short it is something and nothing as usual. I wave at him to leave and tell him I will come at once, but still he hovers around me. This is not the first time that they have run around my husband, thinking him near to death, and found that he had eaten too ripe fruit or drunk too much wine, and I am very sure it will not be the last.
I have never reproached him for sacrificing his health to put a usurper on the throne, and I have nursed him with care as a good wife should: no fault can be laid at my door. But he knows I blame him for the defeat of my king, and he will know that I will blame him for the loss of my son too.
I brush the groom to one side and go to wash my face and hands and change my travel-stained gown, and so it is nearly an hour before I go to my husband’s rooms and enter quietly.
“I am glad you are come at last, Lady Margaret, for I don’t think he has long,” the physician says softly to me. He has been waiting for me, in the antechamber to my husband’s bedroom.
“Long?” I ask. My mind is so filled with my son, my ears listening for the sound of a storm that could blow them off course, or even-please God spare him-sink the little boat, that I don’t understand what the man means.
“I am sorry, Lady Margaret,” he says, thinking me stupid with wifely concern. “But I am afraid I can do no more.”
“No more?” I repeat again. “Why, what is the matter? What are you saying?”
He shrugs. “The wound goes deeper than we thought, and he cannot take food at all now. I fear his stomach was severed inside and has not healed. I am afraid he has not long to live. He can only drink small ale and wine and water; we cannot feed him.”
I look at him uncomprehendingly, and then I brush past him, open the door to my husband’s bedroom, and stride inside. “Henry?”
His face is ashen on the pillow, gray against the white. His lips are dark. I see how thin and gaunt he has become in the few weeks that I have been absent.
“Margaret,” he says, and he tries to smile. “I am so glad you are come home at last.”
“Henry …”
“Is your boy safely away?”
“Yes,” I say.
“That’s good, that’s good,” he says. “You will be glad to know that he is safe. And you can apply for his return later, you know. They will not be ungenerous to you, when they know about me …”
I pause. It is suddenly clear to me that he means I will be a widow, applying for favor to the king whose service has cost the life of my husband.
“You have been a good wife,” he says kindly. “I would not have you grieve for me.”
I press my lips together. I have not been a good wife, and we both know it.
“And you should marry again,” he says, his breath coming short. “But this time, choose a husband who will serve you in the wider world. You need greatness, Margaret. You should marry a man high in the favor of the king, this king, the York king-not a man who loves his hearth and his fields.”
“Don’t speak of it,” I whisper.
“I know I have disappointed you,” he continues in his rasping voice. “And I am sorry for it. I was not suited to these times.” He smiles his crooked, sad smile. “You are. You should have been a great commander; you should have been a Joan of Arc.”
“Rest,” I say weakly. “Perhaps you will get better.”
“No, I think I am done for. But I bless you, Margaret, and your boy, and I think you will bring him home safely again. Surely, if anyone can do it, then you will. Make peace with the Yorks, Margaret, and you will be able to bring your boy home. That’s my last word of advice for you. Forget your dreams of kingship for him; that’s all over, you know. Settle to seeing him safe home, that’s the best thing for him, and for England. Don’t bring him home for another battle. Bring him home for peace.”
“I will pray for you,” I say quietly.
“Thank you,” he says. “I think I will sleep now.”
I leave him to sleep, and I go out quietly, closing the door behind me. I tell them to call me if he gets any worse, or if he asks for me, and I go to the chapel and get to my knees on the hard stone floor before the altar. I don’t even use a kneeler, and I pray to God to forgive me for my sins to my husband, and to receive him into His holy kingdom where there is no war and no rival kings. It is only when I hear the bell start to toll over and over in the tower above my head that I realize it is dawn and I have been on my knees all the night, and that my husband of thirteen years died without asking for me.
Only a few weeks later, with masses being said daily for my husband’s soul in our little chapel, a messenger wearing a black ribboned hat comes from my mother’s house to say that she has died, and I understand that now I am all alone in the world. The only family I have left is Jasper in exile, and my son with him. I am orphaned and widowed, and my child is far away from me. They were blown off course, and instead of landing in France as we had planned, they landed in Brittany. Jasper writes to me that this is luck running our way at last, for the Duke of Brittany has seen them and promises them safety and hospitality in his dukedom, and that they will perhaps be safer in Brittany than in France, where Edward is certain to make a peace treaty, since all he wants now is peace, and cares nothing for the honor of England. I reply at once.
I pause. I write: “Shall I come to you?” And then I cross it out and throw away the piece of paper. I write: “May I come to see my son?” Then I write: “Please, Jasper …”
In the end I write, “I await your advice,” and I send it by messenger.
Then I wait for the reply.
I wonder if he will send for me? I wonder if at last he will say that we can be together, with my boy?
WINTER 1471-72
I wear black for my husband and my mother, and I close down much of the house. As a widow I won’t be called on to entertain my neighbors, not in this first year of my loss; and even though I am a great lady of the House of Lancaster, I won’t be summoned to court, nor will this new king, this blanched rose king and his fecund wife, visit me in the twelve months of my mourning. I need not fear the honor of their favor. I expect they want to forget all about me, and the House of Lancaster. Especially, I doubt that she, who is so much older than him-thirty-four now! – would want him to meet me in the first year of my widowhood when he would see the twenty-eight-year-old heiress of the House of Lancaster, in possession of her fortune, ready to marry again. Perhaps he would regret choosing a nobody.
But no message comes from Jasper summoning me, calling me from the safety of England to the danger and challenge of life with him in Brittany. Instead, he writes that the Duke of Brittany has promised to give him and Henry protection. He does not tell me to come to him. He does not see that this is our chance, our only chance, and I understand his silence very well. He has dedicated his life to my son, to raising him to his name and his lands. He is not going to jeopardize this by marrying me and having all three of us in exile together. He has to keep me, holding Henry’s inheritance, managing his lands and pursuing his interests, in England. Jasper loves me, I know that; but it is, as he says, courtly love, from afar. He doesn’t seem to mind how far.
My dowry lands revert to me, and I start to gather the information about them and to summon the stewards so that they can explain to me the profits that can be made from them. At least my husband kept them in good heart; he was a good landlord, if no leader of men. A good English landlord, if no hero. I do not grieve for him as a wife, as Anne Devereux has grieved for her husband William Herbert. She promised him she would never remarry; she swore she would go to her grave hoping to meet him in heaven. I suppose they were in some sort of love, though married by contract. I suppose they found some sort of passion in their marriage. It is rare but not impossible. I do hope that they have not given my son ideas about loving his wife; a man who is to be king can
