The Queen of Last Hopes (28 page)

“For now, I’ll be pleased to take my chances,” I said, clutching the pommel and thanking the Lord that I had always been a confident rider. Every small tree looked to me like another menacing figure coming to rob or ravish me, and I had no idea whether we were riding toward Berwick, but I at least did not fear falling off this horse. I turned. “Edward! Are you holding on tight?”

“Yes, Mother,” said my son, with sufficient irritation for me to smile.

Then a horseman galloped toward us, clearly bent on blocking our path. “Let us pass!” demanded Will as he reluctantly halted our horse.

The horseman said nothing, and indeed, he looked so menacing that he needed no words to aid him. He was easily one and a half times Will’s size, and his stare as he sized up my escort was a fearsome one to behold. “What have you got for me, boy?” Will made no response. “Answer me, boy, or I’ll kill you here and now, before the lady.” He moved closer to me and fingered my gown. “That gown’s of quality; you’ll not have me believe you’ve no valuables.” He eyed Edward, who was attempting without much success not to look scared. “That boy’s well dressed; if you’ll not pay me to recover him, I reckon some of his people will. Give him here!”

“Let him go!” I dropped to the ground and stood before the brigand. “Do you know who I am? I am your queen, Margaret, wife to your rightful king, Henry the Sixth, and that is your prince!”

The robber stared.

“It is true. Go a little ways from whence we came, to Norham Castle, and you will find it has been under siege, with me present.”

“She speaks true,” said Will.

“I have no jewels; I was robbed of them back near Norham. I have only the clothes on my back. If that will satisfy you, I will give them to you, though as you can see they are much worn. But why settle for that, when I can give you something far more valuable?”

“Say what?”

“A new life! Aren’t you secretly ashamed of this life, robbing innocents and the unwary, lurking, knowing that you will end up on the gallows? But if you help my son and me and my friend here, and bring us safely to the king, you will have done a good deed that will atone for the evil you have done. My husband will reward you, be certain of it, and more important, God will reward you as well. It is never too late to change.”

The robber hesitated. “You are really the queen? You sound more like a female preacher.”

I smiled. “I am the queen. When you take me to safety, my friends will tell you I speak the truth. Now, come. What will it be? The clothes we are wearing, which will feed you for a short time before you are hanged, or your immortal soul?”

The robber swung off his horse and knelt awkwardly at my feet. “My lady, I am yours to command.”

“Rise, then, and show us to Berwick, where my husband awaits me.”

“It’s not far,” said the thief. He looked at Edward, still sitting behind Will. “I can take the boy up behind me, my lady, if it would be more comfortable for you and him.”

I hesitated, then nodded. The robber swung Edward onto his horse, and we trotted away after Will had settled me behind him. Will hissed behind his shoulder, “Your grace, why did you tell him who you were? He might have taken you back to Warwick’s men for a reward! And why did you give him your son? Wasn’t that taking a risk?”

“I don’t know.” I looked at Edward, who was chattering now quite amicably with the robber. “Maybe it was because it was what my husband would do.”

***

It was mid-afternoon when our oddly assorted little group finally came to Berwick, where I found that a search was being mounted for Edward and me. As soon as I passed through the gate, a messenger dashed off to find Henry, who had me locked in his arms before I could even reach the bailey. “Thank the Lord you are safe,” he whispered into my hair. “And you, my boy!” He embraced my son, then stared at Will with his ragged staff badge and my would-be robber as they kneeled before him. “And these are—”

“This is young Will, who saved me back at Norham,” I said. “And this is—” I frowned, remembering I had never learned the name of the man to whom I had entrusted our son.

“They call me Black Jack, your grace.”

“Black Jack,” said Henry, the name sounding so ridiculous on his lips that I could not help but smile in my exhaustion.

“Black Jack could have robbed me in the forest, but instead helped us here to safety. He has treated me with all of the respect due to a queen, and I trust he will do the same to you as his king.”

My companion nodded.

