Rebellion

by Livi Michael

  He retreated into his room. For once, Margaret’s mother seemed quite incapable of speech. They returned to the carriage and Margaret helped her mother in and adjusted the quilted cover that she insisted on carrying with her at all times.

  Her mother did not look at her but stared straight ahead. Her silence made it difficult for Margaret to speak. She ventured to ask if her mother was quite well (she was very pale) and was snapped at for her pains. So they travelled together locked in two different kinds of silence. But Margaret felt a growing sense of outrage. Whatever her mother was keeping from her must have a direct relevance to herself, because it concerned her father. She was happy to consult Margaret regularly, call on her for advice and criticize her, but not to tell her the truth.

  So when they came finally to the fortified gatehouse of Maxey she said, ‘I’m not coming in, Mother, unless you have something to tell me.’

  She thought that her mother would vent the full force of her rage against her, but instead she seemed to crumble. She nodded several times as though to herself. ‘Very well then,’ she said.

  Inside the castle her mother’s mood changed once more; she was disconcerted, febrile. She put on one pair of spectacles, then a different pair as she searched for something in her bureau. ‘It is here somewhere, I know it,’ she muttered, as though to discourage Margaret from interrupting or offering to help. But Margaret merely watched, astonished as her mother fumbled through a drawer. She seemed to have become suddenly old.

  Finally she found a key.

  She unlocked a drawer that seemed to be hidden within the first drawer, and from it withdrew an elderly, crumpled parchment. She carried it to the table but seemed reluctant to let it go. Margaret held out her hand, though her sense of foreboding was strong. Instead of giving it to her, her mother set it down on the table, and smoothed it once, twice, with those aged, fumbling hands. Then abruptly she sat down, turning partially away from Margaret.

  Margaret sat down herself, drawing the parchment towards her. It was a fragment or copy of some longer work, she assumed. Her father’s name appeared on it in monkish script.

  … he accelerated his death by putting an end to his existence, rather than pass a life of misery, labouring under so disgraceful a charge.

  Margaret looked up. ‘I don’t understand,’ she said. Her mother would not look at her, but as her silence deepened Margaret found that she did, after all, understand.

  ‘What disgraceful charge?’ she whispered. Her mother still said nothing, but she glanced at Margaret and her eyes had reddened.

  Margaret had never seen her cry.

  ‘It – was France, you see,’ her mother said finally. ‘Always France. He was asked to lead an expedition there, and he didn’t want to go. That was why they made him duke – to persuade him to go.’

  Margaret waited.

  ‘He’d had enough of France the last time he was there,’ her mother said. ‘He only went in the end to recover his ransom.’

  This part of the story Margaret knew.

  Her father had set off to France, joining Henry V’s forces, as a very young man, not yet sixteen. Shortly afterwards he’d been captured at the Battle of Baugé, and then he’d spent the next seventeen years in captivity – the longest time endured by any nobleman in the course of the Hundred Years War.

  She had known this, but now, in this room, in this heightened state of tension, she understood it differently. She could see him setting off – so young, so full of dreams of glory – only to return in middle age with half his life gone.

  He had lost his life as surely as others had lost theirs.

  And his fortune; his ransom had cost him his inheritance and his lands.

  Eventually he had married her mother, a match which (as no one ever said) under normal circumstances would have been beneath him.

  ‘His health had suffered,’ her mother said, ‘he was never really well. He had these terrible fits of despair; in his sleep he cried out in French. When the summons came to return, I thought he would go out of his mind. He said they were trying to destroy him. If they wanted you dead they could execute you, he said, but to destroy you they sent you to France.

  ‘He kept delaying his departure – he wouldn’t leave until after you’d been born. He negotiated some lands in Kendal to leave to you – he was convinced he would die there, in France.

  ‘And then he went, and it was a disaster, of course, because all he could think about was recouping his lost ransom. They said he had levied illegal taxes in Normandy and Brittany, that he had cost the crown £26,000 and brought both countries to the brink of a different war.

  ‘There was an enquiry, of course, on his return, and he lost yet more of his property. He was allowed to retire, to one of his smaller manors in Dorset, but he faced charges of treason.’

  The word treason hung between them. Margaret closed her eyes.

  ‘And so he –’ her mother said. She started again. ‘Two of his servants found him – in the stables. They cut him down. One of them had the presence of mind to dip his body into the pond. It was said that he had slipped and fallen into it. He was never a good swimmer.’ Margaret opened her eyes. Her mother managed to smile. ‘We buried him quietly at Wimborne Minster,’ she said. ‘There was no official enquiry. By courtesy of the king we were allowed to keep what remained of his property and lands.’

  The king had allowed them to inherit.

  That was Henry VI, of course. Either from kindness or negligence, he had not collected his due. Because suicide was a crime against the king, and all goods were automatically forfeit to him. And her father had already cost the crown a fortune. Yet out of compassion, or incompetence, or simply a desire to cover things up, her father’s title and some of his lands had been retained. And because she still had value, as the daughter of a duke, her wardship was a valuable gift. And she had been given, in fact, to the Duke of Suffolk.

