The Queen of Last Hopes (5 page)

“Why?”

“Because your grace’s ability to bear a child stands between Humphrey and the throne, and I fear that the duchess might work her malice against you were she free to do so. And I have told the king precisely that.” He grinned as I looked up at him, touched by his concern for us. “I would not care to have to spend yet another year negotiating a brand-new marriage for him.”

***

The delegation from France returned home in August, the negotiations having produced, besides a vague feeling of good fellowship, a promise that the two kings would meet each other face-to-face. The next month, a man arrived in England who was to be of some importance to me: Richard, Duke of York. He had been serving my husband as his lieutenant in France, and his term of office was soon to expire. I had stayed with him and his family in Rouen before I came to England for my wedding, but between my indisposition at that time and the tendency of all the people I had met back then to jumble together, he had not made much of an impression on me. Now I had the leisure to observe him: a squat, dark-haired man in his middle thirties. His face was a humorless one but not then an unfriendly one, and his rich gown made it clear that he appreciated the fine things in life.

It is strange indeed—almost comical—to remember that York and I didn’t mind each other at all in those days when he first returned to England. “Your grace,” he said soon after his arrival back at court, “I would crave your assistance in a matter.”

I perked up, proud to be applied to in this manner. “I shall be happy to aid you if I can.”

“It is my wish to marry my son Edward to one of King Charles’s daughters, the Lady Madelaine. I have written to the king, and have been given some encouragement, but if perhaps your grace might put in a word—”

“I shall be happy to. I rather enjoy thinking of prospective matches for people,” I confessed. “They will be a perfect little couple, too. Edward is three, my lord?”

“Yes, my lady.”

“And Madelaine is two. She is a pretty little thing, I saw her at Tours. How sweet! I will write to him tonight.”

“And my oldest daughter, Anne, is to marry Henry Holland.”

“Oh,” I said, a little dubiously. I had met Henry Holland, the heir to the dukedom of Exeter. Holland was my own age but already had a reputation for being somewhat combustible. I wondered if he was the best husband for a six-year-old girl.

“He’s a high-tempered and proud lad, but time will mellow him, and by the time my Anne’s old enough to live with him, he’ll have sown his oats, I daresay,” the duke said, reading my thoughts.

“She is at Rouen, I suppose?”

“Yes, my wife and children are still there. I hope to return soon and take up my lieutenancy where I left off,” he said with a winning smile.

I was silent, not knowing Henry’s intentions on this matter, and guessing too that it depended on the negotiations with France. “I am sure the king will make the best use of your talents, wherever they might be employed,” I said gamely.

***

It was not long after that when I began receiving more letters from my uncle on the subject of Maine. Even my father, having sent me a vivid account of a tournament in which he had taken part, interrupted his narrative long enough to wistfully allude that it would be a fine thing to once again hold one in Maine.

I could no longer put the matter off, so I thought at length of how to broach the subject. Ideally, it would be the sort of favor I would ask if I were with child, but to my great disappointment, I showed no signs of that whatsoever. I considered asking Henry after we had made love, but I remembered the crude words Bertrand de Beauvau had said about taking advice from Agnes Sorel, and discarded the idea as being meretricious. Asking Henry after he had attended mass, an event that always left him at peace with the world, seemed nearly sacrilegious.

So at last, one night as we supped privily together as we sometimes did, I simply said, “Henry, I must ask you for something. Not for clothes or jewels or more income,” I added hastily. “You have been very generous.” (He had been too generous, I realize now, but what lady at fifteen, not a saint, would refuse such gifts?)

“Then what, Marguerite?”

“Something that is very dear to my family, and to our uncle Charles. Something that would help bring about the peace I was sent here for. Maine.”

Henry looked at me. I looked down at my lap, hoping I had not blundered.

“I know, of course, that Charles wishes for the return of Maine,” he said after a while. “Do you think it would secure peace?”

“I do.” Though no one might believe it now, I meant what I said.

Henry smiled and kissed me. “Then I will give it firm consideration, my daisy.”

