The Red Queen

JUNE 1483

My husband Lord Stanley is now Duke Richard’s trusted advisor, as he was once King Edward’s. This is as it should be; he serves the king, and Richard is now the lord protector of the king for these short weeks before the boy Edward is crowned. Then Richard must give up everything, throne and power, and the boy will rule as King of England. We will see then who can survive the reign of a child of the Rivers family with the greatest crown in the world on his head, utterly commanded by his mother: a faithless witch in hiding. There are few men who will trust the boy, and nobody will trust his mother.

But anyway, what son of the House of York could ever give up power? What child of the House of York could ever bring himself to hand over the throne? Richard surely will not hand the crown and scepter to the son of a woman who hates him? But whatever doubts we feel, we are all measured for our coronation robes, and they are building the walkway at Westminster Abbey for the royal procession-the widowed Queen Elizabeth must hear the hammering and sawing above her, as she skulks in her sanctuary in the low chambers beside the abbey. The Privy Council went to her in form and demanded that she send her nine-year-old son Richard to join his twelve-year-old brother in the Tower. She could not refuse, and there was no reason for her to refuse, except her own hatred of Duke Richard, and so she had to give way. Now the two royal boys wait in the royal apartments for the coronation day.

I am responsible for the wardrobe for the coronation, and I meet with the wardrobe mistress and her maids to see what robes will be provided for the Dowager Queen Elizabeth, the princesses, and the other ladies of court. We must prepare the gowns assuming that the queen will come out of sanctuary for the coronation, and that she will want to be dressed exquisitely as usual. We are supervising the brushing of the queen’s ermine robe by the maid of the wardrobe and watching the seamstress sew on a mother-of-pearl button, when the wardrobe mistress remarks that the Duchess of Gloucester, Anne Neville, Richard’s wife, has not ordered her gown from the wardrobe.

“Her command must have gone astray,” I observe. “For she cannot have what she needs to wear for a coronation at her castle at Sheriff Hutton. And she cannot be ordering something to be made-it will never be ready in time.”

She shrugs as she pulls out a robe trimmed with velvet, shakes off the linen cover, and spreads it out for me to see. “I don’t know. But I have no order for a gown from her. What should I do?”

“Prepare one for her, in her size,” I say, as if I am not much interested, and I turn the talk to something else.

I hurry home and seek out my husband. He is writing out the warrants that will summon every sheriff in England to London to see the young king crowned. “I am busy. What is it?” he asks rudely as I open the door.

“Anne Neville has not ordered a gown for the coronation. What d’you think of that?”

He thinks as I did, as swiftly as I did. He puts down his pen and beckons me in. I close the door behind me, with a little thrill of joy at conspiring with him. “She never acts on her own account. Her husband must have ordered her not to come,” he says. “Why would he do that?”

I don’t answer. I know he will be thinking fast.

“She has no gown, so she cannot be coming to the coronation. He will have told her not to come for he must have decided that there will be no coronation,” he says quietly. “And all this”-he gestures at the piles of paper-“all this is just to keep us busy and to fool us into thinking that the coronation will happen.”

“Perhaps he has warned her not to come because he thinks London may riot. Perhaps he wants her safe at home.”

“Who would riot? Everyone wants the York prince crowned. There is only one person who would prevent him becoming king, just as there is only one person who would benefit.”

“Duke Richard of Gloucester himself?”

My husband nods. “What can we do with this precious information? How shall we use it?”

“I’ll tell the dowager queen,” I decide. “If she is going to muster her forces, she should do it now. She had better get her sons away from Richard’s keeping. And if I can persuade the York queen to fight the York regent, then there is a chance for Lancaster.”

“Tell her the Duke of Buckingham might be fit for turning,” he says quietly, as I am halfway out of the door. I stop at once. “Stafford?” I repeat incredulously. This is my second husband’s nephew-the little boy who inherited the title when his grandfather died, who was forced into marriage with the queen’s sister. He has hated the Rivers family ever since they forced him to marry into them. He cannot abide them. So he was first to back Richard; he was first to his side. He was there when Richard arrested Anthony Rivers. I know he will have loved the humiliation of the man he was forced to call brother-in-law. “But Henry Stafford cannot bear the queen. He hates her, and he hates her sister, his wife Katherine. I know it. I remember when they married him. He would never turn against Richard in their favor.”

