The Red Queen tc-2 Read online

  “There would have been an inquiry in London about his conduct; he escaped that shame only by his death. There might even have been an excommunication from the pope. They would have come for your father and accused him of treason, and he would have paid with his life on the block, and you would have lost your fortune, and we would have been attainted and ruined; he spared us that, but only by running away into death.”

  “An excommunication?” I am more horrified by this than anything else.

  “People wrote ballads about him,” she says bitterly. “People laughed at his stupidity and marveled at our infamy. You cannot imagine the shame of it. I have shielded you from it, from the shame of him, and I get no thanks for it. You are such a child you don’t know that he is notorious as the great example of his age of the change of fortune, of the cruelty of the wheel of fortune. He could not have been born with better prospects and better opportunities; but he was unlucky, fatally unlucky. In his very first battle in France, when he rode out as a boy, he was captured, and he was left in captivity for seventeen years. It broke his heart. He thought that nobody cared enough to ransom him. Perhaps that is the lesson that I should have taught you-never mind your studies, never mind your nagging for books, for a tutor, for Latin lessons. I should have taught you never to be unlucky, never to be unlucky like your father.”

  “Does everyone know?” I ask. I am horrified at the shame I have inherited, unknowingly. “Jasper, for instance? Does Jasper know I am the daughter of a coward?”

  My mother shrugs. “Everyone. We said that he was exhausted by campaigning, and died of his service to the king. But people will always gossip about their betters.”

  “And are we an unlucky family?” I ask her. “Do you think I have inherited his bad luck?”

  She will not answer me. She gets to her feet and smooths the skirt of her gown as if to brush away smuts from the fire, or to sweep away ill fortune.

  “Are we unlucky?” I ask. “Lady Mother?”

  “Well, I am not,” she says defensively. “I was born a Beauchamp, and after your father’s death I married again and changed my name from his. Now I am a Welles. But you might be unlucky. The Beauforts may be. But perhaps you will change the luck,” she says indifferently. “You were lucky enough to have a boy, after all. Now you have a Lancaster heir.”

  They serve dinner very late; the Duke of Buckingham keeps court hours and is not troubled by the cost of candles. At least the meat is better cooked and there are more side dishes of pastries and sweetmeats than at Pembroke Castle. I see that at this table where everything is so beautiful, Jasper’s manners are positively courtly, and I understand for the first time that he lives as a soldier when he is in his border castle on the very frontiers of the kingdom, but he is a courtier when he is in a great house. He sees me watching him, and he winks at me as if we two share the secret of how we manage our lives when we do not have to be on our best behavior.

  We eat a good dinner and afterwards there is an entertainment, some fools, a juggler, and a girl who sings. Then my mother nods to me and sends me to bed as if I were a child still, and before the grand company I can do nothing but curtsey for her blessing and go. I glance at my future husband as I leave. He is looking at the girl singer with his eyes narrowed, a little smile on his mouth. I don’t mind walking out after I see that look. I am more sick of men, all men, than I dare to acknowledge to myself.

  Next day, the horses are in the stable yard, and I am to be sent back to Pembroke Castle until my year of mourning is finished and I can be married again to the smiling stranger. My mother comes to bid me farewell and watches the manservant lift me onto the pillion saddle behind Jasper’s master of horse. Jasper himself is riding ahead with this troop of guards. The rear file are waiting for me.

  “You will leave your son in the care of Jasper Tudor when you marry Sir Henry,” my mother remarks, as if this arrangement has just occurred to her this minute, as I am leaving.

  “No, he will come with me. Surely, he will come with me,” I blurt out. “He must come with me. He is my son. Where should he be, but with me?”

  “It’s not possible,” she says decidedly. “It is all agreed. He is to stay with Jasper. Jasper will care for him and keep him safe.”

  “But he is my son!”

  My mother smiles. “You are little more than a child yourself. You cannot look after an heir to our name, and keep him safe. These are dangerous times, Margaret. You should understand that by now. He is a valuable boy. He will be safer if he is at some distance from London, while the Yorks are in power. He will be safer in Pembroke than anywhere else in the country. Wales loves the Tudors. Jasper will guard him as his own.”

  “But he is my own! Not Jasper’s!”

  My mother comes closer and puts her hand on my knee. “You own nothing, Margaret. You yourself are the property of your husband. Once again I have chosen a good husband for you, one near to the crown, kinsman to the Nevilles, son of the greatest duke in England. Be grateful, child. Your son will be well cared for, and then you will have more, Stafford boys this time.”

  “I nearly died last time,” I burst out, careless of the man seated before me on the horse, his shoulders squared, pretending not to listen.

  “I know,” my mother says. “And this is the price of being a woman. Your husband did his duty and died. You did yours and survived. You were lucky this time; he was not. Let’s hope you take your luck onwards.”

  “What if I am not so lucky next time? What if I have the Beaufort luck, and next time the midwives do as you ordered them and let me die? What if they do as you command and drag a grandson out of your daughter’s dead body?”

  She does not even blink. “The baby should always be saved in preference to the mother. That is the advice of the Holy Church, you know that. I was only reminding the women of their duty. There is no need to make everything so personal, Margaret. You make everything into your own tragedy.”

  “I think it is my tragedy, if you are telling my midwives to let me die!”

  She all but shrugs as she steps back. “These are the chances that a woman faces. Men die in battle; women die in childbirth. Battle is more dangerous. The odds are with you.”

  “But what if the odds are against me, if I am unlucky? What if I die?”

  “Then you will have the satisfaction of knowing that you made at least one son for the House of Lancaster.”

  “Mother, before God,” I say, my voice shaking with tears, “I swear that I have to believe that there is more for me in life than being wife to one man after another, and hoping not to die in childbirth!”

  She shakes her head, smiling at me as if my sense of outrage is like a little girl shouting over her toys. “No, truly, my dear, there is nothing more for you,” she says. “So do your duty with an obedient heart. I will see you in January, at your wedding.”

  I ride back to Pembroke Castle in a surly silence, and none of the signs of the coming spring down the greening lanes give me any pleasure at all. I turn my head away from the wild daffodils that make the high meadows a blaze of silver and gold, and I am deaf to the insistent, joyous singing of the birds. The lapwing soaring blunt-winged over a plowed field and calling out his sharp whistle means nothing to me, for everything means nothing to me. The snipe diving downwards making a sound like a roll of drums does not call to me. My life will not be dedicated to God, will not be special in any way. I shall sign myself Margaret Stafford-I won’t even be duchess. I shall live like a hedge sparrow on a twig until the sparrowhawk kills me, and my death will be unnoticed and unmourned by any. My mother herself has told me that there is nothing in my life that is worth doing, and the best I can hope is to avoid an early death in childbirth.

  Jasper spurs on ahead as soon as he sees the high towers of Pembroke, and so greets me at the castle gates with my baby in his arms, beaming with joy. “He can smile!” he exclaims before the horses even come to a standstill. “He can smile. I saw it. I leaned over his cradle to pick him up