  All these thoughts came to her, but overlying them all was the image of her father hanging in a barn.

  She had been silent for so long that her mother was looking at her with a mixture of curiosity and fear. But all Margaret said was, ‘No one told me.’

  ‘How was I going to tell you?’ her mother said at once, and Margaret could tell she’d anticipated this objection. ‘You were a child – an infant.’

  You’ve had time since, Margaret thought, but she didn’t speak. She remembered that her father had died just before her first birthday – a fact she had always attributed to misfortune. But now she knew that he’d taken a rope and secured it round a beam, perhaps, and then his neck, and stood on what? A stool or a box – something he could kick away?

  ‘You were his only child,’ her mother said, and there was a quaver in her voice. ‘He wouldn’t leave – he wouldn’t go to France, until he’d seen you.’

  Until he knew whether or not I was a boy, Margaret thought. And she remembered something that her old nurse Betsy had once told her. That her mother had been so grieved by her father’s death that she had miscarried soon after. A little boy, who would have inherited the title of duke. But the only living child had been a girl.

  Unfortunate for her mother, and her father, and for all of them.

  Her mother was looking at her now with a kind of anguish in her eyes, a kind of plea, which was unprecedented; as though this dark story had changed their roles. But she was not going to think now of her mother’s suffering, or be coerced into any displays of affection. Her father had apparently had no thought for his only child. Nor had her mother, as far as Margaret could see.

  How she’d longed to be admitted to the inner circle of her mother’s affection, which was where all her other children seemed to be. But she, Margaret, had been given away. And never fully readmitted, however hard she had tried. Now it was as though her mother wanted something from her; sympathy at least for the plight she’d been in. And with one part of her mind Margaret could see that her suffering had been intense. But neither of her parents had take
n her into consideration; they had simply not been able to, in the course of so much stress and pain.

  Something in her daughter’s face must have frightened Margaret’s mother, because she started to speak rapidly. ‘We did what we thought was best.’

  We, Margaret thought.

  ‘We didn’t want you to grow up with that stain, that disgrace –’

  ‘Who else knows?’ Margaret said, and her mother looked down, as though confused. Then in a very low voice she said, ‘The abbey has it all on record.’

  Margaret gave a short, incredulous laugh, and shook her head.

  ‘So now, you see – if I pursue an enquiry – into the land – it will all come out –’

  And we would have no entitlement to the land in any case, Margaret thought. All the work they had done, all the investigation, was a complete waste of time.

  ‘Yes,’ was all she said. ‘I see.’

  ‘Margaret,’ said her mother, but Margaret was already gathering her things.

  Waste of my time, she was thinking. No wonder the abbot was so confident.

  ‘You look like him, you know –’

  Margaret got up at once. ‘I think I should go now,’ she said.

  ‘But you haven’t eaten – at least stay for some food.’

  Margaret looked at her mother as though from a great distance. ‘Thank you for telling me,’ she said, and her mother said, ‘Margaret,’ again. But she was leaving, walking swiftly from the room, through the hallway to the doors and outside, to her carriage.

  All the way back she was surprised at herself, at the amount of rage she felt. Why was she so angry? That her father had left her, and her mother had kept things from her?

  She could not say that she would not have done the same.

  Or was it because her background was so much more ignominious than she had been led to believe? She had been taught to be proud of being the daughter of a duke, the Beaufort heiress.

  And her father – she had imagined him as a hero.

  She’d been lied to, of course, but she did not know that it should make her as angry as she was. Given the circumstances, there had not been many options.

  Given any circumstances, she had always thought, there were never many options.

  Yet she felt deprived, somehow, that was it. Not deprived of a father, surely, for she’d never had one. Deprived, perhaps, of a state of innocence, in which she’d believed in her heroic father.

  He’d killed himself just days before her first birthday. Had she not wanted to die, after Edmund’s death, when she’d been left alone and pregnant? Or when her son had been taken from her and given to William Herbert?

  But would she have put an end to her own life? No. Because a woman with a child knows she has a reason to live.

  You look like him, she’d said. Her features on the man swinging in the barn.

  But they had been able to bury him on consecrated ground; there was that at least.

  She was angry with her father, yes, but even more so with her mother, which made no sense. Her mother had surely had the very worst part of the deal.

  She would have done as her mother had done; she would have married again as soon as she could and had another child.

  It was not even her fault that she had given Margaret up. The king had decided, and in those circumstances she could hardly refuse. She’d not had to give up her other children, no; but Margaret was the only one who was the daughter of a duke. And she’d maintained contact with her all these years.

  Her mother would have put all these arguments to her and they were all perfectly reasonable. And none of them appeased the rage in her heart, the sense of grievance.

  She should not be so angry at her mother, but she was. Because all these years she’d waited for their relationship to begin; to feel included in her mother’s heart. And all this time there’d been no chance of it, ever.

  The carriage rattled on like her thoughts.

  It came to her that the Beauforts did not do well from war. Her father, her cousins; the late Duke of Beaufort. They had gained nothing from the unending wars. Her second husband, Edmund, had gained nothing either.