“He has his own ambitions,” my husband remarks darkly. “He has royal blood in his line. He will be thinking that if the throne can be taken from Prince Edward, then it can be taken from Richard too. He would join with the queen, pretending to defend her son, and then take the throne for himself when they have victory.”

I think quickly. The Stafford family, with the exception of my weakly modest husband Henry, has always been extreme in its pride. Stafford backed Richard from spite against the Riverses; now he might indeed stake his own claim. “I’ll tell the queen if you wish,” I say. “But I would think him utterly untrustworthy. She will be a fool to take him as an ally.”

My husband smiles, more like a wolf than the fox they call him. “She has not many friends to choose from,” he says. “I would think she will be glad of him.”

A week after this, at dawn, my husband thumps his fist on my bedroom door and comes in as my maid screams and jumps up from her bed. “Leave us,” he says brusquely to her, and she scuttles from the room as I sit up in bed and draw my robe around me.

“What is it?” My first fear is that my son is ill, but then I see that Thomas is as white as if he has seen a ghost, and his hands are shaking. “What has happened to you?”

“I had a dream.” He sits down heavily on the bed. “Good God, I had such a dream. Margaret, you have no idea …”

“Was it a vision?”

“How would I know? It was like being trapped in hell.”

“What did you dream?”

“I was in a cold and rocky dark place, like some wilderness, nowhere I know. I looked around me: no one was with me, I was alone, none of my affinity, none of my men, not even my standard, nothing. I was quite alone, not my son, not my brother-not even you.”

I wait for more. The bed shakes with his shudder. “A monster came towards me,” he says, his voice very low. “A terrible, terrible thing came towards me, its mouth open to eat me, its breath stinking like hell, its eyes piggy and red, looking from right to left, a monster coming across the country, coming for me.”

“What sort of monster? A serpent?”

“A boar,” he says quietly. “A wild boar with blood on its tusks and blood on its nostrils, spittle on its mouth, its head down low, tracking me.” He shudders. “I could hear it snuffle.”

The wild boar is the emblem of Richard, Duke of Gloucester. We both know this. I get out of bed and open the door to make sure that the maid has gone and that there is no one listening outside. I close it tightly and stir up the embers of the little bedroom fire, as if we need heat on this warm June night. I light candles, as if to drive away the darkness of the hunting boar. I touch the cross around my throat with my finger. I make the sign of the cross on myself. Stanley has brought his night terrors in with him, into my room; it is as if the breath of the boar has whispered in with him, as if he will smell us out, even now, even here.

“You think Richard suspects you?”

He looks at me. “I have done nothing but show him my support. But it was such a dream … I can’t deny it. Margaret, I woke filled with terror like a child. I woke myself with my scream for help.”

“If he suspects you, he will suspect me,” I say. Stanley’s fear is so strong it has me in its grip. “And I have sent messages to the queen, as we agreed. Could he know I am his enemy?”

“Could your messages have gone astray?”

“I am certain of my man. And she is not a fool. But why else would he doubt you?”

He shakes his head. “I have done nothing except speak to Hastings, who is loyal to the core. He is desperate to secure the succession of the prince. It is his last act of love for Edward the king. He is deeply afraid that Richard might play false with Prince Edward. He has been frightened of something going wrong ever since Richard took the prince to the Tower. He asked me if I would join with him at a Privy Council meeting to insist that the prince should come out among the people, to visit his mother, to show that he is free in every way. I think he has sent a messenger to the queen to assure her of her safety and ask her to come out of hiding.”

“Does Hastings know that Richard has ordered his own wife to stay home? Does he think Richard might delay the coronation? Prolong his own regency?”

“I told him Anne Neville had no coronation gown, and he swore at once that Richard cannot be truly planning to crown his nephew. It’s what we are all starting to think. It’s what we’re all starting to fear. But I can’t see anything worse than Richard delaying the coronation, perhaps for years, perhaps till the boy is twenty-one. Delaying it so that he can rule as regent.” He leaps to his feet and strides barefoot across the room. “For God’s sake, Richard was the most loyal brother Edward could ever have had! He has said nothing but asserted his loyalty to the prince. His own nephew! All his enmity has been directed to the dowager queen; not against Edward’s son. And he has the boy utterly in his power now. Crowned or not, Prince Edward can only be a puppet king if Richard can keep him from his mother and from his kin.”

