The Red Queen (25 page)

Within days we have the news that Edward of York has made landfall, not where anyone expected him, but in the north of England, where the witch’s wind blew him to safe harbor, and he has marched on York and asked them to open their gates to him, not on his own account as king, but so that he can take up his dukedom again. The city, persuaded like a set of fools, lets him in, and at once the York supporters flock to their leader and his traitorous ambition is plain. George, the turncoat Duke of Clarence, is among them. It has taken some time, but even stupid George finally realizes that his future as a York boy would be brighter with a York king on the throne, and suddenly he loves his brother above any other and declares that his loyalty to the true king and to his father-in-law Warwick was a great mistake. I suppose from this that my son has lost his earldom forever, as everything will belong to the York boys again and no pleading messages from me to George, Duke of Clarence, will make him give Henry’s title back. All at once everything is golden daylight, and the three suns of York are the dawn over England. In the fields the hares are fighting and leaping, and it seems as if the whole country has gone as mad as hares this March.

Amazingly, Edward gets to London without a single obstacle in his path, the gates are thrown open for him by the adoring citizens, and he is reunited with his wife, as if he had never been chased from his own land, running for his life.

I take to my chamber and pray on my knees when I hear this news from Somerset’s hard-riding messenger. I think of Elizabeth Woodville—the so-called beauty—with her baby son in her arms, and her daughters all around her, starting up as the door is thrown open and Edward of York strides into the room, victorious as he
always is. I spend two long hours on my knees, but I cannot pray for victory and I cannot pray for peace. I can only think of her running into his arms, knowing that her husband is the bravest and most able man in the kingdom, showing him her son, surrounded by their daughters. I take up my rosary and pray again. The words are for the safety of my king; but I cannot think of anything but my jealousy that a woman, far worse born than me, far worse educated than me, without doubt less beloved by God than me, should be able to run to her husband with joy and show him their son and know he will fight to defend him. That a woman such as her, clearly not favored by God, showing no signs of grace (unlike me), should be Queen of England. And that, by some mystery—too great for me to understand—God should have overlooked me.

I come out of my chamber and find my husband in the great hall. He is seated at the top table, his face grave. His steward, standing beside him, is putting one sheet of paper after another before him for his signature. His clerk beside him is melting wax and pressing in the seal. It takes me only a moment to recognize the commissions of array. He is calling up his tenants. He is going to war; at last he is going to war. I feel my heart lift like a lark at the sight; God be praised, he is owning his duty and going to war at last. I step up to the table, my face glad.

“Husband, God bless you and the work you are finally doing.”

He does not smile back at me; he looks at me wearily, and his eyes are sad. His hand keeps moving, signing Henry Stafford, time after time, and he hardly glances down at his pen. They come to the last page: the clerk drips wax, stamps the seal, and hands it in its box back to his chief secretary.

“Send them at once,” Henry says.

He pushes back his chair and steps off the little dais to stand before me, takes my hand, and tucks it in his arm and walks me away from the clerk, who is gathering up the papers to take to the stables for the waiting messengers.

“Wife, I have to tell you a thing which will trouble you,” he says.

I shake my head. I think he is about to tell me that he is going to war with a heavy heart for fear of leaving me, and so I rush to reassure him that I fear nothing when he’s doing God’s work. “Truly husband, I am glad …” He stills me with a gentle touch on my cheek.

“I am calling up my men not to serve King Henry, but to serve King Edward,” he says quietly.

At first I hear the words, but they make no sense to me. Then I am so frozen with horror that I say nothing. I am so silent that he thinks I have not heard him.

“I will serve King Edward of York, not Henry of Lancaster,” he says. “I am sorry if you are disappointed.”

“Disappointed?” He is telling me he has turned traitor, and he thinks I may be disappointed?

“I am sorry for it.”

“But my cousin himself came to persuade you to war …”

“He did nothing but convince me that we have to have a strong king who will put an end to war, now and forever, or he and his sort will go on until England is destroyed. When he told me that he would fight forever, I knew that he would have to be defeated.”

“Edward is not born to be king. He is not a bringer of peace.”

“My dear, you know that he is. The only peace we have known in the last ten years was when he was on the throne. And now he has a son and heir, so please God the Yorks will hold the throne forever and there will be an end to these unending battles.”

I wrench my hand away from his grip. “He is not born royal,” I cry. “He is not sacred. He is a usurper. You are calling out your tenants and mine,
my
tenants from
my
lands to serve a traitor. You would have my standard, the Beaufort portcullis, unfurled on the York side?”

He nods. “I knew you would not like it,” he says resignedly.

“I would rather die than see this!”

He nods as if I am exaggerating, like a child.

