The Red Queen

by Philippa Gregory

  “If he suspects you, he will suspect me,” I say. Stanley’s fear is so strong it has me in its grip. “And I have sent messages to the queen, as we agreed. Could he know I am his enemy?”

  “Could your messages have gone astray?”

  “I am certain of my man. And she is not a fool. But why else would he doubt you?”

  He shakes his head. “I have done nothing except speak to Hastings, who is loyal to the core. He is desperate to secure the succession of the prince. It is his last act of love for Edward the king. He is deeply afraid that Richard might play false with Prince Edward. He has been frightened of something going wrong ever since Richard took the prince to the Tower. He asked me if I would join with him at a Privy Council meeting to insist that the prince should come out among the people, to visit his mother, to show that he is free in every way. I think he has sent a messenger to the queen to assure her of her safety and ask her to come out of hiding.”

  “Does Hastings know that Richard has ordered his own wife to stay home? Does he think Richard might delay the coronation? Prolong his own regency?”

  “I told him Anne Neville had no coronation gown, and he swore at once that Richard cannot be truly planning to crown his nephew. It’s what we are all starting to think. It’s what we’re all starting to fear. But I can’t see anything worse than Richard delaying the coronation, perhaps for years, perhaps till the boy is twenty-one. Delaying it so that he can rule as regent.” He leaps to his feet and strides barefoot across the room. “For God’s sake, Richard was the most loyal brother Edward could ever have had! He has said nothing but asserted his loyalty to the prince. His own nephew! All his enmity has been directed to the dowager queen; not against Edward’s son. And he has the boy utterly in his power now. Crowned or not, Prince Edward can only be a puppet king if Richard can keep him from his mother and from his kin.”

  “But the dream—”

  “The dream was of a boar determined on power and death. It was a warning; it must be a warning.”

  We are both silent. A log shifts in the fireplace, and we both flinch from the sound.

  “What will you do?” I ask him.

  He shakes his head. “What would you do? You think that God speaks to you and warns you in dreams. What would you do if you dreamed that the boar was coming for you?”

  I hesitate. “You can’t think of running away?”

  “No, no.”

  “I would pray for guidance.”

  “And what would your God say?” he asks, with a flare of his usual sarcasm. “He is usually reliable in advising you to seek power and safety.”

  I take my seat on the stool by the fire, looking into the flames as if I were a poor woman telling fortunes, as if I were Queen Elizabeth with her witchcraft skills. “If Richard were to turn against his nephew, both nephews, and somehow prevent their inheritance, put himself on the throne in their place …” I pause. “They have no powerful defenders anymore. The fleet has mutinied against their uncle, their mother is in sanctuary, their uncle Anthony is under arrest …”

  “Then what?”

  “If Richard were to take the throne and leave his nephews locked in the Tower, do you think the country would rise against him and there would be another war?”

  “York against York. It’s possible.”

  “And in those circumstances there would be a great chance for the House of Lancaster.”

  “For your son, Henry.”

  “For Henry to be the last one standing when they tear each other to pieces in a fight to the death.”

  There is silence in my room. I glance at him, afraid that I may have gone too far.

  “There are four lives between Henry and the throne,” he remarks. “The two York princes: Edward and Richard, Duke Richard himself, and then his son.”

  “But they might all fight each other.”

  He nods.

  “If they choose to destroy themselves, it is no sin for Henry to take the empty throne,” I say firmly. “And at last, the rightful house takes the throne of England, which is God’s will.”

  He smiles at my certainty, but this time I am not offended. What matters is that we can see our way, and as long as I know it is the light of God, then it does not matter if he thinks it is the blaze of sinful ambition.

  “So will you go to the Privy Council meeting today?”

  “Yes, it’s at the Tower. But I will send a message to Hastings of my fears. If he is going to move against Richard, he had better do so now. He can force Richard to show his hand. He can demand to see the prince. His love for the late king will make him the prince’s champion. I can stand back and let him step up the pace. The council is determined that the prince should be crowned. Hastings can demand it. He can bear the brunt of showing Richard that he suspects him. I can set Hastings on Richard and step back to see what will happen. I can be warned by this, and I can warn Hastings and let him take the danger.”

  “But where do you stand?”

  “Margaret, I stay loyal to whoever is most likely to triumph, and at the moment, the man with the army of the north at his back, the Tower in his possession, and the rightful king obedient to him and in his keeping: is Richard.”

  I wait for the return of my husband from his council meeting, on my knees before my prie dieu. Our dawn conversation has unsettled and frightened me, and I kneel in prayer and think of Joan, who must have known herself to be in danger so many times, and yet rode out on her white horse with her banner of lilies and did not have to fight her battles in secrecy and silence.

  I think it is almost a part of my prayer when I hear the march of many feet down the street and the clanking on the cobbles as a hundred pikemen ground their pikes, and then there is a hammering on the big street door of our London house.

  I am halfway down the stairs as the porter’s boy comes running up to tell the maids to call me. I grab him by the arm. “Who is it?”

