Philippa Gregory - The Red Queen

My husband comes home in somber mood, having buried his father and delivered up his nephew to his new guardian. Little Henry Stafford, the new Duke of Buckingham, is only five years old, poor child. His father died fighting for Lancaster when he was only a baby, and now he has lost his grandfather too. My husband is stunned at this blow to his house, but I cannot sympathize; for who should be blamed for our defeat but him and all those who chose to stay at home, though their queen summoned them and we were in the utmost danger? My father-in-law died because he was defeated in the battle. Whose fault is that but that of the son who would not ride beside him? Henry tells me that the Duke of York entered London with the king riding alongside him, as his prisoner, and was greeted by a stunned silence. The citizens of London turn out to be only halfhearted traitors, and when York put his hand on the marble throne to claim kingship for himself, there was no support for him.

“Well, how could there be?” I ask. “We have a king already. Even the faithless men of London know that.”

My husband sighs as if he is tired of my convictions, and I notice how weary and old he looks, a deep groove between his eyebrows. Grief sits heavy on him with the responsibility for his house. If our king is a prisoner, and our power is thrown down, then someone will take the little duke from us and have him as their ward for the profit of his lands. If my husband were great with either Lancaster or York, he might have had a say in the disposition of his nephew, the future head of our family. If he had exerted himself, he would now be one of the great men. But since he chose to stay home, he is of no account to anyone. He has made himself as nothing. The great decisions of the world will be made without him, and he cannot even guard his own, as he said he would.

“They have put together an agreement.”

“What agreement?” I ask him. “Who has agreed?”

He throws his traveling cape to one of the household men. He drops into a chair and beckons a page boy to pull off his boots. I wonder if he is ill-he looks so gray and weary. Of course he is very old to have made such a great journey: he is thirty-five years old. “The king is to keep the throne till his death, and then the next king is to be York,” he says shortly. He glances at my face and then looks away. “I knew you wouldn’t like it. There’s no need to trouble yourself, it probably won’t hold.”

“The Prince of Wales is to be robbed of his rights?” I can hardly frame the words, I am so shocked. “How can he be Prince of Wales and not become king? How can anyone think that they can pass over him?”

Henry shrugs. “You are all to be robbed, you who were in the line of succession. You, yourself, are no longer of the ruling house now. Your son is no longer related to a king, nor is he one of the heirs to the throne. It will be York; York, and his line. Yes,” he repeats to my stunned face. “He has won for his sons what no one would give to him. It is York’s sons who will come after the king. The new royal line is to be the House of York. The Lancasters are to be the royal cousins. That is what they have agreed. That is what the king has sworn to follow.”

He rises up in his stockinged feet and turns for his rooms.

I put a hand on his arm. “But this is just what Joan saw!” I exclaim. “When her king was put aside, and his inheritance given to another. This is just what she saw when she took her king to be crowned in Rheims, despite a blasphemous agreement that he should not be crowned. She saw that the order of God was put aside, and she fought for the true heir. This is what inspired her to be great. She saw the true heir, and she fought for him.”

He cannot muster his usual smile for me. “And so what? Do you think you can take Edward, Prince of Wales, to London and have him crowned despite his defeat, despite this agreement? Will you lead a beaten army? Will you be England’s Joan?”

“Someone has to be,” I cry out passionately. “The prince cannot be robbed of the throne. How could they agree to this? How could the king agree to this?”

“Who knows what he thinks, poor soul?” my husband says. “Who knows what he understands now, or even if he can stay awake? And if he goes to sleep or even dies and York takes the throne, at least York will be able to hold the country to peace.”

“That’s not the point!” I shout at him. “York is not called by God. York is not of the senior line from Edward III. York is not of the royal house-we are! I am! My son is! This is my destiny that the king is giving away!” I give a shaking sob. “I was born for this; my son was born for this! The king cannot make us into royal cousins; we were born to be the royal line!”

He looks down at me, and his brown eyes are for once not kindly, but dark with anger. “Enough,” he growls. “You are a stupid young woman of, what? – only seventeen years old, and you understand nothing, Margaret. You should be silent. This is not a ballad or a tale; this is not a romance. This is a disaster that is costing the men and women of England every day. This is nothing to do with Joan of Arc, nothing to do with you, and God Himself knows, nothing to do with Him.”

He pulls away from me and he goes, treading carefully up the stairs to his room. He is stiff from his long ride and he hobbles, bowlegged. I watch him go with hatred, my hand over my mouth to stifle my sobs. He is an old man, an old fool. I know the will of God better than him, and He is, as He has always been, for Lancaster.

I am right in this, and my husband, for all that he is my husband and set over me, is wrong, and this is proved at Christmastide when the Duke of York, who is supposed to be so clever, so brilliant in battle, is caught outside his own castle walls of Sandal, with a small guard, among them his son Edmund, the Earl of Rutland, and both York and his boy are brutally killed by our forces. So much for the man who would be king and would claim the royal line!

The queen’s army takes his hacked body and makes mock of him, and beheads the corpse and sticks his head above the gates of York with a paper crown on his head, so he can view his kingdom before the crows and buzzards peck out his dead eyes. This is a traitor’s death, and with it die the hopes of York, for who is left? His great ally the Earl of Warwick has only useless daughters, and the three remaining boys of York-Edward, George, and Richard-are too young to lead an army on their own account.

I do not exult over my husband, for we have settled to living quietly together and are celebrating Christmas with our tenants, retainers, and servants, as if the world were not trembling with uncertainty. We do not speak of the divided kingdom, and though he has letters from merchants and tradesmen in London he does not tell me their news, nor that his family are constantly urging him to revenge the death of his father. And though he knows that Jasper writes to me from Wales, he does not ask of his newly won castle of Denbigh, and how Jasper so bravely reclaimed it.

I send my son Henry a little cart on wooden wheels, that he can pull along, for his Christmas present, and my husband gives me a shilling to send to him for fairings. In return I give him a silver sixpence to send to the little Duke of Buckingham, Henry Stafford, and we do not speak of the war, or of the queen’s march south at the head of five thousand murderous, dangerous Scots, stained like eager huntsmen with the blood of the rebel York, or of my belief that our house has triumphed again and will come to victory next year, as it must since we are blessed by God.