Philippa Gregory - The Red Queen

I am so unprepared by those who should care for me that I haven’t even been taught how to ride, and I am not allowed even to sit on a horse of my own and be led, not even when we arrive in London and hundreds of people in the streets and markets and shops gawp at the fifty of our household as we ride by. How am I to appear as the heroine who will save England if I have to jog behind Wat, seated pillion, my hand on his belt, like some village slut going to a goose fair? I am not at all like an heir to the House of Lancaster. We stay at an inn, not even at court, for the Duke of Suffolk, my guardian, was terribly disgraced and is now dead, so we cannot stay in his palace. I offer up to Our Lady the fact that we don’t have a good London house of our own, and then I think that She too had to make do with a common inn at Bethlehem, when surely Herod must have had spare rooms in the palace. There must have been more suitable arrangements than a stable, surely. Considering who She was. And so I try to be resigned, like Her.

At least I am to have London clothes before we go to court for me to renounce my betrothal. My Lady Mother summons the tailors and the seamstresses to our inn, and I am fitted for a wonderful gown. They say that the ladies of the court are wearing tall, conical headdresses, so high that a woman has to duck to get under a seven-foot doorway. The queen, Margaret of Anjou, loves beautiful clothes and is wearing a new color of ruby red made from a new dye; they say it is as red as blood. My mother orders me a gown of angelic white by way of contrast, and has it trimmed with Lancaster red roses to remind everyone that I may be only a girl of nine years old but I am the heiress of our house. Only when the clothes are ready can we take a barge downriver to declare my dissent against my betrothal, and to be presented at court.

The dissent is a tremendous disappointment. I am hoping that they will question me and that I might stand before them, shy but clear-spoken, to say that I know from God Himself that John de la Pole is not to be my husband. I imagine myself before a tribunal of judges, amazing them like Baby Jesus at the synagogue. I thought I might say that I had a dream which told me that I was not to marry him for I have a greater destiny: I am chosen by God Himself to save England! I am to be Queen of England and sign my name Margaret Regina: Margaret R. But there is no opportunity for me to address them, to shine. It is all written down before we arrive, and all I am allowed to say is, “I dissent,” and sign my name, which is only Margaret Beaufort, and it is done. Nobody even asks me for my opinion on the matter.

We go to wait outside the presence chamber, and then one of the king’s men comes out and calls “Lady Margaret Beaufort!” and everyone looks around and sees me. I have a moment, a really wonderful moment, when I feel everyone looking at me, and I remember to cast down my eyes, and despise worldly vanity, and then my mother leads the way into the king’s presence chamber.

The king is on his great throne with his cloth of estate suspended over the chair and a throne almost the same size beside him for the queen. She is fair-haired and brown-eyed, with a round pudding face and a straight nose. I think she looks beautiful and spoiled, and the king beside her looks fair and pale. I can’t say I see any great light of holiness at this first inspection. He looks quite normal. He smiles at me as I come in and curtsey, but the queen looks from the red roses at the hem of my gown to the little coronet that holds my veil, and then looks away as if she does not think much of me. I suppose, being French, she does not understand who I am. Someone should have told her that if she does not have a baby, then they will have to find another boy to be their heir for the House of Lancaster and it could well be mine. Then I am sure she would have paid me more attention. But she is worldly. The French can be terribly worldly; I have observed it from my reading. I am sure she would not even have seen the light in Joan the Maid. I cannot be surprised that she does not admire me.

Next to her is a most beautiful woman, perhaps the most beautiful woman I have ever seen. She is wearing a gown of blue with a silver thread running through, which makes it shimmer like water. You would think her scaled like a fish. She sees me staring at her, and she smiles back at me, which makes her face light up with a warm beauty like sunlight on water on a summer’s day.

“Who is that?” I whisper to my mother, who pinches my arm to remind me to be silent.

“Jacquetta Rivers. Stop staring,” my mother snaps, and pinches my arm again to recall me to the present. I curtsey very low and I smile at the king.

“I am giving your daughter in wardship to my dearly loved half brothers, Edmund and Jasper Tudor,” the king says to my mother. “She can live with you until it is time for her to marry.”

The queen looks away and whispers something to Jacquetta, who leans forwards like a willow tree beside a stream, the veil billowing around her tall headdress, to listen. The queen does not look much pleased by this news, but I am dumbfounded. I wait for someone to ask me for my consent so that I can explain that I am destined for a life of holiness, but my mother merely curtseys and steps back and then someone else steps forwards and it all seems to be over. The king has barely looked at me; he knows nothing about me, no more than he knew before I walked in the room, and yet he has given me to a new guardian, to another stranger. How can it be that he does not realize that I am a child of special holiness as he was? Am I not to have the chance to tell him about my saints’ knees?

“Can I speak?” I whisper to my mother.

“No, of course not.”

Then how is he to know who I am, if God does not hurry up and tell him? “Well, what happens now?”

“We wait until the other petitioners have seen the king, and then go in to dine,” she replies.

“No, I mean, what happens to me?”

She looks at me as if I am foolish not to understand. “You are to be betrothed again,” she says. “Did you not hear, Margaret? I wish you would pay attention. This is an even greater match for you. You are first going to be the ward, and then the wife, of Edmund Tudor, the king’s half brother. The Tudor boys are the sons of the king’s own mother, Queen Catherine of Valois, by her second marriage to Owen Tudor. There are two Tudor brothers, both great favorites of the king, Edmund and Jasper. Both half royal, both favored. You will marry the older one.”

“Won’t he want to meet me first?”

“Why would he?”

“To see if he likes me?”

She shakes her head. “It is not you they want,” she says. “It is the son you will bear.”

“But I’m only nine.”

“He can wait until you’re twelve,” she says.

“I am to be married then?”

“Of course,” she says, as if I am a fool to ask.

“And how old will he be?”

She thinks for a moment. “Twenty-five.”

I blink. “Where will he sleep?” I ask. I am thinking of the house at Bletsoe, which does not have an empty set of rooms for a hulking young man and his entourage, nor for his younger brother.

She laughs. “Oh, Margaret. You won’t stay at home with me. You will go to live with him and his brother, in Lamphey Palace, in Wales.”

I blink. “Lady Mother, are you sending me away to live with two full-grown men, to Wales, on my own? When I am twelve?”

She shrugs, as if she is sorry for it, but that nothing can be done. “It’s a good match,” she says. “Royal blood on both sides of the marriage. If you have a son, his claim to the throne will be very strong. You are cousin to the king, and your husband is the king’s half brother. Any boy you have will keep Richard of York at bay forever. Think of that; don’t think about anything else.”

My mother tells me that the time will pass quickly, but of course it does not. The days go on forever and ever, and nothing ever happens. My half brothers and half sisters from my mother’s first marriage into the St. John family show no more respect for me now that I am to be married to a Tudor than when I was to be married to a de la Pole. Indeed, now they laugh at me going to live in Wales, which they tell me is a place inhabited by dragons and witches, where there are no roads, but just huge castles in dark forests where water witches rise up out of fountains and entrance mortal men, and wolves prowl in vast man-eating packs. Nothing changes at all until one evening, at family prayers, my mother cites the name of the king with more than her usual devotion, and we all have to stay on our knees for an extra half hour to pray for the health of the king, Henry VI, in this, his time of trouble; and beg Our Lady that the new baby, now in the royal womb of the queen, will prove to be a boy and a new prince for Lancaster.