Succession

by Michael, Livi

  She did not know what to do. She could feel the heat of his breath through her hair.

  They stayed like that for a while, until his sobbing died away into silence.

  And at length Owen Tudor shifted on his broken knees and said, ‘Edmund loved you, you know.’

  She recoiled a little, a pang of pure pain passing through her. But all she said was, ‘He did not love me.’

  It was the first time she had allowed herself even to think it, let alone say it out loud. But she found she could say it, and feel nothing; she was cold and still. He had never loved her, and now he never could.

  Owen Tudor shook his head and crushed her fingers.

  ‘You think there is only one kind of love?’ he said, lifting his head and looking at her. ‘He was always talking about you, how fine and dignified you were, how lucky he was. He was so proud of your learning – Edmund was never one for books himself. “Our children will be scholars,” he said.’

  There it was: the raw, bloody pain. Her throat tightened and tears spilled down her cheeks. Owen Tudor did not take his eyes from her, he kept on talking.

  ‘He knew he had found the right wife,’ he said, nodding at her. ‘Despite the difference in age, despite everything. He knew you would have the rest of your lives, you see – he wanted children with you – he knew you would be the best mother in the world –’

  He pressed her stomach through the sheets, to feel the baby moving. ‘My grandson,’ he said. Then he said, ‘It is a huge burden you carry. You are so young for it, so small –’

  She was shaken, speechless. No one else had acknowledged the burden of what she carried. He grasped her hands again and kissed the tips of her fingers.

  ‘I will serve you, and your baby, for the rest of my days,’ he said. And she understood then that the baby linked them both, that he (for it never entered her head that it would not be a son) was now all that mattered. That they both had something to live for.

  Later, Owen Tudor claimed credit for the fact that she sat up in her bed and allowed herself to be washed and her hair dressed, and said that she would take some soup.

  At the end of January her waters broke.

  She was alone in the little chapel, leaning forward on her stool, her head bent, thinking of Edmund as usual until her mind was overtaken by blankness. Then there was a gushing flow between her legs.

  She felt a moment of horrified shame, thinking she must have pissed herself. Scarlet with horror, she struggled to rise, then felt a cramping pain in her side, travelling round the side of her belly, taking her breath away.

  And suddenly, sharply, she knew what it was.

  No one was with her; she had insisted on being alone in her chapel. She got up awkwardly, ungainly, and the movement made her dizzy. She felt her way down the stairs and along the little corridor that led back to her room, but no one was there either; they must all have been preparing or serving food. And suddenly she was stopped by another cramping pain.

  The bed. She knew she had to get to the bed, but she didn’t want to lie in it in her wet clothes. Ever since she’d been small she’d had a horror of making a mess. She pulled and tugged at her soaking gown, but it wouldn’t come off. She couldn’t get it over the girdle she was wearing, a birthing girdle which had been sent for specially. She had been told it had belonged to the Virgin.

  When her nurse returned finally she found Margaret on her bed with her knees drawn up and her wet skirts bunched up around her hips, in her eyes an animal fear. And Betsy had run to her and held her hot face in her hands that smelled of eggs and honey.

  ‘Everything will be all right, my lovely, my precious sweet,’ she said, and those words were the last coherent memory Margaret had.

  Of the subsequent rending and tearing and splitting of her small frame, she remembered little.

  She had promised herself and her saints – St Margaret, St Petronilla – that she would not scream while her son was born. St Cecilia had not screamed when they had attempted to smother her with steam; she had sung in her heart to the Lord. St Hadrian of Nicodemia had not screamed when they had struck off each of his limbs on an anvil, and she would not scream now. But she made low, guttural grunting noises that lengthened slowly to the baying of a farmyard animal, as though the pain were turning her inside out. She couldn’t prevent them any more than she could prevent her nurse pressing a sponge to her lips, which she said was full of the Virgin’s breast milk, or the midwife pressing down on her stomach until the tendons of her hips were stretched and tearing. Prayers were written on scraps of parchment and pushed into her mouth; her body was no more her own.

