The Red Queen

EASTER 1461

When they woke in the morning it was to the silence and eerie whiteness of a world of blowing snow. It was bitterly cold. The blizzard started at dawn, and the snow whirled around the standards all day. The Lancaster army, commanding the height of the long ridge near to the village of Towton, ideally placed on the heights, peered down into the valley below them, where the York army was hidden by the swirling flakes. It was too wet for the cannon to fire, and the swirling snow blinded the Lancaster archers, and their bowstrings were damp. They fired blindly, aiming in hope down the hill, into snowflakes, and time and again a volley of arrows hammered back at them as the York archers found their targets clearly silhouetted against the light sky.

It was as if God had ordered the Palm Sunday weather to make sure that it was man against man, hand-to-hand fighting, the most bitter battle of all of the battles of the war, on the field they called Bloody Meadow. Rank after rank of conscripted Lancaster soldiers dropped beneath the storm of arrows, before their commanders allowed them to charge. Then they dropped their useless bows and drew their swords, axes, and blades, and they thundered down the hill to meet the army of the eighteen-year-old boy who would be king, trying to hold his men steady against the shock of the downhill charge.

With a roar of “York!” and “Warwick! À Warwick!” they pushed forwards, and the two armies struck and held. For two long hours, while the snow churned into red slush under their feet, they locked together like a plow grinding through rocky ground. Henry Stafford, riding his horse downhill into the thick of it, felt a stab to his leg and felt his horse stagger and fall beneath him. He flung himself clear but found himself lying across a dying man, his eyes staring, his bloody mouth mumbling for help. Stafford pushed himself up and away, ducked down to avoid a swing from a battle-axe, and forced himself to stand and draw his sword.

Nothing in the jousting ring or the cockfighting pit could have prepared him for the savagery of this battlefield. Cousin against cousin, blinded by snow and maddened with the killing rage, the strongest of men stabbed and clubbed, kicked and stamped on fallen enemies, and the weaker men tore themselves away and started to run, stumbling and falling in heavy armor, often with a chain-mailed rider coming behind them, mace swinging to smash off their heads.

All day, in snow that whirled around them like feathers in a poultry shop, the two armies thrust and stabbed and pushed one another, going nowhere, without hope of victory, as if they were trapped inside a nightmare of pointless rage. A man falling was replaced by a reserve who would step on his body to reach up for a killer stab. Only when it started to grow dark, in the eerie white-skied twilight of spring snow, did the Lancastrian front rank started to yield ground. The first falling back was pressed hard, and they dropped back again, until those at the sides felt their fear rise greater than their rage and one by one started to break away.

At once, they gained relief, for the York men also disengaged and stepped back. Stafford, sensing a lull in the battle, rested for a moment on his sword and looked around him.

He could see the front line of the Lancaster army starting to peel away, like unwilling haymakers, heading early for home. “Hi!” he shouted. “Stand. Stand for Stafford! Stand for the king!” but their pace only quickened, and they did not look back.

“My horse,” he shouted. He knew that he must get after them and halt their retreat before they started to run in earnest. He slipped his dirty sword into its scabbard and started a stumbling run towards his horse lines, and as he ran he glanced to his right and then froze in horror.

The Yorks had not dropped back for a breath and a rest, as so often happened in battle, but had broken from the fight to run as fast as they could to their own horse lines to get their horses, and the men who had been on foot, savagely pressing the Lancaster men-at-arms, were now mounted and riding down on them, maces swinging, broadswords out, lances pointed down at throat height. Stafford leaped over a dying horse and threw himself facedown on the ground behind it as the whistle of the ball of a mace swung through the air just where his head had been. He heard a grunt of fear and knew his own voice. He heard a thunder of hooves, a cavalry charge coming towards him, and he felt himself contract like a frightened snail against the belly of the groaning horse. Above him, a rider jumped the horse and man in one leap, and Stafford saw the hooves beside his face, felt the wind as they went over, flinched against the splash of mud and snow, clung to the dying horse without pride.

When the thunder of the first rush of cavalry was past him, cautiously he raised his head. The York knights were like huntsmen, riding down the Lancaster men-at-arms who were running like deer towards the bridge over Cock Beck, the little river at the side of the meadow, their only escape. The York foot soldiers, cheering on the riders, raced beside them to head off the running enemy, before they could reach the bridge. In moments, the bridge became a mass of struggling, fighting men, Lancastrians desperate to get across and away, York soldiers pulling them back, or stabbing them in the back as they scrambled over their fallen comrades. The bridge creaked as the soldiers surged back and forth, the horses pushing onwards, forcing men over the guard rails into the freezing river, trampling the others underfoot. Dozens of men seeing the knights coming on with their great double-edged swords swinging like scythes on either side of their horses’ heads, seeing the warhorses rear up and bring down their great iron-shod hooves on men’s heads, simply jumped into the river, where soldiers were still struggling, some thrashing against the weight of their armor, others locked on each other’s heads and shoulders, forcing them down to drown in the icy, reddened waters.

Stafford staggered to his feet, horrified. “Get back! Regroup!” he shouted; but he knew that no man would listen to him, and then he heard, above the screams of the battle, the timbers of the bridge shiver and groan.

“Clear the bridge! Clear the bridge!” Stafford fought his way, pushing and shoving, towards the bank to shout at the men, still stabbing and hacking though they could all feel the bridge start to sway under the shifting load. The men cried out warnings, but they still fought, hoping to make an end and break away, and then the rails of the bridge went outwards, and the timber supports cracked, and the whole structure went down, throwing men, enemies, horses, and corpses all as one into the water.