“But the dream-”

“The dream was of a boar determined on power and death. It was a warning; it must be a warning.”

We are both silent. A log shifts in the fireplace, and we both flinch from the sound.

“What will you do?” I ask him.

He shakes his head. “What would you do? You think that God speaks to you and warns you in dreams. What would you do if you dreamed that the boar was coming for you?”

I hesitate. “You can’t think of running away?”

“No, no.”

“I would pray for guidance.”

“And what would your God say?” he asks, with a flare of his usual sarcasm. “He is usually reliable in advising you to seek power and safety.”

I take my seat on the stool by the fire, looking into the flames as if I were a poor woman telling fortunes, as if I were Queen Elizabeth with her witchcraft skills. “If Richard were to turn against his nephew, both nephews, and somehow prevent their inheritance, put himself on the throne in their place …” I pause. “They have no powerful defenders anymore. The fleet has mutinied against their uncle, their mother is in sanctuary, their uncle Anthony is under arrest …”

“Then what?”

“If Richard were to take the throne and leave his nephews locked in the Tower, do you think the country would rise against him and there would be another war?”

“York against York. It’s possible.”

“And in those circumstances there would be a great chance for the House of Lancaster.”

“For your son, Henry.”

“For Henry to be the last one standing when they tear each other to pieces in a fight to the death.”

There is silence in my room. I glance at him, afraid that I may have gone too far.

“There are four lives between Henry and the throne,” he remarks. “The two York princes: Edward and Richard, Duke Richard himself, and then his son.”

“But they might all fight each other.”

He nods.

“If they choose to destroy themselves, it is no sin for Henry to take the empty throne,” I say firmly. “And at last, the rightful house takes the throne of England, which is God’s will.”

He smiles at my certainty, but this time I am not offended. What matters is that we can see our way, and as long as I know it is the light of God, then it does not matter if he thinks it is the blaze of sinful ambition.

“So will you go to the Privy Council meeting today?”

“Yes, it’s at the Tower. But I will send a message to Hastings of my fears. If he is going to move against Richard, he had better do so now. He can force Richard to show his hand. He can demand to see the prince. His love for the late king will make him the prince’s champion. I can stand back and let him step up the pace. The council is determined that the prince should be crowned. Hastings can demand it. He can bear the brunt of showing Richard that he suspects him. I can set Hastings on Richard and step back to see what will happen. I can be warned by this, and I can warn Hastings and let him take the danger.”

“But where do you stand?”

“Margaret, I stay loyal to whoever is most likely to triumph, and at the moment, the man with the army of the north at his back, the Tower in his possession, and the rightful king obedient to him and in his keeping: is Richard.”

I wait for the return of my husband from his council meeting, on my knees before my prie dieu. Our dawn conversation has unsettled and frightened me, and I kneel in prayer and think of Joan, who must have known herself to be in danger so many times, and yet rode out on her white horse with her banner of lilies and did not have to fight her battles in secrecy and silence.

I think it is almost a part of my prayer when I hear the march of many feet down the street and the clanking on the cobbles as a hundred pikemen ground their pikes, and then there is a hammering on the big street door of our London house.

I am halfway down the stairs as the porter’s boy comes running up to tell the maids to call me. I grab him by the arm. “Who is it?”

“Duke Richard’s men,” he gabbles. “In his livery, with the master, they’ve got the lord, your husband. Smacked in the face, blood on his jerkin, bleeding like a pig …”

I push him to one side as he is making no sense, and I run down to the cobbled entrance where the gatemen are swinging open the gate and Duke Richard’s troop march in, and at the center of them is my husband, swaying on his feet, blood pouring from a wound to his head. He looks at me, and his face is white and his eyes are blank with shock.

“Lady Margaret Stanley?” asks the commander of the guard.

I can hardly drag my eyes from the symbol of the boar on his livery. A tusked boar just as my husband dreamed was coming for him.

“I am Lady Margaret,” I say.

“Your husband is under house arrest, and he and you cannot leave here. There will be guards stationed at all doorways and in your house, and at the doors and windows of his chambers. Your household and necessary servants can go about their business, but they will be stopped and searched at my command. Do you understand?”

“Yes,” I whisper.

“I am going to search the house for letters and papers,” he says. “Do you understand this too?”

There is nothing in my rooms that would incriminate either of us. I burn anything dangerous as soon as I have read it, and I never keep a copy of my own letters. All my work for Henry is between God and me.