  She was dimly aware of daylight fading, then coming, then fading again.

  Then at last came a moment when it all seemed suddenly to stop. The scene around her was snuffed out like a candle. And there was no light, no comforting presence, no sign or vision. It was as though her senses were opening on to silence and darkness.

  That was the moment, she later discovered, when they all thought she had died. (‘You went all waxy and pale, my cherub, all those terrible noises died away.’)

  At some point, as from a great distance, she was aware that a crucifix was before her eyes, and either before this or after, Jasper himself was there, gripping the doctor’s shoulder (somehow now both a priest and a doctor were there) and she distinctly heard him order the doctor to cut the baby out if necessary.

  But even as the doctor lifted the knife, her stomach muscles heaved and shifted of their own accord, and she was forced back into herself, away from the infinite peace, back into the narrow contortions of her body, that of itself, it seemed, was forcing the baby out.

  Blurred light – an oblong, hazy, shifting, fading into darkness, then returning.

  Window.

  Daylight.

  But she did not want to get up, or move.

  It was very cold.

  She closed her eyes.

  The blurred light shifted and faded into a shadowy darkness, in which there were voices and movements.

  She tried to sit up, pushing feebly at the covers, trying to make her legs work. But they were like wool and she soon sank back again.

  Somewhere she could hear a baby crying.

  There was the sound of sobbing around her bed, and the stench of blood. And a new scent came to her that was sweetish, and also sour. She felt the weight of something on her pillow, and opened her eyes slowly on to her baby’s face.

  It was yellowish, crumpled, and blotched with red.

  ‘He is a fine, healthy boy,’ Betsy said, her voice catching and breaking, ‘and very like to live,’ and Margaret wondered why her nurse was crying, but not for long, because her mind folded once more into darkness.

  The next time, keeping her eyes on the light, and the shape of the light, she pushed the sheets back and pulled her legs from under them.

  The soles of her feet shrank from the freezing floor, but she pressed down on them, rising slowly, bent almost double, clinging to the wall for support.

  The room swung dangerously around her. The muscles between her ribs, down her sternum, all the way to her thighs, felt intolerably bruised as though she had been beaten; the lower part of her stomach felt as if it had been ripped away. She kept her eyes focussed on the light as though it were the most important thing in the world, a luminous pale grey.

  Then somehow she was there, at the window, smelling the scent of rain. She could see the roofs of Pembroke, curtains of rain falling over them and all the way out to sea. That was the noise she could hear, all that rain falling from the sky to the sea. She could imagine the moment when the individual drop became one with the vastness – she closed her eyes and imagined it, all the turmoil of the water contained as though by an invisible skin.

  She was interrupted by the shriek of her nurse.

  She was hustled back into bed, her legs folding feebly under her, her nurse scolding her all the time. A maid sponged her face, tugged her chemise from her and somehow got her into a
new one; she looked with dull surprise at the gouts of blood on the old one. She seemed to have no resistance to any of this, her voice had no strength. Betsy clasped her face in her hands and asked if there was anything she wanted, food or drink. She had to repeat the question twice.

  Margaret stared up at her. Her lips moved but the words wouldn’t come out. Betsy bent her damp, whiskery face close to Margaret’s mouth and Margaret summoned her reserves of strength.

  ‘My baby,’ she said. ‘I want my baby.’

  Everyone vanished then, but Margaret closed her eyes, confident that they would return.

  They brought him to her, swaddled in the arms of a youngish woman, with red, broken veins on her face.

  ‘This is Jane, wife of Philip ap Hywel,’ Betsy told her. ‘She has been feeding him.’

  But Margaret could only look at the small, bound bundle Betsy placed on the pillow beside her. His mouth puckered to a tiny ‘o’, and then it stretched again, opening as though he might cry, but he didn’t cry, he only yawned, and she could see the little ridges of his gums, that were like the wrinkles on the sea.

