The Red Queen Read online

  I receive a letter from Jasper:

  To Lady Margaret Stanley

  It is to be at the end of this month or early next. We will have fifteen ships and about two thousand men. This will be our last chance, I think. This time we have to win, Margaret. For the sake of your son, you must make your husband take the field. We cannot do this without him. Henry and I are counting on you to bring out the Stanleys. Please God I shall see you at our boy’s coronation, or else I shall never see you again. God bless you either way. This has been a long good cause, and I have been proud to serve your son and you.

  Jasper

  AUGUST 1485

  The fifteen ships set sail from Harfleur, financed by the French for the destruction of England, loaded with the worst men in Europe, drilled by Swiss instructors into some semblance of an army, commanded by Jasper, and led by Henry, more frightened than he has ever been before in his life.

  He has reached the English shore before, and sheered off, too afraid to face this enemy, certain he would be defeated. Now he has his chance once more, and he knows this will be his last chance. The Bretons supported him before, but he did not even land. The French support him now, but they will not do so again. If this fails, there will be no one else to join him. If he fails now, he will spend the rest of his life in exile, a pitiful pretender to the throne, begging for his living.

  They sail through summer seas, the winds are warm, the sea calm, the night is short and the dawn clear. The southern counties are held down by Richard, they do not dare land in the south. So they land as far west as they can, at Dale, in West Wales, hoping that Richard’s spies will not see them, hoping to enlist a flood of recruits eager to march against the tyrant, before he even knows that they are in his country.

  It doesn’t happen. They are greeted mostly with indifference. The men who marched out with the Duke of Buckingham and were defeated by rain don’t want to march out again. Many of them are loyal to Richard, some of them may even send a warning to him. Henry, a stranger in the country he is claiming as his own, cannot understand the Welsh language in this harsh western accent. He even speaks English with a Breton accent—he has been abroad too long. He is a stranger; and they don’t like strangers.

  They march north cautiously. Jasper’s former towns open their gates from old love and loyalty; others they skirt. Henry calls on Welshmen to support a Welsh prince. But the Welsh are not stirred by this call from a young man who has spent most of his life in Brittany, who marches with a French army of convicts.

  They cross the Severn at Shrewsbury. Henry has to confess he had a fear that the river would be up—as once it destroyed another rebel against Richard—but the crossing is low, and the evening mild, and at last they are in England, a raggle-taggle army of French convicts, German mercenaries, and a few Welsh adventurers. And they cannot even decide which way they should march.

  They start to march on London. It will be a long march across the breadth of the west country and then along the valley of the Thames, but both Jasper and Henry believe that if they can take London, then they have the heart of England, and they know that Richard is north of them, mustering his armies at Nottingham.

  To Jasper Tudor and my son Henry Tudor

  I greet you well.

  My husband and his brother Sir William Stanley have assembled two separate mighty armies, and are ready to meet you near Tamworth in the third week of August. I am in touch with the Earl of Northumberland, who, I think, will prove true to us also.

  Send me news. Reply to this—

  Lady Margaret

  In Nottingham, Richard the king commands Lord Stanley to return to court at once and bring his army. He waits for the reply, but when it comes he lets the letter sit on the table before him and looks at the folded paper and the red seal stamped with the Stanley crest. He opens it as if he knows what he will read.

  Stanley writes that he sends his king his love and loyalty. He writes of his duty to his king and his urgent desire to serve him at once. He writes that he is sick, dreadfully sick, but as soon as he is well enough to ride, he will come to Nottingham ready to do his duty.

  Richard raises his eyes from the letter and meets the stony gaze of his friend Sir William Catesby. “Fetch Stanley’s son,” is all he says.

  They bring George, Lord Strange, to the king, though he trails his feet like a prisoner. When he sees Richard’s face and the letter with his father’s seal on the table, they see him start to tremble. “Upon my honor—” he starts.

  “Not your honor, your father’s,” Richard interrupts. “Your father’s honor is what concerns us. You in particular, for you might die for his failure. He writes that he is sick. Is he meeting Henry Tudor? Has he agreed with his wife Lady Margaret that they will repay my kindness with treason?”

  “No! Never! No!” the young man says. “My father is true to you, Your Grace. He always has been, from the first, from the first days. You know that. He has always spoken to me of you with the most devoted—”

  “And your uncle, Sir William?”

  The young man chokes on his assurances. “My uncle, I don’t know,” he says. “He might … but I don’t know. We are all faithful … our motto is Sans Changer …”

  “The old Stanley game?” Richard asks gently. “One on one side, one on another. I remember them telling of Margaret of Anjou waiting for your father to come up and fight for her. I remember her losing the battle while she waited.”

  “My father will come in time for you, Your Grace!” the miserable young man promises. “If I could write to him and bid him to come in your name!”

  “You can write to him and tell him that you will be killed without sentence or ceremony if he is not here by the day after tomorrow,” Richard says swiftly. “And get a priest, and get yourself shriven. You are a dead man if your father is not here the day after tomorrow.”

  They take him to his room, and they lock him in; they bring him paper and a pen, and he shakes so badly that he can hardly write. Then he waits for his father to come for him. Surely, his father will come for him. Surely, a man such as his father would not fail to come for his son and heir?

  Henry Tudor and his army marches east to London. The hay is in and the hayfields greening up with the new growth. The fields of wheat, barley, and rye are golden. The French in particular have to be marched in strict columns; they see the rich villages and think of pillage and theft. They have been on the march for three weeks, and they are tired, but the captains keep them together, and there are few desertions. Jasper reflects that the advantage of foreign mercenary troops is that they have no homes to run to—their only way home is with their commanders. But it is a bitter thought. He had counted on his people flocking to the Tudor standard; he had thought that men whose fathers had died for Lancaster would come out for their revenge, but it seems that it isn’t so. It seems he has been gone too long and they are accustomed to the peace of Richard III. Nobody wants another war, only Jasper and Henry and their army of strangers. Sitting heavily in the saddle, Jasper thinks that this is an England he doesn’t know. It has been many years since he was commander of an English army. Perhaps the world has changed. Perhaps—he makes himself wonder—perhaps they serve Richard as a rightful king and see his boy, the Lancaster boy, the Tudor boy, as nothing but a pretender.

  The promise of a meeting with the Stanleys, the first great recruits to their cause, makes them halt their eastward march on London and turn for the north. Sir William Stanley comes out with just a small bodyguard to meet them as they get to the town of Stafford.

  “Your Grace,” he says to Henry, and puts his fist to his chest in a soldier’s salute. Henry shoots a quick glance at Jasper. This is the first English nobleman on English soil to greet him with the title of a king. Henry is well schooled; he does not grin, but he returns the salute with warmth.

  “Where is your army, Sir William?” he asks.

  “Just one day away, awaiting your orders, sire.”

  “Bring them to joi