The Red Queen

by Philippa Gregory

  “There,” I say to my husband. “The king himself favors Henry. I expect the king can foretell he will have a great future. He will know that this is a special boy. He has the vision of a saint; he will see the grace in Henry, as I do.”

  The storm, which blew away the little boat of the usurper Edward and his runaway companions after their defeat at Edgecote Hill, blows around the coast for almost all the winter. Our lands are flooded both in Surrey and elsewhere, and we have to lay out on ditching and even build dykes against the rising rivers. The tenants are late with their rents, and the crops are sodden in the fields. My husband is pessimistic about the state of the country, as if the loss of the usurper House of York brings rain and discontent.

  The news gets out that the former queen, Elizabeth Woodville, who turns out to be so beloved of her king that he ran away and left her, is going to give birth to another child, even though she is in sanctuary in Westminster, on holy ground. Even this final act of grossness and folly is forgiven by our sainted king, who refuses to have her taken from her place of hiding, and instead sends her midwives and ladies to care for her. The attention that this woman attracts continues to amaze me. I managed to give birth to my boy Henry with no more than two midwives and they under instruction to let me die. Elizabeth Woodville has to have midwives and physicians and her own mother in attendance, when she is in hiding for treason.

  She continues to attract admiration, even though nobody can see her fabled beauty. They say that the citizens of London and the farmers of Kent keep her supplied with food, and that her husband is in Flanders, raising an army to rescue her. The thought of her, reveling in all this attention, makes me grit my teeth. Why cannot people see that all she has done, in all her life, is use a pretty face, or the snare of her body or worse, to capture a king. This is neither noble nor holy—and yet people speak of her as beloved.

  The worst news of all is that she has a boy. He cannot inherit the throne since his father has so thoroughly abandoned it, but a York son born just now is bound to have an influence on gullible people, who will see the hand of destiny in giving the York family an heir in prison.

  If I were the king, I don’t think I would be so very scrupulous about respecting the laws of sanctuary for such a person. How can a woman who is widely regarded as a witch invoke the protection of the Holy Church? How can a baby claim sanctuary? How shall a treasonous family live untouchable in the very heart of London? Our king is a saint, but he should be served by men who can take worldly decisions; and Elizabeth Woodville and her mother Jacquetta, whom I now know to be truly a most notorious and proven witch and a turncoat, should be bundled onto a ship and sent off to Flanders; there they can weave their magic and practice their beauty, where they are likely to be better appreciated among foreigners.

  My childish stunned regard for Elizabeth Woodville’s mother Jacquetta quickly changed when I learned what sort of woman she was, and when I saw her bump her daughter upwards to the throne. There is no doubt in my mind that the grace and beauty which caught my eye when I was a little girl at the court of King Henry was a mask over a most sinful nature. She allowed her daughter to stand at the roadside when the young king rode by, and she was one of the few witnesses at their secret wedding. She became chief lady-in-waiting and leader of the York court. No woman with any sense of loyalty or honor could do any of these things. She, who had served Margaret of Anjou, how could she bow the knee to her light-minded daughter? Jacquetta had been a royal duchess with the English army in France, and then she was widowed and married her husband’s squire, at most shocking speed. Our kindly king forgave her lustful indiscretion, so her husband, Richard Woodville, could call himself Lord Rivers, taking his title as a tribute to the pagan traditions of her family, who sprang from streams and name a water goddess as their ancestor. Since then, scandal and rumors of dealing with the devil have followed her as waters flow downhill. And this is the woman whose daughter thought she should be Queen of England! No wonder he is shamefully dead and they are cast down to little more than prison. She should use her black arts and fly away, or summon the river and swim to safety.

  SPRING 1471

  I say nothing of these thoughts of mine to Sir Henry, who is so gloomy through the dark, wintry days of January and February that one would think he was mourning the exile of his king. One evening at dinner I ask him if he is well, and he says that he is much worried.

