bands come through this way.”
“But my son-”
“Herbert will have told him what to do in the event of the battle going against them. He will have appointed someone to take care of him. I’ll go first to Lady Herbert and see what news she has, then I’ll go to Edgecote. Trust me, I will find your boy.”
“And when you find him, bring him here.”
He hesitates. “Depends who his new guardian is to be. We can’t just take him.”
“But who will decide that now? If York is defeated?”
He smiles. “Lancaster, I suppose. You have victory, remember? Your house will now decide everything. Warwick will put King Henry back on the throne just as he took him off; then I imagine Warwick will rule the country until the prince is of age, and possibly thereafter.”
“We have won?” I ask uncertainly. With my son missing and his guardian dead, it does not feel like victory, it feels like more danger.
“We have won,” my husband says, and there is no gladness in his voice at all. “At any rate, Lancaster has won, and that is us, once more, apparently.”
On the very morning that my cautious husband is about to set out, we have a letter in Jasper’s familiar scrawl.
It is like a dream, a dream as bright as those I used to have as a child when I prayed myself into visions. We are in the Stafford barge sailing down the Thames, the rowers keeping their pace with the low thudding of the drum, my boy gazing at the people on the riverbank who cheer to see our standards flying, and to glimpse my boy in the prow of the boat, a prince-in-waiting. We go past Westminster, and I look at the low buildings that huddle down by the river’s edge. Somewhere in the sanctuary of the abbey is the former queen, Elizabeth Woodville, the King of York’s famously beautiful wife, hiding from her enemies and wondering if she will ever see her husband again. She is thrown down and alone, and I am up high. I wonder if she is looking out from those dark little windows, if her eyes are on my standard even now. I shiver, as if I could feel a baleful glance on me; but I shrug it off. I am the chosen daughter of God, of His chosen house. She can stay there till she rots for all I care, and her beautiful daughters with her.
From the prow of the boat, my son Henry turns back to me with a shy smile, and I say: “Wave to them, wave at your people. They are glad to see our family back in honor, back in power. Show them that you are glad to be here.”
He makes a little gesture, and then he steps back to where I am seated under the Stafford canopy, the red rose of Lancaster embroidered overall.
“Lady Mother, you were right all along,” he says shyly. “I must beg your pardon. I did not understand.”
I put my hand to my heart to feel it thud. “Right about what?”
“We are a great family, and the King Henry is the true king. I didn’t know. When you told me it, I didn’t understand. But I understand now.”
“I am guided by God,” I say earnestly. “I look beyond the fleeting days, to the wisdom of God. Will you be guided by me in the future?”
He gives a solemn little bow. “I shall be your son and your liege man,” he says formally.
I turn my head so he cannot see the triumph in my face. Henry the King has won England, and I have won my son. Thirteen years old and he swears fealty to me. He is mine for life! I feel the tears well up into my eyes. “I accept your service,” I say quietly. Then the barge noses up to the pier, the gangplank is run aboard, and Henry my son shows his beautiful Herbert manners and gives me a hand to help me ashore. We walk through the garden where everyone is smiling in joy that the country has come to its senses and we can all be in our rightful places again. And here is our king, back on his throne, his face so bright with happiness that I hardly see the five years of pallor from his imprisonment. Here is the royal canopy over his head, embroidered with the red rose of Lancaster in full bloom; here are his courtiers around him. It is as if I were a child again and he about to assign me to the Tudors as my guardians. It is as if my childhood joys have come back to me again and the world can start anew.
And here is my son, my boy, his short-cropped hair as bright as a chestnut mane, his shoulders broad, grown taller yet again, standing beside his uncle Jasper, a handsome boy from a handsome family. We are restored. England is returned to its senses, Jasper is Earl of Pembroke once more, my son is in my keeping.
“You see?” I demand of him quietly. “You see now? I was keeping my faith to this king, my cousin, and here he is restored to his throne. God has me in His special keeping, as He has you. I knew that the York reign would be short; I knew that we would all be restored to our true places.” I glance past my son and see that the king has nodded to Jasper to bring him forwards. “Go,” I prompt him. “The king wants you, his cousin.”
My son gives a little jump, but then straightens his shoulders and goes forward to the throne with an air of real grace and quiet confidence. He carries himself so well that I cannot stop myself whispering to my husband, Sir Henry: “See how he walks?”
“Both feet,” my husband commends wryly. “One after the other. Miraculous.”
“Like a nobleman, like a prince,” I correct him. I lean forwards to listen.
“And this is young Henry Tudor, my cousin?” the king asks Jasper.
Jasper bows. “My brother Edmund’s son and his mother is now Lady Margaret Stafford.”
Henry kneels before the king, who leans down and puts his hand on the brown curly head in his royal blessing.
“There,” I say to my husband. “The king himself favors Henry. I expect the king can foretell he will have a great future. He will know that this is a special boy. He has the vision of a saint; he will see the grace in Henry, as I do.”
The storm, which blew away the little boat of the usurper Edward and his runaway companions after their defeat at Edgecote Hill, blows around the coast for almost all the winter. Our lands are flooded both in Surrey and elsewhere, and we have to lay out on ditching and even build dykes against the rising rivers. The tenants are late with their rents, and the crops are sodden in the fields. My husband is pessimistic about the state of the country, as if the loss of the usurper House of York brings rain and discontent.
The news gets out that the former queen, Elizabeth Woodville, who turns out to be so beloved of her king that he ran away and left her, is going to give birth to another child, even though she is in sanctuary in Westminster, on holy ground. Even this final act of grossness and folly is forgiven by our sainted king, who refuses to have her taken from her place of hiding, and instead sends her midwives and ladies to care for her. The attention that this woman attracts continues to amaze me. I managed to give birth to my boy Henry with no more than two midwives and they under instruction to let me die. Elizabeth Woodville has to have midwives and physicians and her own mother in attendance, when she is in hiding for treason.
She continues to attract admiration, even though nobody can see her fabled beauty. They say that the citizens of London and the farmers of Kent keep her supplied with food, and that her husband is in Flanders, raising an army to rescue her. The thought of her, reveling in all this attention, makes me grit my teeth. Why cannot people see that all she has done, in all her life, is use a pretty face, or the snare of her body or worse, to capture a king. This is neither noble nor holy-and yet people speak of her as beloved.
The worst news of all is that she has a boy. He cannot inherit the throne since his father has so thoroughly abandoned it, but a York son born just now is bound to have an influence on gullible people, who will see the hand of destiny in giving the York family an heir in prison.
If I were the king, I don’t think I would be so very scrupulous about respecting the laws of sanctuary for such a person. How can a woman who is widely regarded as a witch invoke the protection of the Holy Church? How can a baby claim sanctuary? How shall a treasonous family live untouchable in the very heart of London? Our king is a saint, but he should be served by men who can take worldly decisions; and Elizabeth Woodville and her mother Jacquetta, whom I now know to be truly a most notorious and proven witch and a turncoat, should be bundled onto a ship and sent off to Flanders; there they can weave their magic and practice their beauty, where they are likely to be better appreciated among foreigners.