  It could be argued that they did not do well from marriage either. Her mother’s second husband had committed suicide, her third had been attainted; Margaret’s own husband Edmund had died in prison.

  And her third husband, Henry – had he done well?

  She could give him no children, which he did not seem to mind. He did not have to know that she was the daughter of a disgraced war commander and suicide, that her titles and possessions were based on a deception. She would say nothing.

  She was, perhaps, more like her mother than her father, after all.

  She could see the gates of her own home now, and there was her husband, coming out to greet her.

  This was not in itself unusual, since he worried about her when she was away. But he was holding in his hand a letter that had the royal seal.

  ‘What?’ she said as he came forward to help her from the carriage. ‘What is it?’

  Her voice was sharp with alarm, but all he said was, ‘You’d better come in.’

  Her heart quickened almost to the point of pain. She did not think she could take any more bad news that day. Attainder, she thought desperately. But what for? And surely there would be officers?

  ‘You had better sit down,’ he said as they entered his study.

  ‘For God’s sake,’ she said.

  ‘No, no,’ he said, seeing her expression. ‘It is his majesty’s intention to bestow on us a gift.’

  She sat down.

  Henry was fiddling with his spectacles, then with the seal. She waited in a state of numbed impatience. ‘It is the gift of a manor house,’ he said.

  ‘No,’ she said. She snatched the letter from him and began to read it herself.

  His most excellent majesty, King Edward IV, grants and awards to his beloved liegeman Henry, Lord Stafford, and his wife, the Countess of Richmond, and to their heirs male in perpetuity, the rights, lordship, parks and lands of Woking Old Hall, of the manor of Woking …

  She looked at her husband in disbelief.

  Woking Old Hall.

  It had been her grandmother’s property. Inherited by Henry Beaufort – the late Duke of Somerset. After his execution it had reverted to the king.

  She remembered visiting it as a child.

  It was a substantial property on the River Wey; moated, with orchards and a deer park. Why was he giving it to her? She had assumed she was in disgrace, along with the rest of the Beauforts.

  ‘It would appear that the king is in need of supporters,’ her husband said, looking at her over his spectacles.

  Was that true? Certainly he was less popular than he had been. People were saying that he had not brought peace, only taxes. His popularity had not recovered since he’d changed the coinage a little over a year ago. Everyone said that the new coinage had been created at the expense of the common people.

  But there had been a burst of generosity since the birth of his daughter. The magnificent celebrations and christening that proved he was not disappointed had been followed by a distribution of gifts.

  And her husband’s nephew, the Duke of Buckingham, was now married to the queen’s sister.

  Even so, this was the first mark of the king’s favour to them since Towton. They could thank God that she had prevented her husband from fighting against the king at Hexham. He had been ill at the time, she remembered that now; it had been a fortunate illness.

  Already her mind was working out the practicalities. It was closer to court, but further away from her mother, which was no bad thing. But they could not move immediately, there would be repairs – the manor house had stood empty for some time. But there were big gardens, and many outbuildings. She could have a hospital there, like Alice Chaucer. And, more importantly, guests from court.

  They could hire carts from the nearby abbey for the removal.

  Her husband wa
s still looking at her, waiting for her approval, her smile. But her mind was now working on a different track. If the king was so anxious to court their friendship, then surely now might be the right time to approach him about her son? She could get his permission to visit him at least.

  ‘I must write to the king,’ her husband was saying, ‘to thank him for this unlooked-for gift.’

  She smiled at him, finally. ‘I will write,’ she said.

  23

  Two Kings

  When King Henry was asked during his imprisonment in the Tower why he had unjustly claimed and possessed the crown of England for so many years, he would answer thus, ‘My father was king of England and peaceably possessed the crown of England for the whole time of his reign. And his grandfather and my grandfather was king of the same realm. And I, a child in the cradle, was peaceably and without any protest crowned and approved as king by the whole realm, and wore the crown of England some forty years, and each and all of my lords did me royal homage and plighted me their faith …

  John Blacman

  Obviously King Edward had to win over as many supporters of the former king as possible, especially while that king was caged like one of the poorer specimens in the Tower menagerie. A wasted lion, perhaps, toothless and clawless, riddled with mange. But still with the power to provoke the people’s sympathy.

  He had allowed, even encouraged, visitors, so that they could see the former king in his reduced and pitiful state, since, next to execution, public humiliation was the most effective way to destroy a king. Several of them did come to mock him, of course, and of course he forgave them, as was his wont. He responded with dignity to those who threatened or tormented him and they went away subdued. But there were others who came to tell him of their griefs and suffering; to have the boils on their necks removed and their scabrous heads blessed.

  Once it was reported that he had seen a woman attempting to drown her baby in the water surrounding the Tower. He had called out to her and rebuked her, and she had brought the baby to him, weeping, to be cured of its deformity.

  King Edward could not stop the flow of visitors without giving rise to rumour and speculation; turning the tide of the people’s sympathies. Still, throughout the country, Henry was the focus of riots and rebellions. More and more of his supporters were making their way across the sea to Margaret of Anjou’s tiny court.