be York,” he says shortly. He glances at my face and then looks away. “I knew you wouldn’t like it. There’s no need to trouble yourself, it probably won’t hold.”
“The Prince of Wales is to be robbed of his rights?” I can hardly frame the words, I am so shocked. “How can he be Prince of Wales and not become king? How can anyone think that they can pass over him?”
Henry shrugs. “You are all to be robbed, you who were in the line of succession. You, yourself, are no longer of the ruling house now. Your son is no longer related to a king, nor is he one of the heirs to the throne. It will be York; York, and his line. Yes,” he repeats to my stunned face. “He has won for his sons what no one would give to him. It is York’s sons who will come after the king. The new royal line is to be the House of York. The Lancasters are to be the royal cousins. That is what they have agreed. That is what the king has sworn to follow.”
He rises up in his stockinged feet and turns for his rooms.
I put a hand on his arm. “But this is just what Joan saw!” I exclaim. “When her king was put aside, and his inheritance given to another. This is just what she saw when she took her king to be crowned in Rheims, despite a blasphemous agreement that he should not be crowned. She saw that the order of God was put aside, and she fought for the true heir. This is what inspired her to be great. She saw the true heir, and she fought for him.”
He cannot muster his usual smile for me. “And so what? Do you think you can take Edward, Prince of Wales, to London and have him crowned despite his defeat, despite this agreement? Will you lead a beaten army? Will you be England’s Joan?”
“Someone has to be,” I cry out passionately. “The prince cannot be robbed of the throne. How could they agree to this? How could the king agree to this?”
“Who knows what he thinks, poor soul?” my husband says. “Who knows what he understands now, or even if he can stay awake? And if he goes to sleep or even dies and York takes the throne, at least York will be able to hold the country to peace.”
“That’s not the point!” I shout at him. “York is not called by God. York is not of the senior line from Edward III. York is not of the royal house-we are! I am! My son is! This is
He looks down at me, and his brown eyes are for once not kindly, but dark with anger. “Enough,” he growls. “You are a stupid young woman of, what? – only seventeen years old, and you understand nothing, Margaret. You should be silent. This is not a ballad or a tale; this is not a romance. This is a disaster that is costing the men and women of England every day. This is nothing to do with Joan of Arc, nothing to do with you, and God Himself knows, nothing to do with Him.”
He pulls away from me and he goes, treading carefully up the stairs to his room. He is stiff from his long ride and he hobbles, bowlegged. I watch him go with hatred, my hand over my mouth to stifle my sobs. He is an old man, an old fool. I know the will of God better than him, and He is, as He has always been, for Lancaster.
WINTER 1460
I am right in this, and my husband, for all that he is my husband and set over me, is wrong, and this is proved at Christmastide when the Duke of York, who is supposed to be so clever, so brilliant in battle, is caught outside his own castle walls of Sandal, with a small guard, among them his son Edmund, the Earl of Rutland, and both York and his boy are brutally killed by our forces. So much for the man who would be king and would claim the royal line!
The queen’s army takes his hacked body and makes mock of him, and beheads the corpse and sticks his head above the gates of York with a paper crown on his head, so he can view his kingdom before the crows and buzzards peck out his dead eyes. This is a traitor’s death, and with it die the hopes of York, for who is left? His great ally the Earl of Warwick has only useless daughters, and the three remaining boys of York-Edward, George, and Richard-are too young to lead an army on their own account.
I do not exult over my husband, for we have settled to living quietly together and are celebrating Christmas with our tenants, retainers, and servants, as if the world were not trembling with uncertainty. We do not speak of the divided kingdom, and though he has letters from merchants and tradesmen in London he does not tell me their news, nor that his family are constantly urging him to revenge the death of his father. And though he knows that Jasper writes to me from Wales, he does not ask of his newly won castle of Denbigh, and how Jasper so bravely reclaimed it.
I send my son Henry a little cart on wooden wheels, that he can pull along, for his Christmas present, and my husband gives me a shilling to send to him for fairings. In return I give him a silver sixpence to send to the little Duke of Buckingham, Henry Stafford, and we do not speak of the war, or of the queen’s march south at the head of five thousand murderous, dangerous Scots, stained like eager huntsmen with the blood of the rebel York, or of my belief that our house has triumphed again and will come to victory next year, as it must since we are blessed by God.
SPRING 1461
I think, like everyone else of any sense, that with the death of the Duke of York the wars are over. His son Edward is only eighteen years old and all alone on the borders of Wales, where all the men follow Jasper and the House of Lancaster. His mother, the Duchess Cecily, knowing that this is her final defeat, wearing black in her widowhood, sends her two younger sons George and Richard into hiding in Flanders, with the Duke of Burgundy. Duchess Cecily must fear the arrival of the queen in London, at the head of her army of wild men, demanding vengeance for this second failed rebellion. Her oldest son she cannot save; Edward will most probably die in the borders of Wales, hopelessly outnumbered, fighting for his dead father’s lost cause.
My brother-in-law Jasper will be defending his own; his father Owen Tudor marches with him. They cannot fail against an army led by a boy, who has just lost his brother, his father and commander, as Jasper confirms:
“I think there may be another battle,” I say tentatively to my husband Henry when he comes to my bedroom. I am seated at the fireside. He drapes his gown on the end of the bed and slides between the sheets. “Your bed is always so comfortable,” he remarks. “Do you have better sheets than me?”
I giggle, distracted for a moment. “I shouldn’t think so. It is your steward of the household who orders everything. My sheets came with me from Wales, but I can tell him to put them on your bed, if you think them finer.”
“No, I like to enjoy them here, with you. Let’s not talk of the troubles of the country.”
“But I have had a letter from Jasper.”
“Tell me of it in the morning.”
“I think it is important.”
He sighs. “Oh, very well. What does he say?”
I hand him my note, and he glances at it. “Yes. I knew this. I heard that they were mustering in Wales. Your old enemy William Herbert has changed his coat again.”
“Never!”
“He will wear a white rose once more and fight alongside the York boy. He was not a friend to Lancaster for long. It must rile Jasper that Herbert rides out against him once more.”
“Herbert is quite without honor!” I exclaim. “And after the king himself pardoned him!”
My husband shrugs. “Who knows why a man chooses one side or another? I hear from my cousin, who is with the queen’s forces, that they will mop up the remnants of the York threat and then come to London in victory.”
