The Red Queen Read online

  It is the color that makes me hiss like a cat and step back so she cannot see my white, shocked face staring out of the window as she looks up and down at the house critically, as if she were valuing it for purchase. It is the bright redness of her dress that shocks me. I cannot even see her face yet, though I catch a glimpse of blond hair tucked away under the red velvet cap. It is that color that shakes me with irritation before she has even allowed my husband—my husband, smiling as I have never seen before—to lift her down from the saddle.

  Then it comes back to me with a rush. The year I went to court for the first time was the year that Margaret of Anjou, Henry VI’s queen, showed the world the new red: that very same bright scarlet. I remember Queen Margaret looking down the great hall of the court and overlooking me as if I were not worth her attention. I remember the towering height of her headdress and the scarlet of her gown. I remember feeling then, as I find I am feeling now, the seething resentment of someone who deserves the highest attention, the greatest respect, and yet is being overlooked. The Lady Elizabeth has not even stepped over my threshold, and yet she wears the color of a woman who wants to capture the attention of everyone. Before she has even set foot in my house I feel sure that she will draw every eye from me. But I am determined that she shall learn to respect me. She shall know who is her better; I swear it. The power of the Lord is mine; I have spent my life in prayer and study. She has spent her life in frivolity and ambition, and her mother is no more than a lucky witch. She shall honor me in God’s name. I shall make sure of it.

  My husband himself throws open the door for her and steps back to let her precede him into the great hall. I come forwards out of the shadows, and she immediately recoils as if I were a ghost. “Oh! My lady Margaret! You startled me! I did not see you there!” she cries, and she sweeps into a curtsey which is precisely judged—not as low as for a queen, low enough for the wife of a great lord of the realm, low enough for the woman who might be her mother-in-law, but a little raised, as if to remind me that I am in disgrace with this girl’s uncle and I am under house arrest on his word, and she is his favorite and he is king.

  I make the smallest, smallest movement of my head in return, and then I step towards my husband and we exchange our usual frosty kiss of greeting. “Husband, you are welcome,” I lie politely.

  “Wife, I give you joy,” he replies. For once his smile is bright; he is richly amused at bringing this blooming flower into the cold wasteland that is my home. “I am glad to bring you such a companion to cheer your solitude.”

  “I am happy in my own company, with my studies and my prayers,” I say at once, and then, as he raises an eyebrow at me, I have to turn to her: “But of course I am very glad of your visit.”

  “I will not intrude on you for long, I am sure,” she says, flushing a little at the rudeness of the icy welcome. “I am sorry to do so. But the king ordered it.”

  “We did not choose it, but it is a happy arrangement,” my husband says smoothly. “Shall we go to the privy chamber? And take some wine?”

  I nod to my steward of the household. He knows to fetch the best of the bottles; my husband is now acquainted with my cellar and is always served with the finest, now that he is master here. I lead the way, and I hear her light footsteps coming behind me, her high heels tapping on the paving stones of the hall, the very tempo of vanity. When we reach my room, I gesture that she may sit on a stool, and I take the carved chair and look down on her.

  She is beautiful, that much is undeniable. She has a heart-shaped face and a creamy pale complexion, straight eyebrows of brown, and gray, wide eyes. Her hair is fair, blond at the front and curling, to judge from the one lock that has escaped from the cap and falls in a ringlet to her shoulder. She is tall and has her mother’s grace, but she has an endearing charm that her mother never had. Elizabeth Woodville would turn a head in every crowd, but this girl would warm a heart. I see what my husband means about her radiance; she is tremendously engaging. Even now, as she pulls off her gloves and holds her hands to the warmth of the fire, unaware that I am looking her up and down as I would a horse that I might buy, she has a sort of vulnerable appeal. She is like a young animal that you cannot see without wanting to pet: like an orphan fawn, or a long-legged foal.

  She senses my eyes on her and she looks up. “I am sorry to disturb your studies, Lady Margaret,” she repeats. “I have written to my mother. It may be that I will be allowed to go and stay with her.”

  “Why are you sent from court at all?” I ask. I try to smile to encourage her to confide in me. “Did you get into some silly trouble? I am quite in disgrace for my support of my son, you know.”

  She shakes her head, and a little shadow goes over her face. “I think the king wanted me to be in a household where there could be no question against my reputation,” she says. “There has been some gossip—perhaps you have heard it?”

  I shake my head as if to imply that I live so quietly, so remotely, that I hear and know nothing.

  “The king is very kind to me and singles me out from the ladies of court,” she says, lying fluently as only beautiful girls know how. “There was gossip—you know how the court loves to gossip—and with Her Grace the queen dying so sadly, he wanted to make it clear that there was no cause. So he sent me to you. I am so grateful that you would take me in, thank you.”

  “And what was the gossip?” I ask, and watch her shift uncomfortably on her little stool.

  “Ah, Lady Margaret, you know how the world likes to whisper.”

  “And what did they whisper?” I press her. “If I am to repair your reputation, I should know at least what has been said against it.”

  She looks frankly up at me, as if she would have me for a friend and ally if she could. “They say that the king would have taken me for his wife,” she says.

  “And would you have liked that?” I ask steadily, but I can hear my own heart pounding in my ears for rage at the insult to my son and to our house.

  She blushes deep rose, as red as her cap. “It is not for me to decide,” she says quietly. “My mother must arrange my marriage. And besides, I am already betrothed to your son. Such things are for my mother and my guardians to decide.”

  “Your maidenly obedience does you credit, I am sure,” I say. I find I cannot keep the cold scorn from my voice, and she hears it and flinches back and looks at me again. She sees the anger in my face and her color drains away and she is white, as if she would faint.

  At that precise moment, my husband walks into the room followed by the steward with the wine and three glasses, takes in the situation in one second, and says urbanely: “Getting to know each other? Excellent.”

  He sends her off to her private chambers after she has drunk her glass of wine with us and tells her to rest after the rigors of the journey. Then he pours himself another measure, seats himself in a chair the match of mine, stretches out his boots towards the fire, and says: “You had better not bully her. If Richard defeats your son, he will marry her. The north won’t rebel against him once he has won a strong victory, and then she will be queen and you will never get out of this rathole.”

  “It is hardly a rathole, and I don’t bully,” I say. “I merely asked her why she had been sent to me, and she chose to tell me something of the truth and something of a lie, as any girl would, who does not know the one from another.”

  “She may be a liar, and indeed, in your terms, she may be a whore, but she will be the next Queen of England,” he says. “If your son comes in like a dragon from Wales—did you know there is a new ballad doing the rounds about the dragon from Wales?—then he will have to marry her to secure the York affinity, whatever her past has been. If Richard defeats your son, as seems most likely, then Richard will marry her for love. Either way, she will be Queen of England, and you would be wise not to make an enemy of her.”

  “I shall treat her with perfect courtesy,” I say.

  “Do that,” he recommends. “But listen to me, and do somet