The Red Queen

by Philippa Gregory

  “The princess. She said that she was cursed to be the next Queen of England and take her brother’s throne.”

  We look at each other in stunned incomprehension. “You are sure?”

  “She was terrifying. She complained of her mother’s ambition and said that it was a curse laid on the family and that she would have to take her brother’s throne—and that that, at least, would please her mother, though it would disinherit her brother.”

  “What could she mean?”

  The doctor shrugs. “She didn’t say. She has grown to be a beautiful girl, but she is terrifying. I believed her. I have to say, I believed every word she said. It was like a prophet speaking true. I believe that somehow she will be Queen of England.”

  I take a little breath. This is so aligned to my own prayers that it has to be the word of God, though speaking through a most sinful vessel. If Henry were to take the throne and she were to marry him, she would indeed be queen. How else could it come about?

  “And there was one other thing,” Lewis says cautiously. “When I asked the queen what were her plans for the princes in the Tower, Edward and Richard, she said: ‘It’s not Richard.’”

  “She said what?”

  “She said: ‘It’s not Richard.’”

  “What did she mean?”

  “It was then that the princess came in, with her gown all wet from the river, and she knew everything: the acclamation for the duke, the disinheriting of the family. Then she said that she would be queen.”

  “But did you ask the queen what she meant by ‘It’s not Richard’?”

  He shakes his head, this man who has seen everything, but did not have the sense to ask the one key thing. “Did you not think it might be rather important?” I snap at him.

  “I am sorry. The princess coming in was so … she was unearthly. And then her mother said that now they were in a dry spell but they would be in flood again. They were terrifying. You know what they say about their ancestry—that they come from a water goddess. If you had been there, you would have thought the water goddess about to rise from the Thames itself.”

  “Yes, yes,” I say without sympathy. “I see they were frightening, but did she say anything else? Did the queen speak of her brothers who have got away? Did she say where they are or what they are doing? The two of them have the power to raise half the kingdom.”

  He shakes his head. “She said nothing. But she heard it well enough when I told her that you would help the young princes to escape. She is planning something, I am sure. She was planning it before she realized that Richard is going to take the throne. She will be desperate now.”

  I nod and I gesture to him to leave me. I make my way at once to our little chapel to get to my knees. I need the peace of God to clear my mind of this whirl of thoughts. That Elizabeth the princess should know her destiny only confirms my belief that she will be Henry’s wife, and he will take the throne. That her mother should say, “It’s not Richard” fills me with deep unease.

  What can she mean: “It’s not Richard”? Is it not Richard her son, in the Tower? Or does she merely mean that it is not Richard, Duke of Gloucester, whom she fears? I can’t tell, and that fool should have asked her. But I suspected something like this. I have been fretting about something like this. I never thought that she would be such a fool as to give up a second son to an enemy who had kidnapped the first. I have known her for ten years; she is not a woman who does not foresee the worst. The Privy Council trooped down to meet her and lined themselves up to tell her that she had no choice, and then marched away with the little Prince Richard holding the archbishop’s hand. But I always thought that she would have prepared for them. I always knew she would do something to get her last free son away to safety. Any woman would do it, and she is determined and clever, and she dotes on her boys. She would never send them into danger. She would never let her youngest son go where her oldest was in danger.

  But what has she done? If the second prince in the Tower is not Richard, then who is it? Has she sent some pauper in disguise? Some minor ward who would do anything for her? And worse, if Prince Richard, the legitimate heir to the throne of England, is not in the Tower of London under lock and key, then where is he? If she has hidden him somewhere, then he is heir to the York throne, another obstacle to my son’s succession. Is she telling me this? Or pretending? Is she tormenting me? Triumphing over me still by telling my thick-witted messenger a riddle to pass on to me? Did she speak her son’s name on purpose to laugh at me with her foresight? Or did she just slip up? Is she telling me of Richard, to warn me that whatever happens to Edward, she still has an heir?