“’Ware bridge!” Stafford shouted on the riverbank, then as the enormity of the defeat started to sink in, “’Ware bridge!” he said more softly.

For a moment, as the snow fell around him and the men in the fast-flowing water went down and came up shouting for help and were then pulled down again by the weight of their armor, it was as if everything had gone very quiet, and he was the only man alive in the world. He looked around and could not see another man standing. There were some clinging to the timbers and still hacking at each other’s grasping fingers, there were some drowning before him, or being swept away in the bloodstained flood; on the battlefield the men on the ground lay still, slowly disappearing under the falling snow.

Stafford, chilled in the cold air, felt the snow fall cleanly on his sweaty face, put out his tongue like a child, and felt the flake rest and then melt in the warmth of his mouth. Out of the whiteness another man walked slowly, like a ghost. Wearily, Stafford turned and dragged his sword from the scabbard and readied himself for another fight. He did not think he had the strength to hold up his heavy sword, but he knew he must find from somewhere the courage to kill another fellow countryman.

“Peace,” the man said in a voice drained of emotion. “Peace, friend. It’s over.”

“Who’s won?” Stafford asked. Beside them the river was rolling corpses over and over in the flood. In the field all around them men were getting to their feet or crawling to their lines. Most of them were not moving at all.

“Who cares?” the man said. “I know I have lost all my troop.”

“You are wounded?” Stafford asked as the man staggered.

The man took away his hand from his armpit. At once blood gushed out and splashed to the ground. A sword had stabbed him in the underarm joint of his armor. “I will die, I think,” he said quietly, and now Stafford saw that his face was as white as the snow on his shoulders.

“Here,” he said. “Come on. I have my horse near. We can get to Towton; we can get you strapped up.”

“I don’t know if I can make it.”

“Come on,” Stafford urged. “Let’s get out of this alive.” At once, it seemed tremendously important that one man, this one man, should survive the carnage with him.

The man leaned against him, and the two of them hobbled wearily uphill towards the Lancaster lines. The stranger hesitated, gripped his wound, and choked on a laugh.

“What is it? Come on. You can make it! What is it?”

“We’re going uphill? Your horse is on the ridge?”

“Yes, of course.”

“You’re for Lancaster?”

Stafford staggered under his weight. “Aren’t you?”

“York. You are my enemy.”

Embracing like brothers, the two men glared at each other for a moment and then both brokenly laughed.

“How would I know?” the man said. “Good God, my own brother is on the other side. I just assumed you were for York, but how could any man tell?”

Stafford shook his head. “God knows what I am, or what will happen, or what I will have to be,” he said. “And God knows that a battle like this is no way to resolve it.”

“Have you fought before in these wars?”

“Never, and if I can, I never will again.”

“You’ll have to come before King Edward and surrender yourself,” the stranger said.

“King Edward,” Stafford repeated. “That’s the first time I have heard the boy of York called king.”

“This is the new king,” the man said certainly. “And I will ask him to forgive you and release you to your home. He will be merciful, though if it were the other way round and you took me to your queen and to your prince, I swear I would not survive them. She kills unarmed prisoners-we don’t. And her son is a thing of horror.”

“Come on then,” Stafford said, and the two of them fell into line with the Lancaster soldiers waiting to beg pardon of the new king and promise never to raise arms against him again. Before them were Lancaster families that Stafford had known all his life, among them Lord Rivers and his son Anthony, their heads bowed, silent under the shame of defeat. Stafford cleaned his sword while he waited and readied himself to offer it up. It was still snowing, and the wound in his leg was throbbing as he walked slowly up to the crest of the ridge where the empty pole for the royal standard still stood at the peak with the Lancaster standard-bearers dead all around it and the York boy standing tall.

My husband does not come back from the war like a hero. He comes quietly, with no stories of battle and no tales of chivalry. Twice, three times, I ask him what it was like, thinking that it might have been like Joan’s battles: a war in the name of God for the king ordained by God, hoping that he might have seen a sign from God-like the three suns over the York victory-something that would tell us that God is with us despite the setback of defeat. But he says nothing, he will tell me nothing; he behaves as if war is not a glorious thing at all, as if it is not the working out of God’s will by ordeal.

All he will tell me, briefly, is that the king and the queen got safely away with the prince, the head of my house, Henry Beaufort, with them. They have fled to Scotland and will, no doubt, rebuild their shaken army, and that Edward of York must have the luck of the hedgerow rose of his badge, for he fought in grief and mist at Mortimer’s Cross, uphill in snow at Towton, and won both battles, and is now crowned King of England by public acclaim.

We spend the summer quietly, almost as if we are in hiding. My husband may have been pardoned for riding out against the new King of England, but no one is likely to forget that we are one of the great families of the Lancaster connection, and that I am the mother of a boy in line to the lost throne. Henry goes up to London to gather news and brings me back a beautifully copied manuscript of The Imitation of Christ in French that he thinks I might translate into English, as part of my studies. I know he is trying to keep my mind from the defeat of my house, and the despair of England, and I thank him for his consideration and start to study; but my heart is not in it.

I wait for news from Jasper, but I imagine he is lost in the same sorrow that greets me on waking, every morning, before I am even fully awake. Every day I open my eyes and realize, with such a sick pang in my heart, that my cousin the king is in exile-who knows where? – and our enemy is on his throne. I spend days on my knees, but God sends me no sign that these days are only to test us and that the true king will be restored. Then, one morning, I am in the stable yard, when a messenger comes riding in, muddy and travel-stained, on a little Welsh pony. I know at once that he brings me word, at last, from Jasper.

