Succession (26 page)

Margaret did not look at Jasper when he delivered this news, she didn’t want to. When she looked at him she could only remember the pressure of his fingers on her wrist.

So she looked instead out of the window, where the sky was a blank grey yet the fields were filled with a damp yellow light. Her heart began beating faster, as though it might burst out of the cage of her chest.

‘It is not a large establishment,’ Jasper said, ‘there are only thirty servants. You can take your own attendants also, of course.’ He paused. ‘I hope you will still come and stay with me at Pembroke,’ he said, and Margaret knew he was thinking about his nephew. But she would be mistress, finally, of her own household. She would not have to live with Jasper. And she would leave Wales. She never wanted to come back.

‘Perhaps you will visit us,’ she said to Jasper, and felt rather than saw the expression of anxiety deepen in his eyes. But this was the first time she had real reason to be grateful to her mother, and to God, who had finally answered her prayers.

In the next few days she made up her mind.

She sent for Betsy and received her in her room, waiting with a peculiar tension between her shoulders, a feeling that was almost, though not quite, fear.

Betsy hurried in and would have embraced Margaret immediately had she not stood up, moving swiftly away from her nurse.

‘I am to have my own household,’ she said.

‘I know it!’ said Betsy. ‘Oh, my precious, it’s a grand day for us.’ And she made a move again as though she would kiss her, and Margaret drew back.

Betsy hardly paused.

‘You will soon be as fine as your cousin – finer even – who knows when she will marry again – and you, my sweet pea, will have more heirs –’

‘That is not what the doctor said,’ Margaret interrupted, and her nurse faltered at the look on her face. She had not known that Margaret had heard what the doctor had said. Yet Betsy knew – Margaret could tell from her nurse’s reaction that she knew. Jasper had told her, no doubt.

But Betsy rallied. She told Margaret that she should pay no heed to what the doctor had said, none at all – did she not know someone herself who had lost her entire womb due to a curse, but then she had prayed at the tomb of St Margaret and the next year she had given birth to triplets.

Margaret nodded. ‘I will not be giving birth to triplets,’ she said. ‘We will have to hope that my husband does not mind too much having no heirs of his own.’ Her smile was bright and cold. Her nurse looked as though she would speak, then suddenly sat down on the bed.

‘Oh, my lady,’ she said, pressing one hand to her breast, ‘you can’t blame poor Betsy for wanting the best for her little Peg.’

There were tears in her eyes. Margaret turned away from her, but her heart was beating faster. ‘You did not consult me,’ she said. ‘You went behind my back …’

‘Oh, now what would you have said if I had consulted you?’ cried Betsy. ‘You were all for going into a convent. But Lord Jasper – he had other plans.’

‘And you helped him.’

Betsy wrung her hands. ‘What was I supposed to do? Neither of us knew what to do for the best, you being so ill, and surrounded by your enemies; your husband dead, your babe so new and feeble – he had to find a new husband for you. Either that or marry you himself.’

Margaret looked at her in horror.

‘Or let your enemies get their hands on you. The Duke of York – he could have had you for one of his own sons, or you could have been given straight to Lord Herbert – and then what? Would you have liked that any better?’

Margaret turned away again. All her life she had been persuaded by Betsy’s arguments.

‘So, you see, he had to act, lambkin, in your own best interests – and you were so sad and ill – he had to ask your old Betsy.’

Margaret shook her head.
I will not listen
, she told herself. And yet she did.

‘And it has all turned out for the best,’ Betsy said pleadingly, ‘hasn’t it, my chicken? You will have a new husband who loves you and loves your son, and we will all move together to a fine new house –’

‘Not all of us,’ Margaret said distantly.

‘Yes, all of us together. And I will help to look after your babe just as I looked after you when you were a tiny scrap.’

‘He has his nurse,’ Margaret said. ‘And I do not need one any more.’

‘Oh,’ Betsy said, ‘you will always need your Betsy.’

Margaret looked at her fully. ‘I am about to be married for the third time,’ she said. ‘I do not need a nurse.’

She could see then, and always, the look on Betsy’s face.

‘You will receive a generous pension,’ she said, and her voice, even to her own ears, sounded uneven. ‘I am sure that my Lord Jasper will take you wherever you wish to go.’

‘But I don’t wish to go anywhere,’ Betsy said, ‘except with you.’

‘You had better make the necessary arrangements.’

‘But, poppet,’ Betsy said, getting up, ‘you mustn’t send me away. What have I done other than take care of you? What have I done that was so wrong?’

Margaret moved her head impatiently, but her nurse appeared to misunderstand her and stepped forward in hope.

‘You can’t do without old Betsy,’ she said. ‘And I can’t do without you. All I want is to live with you and look after your baby, and love you both with all my heart!’

Margaret let out a long breath. ‘I have already told my Lord Jasper that you will be leaving my service. He will help to place you elsewhere if you wish. But if you want to retire he will help you to find a cottage.’ Her voice rose as her nurse made another movement towards her. ‘Our time together is done.’

And at last she saw that Betsy understood.

