The Queen of Last Hopes (11 page)

“God forbid. But how can we act?”

“I by bringing the lords together under King Henry—I can do it, for he trusts me, however ill I might have repaid that trust in the past—and you simply by supporting me in front of Henry.”

“Against whom, my lord?”

“You’re not the least bit slow, your grace. The Duke of York. I firmly believe he will not remain in Ireland for long. He is free to appoint a deputy to carry out his duties there, remember, and if I were him I would find this too good an opportunity to miss. With Suffolk dead and England still nervous after Cade, it’s a situation ripe for exploitation, especially since he hasn’t been here or in France and can’t be blamed for any of what’s happened. Though I’m not entirely sure some of the blame can’t attach to him. There have been rumors that he has been behind some of the unrest here.”

“I have heard such talk. Do you think there is substance to it?”

“I wouldn’t discount it. Cade, or whatever he called himself on any given day, dropped his name often enough, and it’s hard to imagine there wasn’t someone encouraging him to do so.”

“My lord, do you think York could have been behind Suffolk’s death?” I asked suddenly.

“Him or his followers; it wouldn’t surprise me. There wasn’t anything spontaneous about that murder. Those men were waiting for the duke, and they no doubt had their orders what to do with him when they found him.”

“And none of those seamen who were on Suffolk’s ship did anything to resist the
Nicholas of the Tower
’s men. As if it had been prearranged.”

“Indeed.”

I stretched forth my hand to Somerset. “My lord, we have an alliance.”

“I shall be true to it, your grace.”

Somerset visibly relaxed, and so did I. “Now that we have formed an alliance, shall I soon have the pleasure of seeing your wife and children?”

My new ally grinned. “As a matter of fact, your grace, they are on the grounds here. Might they join us?” I assented, and Somerset nodded to his servant.

In a few moments, the Duchess of Somerset, Eleanor Beauchamp, and the couple’s children stood before me as the duke beamed at them; whatever Somerset might be faulted for, it was not for a lack of affection for his eight offspring. Not all of the five daughters were there; some had married and were living elsewhere. But all three boys were present: Henry, age fourteen, Edmund, age twelve, and little John, age four. There is not much that makes me cry now, but I can still weep to think of the three brothers as they knelt in front of me that day, their faces closely resembling their father’s and almost identical to each other except for the gradations of age. I had seen when they entered the room that lively as their young faces were, the expressions of the older two boys were guarded, and the two of them stuck close together as if expecting a challenge, even in my own chamber. I wondered how much of the talk about their father they had heard, and I decided after consideration that they must have heard a great deal of it.

They were forward lads nonetheless, once I bade them rise and engaged them in conversation, and I found that I was enjoying myself for the first time since Suffolk had been sent off on his fatal journey. Because the day was fine, I proposed that we go riding. As the boys trotted on a little ahead of their parents and me, I asked, “Are your older sons to be serving in someone’s household now that they are back in England?”

“Henry is to be one of the king’s squires, but we have not placed Edmund yet.” The duchess gave an almost imperceptible sigh, and I suspected that she was thinking that no noble family might want a Beaufort boy in its household after Somerset’s disgrace.

“Then let Edmund serve as one of my pages,” I said hastily. “I have room for him”—I hardly needed him, in fact, as my household was rather bloated to begin with—“and he seems a bright lad.”

The Somersets smiled their assent, and so Edmund joined my household.

***

Somerset had been right about the Duke of York, for just a few weeks later, he had landed at Beaumaris in Wales. Evading Henry’s men, he had made his way to London and demanded an audience with the king.

“My, he was a study in humility,” the Duke of Somerset told me afterward in my chamber at Westminster. I had decided that York’s coming would be an ill time to be tucked away at Greenwich. “He’d already sent King Henry a statement protesting his loyalty, and a second statement complaining of his hostile reception at Beaumaris. I’m not sure how else he expected to be greeted, considering that he hadn’t sent the king a word of warning that he was coming here. And considering that he’s got hundreds of men here with him in London, he surely can’t wonder why the king might have his suspicions. But he put on a fine show of having nothing but the best intentions. Said that he always had been and always would be King Henry’s true liegeman and servant and that he was grieved beyond measure that the king could think him otherwise.”

“What did King Henry say to this?”

“Oh, he was most gracious; he always is. But I’ve seen him rather more cordial. I believe he has his guard up.”

“Henry is getting more wary,” I reflected. “Or at least less trusting.”

“That perhaps is a good thing, your grace.”