As usual, he is brusque.

William Herbert is to be given all of Wales, all my lands and my castles, as prize for turning his coat back to York. The new king has made him a baron also. He will hunt me down as I hunted him, and I doubt that I will get a pardon from a tender king as he did. I will have to leave Wales. Will you come and fetch your boy? I will meet you at Pembroke Castle within the month. I won’t be able to wait longer than that.

– J.

I round on the stable lad. “Where is my husband, where is Sir Henry?”

“He is riding the fields with his land steward, my lady,” the boy says.

“Saddle my horse, I must see him,” I say. They bring Arthur from his stall and he catches my impatience and tosses his head while they fiddle with the bridle, and I say: “Hurry, hurry.” As soon as he is ready, I am in the saddle and riding out towards the barley fields.

I can see my husband riding the margins of the field, talking to his land steward, and I kick Arthur into a rolling canter and come up to him in a rush that makes his own horse sidle and curvet in the mud.

“Steady,” my husband says, drawing rein. “What’s the matter?”

In reply, I thrust the letter at him and wave the land steward out of earshot. “We have to fetch Henry,” I say. “Jasper will meet us at Pembroke Castle. He has to go. We have to go there.”

He is infuriatingly slow. He takes the letter and reads it, then he turns his horse’s head for home and reads it again, as he rides.

“We have to leave at once,” I say.

“As soon as it is safe to do so.”

“I must fetch my son. Jasper himself tells me to fetch him!”

“Jasper’s judgment is not of the best, as perhaps you can now see, since his cause is lost and he is running away to France or Brittany or Flanders and leaving your son without a guardian.”

“He has to!”

“Anyway, he is going. His advice is not material. I will muster a suitable guard, and if the roads are safe enough, I will go and fetch Henry.”

“You will go?” I am so anxious for my son that I forget to hide the scorn in my voice.

“Yes. I, myself. Did you think me too decrepit to ride to Wales in haste?”

“There may be soldiers on the way. William Herbert’s army will be on the road. You are likely to cross their path.”

“Then we shall have to hope that my ancient years and gray hairs protect me,” he says with a smile.

I don’t even hear the joke. “You have to get through,” I say, “or Jasper will leave my boy alone at Pembroke, and Herbert will take him.”

“I know.”

We come into the stable yard, and he has a quiet word with Graham, his master of horse, and next thing all the men-at-arms are tumbling from our house and from the stable yard, and the chapel bell is tolling to call the tenants to muster. It is all done at such speed and efficiency that for the first time I see that my husband has command of his men.

“Can I come too?” I ask. “Please, husband. He is my son. I want to bring him safely home.”

He looks thoughtful. “It will be a hard ride.”

“You know I am strong.”

“There might be danger. Graham says that there are no armies near here, but we are going to have to cross most of England and nearly all of Wales.”

“I am not afraid, and I will do as you order.”

He pauses for a moment.

“I beg you,” I say. “Husband, we have been married three and a half years, and I have never asked you for anything.”

He nods. “Oh, very well. You can come too. Go and pack your things. You can bring only a saddle bag, and tell them to put a change of clothes up for me. Tell them to pack provisions for fifty men.”

If I commanded the house, I would do it myself, but I am still served as a guest. So I get off my horse and go to the groom of the servery and tell him that his master, and I, and the guard are going on a journey and we will need food and drink. Then I tell my maid and Henry’s servant to pack a bag for us both, and I go back to the stable yard to wait.

They are ready within the hour, and my husband comes out of the house with his traveling cloak carried on his arm. “D’you have a thick cloak?” he asks me. “No, I thought not. You can have this, and I will use an old one. Take it, strap it to your saddle.”

Arthur is steady as I mount him, as if he knows that we have work to do. My husband draws up his horse beside mine. “If we see an army, then Will and his brother will ride away with you. You are to do as they order. They are commanded to ride with you for home, or for the nearest house of safety, as fast as they can. Their task is to keep you safe; you are to do as they say.”

“Not if it is our army,” I point out. “What if we meet the queen’s army on the road?”

He grimaces. “We won’t see the queen’s army,” he says shortly. “The queen could not pay for an archer, let alone a troop. We will not see her again until she can make an alliance with France.”

“Well anyway, I promise,” I say. I nod at Will and his brother. “I will go with them when you tell me I must.”

My husband nods, his face grim, and then turns his horse so he is at the head of our little guard-about fifty mounted men armed with nothing but a handful of swords and a few axes-and leads us west for Wales.

It takes us more than ten days of hard riding every day to get there. We go west on poor roads, skirting the town of Warwick and going cross-country wherever we can, for fear of meeting an army: any army, friend or foe. Every night we have to go to a village, an alehouse, or an abbey and find someone who can guide us for the next day. This is the very heart of England, and many people know no farther than their parish boundaries. My husband sends scouts a good mile ahead of us with orders that if there is any sign of outriders from any army, they are to gallop back to warn us, and we will turn off the road and get into hiding in the forest. I cannot believe that we must hide, even from our own army. We are Lancaster, but the Lancaster army that the queen has brought down on her country is out of all control. Some nights the men have to sleep in a barn while Henry and I beg hospitality in a farmhouse. Some nights we take a room at an inn on the road, one night in an abbey where they have dozens of guest rooms and are used to serving small armies of men marching from one battle to another. They don’t even ask us which lord we serve, but I see that there is no gold and silver on show in the church. They will have buried their treasures in some hiding place and are praying for peaceful times to come again.