“I understand. May I take my husband to my closet? He is wounded.”

He gives a grim smile. “When we marched in to arrest Lord Hastings, your husband dived under the table and nearly took off his own head on a pike blade. It looks worse than it is.”

“You arrested Lord Hastings?” I ask incredulously. “On what charge?”

“Madam, we have beheaded him,” he says shortly. He pushes past me into my own rooms, and his men fan out in my yard and take up their positions, and we are prisoners in our own great house.

Stanley and I go to my closet, surrounded by pikemen, and only when they have seen that the window is too small for escape do they step back and close the door on the two of us and we are alone.

Stanley throws his bloodstained jerkin and spoiled shirt to the floor with a shudder, and he sits on a stool, stripped to the waist. I pour a jug of water into the ewer and start to wash the cut. It is shallow and long, a glancing blow, not one aimed to kill, but an inch lower and he would have lost an eye. “What is happening?” I whisper.

“Richard came in at the start of the meeting to determine the order of the coronation, all smiles, asked Bishop Morton to send out for strawberries from his garden, very affable. We started our work on the coronation, the seating, the precedence, the usual things. He went out again, and while he was outside, someone must have brought him some news or a message, and he came in a changed man, with a face dark with rage. The troop came in after him like they were overrunning a fort, banging in the door, weapons at the ready. They swung at me, I dropped down, Morton leaped back, Rotherham ducked behind his chair; they took Hastings before he could defend himself.”

“But why? What had been said?”

“Nothing! Nothing had been said. It was as if Richard just unleashed his power. They just grabbed Hastings and took him.”

“Took him where? On what charge? What did they say?”

“They said nothing. You don’t understand. It wasn’t an arrest. It was a raid. Richard was shouting like a madman that he was under an enchantment, that his arm was failing him, that Hastings and the queen were destroying him by witchcraft-”

“What?”

“He pulled up his sleeve and showed us his arm. His sword arm-you know how strong his right arm is. He says it is failing him, he says it is shriveling away.”

“Dear God, has he run mad?” I pause in wiping the blood; I cannot believe what I am hearing.

“They dragged Hastings out. Not another word. They pulled him outside though he was kicking and swearing and digging in his heels. There was some old lumber lying around from the building work, and they just threw down a piece of timber, forced him down on it, and took his head off with one swing.”

“A priest?”

“There was no priest. Do you not hear what I am saying? It was a kidnap and a murder. He had no time even to say his prayers.” Stanley starts to shake. “Dear God, I thought they were coming after me. I thought I would be next. It was like the dream. The smell of blood and nobody there to save me.”

“They beheaded him before the Tower?”

“As I said, as I said.”

“So if the prince looked out of his window, hearing the noise, he will have seen his father’s dearest friend beheaded on a log? The man he called his uncle William?”

Stanley is silent, looking at me. A trickle of blood runs down his face and he smears it with the back of his hand, turning his cheek red. “Nobody could have stopped them.”

“The prince will see Richard as his enemy,” I say. “He can’t call him lord protector after this. He will think him a monster.”

Stanley shakes his head.

“What is going to happen to us?”

His teeth are starting to chatter. I put down the bowl and wrap a blanket around his shoulders.

“God knows, God knows. We are under house arrest for treason; they suspect us of plotting with the queen and Hastings. Your friend Morton too, and they took Rotherham as well. I don’t know how many others. I suppose Richard is going to seize the throne and has rounded up everyone he thinks might argue.”

“And the princes?”

He is stammering with shock. “I don’t know. Richard could just kill them, like he killed Hastings. He could break into sanctuary and murder the whole royal family: the queen, the little girls, all of them. Today he has shown us that he can do anything. Perhaps they are already dead?”

News comes in snippets from the outside world, carried by housemaids as gossip from the market. Richard declares that the marriage between the queen, Elizabeth Woodville, and King Edward was never valid, as Edward was precontracted to another lady before he married Elizabeth in secret. He declares all their children bastards and himself as the only York heir. The craven Privy Council, who observe Hastings’s headless body being laid to rest beside the king he loved, do nothing to defend their queen and their princes, but there is a general hasty and unanimous agreement that there is only one heir, and it is Richard.