She expected noisy tears, but Betsy only looked at her with stricken eyes, then dropped a curtsy, but stumbled in the execution of it and almost fell. And Margaret, from long habit, held out her hand, and her nurse steadied herself and rose. She looked at Margaret’s hand in hers, then at her face, and said, ‘Oh, my lady – I hope you find others to love you as I have done – all your life –’ but she couldn’t go on. She left the room, weeping and bowed over like an old, old woman, and Margaret sank down on to the bed.

Treacherously, her body remembered the embrace of her nurse, the warm comfort of it, the stale and spicy smell.

Since infancy the world had come to her through Betsy’s eyes, magical and fearful, but now she was no longer a child. She had a child of her own, and would have her own household; she needed to see the world through her own eyes.

Even then she knew it was not likely that others would love her as Betsy had.

Two days later she set out for Maxstoke, leaving Betsy to make her own arrangements. She did not say goodbye to her nor look back, afraid of seeing another face at the window, watching her as she left.

The night before her wedding she could not stop crying over Edmund, great sobs that threatened to tear her apart. It was incredible to her that he should be dead, that he who had been so vivid, so alive, could be dead and gone. She sat up in bed finally, pressing the heels of her hands to her eyes. When she took them away she would see him. He would be looking at her from the shadows of the room with that half-smile on his face; as though it had been just another of his protracted absences or an elaborate joke.

What, marrying so soon?
he would say.

The sense of unreality deepened as she walked into the church that morning wearing his presence around her like a veil or a shroud. She stood next to her new husband hardly seeing him. The words
she had to say echoed strangely in her mind. This was, after all, the third time she had made her vows. And she was still only fourteen.

She reminded herself that he was a kind man, her new husband. He would not treat her as a child. He would not touch her if she didn’t want to be touched. And she was to have her own household, where she and her husband and her son would live.

But later, at Bourne Castle, she learned, to her great grief and distress, that Jasper had been awarded custody of her son.

Now the government of the realm stood most by the queen and her council.

Brut Chronicle

 

[In 1456] John Helton, an apprentice at court and formerly of Gray’s Inn, was drawn, hanged and quartered for producing bills asserting that Prince Edward was not the queen’s son; however, before his death, he retracted all his statements.

John Benet’s Chronicle

 

It was at the queen’s insistence that the extreme penalty was applied –‘It is treason, is it not?’ – and at her insistence the little prince was made to watch, despite the protests of his nurse.

‘He is so young.’

‘He is young,’ said the queen.

‘Your majesty –’

‘There are those in this country who do not think he should be heir to the throne, that he is not the king’s son. Now they are saying he is not my son either, but a changeling. He will need to know how to deal with such men.’

And so the little prince sat at her side while the apprentice John Helton was drawn on a hurdle towards them, then made to stand on a cart.

The mood of the crowd was by no means certain. It strained and roared like a great beast, some calling out curses, others singing ‘Deo Gracias’, as the cries of this man became less and less human.

Partway through she felt a certain light-headedness, as though the top of her head had lifted and she was spiralling up, outwards
and upwards, towards the grey-white sky. There was a bitter fluid in her throat.

The little prince seemed to be straining forward, though in reality he had not moved. They both remained very still before the eyes of the crowd, as the man was cut down by the executioner, who made several incisions in the spine, then severed the legs at the hips. Finally he held the head aloft, and men came with buckets to wash away the blood.

At last there was nothing left of John Helton but a putrid smell that clung in the air.

Only then did the queen permit herself to hold a scented cloth to her face.

Afterwards the little prince became very excited. His face was flushed and he ran about his rooms, jabbing his tiny sword first at one person then another.

‘
You
shall die – and
you –
and
you
!’

Until his nurse took it from his hand and picked him up to restrain him.

‘I shall put him to bed,’ she said.

She did not look at the queen, but there was reproof in every lineament. And the queen sat back, very pale.

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘He should rest.’

The queen with such as were of her affinity [now] ruled the realm as she liked gathering riches innumerable. The officers of the realm … peeled the poor people and disinherited many heirs and did many wrongs … [and] the queen was defamed and slandered that he that was called prince was not the king’s son but a bastard born of adultery, wherefore she, dreading that he should not succeed his father in the crown of England, allied unto her the knights and squires of Cheshire … and made her son give a livery of swans to all the gentlemen of the county and to many other gentlemen of the land, trusting through her strength to make her son king … and making privy means to some of the lords of England to stir the king that he should resign the crown to her son, but she could not bring that purpose about.

An English Chronicle

 

Early in 1458 a great council met at Westminster, and despite the king’s absence, the council strove for peace between the lords, for there was a great quarrel between the Duke of Somerset and the Earl of Northumberland on one side and the Earls of Warwick and Salisbury on the other. All these lords brought many men with them, the former lodged outside London and the latter inside.

In March the king and queen came to London [where, on the 25th day of March] the king, with great difficulty, engineered an agreement between the lords. Thereafter, as a sign of their amity, the king, queen and all the lords went in procession to St Paul’s … [and this was called the Loveday].

 

John Benet’s Chronicle

 

This same year the Earl of Warwick was at a council in Westminster and all the king’s household gathered them together for to have slain the said earl …

Brut Chronicle