“Rise, then, both of you,” Henry said. “Young Will, you can return to your people, or stay here in my service. I hope you will choose the latter, but I know you may have family waiting for you.”

“I do, your grace. I am sorry.”

“Then take some refreshment before you leave, and rest your horse. And you, Black Jack? Would you like to stay?”

“I’ve no one waiting for me, your grace. If I can serve you and your brave lady, I’d be honored.”

“Then so it shall be.”

***

Before my adventures, I had half hoped that Henry would change his mind about sending me to France, but after getting an uncensored account of the episode from Edward, Will, and Black Jack, Henry could not get me out of England fast enough. He did not even wait for my father’s reply to his message. “Had those men murdered you, or ravished you”—Henry shuddered—“I might well have gone mad again. I almost did when I heard from some of those Scots that Warwick’s men had been seen near you. No, you and Edward must go to France. Why, what is wrong, my dear?”

“I deserve to have been ravished and murdered.” I dropped down to my knees. “I have been advised not to tell you this, but I cannot bear it any longer. You must know the truth if you are to send me to France again. I have wronged you in the worst way a woman can wrong a husband.”

Henry stared down at me as I huddled by his feet. “With another man?”

“Yes. With Henry Beaufort.” I swallowed. “He has been a traitor to you by deserting you and will have to answer to God for that, but I am to blame for our adultery. I am the woman and the married one; I should have known better. I did know better. If you will only forgive me, I will do any penance I am asked to do. I will fast. I will walk barefoot through the streets with a taper. I will end my days in a nunnery. I will—”

“Margaret, stand.”

Shaking, I obeyed. Calmly, Henry asked, “Edward. He is my son?”

“Yes. I will swear to it. I did you no wrong until I went to Rouen.
Ruin
. It is aptly named, is it not?” I stared at the floor. “I will never wrong you in that way again; I will swear an oath to that too.”

Henry took me into his arms. “I forgive you, Marguerite. There is no need for solemn oaths.”

“You are too generous,” I whispered.

“You have had much to bear these last few years.” Henry stroked my hair as I began to sob into his neck.

“But can you ever trust me again?”

“I can and I will.” He smiled sadly. “Even when you were in Rouen, you did your best for me. How many queens have been asked to do so much? How many have suffered robbery and shipwreck and exile for their king’s sake? I do not condone your behavior with Somerset, but under the circumstances I cannot let it outweigh all of the devotion you have shown to me and our son.”

“
Our
son. Believe me.”

“I do.” Henry was silent for a time while I rested in his embrace. “I would even forgive Hal if he asked it,” he said. “Perhaps someday he will.”

I shook my head. “They say that Edward has made him very welcome at his court. The traitor will be too comfortable there.”

“You must have loved him, and I was fond of him myself. The man cannot be all bad; indeed, I know he is not. Do not give up on him, Marguerite.”

Only my dear Henry could speak more kindly about my former lover than I could myself. “I will try. After all, you have not given up on me.”

I spent the night clasped in my husband’s arms. The next day, I once again made my farewells to Henry at Edinburgh. Traveling with me and Edward were the Duke of Exeter, Doctor Morton, Marie, William and Katherine Vaux, and a couple of dozen others, each of us in varying degrees a tatterdemalion. Would we ever see England’s shores again? Yet as uncertain as our future was, it was Henry I worried about most, left to no one but the uncertain protection of the Scots. “I wish you were going with us,” I said as I embraced him.

“I must stay here and be ready for whatever happens,” said Henry, hugging me closer to him. “Who knows? Perhaps when we see each other again, it will be in London.”

I smiled and turned to Lord Ros as Henry bade good-bye to our son. “Do take care of him.”

“I will. I and Black Jack,” he added, for Black Jack had taken a distinct liking to Lord Ros and could generally be found rendering him some service or another. “Don’t you fear, your grace. We will keep the cause of Lancaster alive here.”

“As I will abroad.” I turned to Henry one more time. “I love you,” I said simply.

“And I love you. Remember, my darling. In London!”