  I wait for hours on my knees for Our Lady the Queen of Heaven to tell me what this most earthly queen is doing: playing her games, weaving her spells, once again, as ever, before me, triumphing over me even in this moment of her great terror and defeat. But Our Lady does not come to me. Joan does not advise me. God is silent to me, his handmaiden. None of them tell me what Elizabeth Woodville is doing in the hidden sanctuary beneath the abbey, and without their help I know she will come out again to triumph.

  No more than a day after this, my lady-in-waiting comes in with red eyes and says that Anthony, Earl Rivers, the dazzling, chivalrous brother of the queen, is dead, executed on Richard’s order in Pontefract Castle. She brings the news to me the moment it reaches London. Nobody could have heard more quickly; the official report reaches the Privy Council only an hour after I hear it. It seems that the queen and her daughter told Dr. Lewis on the very night that it happened, perhaps at the very moment of his death. And how can that be?

  In the morning, my husband meets me at breakfast. “I am summoned to attend a Privy Council meeting,” he says, showing me a warrant with the seal of the boar. Neither of us looks directly at it; the letter sits on the table between us like a dagger. “And you are to go to the royal wardrobe and prepare the coronation robes for Anne Neville. The robes for a queen. You are to be lady-in-waiting to Queen Anne. We are released from house arrest without a word. And we are in royal service again, without a word spoken.”

  I nod. I will undertake the work for King Richard that I was doing for King Edward. We will wear the same gowns, but the gown of gold and ermine that was ready for the Dowager Queen Elizabeth will be cut down for her sister-in-law, the new Queen Anne.

  My ladies-in-waiting and the Stanley men-at-arms are seated all around us, so my husband and I exchange no more than a small glance of triumph at our own survival. This will be the third royal house that I have served, and each time I have bowed low and thought of my own son as heir. “I shall be honored to serve Queen Anne,” I say smoothly.

  It is my destiny to smile at the changes of the world and await my reward in heaven, but even I balk for a moment at the doorway of the queen’s chambers when I see little Anne Neville—daughter of the Kingmaker Warwick, born well enough, royally married, widowed to nothing, and now risen again to the throne of England itself—standing by the great fireplace in her traveling cloak surrounded by her ladies from the north, like a gypsy encampment from the moors. They see me in the doorway; the steward of her chamber bellows, “Lady Margaret Stanley!” in an accent no one living south of Hull could understand, the women shuffle aside, so that I can walk towards her, and I step in and go down to my knees, abase myself to yet another usurper, and hold up my hands in the gesture of fealty.

  “Your Grace,” I say to the woman who was picked up from disgrace and poverty by the young Duke Richard because he knew he could claim the Warwick fortune with this most unlucky bride. Now she is to be Queen of England, and I have to kneel to her. “I am so glad to offer you my service.”

  She smiles at me. She is pale as marble, her lips pale, her eyelids the palest pink. Certainly, she cannot be well; she puts her hand on the stone of the fireplace and leans against it as if she is weary.

  “I thank you for your service, and I would have you serve as my senior lady-in-waiting,” she says quietly, a little catch in he
r breath. “You will carry my train at my coronation.”

  I bow my head to hide my flare of joy. This is to honor my family; this is to have the House of Lancaster one pace from the crown as it is held over an anointed head. I will be just one step behind the Queen of England and—God knows—ready to step up. “I am glad to accept,” I say.

  “My husband speaks so highly of the wisdom of Lord Thomas Stanley,” she says.

  So highly that the pikemen nearly sliced off his head and held him for a week under house arrest. “We have long been in service to the House of York,” I remark. “You and the Duke have been sadly missed while you were away from court in the north. I am glad to welcome you home to your capital city.”