  “Is Henry safe?” I ask at once.

  His weary smile reassures me. “Of course, I would have told you if I had any bad news from Jasper. The two of them are at Pembroke, I don’t doubt, and we can visit them when the roads are clear of all this rain, if there is no more trouble.”

  “Trouble?” I repeat.

  Sir Henry glances at the server of wine, who stands behind us, and then looks down the great hall where the servants and tenants on the nearest tables can overhear our speech. “We can talk later,” he says.

  We wait till we are alone in my bedroom, with the hot-spiced wine served, and the servants gone for the night. He sits before the fireside, and I see that he looks weary and older than his forty-five years.

  “I am sorry for your unease,” I say; but he is of an age when a man makes a nonsense out of a nothing, and if my boy Henry is well, and our king on the throne, then what trouble need we fear? “Please tell me your worries, husband. Perhaps we can put them to naught.”

  “I have a message from a man loyal to York, who thinks that I too am loyal to York,” he says heavily. “It’s a summons.”

  “A summons?” I repeat stupidly. For a moment I think he means to serve as a justice, and then I realize he means that York is recruiting again. “Oh, God spare us! Not a summons to rebel?”

  He nods.

  “A secret plot of York and they have come to you?”

  “Yes.” He sighs. For a moment I lose my fear and am tempted to giggle. His correspondent cannot know my husband very well if he thinks he is a Yorkist. And not well at all if he thinks he will arm to command, and joyously ride out to war. My husband makes a most reluctant soldier. He is not made of heroic stuff.

  “Edward is planning to invade and take back his kingdom,” he says. “We will have the wars starting again.”

  Now I am alarmed. I grip my chair. “It’s not his kingdom.”

  My husband shrugs. “Whoever has the right of it, Edward will fight for it.”

  “Oh no,” I say. “Not again. He cannot hope to come against our king. Not now that he has just been restored. He has been back on his throne—what?—five months?”

  “My friend who wrote me to turn out for Edward said more,” my husband goes on. “My friend is not just Edward’s man, he is a friend of George, Duke of Clarence.”

  I wait. Surely, George of Clarence cannot have turned his coat. He has staked everything on being his brother’s enemy. He is in thrall to Warwick, married to his daughter, standing in line for the throne only second to our Prince of Wales. He is a key member of the court, a most beloved cousin of our king. He has burned his boats with his brother; he cannot go back. Edward would never have him back. “George?” I ask.

  “He is to join his brother again,” my husband tells me. “The three sons of York are to be reunited.”

  “You must send this at once to the king, and to Jasper,” I insist. “They have to know; they have to be prepared.”

  “I have sent messages to both Wales and the court,” my husband says. “But I doubt I am telling either of them anything that they don’t already know. Everyone knows that Edward is arming and raising an army in Flanders—he would be bound to come again to reclaim his throne. And the king …” He breaks off. “I don’t think the king cares for anything anymore but his own soul. I truly think he would be glad to surrender his throne if he could go into a monastery and spend his days in prayer.”

  “God has called him to be king,” I say firmly.

  “Then God will have to help him,” my husband replies. “And I think he will need all the
help he can get if he is to hold off Edward.”

  The king’s need for help is spelled out for us when my cousin, the Duke of Somerset, Edmund Beaufort, announces he is coming for a visit. I send to the town of Guildford and even to the coast for delicacies for the table, and His Grace sits down to a small banquet every day of his visit. He thanks me for my hospitality when we are by the fire in my presence chamber, my husband Sir Henry out of the room for a moment. I smile and bow my head, but I don’t think for a moment that he has come to stay for the pleasure of oysters from the Sussex coast or potted cherries from Kent.

  “You have entertained me royally,” he says, tasting a sugared plum. “These are from your orchards?”

  I nod. “Last summer’s crop,” I say, as if I care one way or another for household things. “It was a good year for fruit.”