“In London!” I said, smiling and waving as Pierre de Brézé led me toward our waiting ship.

King Edward, as I had been reminded none too gently to call him, was a tall man, who looked even taller when one was kneeling before him in supplication. Six feet four, I estimated. “Up,” he said cheerfully, extending a hand himself to assist me, for my hands were bound lest, I’d been told, I had some harebrained notion about assassinating the rightful king. “So! You have agreed to become our liegeman. A sensible decision. What made you do it? I must say, you’re the last one I’d have ever expected to come over to our side.”

“I thought I might as well give in to the inevitable,” I said. In fact, I could pinpoint the exact moment when I had decided not merely to surrender to Edward, but to pledge my loyalty to him: the morning of Christmas Eve, when I had sat down to yet another plate of horse. I was six-and-twenty and unmarried, with a bastard child I had never seen. I was poor; I hadn’t seen my mother in years; my brother Edmund was languishing as a Yorkist prisoner. I loved a woman I never could have openly, and she herself had begged me to break off our relations. I was fighting for a cause that had been lost long ago at Palm Sunday Field. That Christmastide as I stared around me at the cheerlessness of Bamburgh Castle, it had suddenly seemed so simple, so seductive to throw in my lot with the side that was winning.

Seductive it had been; simple it had not. I hadn’t dared to tell even Tom, my own brother, my intention. Even as Edward’s men led me into the king’s presence, I had had second thoughts. I could tell him I had changed my mind, and then I would go to my prison or to my death with a clear conscience.

But my courage, and my conscience, had failed me.

Edward snorted when he heard my reply. “That’s what they all say when they come over to me.
I decided to give in to the inevitable
. Or
One can’t fight against fate
. Always the same answer. And they all have the same expression on their face, like they’ve taken a gulp of bad wine.”

“Oh?” I said gloomily. “I had hoped that I was more unique.”

My new king smiled. “Someone told me that you had a certain charm, Beaufort. I was beginning to doubt it.” He settled back in his chair and looked at me with interest. “Why, I believe we might even become friends.”

***

I tried not to think of Margaret in those early Yorkist days of mine, which of course meant that I thought of her nearly constantly. When I had been brought to Alnwick to assist Warwick (a role that was as nearly as unpleasant to think about as my betrayal of Margaret, but I was wisely kept far from his presence), I passed the dreary hours of the siege in dialogue with myself:
She dismissed you, after all, and she was right. Continuing as things were could only lead to disaster. Her place is with her husband, not with you. It’s all for the best
.

But you didn’t have to abandon her cause when you left her bed.

With all of my conversations with myself ending like this, I couldn’t have been more unpleasant, and more tedious, company for myself. Needless to say, then, I quickly sought out more congenial companionship as soon as the king’s household, me in tow, arrived in London. “Your grace, I would like to ask leave to visit my son in London. I’ve never seen him.”

Edward threw me an exasperated look. “Beaufort, when will you realize that you’re not my prisoner? You can see the boy any time you want. How old is he?”

“Three. He was born when I was abroad.”

“And you’ve never had a chance to see the lad? Well, I suppose not, if he’s been here. Who’s the mother?”

I hesitated, and Edward laughed. “Good Lord, man, I’m not poaching on your territory.” He smiled in that endearingly boyish way of his. “In fact, I’ve a bastard son of my own, just newly hatched. Arthur, the boy’s name is, by an Elizabeth Lucy. I rather like the name, don’t you?”

“Do you still see the mother?” I asked, since Edward evidently liked this topic and it had occurred to me that I had been rather standoffish.

“Oh, once in a while,” the king said airily. “There are other women now.”

Sometimes I marveled at the fact that the same island had managed to produce two kings so diametrically opposite as Henry and Edward.

That very afternoon, I set off for Eastcheap, where I found that unlike everything else, Joan’s shop had changed very little in the past few years—if anything, it looked better than when I had seen first seen it. It smelled as tempting as it had when I had first come across it at age seventeen, and I wondered if Joan was as tempting too.