We don’t go to the big houses nor to any of the castles that we can sometimes see on the hills overlooking the road, or sheltered by great woods. The victory of York has been so complete that we don’t dare advertise that we are riding to save my son, an heir to the House of Lancaster. I understand now what Henry my husband tried to tell me before, that the country is blighted not only by war, but by the constant threat of war. Families who have been friends and neighbors for years avoid each other in fear, and even I, riding towards land that belonged to my first husband, whose name is still beloved, am fearful of meeting anyone who might remember me.

On the road, when I am exhausted and aching in every bone in my body, I learn that Henry Stafford cares for me, without ever making a fuss over me, or suggesting that I am a weak woman and should not have come. He lifts me down from my horse when we take a rest, and he sees that I have wine and water. When we stop for dinner, he gets my food himself, even before he is served, and then he spreads out his own cloak for my bed, and covers me up and makes me rest. We are lucky with the weather, and it does not rain on our journey. He rides beside me in the mornings and teaches me the songs that the soldiers sing: bawdy songs for which he invents new words for me.

He makes me laugh with his nonsense songs, and he tells me of his own childhood, as a younger son of the great House of Stafford, and how his father meant him for the church until he begged to be excused. They would not release him from their plan until he told the priest that he feared he was possessed by the devil, and they were all so anxious about the state of his soul that they gave up the idea of the priesthood for him.

In return, I tell him how I wanted to be a saint, and how glad I was when I found I had saints’ knees, and he laughs out loud at that and puts his hand over mine on my reins, and calls me a darling child, and his very own.

I had thought him a coward when he would not go to war and when he came back so silent from the battlefield; but I was wrong. He is a very cautious man, and he believes wholeheartedly in nothing. He would not be a priest for he could not give himself wholly to God. He was glad that he was not born the oldest, for he did not want to be duke and head of such a great house. He is of the House of Lancaster, but he dislikes and fears the queen. He is enemy to the House of York, but he thinks highly of Warwick and admires the courage of the boy of York, and surrendered his sword to him. He would not dream of going into exile like Jasper; he likes his home too much. He does not align himself with any lord but thinks for himself, and I see now what he means when he says he is not a hound to yelp when the huntsman blows the horn. He considers everything in the light of what might be right, and what would be the best outcome for himself, for his family, his affinity, and even for his country. He is not a man to give himself easily. Not like Jasper. He is not a man for these times of passion and hot temper.

“A little caution.” He smiles at me as Arthur splashes stolidly through the great river crossing of the Severn, the gateway to Wales. “We have been born into difficult times, when a man or even a woman has to choose their own way, has to choose their loyalties. I think it is right to go carefully and to think before acting.”

“I have always thought one should do the right thing,” I say. “And nothing but that.”

“Yes, but then you wanted to be a saint.” He smiles. “Now you are the mother of a child; now you have to consider not only what is the right thing to do, but if it is likely to keep you and your son safe. You will want to keep your son safe more than anything in the world. The safety of your son may matter to you more than the will of God.”

For a moment I am puzzled by this. “But it must be the will of God that my son is safe,” I say. “My son is without sin, and he is of the royal line. He is of the only true royal house. God must want him to be safe to serve the House of Lancaster. What I wish and what God wishes must be the same.”

“Do you really think God, in his heaven with all the angels, there from the beginning of time and looking towards the Day of Judgment, really looks down on all the world and sees you and little Henry Tudor and says that whatever you choose to do is His will?”

It sounds like blasphemy somewhere. “Yes, I do,” I say uncertainly. “Jesus Christ Himself promised that I am as precious as the lilies of the field.”

“And so you are,” he says with a smile, as if he comforting me with a story.

That silences me and makes me think for the rest of the ride. “So, do you think there are many men like you, who have not given their hearts to one side or another?” I ask as he helps me down from the saddle in the yard of a dirty little inn, on the road to Cardiff, that evening.

He pats Arthur’s dark neck. “I think most men will choose to follow the house that can promise them peace and safety,” he says. “There is loyalty to the king, of course; no one can deny that King Henry is crowned King of England. But what if he is not fit to rule? What if he is ill again and can do nothing? What if he is commanded by the queen? What if she is ill advised? How can it be a crime to want the next heir in his place? If that claimant was of the royal line also? If he was as close as a cousin? If he has as good a claim to the throne as Henry?”

I am so weary that I lean back against Arthur’s big comfortable shoulder, and then my husband draws me to him and holds me. “Don’t you worry about this now,” he says. “The main thing is that we get your boy and make sure he is safe. Then you can consider who God and you would prefer to rule the kingdom.”

On the tenth morning of our journey, traveling now on tiny, stony lanes through high, mountainous country, my husband says to me, “We should be there by midday,” and I gasp at the thought of seeing my boy again so soon. We send scouts ahead to the castle to see if it is safe to approach. It looks as if everything is quiet. We wait out of sight, and my husband points out to me that the gates of the castle are open and the drawbridge down, and as we watch a girl comes out with a flock of geese and calls them down to the river.

“Looks safe enough,” my husband says cautiously, and gets off his horse and helps me down, and the two of us go to the other side of the river. The geese are swimming on the water, some are dabbling their yellow beaks in the mud; the girl is seated on the bank, fiddling about with some lace.

“Girl, who is the master of the castle?” my husband asks her.

She jumps at the sound of his voice and scrambles to her feet and bobs a curtsey. “It was the Earl of Pembroke, but he ran away to the wars,” she says, her accent so strong I can hardly make out what she is saying.

