The Red Queen Read online

  She rounds on me, her gown releasing the scent of lavender as it sweeps the strewing herbs on the floor. “We may be of the same family, but that is the very reason why we are not friends, for we are rivals for the throne. What quarrels are worse than family quarrels? We may all be cousins, but they are of the House of York and we are of the House of Lancaster. Never forget it. We of Lancaster are the direct line of descent from Edward III by his son, John of Gaunt. The direct line! But the Yorks can only trace their line back to John of Gaunt’s younger brother Edmund. They are a junior line: they are not descended from Edward’s heir; they descend from a younger brother. They can only inherit the throne of England if there is no Lancaster boy left. So—think, Margaret!—what do you think they are hoping for when the King of England falls into a trance, and his child is yet unborn? What d’you think they dream, when you are a Lancaster heir but only a girl, and not even married yet? Let alone brought to bed of a son?”

  “They would want to marry me into their house?” I ask, bewildered at the thought of yet another betrothal.

  She laughs shortly. “That—or, to tell the truth, they would rather see you dead.”

  I am silenced by this. That a whole family, a great house like York, would wish for my death is a frightening thought. “But surely, the king will wake up? And then everything will be all right. And his baby could be a son. And then he will be the Lancaster heir, and everything will be all right.”

  “Pray God the king wakes soon,” she says. “But you should pray that there is no baby to supplant you. And pray God we get you wedded and bedded without delay. For no one is safe from the ambitions of the House of York.”

  OCTOBER 1453

  The king dreams on, smiling in his waking sleep. In my room, alone, I try sitting, as they say he does, and staring at the floorboards, in case God will come to me as He has come to the king. I try to be deaf to the noises of the stable yard outside my window and to the loud singing from the laundry room where someone is thumping cloths on a washboard. I try to let my soul drift to God, and feel the absorbing peace that must wash the soul of the king so that he does not see the worried faces of his counsellors, and is even blind to his wife when she puts his newborn baby son in his arms and tells him to wake up and greet the little Prince Edward, heir to the throne of England. Even when, in temper, she shouts into his face that he must wake up or the House of Lancaster will be destroyed.

  I try to be entranced by God, as the king is, but someone always comes and bangs on my door or shouts down the hall for me to come and do some chores, and I am dragged back to the ordinary world of sin again, and I wake. The great mystery for England is that the king does not wake, and while he sits, hearing only the words of angels, the man who has made himself Regent of England, Richard, Duke of York, takes the reins of government into his own hands, starts to act like a king himself, and so Margaret, the queen, has to recruit her friends and warn them that she may need their help to defend her baby son. The warning alone is enough to generate unease. Up and down England men start to muster their forces and consider whether they would do better under a hated French queen with a true-born baby prince in her arms, or to follow the handsome and beloved Englishman, Richard of York, to wherever his ambition may take him.

  SUMMER 1455

  It is my wedding day—come at last. I stand at the door of the church in my best gown, the belt high and tight around my rib cage and the absurdly wide sleeves drowning my thin arms and little hands. My headdress is so heavy on my head that I droop beneath the wire support and the tall, conical height. The sweep of the scarf from the apex veils my pale resentment. My mother is beside me to escort me to my guardian Edmund Tudor, who has decided—as any wise guardian would, no doubt—that my best interests will be served by marriage to him: he is his own best choice as caretaker of my interests.

  I whisper to my mother, “I am afraid,” and she looks down at me. My head is only up to her shoulder. I am twelve years old but still a little girl, my chest as flat as a board, my body hairless beneath my thick layers of rich clothes. They had to pack my bodice with linen to give the impression of breasts. I am a child sent out to do a woman’s duty.

  “Nothing to be afraid about,” she says bluntly.

  I try again. “I thought I would be a virgin like Joan of Arc,” I say to her. I put my hand on her sleeve to tug at her attention. “You know I did. I always did. I wanted to go to a convent. I still want to go. I may have a calling. It might be God’s will. We should take advice. We could ask the priest. We could ask him now, before it is too late. What if God wants me for His own? Then it would be blasphemy if I married.”

  She turns to me and takes my cold hand in hers. “Margaret,” she says seriously, “you must know that you could never choose your own life. You are a girl: girls have no choice. You could never even choose your own husband: you are of the royal family. A husband would always have been chosen for you. It is forbidden for one of royal blood to marry their own choice. You know this too. And finally, you are of the House of Lancaster. You cannot choose your allegiance. You have to serve your house, your family, and your husband. I have allowed you to dream, and I have allowed you to read; but the time has come to put aside silly stories and silly dreams and do your duty. Don’t think you can be like your father and run away from your duty. He took a coward’s way out; you cannot.”

  This sudden reference to my father shocks me. She never speaks of her second husband, my father, except in the vaguest and most general terms. I am about to ask, How did he run away? What was his coward’s way out? when the doors of the church open, and I have to walk forwards and take the hand of my new husband, and stand before a priest and swear to be a wife. I feel his big hand take mine and I hear his deep voice answer the questions, where I just whisper. He pushes a heavy ring of Welsh gold on my finger, and I have to hold my fingers together like a little paw to keep it on. It is far too big for me. I look up at him, amazed that he thinks such a marriage can go ahead, when his ring is too big for my hand and I am only twelve and he is more than twice my age: a man, tempered by fighting and filled with ambition. He is a hard man from a power-seeking family. But I am still a child longing for a spiritual life, praying that people will see that I am special. This is yet another of the many things that nobody seems to care about but me.

  I am to start married life in the palace of Lamphey, Pembrokeshire, which is in the heart of horrible Wales. I have no time to miss my mother and my family in the first months, for everything is so different that I have to learn completely new ways. Most of my time is spent with the servants and the women attendants in the castle. My husband and his brother storm in and out like rain. My lady governess has come with me, and my own maidservant, but everyone else is a stranger. They all speak Welsh and stare at me when I try to ask them for a glass of small ale or a jug of water for washing. I so long for a friendly face from home that I would even be glad to see Wat, the groom.

  The castle stands in desolate countryside. Around me is nothing but high mountains and sky. I can see the rain clouds coming like a wet curtain, half an hour before they pour down on the gray slate roofs and rain-streaked walls. The chapel is a cold and neglected building, and the priest is very poor in his attendance; he does not even notice my exceptional piety. I often go there to pray, and the light streams through the western window onto my bowed head, but nobody even notices. London is a nine-day arduous journey away; my old home is as far. It can take ten days for a letter to come from my mother, but she hardly ever writes. Sometimes I feel that I have been stolen from a battlefield and held to ransom in an enemy land, like my father. Certainly, I could not feel more foreign and lonely.

  Worst of all, I have not had a vision since my wedding night. I spend every afternoon on my knees, when I close my privy chamber door and pretend to be sewing. I spend every evening in the damp chapel. But nothing comes to me. Not a vision of the stake, not the battles, not even the flicker of a banner of angels and lilies. I beg Our