“Yes,” I said, not without some regret. “It probably is.”

***

For the next year and many months after that, I watched from a queenly distance as Somerset and York struggled for control of the kingdom—limiting my own role to the occasional well-chosen word to Henry in favor of Somerset. York denounced Somerset and even managed to get him imprisoned in the Tower for a time—ostensibly for Somerset’s own protection—but Somerset proved a more formidable foe than York anticipated. By March of 1452, York, the arrogant fool, took it upon himself to prepare a petition denouncing Somerset for his losses in France. Henry politely agreed to receive it—and took York into custody when he arrived in the king’s presence. As I was at Greenwich at the time, I missed the sight of the proud Duke of York having to swear at St. Paul’s Cathedral an oath of allegiance to Henry. York skulked off to his castle at Ludlow, not to be seen again at court for many months.

It was a fine year, 1452. John Talbot, the brave old Earl of Shrewsbury, recovered Bordeaux for the English. Henry’s younger half brothers, Edmund and Jasper Tudor, were made the Earl of Richmond and the Earl of Pembroke. There was a liveliness at court that had not been there before, and a hope that what had been lost in France might yet be regained. Even I shared it.

The next year, 1453, began sadly for me: in late February, my mother died. Yet even as I wept for her whom I would never see again and put on blue mourning, I had a secret that brought me hope. For one day in early March, I summoned Richard Tunstall, one of Henry’s esquires of the body, to my chamber at Greenwich. He looked back, frowning slightly, at my departing physician. “Your grace is well?”

“Quite. I want you to take a message to the king.”

“Yes, your grace.”

“Tell him—” I paused as my ladies looked on, smiling. After eight years, I wanted to savor the words I was about to say. “Tell him that my physician has seen me today, and has confirmed what I have suspected for several weeks. I am with child.”

My son could have been conceived on several occasions that January, I suppose, but I like to think that it happened on January 5, the evening that Edward Tudor and Jasper Tudor were knighted at the Tower. There was a fine feast that night and a disguising, and much wine, and I was dismayed to see during the dancing afterward that fourteen-year-old Edmund Beaufort had overindulged. “Go back to Greenwich immediately,” I ordered. “What if the king sees you like this?”

“I’ll take him,” offered Edmund’s older brother Henry, the Earl of Dorset. Hal, as we all called him, was a frequent visitor to my household, as he and Edmund were close and Hal’s own duties in the king’s household were not particularly onerous. Not quite seventeen, he had inherited more than a generous portion of the Beaufort good looks, and his visits were always received with marked enthusiasm on the part of my youngest ladies. Hal had been enjoying the fruits of the grape himself, but his balance was considerably better than his younger brother’s. He gave me a winning smile of apology for his brother’s ill behavior. “Come along, Edmund.”

“I thought Frenshwomen liked wine,” protested Edmund as Hal hauled him in the direction of the royal barge.

“In moderation,” I said huffily. “For heaven’s sake, Hal, don’t let him fall off the barge.”

It was much later that evening when Henry and I rode by barge to Greenwich ourselves. As the hour was so late, my bed had already been turned down for me without any of the ceremony that usually accompanied it. As Katherine Peniston dressed me in my nightshift, I heard a rustle from the direction of the bed. I froze. “What on earth is that?”

Then a mouse answered my question by running up my long nightshift. With a single, eloquent shriek, I jumped upon the stool and began beating on the skirt of my garment. Then I saw that the creatures were all over the place—gamboling in the bedclothes, scurrying along the bed curtains, frisking among the drapes. “Take them away! Call my pages! Call the rat-catcher!
Do
something!”

“Leave the room, your grace,” Katherine said reasonably. Was it my imagination, or was she trying very hard not to laugh?

“I will not leave my bedchamber to those creatures. And who knows where else they are lurking?” A mouse scooted across the floor and into my slipper. “More pages! Now!”

A handful of pages rushed in, predictably headed by William Vaux, who never missed an opportunity to be in Katherine’s presence. “You know, my lady,” Katherine observed as the boys slowly began rounding up the rodents, “I believe that they have been put inside your chamber deliberately.”

Nearby, William, holding a mouse by the tail in each hand, snorted. Still on my stool, I turned to stare at him. “Do you know something about this, boy?”

“Your grace…”

“Answer me!”

“Well…I think Edmund Beaufort might know something more about it.”

“Call the king and the Beaufort brothers here immediately.”