“Anyone taken the castle since he left?”

“Nay, we’re just hoping he’ll come back. D’you know where he is, sir?”

“I don’t know. Is the little lad in the castle nursery?”

“The little earl? Yes, he’s there. I keep the hens too, and I send in a good new-laid egg for him every morning.”

“Do you?” I am unable to silence my delight. “Does he have a fresh-laid egg for his breakfast every day?”

“Oh yes,” she says. “And they say he likes a slice of roast chicken too for his dinner.”

“How many men-at-arms?” my husband interrupts.

“A hundred,” she says. “But three times that rode out with Jasper Tudor and didn’t come back. They say it was a terrible defeat. They say that God set three suns in the sky to curse our boys, and now the three sons of York will curse our country.”

My husband spins a coin across the river to her, and she catches it with snatching hands. We go back to where our men are hidden by the turn in the road, and we mount up. My husband orders them to unfurl our standard and to go forwards at slow walk and halt when he gives the word. “We don’t want a flight of arrows as our welcome,” he says to me. “You and Will and Stephen go to the rear of the ride, just to be safe.”

I am desperate to ride into the castle that was once my home; but I do as he orders me, and we go slowly forwards until we hear the shouted challenge from the castle walls and at the same time we hear the roar of the chain and the great portcullis comes clanging down. My husband and his standard-bearer ride up to the gate and shout our name to the officer on the walls of the castle, and then the portcullis creaks up and we ride into the courtyard.

Arthur goes at once to the old mounting block, and I dismount without help and let his reins go. He heads at once for his old stall, as if he were still Owen Tudor’s battle horse. The stable lad exclaims to see him, and I go quickly to the front door and the groom of the household flings it open before me, recognizes me though I have grown taller, bows to me, and says: “My lady.”

“Where is my son?” I ask. “In his nursery?”

“Yes,” he says. “I will have them bring him to you.”

“I’ll go up,” I say, and without waiting I run up the stairs and burst into his nursery.

He is eating his dinner. They have laid a table for him with a spoon and a knife, and he is seated at the head of the table and they are waiting on him as they should, as an earl should be served. He turns his little head as I come in, and he looks at me without recognition. His curly hair is brown, like a bright bay horse as Jasper said; his eyes are hazel. His face is baby-round still; but he is not a baby anymore, he is a boy, a little boy of four years old.

He climbs down from his chair-he has to use the rungs of the chair as steps-and comes towards me. He bows; he has been well taught. “Welcome, madam, to Pembroke Castle,” he says. He has the slightest lilt of a Welsh accent in his clear, high voice. “I am the Earl of Richmond.”

I drop to my knees so my face is level with his. I so long to snatch him into my arms, but I have to remember that to him I am a stranger.

“Your uncle Jasper will have told you about me,” I say.

His face lights up with joy. “Is he here? Is he safe?”

I shake my head. “No, I am sorry. I believe he is safe, but he is not here.”

His little mouth trembles. I am so afraid that he will cry, I put my hand out to him, but at once he straightens up and I see his little jaw square as he holds back tears. He nips his lower lip. “Will he come back?”

“I am sure of it. Soon.”

He nods, he blinks. One tear rolls down his cheek.

“I am your mother, Lady Margaret,” I say to him. “I have come to take you to my home.”

“You are my mother?”

I try to smile, but I give a little choke. “I am. I have ridden for nearly two weeks to come to you to make sure you are safe.”

“I am safe,” he says solemnly. “I am just waiting for my uncle Jasper to come home. I can’t come with you. He told me to stay here.”

The door behind me opens, and Henry enters quietly. “And this is my husband, Sir Henry Stafford,” I say to my little son.

The boy steps away from the table and bows. Jasper has taught him well. My husband, hiding his smile, bows solemnly in return.

“Welcome to Pembroke Castle, sir.”

“I thank you,” my husband says. He glances at me, taking in the tears in my eyes and my flushed face. “Is everything all right?”

I make a helpless gesture with my hand as if to say-yes, everything is all right, except my son treats me as a polite stranger, and the only person he wants to see is Jasper, who is an attainted traitor and in exile for life. My husband nods as if he can understand all of this, and then turns to my son. “My men have ridden all the way from England, and they have extremely fine horses. I wonder if you would like to see them in their harness before the horses are put into the fields?”

Henry brightens at once. “How many men?”

“Fifty men-at-arms, a few servants and scouts.”

He nods. This is a boy who was born into a country at war and was raised by one of the greatest commanders of our house. He would rather inspect a troop than eat his dinner.

“I should like to see them. I will get my jacket.” He goes into his private chamber, and we can hear him calling for his nursemaid to fetch his best jacket as he is going to inspect his mother’s guard.

Henry smiles at me. “Nice little fellow,” he says.

“He didn’t recognize me.” I am holding back tears, but the quaver in my voice betrays me. “He has no idea who I am. I am a complete stranger to him.”

“Of course, but he will learn,” Henry says soothingly. “He will come to know you. You can be a mother to him. He is only four; you have missed only three years, but you can start again with him now. And he has been well raised and well educated.”

“He is Jasper’s boy through and through,” I say jealously.

Henry draws my hand through his arm. “And now you will make him yours. After he has seen my men, you show him Arthur and tell him that he was Owen Tudor’s battle horse, but that you ride him now. You’ll see-he will want to know all about it, and you can tell him stories.”

