The Red Queen

“Lady Margaret! Come in! It must be a storm or something worse!”

She is a fool, but she is right in this: something terrible is happening, but I cannot understand what it is. I look up at the sky, and I see the strangest and most ominous sight: the sun is being devoured by a large, dark rondel, like a plate being passed before a candle. Slowly, as I shade my eyes and squint through my fingers, I can see the plate pass before the sun and then it is completely covering it, and the world has gone dark.

“Come in!” the woman whimpers. “Lady Margaret, for the love of God, come in!”

“You go,” I say. I am quite fascinated. It is as if the darkness and despair of my own grief has blotted out the sun itself, and now it is, quite suddenly, as dark as night. Perhaps it will always be nighttime now; it will always be darkness while Richard is on the throne of England and my son is blotted from the world as the sun has been blotted from the sky. My life has been dark as night since his campaign failed, and now everyone can share the darkness with me, for they failed to rise for my son. We can all be benighted in this godforsaken kingdom without a true king, forever. It is nothing more than everyone else deserves.

The woman trembles and then runs back to the house. The man-at-arms stands, almost at attention, at a distance from me, torn between his duty to guard me and his own fear, and the two of us wait in the eerie half darkness, to see what-if anything-will happen next. I wonder if this is the world ending, and if now at last there will be a great trumpet peal from the angels and God will call me to His own, who has served Him so long and so hard, and so thanklessly, in this vale of tears.

I drop to my knees again and feel for my rosary in my pocket. I am ready for the call. I am not afraid, I am a woman of courage, favored by the Lord. I am ready for the heavens to open, and for God to summon me. I am His faithful servant; perhaps He will summon me first, showing everyone who ever doubted my vocation that He and I have a special understanding. But instead there is the unearthly light again, and I open my eyes and look around to see a world slowly restored, the light growing stronger, the disc peeling away from the sun, the sun too bright to look at, once more, and the birds starting to sing as if it were dawn.

It is over. The ungodly shadow is over. It has to be a sign-but of what? And what am I to learn from it? The man-at-arms, trembling with fear, looks at me, and forgets his place so much as to speak to me directly: “For the love of God, what was that all about?”

“It is a sign,” I say, not reproving him for speaking on this one occasion. “It is a sign from God. The reign of one king is ending and the new sun is coming. The sun of York is to be put out, and the new sun is to come in like a dragon.”

He gulps. “You are sure, my lady?”

“You saw it yourself,” I say.

“I saw the darkness …”

“Did you see the dragon come out of the sun?”

“I think so …”

“That was the Tudor dragon, coming out of the west. As my son will come.”

He drops to his knees and lifts his hands to me in the gesture of fealty. “You will call on me for your son,” he says. “I am your liege man. I saw the sun darken as you say, and the dragon come out of the west.”

I take his hands in my own, and I smile to myself. This is how ballads are born: he will say that he saw the Tudor dragon of Wales coming out of the west and darkening the sun of York.

“The sun is no longer in splendor,” I say. “We all saw it darkened and defeated. The whole kingdom saw the sun fail. This will be the year that the sun of York goes out forever.”

MARCH 1485

To my wife, Lady Margaret Stanley

This is to tell you that the queen is dead. She was failing ever since the Christmas feast and she died almost unattended, from weakness of the lungs, on the same day that the sun went dark over the castle.

You will be interested to know that Richard is to publicly renounce any intention to marry his niece. Rumors have reached such a scandalous level that the lords of the north made it clear to him that such an insult to the memory of the queen-one of their own-would not be accepted. Truth is that many are terrified at the thought of Elizabeth Woodville restored as My Lady the Queen’s Mother since they allowed the execution of her brother and Grey son and locked up her princes. Perhaps you would have done better to resist the temptation to scold her. If only you had urged the marriage between the York girl and Richard, it could have caused Richard’s overthrow! But you did not think of that in your pride for your son. I am sure rightly.

To demonstrate his indifference to the York princess, the king has decided to put her in the care of a lady of unimpeachable morality so that the world may see that she is chaste-and not, as we have all thought, madly in love with him and bedding him while his wife was dying.

You will perhaps be surprised to learn that his choice of chaperone … duenna … and may I say, mother? … has fallen on you, as the most proper lady to guard her reputation, since she is betrothed to your son.

I lift my head from his letter; I can almost hear his mocking laughter and see his cold smile. I find I am smiling too. The turn of the wheel of fortune is impossible to predict, and now I am to be a guardian to the daughter of a woman I hate. I hate the girl too.

The princess will arrive to stay with you within the week. I am sure you will revel in each other’s company. Personally, I cannot imagine a more ill-matched household; but no doubt your faith will support you, and of course she has no choice at all.

Stanley

APRIL 1485

Grimly, I tell them to prepare a bedroom for a princess, and confirm to my fluttering ladies that the Princess of York or, as I pointedly call her, Lady Elizabeth-I give her no family name, since she has none, being declared a bastard-will come within the next few days. There is a great deal of concern about the quality of the linen and in particular the ewer and the bowl for her room, which I have used but that they consider too poor for such a great young lady. At this point I say briefly that since she has spent half her life in hiding from an ordained king, and the other half using borrowed goods to which she had no right at all, it does not matter so very much whether her jug is pewter or no, and the dent makes no difference either.

I do make an effort to ensure that she has a good prie dieu in her room, a simple but large crucifix to focus her mind on her sins, and a collection of devotional texts so that she may think about her past life and hope for better in the future. I also include a copy of our family tree and pedigree so she can see for herself that my son’s birthright is as good as, indeed better than, hers. While I am waiting for her to arrive, I get the briefest letter from Jasper.

In haste-the King of France has given us aid-we are sailing as soon as we get a good wind. You must secure the York princess if you can, as the Yorks will only support us if we have her, and the Lancs are slow to promise for us. Pray for us. We are on our way as soon as the wind changes.

– J.

I thrust the letter in the fire, breathless with the shock, and at that very moment I hear the rattle of horses’ hooves. It sounds like a guard of about fifty. I go to the leaded window of the great hall and peer out. I see my husband’s standard and the men wearing his livery. He is riding his big horse at the head of them all; and beside him, on a big working cob, his coat burnished to bright chestnut, the captain of the guard is on a pillion saddle; and behind him, sitting sideways and smiling, as if she owned half of England, is a young woman in a riding habit of scarlet velvet.