  She makes a little gesture with her hand and her page brings a stool over so that she can sit before the fire. I stand before her and I watch her shoulders shake as she coughs. This is a woman who is not going to make old bones. This is a woman who is not going to conceive a quiver of heirs for York, not like the fecund Queen Elizabeth. This is a woman who is sick and weak. I doubt she will last five more years. And then? And then?

  “And your son, Prince Edward?” I inquire demurely. “Is he coming to the coronation? Should I order your chamberlain to prepare rooms for him?”

  She shakes her head. “His Grace is not well,” she says. “He will stay in the north for now.”

  Not well? I think to myself. Not well enough to come to the coronation of his own father, is not well at all. He was always a pale boy with his mother’s slight build, seldom seen around court; they always kept him away from London for fear of the plague. Has he, perhaps, not outgrown childhood weakness but is going from a frail boy to a sickly adult? Has Duke Richard failed to get himself an heir who will outlive him? Is there now only one strong heartbeat between my son and the throne?

  SUNDAY, JULY 6, 1483

  We are where we planned to be, one step from the crown. My husband follows the king, with the mace of the Constable of England in his grasp; I follow the new Queen Anne, holding her train. Behind me comes the Duchess of Suffolk, the Duchess of Norfolk behind her. But it is I who walk in the footsteps of the queen, and when she is anointed with holy oil, I am close enough to smell the heady musk of it.

  They have spared no cost for this ceremony. The king is dressed in a gown of purple velvet, a canopy of cloth of gold carried over his head. My kinsman Henry Stafford, the young Duke of Buckingham, is in blue with a cartwheel emblem of solid gold thread dazzling on his cloak. He holds the king’s train in one hand; in the other he has the staff of the High Steward of England, his reward for supporting and guiding Duke Richard to the throne. The place for his wife, Katherine Woodville, the dowager queen’s sister, is empty. The duchess has not come to celebrate the usurping of her family’s throne. She is not with her treasonous husband. He hates her for her family, for her triumph over him when he was young and she was the king’s sister-in-law. This is just the first of many times that she can expect humiliation in future.

  I walk behind the queen all the day. When she goes in to dine in Westminster Hall, I sit at the table for the ladies as she is served the magnificent dinner. The king’s champion himself bows to our table and to me, after he has bellowed his challenge for King Richard. It is a dinner as grand and as self-important as any one of the great occasions of Edward’s court. The dining and the dancing go on till midnight, and after. Stanley and I leave in the early hours of the morning, and our barge takes us upriver to our house. As I sit myself in the rear of the barge, my furs gathered around me, I see a small light shining low from a waterside window beneath the dark bulk of the abbey. I know for a certainty it is Queen Elizabeth, queen no more, named as a whore and not even recognized as a widow, her candle shining over the dark waters, listening to her enemy’s triumph. I think of her watching me go by in my beautiful barge, rowing away from the king’s court, as years ago she watched me row my son towards the king’s court. She was in sanctuary then too.

  I should revel in my triumph over her, but I shiver and gather my furs around me as if the little pinprick of light was a baleful eye glaring at me over the dark waters. She came out of sanctuary once before to victory. I know she will be planning Richard’s downfall; she will be plotting to come out to victory again.

  To my brother-in-law Jasper Tudor, and Henry Tudor my son,

  I greet you well. I have much news. Richard is crowned King of England, and his wife is Queen Anne. We are in high favor and trust. The former Queen Elizabeth has called on her affinity, and they are to attack the Tower of London and free the princes as soon as the new royal couple set out on progress, immediately after the coronation. I have promised our support, and Queen Elizabeth trusts me with the secret plans.

  Start to recruit your men. If the queen gets her boys out of the Tower, she will raise her troops and march on Richard. When either she or Richard win, the victor must turn to find you landed in force, Lancaster rising, and a second battle for him or her to fight against your fresh troops.

  I think our time is coming; I think our time is now.

  Margaret Stanley

  The same day that I send my letter to my son I receive a long letter, delivered in secret, from my old friend Bishop John Morton, released from the Tower into the care of the Duke of Buckingham, at his house at Brecknock.

