The Red Queen

by Philippa Gregory

  In my loneliness I consider that we were separated when he was such a little boy and since then we have never been close—not as a mother might be to her child, not as Elizabeth Woodville always has been to her children, that she raised herself, that she loved so openly. Now that I can be of no use to him, he will forget all about me. And in truth, in bitter truth: if he were not the heir to my house, and summit of all my ambitions, I would already have forgotten all about him.

  My life comes down to this: a court that has forgotten me, a husband who mocks me, a son who has no use for me, and a God who has gone silent. It is no comfort to me that I despise the court, that I never loved my husband, and that my son was born only to fulfill my destiny, and if he cannot do that, I don’t know what use we are to each other. I go on praying. I don’t know what to do but that. I go on praying.

  Pontefract,

  June 1484

  My lady,

  I write to alert you to a treaty signed by King Richard and the current ruler of Brittany, who is the treasurer and chief officer (the duke being currently out of his wits). King Richard and Brittany have made an agreement. England is to supply archers to Brittany to help them in their struggle against France, and in return they will take Henry Tudor into imprisonment and send him home for execution. I thought you would want to know this.

  I remain your faithful husband,

  Stanley

  I have no one that I can trust to send but Ned Parton. But I have to take the risk. I send one line to Jasper.

  Stanley tells me that Richard has made agreement with Brittany to arrest Henry. Be warned.

  Then I go to my chapel and kneel before the chancel rail, my face turned to the crucifix of the suffering Christ. “Keep him safe,” I whisper over and over again. “Keep my son safe. And bring him to victory.”

  Within the month I have a reply. It is from Jasper, and short and to the point as always.

  France,

  July 1484

  Thank you for your warning that was confirmed by your friend Bishop Morton, who heard it in France. I took some of our men and rode over the border to Anjou to attract as much attention as I could, while Henry took the road to Vannes with a guard of only five. He disguised himself as a servant and rode for the border, crossing it just a day ahead of the Brittany guard. It was a close-run thing and your son was calm in danger, and we laughed about it when we were safe.

  We were welcomed by the French court, and they are promising to support us with an army and funds. They will open the prison gates for us to recruit an army of rascals, and I have a plan to train them. I have hopes, Margaret—

  —JT

  WINTER 1484

  The court spends the Christmas season at Westminster, and the gossip of the household tells me that Richard has put on as great a show as his brother ever did. The news of the music, the playing, the clothes, and the feasting go round the kingdom and grow more glorious in the telling. My household brings in the yule log and mistletoe and holly and makes very merry without me in the kitchen and the hall.

  I find the marble floor of the chapel very cold under my knees. I am without comfort, I am without place, I am without much hope. Richard at Westminster, in the glory of York power, is proudly invulnerable both to my boy and to my brother-in-law, poor pensioners of the enemy of England: France. I see them sinking into exile; I see them brought low and disregarded. I fear they will hang around the court of France for the rest of Henry’s life, and he will be known as a second-rank pretender: worth playing as a card in a game of treaties, worth nothing on his own account.

  My husband writes one of his rare letters from Westminster, and I fall on it as a beggar might fall on a crust of bread. I am too poor in news to be proud.

  The York princess is at the top of her game; her beauty commands the court, and the king follows her like a lapdog. The queen dresses her in her own gowns—they dress to match. The thin old Neville woman and this glowing, rosy girl come out to dine in dresses of the same rich cut and color, as if they want to encourage comparison.

  The queen must be ordered by the king to be so complaisant; she does everything but put her niece into bed with her husband. There are some who share your view that Richard seeks to seduce his niece only to insult your son, to show him as a helpless cuckold. If so, he succeeds magnificently. Henry Tudor is a laughingstock to this hot-blooded court. But there are others who think, more simply, that the lovers are merely reckless with appearances, forgetting everything but each other, and think of nothing but their own desires.

  The court is wonderful this season; how sorry I am you cannot be here. I have never seen such wealth and glamour since Edward’s time, and at the heart of it all is Edward’s daughter looking as if she has come into her own again. Of course she belongs here. The Yorks are indeed the sun in splendor, and to see Elizabeth of York is to be dazzled.

  By the way, do you have any news of your son? Richard’s spies report to him in secret, I don’t know what they say; but I do know that the king has ceased to fear Henry, and his poor ally, the mad Duke of Brittany. He nearly caught him in June, you know, and there are many who say Henry will find no safe haven in France. He will simply be held by the French king as a bargaining chip, until he loses all value. Perhaps it may be that your last defeat was your last chance? What do you think? And if so, do you want to give up hope for Henry, and sue for forgiveness to Richard? I could perhaps intercede for you if I promised that you are humbled to the ground.

  I send you the compliments of the season and this little book as a gift. It is printed by one Thomas Caxton on a press of his own devising, brought to England by the late and much missed Anthony Rivers, the queen’s brother. I thought you would find a printed book, rather than a hand-copied manuscript, of interest. Everyone is saying that Rivers was a man of great foresight to patronize such work. His own sister Elizabeth the queen edited the first text off the press; she is a scholar as well as a beauty, of course.

