The Red Queen Read online

  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.”

  APRIL 1471

  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.

  I spend that night, all the night, on my knees praying for the victory of my House of Lancaster. The servant said that they were gathering outside London and would march to meet our forces that are mustering in thousands, somewhere near Oxford. Edward will march out his troops along the great west road, and the armies will meet somewhere on the way. I expect Warwick to win for our king, even with both York boys, George of Clarence and Richard of Gloucester, fighting alongside their older brother. Warwick is the more experienced commander; he taught the York boys everything they know about warfare. And Warwick has the greatest force. And Warwick is in the right. Our king, an ordained monarch, a saintly man, is held a prisoner in the Tower of London by order of the York usurper. How can God allow his captor to have victory? My husband may be there, in the armies of York. But I have to pray for his defeat. I am for Lancaster, I am for my king, I am for Jasper, and I am for my son.

  I send to Guildford every day for news, expecting riders to come from London with word of a battle; but no one knows what is happening until one of our men comes back, riding a stolen horse, ahead of all the others to tell me that my husband Henry is wounded and near to death. I hear him out, standing alone in the stable yard until someone thinks to send for one of my ladies, and she clasps my arm to hold me up, while the man tells me of a battle of shifting fortunes and confusion. There was thick mist, the line of the army swung about, the Earl of Oxford changed his coat, or so someone said; there was a panic when he attacked our side, and Edward came out of the mist in a charge like the devil himself, and the Lancaster forces broke before him.

  “I will have to go to him and fetch him home,” I say. I turn to his steward. “Get a cart ready so we can bring him home, and put a featherbed in it and everything he will need. Bandages, I suppose, and physic.”

  “I will fetch the physician to go with you,” he says. I take it as a reproach that I have never been much of a nurse or herbalist. “And the priest,” I say. I see him flinch, and I know that he is thinking that his master may need the last rites, that he may