The Red Queen tc-2 Read online

  I don’t even answer him. I slip my hand in the crook of his arm and we hurry out, our faces pale with concern for the king whom everyone knows we love.

  He lingers for days. The agony of the queen is remarkable to see. For all his infidelities to her, and for all his fecklessness with his friends, this is a man who has inspired passionate attachment. The queen is locked in his chamber night and day; physicians go in and out with one remedy after another. The rumors fly around the court like crows seeking a tree in the evening. They say he was chilled by a cold wind off the river when he insisted on fishing at Eastertide. They say that he is sick in his belly from his constant overeating and excessive drinking. Some say that his many whores have given him the pox and it is eating away at him. A few think like me, that it is the will of God and punishment for treason against the House of Lancaster. I believe that God is making the way straight for the coming of my son.

  Stanley takes to the king’s rooms, where men gather in corners to mutter their fears that Edward, who has been invincible for all his life, may finally have run out of luck. I spend my time in the queen’s rooms, waiting for her to come in, to change her headdress and comb her hair. I watch her blank face in the mirror as she lets the maid pin up her hair any way she chooses. I see her white lips moving constantly in prayer. If she were the wife of any other man, I would pray for her too from pity. Elizabeth is in agony of fear at losing the man she loves and the one who has stood above us all, unquestionably the greatest man in England.

  “What does she say?” my husband asks me as we meet at dinner in the great hall, as subdued as if a funeral pall were laid over us already.

  “Nothing,” I reply. “She says nothing. She is dumbstruck at the thought of losing him. I am certain he is sinking.”

  That afternoon the Privy Council is called to the king’s bedside. We women wait in the great presence chamber, outside the privy chambers, desperate for news. My husband comes out after an hour, grim-faced.

  “He swore us to an alliance over his bed,” he says. “Hastings and the queen: the best friend and the wife. Begged us to work together for the safety of his son. Named his son Edward as the next king, joined the hands of William Hastings and the queen over his bed. Said we should serve under his brother Richard as regent till the boy is of age. Then the priest came in to give him the last rites. He will be dead by nightfall.”

  “Did you swear fealty?”

  His crooked smile tells me that it meant nothing. “God, yes. We all swore. We all swore to work peaceably together, swore to friendship unending, so I should think the queen is arming now and sending for her son to come at once from his castle in Wales with as many men as he can muster, armed for war. I should think Hastings is sending for Richard, warning him against the Riverses, calling on him to bring in the men of York. The court will fall apart. Nobody can stand the ascendancy of the Riverses. They are certain to rule England through their boy. It will be Margaret of Anjou all over again, a court run by the distaff. Everyone will be calling on Richard to stop her. You and I must divide and work. I shall write to Richard and pledge fealty to him, while you assure the queen of our loyalty to her and to her family, the Riverses.”

  “A foot in each camp at once,” I whisper. It is Stanley’s way. This is why I married him; this is the very moment that I married him for.

  “My guess is that Richard will hope to rule England till Prince Edward is of age,” he says. “And then rule England through the boy if he can dominate him. He will be another Warwick. A Kingmaker.”

  “Or will he be a rival king?” I breathe, thinking as always of my own boy.

  “A rival king,” he agrees. “Duke Richard is a Plantagenet of York, already of age, whose claim to the throne is unquestionable, who does not need a regency nor an alliance of the lords to rule for him. Most people would think him a safer choice for king than an untried boy. Some will see him as the next heir. You must send a messenger to Jasper at once and tell him to keep Henry in safety till we know what will happen next. They cannot come to England till we know who will claim the throne.”

  He is about to go, but I put a hand on his arm. “And what do you think will happen next?”

  His eyes do not meet mine; he looks away. “I think the queen and Duke Richard will fight like dogs over the bone that is the little prince,” he says. “I think they will tear him apart.”

  MAY 1483

  LONDON

  Only four weeks after that hurried conversation I write to Jasper with extraordinary news.

  Richard, Duke of Gloucester, the king’s own brother, swearing absolute fealty to his nephew Prince Edward, has brought the boy to London and housed him in the king’s rooms in the Tower with full honor for his coronation which is to be next month. There was some squabble with the young prince’s guardians and Anthony Rivers, his uncles, and Richard Grey, his half brother, are held by the duke. Elizabeth, the queen, has taken to sanctuary with the rest of her children, swearing that Richard is a false friend and an enemy to her and her own, demanding that her royal son be released to her.

  The city is in uproar, not knowing who to believe or whom to trust. Most think that the queen is trying to steal the royal treasure (she has taken as much as she can carry) to defend her own power and family. Her brother is gone with the fleet and has stolen the rest of the treasure of the realm, and is likely to make war on London from the river. Overnight she is an enemy to the kingdom, and even to her own son, since everything is in train for the young prince’s coronation and he himself is issuing writs under the joint seal of himself as heir and his uncle as protector. Will the queen’s brother bombard her royal son in the Tower? Will she fight him if he is the duke’s ward? Will she hide from his coronation?

  I will write more as soon as I know more. Stanley says to wait and watch, our time may be now.

  Margaret Stanley

  JUNE 1483

  LONDON

  My husband Lord Stanley is now Duke Richard’s trusted advisor, as he was once King Edward’s. This is as it should be; he serves the king, and Richard is now the lord protector of the king for these short weeks before the boy Edward is crowned. Then Richard must give up everything, throne and power, and the boy will rule as King of England. We will see then who can survive the reign of a child of the Rivers family with the greatest crown in the world on his head, utterly commanded by his mother: a faithless witch in hiding. There are few men who will trust the boy, and nobody will trust his mother.

  But anyway, what son of the House of York could ever give up power? What child of the House of York could ever bring himself to hand over the throne? Richard surely will not hand the crown and scepter to the son of a woman who hates him? But whatever doubts we feel, we are all measured for our coronation robes, and they are building the walkway at Westminster Abbey for the royal procession-the widowed Queen Elizabeth must hear the hammering and sawing above her, as she skulks in her sanctuary in the low chambers beside the abbey. The Privy Council went to her in form and demanded that she send her nine-year-old son Richard to join his twelve-year-old brother in the Tower. She could not refuse, and there was no reason for her to refuse, except her own hatred of Duke Richard, and so she had to give way. Now the two royal boys wait in the royal apartments for the coronation day.

  I am responsible for the wardrobe for the coronation, and I meet with the wardrobe mistress and her maids to see what robes will be provided for the Dowager Queen Elizabeth, the princesses, and the other ladies of court. We must prepare the gowns assuming that the queen will come out of sanctuary for the coronation, and that she will want to be dressed exquisitely as usual. We are supervising the brushing of the queen’s ermine robe by the maid of the wardrobe and watching the seamstress sew on a mother-of-pearl button, when the wardrobe mistress remarks that the Duchess of Gloucester, Anne Neville, Richard’s wife, has not ordered her gown from the wardrobe.

  “Her command must have gone astray,” I observe. “For she cannot have what she needs to w