Richard and my kinsman Henry Stafford the Duke of Buckingham, start to put about that King Edward himself was a bastard, the misbegotten son of an English archer on Duchess Cecily while she was with the Duke of York in France. The people hear these accusations-what they make of them God knows-but there is no mistaking the arrival of an army from the northern counties, loyal to no one but Richard, and eager for rewards; there is no denying that all the men who might have been loyal to Prince Edward are arrested or dead. Everyone considers their own safety. No one speaks out.

For the first time in my life, I can think kindly of the woman I have served for nearly ten years, Elizabeth Woodville, who was Queen of England and one of the most beautiful and beloved queens that the country has ever had. Never beautiful to me, never beloved to me except now, fleetingly, in this moment of her utter defeat. I think of her in the damp dimness of the Westminster sanctuary, and I think that she will never triumph again, and for the first time in my life I can go on my knees and truly pray for her. All she has in her keeping now are her daughters; the life she reveled in has gone, and her two young sons are held by her enemy. I think of her defeated and afraid, widowed and fearing for her sons, and for the first time in my life I can feel my heart warm towards her: a tragic queen thrown down by no fault of her own. I can pray to Our Lady the Queen of Heaven to succor and comfort Her lost, miserable daughter in these days of her humiliation.

The oldest York girl, Princess Elizabeth, is of marriageable age and is only unmarried at the late age of seventeen years because of the shifting luck of her house. While I am on my knees, praying for the health and safety of the queen, I consider the pretty girl Elizabeth and think what a wife she would make for my son Henry. The son of Lancaster and the daughter of York would together heal the wounds of England and resolve the struggle of two generations. If Richard were to die after taking the throne, his heir would be a child, and a sickly Neville child at that, no more able to defend his claim than the York princes, and as easy to throw down as they have been. If my son were to take the throne then, and marry the York princess, the people would cleave to him as a Lancaster heir and the husband of the York heiress.

I send for my doctor, Dr. Lewis of Caerleon, a man as interested in conspiracy as medicine. The queen knows him as my physician, and she will admit him, knowing he is from me. I tell him to promise her our support, to tell her that Buckingham is ready to be persuaded against Duke Richard, that my son Henry could raise an army in Brittany. And I tell him before anything else to try to discover what plans she has, what her supporters are promising her. My husband may think that she has no hope, but I have seen Elizabeth Woodville come out of sanctuary once before, and take the throne with careless joy, forgetting all about the shame that the Lord had rightly sent her. I tell Lewis he is to say nothing of my husband being under house arrest, but he is to tell her, as a kindly friend, of the murder of Hastings, of the sudden visibility of Richard’s ambition, of the bastardizing of her sons, of the ruin of her name. He is to tell her with compassion that her cause is lost unless she acts. I have to get her to muster what friends she has, raise what army she can afford, and get her troops into battle against Richard. If I can encourage her into a long and bloody battle, then my son can land with fresh troops and take on the exhausted winner.

Lewis goes to her on a day when she will be desperate for a friend: the day that was set for her son’s coronation. I doubt that anyone will have warned her that he is not to be crowned at all. Lewis goes through the streets where doors are shut and windows barred and the people don’t linger at corners to talk, and then he returns to me almost at once. He is wearing his mask against plague, a long conical mask stuffed with herbs and scented with oils, which gives him a terrifying profile, an inhuman face, a white ghost-face. He removes it only when he is in my room with the door shut behind him, and he bows low.

“She is anxious for help,” he says without preamble. “She is a desperate woman; I would judge her half mad with desperation.” He pauses. “I saw the young Princess of York also …”

“And?”

“She was disturbed. She was prophetic.” He gives a little shiver. “She frightened me, and I am a physician who has seen everything.”

I ignore his boast. “How did she frighten you?”

“She came at me out of the darkness, her gown soaked with water from the river, trailing behind her like a tail as if she were half fish. She said that the river had already told her the news I was about to give her mother-that Duke Richard had claimed the throne by right of his legitimacy and that the young princes are proclaimed bastards.”

“She knew that already? They have spies out? I had no idea she could be well informed.”

“It wasn’t the queen; she didn’t know. It was the girl, and she said the river told her. She said the river told her of a death in the family, and the mother knew at once that it was her brother Anthony and her Grey son. They flung open the windows to listen to the river going by. They were like a pair of water witches in there. Any man would have been afraid.”

“She says that Anthony Rivers is dead?”

“They both seemed certain of it.”

