The Red Queen

APRIL 1483

I have to wait till Easter for Henry to come home, though I write to him and to Jasper at once. They start to prepare for his return, dispersing the little court of York opportunists and desperate men who have gathered around them, preparing themselves to part for the first time since Henry’s boyhood. Jasper writes to me that he cannot think what he will do with himself without Henry to guide, advise, and govern.

Perhaps I will go on pilgrimage. Perhaps it is time I considered myself, my own soul. I have lived only for our boy and, far from England as we have been, I had come to think that we would never get home. Now he will return, as he should, but I cannot. I will have lost my brother, my home, you, and now him. I am glad that he can come back to you and take his place in the world. But I shall be very alone in my exile. Truly, I cannot think what I shall do without him.

I take this letter to Stanley, my husband, where he is working in his day room, papers piled around the table for his assent. “I think Jasper Tudor would be glad to come home with Henry,” I say cautiously.

“He can come home to the block,” my husband says bluntly. “Tudor picked the wrong side and clung to it through victory all the way to defeat. He should have sought for pardon after Tewkesbury when everyone else did, but he was as stubborn as a Welsh pony. I’ll use no influence of mine to have him restored, and neither will you. Besides, I think you have an affection for him which I don’t share, nor do I admire it in you.”

I look at him in utter amazement. “He is my brother-in-law,” I say.

“I am aware of that. It only makes it worse.”

“You can’t think that I have been in love with him for all these years of absence?”

“I don’t think about it at all,” he says coldly. “I don’t want to think about it. I don’t want you to think about it. I don’t want him to think about it, and especially, I don’t want the king and that gossip his wife to think about it. So Jasper can stay where he is, we will not intercede for him, and you will have no need to write to him anymore. You need not even think of him. He can be dead to us.”

I find I am trembling with indignation. “You can have no doubt as to my honor.”

“No, I don’t want to think about your honor, either,” he repeats.

“Since you have no desire for me yourself, I don’t see why you should care one way or the other!” I throw at him.

I cannot anger him. His smile is cold. “The lack of desire, you will recall, was required by our marriage agreement,” he says. “Stipulated by you. I have no desire for you at all, my lady. But I have a use for you, as you do for me. Let us stay with this arrangement and not confuse it with words from a romance that neither of us could ever mean to each other. As it happens you are not to my taste as a woman, and God knows what sort of man could raise desire in you. If any. I doubt that even poor Jasper caused more than a chilly flutter.”

I sweep to the door but pause with my hand on the latch to turn back and speak bitterly to him: “We have been married for ten years, and I have been a good wife to you. You have no grounds for complaint. Have you not the slightest affection for me?”

He looks up from his seat at the table, his quill poised over the silver inkpot. “You told me when we married that you were given to God and to your cause,” he reminds me. “I told you I was given to the furtherance of myself and my family. You told me that you wished to live a celibate life, and I accepted this in a wife who brought a fortune, a great name, and a son who has a claim to the throne of England. There is no need for affection here; we have a shared interest. You are more faithful to me for the sake of our cause than you would ever be for any affection, I know that. If you were a woman who could be ruled by affection, you would have gone to Jasper and your son a dozen years ago. Affection is not important to you, nor to me. You want power, Margaret, power and wealth; and so do I. Nothing matters as much as this to either of us, and we will sacrifice anything for it.”

“I am guided by God!” I protest.

“Yes, because you think God wants your son to be King of England. I don’t think your God has ever advised you otherwise. You hear only what you want. He only ever commands your preferences.”

I sway as if he has hit me. “How dare you! I have lived my life in His service!”

“He always tells you to strive for power and wealth. Are you quite sure it is not your own voice that you hear, speaking through the earthquake, wind, and fire?”

I bare my teeth at him. “I tell you that God will have my son Henry on the throne of England, and those who laugh now at my visions and doubt my vocation will call me ‘My Lady, the King’s Mother,’ and I shall sign myself Margaret Regina: Margaret R …”

There is an urgent tap on the door and the handle is rattled. “My lord!”

“Come in!” Thomas calls, recognizing the voice of his personal secretary.

I step aside as James Peers opens the door and slips in, sketches a bow to me, and approaches my husband’s writing table. “It is the king,” he says. “They are saying he is sick.”

“He was sick last night. Just overeating.”

“He is worse today; they have called more physicians and are bleeding him.”