I take a seat in silence in the nursery as they prepare him for bed. The mistress of the nursery is still the woman that Jasper appointed when my son was born; she has cared for him all his life, and I find myself burning with envy at her easy way with him, at the companionable way she hauls him to her knee and strips off his little shirt, at the familiar way that she tickles him as she pulls on his nightshirt and scolds him for wriggling like a Severn eel. He is deliciously at ease with her; but now and then he remembers that I am there and shoots me a little shy smile, as a polite child at a stranger.

“Would you like to hear him say his prayers?” she asks me, as he goes through to his bedroom.

Resentfully, in second place, I follow her to see him kneel at the foot of his tester bed, fold his hands together, and recite the Lord’s Prayer and the prayers for the evening. She hands me a badly transcribed prayer book, and I read the collect for the day and the prayer for the evening and hear his soprano “Amen.” Then he crosses himself and rises up and goes to her for her blessing. She steps back and gestures to him that he should kneel to me. I see his little mouth turn down; but he kneels before me, obediently enough, and I put my hand on his head and say: “God bless you and keep you, my son.” Then he rises up and takes a great run and a leap into his bed and bounces until she folds back the sheet and tucks him up and bends and kisses him in one thoughtless gesture.

Awkwardly, a stranger in his nursery, uncertain of my welcome, I go to his bedside and lean over him. I kiss him. His cheek is warm, the smell of his skin like a new-baked bread roll, firm as a warm peach.

“Good night,” I say again.

I step back from the bed. The woman moves the candle away from the curtains and pulls up her chair to the fire. She is going to sit with him till he sleeps, as she does every night, as she has done every night since his birth. He has gone to sleep with the creak of the treadles of her rocking chair and the reassuring sight of her beloved face in the firelight. There is nothing for me to do here; he has no need of me at all. “Good night,” I say again, and I go quietly from his room.

I close the outer door of his presence chamber and pause at the head of the stone stairs. I am just about to go down in search of my husband when I hear a door above me, high up in the tower, quietly open. It is a door that goes out to the roof where Jasper used to sometimes go to gaze up at the stars or, during troubled times, look out across the country for an enemy army. My first thought is that Black Herbert has got someone into Pembroke Castle and he is coming down the stairs with his knife drawn, ready to let in his troop through the sally port. I press myself back against Henry’s bedroom door, ready to fling myself into his room and lock the door behind me. I must keep him safe. I can raise the alarm from his bedroom window. I would lay down my life for him.

I hear a quiet footstep, and then the closing of the roof door, and then the turning of the key, and I hold my breath so that there shall be no sound but another quiet step, as whoever it is comes silently down the spiral stone stairs of the tower.

And at once, as if I could recognize him by his footstep, I know it is Jasper, and I step out from the shadow and say quietly, “Jasper, oh Jasper!” and he takes the last three steps in a bound and has his arms around me and is holding me tightly to him, and my arms are around his broad back and we are gripping each other as if we cannot bear to let each other go. I pull myself back so I can look up at him, and at once his mouth comes down on mine and he kisses me, and I am shot through with such desire and such longing that it is like being at prayer when God answers in flame.

That thought of prayer makes me pull away from him and gasp, and he releases me at once.

“I am sorry.”

“No!”

“I thought you would be at dinner or in the solar. I meant to come to you and your husband quietly.”

“I was with my boy.”

“Was he pleased to see you?”

I make a little gesture. “He is more concerned with you. He is missing you. How long have you been here?”

“I have been in the area for nearly a week. I didn’t want to come to the castle for fear of Herbert’s spies. I didn’t want to bring him down on us. So I have been hiding out in the hills, waiting for you to come.”

“I came as soon as I could. Oh, Jasper, do you have to go away?”

His arm is around my waist again, and I cannot stop myself leaning against him. I have grown taller, my head rests against his shoulder. I feel as if I fit him, as if his body were a piece of fretwork, hammered to interlock with mine. I feel as if I will ache all my life if we are not fitted together.

“Margaret, my own love, I have to go,” he says simply. “There is a price on my head and bad blood between Herbert and me. But I will be back. I will go to France or Scotland and recruit for the true king, and I will return with an army. You can be sure of it. I will come back, and this will be my castle once more, when Lancaster is on the throne again and we have won.”

I find I am clinging to him, and I unclench my hands from where I am holding his jacket, step back, and force myself to let him go. The space that I make between us, no more than a foot or so, is an unbearable void.

“And you, are you well?” His direct blue eyes scan my face, run frankly down my body. “No child?”

“No,” I say shortly. “It doesn’t seem to happen. I don’t know why.”

“He treats you well?”

“He does. He lets me have the chapel as I wish it, and he lets me study. He gives me an allowance from my lands that is generous. He even gets me books and helps me with Latin.”

“A treat indeed,” he says solemnly.

“Well, it is for me,” I say defensively.

“And how will he stand with King Edward?” he asks. “Are you in any danger?”

“I think not. He rode out for King Henry at Towton …”

“He went to war?”

I nearly giggle. “He did, and I don’t think he liked it much. But he has been pardoned, and his pardon should cover me. We’ll take Henry home with us and live quietly. When the true king comes into his own again, we will be ready. I doubt that York will trouble himself with us. Surely, he has greater enemies? Sir Henry does not play a big part in the affairs of the world; he likes to stay at home, quietly. Surely, he has made himself so unimportant that nobody will bother with us?”

Jasper grins, a young man born to play a part in the great affairs of the world and quite incapable of staying at home quietly. “Perhaps. At any rate, I am glad he will keep you and the boy safe while I am away.”