In no time at all, my husband and the Beaufort brothers appeared, Edmund leaning on Hal. Henry blinked at me as I stared down at him from the vantage point of my stool. “Marguerite?”

“There are mice in this room.”

“Sisteen of them,” offered Edmund Beaufort proudly. “Would have been seventeen. Cat,” he added gloomily.

“Henry, what are you going to do about this?”

“My dear?”

“That—creature—has infested my chamber with mice! And he knows I hate them! It is one of the first things my pages are told when they enter my household.”

“It is partly my fault,” admitted Hal. He had been gazing, I suddenly realized, in the direction of my nightshift, which was not one of my thicker ones. With a scowl, I crossed my arms over my bosom. “Edmund just wanted to play a prank, and I—er—helped a little.”

“Helped
a little
? You got all of the mith.”

“Well, that’s gratitude for you,” snapped Hal. He pushed Edmund to his knees, a task that required very little effort given his brother’s present difficulty in remaining upright, and followed suit himself. “Your grace, please forgive us. We had too much wine, and knowing of your—susceptibilities—we could not resist temptation.”

“Do forgive them, my dear,” said Henry. Was he hiding laughter as well? “It was nothing but a silly prank.”

“But I can’t sleep in this chamber! It may still be infested!”

“There are two I can’t account for,” reported William Vaux.

“You see? I cannot sleep here!”

“Then you shall sleep in my chamber tonight,” Henry said. He lifted me from my stool, his hand brushing my breast as he did. “Come, my dear. Forgive Hal and Edmund, and let us go to bed. It is very late.”

“Oh, very well,” I said grudgingly. “But it had better be free of mice in the morning.”

“See to it,” Henry ordered Hal. Then he led me to his chamber, where he dismissed his attendants before we even were completely inside the room. He stepped close to me and laid his hand on my cheek. “You looked very beautiful in your nightshift back there, Marguerite.”

“There are two mice unaccounted for! What if one is hiding in its folds?”

Henry reached for the fastenings of my nightshift and began to untie them. “Then I will check,” he assured me. “Very carefully.”

And so there you have it. I had prayed, fasted, bargained with God—done everything in my power to be granted a child. All it took in the end was, it turned out, the earthly intervention of the Beaufort brothers.

***

Henry was at Reading, where Parliament was being held, when I sent him word of my pregnancy. I received a loving note from him, short and joyous, and early in April, when Parliament had adjourned for Easter, I received Henry himself. He kissed me, then tenderly touched my belly. “There’s nothing much to feel yet,” I said apologetically. “I am just a little plumper there, that is all.”

“God be thanked,” whispered Henry, taking me into his arms. We stood there embracing for a long, long time, both of us weeping for joy.

Though I probably owed my pregnancy to the Beaufort boys’ mischief, I could not leave out God entirely. Already I had given a rich New Year’s gift to the shrine of Our Lady of Walsingham, in what had become my increasingly desperate hope that it would help influence God to send me a child. Now that my prayers had been answered, it was time to go to Walsingham in person. I traveled there leisurely in mid-April, in the company of Henry’s half brother Jasper. “So what do you think of your new ward?” I asked as we plodded along. Jasper and Edmund had been made the guardians of ten-year-old Margaret Beaufort, the daughter of the Duke of Somerset’s late brother, John. Poor Suffolk had married little Margaret to his son at around the time of his imprisonment, but the unconsummated marriage had been dissolved just last month. I involuntarily sighed, thinking of this posthumous blow to my late friend’s ambitions. “She seems to be an intelligent child.”

Jasper laughed. “She was certainly pleased to be the center of attention at court!” So that the child could meet her prospective guardians, Henry had summoned her to court in February, generously presenting her with new gowns. “Edmund will marry her, I suppose.”

“And you? Shall you take a wife? A man with a title needs a wife.”

“I am content with my single state as of now. But you do like match-making, don’t you, your grace?”

“I like to see people married, especially now that I am in such a happy state.” I smiled and blushed. “I have waited so long for this, Jasper. I don’t even care whether I bear a boy or a girl; I just pray that I can carry my babe to term and that the little one is healthy. I do not think I could bear it if—”

Jasper patted my hand as I started to give way to my emotions. “Your grace must not think of that. You are young and healthy and”—he bit his lip—“if the very worst were to happen, you are young enough to conceive again. But we must hope that this is the first of many children to come.”