Well, I would find out soon enough. I pushed open the door and there Joan stood, setting out wafers. “Smells good in here,” I said.

“Thank you, sir. My cooking is good, you’ll find. Won’t you try something?” Joan gave me her full attention and clapped a floury hand to her chest. “Hal?”

“The same.”

“My God,” Joan said, and locked me into a flour-filled embrace. “It’s safe for you to be in London?”

“Yes.” Well, there was no point in delaying the truth. “I serve the House of York now.”

Joan’s face changed. “I had heard that, but I never believed it. You? A Yorkist?”

“Me.”

“I can’t believe it even when I hear it from you.”

“Well, it’s true. Is that all you can do, stare at me as if I had horns?”

“I—I just never expected it.”

“Maybe you lack imagination.” I slammed the purse I was carrying—full of coins courtesy of Edward, who had given me a generous allowance—on the counter. “I’ll take myself off now, if that’s the welcome I’m going to get. Here’s some money for Charles. You can wash it before you use it in case it’s too filthy for you.”

“Hal, no!” Joan caught at me. “Don’t get your back up so quickly. I am sorry. I am glad to see you back. But it’s confusing. Don’t you realize that? I’ve been raising Charles as a Lancastrian through and through. He knows that his father’s been fighting for the king and the queen and understands that’s why you haven’t seen him before. And now you’re with the House of York—it’s not something I ever expected. Not after what happened to your father—and you—at St. Albans. I remember how you were when I first saw you afterward, how I just wanted to take you in my arms and comfort you as if you were my boy instead of my lover. And now you’re fighting for these men?”

“Times have changed. King Edward”—I’d had to train myself to add the word
king
, and as a result I always gave it an odd emphasis—“is a better man than his father.”

“Yes, so they say. But he’s still got Warwick, hasn’t he?”

This was a question best ignored. “It’s best for everyone. For Mother, for my brothers—King Edward’s going to set Edmund free soon, I hope—and even for you and Charles. I can provide for him now, marry him well.”

“But is it the best for you? Love, I don’t want you coming to hate yourself.”

“Why not? Everyone else does—except for King Edward. His men treat me like a leper, and you can just imagine what Henry’s men think of me now. I’d hoped for something different from you.”

“I don’t hate you, Hal. I am very, very glad to see you. And Charles will be glad to see you also. Will you come see him? Please?”

“Joan, I’ve not been around children his age much. How do I act?”

Joan patted my cheek. “You’ll do fine. Let me just get Joe to mind the shop—just as he’s been minding us, I warrant.” A boy bobbed into view, and I wondered how long he had been eavesdropping. “Oh, I should warn you that my mother’s back there; she helps me with Charles. She believes I’ve made it up about you being the father, by the way.”

“Who does she think is the father? The Holy Ghost?”

“More like the innkeeper a few houses down. Come on, Hal.”

In the living area behind Joan’s shop, an older lady sat sewing as a small boy played with cherry stones. “Charles. This is your father. Mother, this is the Duke of Somerset.”

I gazed down at a perfect replica of myself at three years of age. I’d never doubted Joan for an instant when she had told me that I was the father of her coming child, but I had not expected that my son would resemble me so completely. Neither, evidently, had Mrs. Hill, who stared in turn at me, Joan, and Charles before muttering, “Well, I’ll be damned.”

“I told you he’d come back when he could, Ma.”

“And here I am,” I said. “My pleasure, madam.” I hesitated, then crouched beside Charles, who looked at me as one could expect a child to look at a total stranger who has just been announced as his father. “Can I play?”

“Do you know ’ow?”

Look like me this boy might, but his voice was pure London. “I’ll have you know that no one in my family was better than I at bowling stones in my youth,” I said. “Just watch the master in awe and learn, boy.”

“He talks funny,” Charles observed, but obediently watched as I aimed one stone toward the other and set them to colliding with a satisfying click. Soon we were making quite a match of it, though naturally I let Charles win.

