The Red Queen

WINTER 1484

The court spends the Christmas season at Westminster, and the gossip of the household tells me that Richard has put on as great a show as his brother ever did. The news of the music, the playing, the clothes, and the feasting go round the kingdom and grow more glorious in the telling. My household brings in the yule log and mistletoe and holly and makes very merry without me in the kitchen and the hall.

I find the marble floor of the chapel very cold under my knees. I am without comfort, I am without place, I am without much hope. Richard at Westminster, in the glory of York power, is proudly invulnerable both to my boy and to my brother-in-law, poor pensioners of the enemy of England: France. I see them sinking into exile; I see them brought low and disregarded. I fear they will hang around the court of France for the rest of Henry’s life, and he will be known as a second-rank pretender: worth playing as a card in a game of treaties, worth nothing on his own account.

My husband writes one of his rare letters from Westminster, and I fall on it as a beggar might fall on a crust of bread. I am too poor in news to be proud.

The York princess is at the top of her game; her beauty commands the court, and the king follows her like a lapdog. The queen dresses her in her own gowns-they dress to match. The thin old Neville woman and this glowing, rosy girl come out to dine in dresses of the same rich cut and color, as if they want to encourage comparison.

The queen must be ordered by the king to be so complaisant; she does everything but put her niece into bed with her husband. There are some who share your view that Richard seeks to seduce his niece only to insult your son, to show him as a helpless cuckold. If so, he succeeds magnificently. Henry Tudor is a laughingstock to this hot-blooded court. But there are others who think, more simply, that the lovers are merely reckless with appearances, forgetting everything but each other, and think of nothing but their own desires.

The court is wonderful this season; how sorry I am you cannot be here. I have never seen such wealth and glamour since Edward’s time, and at the heart of it all is Edward’s daughter looking as if she has come into her own again. Of course she belongs here. The Yorks are indeed the sun in splendor, and to see Elizabeth of York is to be dazzled.

By the way, do you have any news of your son? Richard’s spies report to him in secret, I don’t know what they say; but I do know that the king has ceased to fear Henry, and his poor ally, the mad Duke of Brittany. He nearly caught him in June, you know, and there are many who say Henry will find no safe haven in France. He will simply be held by the French king as a bargaining chip, until he loses all value. Perhaps it may be that your last defeat was your last chance? What do you think? And if so, do you want to give up hope for Henry, and sue for forgiveness to Richard? I could perhaps intercede for you if I promised that you are humbled to the ground.

I send you the compliments of the season and this little book as a gift. It is printed by one Thomas Caxton on a press of his own devising, brought to England by the late and much missed Anthony Rivers, the queen’s brother. I thought you would find a printed book, rather than a hand-copied manuscript, of interest. Everyone is saying that Rivers was a man of great foresight to patronize such work. His own sister Elizabeth the queen edited the first text off the press; she is a scholar as well as a beauty, of course.

What would happen if everyone could read and everyone could buy these? Would they give up on teachers and kings altogether? Would they care nothing for the Houses of Lancaster and York? And study their own loyalties? Would they cry a plague on both your houses? It is amusing to speculate, is it not?

Stanley

I drop his book to the floor in sheer irritation at the thought of Elizabeth of York and her incestuous lover-uncle dancing in the Christmas feast, while that poor thing, Anne Neville, smiles on them as if she were part of a happy family at play. When Stanley taunts me with Henry’s silence, I have no riposte. In truth, I don’t know what he is doing; I have heard nothing since their flight to France when Jasper said he had hopes, but did not tell me what they were. I think Jasper has advised Henry not to write to me. I think they believe that Stanley’s messenger Ned Parton is unsafe; they believe he reports to my husband. They are surrounded by spies, and they have to be suspicious; but I fear that now they doubt me too. This was once our battle, our rebellion: we Tudors against the Yorks. Now they trust no one, not even me. I live far from everyone, everything. I know nothing but what my husband writes to me, and he writes as a man in triumph might taunt a defeated enemy.