The Red Queen

APRIL 1472

I take a month to consider the court of York, the court of hedge-rose usurpers, and wonder which of the men favored by the king would be most likely to protect me and my lands and bring my son home in safety. William, now ennobled as Lord Hastings, the king’s best friend and companion, has a wife already, and is in any case heart and soul for Edward. He would never consider a stepson’s interest against the king he loves. He would never turn his coat against York, and I have to marry a man who is prepared to be true to my cause. At the very best, I want a husband who is ready to turn traitor. The queen’s brother, Sir Anthony Woodville, the new Earl Rivers, would be of interest, except that he is notoriously loyal and loving to his sister. Even if I could bear to marry into the upstart family of a queen who found her husband by standing at the roadside like a whore, I could not turn any of her family against her and against their darling baby boy. They stick together like the brigands they are. The Riverses run together-everyone says it. Always downhill, of course.

I consider the king’s brothers. I don’t think I am looking too high. After all, I am the heiress to the House of Lancaster; it would make sense for York to approach me and heal the wounds of the war through marriage. George, the next brother to the king, the practiced turncoat, is already married to Warwick’s eldest daughter Isobel, who must rise up every morning to regret her father’s ambition in pairing her with this vain fool; but Richard, the younger brother, is still free. He is nearly twenty years old, so there would be eight years between us, but worse matches have been made. All that I hear of him is that he is faithfully loyal to his brother; but once married to me, with an heir to the throne as his stepson, how could any young man resist treasonous ambition, especially a York?

But the fact that I cannot have Edward the King just eats into me, day after day, as I consider the men I could marry. If only Edward had not been entrapped by the beautiful Elizabeth Woodville, he would have made the perfect match for me now. The York boy, and the Lancaster heiress! Together we could have healed the wounds of our country and made my son the next king. By marrying, we would have unified our houses and put an end to rivalry and war. I care nothing for his good looks as I am devoid of vanity and lust, but the rightness of being his wife and becoming Queen of England haunts me like a lost love. If it were not for Elizabeth Woodville and her shameless capture of a young man, it could be me at his side now, Queen of England, signing my letters: Margaret R. They say that she is a witch and captured him with spells and married him on May Day-whatever the truth of that, I can clearly see how she has circumvented the will of God by seducing the man who could have made me queen. She must be a woman beyond wickedness.

But it is pointless to mourn, and anyway Edward would be a hard husband to respect. How could one bear to obey a man constantly bent on pleasure? What might he command a wife to do? What vices might he embrace? If he bedded a woman, what dark and secret pleasures might he insist on? It makes me shudder to think of Edward naked. I hear he is quite without morals. He bedded his upstart wife and wedded her (probably in that order), and now they have a handsome strong son to claim the throne that rightfully belongs to my boy, and no chance of her dying in childbed while she is guarded by her mother, who is without doubt a witch. No chance for me at all unless I can creep close to the throne through his young brother Richard. I would not stand in the road and try to tempt him like his brother’s wife did; but I might make a proposal that would interest him.

I send my steward, John Leyden, to London with instructions to befriend and dine with the head of Richard’s household. He is to say nothing, but see how the land lies. He must see if the young prince has a betrothal in mind, discover if he would be interested in my land holdings in Derbyshire. He is to whisper in his ear that a Tudor stepson whose name commands all of Wales is a boy worth fathering. He is to wonder aloud if Richard’s heartfelt fidelity to his brother might waver so far as to marry into the enemy house, if the terms were right. He is to see what the young man might take as a price for the wedding. He is to remind him that though I am eight years his senior, I am still slim and comely and not yet thirty years old; some would say that I am pleasing. Perhaps I could even be seen as beautiful. I am no golden-haired whore of his brother’s choosing, but I am a woman of dignity and grace. For one moment only I think of Jasper’s hand on my waist on the stair at Pembroke and his kiss on my mouth before we drew back.

My steward is to emphasize that I am devout, and that no woman in England prays with more fervor or goes on more pilgrimages, and that though he may think this is nothing (after all, Richard is a young man and from a foolish family), to have a wife who has the ear of God, whose destiny is guided by the Virgin herself, is an advantage. It is something to have a woman leading your household who has had saints’ knees from childhood.

But it is all for nothing. John Leyden comes home on his big bay cob and shakes his head at me as he dismounts before the front door of the house at Woking.

“What?” I snap without further greeting, though he has ridden far, and his face is red from the heat of May. A page runs towards him with a foaming tankard of ale, and he buries his face in it, as if I am not waiting, as if I do not thirst and fast all Friday, every week, and on holy days too.

“What?” I repeat.

“A word in private,” he says.

So I know that it is bad news, and I lead the way, not to my private rooms, where I don’t want a hot sweaty man drinking ale, but to the chamber on the left of the great hall, where my husband used to do the business of his lands. Leyden closes the door behind him and finds me before him, my face hard. “What went wrong? Did you botch it?”

“Not I. It was a botched plan. He is married already,” he says, and takes another draft.

“What?”

