Succession

by Michael, Livi

  Henry Duke of Somerset and Humphrey Duke of Buckingham, with many other noblemen who held and stood with King Henry, lamenting his adversity … went secretly to Queen Margaret, privately offered her their counsel and declared that the Duke of York sought to deceive the king … [or to] kill him unawares … The queen, much moved by this warning and afraid both for herself and her husband, took occasion to persuade him to withdraw to Coventry …

  Polydore Vergil

  Margaret said nothing as he spoke to her. The prince was Edmund’s nephew, and therefore her own, and the new council would look after him. The woman in her could see this, but the child knew only that she never saw Edmund, that he was never available to her. And now he was explaining that both he and Jasper would spend the winter season at court; he did not know when he would return. She herself could leave as soon as the weather changed, to return to Lamphey.

  At this, in one awful moment, the child won.

  ‘Don’t go,’ she begged him, but his face became cold and still, and she learned the most important lesson of her married life: never to complain.

  And he left anyway, of course. She could only bow her head as he went out of the room, feeling a stark and terrifying hollowness inside. Edmund was leaving, and she had shown herself up to him as an ungrateful child.

  She watched as he set out the next day, his colours bright against a leaden sky, a freezing rain turning the snow to slush and churning all the roads to an impassable mud.

  ‘It is the life of women,’ her nurse said behind her, putting her hands on her shoulders. She could feel the warmth of Betsy’s flesh on hers, but it didn’t reach her, for she was freezing inside. She would not know if the ice cracked, or his horse slipped, or he was lost in a whirling storm. All she could do for him was pray.

  It was part of her bargain with God that she stopped eating. She took to offering up a portion of food each day as part of her prayer. She would no longer eat breakfast, or any mid-morning meal. Frequently she did not eat at all until partway through the afternoon; and then only some dried wafers or biscuits and figs, until the evening meal.

  By supper she was nearly fainting with hunger, light-headed, yet strangely calm, almost exhilarated, for God and all his angels could surely see she was keeping her part of the deal. And if St Bridget could exist off only communion wine and wafers, then so could she.

  Betsy grew suspicious, but she was clever at concealing her fasts. It was easy to hide some food in her long sleeves, then throw it to the birds. Sometimes she held the food she was not eating in her mouth until her nurse left the room. But if Betsy caught her she would not hear the end of it.

  ‘You must eat, my precious duckling – how else are you going to grow tall? Your bosom will not grow [Margaret had taken to checking this every day] unless you eat. Come now, eat a little something, my poppet, just for Betsy.’

  Ever more dainty dishes were prepared for her, and still she would not eat. But on the fifth day she had a headache, and could not move, and her nurse stayed by her side.

  ‘What would your husband say?’ she asked.

  She tried and failed to spoon-feed Margaret herself, small portions of pigeon pie, pigs’ trotters broiled into a soup, all the time admonishing her with unlikely warnings.

  ‘I know a girl who would not eat and she did not grow into a lovely young woman. She grew spindly and black with hunger, until at length she turned into a spider and crawled away into a crack in the wall.’

  Margaret didn’t answer; she was too old for Betsy’s stories now. But her nurse did not give up.

  ‘I thought you wanted to be beautiful,’ she said. She could even change by the time Edmund returned: her hair would grow long and glossy, her cheeks pink, her bosom develop. She might be two or three inches taller.

  Margaret kept her face turned away, but she was listening. It would not be a good thing, her nurse went on, if she were to meet him in a shrunken and scrawny state, with her hair falling out and her skin yellow, no. Did she not think there were too many pretty girls around him for that?

  Margaret’s throat constricted suddenly. How could she tell her nurse that if she ate, Edmund might never return to her at all?

  A clever wife, a sensible one, her nurse continued, might give up something in order to bring her husband back, but not those things that made her beautiful, oh no.

  Slowly, Margaret sat up. She looked at the dish her nurse was holding – a little soup and bread. Her throat constricted again. ‘I will eat a pear,’ she said.