A mile from Walsingham at the Chapel of St. Catherine of Alexandria, I removed my shoes and walked barefoot the rest of the way to the shrine, as was the custom for its pilgrims. The well-trod path was smooth and easy to walk; had it been covered in sharp stones, I would not have cared even if they had torn at my tender feet. When I at last knelt before the holy shrine, I spent a good hour there, first in saying the assigned prayers, then in adding the fervent prayers that I had composed on my own. They all amounted to the same plea.
I have failed to bring Henry peace. Let me succeed in bringing him a child. A healthy babe who will rule this country in peace and prosperity. Grant me that one petition, and I will ask for nothing more.

***

As I made my way back to London, I was accosted by a servant wearing a livery that I did not find entirely agreeable: that of the Duke of York. Cecily, Duchess of York, was staying at her husband’s manor at Hitchin in Hertfordshire. Would I be gracious enough to accept her hospitality? Given that Cecily had waited even longer than I to bear her first child—ten years—and now had a brood of healthy ones, I thought that this might be a good sign. I readily consented.

Tall, blond, and slender, Cecily was so unlike her shortish, dark, and squarish husband that I wondered if the couple’s elders had not mated this pair of opposites as some sort of experiment. Cecily had been a great beauty in her youth, I had been told by the Duchess of Suffolk and others, and she still carried herself as if she were used to being admired. “I hope your health is good, my lady?” I said after we exchanged a few formalities. I knew that she had given birth to a son, Richard, the previous October.

“My son is thriving, but I myself have been slow to recover.”

“Was it a difficult birth?”

Cecily nodded. “Slightly, but I believe that the primary cause of my indisposition has been my anxiety about my husband, your grace. He is a loyal subject. It distresses him so to be thought otherwise.”

“His actions last year were disturbing to Henry, of course,” I said blandly, noticing that Cecily was eyeing my belly. “He has tired of being told that he should imprison the councillors who have been loyal to him.”

“My lord only wants the best for the kingdom, your grace.”

And for himself
, I thought. “Henry is a man who readily forgives, but he has become more cautious,” I said. “I am certain, however, that when he feels quite assured that the Duke of York can work with him, and not against his councillors, he will welcome him at court.”

Cecily sighed, and I found myself feeling sorry for her. It could not be easy living with a disgruntled duke. “I shall certainly encourage good relations between your lord and the king,” I said. “I know that is what Henry most desires. And”—I could not resist a little thrust, given that the Duke of York was the heir to the throne—“I have hopes that the king will have more cause than ever to be in charity with all of the world. You see, I went to Walsingham to give thanks for my pregnancy.”

To her credit, Cecily smiled and curtseyed. “I am thankful beyond words that the Lord has at last blessed your grace with a child. But you cannot be far along?”

“I expect to be brought to childbed in October.”

Cecily said with some hesitation. “Without being presumptuous, your grace, I know indeed the pain this must have caused you. For nearly ten years of marriage, I never got with child, though I was of the age to conceive when I married. I had despaired; I had tried everything I knew.” She shook her head. “I should not say this, but I even consulted a wise woman and obtained a love potion. I was that desperate.”

“I would have obtained one myself if I had not feared someone finding out,” I confessed. “It has been horrid. The rumors! People have said that Henry’s confessor told him he should not lie with me, that Henry had taken a vow of chastity, that he spurned me after Maine was ceded, that I had been told not to lie with him until King Charles regained France, all sorts of nonsense!”

“Queen or no, someone will always talk scandal about a woman who fails to conceive a child immediately. It is the way of the world.”

“No doubt if I had conceived straight away there would have been talk that I had anticipated my wedding day,” I fumed before I brightened. What did that hurtful gossip matter now? “But now that I have conceived, I hope that I shall follow your example and have many more babes.”

“It can be frightening the first time one is with child. Do ask me anything you wish to ask about child bearing. Has your grace began to look for a midwife?”

We engaged in similar conversation throughout the evening until the next morning, when I left to resume my journey. It was a pity, I was to think later. I had truly liked the Duchess of York. In a kinder world, we might have become friends.

***

Like any woman great with child, my greatest fear in those early months of pregnancy was that I would miscarry. But day by day my belly grew larger, and at the expected time my baby began to kick within my womb—a sensation that I could not feel too often. Henry was as transfixed as I and would spend up to an hour lying beside me, feeling my child move.

“I am sorry this business up north must take me away from you,” he said in mid-July. There, the Nevilles and the Percies were feuding, for reasons that were obscure to me then and that I recollect only vaguely now. “But it is the sort of problem that must be contained before more families are swept up in it. The best way of doing so is for me to ride to the North myself.’