The Red Queen

SEPTEMBER 1483

At last I have come into my own. I have inherited the kingdom I dreamed of when I prayed to Joan the Maid and wanted to be her, the only girl to see that her kingdom should rise, the only woman to know, from God Himself, what should be done. My rooms in our London house are my secret headquarters of rebellion; every day messengers come and go with news of arming, asking for money, collecting their weapons and smuggling them secretly out of the city. My table of work, which was once piled with books of devotion for my studies, is now covered with carefully copied maps, and hidden in its drawers are codes for secret messages. My ladies approach their husbands, their brothers, or their fathers, swear them to secrecy, and bind them to our cause. My friends in the church and in the city and on my lands link one to another and reach out to the country in a web of conspiracy. I judge who shall be trusted and who shall not, and I approach them myself. Three times a day I go down on my knees to pray, and my God is the God of righteous battles.

Dr. Lewis goes between me and the Queen Elizabeth almost daily, as she in her turn draws out those still loyal to the York princes, the great men and loyal servants of the old royal household, and her brothers and her son are everywhere in secret in the counties around London calling out the York affinity, while I summon those who will fight for Lancaster. My steward Reginald Bray goes everywhere, and my beloved friend John Morton as house guest and prisoner is in daily contact with Henry Stafford, the Duke of Buckingham. He tells the duke of our recruiting and reports back to me that the thousands of men that Buckingham can command are secretly arming. To my own people, I give the assurance that Henry will marry the Princess Elizabeth of York, and unite the country with his victory. This brings them out for me. But the Yorks and the common people care nothing for my Henry; they are anxious only to set the princes free. They are desperate for the freedom of their boys, they are united against Richard, they would join with any ally-the devil himself-as long as they can free the York boys.

The Duke of Buckingham seems to be true to my plan, though I don’t doubt he has one of his own, and promises he will gather up his men and Tudor loyalists through the marches of Wales, cross the Severn, and enter England from the west. At the same time my son is to land in the south and march his forces north. The queen’s men will come out of all the southern counties, where her strength lies, and Richard, still in the north, will have to scramble for recruits as he marches south to greet not one but three armies and choose the place of his death.

Jasper and Henry raise their troops from the prisons and streets of the worst cities in northern Europe. They will be paid fighters and desperate prisoners who are released only to go to war under the Tudor banner. We don’t expect them to stand against more than one charge, and they will have no loyalty and no sense of a true cause. But their numbers alone will take the battle. Jasper has raised five thousand of them, truly five thousand, and is drilling them into a force that would strike terror into any country.

Richard, ignorant, far away in York, delighting in the loyalty of that city for their favorite son, has no idea of the plans that we are forming in the very heart of his own capital, but he is astute enough to know that Henry poses a danger. He is trying to persuade King Louis of France into an alliance that would include the handing over of my boy. He is hoping to make a truce with Scotland; he knows that my Henry will be collecting troops; he knows of the betrothal, and that my son is in alliance with the Queen Elizabeth, and he knows that they will either come on the autumn winds this year, or wait for spring. He knows this, and he must fear it. He doesn’t know where I stand in this; whether I am the loyal wife of a loyal retainer whom he has bought with fees and positions, or whether I am the mother of a son with a claim to the throne. He must watch, he must wait, he must be filled with wondering.

What he doesn’t know yet is that a great shadow has fallen over his hopes and his security; what he does not know is that his greatest comrade and his first friend, the Duke of Buckingham, who put him on the throne, who swore fealty to him, who was to be bone of his bone and blood of his blood, another brother as trustworthy as those of the York affinity, is turned against him and has sworn to bring his destruction. Poor Richard, unknowing, innocent, celebrates in York, revels in the pride and love of his northern friends. What he does not know is that his greatest friend of all, the man he loves as a brother, has become indeed like a brother: as false to him as any envious rivalrous brother of York.

My husband, my lord Thomas Stanley, on a three-day leave from his duties at Richard’s court at York, comes to me in the evening, in the hour before dinner, and waves my women from the room, without a word of courtesy to them or to me. I raise an eyebrow at his rudeness and wait.

“I have no time for anything but this question,” he snaps. “The king has sent me on this private errand, though God knows he shows little sign of trusting me. I have to be back with him the day after tomorrow, and he eyes me as if he would have me under arrest again. He knows there is a rebellion in the making; he suspects you and therefore me too, but he doesn’t know whom he can trust. Tell me this one thing: Have you ordered the deaths of the princes? And is it done?”