  “Duke Richard’s men,” he gabbles. “In his livery, with the master, they’ve got the lord, your husband. Smacked in the face, blood on his jerkin, bleeding like a pig …”

  I push him to one side as he is making no sense, and I run down to the cobbled entrance where the gatemen are swinging open the gate and Duke Richard’s troop march in, and at the center of them is my husband, swaying on his feet, blood pouring from a wound to his head. He looks at me, and his face is white and his eyes are blank with shock.

  “Lady Margaret Stanley?” asks the commander of the guard.

  I can hardly drag my eyes from the symbol of the boar on his livery. A tusked boar just as my husband dreamed was coming for him.

  “I am Lady Margaret,” I say.

  “Your husband is under house arrest, and he and you cannot leave here. There will be guards stationed at all doorways and in your house, and at the doors and windows of his chambers. Your household and necessary servants can go about their business, but they will be stopped and searched at my command. Do you understand?”

  “Yes,” I whisper.

  “I am going to search the house for letters and papers,” he says. “Do you understand this too?”

  There is nothing in my rooms that would incriminate either of us. I burn anything dangerous as soon as I have read it, and I never keep a copy of my own letters. All my work for Henry is between God and me.

  “I understand. May I take my husband to my closet? He is wounded.”

  He gives a grim smile. “When we marched in to arrest Lord Hastings, your husband dived under the table and nearly took off his own head on a pike blade. It looks worse than it is.”

  “You arrested Lord Hastings?” I ask incredulously. “On what charge?”

  “Madam, we have beheaded him,” he says shortly. He pushes past me into my own rooms, and his men fan out in my yard and take up their positions, and we are prisoners in our own great house.

  Stanley and I go to my closet, surrounded by pikemen, and only when they have seen that the window is too small for escape do they step ba
ck and close the door on the two of us and we are alone.

  Stanley throws his bloodstained jerkin and spoiled shirt to the floor with a shudder, and he sits on a stool, stripped to the waist. I pour a jug of water into the ewer and start to wash the cut. It is shallow and long, a glancing blow, not one aimed to kill, but an inch lower and he would have lost an eye. “What is happening?” I whisper.

  “Richard came in at the start of the meeting to determine the order of the coronation, all smiles, asked Bishop Morton to send out for strawberries from his garden, very affable. We started our work on the coronation, the seating, the precedence, the usual things. He went out again, and while he was outside, someone must have brought him some news or a message, and he came in a changed man, with a face dark with rage. The troop came in after him like they were overrunning a fort, banging in the door, weapons at the ready. They swung at me, I dropped down, Morton leaped back, Rotherham ducked behind his chair; they took Hastings before he could defend himself.”

  “But why? What had been said?”

  “Nothing! Nothing had been said. It was as if Richard just unleashed his power. They just grabbed Hastings and took him.”

  “Took him where? On what charge? What did they say?”

  “They said nothing. You don’t understand. It wasn’t an arrest. It was a raid. Richard was shouting like a madman that he was under an enchantment, that his arm was failing him, that Hastings and the queen were destroying him by witchcraft—”

  “What?”

  “He pulled up his sleeve and showed us his arm. His sword arm—you know how strong his right arm is. He says it is failing him, he says it is shriveling away.”

  “Dear God, has he run mad?” I pause in wiping the blood; I cannot believe what I am hearing.

  “They dragged Hastings out. Not another word. They pulled him outside though he was kicking and swearing and digging in his heels. There was some old lumber lying around from the building work, and they just threw down a piece of timber, forced him down on it, and took his head off with one swing.”

  “A priest?”

  “There was no priest. Do you not hear what I am saying? It was a kidnap and a murder. He had no time even to say his prayers.” Stanley starts to shake. “Dear God, I thought they were coming after me. I thought I would be next. It was like the dream. The smell of blood and nobody there to save me.”

  “They beheaded him before the Tower?”

  “As I said, as I said.”

  “So if the prince looked out of his window, hearing the noise, he will have seen his father’s dearest friend beheaded on a log? The man he called his uncle William?”

  Stanley is silent, looking at me. A trickle of blood runs down his face and he smears it with the back of his hand, turning his cheek red. “Nobody could have stopped them.”

  “The prince will see Richard as his enemy,” I say. “He can’t call him lord protector after this. He will think him a monster.”

  Stanley shakes his head.

  “What is going to happen to us?”

  His teeth are starting to chatter. I put down the bowl and wrap a blanket around his shoulders.

  “God knows, God knows. We are under house arrest for treason; they suspect us of plotting with the queen and Hastings. Your friend Morton too, and they took Rotherham as well. I don’t know how many others. I suppose Richard is going to seize the throne and has rounded up everyone he thinks might argue.”

  “And the princes?”

  He is stammering with shock. “I don’t know. Richard could just kill them, like he killed Hastings. He could break into sanctuary and murder the whole royal family: the queen, the little girls, all of them. Today he has shown us that he can do anything. Perhaps they are already dead?”

