The Red Queen (28 page)

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.

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?

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.

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?