“And what if you lose?” I demand. “You will be known as a turncoat who supported York. Do you think they will call Henry—your stepson—to court again, and give him back his earldom? Do you think Henry the king will bless him as he did before, when everyone knows you have shamed yourself, and shamed me?”

He grimaces. “I think it is the right thing to do. And, as it happens, I think York will win.”

“Against Warwick?” I ask him scornfully. “He can’t beat Warwick. He didn’t do so well last time, when Warwick chased him out of England. And the time before that, when Warwick took him prisoner. He is Warwick’s boy, not his master.”

“He was betrayed last time,” he said. “He was alone without his army. This time he knows his enemies, and he has summoned his men.”

“Say you win then,” I say, the words tumbling out in my distress. “Say you put Edward on my family’s throne. What happens to me? What happens to Henry? Will Jasper have to go into exile again, thanks to your enmity? Will my son and his uncle be driven out of England by you? Do you want me to go too?”

He sighs. “If I serve Edward and he is glad of my service, then he will reward me,” he says. “We might even get Henry’s earldom back from him. The throne will no longer run in your family, but Margaret, dear little wife, to be honest with you: your family does not deserve to own it. The king is sick, to tell the truth; he is mad. He is not fit to run a country, and the queen is a nightmare of vanity and ambition. Her son is a murderer: Can you think what we will suffer if he ever gets the throne? I cannot serve such a prince and such a queen. There
is
no one but Edward. The direct line is—”

“Is what?” I spit.

“Insane,” he says simply. “Hopeless. The king is a saint and cannot rule, and his son is a devil and should not.”

“If you do this, I will never forgive you,” I swear.
The tears are running down my face, and angrily I brush them away. “If you ride out to defeat my own cousin, the true king, I will never forgive you. I will never call you ‘husband’ again; you will be as if you were dead to me.”

He releases my hand as if I am a bad-tempered child. “I knew you would say that,” he says sadly. “Though I am doing what I think best for us both. I am even doing what I think best for England, which is more than many men can say in these troubled times.”

The summons comes from Edward the usurper in London, and my husband rides out at the head of his army of tenants to join his new lord. He is in such a hurry to go that half the men are not yet equipped, and his master of horse stays behind to see that the sharpened staves and newly forged swords are loaded in carts to follow the men.

I stand in the stable yard and watch the men falling into line. Many of them have served in France; many of them have marched out before for English battles. This is a generation of men accustomed to warfare, inured to danger and familiar with cruelty. For a moment I understand my husband’s yearning for peace, but then I remember that he is backing the wrong king and I fire up my anger again.

He comes from the house, wearing his best boots and the thick traveling cape that he gave to me when we rode to see my boy. I was glad of his kindness then, but he has disappointed me since. I am hard-faced as I look at him, and I despise his hangdog expression.

“You will forgive me if we win and I can bring your boy home to you,” he suggests hopefully.

“You will be on opposing sides,” I say coldly. “You will be fighting on one side and my brother-in-law and my boy on the other. You ask me to hope that my brother-in-law Jasper is defeated
or killed. For that is the only way that my boy will need a new guardian. I cannot do that.”

He sighs. “I suppose not. Will you give me your blessing, anyway?”

“How can I bless you when you are cursed in your choice?” I demand.

He cannot maintain his smile. “Wife, will you pray for my safety at least while I am gone?”

“I shall pray that you see sense and change sides in the very middle of the battle,” I say. “You could do that and make sure you were on the victorious side. I would pray for your victory then.”

“That would be quite without principle,” he remarks mildly. He kneels to me and takes my hand and kisses it, and I stubbornly do not touch his head with my other hand in blessing. He rises up and goes to the mounting block. I hear him grunt with the effort of stepping onto it and swinging into the saddle, and for a moment I feel pity that a man, not young anymore, who so dislikes leaving his home, should be forced out on a hot spring day to battle.

He turns his horse and raises his hand to me in salute. “Good-bye, Margaret,” he says. “And I say ‘God bless you’ to you, even if you won’t say it to me.”

I think it is unkind of me to stand there with my hands by my sides and a frown on my face. But I let him go without a blown kiss, without a blessing, without a command to come back safely. I let him go without a word or a gesture of love, for he is going out to fight for my enemy and so he is my enemy now.

I hear from him within a few days. His second squire comes back in a rush because he forgot the gussets for his coat of mail. He brings the will that my husband has scribbled in haste, thinking battle will
be joined at once. “Why? Does he think he will die?” I ask cruelly when the man hands it to me for safekeeping.

“He is very low in his spirits,” he answers me honestly. “Shall I take a message back to cheer him?”

“No message,” I say, turning away. No man who fights under the banner of York against the interests of my son will have a message of hope from me. How can I? My prayer must be that York fails and is defeated. My prayer must be for my husband’s defeat. I will pray that he is not killed, but in all honesty, before my God, I can’t do more than that.