  My dear daughter in Christ,

  I have been wrestling with the conscience of the young duke, who has me in his charge as his prisoner; but finds he is captured by me, since I have turned him from his friendship with Richard, now called king. The young duke is struggling with his conscience that he raised Richard to the throne on poor grounds, and that he would have served his God, his country, and himself better if he had either supported the York princes and himself become their protector, or claimed the throne for himself.

  He is now ready to turn against Richard and will join a rebellion against him. As evidence of his good faith, you can call on his men to attack the Tower and get the princes out. I will send you his password under my seal. I think you should meet him and see what alliance you can make in these troubled times. He will be traveling to Brecon after leaving Richard at Worcester, and I have promised him that you will meet him as if by accident on the highway.

  I remain your friend,

  John Morton, Bishop of Ely

  I look up to see one of my ladies-in-waiting looking at me. “Are you all right, my lady?” she asks. “You have gone very pale, and now you are flushed.”

  “No, I don’t feel well at all,” I say. “Fetch Dr. Lewis for me.”

  My husband comes to find me in my chapel the night after the coronation. “I am about to select the men who will join the queen’s men in their attack on the Tower, before I leave London with the royal progress,” he says, dropping without ceremony into a seat, giving a cursory nod to the altar where a single candle is burning against the dark, and crossing himself without any show of respect. “They are drawing their armor and their weapons from the armory right now. I have to know your will.”

  “My will?” I ask. I don’t rise to my feet but turn my head to look at him, my hands still clasped in prayer. “My will is always God’s will.”

  “If my men break down the door to the Tower, as I plan they should, if they are first in, as I will order them to be, if they open the princes’ door and find them alone but for a couple of attendants, is it your will—or indeed God’s will—that they catch them up like lost lambs and return them to their mother? Or are they to slice off their little heads then and there, and slaughter the servants and then blame it all on them?”

  I stare at him. I had not thought he would ever be so blunt. “These are your orders to your men.” I am playing for time. “I can’t order your men. You must do so. And anyway, someone else might get in before them and do it first.”

  “This is your plan to get your son on the throne,” he replies tightly. “If the princes are dead, then two rival claimants are gone, and your son is two steps closer. If t
hey rejoin their mother, then she will be able to turn out all the south of England in her defense. Men will fight for her heirs that would stay home if they were dead. There is no point fighting for Elizabeth Woodville—but it is a glorious cause for the young King Edward and his brother Prince Richard. Those two boys make her twice as strong against Richard—twice as strong against Henry.”

  “Obviously the York princes cannot be allowed to claim the throne.”

  “Evidently,” my husband replies. “But do you want to stop them breathing as well?”

  I find my praying hands are gripping each other. “God’s will,” I whisper, wishing I could feel the certainty that Joan knew when she rode out to kill or be killed, when she knew that God’s will was a hard and bloody road. But Joan did not ride against little boys, innocent boys. Joan never sent killing men into a nursery.

  My husband rises from his seat. “I must go to inspect the muster. What is your wish? I have to order the captains. I can’t tell them to wait until God has made up His mind.”

  I rise too. “The little one is only nine years old.”

  He nods. “But he is a prince. War is hard, my lady. What are your commands?”

  “This is a most grave, a most grave adventure,” I whisper. I step towards him and put my hand on his arm, as if the warmth of his body through his elegantly slashed jacket, could comfort me. “To order the death of two boys, two boys aged only nine and twelve, and them Princes of the Blood … Two innocent boys …”

  He smiles his wolfish smile. “Oh, say the word and we shall save them from their wicked uncle and their imprisonment and rescue their mother too. Do you want to see the royal family of York restored with their Prince Edward on the throne as king? For perhaps we can achieve this tonight. Is that your will? Are we to put Prince Edward on the throne? Are we on an errand of mercy?”

  I am wringing my hands. “Of course not!”