  “A good year for England,” he says. “Our king back on the throne, and the usurper driven away. Lady Margaret, I swear, we cannot let these scoundrels back into the country again to drive our good king from the throne!”

  “I know it,” I say. “Who should know better than I, his cousin, whose son was given into the charge of traitors? And now I have him restored to me like Lazarus from death.”

  “Your husband commands much of Sussex, and his influence goes into Kent,” the duke presses on, disregarding Lazarus. “He has an army of tenants who would turn out for him if he commanded. It might be that the York fleet will land on your shores. We have to know that your husband will stand loyal to his king and that he will call his tenants out to defend us. But I am afraid that I have reason to doubt him.”

  “He is a man who loves peace above all,” I say lamely.

  “We all love peace,” my cousin asserts. “But sometimes a man has to defend his own. We all have to defend the king. If York makes it back to England with an army of Flanders mercenary soldiers and defeats us again, we will none of us be safe in our lands, in our titles, or”—he nods at me—“in our heirs. How would you like to see young Henry brought up in yet another York household? His inheritance used by a York guardian? Married to a York girl? Don’t you think that Elizabeth Woodville as queen, restored to her throne, will turn her greedy gray eyes on your son and his inheritance? She took your little nephew the Duke of Buckingham and married him to her own sister Katherine for profit—a shocking mismatch. Don’t you think she will take your son for one of her endless daughters if she comes back to power?”

  I stand and walk to the fireplace. I look down at the flames and wish for a moment that I had the Sight to foretell the future like the York queen. Does she know that her husband is coming to save her, to rescue her and his new baby son from their prison? Can she tell if they will succeed or fail? Can she whistle up a storm to blow them onshore as they say she whistled one up to blow him safely away?

  “I wish I could promise you my husband’s sword and fortune and tenantry at your service,” I say quietly. “Everything I can do to persuade him to ride out for the king, I do already. I make it clear to my own tenants that I would be pleased to see them form into bands for their true king. But Sir Henry is slow to act, and reluctant to act. I wish I could promise you more, cousin. I am ashamed that I cannot.”

  “Does he not realize that you stand to lose everything? Your son’s title and wealth will be taken from him again?”

  I nod. “Yes, but he is much influenced by the London traders and his business friends. And they are all for York because they believe Edward makes peace throughout the land, and because he makes the courts of law work so that a man can have justice. My husband is influenced too by the greater men among his tenants, and by the other noblemen in the area. They don’t all think as they should. They favor York. They say he brought peace and justice to England and that since he has gone, there has been trouble and uncertainty. They say he is young and strong and commands the country and that our king is frail and ruled by his wife.”

  “I can’t deny that,” my cousin says briskly. “But Edward of York is not the true king. He could be a very Daniel bringing judgment, he could be Moses bringing fine laws, and he would still be a traitor. We have to follow the king, our king, or be traitors ourselves.”

  The door opens, and my husband comes in, all smiles. “I am sorry,” he says. “There was trouble in the stable; some fool tipped over a brazier, and they were running around putting out the fire. I just went down to check that it was thoroughly out. Don’t want our honored guest to be burned in his bed!” He smiles pleasantly at the duke, and in that moment, in his smiling, honest warmth, in his lack of fearfulness, in his confident sense of his own rightness—I think that we both know that Sir Henry is not going to ride out for the king.

  Within days we have the news that Edward of York has made landfall, not where anyone expected him, but in the north of England, where the witch’s wind blew him to safe harbor, and he has marched on York and asked them to open their gates to him, not on his own account as king, but so that he can take up his dukedom again. The city, persuaded like a set of fools, lets him in, and at once the York supporters flock to their leader and his traitorous ambition is plain. George, the turncoat Duke of Clarence, is among them. It has taken some time, but even stupid George finally realizes that his future as a York boy would be brighter with a York king on the throne, and suddenly he loves his brother above any other and declares that his loyalty to the true king and to his father-in-law Warwick was a great mistake. I suppose from this that my son has lost his earldom forever, as everything will belong to the York boys again and no pleading messages from me to George, Duke of Clarence, will make him give Henry’s title back. All at once everything is golden daylight, and the three suns of York are the dawn over England. In the fields the hares are fighting and leaping, and it seems as if the whole country has gone as mad as hares this March.