  It was not the season for pears, of course, yet a dried one was found, and boiled in cider, so that it took on the appearance again of the golden, rounded fruit. And she ate almost half of it before lying down.

  The weather did not improve, and they stayed in the great granite fortress till it was almost spring. Until Margaret insisted, against all the wishes of her nurse, on returning to Lamphey.

  She began to take more interest in the household and estate; to notice when a stream had overflowed its banks, or when a sheep was in trouble, lying on its side and watching the world of the hill with grudging, resentful eyes. She began to have some say in the food that was ordered, and in the ordering of cloth. All the time she was performing these tasks for Edmund, though he was never there; she was conscious of his approving gaze on everything she did.

  And still Edmund stayed away at court, looking after his little nephew, the prince.

  Then at last they heard from him. They could meet him, he said, at Caldicot, near Chepstow, some hundred miles east of Pembroke Castle. They made the long journey to visit him, but he was hardly there. And when he was, he wouldn’t tell her what business kept him away from her, closeted so many hours with his brother in his own suite of rooms.

  So she returned to listening at doors.

  Much of the time she didn’t understand what she was hearing, but on one occasion she heard him say, ‘She’s a little girl – a child.’

  ‘It’s not unheard of,’ Jasper said, and Edmund said, ‘She’s a child, Jasper. Twelve years old – she looks eight. I am twenty-six – married to an infant. Do you not see how that looks?’

  ‘She is an infant with the Beaufort fortune,’ Jasper said. ‘And you are in need of an heir.’

  She had heard enough. She walked away quickly, unsteadily, and without direction. Her heart was pumping painfully, irregularly, and her face felt as though it might burst. What she felt most clearly was the need to avoid her nurse. She went to sit on her own in the garden.

  The long winter had continued through April, and now the streams ran high with melted snow. The air was shrill with birds and the sky a sharp, precise blue.

  Normally she felt the spring as a quickening of the blood. At Ewelme she and John de la Pole would have run and shouted through the gardens; at Bletsoe her half-brothers would have taught her to fish. But here, when her nurse had suggested they should go out into the fresh air and see all the new lambs, she had said, ‘I’m not a child any more.’

  She sat on a large stone near a pond. There was a mass of spawn like a green cloud in the water. She sat hunched over it in a thoughtful study, solitude wrapped round her like a cloak, and when she heard his footstep she did not even look up. She did not wish to see his face rearrange itself, for her benefit, into a mask of pleasure.

  His steps paused, as they had to; he could not simply pass her by.

  ‘Are you counting the tadpoles?’ he said.

  Something about the way she sat, hunched and concentrated, must have intrigued him, for he squatted beside her. Normally the nearness of him would make her mouth too dry to speak, and quicken her heart. Now it only thumped painfully once, twice, before settling above her stomach like a lead weight.

  ‘Are you sure there are enough?’

  She looked at him then, with eyes turned suddenly old. His expression changed – she had piqued him – then he began to smile.

  ‘Are you looking for fairies?’

  ‘No.’

  He
tilted his head so that he was gazing directly into her eyes. His face was filled with a tender enquiry, so tender she had to look quickly away.

  He touched her cheek, returning her gaze to his.

  ‘Something ails my lady wife,’ he said, and his expression was all concern. She couldn’t bear it. But she couldn’t look away. She could see her own reflection in each of his eyes; they were blue now, not grey, reflecting the clear sky, and she saw something else in them – a flicker of alarm.

  ‘What is it?’ he started to say, but he didn’t finish, because in a sudden movement she had leaned forward and kissed him.

  It was no more than a butting of her mouth into his. He drew back, laughing a little in astonishment.

  ‘What –?’

  But before he could withdraw or stand up, she flung her arms round his neck and butted his mouth again; her teeth banged on his. Then she looked at him.

  The expression on his face changed from surprise to wariness to speculation. And understanding. He understood her perfectly, she could tell.

  ‘Well,’ he said, and she waited, breathless with terror. He put his hands on her shoulders, holding her away from him. ‘What’s this?’ he said softly, and she could not stop looking at him; she could not take her eyes away, willing him to see.