Mrs. Hill took the first opportunity to rush home, presumably to tell her neighbors that her daughter had indeed been mistress to a duke. I spent the rest of the afternoon with Joan and Charles, Joan leaving the shop in what I hoped were the competent hands of Joe. We played at stones for a while, and then we walked out into the open fields to play at ball. Joan cooked us supper when we returned (her cooking was even better than I remembered), after which we put our tired son to bed, I carrying him up the stairs. “You’ve worn him out, and I didn’t think that was possible,” Joan said as I laid him in his tiny bed and kissed him good-night on the forehead. “He likes you.”

“And I like him. You’ve done a good job with him, Joan.” I supposed at some point, though, that his education would have to be taken in hand: the letter aitch and Charles, for instance, could certainly stand to become better acquainted. “I’m very proud that he’s my son,” I added lamely, revolving in my mind whether I should stay longer. It had been over three years since we had been together; perhaps Joan had found another man—though, base creature that I was, I had looked around and hadn’t seen any signs of one.

Then Joan answered my unspoken question. “I expect that you’ve had other women, Hal, after all this time, and I can’t blame you. But I’ve never had another man since you left, and I won’t have another. It wouldn’t be right to have Charles thinking he could have been fathered by any gentleman I happened to fancy.”

I stroked her cheek. “I’ve missed you.”

“I’ve missed you too, Hal. Even if you have gone Yorkist on us.”

“A Yorkist takes off his drawers the same way as a Lancastrian,” I told her, leading her into her bedchamber opposite Charles’s tiny chamber. “I’ll prove it.”

Making love to Joan was a world away from making love to Margaret. Physically, the women themselves could not have been less alike—Margaret was petite and fine-boned, whereas Joan was tall and ample—and with Joan there was none of the guilt and fear of being caught that had always lent a certain desperate edge to my couplings with Margaret. Instead, our lovemaking was easy, comfortable, and uncomplicated, and when it was over I felt more at peace with the world than I had in many a day. Only one thing concerned me. “You don’t think Charles heard, do you?”

Joan shook her head. “He sleeps like the dead,” she said contentedly. Draping her arm around me in preparation for sleep, she kissed me. “Welcome back to London, Hal.”

***

I spent every night I could at Joan’s, for as I had told her, people at Edward’s court kept their distance from me, especially when Ralph Percy, who had turned his coat at the same time I had turned mine, went back to Henry and Margaret’s side. I wasn’t that much bothered by the coldness of Warwick and his brothers—they were not people I could envision myself holding a friendly conversation with under any circumstances—but even the urbane and jovial Lord Hastings, Edward’s closest friend, was coolly polite toward me, and others were downright hostile. It made me feel like I imagined a lonely schoolboy must feel.

Only the king treated me with warmth: dining by my side, joking with me, and even doing me the honor of allowing me to share the royal bed—an honor I could have really done without, for not only was half the court jealous of me and the other half convinced that I had plans to assassinate Edward, it turned out that the king snored. Each time my nagging conscience settled down adequately enough for me to fall asleep at night, he would start up, and I would lie tossing and turning until he finally shifted position.

“We’ll have to find you a wife one of these days, Somerset,” Edward mused one evening in April as we settled side by side. I’d been restored to my title and lands by Parliament in March, and I had to admit that it was a pleasure to hear my ducal title on the king’s lips once more.

“Yes, one of these days,” I agreed, trying to put from my memory the image of Margaret sitting on my lap in that barge at Rouen.
I would be the Duchess of Somerset
, she’d whispered artlessly, so sweetly. “I suppose your grace will be finding a wife soon?” At least then, I thought, I could sleep in my own bed or Joan’s more often.

“Oh, one of these days,” the king said offhandedly. “I’m still young, and Warwick keeps proposing these perfect frights. So far they’ve all been too old, or too homely, or too dull. I know the field is limited for a king, but surely he can do better than that. Sometimes I think I’d like to pick for myself, just to see the look on Warwick’s face. But enough of that. You joust, don’t you?”