I make the sign of the cross. Elizabeth Woodville has been accused of working with dark forces before now, but to speak true from the sanctuary of holy ground is surely the devil’s work.

“She must have spies working for her; she must be better prepared and armed than we realize. But how could she have got news from Wales before me?”

“She said another thing.”

“The queen?”

“The princess. She said that she was cursed to be the next Queen of England and take her brother’s throne.”

We look at each other in stunned incomprehension. “You are sure?”

“She was terrifying. She complained of her mother’s ambition and said that it was a curse laid on the family and that she would have to take her brother’s throne-and that that, at least, would please her mother, though it would disinherit her brother.”

“What could she mean?”

The doctor shrugs. “She didn’t say. She has grown to be a beautiful girl, but she is terrifying. I believed her. I have to say, I believed every word she said. It was like a prophet speaking true. I believe that somehow she will be Queen of England.”

I take a little breath. This is so aligned to my own prayers that it has to be the word of God, though speaking through a most sinful vessel. If Henry were to take the throne and she were to marry him, she would indeed be queen. How else could it come about?

“And there was one other thing,” Lewis says cautiously. “When I asked the queen what were her plans for the princes in the Tower, Edward and Richard, she said: ‘It’s not Richard.’”

“She said what?”

“She said: ‘It’s not Richard.’”

“What did she mean?”

“It was then that the princess came in, with her gown all wet from the river, and she knew everything: the acclamation for the duke, the disinheriting of the family. Then she said that she would be queen.”

“But did you ask the queen what she meant by ‘It’s not Richard’?”

He shakes his head, this man who has seen everything, but did not have the sense to ask the one key thing. “Did you not think it might be rather important?” I snap at him.

“I am sorry. The princess coming in was so … she was unearthly. And then her mother said that now they were in a dry spell but they would be in flood again. They were terrifying. You know what they say about their ancestry-that they come from a water goddess. If you had been there, you would have thought the water goddess about to rise from the Thames itself.”

“Yes, yes,” I say without sympathy. “I see they were frightening, but did she say anything else? Did the queen speak of her brothers who have got away? Did she say where they are or what they are doing? The two of them have the power to raise half the kingdom.”

He shakes his head. “She said nothing. But she heard it well enough when I told her that you would help the young princes to escape. She is planning something, I am sure. She was planning it before she realized that Richard is going to take the throne. She will be desperate now.”

I nod and I gesture to him to leave me. I make my way at once to our little chapel to get to my knees. I need the peace of God to clear my mind of this whirl of thoughts. That Elizabeth the princess should know her destiny only confirms my belief that she will be Henry’s wife, and he will take the throne. That her mother should say, “It’s not Richard” fills me with deep unease.

What can she mean: “It’s not Richard”? Is it not Richard her son, in the Tower? Or does she merely mean that it is not Richard, Duke of Gloucester, whom she fears? I can’t tell, and that fool should have asked her. But I suspected something like this. I have been fretting about something like this. I never thought that she would be such a fool as to give up a second son to an enemy who had kidnapped the first. I have known her for ten years; she is not a woman who does not foresee the worst. The Privy Council trooped down to meet her and lined themselves up to tell her that she had no choice, and then marched away with the little Prince Richard holding the archbishop’s hand. But I always thought that she would have prepared for them. I always knew she would do something to get her last free son away to safety. Any woman would do it, and she is determined and clever, and she dotes on her boys. She would never send them into danger. She would never let her youngest son go where her oldest was in danger.

But what has she done? If the second prince in the Tower is not Richard, then who is it? Has she sent some pauper in disguise? Some minor ward who would do anything for her? And worse, if Prince Richard, the legitimate heir to the throne of England, is not in the Tower of London under lock and key, then where is he? If she has hidden him somewhere, then he is heir to the York throne, another obstacle to my son’s succession. Is she telling me this? Or pretending? Is she tormenting me? Triumphing over me still by telling my thick-witted messenger a riddle to pass on to me? Did she speak her son’s name on purpose to laugh at me with her foresight? Or did she just slip up? Is she telling me of Richard, to warn me that whatever happens to Edward, she still has an heir?

I wait for hours on my knees for Our Lady the Queen of Heaven to tell me what this most earthly queen is doing: playing her games, weaving her spells, once again, as ever, before me, triumphing over me even in this moment of her great terror and defeat. But Our Lady does not come to me. Joan does not advise me. God is silent to me, his handmaiden. None of them tell me what Elizabeth Woodville is doing in the hidden sanctuary beneath the abbey, and without their help I know she will come out again to triumph.