  News comes in snippets from the outside world, carried by housemaids as gossip from the market. Richard declares that the marriage between the queen, Elizabeth Woodville, and King Edward was never valid, as Edward was precontracted to another lady before he married Elizabeth in secret. He declares all their children bastards and himself as the only York heir. The craven Privy Council, who observe Hastings’s headless body being laid to rest beside the king he loved, do nothing to defend their queen and their princes, but there is a general hasty and unanimous agreement that there is only one heir, and it is Richard.

  Richard and my kinsman Henry Stafford the Duke of Buckingham, start to put about that King Edward himself was a bastard, the misbegotten son of an English archer on Duchess Cecily while she was with the Duke of York in France. The people hear these accusations—what they make of them God knows—but there is no mistaking the arrival of an army from the northern counties, loyal to no one but Richard, and eager for rewards; there is no denying that all the men who might have been loyal to Prince Edward are arrested or dead. Everyone considers their own safety. No one speaks out.

  For the first time in my life, I can think kindly of the woman I have served for nearly ten years, Elizabeth Woodville, who was Queen of England and one of the most beautiful and beloved queens that the country has ever had. Never beautiful to me, never beloved to me except now, fleetingly, in this moment of her utter defeat. I think of her in the damp dimness of the Westminster sanctuary, and I think that she will never triumph again, and for the first time in my life I can go on my knees and truly pray for her. All she has in her keeping now are her daughters; the life she reveled in has gone, and her two young sons are held by her enemy. I think of her defeated and afraid, widowed and fearing for her sons, and for the first time in my life I can feel my heart warm towards her: a tragic queen thrown down by no fault of her own. I can pray to Our Lady the Queen of Heaven to succor and comfort Her lost, miserable daughter in these days of her humiliation.

  The oldest York girl, Princess Elizabeth, is of marriageable age and is only unmarried at the late age of seventeen years because of the shifting luck of her house. While I am on my knees, praying for the health and safety of the queen, I consider the pretty girl Elizabeth and think what a wife she would make for my son Henry. The son of Lancaster and the daughter of York would together heal the wounds of England and resolve the struggle of two generations. If Richard were to die after taking the throne, his heir would be a child, and a sickly Neville child at that, no more able to defend his claim than the York princes, and as easy to throw down as they have been. If my son were to take the throne then, and marry the York princess, the people would cleave to him as a Lancaster heir and the husband of the York heiress.

  I send for my doctor, Dr. Lewis of Caerleon, a man as interested in conspiracy as medicine. The queen knows him as my physician, and she will admit him, knowing he is from me. I tell him to promise her our support, to tell her that Buckingham is ready to be persuaded against Duke Richard, that my son Henry could raise an army in Brittany. And I tell him before anything else to try to discover what plans she has, what her supporters are promising her. My husband may think that she has no hope, but I have seen Elizabeth Woodville come out of sanctuary once before, and take the throne with careless joy, forgetting all about the shame that the Lord had rightly sent her. I tell Lewis he is to say nothing of my husband being under house arrest, but he is to tell her, as a kindly friend, of the murder of Hastings, of the sudden visibility of Richard’s ambition, of the bastardizing of her sons, of the ruin of her name. He is to tell her with compassion that her cause is lost unless she acts. I have to get her to muster what friends she has, raise what army she can afford, and get her troops into battle against Richard. If I can encourage her into a long and bloody battle, then my son can land with fresh troops and take on the exhausted winner.

  Lewis goes to her on a day when she will be desperate for a friend: the day that was set for her son’s coronation. I doubt that anyone will have warned her that he is not to be crowned at all. Lewis goes through the streets where doors are shut and windows barred and the people don’t linger at corners to talk, and then he returns to me almost at once. He is wearing his mask against plague,
a long conical mask stuffed with herbs and scented with oils, which gives him a terrifying profile, an inhuman face, a white ghost-face. He removes it only when he is in my room with the door shut behind him, and he bows low.

  “She is anxious for help,” he says without preamble. “She is a desperate woman; I would judge her half mad with desperation.” He pauses. “I saw the young Princess of York also …”

  “And?”

  “She was disturbed. She was prophetic.” He gives a little shiver. “She frightened me, and I am a physician who has seen everything.”

  I ignore his boast. “How did she frighten you?”

  “She came at me out of the darkness, her gown soaked with water from the river, trailing behind her like a tail as if she were half fish. She said that the river had already told her the news I was about to give her mother—that Duke Richard had claimed the throne by right of his legitimacy and that the young princes are proclaimed bastards.”

  “She knew that already? They have spies out? I had no idea she could be well informed.”

  “It wasn’t the queen; she didn’t know. It was the girl, and she said the river told her. She said the river told her of a death in the family, and the mother knew at once that it was her brother Anthony and her Grey son. They flung open the windows to listen to the river going by. They were like a pair of water witches in there. Any man would have been afraid.”

  “She says that Anthony Rivers is dead?”

  “They both seemed certain of it.”

  I make the sign of the cross. Elizabeth Woodville has been accused of working with dark forces before now, but to speak true from the sanctuary of holy ground is surely the devil’s work.

  “She must have spies working for her; she must be better prepared and armed than we realize. But how could she have got news from Wales before me?”

  “She said another thing.”

  “The queen?”