After all the hours I had spent agonizing over the matter, it was just that simple.

***

In December, Henry wrote the letter that Charles most wanted to see: he agreed to cede Maine out of love and affection for that king, and also “favoring our most dear and well-beloved companion the queen, who has requested us to do this many times.” Some weeks later, a letter from my uncle Charles arrived for me that was the written equivalent of another chuck on the chin. I was his little messenger of peace, he said.

I blushed to see myself described so flatteringly by Henry and Charles, and when I went to bed I happily dreamed of my husband and my uncle and my father all meeting in amity and ruling in harmony for the rest of their lives.

If there was a sillier girl abed that night in England, I do not know who she was.

It was strange, I thought as I headed toward King Henry’s inner chamber in response to his summons to discuss the state of affairs in France, how so much of my life had been determined by a battle that took place thirty years before, a battle that I had never seen. I at least remembered well the day I had first heard of it: it was the autumn of 1415, and I was newly turned nineteen and back in England, just beginning to recover from my illness at Harfleur, when my mother came to my bedside and sat beside me.

“Will,” she said quietly, “I have more bad news from France.”

Just six weeks before, my father had died of dysentery at Harfleur, leaving my brother as the next Earl of Suffolk. I looked at my mother and saw that she had been crying. “Michael?”

“Yes. He was killed in battle.”

Michael, the eldest of us five brothers, was my mother’s favorite, naturally enough, I suppose. I had loved him too, and, of course, in my position as the second son, envied him as well. I wondered if my mother wished I had died in his place instead of being sent home to recuperate, but it was a question I did not dare ask. “I’m sorry, Mother.” I was too weak to manage anything more eloquent, so I grasped my mother’s hand, which seemed to be enough for her. We had been sitting together for a long time with our grief when I thought to ask, “The battle? Did we—?”

My mother smiled sadly. “It was a great victory for England, perhaps the most remarkable since Crécy,” she said, smoothing some hair off my forehead with a tenderness that made me decide she hadn’t wanted me to die in Michael’s place after all. “It was at a place called Agincourt.”

Maybe if I had been at Agincourt that St. Crispin’s Day of 1415, instead of sick in England, I would have been a different man—certainly if my brother had not died in battle, and I had not inherited his earldom, my life would have been much different. Maybe if I had seen Henry V at his finest at Agincourt, I would have shared the half-contemptuous attitude toward his son that so many held. For I loved Henry; I truly did. I have been accused of working my way into his favor by calculated means, of working to turn him against others—but that is nonsense. Simply said, when I first joined his council after returning from my long sojourn in France, we liked each other. I liked his unworldliness and his gentleness, and his calm certainty that all could live in peace if people would just put their minds to it. What he liked about me I cannot venture to say; perhaps he simply liked me because I liked him. Maybe it was because I forbore, unlike his uncle Gloucester, from constantly invoking the specter of his father.

But even I, fond of Henry as I was, was not prepared for the conversation we had toward the end of 1445 when I came to the king in his chamber at Windsor Castle.

“I have agreed to cede Maine,” Henry informed me, flourishing a letter. “In privy correspondence with my uncle of France.”

“On what conditions?”

“Well, none.” Henry frowned slightly, as if amazed that I should ask such a daft question, then continued cheerfully, “Well, of course, to extend the truce.”

“When?”

“It is to be completed by the end of April.”

In just over four months, we were to hand over Maine, with virtually nothing in return and without any approval of the king’s promise by the lords on the king’s council. I must have looked slightly ill, for Henry said, “My lord, do you find this problematic?”

One of my great weaknesses, I have discovered, was my reluctance to disappoint Henry. “I think that it will present some problems, but not insurmountable ones.”

Henry smiled. “Peace always presents challenges, I think.”

“Indeed.”

“It will please Margaret so much,” Henry said. He leaned closer. “In confidence, your grace, she is the chief impetus behind this! I might have waited and consulted with my council, but she is so desirous of this peace. How could I say no?”

