The Red Queen tc-2 Read online

  My husband writes one of his rare letters from Westminster, and I fall on it as a beggar might fall on a crust of bread. I am too poor in news to be proud.

  The York princess is at the top of her game; her beauty commands the court, and the king follows her like a lapdog. The queen dresses her in her own gowns-they dress to match. The thin old Neville woman and this glowing, rosy girl come out to dine in dresses of the same rich cut and color, as if they want to encourage comparison.

  The queen must be ordered by the king to be so complaisant; she does everything but put her niece into bed with her husband. There are some who share your view that Richard seeks to seduce his niece only to insult your son, to show him as a helpless cuckold. If so, he succeeds magnificently. Henry Tudor is a laughingstock to this hot-blooded court. But there are others who think, more simply, that the lovers are merely reckless with appearances, forgetting everything but each other, and think of nothing but their own desires.

  The court is wonderful this season; how sorry I am you cannot be here. I have never seen such wealth and glamour since Edward’s time, and at the heart of it all is Edward’s daughter looking as if she has come into her own again. Of course she belongs here. The Yorks are indeed the sun in splendor, and to see Elizabeth of York is to be dazzled.

  By the way, do you have any news of your son? Richard’s spies report to him in secret, I don’t know what they say; but I do know that the king has ceased to fear Henry, and his poor ally, the mad Duke of Brittany. He nearly caught him in June, you know, and there are many who say Henry will find no safe haven in France. He will simply be held by the French king as a bargaining chip, until he loses all value. Perhaps it may be that your last defeat was your last chance? What do you think? And if so, do you want to give up hope for Henry, and sue for forgiveness to Richard? I could perhaps intercede for you if I promised that you are humbled to the ground.

  I send you the compliments of the season and this little book as a gift. It is printed by one Thomas Caxton on a press of his own devising, brought to England by the late and much missed Anthony Rivers, the queen’s brother. I thought you would find a printed book, rather than a hand-copied manuscript, of interest. Everyone is saying that Rivers was a man of great foresight to patronize such work. His own sister Elizabeth the queen edited the first text off the press; she is a scholar as well as a beauty, of course.

  What would happen if everyone could read and everyone could buy these? Would they give up on teachers and kings altogether? Would they care nothing for the Houses of Lancaster and York? And study their own loyalties? Would they cry a plague on both your houses? It is amusing to speculate, is it not?

  Stanley

  I drop his book to the floor in sheer irritation at the thought of Elizabeth of York and her incestuous lover-uncle dancing in the Christmas feast, while that poor thing, Anne Neville, smiles on them as if she were part of a happy family at play. When Stanley taunts me with Henry’s silence, I have no riposte. In truth, I don’t know what he is doing; I have heard nothing since their flight to France when Jasper said he had hopes, but did not tell me what they were. I think Jasper has advised Henry not to write to me. I think they believe that Stanley’s messenger Ned Parton is unsafe; they believe he reports to my husband. They are surrounded by spies, and they have to be suspicious; but I fear that now they doubt me too. This was once our battle, our rebellion: we Tudors against the Yorks. Now they trust no one, not even me. I live far from everyone, everything. I know nothing but what my husband writes to me, and he writes as a man in triumph might taunt a defeated enemy.

  MARCH 1485

  Another day when I rise for matins, pray as always for patience to endure my imprisonment and enforced silence, pray for the success of my son and for the downfall of his enemies, find my mind wandering as I think how Richard’s downfall might come about, find myself dreaming of the humiliation of the York princess and the witch her mother, and recall myself to myself with a sudden start and see that the candles are burning down on the altar and I have been on my knees for two hours and my companions are restless behind me, giving the theatrical sighs of women who imagine they are badly treated.

  I rise up and go to breakfast and see the relish with which my ladies fall on their food as if they were famished by having to come an hour or so late. They really are hopelessly venal creatures. If I could have lived in a nunnery in this time of imprisonment, at least I would have lived with holy women and not this collection of fools. I go to my room to deal with the business of my lands and the gathering of the rents, but there is almost nothing to do. It all goes to my husband’s steward now, and I am a tenant in the house that was once all my own.

  I make myself walk in the garden for an hour in the morning for the good of my health, but I can take no pleasure in the fat buds on the apple trees and the bobbing yellow of the Lenten lilies. The sun is starting to grow warm again for another year of my captivity, and it is hard for me to take any joy in it. This must be the start of campaign season-my son must surely be recruiting troops and hiring ships, but I know almost nothing about it. It is as if I am trapped in a winter of solitude and silence, while the rest of the world is waking to life, to opportunities, to sin itself.

  I almost think it is an echo of my mood when the world seems oddly shadowed, the sunlight which was so bright and warm only a moment ago starts to feel cool, starts to look almost like candlelight, candlelight throughout the orchard, and suddenly all the birds that were singing to one another in the trees fall silent, and the hens at the end of the orchard all scurry to the henhouse, as it gets darker and darker all around as if night were falling though it is not yet noon.

  I freeze in my stride: at last my calling has come upon me. It has happened at last. A vision, a full daytime vision, has come to me, and at last I shall see an angel or perhaps the blessed Lady Mary Herself, and She will tell me when my son will invade, and that he will triumph. I drop to my knees, ready for the visitation that I have waited for all my life. At last, I shall see what Joan the Maid saw. At last I shall hear the voices of angels in the church bells.

  “Lady Margaret! Lady Margaret!” A woman comes running out of the house, a man-at-arms behind her. “Come in! Come in! Something terrible is happening!”

  I open my eyes with a start and look behind me at this screaming fool as she gallops across the orchard, skirts flapping and headdress awry. It cannot be a holy vision if an idiot like this can see it. I rise to my feet. There is no vision for me today; my sight is only what everyone else sees, and it is no miracle but something worldly and strange.

  “Lady Margaret! Come in! It must be a storm or something worse!”

  She is a fool, but she is right in this: something terrible is happening, but I cannot understand what it is. I look up at the sky, and I see the strangest and most ominous sight: the sun is being devoured by a large, dark rondel, like a plate being passed before a candle. Slowly, as I shade my eyes and squint through my fingers, I can see the plate pass before the sun and then it is completely covering it, and the world has gone dark.

  “Come in!” the woman whimpers. “Lady Margaret, for the love of God, come in!”

  “You go,” I say. I am quite fascinated. It is as if the darkness and despair of my own grief has blotted out the sun itself, and now it is, quite suddenly, as dark as night. Perhaps it will always be nighttime now; it will always be darkness while Richard is on the throne of England and my son is blotted from the world as the sun has been blotted from the sky. My life has been dark as night since his campaign failed, and now everyone can share the darkness with me, for they failed to rise for my son. We can all be benighted in this godforsaken kingdom without a true king, forever. It is nothing more than everyone else deserves.

  The woman trembles and then runs back to the house. The man-at-arms stands, almost at attention, at a distance from me, torn between his duty to guard me and his own fear, and the two of us wait in the eerie half darkness, to see what-if anything-will happen