  He looked at her consideringly, then away. He made a small sound that was almost, but not quite, a laugh.

  Then he looked back, and she could see something had changed in him. The tender amusement had gone, replaced by something she couldn’t read.

  ‘I’m afraid …’ he said solemnly, and the whole of her stomach and throat contracted in terror. ‘I’m afraid you are in need of a little instruction in kissing.’

  She couldn’t move or take her eyes from him as he touched her face, turning it slightly one way then the other.

  ‘You have all the right equipment,’ he said, teasing her again, but not quite in the old way. ‘One mouth, two lips.’ He brushed his thumb over them lightly and a prickling sensation shot along her spine. ‘A tongue,’ he said, and she wondered dizzily what a tongue had to do with it. ‘I have heard you are a clever student,’ he said, and he kissed her then, gently, without opening his mouth. Blood rushed to her head and her stomach felt weak.

  ‘Do you wish to learn?’ he asked her. She had closed her eyes and could not open them, but she nodded. ‘Well, then. Open your mouth. Just a little.’

  He kissed her again. She felt his tongue against her teeth.

  ‘You mustn’t keep me out,’ he said.

  All the time she couldn’t believe it; she couldn’t believe it was happening to her.

  She sucked on his tongue gently, doubtfully, just as he told her to, but when he undid the lace ribbon at the neck of her chemise, she stiffened suddenly, knowing what he would see there: the ridges of her breast bone and the ribs attached to it – a flat expanse. He slipped one finger into the neck of her gown and over one nipple, then the other. She kept her eyes shut, but all he said was, ‘It is chilly. Shall we go inside?’

  And she nodded vigorously, finally opening her eyes.

  He helped her to her feet and she hurried beside him, almost running, because he was striding now, quick and decisive. They passed her nurse, and Margaret saw the look of surprise, shock even, on Betsy’s face as she remembered just in time to drop a deep curtsy, that yet had a scandalized air as though she knew, and Margaret felt the urge to laugh – shrill, improbable laughter was brimming up inside her.

  Edmund held the door of his room open for her, and she walked past him. He was looking at her now as from a great distance; his eyes had gone narrow and cold, unfathomable, and all her laughter turned to terror again. She walked past him anyway, to the centre of the room, towards his bed on which there was a splendid coverlet of fur-lined silk.

  And there she faltered, not knowing what to do.

  She felt him come up behind her, and put his hands on her, and somewhere inside she started to pray, Holy Mary, Mother of God … but Mary was a virgin, she thought wildly, how could she help? And she cast around in her mind for an appropriate saint, finding none. And he was lifting her, then, placing her on the bed. He stripped off her gown, so that she was in her kirtle and chemise. Then he lifted her chemise.

  No one had ever seen her naked, apart from her nurse. She shrank from seeing herself through his eyes: scrawny, unformed. She had prayed so hard for breasts.

  But he did not take her undergarments off, he merely lifted them to her thighs, then began stripping off her hose gently, holding each foot in his hand as he did so, then pushing her kirtle and chemise up higher, exposing her.

  All this time she lay paralysed between shame and desire; then he touched her softly, and sensations she had never dreamed of flowered in her belly.

  Later, the pain came and it was very bad. He stopped, withdrew himself, and started again; she clung to him, sweating, and gripped him with her knees. Sharp splinters of pain drove upwards into her abdomen. Stars burst behind her eyes, her lungs seemed stuck together and she could not breathe, but she would not cry or beg him to stop. Four or five times he tried, his member covered with her blood, then at last he gasped and lay forward on her and she lay beneath him like a crumpled rag, trying to grasp the fact that it was over, and the pain had stopped.

  It was over. She was a wife now, fully, and a child no longer.

  She looked at Edmund, who was falling asleep, strands of light brown hair across his face.

  It had really happened. He was her husband. She touched his hair, moving it from his face, his beautiful face, and a feeling overcame her then, a feeling she had never known before, welling from her stomach: a deep, shining joy.