I cannot resist stepping forwards and taking hold of the lapel of his jacket again so I can look up earnestly into his face. His arm comes around my waist and holds me closer. “Jasper, how long will you be gone?”

“As soon as I can muster an army that can retake Wales for the king, I’ll be back,” he promises me. “These are my lands and my cause. My father died for them, my brother died for them; I won’t let their deaths be in vain.”

I nod. I can feel the heat of his body through his jacket.

“And don’t you let them persuade you that York is the true king,” he warns me in an urgent whisper. “Bow your knee and bend your head and smile, but know always that Lancaster is the royal house and while the king is alive we have a king. While Prince Edward is alive we have a Prince of Wales, and while your son is alive we have an heir to the throne. Stay true.”

“I do,” I whisper. “I always will. There will never be anyone for me but …”

A clattering sound from lower down the well of the stair startles us both and reminds me that I should be at dinner. “Will you come to eat with us?” I ask.

He shakes his head. “I’d rather not be seen. The moment Herbert knows I am here he will have the castle surrounded, and I don’t want you and the boy exposed to danger. I’ll get some food sent up to the nursery, and I will meet you and your husband in the solar after dinner, and tomorrow morning I leave.”

I tighten my grip on him. “So soon? You won’t go so soon? I have hardly seen you! Henry will want to see you!”

“I have to go, and the longer I stay, the more danger you are in, and the more likely I am to be caught. Now that the boy is in your keeping, I can leave him with a clear conscience.”

“And you can leave me?”

He smiles his crooked smile. “Ah, Margaret, all the time I have known you, you have been the wife of another man. I am a courtly lover, as it turns out. A troubadour to a distant mistress. I don’t ask for more than a smile and to be in your prayers. I love from afar.”

“But this is going to be very far,” I say childishly.

Silently, he puts a gentle finger to my cheek and wipes away a single tear.

“How shall I live without you?” I whisper.

“I can’t do anything to dishonor you,” he says gently. “Really, Margaret, I could not. You are my brother’s widow and your son carries a great name. I have to love and serve you, and for now, I serve you best by going away and mustering an army to take your son’s lands back into my keeping, and to defeat those who would deny his house.”

The trumpet call, which announces that dinner is ready to be served, echoes up the stone well of the stair, making me jump.

“Go on,” Jasper says. “I will see you and your husband in the solar later. You can tell him I am here.”

He gives me a little push, and I start down the stairs. As I look back I see that he has gone into the nursery. I realize that he trusts Henry’s nurse with his life, and he has gone to sit beside my sleeping boy.

Jasper joins us in the solar after dinner. “I shall leave early tomorrow,” he says. “There are men here whom I can trust to take me to Tenby. I have a ship waiting there. Herbert is looking for me in the north of Wales; he can’t get here in time, even if he hears of me.”

I glance at my husband. “Can we ride with you and see you leave?” I ask.

Jasper politely waits for my husband to rule.

“As you wish,” Sir Henry says levelly. “If Jasper thinks it safe. It might help the boy to see you safely away; he is likely to pine for you.”

“It’s safe enough,” Jasper says. “I had thought Herbert was on my tail, but he has taken a false scent.”

“At dawn then,” my husband says pleasantly. He rises to his feet and puts out a hand to me. “Come, Margaret.”

I hesitate. I want to stay by the fireside with Jasper. He will go tomorrow, and we will have no time alone together at all. I wonder that my husband does not see this, does not understand that I might want some time alone with this friend of my childhood, this guardian of my son.

His weary smile would have told me-if I had been looking at him-that he understood this completely, and much more. “Come, wife,” he says gently, and at that bidding Jasper gets to his feet and bows over my hand, so I have to go to bed with my husband, and leave my dearest friend, my only friend, sitting alone over the fire for his last evening in the home that we used to share.

In the morning I see a different child in my boy Henry. His face is bright with happiness; he is his uncle’s little shadow, following him like an enthusiastic puppy. His manners are still beautiful, perhaps even better when he knows that his guardian is watching him, but there is a joy in every movement when he can look up and see Jasper’s approving smile. He serves him like a page boy, standing behind him proudly holding his gloves, stepping forwards to take the reins of the great horse. Once, he stops a groom bringing a whip: “Lord Pembroke doesn’t like that whip,” he says. “Get the one with the plaited end,” and the man bows and runs to obey.

Jasper and he walk side by side to inspect the guard who have assembled to ride with us to Tenby. Henry walks just as Jasper does, his hands clasped behind his back, his eyes intent on the faces of the men, though he has to look up as they tower above him. He stops, just as Jasper does, from time to time to remark on a well-honed weapon, or on a well-groomed horse. To see my little boy inspecting the guard, the very mirror of the great commander who is his uncle, is to watch a prince serving his apprenticeship.

“What does Jasper think his future will be?” my husband wonders in my ear. “For he is training a little tyrant here.”

“He thinks he will rule Wales as his father and grandfather did,” I say shortly. “At the very least.”

“And what at the most?”

I turn my head and I don’t answer, for I know the extent of Jasper’s ambition in the regal bearing of my son. Jasper is raising an heir to the throne of England.

“If they had weapons, or even boots, this would be a little more impressive,” my husband the Englishman remarks quietly in my ear; and for the first time I notice that many of the guard are indeed barefoot, and many of them have only sickles or coppicing hooks. They are an army of country men, not professional soldiers. Most of Jasper’s battle-hardened, well-equipped guard died under the three suns of Mortimer’s Cross, the rest of them at Towton.