  And, just for a moment, his eyelids fluttered and opened, and she saw those eyes in that wrinkled face, a deep underwater blue. They were so dark and filmy, as though not yet fully part of the world. She had a sensation of fall. Ill and exhausted as she was, she registered suddenly the journey he had made, all the way from non-existence into being.

  She made an involuntary sound, and her nurse hurried to take him from her.

  She was being supported, propped up from behind, so that her baby could be laid in her lap. His eyes were tightly shut. He did not look like Edmund, or like anyone other than himself.

  ‘He is the prettiest babe that ever lived,’ her nurse said.

  She freed his hands so that Margaret could look at them; long yellowish fingers opening and closing slowly.

  ‘He is a fine, healthy boy,’ his nurse said. The baby opened his mouth to cry. ‘It’s time for his feed,’ she said, and lifted him once more.

  Margaret didn’t protest at the sudden emptiness of her lap, but sank back, watching him all the time. His face puckered again and he made a sharp, mewling sound, and the wet nurse opened her gown. Her breast was heavy and blue-veined, almost the same size as the baby. Involuntarily, Margaret’s fingers moved towards her own breast, which was still flat, though very sore. She watched with a kind of hunger as her baby’s mouth found the nipple, which seemed enormous, then, puckered face to puckered nipple, he began to suck.

  Betsy’s arms were round her; she could feel herself slipping down. But she managed to frame a question: ‘What day is it?’

  ‘It is the last day of January,’ her nurse replied. ‘He is three days old.’

  Three days had gone from her. She had lost three days.

  She lay, semi-conscious, in the small chamber, while Jasper and the doctor discussed her, assuming she could not hear, their voices above her bed.

  ‘She has lost a great deal of blood,’ the doctor said.

  ‘Yet she is young,’ said Jasper, ‘she may survive.’

  ‘Oh, certainly,’ the doctor hastened to agree. ‘But there is something else.’

  He explained that her internal organs had been greatly damaged by the birth, specifically by the hooks he had been obliged to use to haul the baby out. He thought that more than the afterbirth had come away.

  ‘It might mean,’ he said, ever more hesitantly, ‘that she will have great trouble conceiving again. It is not likely, in fact.’

  She could imagine, rather than see, Jasper’s face as he took this in.

  ‘Still, she is young,’ he repeated. ‘It is possible that she will recover.’

  The doctor made a doubtful noise. ‘It would take a miracle,’ he said. ‘The womb itself –’

  ‘Are you saying that a miracle cannot happen?’ Jasper interrupted him.

  ‘Of course not,’ the doctor said at once.

  ‘Well then,’ said Jasper. ‘If it takes a miracle, then we must hope for one.’

  She did not fully understand the significance of this conversation. Did they think she wanted to go through that again? Besides, Edmund, her Edmund, was dead.

  Only later did she understand that her fertility, her youth, was Jasper’s bargaining point. She was too tired to understand anything then.

  ‘My Lord Jasper has named him Owen, after his father,’ Betsy’s voice said.

  ‘No,’ said Margaret distinctly. Until this moment she had thought she would name him Edmund. She looked at the fine bones and veins of his skull, the already darkening hair. He was not like his father at all.

  There was no question of calling him Jasper.

  The king was his next relative, and the king would be his patron. Since Edmund’s death she’d hoped and prayed that the king would deliver them from this war-torn country. There was no reason for them to stay, with Edmund gone. It was dangerous, in fact, because he could no longer protect them from their enemies. If she named her baby after the king the king would surely send for them, and they could leave this country which had become her prison, and her husband’s tomb.

  ‘Henry,’ she said, adding defensively, ‘Edmund wanted to name him for the king,’ and her nurse did not argue with her, though it was the first she had heard of it.

  ‘So should I tell my Lord Jasper –’ she said, and Margaret looked at her fully.

  ‘Tell him he is called Henry,’ she said. ‘After the king.’

