The Red Queen tc-2 Read online

  She sighs as if I am tiresome. “They won’t ask you that.”

  “And then what will happen?”

  “His Grace, the king, will appoint a new guardian, and, in turn, he will give you in marriage to the man of his choice.”

  “Another betrothal?”

  “Yes.”

  “Can I not go to an abbey?” I ask very quietly, though I know what her answer will be. Nobody regards my spiritual gifts. “Now I am released from this betrothal can I not go?”

  “Of course you can’t go to an abbey, Margaret. Don’t be stupid. Your duty is to bear a son and heir, a boy for our family, the Beauforts, a young kinsman to the King of England, a boy for the House of Lancaster. God knows, the House of York has boys enough. We have to have one of our own. You will give us one of our own.”

  “But I think I have a calling-”

  “You are called to be mother of the next heir of Lancaster,” she says briskly. “That is an ambition great enough for any girl. Now go and get ready to leave. Your women will have packed your clothes; you just have to fetch your doll for the journey.”

  I fetch my doll and my own carefully copied book of prayers too. I can read French, of course, and also English, but I cannot understand Latin or Greek, and my mother will not allow me a tutor. A girl is not worth educating, she says. I wish that I could read the gospels and prayers in Latin, but I cannot, and the handwritten copies in English are rare and precious. Boys are taught Latin and Greek and other subjects too; but girls need only be able to read and write, to sew, to keep the household accounts, to make music and enjoy poetry. If I were an abbess, I would have access to a great library, and I could set clerks to copy all the texts that I wanted to read. I would make the novices read to me all day. I would be a woman of learning instead of an untaught girl, as stupid as any ordinary girl.

  If my father had lived, perhaps he would have taught me Latin. He was a great reader and writer; at least I know that much about him. He spent years in captivity in France when he studied every day. But he died just days before my first birthday. My birth was so unimportant to him that he was in France on campaign, trying to restore his fortune, when my mother was brought to bed, and he did not come home again until just before my first birthday, and then he died; so he never knew me and my gifts.

  It will take us three days to get to London. My mother will ride her own horse, but I am to ride pillion behind one of the grooms. He is called Wat, and he thinks himself a great charmer in the stables and kitchen. He winks at me, as if I would be friendly to a man such as him, and I frown to remind him that I am a Beaufort and he is a nobody. I sit behind him, and I have to take tight hold of his leather belt, and when he says to me, “Right and tight? Righty tighty?” I nod coldly, so as to warn him that I don’t want him talking to me all the way to Ampthill.

  He sings instead, which is just as bad. He sings love songs and haymaking songs in a bright tenor voice, and the men who ride with us, to protect us from the armed bands who are everywhere in England these days, join in with him and sing too. I wish my mother would order them to be silent, or at least command them to sing psalms; but she is happy, riding out in the warm spring sunshine, and when she comes alongside me, she smiles and says, “Not far now, Margaret. We will spend tonight at Abbots Langley and go on to London tomorrow. Are you not too tired?”

  I am so unprepared by those who should care for me that I haven’t even been taught how to ride, and I am not allowed even to sit on a horse of my own and be led, not even when we arrive in London and hundreds of people in the streets and markets and shops gawp at the fifty of our household as we ride by. How am I to appear as the heroine who will save England if I have to jog behind Wat, seated pillion, my hand on his belt, like some village slut going to a goose fair? I am not at all like an heir to the House of Lancaster. We stay at an inn, not even at court, for the Duke of Suffolk, my guardian, was terribly disgraced and is now dead, so we cannot stay in his palace. I offer up to Our Lady the fact that we don’t have a good London house of our own, and then I think that She too had to make do with a common inn at Bethlehem, when surely Herod must have had spare rooms in the palace. There must have been more suitable arrangements than a stable, surely. Considering who She was. And so I try to be resigned, like Her.

  At least I am to have London clothes before we go to court for me to renounce my betrothal. My Lady Mother summons the tailors and the seamstresses to our inn, and I am fitted for a wonderful gown. They say that the ladies of the court are wearing tall, conical headdresses, so high that a woman has to duck to get under a seven-foot doorway. The queen, Margaret of Anjou, loves beautiful clothes and is wearing a new color of ruby red made from a new dye; they say it is as red as blood. My mother orders me a gown of angelic white by way of contrast, and has it trimmed with Lancaster red roses to remind everyone that I may be only a girl of nine years old but I am the heiress of our house. Only when the clothes are ready can we take a barge downriver to declare my dissent against my betrothal, and to be presented at court.

  The dissent is a tremendous disappointment. I am hoping that they will question me and that I might stand before them, shy but clear-spoken, to say that I know from God Himself that John de la Pole is not to be my husband. I imagine myself before a tribunal of judges, amazing them like Baby Jesus at the synagogue. I thought I might say that I had a dream which told me that I was not to marry him for I have a greater destiny: I am chosen by God Himself to save England! I am to be Queen of England and sign my name Margaret Regina: Margaret R. But there is no opportunity for me to address them, to shine. It is all written down before we arrive, and all I am allowed to say is, “I dissent,” and sign my name, which is only Margaret Beaufort, and it is done. Nobody even asks me for my opinion on the matter.

  We go to wait outside the presence chamber, and then one of the king’s men comes out and calls “Lady Margaret Beaufort!” and everyone looks around and sees me. I have a moment, a really wonderful moment, when I feel everyone looking at me, and I remember to cast down my eyes, and despise worldly vanity, and then my mother leads the way into the king’s presence chamber.

  The king is on his great throne with his cloth of estate suspended over the chair and a throne almost the same size beside him for the queen. She is fair-haired and brown-eyed, with a round pudding face and a straight nose. I think she looks beautiful and spoiled, and the king beside her looks fair and pale. I can’t say I see any great light of holiness at this first inspection. He looks quite normal. He smiles at me as I come in and curtsey, but the queen looks from the red roses at the hem of my gown to the little coronet that holds my veil, and then looks away as if she does not think much of me. I suppose, being French, she does not understand who I am. Someone should have told her that if she does not have a baby, then they will have to find another boy to be their heir for the House of Lancaster and it could well be mine. Then I am sure she would have paid me more attention. But she is worldly. The French can be terribly worldly; I have observed it from my reading. I am sure she would not even have seen the light in Joan the Maid. I cannot be surprised that she does not admire me.

  Next to her is a most beautiful woman, perhaps the most beautiful woman I have ever seen. She is wearing a gown of blue with a silver thread running through, which makes it shimmer like water. You would think her scaled like a fish. She sees me staring at her, and she smiles back at me, which makes her face light up with a warm beauty like sunlight on water on a summer’s day.

  “Who is that?” I whisper to my mother, who pinches my arm to remind me to be silent.

  “Jacquetta Rivers. Stop staring,” my mother snaps, and pinches my arm again to recall me to the present. I curtsey very low and I smile at the king.

  “I am giving your daughter in wardship to my dearly loved half brothers, Edmund and Jasper Tudor,” the king says to my mother. “She can live with you until it is time for her to marry.”

  The queen looks away and whispers something to Jacquett