  Amazingly, Edward gets to London without a single obstacle in his path, the gates are thrown open for him by the adoring citizens, and he is reunited with his wife, as if he had never been chased from his own land, running for his life.

  I take to my chamber and pray on my knees when I hear this news from Somerset’s hard-riding messenger. I think of Elizabeth Woodville—the so-called beauty—with her baby son in her arms, and her daughters all around her, starting up as the door is thrown open and Edward of York strides into the room, victorious as he always is. I spend two long hours on my knees, but I cannot pray for victory and I cannot pray for peace. I can only think of her running into his arms, knowing that her husband is the bravest and most able man in the kingdom, showing him her son, surrounded by their daughters. I take up my rosary and pray again. The words are for the safety of my king; but I cannot think of anything but my jealousy that a woman, far worse born than me, far worse educated than me, without doubt less beloved by God than me, should be able to run to her husband with joy and show him their son and know he will fight to defend him. That a woman such as her, clearly not favored by God, showing no signs of grace (unlike me), should be Queen of England. And that, by some mystery—too great for me to understand—God should have overlooked me.

  I come out of my chamber and find my husband in the great hall. He is seated at the top table, his face grave. His steward, standing beside him, is putting one sheet of paper after another before him for his signature. His clerk beside him is melting wax and pressing in the seal. It takes me only a moment to recognize the commissions of array. He is calling up his tenants. He is going to war; at last he is going to war. I feel my heart lift like a lark at the sight; God be praised, he is owning his duty and going to war at last. I step up to the table, my face glad.

  “Husband, God bless you and the work you are finally doing.”

  He does not smile back at me; he looks at me wearily, and his eyes are sad. His hand keeps moving, signing Henry Stafford, time after time, and he hardly glances down at his pen. They come to the last page: the clerk drips wax, stamps the seal, and hands it in its box back to his chief secretary.

  �
�Send them at once,” Henry says.

  He pushes back his chair and steps off the little dais to stand before me, takes my hand, and tucks it in his arm and walks me away from the clerk, who is gathering up the papers to take to the stables for the waiting messengers.

  “Wife, I have to tell you a thing which will trouble you,” he says.

  I shake my head. I think he is about to tell me that he is going to war with a heavy heart for fear of leaving me, and so I rush to reassure him that I fear nothing when he’s doing God’s work. “Truly husband, I am glad …” He stills me with a gentle touch on my cheek.

  “I am calling up my men not to serve King Henry, but to serve King Edward,” he says quietly.

  At first I hear the words, but they make no sense to me. Then I am so frozen with horror that I say nothing. I am so silent that he thinks I have not heard him.

  “I will serve King Edward of York, not Henry of Lancaster,” he says. “I am sorry if you are disappointed.”

  “Disappointed?” He is telling me he has turned traitor, and he thinks I may be disappointed?

  “I am sorry for it.”

  “But my cousin himself came to persuade you to war …”

  “He did nothing but convince me that we have to have a strong king who will put an end to war, now and forever, or he and his sort will go on until England is destroyed. When he told me that he would fight forever, I knew that he would have to be defeated.”

  “Edward is not born to be king. He is not a bringer of peace.”

  “My dear, you know that he is. The only peace we have known in the last ten years was when he was on the throne. And now he has a son and heir, so please God the Yorks will hold the throne forever and there will be an end to these unending battles.”

  I wrench my hand away from his grip. “He is not born royal,” I cry. “He is not sacred. He is a usurper. You are calling out your tenants and mine, my tenants from my lands to serve a traitor. You would have my standard, the Beaufort portcullis, unfurled on the York side?”