“I wish I could promise you my husband’s sword and fortune and tenantry at your service,” I say quietly. “Everything I can do to persuade him to ride out for the king, I do already. I make it clear to my own tenants that I would be pleased to see them form into bands for their true king. But Sir Henry is slow to act, and reluctant to act. I wish I could promise you more, cousin. I am ashamed that I cannot.”
“Does he not realize that you stand to lose everything? Your son’s title and wealth will be taken from him again?”
I nod. “Yes, but he is much influenced by the London traders and his business friends. And they are all for York because they believe Edward makes peace throughout the land, and because he makes the courts of law work so that a man can have justice. My husband is influenced too by the greater men among his tenants, and by the other noblemen in the area. They don’t all think as they should. They favor York. They say he brought peace and justice to England and that since he has gone, there has been trouble and uncertainty. They say he is young and strong and commands the country and that our king is frail and ruled by his wife.”
“I can’t deny that,” my cousin says briskly. “But Edward of York is not the true king. He could be a very Daniel bringing judgment, he could be Moses bringing fine laws, and he would still be a traitor. We have to follow the king, our king, or be traitors ourselves.”
The door opens, and my husband comes in, all smiles. “I am sorry,” he says. “There was trouble in the stable; some fool tipped over a brazier, and they were running around putting out the fire. I just went down to check that it was thoroughly out. Don’t want our honored guest to be burned in his bed!” He smiles pleasantly at the duke, and in that moment, in his smiling, honest warmth, in his lack of fearfulness, in his confident sense of his own rightness-I think that we both know that Sir Henry is not going to ride out for the king.
Within days we have the news that Edward of York has made landfall, not where anyone expected him, but in the north of England, where the witch’s wind blew him to safe harbor, and he has marched on York and asked them to open their gates to him, not on his own account as king, but so that he can take up his dukedom again. The city, persuaded like a set of fools, lets him in, and at once the York supporters flock to their leader and his traitorous ambition is plain. George, the turncoat Duke of Clarence, is among them. It has taken some time, but even stupid George finally realizes that his future as a York boy would be brighter with a York king on the throne, and suddenly he loves his brother above any other and declares that his loyalty to the true king and to his father-in-law Warwick was a great mistake. I suppose from this that my son has lost his earldom forever, as everything will belong to the York boys again and no pleading messages from me to George, Duke of Clarence, will make him give Henry’s title back. All at once everything is golden daylight, and the three suns of York are the dawn over England. In the fields the hares are fighting and leaping, and it seems as if the whole country has gone as mad as hares this March.
Amazingly, Edward gets to London without a single obstacle in his path, the gates are thrown open for him by the adoring citizens, and he is reunited with his wife, as if he had never been chased from his own land, running for his life.
I take to my chamber and pray on my knees when I hear this news from Somerset’s hard-riding messenger. I think of Elizabeth Woodville-the so-called beauty-with her baby son in her arms, and her daughters all around her, starting up as the door is thrown open and Edward of York strides into the room, victorious as he always is. I spend two long hours on my knees, but I cannot pray for victory and I cannot pray for peace. I can only think of her running into his arms, knowing that her husband is the bravest and most able man in the kingdom, showing him her son, surrounded by their daughters. I take up my rosary and pray again. The words are for the safety of my king; but I cannot think of anything but my jealousy that a woman, far worse born than me, far worse educated than me, without doubt less beloved by God than me, should be able to run to her husband with joy and show him their son and know he will fight to defend him. That a woman such as her, clearly not favored by God, showing no signs of grace (unlike me), should be Queen of England. And that, by some mystery-too great for me to understand-God should have overlooked me.
I come out of my chamber and find my husband in the great hall. He is seated at the top table, his face grave. His steward, standing beside him, is putting one sheet of paper after another before him for his signature. His clerk beside him is melting wax and pressing in the seal. It takes me only a moment to recognize the commissions of array. He is calling up his tenants. He is going to war; at last he is going to war. I feel my heart lift like a lark at the sight; God be praised, he is owning his duty and going to war at last. I step up to the table, my face glad.
“Husband, God bless you and the work you are finally doing.”
He does not smile back at me; he looks at me wearily, and his eyes are sad. His hand keeps moving, signing Henry Stafford, time after time, and he hardly glances down at his pen. They come to the last page: the clerk drips wax, stamps the seal, and hands it in its box back to his chief secretary.
“Send them at once,” Henry says.
He pushes back his chair and steps off the little dais to stand before me, takes my hand, and tucks it in his arm and walks me away from the clerk, who is gathering up the papers to take to the stables for the waiting messengers.
“Wife, I have to tell you a thing which will trouble you,” he says.
I shake my head. I think he is about to tell me that he is going to war with a heavy heart for fear of leaving me, and so I rush to reassure him that I fear nothing when he’s doing God’s work. “Truly husband, I am glad …” He stills me with a gentle touch on my cheek.
“I am calling up my men not to serve King Henry, but to serve King Edward,” he says quietly.
At first I hear the words, but they make no sense to me. Then I am so frozen with horror that I say nothing. I am so silent that he thinks I have not heard him.
“I will serve King Edward of York, not Henry of Lancaster,” he says. “I am sorry if you are disappointed.”
“Disappointed?” He is telling me he has turned traitor, and he thinks I may be disappointed?
“I am sorry for it.”
“But my cousin himself came to persuade you to war …”
“He did nothing but convince me that we have to have a strong king who will put an end to war, now and forever, or he and his sort will go on until England is destroyed. When he told me that he would fight forever, I knew that he would have to be defeated.”
“Edward is not born to be king. He is not a bringer of peace.”
“My dear, you know that he is. The only peace we have known in the last ten years was when he was on the throne. And now he has a son and heir, so please God the Yorks will hold the throne forever and there will be an end to these unending battles.”
I wrench my hand away from his grip. “He is not born royal,” I cry. “He is not sacred. He is a usurper. You are calling out your tenants and mine,
He nods. “I knew you would not like it,” he says resignedly.
“I would rather die than see this!”
He nods as if I am exaggerating, like a child.
“And what if you lose?” I demand. “You will be known as a turncoat who supported York. Do you think they will call Henry-your stepson-to court again, and give him back his earldom? Do you think Henry the king will bless him as he did before, when everyone knows you have shamed yourself, and shamed me?”
He grimaces. “I think it is the right thing to do. And, as it happens, I think York will win.”
“Against Warwick?” I ask him scornfully. “He can’t beat Warwick. He didn’t do so well last time, when Warwick chased him out of England. And the time before that, when Warwick took him prisoner. He is Warwick’s boy, not his master.”
“He was betrayed last time,” he said. “He was alone without his army. This time he knows his enemies, and he has summoned his men.”
“Say you win then,” I say, the words tumbling out in my distress. “Say you put Edward on my family’s throne. What happens to me? What happens to Henry? Will Jasper have to go into exile again, thanks to your enmity? Will my son and his uncle be driven out of England by you? Do you want me to go too?”
He sighs. “If I serve Edward and he is glad of my service, then he will reward me,” he says. “We might even get Henry’s earldom back from him. The throne will no longer run in your family, but Margaret, dear little wife, to be honest with you: your family does not deserve to own it. The king is sick, to tell the truth; he is mad. He is not fit to