I glance at the closed door and rise to my feet. “Husband, why do you ask?”

“Because my land agent today asked me were they dead. My chief of horse asked me had I heard the news. And my vintner told me that half the country believe it is so. Half the country think they are dead, and most of them think that Richard did it.”

I conceal my pleasure. “But really, how would I do such a thing?”

He puts his clenched fist under my face and snaps his fingers. “Wake up,” he says rudely. “You are talking to me, not to one of your acolytes. You have dozens of spies, a massive fortune at your own command, and now the Duke of Buckingham’s men to call on, as well as your own guard. If you want it done, it can be done. So is it done? Is it over?”

“Yes,” I say quietly. “It is done. It is over. The boys are dead.”

He is silent for a moment, almost as if he were saying a prayer for their little souls. Then he asks: “Have you seen the bodies?”

I am shocked. “No, of course not.”

“Then how do you know they are dead?”

I draw very close to him. “The duke and I agreed it should be done, and his man came to me late one night and told me that the deed was done.”

“How did they do it?”

I cannot meet his eyes. “He said that he and a couple of others caught them sleeping and pressed them in their bed, smothered them with the mattresses.”

“Only three men!”

“Three,” I say defensively. “I suppose it would need three-” I break off as I see that he is imagining, as I am, holding a ten-year-old boy and his twelve-year-old brother facedown in their beds and then crushing them with a mattress. “Buckingham’s men,” I remind him. “Not mine.”

“Your orders, and three witnesses to it. Where are the bodies?”

“Hidden under a stair in the Tower. When Henry is proclaimed king, he can discover them there and declare the boys were killed by Richard. He can hold a Mass, a funeral.”

“And how do you know that Buckingham has not played you false? How do you know that he has not spirited them away and they are still alive somewhere?”

I hesitate. Suddenly I feel that I may have made a mistake, giving dirty work to others to do. But I wanted it to be Buckingham’s men, and all the blame on Buckingham. “Why would he do that? It is in his interest that they should be dead,” I say, “just as much as ours. You yourself said that. And if the worst comes to the worst, and he has tricked me, and they are alive in the Tower, then someone can kill them later.”

“You put a lot of faith in your allies,” my husband says unpleasantly. “And you keep your hands clean. But if you don’t strike the blow, you don’t know if it goes home. I just hope that you have done the job. Your son will never be safe on the throne if there is a York prince somewhere in hiding. He will spend his life looking over his shoulder. There will be a rival king waiting in Brittany for him, just as he was there for Edward. Just as he terrorizes Richard. Your precious son will be haunted by fear of a rival, just as he haunts Richard. Tudor will never have a moment’s peace. If you have botched this, you have given your son over to be dogged by an unquiet spirit, and the crown will never sit securely on his head.”

“I do the will of God,” I say fiercely. “And it has been done. And I won’t be questioned. Henry will be safe on his true throne. He will not be haunted. The princes are dead, and I am guilty of nothing. Buckingham did it.”

“At your suggestion.”

“Buckingham did it.”

“And you are sure they were both killed?”

I hesitate for a moment as I think of Elizabeth Woodville’s odd words: “It’s not Richard.” What if she put a changeling in the Tower for me to kill? “Both of them,” I say steadily.

My husband smiles his coldest smile. “I shall be glad to be sure of it.”

“When my son comes into London in triumph and finds the bodies, lays the blame on Buckingham or Richard, and gives them a holy burial, you will see that I have done my part.”

I go to bed uneasy, and the very next day, straight after matins, Dr. Lewis comes to my rooms looking strained and anxious. At once I say I am feeling unwell and send all my women away. We are alone in my privy chamber, and I let him take a stool and sit opposite me, almost as an equal.

“The Queen Elizabeth summoned me to sanctuary last night, and she was distraught,” he says quietly.

“She was?”

“She had been told that the princes were dead, and she was begging me to tell her that it was not the case.”

“What did you say?”

“I didn’t know what you would have me say. So I told her what everyone in the city is saying: that they are dead. That Richard had them killed either on the day of his coronation, or as he left London.”

“And she?”

“She was deeply shocked; she could not believe it. But Lady Margaret, she said a terrible thing-” He breaks off, as if he dare not name it.

“Go on,” I say but I can feel a cold shiver of dread creeping up my spine. I fear I have been betrayed. I fear that this has gone wrong.