“He has snapped up the other Warwick heiress, the sister of Isobel who is married to George. He has married Anne Neville, the widow of the Prince of Wales, Edward the Prince of Wales that was. He who died at Tewkesbury.”

“How could he?” I demand. “Her mother would never let such a thing happen. How would even George let it happen? Anne is heiress to the Warwick estates! He’s not likely to let his younger brother have her! He won’t want Richard sharing the Warwick fortune! Their lands! The loyalty of the north!”

“Didn’t know,” my steward gurgles from the bottom of his tankard. “They say that Richard went to George’s house, found Lady Anne there in hiding, took her away, hid her himself, and married her without even permission from the Holy Father. At any event, the court is in uproar at Richard taking her to wife; but he has her, the king will forgive him, and there is no new husband for you, my lady.”

I am so furious that I don’t dismiss him but stride from the room, leaving him there with his ale in his hand like a dolt. To think that I was considering young Richard and all the time he was courting and capturing a Warwick girl, and now the York family and the Warwick family are all nicely tied in together and I am excluded. I feel as offended as if I had proposed to him myself and been rejected. I was truly preparing to lower myself to marry one of the House of York-and then I find that he has taken young Anne to bed and it is all over.

I go to the chapel and drop down on my knees to take my complaints to Our Lady, who will understand how insulting it is to be overlooked, and for such a weak thing as Anne Neville. I pray with irritation for the first hour, but then the calm of the chapel comes to me, the priest comes in for the evening prayers, and the familiar ritual of the service soothes me. As I whisper the prayers and run my rosary beads through my fingers, I wonder who else might be the right age, and unmarried and powerful at the court of York, and Our Lady in her particular care for me sends me a name as I say “Amen.” I rise to my feet and leave the chapel with a new plan. I think I have the very man who would turn his coat to the winning colors and I whisper his name to myself: Thomas, Lord Stanley.

Lord Stanley is a widower born loyal to my House of Lancaster, but never very certain in his preference. I remember Jasper complaining that at the battle of Blore Heath, Stanley swore to our queen, Margaret of Anjou, that he would be there for her, with his two thousand men, and she waited and waited for him to come and take the victory for her, and while she was waiting for him, York won the battle. Jasper swore that Stanley was a man who would take out all his affinity in battle array-an army of many thousands of men-and then sit on a hill to see who was going to win before declaring his loyalty. Jasper said he was a specialist of the final charge. Whichever was the victor, they were always grateful to Stanley. This is a man whom Jasper would despise. This is a man whom I would have despised. But now it may be that this is the very man I need.

He turned his coat after the battle of Towton to become a York and rose high in favor with King Edward. He is now steward of the royal household, as close to the king as it is possible to get, and is rewarded with great lands in northwest England that would make a fine match with my own lands, and might make a good inheritance for my son Henry in the future, though Stanley has children and a grown son and heir of his own already. King Edward seems to admire and trust him, though my suspicion is that the king is (and not for the first time) mistaken. I would not trust Stanley further than I could watch him, and if I did, I would still keep an eye on his brother. As a family they have a tendency to divide and join opposing sides to ensure that there is always one who wins. I know him as a proud man, a cold man, a man of calculation. If he were on my side, I would have a powerful ally. If he were Henry’s stepfather, I might hope to see my boy home in safety and restored to his titles.

Without mother or father to represent me, I have to apply to him myself. I am twice widowed, and a woman of nearly thirty years. I think it is time that I might take my life into my own keeping. Certainly, I know that I should have waited for a full year of mourning before I approached him; but once I had thought of him, I was afraid that the queen would snap him up in a marriage to benefit her family if I left him too long, and besides, I want him working to get Henry home at once. I am not a lady of leisure who has years to mull over plans. I want things done now. I don’t have the queen’s ill-gotten advantages of beauty and witchcraft-I have to do my work with honesty and speed.

And in any case, his name came into my mind when I was on my knees in chapel. Our Lady Mother Herself guided me to him. The will of God is that I should find in him a husband for me and an ally for my son. I think I will not trust John Leyden this time. Joan of Arc did not find a man to do her work for her; she rode out in her own battles. So I write to Stanley myself and propose a marriage between ourselves in as simple and as honest terms as I can manage.

I have some nights of worry that I will disgust him by being so blunt about my plans. Then I think of Elizabeth Woodville waiting for the King of England under an oak tree, as if she just happened to be by the roadside, a hedge witch casting her spells, and I think that my way at least is an honorable offer and not a begging for an amorous glance and a sluttish strutting of her well-worn wares. Then at last he writes in reply. The steward of his household will meet mine in London, and if they can agree on a marriage contract, he will be delighted to be my husband at once. It is as simple and as cold as a bill of sale. His letter is as cool as an apple in a store. We have an agreement, but even I note that it does not feel much like a wedding.

The stewards, and then the bailiffs, and then finally the lawyers meet. They wrangle, they agree, and we are to be married in June. It is no little decision for me-for the first time in my life I have my own lands in my own hands as a widow; once I am a wife, everything becomes Lord Stanley’s property. I have to struggle to reserve what I can from the law that rules that a wife has no rights, and I keep what I can, but I know I am choosing my master.