How indeed? Charles must have known that few men could resist those violet eyes. I had fallen prey to a similar pair myself, and the result was my daughter. In any case, I didn’t blame Queen Margaret for trying.

Well, I told myself, perhaps I was being overly pessimistic. Henry and King Charles were still planning to meet; surely, once Charles actually saw Henry in person (for they had never come face to face), we could reach a bargain that was less one-sided than the one Henry had made without consulting a soul except for his girl queen.

Henry coughed politely, and I realized that in my reverie, I had missed what he had been saying. “I beg your pardon, your grace.”

“I was saying I think it time we discussed my works at Cambridge. I fear sometimes that they have been feeling neglected there because of my interest in my foundation at Eton.”

***

One thing I can say about our queen—and I came to love her like my own daughter—she had found her way to Henry’s heart honestly. Another sixteen-year-old girl with Margaret’s tastes (which Henry’s treasurer had soon found were by no means inexpensive) might have been bored witless by Henry’s talk of his foundations at Cambridge and Eton, but not Margaret. She might like clothes, jewels, and bloodhounds, but she also could sit for hours with Henry and study the plans he was drawing up for his foundations. When Henry traveled to Cambridge in July of 1446, she went with him and stood proudly beside him as the provost of King’s College, William Millington, made a lengthy speech of thanks and welcome that would have tried the patience of many a girl of the queen’s age.

Henry, of course, listened without the slightest hint of fatigue or inattention; he did not so much as shift his weight. When the provost was finished at last, he thanked him and stepped forward, beaming. “We have long looked forward to this day, my lord. We regret that because of the pestilence, we were unable to lay the first chapel stone here two years earlier, but had to send my lord Suffolk to do it instead. But as our plans for this college have expanded and become more ambitious, we have been given the opportunity to lay this latest stone ourselves. We are sorry to deprive my lord Suffolk of the pleasure!”

The king gestured at me and laughed as two men stepped forward, bearing a giant stone. They carefully placed it in the arms of Henry, who took the burden of two men without visible difficulty. Then as a fanfare played, he stooped and carefully laid it in the place marked out with golden cord. “Soon a great building shall rise from this,” he said, getting to his feet gracefully. “It is a grand day for education. Let us give thanks!”

Margaret beamed beside her husband, then bent her head in prayer. Just before I bent my own, I watched Henry’s face. Even with his head bowed in reverence, he was still smiling.

Henry and Margaret were happy, and I wanted to keep them that way. Was that such a base wish?

***

Maine, meanwhile, had not been handed over by the impossible deadline Henry had set—something which, needless to say, had not been forgotten by King Charles. We were, in fact, at an impasse. No Maine, no truce and no meeting, and no peace. There was no choice: we would have to cede Maine. But what of Edmund Beaufort, the Earl of Somerset? He was the governor of Maine, and he also had the most to lose from Henry’s promise, for he held the land rights there. He would not give up his holdings with nary a whimper. And there was Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester, to contend with.

Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester, youngest brother of Henry V! It was he I had served under when I returned to France following my non-service at Agincourt, and it was he who had put me on the young king’s council when I returned to England after my disastrous encounter with the Maid of Orléans at Jargeau. But he had grown more choleric as the years had passed, and our relations had deteriorated, especially in 1440 when I had been among those urging the release of Charles of Orléans, who had been a prisoner in English hands since Agincourt. Orléans had been in my own charge for a time, and I in turn had been his half brother’s charge when I was taken captive, so I had come to like the two brothers, and them me. Gloucester, however, had huffed and puffed and had even stalked out of Westminster Abbey when Charles of Orléans was taking his oath to abide by the terms of his release. His influence with the king had fallen steadily since then, and it hadn’t helped matters any that mine was rising at the time.

Somerset, I thought, could be kept sweet easily enough by having his losses made up to him. The Duke of York had been the governor of Normandy and was expecting to be reappointed, but what if Somerset were put there instead, and York sent to Ireland as its governor? York might see Ireland as a comedown, but he was a natural fit for it, being the greatest English landholder there. That was a thought.