  What would happen if everyone could read and everyone could buy these? Would they give up on teachers and kings altogether? Would they care nothing for the Houses of Lancaster and York? And study their own loyalties? Would they cry a plague on both your houses? It is amusing to speculate, is it not?

  Stanley

  I drop his book to the floor in sheer irritation at the thought of Elizabeth of York and her incestuous lover-uncle dancing in the Christmas feast, while that poor thing, Anne Neville, smiles on them as if she were part of a happy family at play. When Stanley taunts me with Henry’s silence, I have no riposte. In truth, I don’t know what he is doing; I have heard nothing since their flight to France when Jasper said he had hopes, but did not tell me what they were. I think Jasper has advised Henry not to write to me. I think they believe that Stanley’s messenger Ned Parton is unsafe; they believe he reports to my husband. They are surrounded by spies, and they have to be suspicious; but I fear that now they doubt me too. This was once our battle, our rebellion: we Tudors against the Yorks. Now they trust no one, not even me. I live far from everyone, everything. I know nothing but what my husband writes to me, and he writes as a man in triumph might taunt a defeated enemy.

  MARCH 1485

  Another day when I rise for matins, pray as always for patience to endure my imprisonment and enforced silence, pray for the success of my son and for the downfall of his enemies, find my mind wandering as I think how Richard’s downfall might come about, find myself dreaming of the humiliation of the York princess and the witch her mother, and recall myself to myself with a sudden start and see that the candles are burning down on the altar and I have been on my knees for two hours and my companions are restless behind me, giving the theatrical sighs of women who imagine they are badly treated.

  I rise up and go to breakfast and see the relish with which my ladies fall on their food as if they were famished by having to come an hour or so late. They really are hopelessly venal creatures. If I could have lived in a nunnery in this time of imprisonment, at le
ast I would have lived with holy women and not this collection of fools. I go to my room to deal with the business of my lands and the gathering of the rents, but there is almost nothing to do. It all goes to my husband’s steward now, and I am a tenant in the house that was once all my own.

  I make myself walk in the garden for an hour in the morning for the good of my health, but I can take no pleasure in the fat buds on the apple trees and the bobbing yellow of the Lenten lilies. The sun is starting to grow warm again for another year of my captivity, and it is hard for me to take any joy in it. This must be the start of campaign season—my son must surely be recruiting troops and hiring ships, but I know almost nothing about it. It is as if I am trapped in a winter of solitude and silence, while the rest of the world is waking to life, to opportunities, to sin itself.

  I almost think it is an echo of my mood when the world seems oddly shadowed, the sunlight which was so bright and warm only a moment ago starts to feel cool, starts to look almost like candlelight, candlelight throughout the orchard, and suddenly all the birds that were singing to one another in the trees fall silent, and the hens at the end of the orchard all scurry to the henhouse, as it gets darker and darker all around as if night were falling though it is not yet noon.

  I freeze in my stride: at last my calling has come upon me. It has happened at last. A vision, a full daytime vision, has come to me, and at last I shall see an angel or perhaps the blessed Lady Mary Herself, and She will tell me when my son will invade, and that he will triumph. I drop to my knees, ready for the visitation that I have waited for all my life. At last, I shall see what Joan the Maid saw. At last I shall hear the voices of angels in the church bells.

  “Lady Margaret! Lady Margaret!” A woman comes running out of the house, a man-at-arms behind her. “Come in! Come in! Something terrible is happening!”

  I open my eyes with a start and look behind me at this screaming fool as she gallops across the orchard, skirts flapping and headdress awry. It cannot be a holy vision if an idiot like this can see it. I rise to my feet. There is no vision for me today; my sight is only what everyone else sees, and it is no miracle but something worldly and strange.

  “Lady Margaret! Come in! It must be a storm or something worse!”

  She is a fool, but she is right in this: something terrible is happening, but I cannot understand what it is. I look up at the sky, and I see the strangest and most ominous sight: the sun is being devoured by a large, dark rondel, like a plate being passed before a candle. Slowly, as I shade my eyes and squint through my fingers, I can see the plate pass before the sun and then it is completely covering it, and the world has gone dark.

  “Come in!” the woman whimpers. “Lady Margaret, for the love of God, come in!”

  “You go,” I say. I am quite fascinated. It is as if the darkness and despair of my own grief has blotted out the sun itself, and now it is, quite suddenly, as dark as night. Perhaps it will always be nighttime now; it will always be darkness while Richard is on the throne of England and my son is blotted from the world as the sun has been blotted from the sky. My life has been dark as night since his campaign failed, and now everyone can share the darkness with me, for they failed to rise for my son. We can all be benighted in this godforsaken kingdom without a true king, forever. It is nothing more than everyone else deserves.

  The woman trembles and then runs back to the house. The man-at-arms stands, almost at attention, at a distance from me, torn between his duty to guard me and his own fear, and the two of us wait in the eerie half darkness, to see what—if anything—will happen next. I wonder if this is the world ending, and if now at last there will be a great trumpet peal from the angels and God will call me to His own, who has served Him so long and so hard, and so thanklessly, in this vale of tears.