“She cried out at first and then she said: ‘At least Richard is safe.’”

“She meant Prince Richard? The younger boy?”

“The one they took into the Tower to keep his brother company.”

“I know that! But what did she mean?”

“That’s what I asked her. I asked her at once what she meant, and she smiled at me in the most frightening way and said: ‘Doctor, if you had only two precious, rare jewels and you feared thieves, would you put your two treasures in the same box?’”

He nods at my aghast expression.

“What does she mean?” I repeat.

“She wouldn’t say more. I asked her if Prince Richard was not in the Tower when the two boys were killed. She just said that I was to ask you to put your own guards into the Tower to keep her son safe. She would say nothing more. She sent me away.”

I rise from my stool. This damned woman, this witch, has been in my light ever since I was a girl, and now, at this very moment when I am using her, using her own adoring family and loyal supporters to wrench the throne from her, to destroy her sons, she may yet win, she may have done something that will spoil everything for me. How does she always do it? How is it that when she is brought so low that I can even bring myself to pray for her, she manages to turn her fortunes around? It must be witchcraft; it can only be witchcraft. Her happiness and her success have haunted my life. I know her to be in league with the devil, for sure. I wish he would take her to hell.

“You will have to go back to her,” I say, turning to him.

He almost looks as if he would refuse.

“What?” I snap.

“Lady Margaret, I swear, I dread going to her. She is like a witch imprisoned in the cleft of a pine tree; she is like an entrapped spirit; she is like a water goddess on a frozen lake, waiting for spring. She lives in the gloom of sanctuary with the river flowing all the time beside their rooms, and she listens to the babble as a counsellor. She knows things that she cannot know by earthly means. She fills me with terror. And her daughter is as bad.”

“You will have to summon your courage,” I say briskly. “Be brave, you are doing God’s work. You have to go back to her and tell her to be of stout heart. Tell her that I am certain that the princes are alive. Remind her that when we attacked the Tower, we heard the guards taking them back from the door. They were alive then, why would Richard kill them now? Richard has taken the throne without killing them, why would he put them to death now? Richard is a man who does his own work, and he is hundreds of miles away from them now. Tell her that I will double my people in the Tower and that I swear to her, on my honor, that I will protect them. Remind her that the uprising will start next month. As soon as we defeat Richard the king, we will set the boys free. Then, when she is reassured, when she is in her first moment of relief, when you see the color come to her face and you have convinced her-in that moment quickly ask her if she has her son Prince Richard in safety already. If she has him hidden away somewhere.”

He nods, but he is pale with fear. “And are they safe?” he asks. “Can I truly assure her that those poor boys are safe and we will rescue them? That the rumors, even in your own household, are false? Do you know if they are alive or dead, Lady Margaret? Can I tell their mother that they are alive and speak the truth?”

“They are in the hands of God,” I reply steadily. “As are we all. My son too. These are dangerous times, and the princes are in the hands of God.”

That night we hear news of the first uprising. It is mistimed; it comes too early. The men of Kent are marching on London, calling on the Duke of Buckingham to take the throne. The county of Sussex gets up in arms, believing they cannot delay a moment longer, and the men of Hampshire beside them rise up too as a fire will leap from one dry woodland to another. Richard’s most loyal commander, Thomas Howard, the brand-new Duke of Norfolk, marches down the west road from London and occupies Guildford, fighting skirmishes to the west and to the east, but holding the rebels down in their own counties, and sending a desperate warning to the king: the counties of the south are up in the name of the former queen and her imprisoned sons, the princes.

Richard, the battle-hardened leader of York, marches south at the fast speed of a York army, makes his center of command at Lincoln, and raises troops in every county, especially from those who greeted his progress with such joy. He hears of the betrayal of the Duke of Buckingham when men come from Wales to tell him that the duke is already on the march, going north through the Welsh marches, recruiting men and clearly planning to cross at Gloucester, or perhaps Tewkesbury, to come into the heart of England with his own men and his Welsh recruits. His beloved friend, Henry Stafford, is marching out under his standard, as proudly and as bravely as once he did for Richard; only now he is marching against him.

Richard goes white with rage, and he grips his right arm, his sword arm, above the elbow, as if he were shaking with rage, as if to hold it steady. “A man with the best cause to be true,” he exclaims. “The most untrue creature living. A man who had everything he asked for. Never was a false traitor better treated; a traitor, a traitor.”