But Gloucester would be a different matter. He had little to lose personally from us giving up Maine; for him it would be a matter of national pride and would only confirm his belief that England had been going straight to perdition ever since August 31, 1422, the day Henry V died. Many a time had I heard him say, “My brother the king would not have done this!” Sometimes I believed that he was in communication with the late king’s shade, so insistent was he as to what Henry V’s thoughts would have been on any given subject.

No, Gloucester would never be shy of speaking his mind, especially when he heard about something as enormous as ceding Maine. He might be out of favor, but could he rouse the commons to his side? It didn’t seem like a chance worth taking.

***

The New Year passed, and a Parliament had been summoned to meet at Cambridge. I took a deep breath as I approached Henry; what I was about to do was not to my taste, whatever is said now about me. “Your grace, there is a grave matter I need to discuss with you.”

Henry frowned. “Is there a problem with our proposed meeting with our uncle Charles?”

“No, but it touches on it. Your grace, I will be honest.”

“You always are, I hope, Suffolk,” Henry said lightly, fastening his puppy-like eyes on me with vastly disconcerting effect.

“I—I try, your grace. What I am about to tell you may be no more than rumor, but I do not believe it is a rumor I should keep from you. I will start by admitting openly that over the last few months, I have had a spy in the Duke of Gloucester’s household.”

“Suffolk, that hardly seems honorable.”

“I did so, your grace, in order that I might gauge his reaction to the Maine business.”

“We really must get on with that, Suffolk. My uncle Charles’s patience is wearing thin.”

“I fear that your uncle Gloucester is plotting against your grace. Plotting to remove you from the throne and rule in your stead.”

I waited for another non sequitur from Henry, but this time I had his full attention. “What proof do you have?”

“Very little. Only that your uncle has been more vociferous and reckless in his complaints lately, and that he has seemed to have more actively courted popularity with his Welsh tenants. And he has been speaking disparagingly against the queen, openly wondering if she is capable of bearing children and describing your marriage as a poor bargain.” I did not add that Humphrey called Queen Margaret “the French wench” and myself the “Wool Merchant,” an allusion to my great-grandfather’s origins. Evidently my family’s start in commerce had been preying heavily on Gloucester’s mind.

“I see.”

“There is another matter that concerns me, your grace. When you travel to France, your uncle would be the natural person to safeguard the realm in your absence. We can agree, I daresay, that given his hostility toward the proposed peace, it would not do for him to travel to France.” The king nodded. “I fear that if your grace were to be out of the country, your uncle, whether as regent or simply in a private capacity, might take the opportunity to stir up trouble were he at large. And I also fear that he may disrupt this upcoming Parliament, and perhaps to stir the commons against the peace.”

“It almost sounds, Suffolk, as if you are advocating that he be arrested whether or not we have good cause to be suspicious of him.”

“It is what I am advocating, for the sake of the peace that means so much to you.”

Henry was silent for a time. Finally, he said, “When my uncle was at court, he would always advise me to ask myself, what would my father do? I have asked myself that just now, and I fear that the answer is that my father would take no chances. He would arrest him. Do you think that is the case, Suffolk?”

“I do.”

“Then we shall arrest him. Take care of the matter, Suffolk.”

***

If a man is going to do a thing of which he is ashamed, he might as well do it well. I ordered that Parliament be moved to Bury Saint Edmunds, where Gloucester had little influence and I had great influence, and I ordered the leading judges in the country to appear there, to be ready for the trial that would probably be necessary.

Was Gloucester plotting? I honestly don’t know to this day. If my spies told me true—and I had a couple of them, not wishing to stake a man’s future on a single paid man—he was indeed making plenty of noises in that direction. He dreamed of being reunited with that wife of his, once his mistress and a convicted witch, and they said that after a cup of wine too many on occasion, he would speak of freeing her from her prison. Since Humphrey was next in line to the throne, it was an easy matter to assume that ridding himself of Henry might be next on his agenda. And if he could strike a bargain with his unruly Welsh tenants, God only knew what could transpire.