  I drop to my knees again and feel for my rosary in my pocket. I am ready for the call. I am not afraid, I am a woman of courage, favored by the Lord. I am ready for the heavens to open, and for God to summon me. I am His faithful servant; perhaps He will summon me first, showing everyone who ever doubted my vocation that He and I have a special understanding. But instead there is the unearthly light again, and I open my eyes and look around to see a world slowly restored, the light growing stronger, the disc peeling away from the sun, the sun too bright to look at, once more, and the birds starting to sing as if it were dawn.

  It is over. The ungodly shadow is over. It has to be a sign—but of what? And what am I to learn from it? The man-at-arms, trembling with fear, looks at me, and forgets his place so much as to speak to me directly: “For the love of God, what was that all about?”

  “It is a sign,” I say, not reproving him for speaking on this one occasion. “It is a sign from God. The reign of one king is ending and the new sun is coming. The sun of York is to be put out, and the new sun is to come in like a dragon.”

  He gulps. “You are sure, my lady?”

  “You saw it yourself,” I say.

  “I saw the darkness …”

  “Did you see the dragon come out of the sun?”

  “I think so …”

  “That was the Tudor dragon, coming out of the west. As my son will come.”

  He drops to his knees and lifts his hands to me in the gesture of fealty. “You will call on me for your son,” he says. “I am your liege man. I saw the sun darken as you say, and the dragon come out of the west.”

  I take his hands in my own, and I smile to myself. This is how ballads are born: he will say that he saw the Tudor dragon of Wales coming out of the west and darkening the sun of York.

  “The sun is no longer in splendor,” I say. “We all saw it darkened and defeated. The whole kingdom saw the sun fail. This will be the year that the sun of York goes out forever.”

  MARCH 1485

  To my wife, Lady Margaret Stanley

  This is to tell you that the queen is dead. She was failing ever since the Christmas feast and she died almost unattended, from weakness of the lungs, on the same day that the sun went dark over the castle.

  You will be interested to know that Richard is to publicly renounce any intention to marry his niece. Rumors have reached such a scandalous level that the lords of the north made it clear to him that such an insult to the memory of the queen—one of their own—would not be accepted. Truth is that many are terrified at the thought of Elizabeth Woodville restored as My Lady the Queen’s Mother since they allowed the execution of her brother and Grey son and locked up her princes. Perhaps you would have done better to resist the temptation to scold her. If only you had urged the marriage between the York girl and Richard, it could have caused Richard’s overthrow! But you did not think of that in your pride for your son. I am sure rightly.

  To demonstrate his indifference to the York princess, the king has decided to put her in the care of a lady of unimpeachable morality so that the world may see that she is chaste—and not, as we have all thought, madly in love with him and bedding him while his wife was dying.

  You will perhaps be surprised to learn that his choice of chaperone … duenna … and may I say, mother? … has fallen on you, as the most proper lady to guard her reputation, since she is betrothed to your son.

  I lift my head from his letter; I can almost hear his mocking laughter and see his cold smile. I find I am smiling too. The turn of the wheel of fortune is impossible to predict, and now I am to be a guardian to the daughter of a woman I hate. I hate the girl too.

  The princess will arrive to stay with you within the week. I am sure you will revel in each other’s company. Personally, I cannot imagine a more ill-matched household; but no doubt your faith will support you, and of course she has no choice at all.

  Stanley

  APRIL 1485

  Grimly, I tell them to prepare a bedroom for a princess, and confirm to my fluttering ladies that the Princess of York or, as I pointedly call her, Lady Elizabeth—I give her no family name, since she has none, being declared a bastard—will come within the next few days.
There is a great deal of concern about the quality of the linen and in particular the ewer and the bowl for her room, which I have used but that they consider too poor for such a great young lady. At this point I say briefly that since she has spent half her life in hiding from an ordained king, and the other half using borrowed goods to which she had no right at all, it does not matter so very much whether her jug is pewter or no, and the dent makes no difference either.

  I do make an effort to ensure that she has a good prie dieu in her room, a simple but large crucifix to focus her mind on her sins, and a collection of devotional texts so that she may think about her past life and hope for better in the future. I also include a copy of our family tree and pedigree so she can see for herself that my son’s birthright is as good as, indeed better than, hers. While I am waiting for her to arrive, I get the briefest letter from Jasper.

  In haste—the King of France has given us aid—we are sailing as soon as we get a good wind. You must secure the York princess if you can, as the Yorks will only support us if we have her, and the Lancs are slow to promise for us. Pray for us. We are on our way as soon as the wind changes.

  —J.

  I thrust the letter in the fire, breathless with the shock, and at that very moment I hear the rattle of horses’ hooves. It sounds like a guard of about fifty. I go to the leaded window of the great hall and peer out. I see my husband’s standard and the men wearing his livery. He is riding his big horse at the head of them all; and beside him, on a big working cob, his coat burnished to bright chestnut, the captain of the guard is on a pillion saddle; and behind him, sitting sideways and smiling, as if she owned half of England, is a young woman in a riding habit of scarlet velvet.