moment only, prowling around my quiet house, alone in my dark dress, I wonder if I might leave England altogether and, uninvited, join Jasper and my son in Brittany. I could take a fortune big enough to keep us for a year or two. I could marry Jasper and we could live as a family, and even if we never reclaimed the throne for Henry, we could form our own household and live as royal exiles.

It is a dream that I allow myself for no more than a longing heartbeat. To live with my boy and watch him grow is a joy that God has not granted me. If I were to marry a man for love, it would be the first time in a life that has seen two loveless unions. Passion between a man and a woman is not the road that has been marked out for me. I know that God wants me to serve my son and my house in England. To run away to Brittany like a gypsy woman to be with the two of them would be to surrender any chance of getting my son’s inheritance restored to him, his title restored to him, and he himself safely returned to his place in the highest circles of the land. And I have to observe that Jasper chooses Henry’s cause over Henry’s mother.

Even if my husband’s dying advice proves right, and there is no future for Henry as King of England, then I still have to claim his earldom and try to get his lands returned to him. This is the road I have to take now. If I am to serve my family and serve my son, I will have to place myself in the court of York, whatever I think of Edward and his enchanting queen. I will learn to smile at my enemies. I will have to find myself a husband who has influence with them, who can take me to the highest place in the land, but still has the sense to think for himself and serve his own ambition and mine.