  She loved him, she loved him absolutely: the planes and shadows of his face, the ridges of his sternum, the slope of his hip, the fine hair on his chest, the pale stalk between his legs in its nest of hair.

  She spent more time with him now, walking with him in the gardens, sharing his rooms. He was more inclined to talk to her, and to listen to what she had to say. Subtly, but distinctly, her status within the household had changed.

  Betsy had taken to calling her ‘My lady’. Even the servants seemed to know.

  And Margaret was proud; she had never been so proud, of her altered status, her tall, handsome husband. She wanted to be with him all the time.

  But in early May he was called away again, to subdue the Welsh rebel, Gruffydd ap Nicholas, who had encroached on lands belonging to the Marcher lords. He had taken control of several castles: Conway, Cardigan, Kidwelly, Aberystwyth, the great and almost impregnable fortress of Carreg Cennen, and then the northern fortress of Carmarthen. So Edmund had to go to Pembrokeshire and Cardiganshire where Gruffydd’s two sons, Thomas and Owain, were stirring up the people to rebellion.

  ‘But when will you come back?’ she said, before she could stop herself, and then she had to watch his face closing again, becoming cold and still.

  She watched him leaving her, his colours bright in the May sunshine, and wept like a child in Betsy’s arms. At the last moment he turned and lifted a hand towards her, and she could feel rather than see his flashing smile. And together they watched him leave, the dust rising from the horses’ hooves, the company of men at first solid and then, in the heat shimmer, insubstantial and unreal.

  Soon she heard that he was ‘greatly at war’ with Gruffydd ap Nicholas, and might not be back for some time. Margaret and her nurse returned to Lamphey.

  Later that month, around the time of her thirteenth birthday, she noticed that her breasts were finally beginning to bud and swell. The trees were bowed with thick white blossom and from a distance they looked like giant sheep. Fat bumblebees probed into flowers and each morning the sky was pristine. When Edmund returned she would finally have breasts, like ripe plums.

  They were tender, especially at night, but she rejoiced in this tenderness, prodding them surreptitiously throughout the day. They didn’t seem to be growing very fast, but they were increasing
ly painful.

  On the morning of her birthday, she asked her nurse, ‘Do – female parts – hurt before they grow?’

  She indicated with her hands, and Betsy looked at her.

  ‘Sometimes they do,’ she said. Then she said, ‘Sometimes they hurt before your monthly courses.’

  She had never started her monthly courses. So her nurse explained that the womb was like a holy chalice that weeps if disappointed of the seed. And at the expression on Margaret’s face, she said, ‘It means you are becoming a woman, my sweet.’

  Margaret said nothing to this, but hugged the information privately to herself. She was becoming a woman. She would be a woman when Edmund returned.

  There was no bleeding, and she was grateful for this. But over the next few days she wondered, did breasts make you feel sick as well, when they started to grow? Because she could no longer stand the thought of food in the morning, Betsy sighed and clucked over her as she sent her breakfast back.

  Then one morning she was actually sick, into her chamber pot, and her nurse hurried to empty it.

  ‘Why are they so much trouble, growing?’ she fretted aloud.

  Her nurse said nothing, but when she was sick again the next morning, Betsy wiped her face, then clasped it between her hands.

  ‘Oh, my precious,’ she said, with a catch in her voice. ‘Praise be to God. Bless you, my angel, my sweetest child,’ and she hugged her hard.

  ‘What?’ said Margaret, squirming uncomfortably, and already feeling sick again. ‘What is it?’

  And that was how she learned she was with child.

  ‘You must eat,’ Betsy said to her, over and again. For Margaret was fasting once more. Her lips had taken on a bluish tinge, and the flesh of them was dry and cracked.

  ‘You think he will want to kiss them when he comes back?’ Betsy said. But this time her rejection of food had less to do with prayer than with the fierce nausea that gripped her during the early weeks of pregnancy.

  She woke each morning with a tremulous consciousness: what if she should fail, what if she should fail? Women did fail their babies, she knew. Her own mother, after hearing of the death of her father, had miscarried a son.