“It is serious?”

“It seems so.”

“I’ll come at once.”

My husband throws down his pen and strides towards me, where I stand beside the half-open door. He comes close as a lover and puts his hand on my shoulder to breathe intimately in my ear. “If he were to be sick, if he were to die, and there were to be a regency and your boy were to return home and serve on the council of regency, then he would be two heartbeats only from the throne and standing beside it. If he were to be a good and loyal servant and attract the notice of men, they might prefer a young man and the House of Lancaster to that of a beardless mother’s boy and the House of York. Do you want to stay here and talk about your vocation, and whether you want affection, or do you want to come with me now and see if the York king is dying?”

I don’t even answer him. I slip my hand in the crook of his arm and we hurry out, our faces pale with concern for the king whom everyone knows we love.

He lingers for days. The agony of the queen is remarkable to see. For all his infidelities to her, and for all his fecklessness with his friends, this is a man who has inspired passionate attachment. The queen is locked in his chamber night and day; physicians go in and out with one remedy after another. The rumors fly around the court like crows seeking a tree in the evening. They say he was chilled by a cold wind off the river when he insisted on fishing at Eastertide. They say that he is sick in his belly from his constant overeating and excessive drinking. Some say that his many whores have given him the pox and it is eating away at him. A few think like me, that it is the will of God and punishment for treason against the House of Lancaster. I believe that God is making the way straight for the coming of my son.

Stanley takes to the king’s rooms, where men gather in corners to mutter their fears that Edward, who has been invincible for all his life, may finally have run out of luck. I spend my time in the queen’s rooms, waiting for her to come in, to change her headdress and comb her hair. I watch her blank face in the mirror as she lets the maid pin up her hair any way she chooses. I see her white lips moving constantly in prayer. If she were the wife of any other man, I would pray for her too from pity. Elizabeth is in agony of fear at losing the man she loves and the one who has stood above us all, unquestionably the greatest man in England.

“What does she say?” my husband asks me as we meet at dinner in the great hall, as subdued as if a funeral pall were laid over us already.

“Nothing,” I reply. “She says nothing. She is dumbstruck at the thought of losing him. I am certain he is sinking.”

That afternoon the Privy Council is called to the king’s bedside. We women wait in the great presence chamber, outside the privy chambers, desperate for news. My husband comes out after an hour, grim-faced.

“He swore us to an alliance over his bed,” he says. “Hastings and the queen: the best friend and the wife. Begged us to work together for the safety of his son. Named his son Edward as the next king, joined the hands of William Hastings and the queen over his bed. Said we should serve under his brother Richard as regent till the boy is of age. Then the priest came in to give him the last rites. He will be dead by nightfall.”

“Did you swear fealty?”

His crooked smile tells me that it meant nothing. “God, yes. We all swore. We all swore to work peaceably together, swore to friendship unending, so I should think the queen is arming now and sending for her son to come at once from his castle in Wales with as many men as he can muster, armed for war. I should think Hastings is sending for Richard, warning him against the Riverses, calling on him to bring in the men of York. The court will fall apart. Nobody can stand the ascendancy of the Riverses. They are certain to rule England through their boy. It will be Margaret of Anjou all over again, a court run by the distaff. Everyone will be calling on Richard to stop her. You and I must divide and work. I shall write to Richard and pledge fealty to him, while you assure the queen of our loyalty to her and to her family, the Riverses.”

“A foot in each camp at once,” I whisper. It is Stanley’s way. This is why I married him; this is the very moment that I married him for.

“My guess is that Richard will hope to rule England till Prince Edward is of age,” he says. “And then rule England through the boy if he can dominate him. He will be another Warwick. A Kingmaker.”

“Or will he be a rival king?” I breathe, thinking as always of my own boy.

“A rival king,” he agrees. “Duke Richard is a Plantagenet of York, already of age, whose claim to the throne is unquestionable, who does not need a regency nor an alliance of the lords to rule for him. Most people would think him a safer choice for king than an untried boy. Some will see him as the next heir. You must send a messenger to Jasper at once and tell him to keep Henry in safety till we know what will happen next. They cannot come to England till we know who will claim the throne.”

He is about to go, but I put a hand on his arm. “And what do you think will happen next?”

His eyes do not meet mine; he looks away. “I think the queen and Duke Richard will fight like dogs over the bone that is the little prince,” he says. “I think they will tear him apart.”