  So he was christened Henry, quickly, on Candlemas Day, in case he should not survive.

  Yet he did survive, and thrived.

  She grew stronger and was allowed to sit up with him. As soon as she could she took him to the window, because she wanted him to have a view. She sat by the window with him as if offering him to the sky and sea.

  Jasper came to see her and did not interrupt but watched her with his speculative gaze. A variable sky cast patches of light and shade over the town. Her baby’s face crumpled and uncrumpled; his tiny fists, unbound, flailed jerkily.

  Then Jasper came towards them and touched the baby’s hand, letting the tiny fingers curl round his own. His mournful features set into something resembling a smile.

  ‘So young, and heir to so much,’ he murmured.

  It was true. In his ancestry were the kings of England and France. Owen Tudor’s family were descended from the royal house of Wales. Still, she did not like to be reminded of this. It was as though some burden had already fallen on his fragile shoulders. Yet she did not mind Jasper so much now that the baby was a common source of interest. It was a miracle that this small, fierce life had come to her and stayed; everything, even his father’s death, paled into insignificance besides.

  ‘I have a letter from the king,’ Jasper told her, and she did not look at him, but her heart began to pound. At last he had sent for her; she would return to court with her baby. There was a short pause then Jasper began to read.

  The king sent his heartfelt condolences to his beloved kinswoman in the hour of her grief. He felt the loss of his brother as a blow to his body and his soul. Such a loss was beyond measure of words, beyond all hope of redress. He could only pray for his enemies as Our Saviour Jesus Christ had prayed for His. He hoped that in the fullness of time they would all find forgiveness in their hearts and live in peace.

  Now she did look at Jasper, as he finished reading.

  ‘Is that all?’ she said.

  ‘He thanks you for naming Edmund’s son after him,’ said Jasper.

  No hint of rage, or retribution, or even the hope of bringing Edmund’s murderers to justice?

  ‘Let me see the letter,’ she said.

  After a pause Jasper handed it to her.

  She read it through twice, scanning the words as if she might have missed some hidden message that would tell her that the king was going to pursue his brother’s killers, and take care of his widow. But there was nothing, and nothing about sending for her, to take her away from W
ales and into his own protection.

  She let the letter droop in her hand.

  Jasper was looking at her ironically. ‘We should prepare for a journey,’ he said.

  She didn’t hear him at first, so he said it again.

  ‘A journey?’ she said. ‘Where to?’ thinking he meant to take her to the king.

  ‘To Newport, in Gwent,’ said Jasper, and she stared at him. ‘The Duke of Buckingham has invited us to stay in his household.’

  ‘Why?’ she asked, then, realizing this was not very polite, she added, ‘Perhaps later in the year. When the weather improves.’

  ‘We have not been invited later in the year,’ Jasper said. ‘We have been invited this week.’

  ‘This week?’ She laughed a little. ‘But the roads …’

  The roads were still flooded; she had heard the servants talking about it.

  ‘Difficult,’ Jasper said, ‘not impossible.’

  ‘But – there might be snow. And the plague – the plague is still in the villages.’

  ‘We can bypass the villages.’

  ‘But where will we stay for the night? I will not put my baby at risk of plague.’

  Jasper wasn’t angry. He appeared to be considering what she said. He reached over and touched the silken curls in the soft folds of her baby’s neck.

  ‘It will not be for long,’ he said. ‘A month, maybe two. No more than that.’

  She stood up then, unsteadily, clutching her baby. ‘I am not going anywhere,’ she said. ‘He is too young to travel.’ Unexpectedly, tears were threatening, and she was furious with herself.

  Jasper nodded, without looking at her.

  ‘Listen to me,’ he said. ‘The Duke of Buckingham is the most powerful magnate and the greatest landowner in all of Wales. He will offer protection to your son. How long do you think it will be before Lord Herbert turns his attention to Edmund’s heir?’

  Margaret said nothing, but her grip on her baby tightened. The name of William Herbert filled her with horror.