The Red Queen Read online

  I go to my husband’s room and note his comfortable arrangements. He has a well-made bed, his jug of small ale on a table at his side, his books in their box, his writing paper for memoranda on his writing desk: everything around him that he could wish. He is seated in his chair, strapped tight around his belly, the pain making him gray and older than his years. But his smile to me is cheerful as always.

  “I have heard from Jasper in Wales,” I say flatly. “He is going into exile.”

  My husband waits for me to say more.

  “He will take my son with him,” I volunteer. “There is no safety in England for a boy who is heir to the Lancaster line.”

  “I agree,” my husband says equably. “But my nephew Henry Stafford is safe enough in the York court. They have accepted his fealty. Shouldn’t your Henry approach King Edward and offer to serve him?”

  I shake my head. “They are going to France.”

  “To plan invasion?”

  “For their own safety. Who knows what will come next? These are troubled times.”

  “I would see you spared from trouble,” he says gently. “I wish you would ask Jasper to avoid trouble and not make it.”

  “I don’t seek trouble for myself, and neither does Jasper. I only ask that you will allow me to ride to Tenby and see them sail. I want to say good-bye to my son.”

  He pauses for a moment. This turncoat, this coward, snug in his bed, has the right to command me. I wonder if he dares to forbid me to go, and if I dare to defy him.

  “It is to put yourself in danger.”

  “I have to see Henry before he leaves. Who knows when it will be safe for him to return? He is fourteen years old; he will be a man before I see him again.”

  He sighs, and I know I have won. “You will ride with a full guard?”

  “Of course.”

  “And turn back if the roads are closed?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then you can go to say good-bye to your son. But make no promises to them, nor to the future of the House of Lancaster. Your cause was finally defeated at Tewkesbury. Henry’s house was destroyed at Tewkesbury. It is over. Your advice to them should be to seek for a way to return in peace.”

  I look at him, and I know my face is defiant and cold. “I know it is over,” I say. “Who should know better than I? It is my cause that is defeated, the head of my house executed, my husband wounded fighting on the wrong side, and my son going into exile. Who should know better than I that all hope is dead for my country?”

  SEPTEMBER 1471

  TENBY, WALES

  I look disbelievingly over the bright water of the harbor at Tenby. The sunshine sparkles, and there is a light wind blowing; it is a day to sail for pleasure, surely not for me to stand here, amid the smell of fish, with my heart breaking.

  This tiny village is heart and soul for Jasper, and the fishwives and the men are clattering in their rough wooden pattens down the cobbled street that leads to the quay where bobs the little boat that is waiting to take my son away from me. Some of the women are red-eyed at their lord’s exile; but I do not cry. Nobody would know from looking at me that I could weep for a week.

  My boy has grown again; he is now as tall as me, a youth of fourteen, starting to thicken around his shoulders, his brown eyes level with mine, and he is pale though his summertime freckles are speckled on his nose like the markings on a warm bird’s egg. I stare at him, seeing both the child that has grown to a man and now the boy who should be king. The glory of majesty has come down to him. King Henry and his son Prince Edward are both dead. This boy, my boy, is heir to the House of Lancaster. This is no longer my boy, the child in my possession: this is England’s rightful king.

  “I will pray for you every day and write to you,” I say quietly. “Make sure that you reply to me; I shall want to know how you are. And make sure you say your prayers and attend to your studies.”

  “Yes, Lady Mother,” he says obediently.

  “I’ll keep him safe,” Jasper says to me. For a moment our eyes meet, but we exchange nothing except a grim determination to get this parting over, to get this exile under way, to keep this precious boy safe. I suppose that Jasper is the only man whom I have loved, perhaps he is the only man whom I will ever love. But there has never been time for words of love between us; we have spent most of our time saying good-bye.

  “Times can change,” I say to Henry. “Edward looks as if he is secure on the throne now with our king in his grave and our prince dead too but I don’t give up. Don’t you give up either, my son. We are of the House of Lancaster, we are born to rule England. I said it before, and I was right. I will be right again. Don’t forget it.”

  “No, Lady Mother.”

  Jasper takes my hand and kisses it, bows, and goes towards the little boat. He throws his few bundles of goods down to the master and then, holding his sword carefully aloft, steps down into the fishing smack. He, who commanded half of Wales, is going away with almost nothing. This is indeed defeat. Jasper Tudor leaves Wales like a convict on the run. I can feel my belly burn with resentment at the York usurpers.

  My son kneels before me, and I put my hand on his soft, warm head and say, “God bless you and keep you, my son,” and then he rises up and in just a moment he is gone, light-footed over the dirty cobbles. He jumps down the harbor steps like a deer, and is in the boat, and they are casting off before I can say another word. He is gone before I have advised him how to behave in France; he is gone before I can warn him of the perils of the world. It is too fast, too fast, and too final. He has gone.

  They push off from the wall and spread the sails; the wind flutters the canvas, and they reef it in tightly. There is a creaking noise as the mast and the sheets take the strain, and then the boat starts to move, slowly at first, and then more quickly away from the harbor wall. I want to shout, “Come back!” I even want to shout, “Don’t leave me! Don’t leave without me!” like a child. But I cannot call them back to danger, and I cannot run away myself. I have to let him go, my son, my brown-headed son, I have to let him go across the sea into exile, not even knowing when I will see him again.

  I come home—dulled by the journey and my constant muttered prayers on every step of the way, my back aching from the jolting of the horse and my eyes dry and sore—to find the physician once again in attendance on my husband. It is a long journey, and I am exhausted by the road and wearied by grief at the loss of my son. Every step of the way I have wondered where he is now, and when I shall see him, indeed if I shall see him ever again. I cannot find it in myself even to pretend an interest when I see the physician’s horse in the stable and his servant waiting in the hall. Since we came home from the battle of Barnet, one nurse or another—or the physician or the apothecary or the barber surgeon—have been constant presences in our house. I assume that he has come to deal with my husband’s usual complaint of pain from his wound. The slash across his belly has long healed, leaving a ridged scar, but he likes to make much of it, talking of his suffering in the wars, and the moment when the sword came down, the dreams he still has at night.

  I am accustomed to ignoring his complaints, or suggesting a soothing drink and going to bed early, so when the groom of the bedchamber stops me as I walk into the hall, all I can think is that I am longing to wash and change out of my dirty clothes. I would brush past him, but he is urgent, as if something were really wrong. He says the apothecary is grinding herbs in our still room, the physician is with my husband; perhaps I should prepare myself for bad news. Even then, as I sit in the chair and snap my fingers for the page boy to pull off my riding boots, I am barely listening. But the man goes on fretting. Now they think that the wound went deeper than we realized, and is unhealed, perhaps bleeding into his belly. He has never eaten well since the battle, his groom reminds me mournfully—but still he eats far more than me, who fasts every saint’s day and every Friday. He cannot sleep except for snatches of rest—but still he sleeps more than me, who gets up twice in the night,