No more than a day after this, my lady-in-waiting comes in with red eyes and says that Anthony, Earl Rivers, the dazzling, chivalrous brother of the queen, is dead, executed on Richard’s order in Pontefract Castle. She brings the news to me the moment it reaches London. Nobody could have heard more quickly; the official report reaches the Privy Council only an hour after I hear it. It seems that the queen and her daughter told Dr. Lewis on the very night that it happened, perhaps at the very moment of his death. And how can that be?

In the morning, my husband meets me at breakfast. “I am summoned to attend a Privy Council meeting,” he says, showing me a warrant with the seal of the boar. Neither of us looks directly at it; the letter sits on the table between us like a dagger. “And you are to go to the royal wardrobe and prepare the coronation robes for Anne Neville. The robes for a queen. You are to be lady-in-waiting to Queen Anne. We are released from house arrest without a word. And we are in royal service again, without a word spoken.”

I nod. I will undertake the work for King Richard that I was doing for King Edward. We will wear the same gowns, but the gown of gold and ermine that was ready for the Dowager Queen Elizabeth will be cut down for her sister-in-law, the new Queen Anne.

My ladies-in-waiting and the Stanley men-at-arms are seated all around us, so my husband and I exchange no more than a small glance of triumph at our own survival. This will be the third royal house that I have served, and each time I have bowed low and thought of my own son as heir. “I shall be honored to serve Queen Anne,” I say smoothly.

It is my destiny to smile at the changes of the world and await my reward in heaven, but even I balk for a moment at the doorway of the queen’s chambers when I see little Anne Neville-daughter of the Kingmaker Warwick, born well enough, royally married, widowed to nothing, and now risen again to the throne of England itself-standing by the great fireplace in her traveling cloak surrounded by her ladies from the north, like a gypsy encampment from the moors. They see me in the doorway; the steward of her chamber bellows, “Lady Margaret Stanley!” in an accent no one living south of Hull could understand, the women shuffle aside, so that I can walk towards her, and I step in and go down to my knees, abase myself to yet another usurper, and hold up my hands in the gesture of fealty.

“Your Grace,” I say to the woman who was picked up from disgrace and poverty by the young Duke Richard because he knew he could claim the Warwick fortune with this most unlucky bride. Now she is to be Queen of England, and I have to kneel to her. “I am so glad to offer you my service.”

She smiles at me. She is pale as marble, her lips pale, her eyelids the palest pink. Certainly, she cannot be well; she puts her hand on the stone of the fireplace and leans against it as if she is weary.

“I thank you for your service, and I would have you serve as my senior lady-in-waiting,” she says quietly, a little catch in her breath. “You will carry my train at my coronation.”

I bow my head to hide my flare of joy. This is to honor my family; this is to have the House of Lancaster one pace from the crown as it is held over an anointed head. I will be just one step behind the Queen of England and-God knows-ready to step up. “I am glad to accept,” I say.

“My husband speaks so highly of the wisdom of Lord Thomas Stanley,” she says.

So highly that the pikemen nearly sliced off his head and held him for a week under house arrest. “We have long been in service to the House of York,” I remark. “You and the Duke have been sadly missed while you were away from court in the north. I am glad to welcome you home to your capital city.”

She makes a little gesture with her hand and her page brings a stool over so that she can sit before the fire. I stand before her and I watch her shoulders shake as she coughs. This is a woman who is not going to make old bones. This is a woman who is not going to conceive a quiver of heirs for York, not like the fecund Queen Elizabeth. This is a woman who is sick and weak. I doubt she will last five more years. And then? And then?

“And your son, Prince Edward?” I inquire demurely. “Is he coming to the coronation? Should I order your chamberlain to prepare rooms for him?”

She shakes her head. “His Grace is not well,” she says. “He will stay in the north for now.”

Not well? I think to myself. Not well enough to come to the coronation of his own father, is not well at all. He was always a pale boy with his mother’s slight build, seldom seen around court; they always kept him away from London for fear of the plague. Has he, perhaps, not outgrown childhood weakness but is going from a frail boy to a sickly adult? Has Duke Richard failed to get himself an heir who will outlive him? Is there now only one strong heartbeat between my son and the throne?