Jasper reaches the end of the line of soldiers and snaps his fingers for his horse. Henry turns and nods to the groom as if to tell him to hurry. He is to ride before his uncle, and from the confident way that Jasper swings up into the big saddle and then bends down to offer Henry his hand, I can tell that they have done this often. Henry stretches up to reach Jasper’s big hand, and is hauled up to sit before him. He nestles back into his uncle’s firm grip and beams with pride.

“March on,” Jasper says quietly. “For God and the Tudors.”

I think that Henry will cry when we get to the little fishing port of Tenby and Jasper swings him down to the ground and then jumps down beside him. For a moment Jasper kneels, and his copper head and Henry’s brown curls are very close. Then Jasper straightens up and says, “Like a Tudor, eh, Henry?” and my little boy looks up to his uncle and says, “Like a Tudor, sir!” and solemnly the two of them clasp hands. Jasper claps him on the back so hard as to nearly knock him off his little feet, and then turns to me.

“Godspeed,” Jasper says to me. “I don’t like long farewells.”

“Godspeed,” I say. My voice is trembling, and I don’t dare to add more before my husband and the men of the guard.

“I’ll write,” Jasper says. “Keep the boy safe. Don’t spoil him.”

I am so irritated by Jasper telling me how to care for my own son that I can hardly speak for a moment, but then I bite my lip. “I will.”

Jasper turns to my husband. “Thank you for coming,” he says formally. “It is good to hand Henry over in safety, to a guardian I can trust.”

My husband inclines his head. “Good luck,” he says quietly. “I will keep them both safe.”

Jasper turns on his heel and is about to walk away when he checks, turns back to Henry, and sweeps him up for a quick, hard hug. When he puts the little boy gently down, I see that Jasper’s blue eyes are filled with tears. Then he takes the reins of his horse and leads it carefully and quietly onto the ramp to the boat. A dozen men go with him; the rest wait with us. I glance at their faces and see their aghast look, as their lord and commander shouts to the master of the ship that he can cast off.

They throw the lines to the ship; they raise the sail. At first it seems as if it is not moving at all, but then the sails flap and quiver and the wind and the force of the tide slides the ship from the little stone quayside. I step forwards and put my hand on my little son’s shoulder; he is trembling like a foal. He does not turn his head at my touch; he is straining his eyes to see the last possible sight of his guardian. Only when the ship is a little distant dot at sea does he take a shuddering breath and drop his head and I feel his shoulders heave with a sob.

“Would you like to ride before me?” I ask him quietly. “You can sit up before me like you did with Jasper.”

He looks up at me. “No thank you, my lady,” he says.

I devote myself to my son in the following weeks that we spend at Pembroke Castle. An armed band, little better than brigands, is threatening the road to England, and my husband decides that we are safer waiting at Pembroke for them to move on, than to ride out and risk meeting them. So I sit with little Henry when he takes his lessons from the tutor that Jasper has employed, I ride with him in the morning, I watch him as he jousts at the little quintain that Jasper had built for him in the field behind the stables. We ride to the river together, and we go out in a fishing boat and have the servants build a fire on the beach so we can eat our catch roasted on sticks. I give him toys and a book and a new pony of his own. I personally transcribe his prayers for the day into English, in a better translation from the Latin. I play catch and cards with him. I sing nursery rhymes with him, and I read to him in French. I put him to bed and spend the evening planning what he might like to do the next day. I wake him in the morning with a smile. I never discipline him-I let his tutor do that. I never send him to change his clothes or scold him for getting dirty-I let his nurse do that. To him, I am a perfect playmate, always happy, always ready for a game, happy to let him name the game, happy to let him win; and every night he kneels at his bedside in prayer, and I kneel beside him. And every night, whatever we have done during the day, however carefree he seems to have been, he prays God to send his uncle Jasper home to him so that they can be happy again.

“Why do you still miss Jasper so much?” I ask him, as I tuck him up. I make sure my voice is light, almost indifferent.

His little face brightens against the white linen pillow. He beams at the thought of his uncle. “He is my lord,” he says simply. “I am going to ride out with him when I am big enough. We are going to bring peace to England, and when that is done, we are going on crusade together. We will never be parted. I shall swear fealty to him and be the son that he does not have. He is my lord. I am his man.”

“But I am your mother,” I remark. “I am here to take care of you now.”

“Jasper and I love you,” he says cheerfully. “We say you are our guiding light. And we always pray for you, and for my father Edmund too.”

“But I am here now,” I insist. “And Edmund never even saw you. He hardly counts, it is not the same at all. Jasper is in exile; I am the only one here now.”

He turns his little head, his eyelids are drooping, dark eyelashes brushing his pink cheeks. “My uncle, Lord Pembroke, is glad to have you at his castle,” he says quietly. “We are both glad to welcome …”

He is asleep. I turn and find my husband leaning silently against the stone doorway. “Did you hear that?” I ask him. “All he thinks about is Jasper. He prays for me as he does for his father, who was dead before he was born. I am as distant as the queen to him.”

My husband puts out an arm to me, and I am glad for the comfort. I rest my head on his chest and feel him hold me.

“He’s a bright boy,” he says soothingly. “You have to give him time to get to know you. He has lived with Jasper for so long that the man fills his world. He has to learn about you. It will come. Be patient. And besides, it is no disadvantage to be as the queen to him. You are his mother, not his nursemaid. Why not be his guiding light, the one who commands him? He has learned from Jasper to adore you from afar. He understands that. Why would you want to be anything else?