At once he sends out commissions of array to every county in England demanding their loyalty, demanding their arms and their men. This is the first and greatest crisis of his new reign. He summons them to support a York king; he demands the loyalty that they gave to his brother, which they have all promised to him. He warns those who cheered when he took the crown less than sixteen weeks ago that they must now stand by that decision, or England will fall to an unholy alliance of the false Duke of Buckingham, the witch queen, and the Tudor pretender.

It is pouring with rain, and there is a strong wind blowing hard from the north. It is unnatural weather, witch’s weather. My son must set sail now if he is to arrive while the queen’s supporters are up and while Buckingham is marching. But if it is so foul here, in the south of England, then I fear the weather in Brittany. He must come at exactly the right moment to catch the weary victor of the first battle and make them turn and fight again, while they are sick of fighting. But-I stand at my window and watch the rain pouring down, and the wind lashing the trees in our garden-I know he cannot set sail in this weather, the wind is howling towards the south. I cannot believe he will even be able to get out of port.

The next day the rains are worse and the river is starting to rise. It is over our landing steps at the foot of the garden, and the boatmen drag the Stanley barge up the garden to the very orchard, out of the swirling flood, fearing that it will be torn from its moorings by the current. I can’t believe that Henry can set sail in this, and even if he were to get out of harbor, I can’t believe that he could safely get across the English seas to the south coast.

My web of informers, spies, and plotters are stunned by the ferocity of the rain, which is like a weapon against us. The roads into London are all but impassable; no one can get a message through. A horse and rider cannot get from London to Guildford, and as the river rises higher, there is news of flooding and drowning upstream and down. The tides are unnaturally high, and every day and night the floods from the river pour down to the inrushing tide and there is a boiling surge of water that wipes out riverside houses, quays, piers, and docks. Nobody can remember weather like this, a rain storm that lasts for days, and the rivers are bursting their banks all around England.

I have no one to talk to but my God, and I cannot always hear His voice, as if the rain is blotting out His very face, and the wind blowing away His words. This is how I know for sure that it is a witch’s wind. I spend my day at the window overlooking the garden, watching the river boil over the garden wall and come up through the orchard, lap by lap, till the trees themselves seem to be stretching up to the heavy clouds for help. Whenever one of my ladies comes to my side, or Dr. Lewis comes to my door, or any of the plotters in London ask for admittance, they all want to know what is happening: as if I know any more than them, when all I can hear is rain; as if I can foretell the future in the gale-ripped sky. But I know nothing, anything could be happening out there; a waterlogged massacre could be taking place even half a mile away, and none of us would know-we would hear no voices over the sound of the storm, no lights would show through the rain.

I spend my nights in my chapel, praying for the safety of my son and the success of our venture, and hearing no answer from God but only the steady hammer of the torrent on the roof and the whine of the wind lifting the slates above me, until I think that God Himself has been blotted from the heavens of England by the witch’s wind, and I will never hear Him again.

Finally, I get a letter from my husband at Coventry.

The king has commanded my presence, and I fear he doubts me. He has sent for my son Lord Strange too and was very dark when he learned that my son is from his home with an army of ten thousand men on the march, but my son has told nobody where he is going, and his servants only swear that he said he was raising his men for the true cause. I assure the king that my son will be marching to join us, loyal to the throne; but he has not yet arrived here at our command center, in Coventry Castle.

Buckingham is trapped in Wales by the rising of the river Severn. Your son, I believe, will be held in port by the storm on the seas. The queen’s men will be unable to march out on the drowned roads, and the Duke of Norfolk is waiting for them. I think your rebellion is over; you have been beaten by the rain and the rising of the waters. They are calling it the Duke of Buckingham’s Water, and it has washed him and his ambition to hell along with your hopes. Nobody has seen a storm like this since the Queen Elizabeth called up a mist to hide her husband’s army at the battle of Barnet, or summoned the wind to blow him safely home. Nobody doubts she can do such a thing, and most of us only hope she will stop before she washes us all away. But why? Can she be working against you now? And if so, why? Does she know, with her inner sight, what has befallen her boys and who has done it? Does she think you have done it? Is she drowning your son in revenge?

Destroy what papers you have kept, and deny whatever you have done. Richard is coming to London, and there will be a scaffold built on Tower Green. If he believes half what he has heard, he will put you on it and I will be unable to save you.

Stanley