Philippa Gregory - The Red Queen

Then, in November, I get a letter addressed to me, to Lady Margaret Tudor, from my brother-in-law, Jasper. It is the first time in his life he has ever written to me, and I open it with shaking hands. He does not waste many words.

Regret to tell you that your husband, my dearly beloved brother Edmund, is dead of the plague. Hold the castle at all costs. I am coming.

I greet Jasper at the castle gate, and at once see the difference in him. He has lost his twin, his brother, the great love of his life. He jumps down from his horse with the same grace that Edmund had, but now there is only the noise of one pair of boots ringing iron-tipped heels on the stone. For the rest of his life he will listen for the clatter of his brother and hear nothing. His face is grim, his eyes hollowed with sadness. He takes my hand as if I am a grown lady, and he kneels and offers up his hands, in the gesture of prayer, as if he is swearing fealty. “I have lost my brother, and you, your husband,” he says. “I swear to you, that if you have a boy, I will care for him as if he were my own. I will guard him with my life. I will keep him safe. I will take him to the very throne of England, for my brother’s sake.”

His eyes are filled with tears, and I am most uncomfortable to have this big, fully grown man on his knees before me. “Thank you,” I say. I look round in my discomfiture, but there is no one to tell me how to raise Jasper up. I don’t know what I am supposed to say. I notice he doesn’t promise anything to me if I have a girl. I sigh and clasp my hands around his, as he seems to want me to do. Really, if it were not for Joan of Arc, I would think that girls are completely useless.

I go into confinement at the start of the month. They put up shutters on my bedroom windows to close out the gray winter light. I can’t imagine that a sky which is never blue and a sun which never shines can be thought so distracting that a woman with child should be shaded from it; but the midwife insists that I go into darkness for a month before my time, as the tradition is, and Jasper, pale with worry, says that everything must be done to keep the baby safe.

The midwife thinks that the baby will come early. She feels my belly and says that he is lying wrongly, but he may turn in time. Sometimes, she says, babies turn very late. It is important that they come out headfirst; I don’t know why. She does not mention any details to Jasper, but I know that he paces up and down outside my chamber every day. I can hear the floorboards creak as he tiptoes north and south, as anxious as a loving husband. Since I am in confinement I can see no man, and that is a great relief. But I do wish I could come out to church. Father William, here at Pembroke, was moved to tears by my first confession. He said he had never met a young woman of more piety. I was glad at last to find someone who understands me. He is allowed to pray with me if he sits on one side of the screen and I the other, but it is not nearly as inspiring as praying before a congregation, where everyone can see me.

After a week, I start to have terrible pain in the very bones of my body when I am walking the narrow confines of the chamber, and Nan the midwife and her fellow crone, whose name sounds something like a squawk, and who speaks no English at all, agree that I had better go to bed and not walk anymore, not even stand. The pain is so bad I could almost believe that the bones are breaking inside me. Clearly, something has gone wrong, but nobody knows what it is. They ask the physician, but since he cannot lay a hand on me, nor do more than ask me what I think might be the matter, we get no further forwards. I am thirteen years old and small for my age. How am I to know what is going wrong with the baby in my body? They keep asking me, does it really feel as if my bones are breaking inside me? And when I say yes, then they look at one another as if they fear it must be true. But I can’t believe that I will die in childbirth. I can’t believe that God will have gone to all this trouble to get me here in Wales, with a child who might be king in my womb, only to have me die before he is even born.

They speak of sending for my mother, but she is so far away and the roads are so dangerous now that she cannot come, and besides, she would know no better than them. Nobody knows what is wrong with me, and now they remark that I am too young and too small to be with child at all, which is rather belated advice and no comfort to me now I am so close to the birth. I have not dared to ask how the baby is actually going to come out of my belly. I fear very much that I am supposed to split open like a small pod for a fat pea, and then I am certain to bleed to death.

I had thought the pain of waiting was the worst pain I could endure, but that was only until the night when I wake to an agony as if my belly were heaving up and turning over inside me. I scream in shock, and the two women bounce up from their trestle beds and my lady governess comes running, and my maid, and in a moment the room is filled with candles and people fetching hot water and firewood and among it all, nobody is even looking at me, though I can feel a sudden flood pour out of me, and I am certain that it is blood and I am bleeding to death.

They fly at me and give me a lathe to bite on, and a sacred girdle to tie around my heaving belly. Father William has sent the Host in the Monstrance from the chapel, and they put it on my prie dieu so I can fix my eyes on the body of the Lord. I have to say I am much less impressed by crucifixion now that I am in childbirth. It is really not possible that anything could hurt more than this. I grieve for the suffering of Our Lord, of course. But if He had tried a bad birth He would know what pain is.

They hold me down on the bed but let me heave on a rope when the pains start to come. I faint once for the agony of it, and then they give me a strong drink, which makes me giddy and sick, but nothing can free me from the vice that has gripped on my belly and is tearing me apart. This goes on for hours, from dawn till dusk, and then I hear them muttering to each other that the timing of the baby is wrong, it is taking too long. One of the midwives says to me that she is sorry but they are going to have to toss me in a blanket to make the baby come on.

“What?” I mutter, so confused with pain that I don’t know what she means. I don’t understand what they are doing as they help me off the bed and bid me lie on a blanket on the floor. I think perhaps they are doing something that will relieve the gripping pain which makes me cry out until I think I can bear no more. So I lie down, obedient to their tugging hands, and then the six of them gather round and lift the blanket between them. I am suspended like a sack of potatoes, and then they pull the blanket all at once and I am thrown up and drop down again. I am only a small girl of thirteen, they can throw me up into the air, and I feel a terrible flying and falling sensation and then the agony of landing and then they fling me up again. Ten times they do this while I scream and beg them to stop, and then they heave me back into the bed and look at me as if they expect me to be much improved while I hang over the side of the bed and vomit between sobs.

I lie back for a moment, and for a blessed moment the worst of it stops. In the sudden silence I hear my lady governess say, very clearly: “Your orders are to save the baby if you have to choose. Especially if it is a boy.”

I am so enraged at the thought of Jasper ordering my own lady governess to tell my midwives that they should let me die if they have to choose between my life or that of his nephew that I spit on the floor and cry out: “Oh, who says so? I am Lady Margaret Beaufort of the House of Lancaster …” But they don’t even hear me; they don’t turn to listen to me.