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WESTMINSTER ABBEY
31 October 1470
There was little room for Margaret to place her feet as she stepped into the path meandering the sanctuary’s tenements, the cobbled ground over which she trod either slippery stone giving its way to the stickiness of mud, either fractured steps covered in the motley drenched leaves of October. Winter had come early again that year, a collection of withered brown spots arriving long before the last speckles of gold could paint the dying vegetation. Spring had given way to summer and summer had given way to autumn: as Fortune’s wheel turned, so did the seasons succeed each other in ceaseless rotation. That past season in England, the last turn of the goddess’s wheel had come at a vertiginous speed. Nothing lasted, Margaret knew, but the wheel went on turning.
The night before she had lit three small candles. Saint Katherine, holy virgin, spouse of Christ, ruler and breaker of wheels, protect my child from the hungry hands of men strayed into damnation. Help my son grow strong in his faith and keep him safe from all sorrow. O Saint Catherine most pure, Princess of Egypt, for your glorious martyrdom and love of Christ, pray for my son tonight.
As her feet advanced, step after step, her lips moved in silent motion, her short prayer was uttered without a sound, scattered leaf-like in the wind. It was the first time Margaret could ponder over her prayers with her son so close at hand. He was just behind her, in fact, his hand pressing on her shoulder whenever he thought she was about to trip and tumble to the dirt ground under her slippers. It was considerate of him, chivalrous even, but all around an unnecessary measure. Margaret would not fall. Her steps had never been surer. Almost ten years she had waited for her son to be returned to her, almost ten years of waiting, ten years of praying, ten years of emptiness and worry at the heart. The peace of the world might not be as certain as the peace of God, but this much Margaret promised herself: they would never lay their hands on Henry again.
They pressed their steps to arrive before the dying of the light. Mother and son carried a pair of last-minute presents as they made their way around the abbey, two straw baskets set with fine linen and filled to the brim with delicacies. They moved through the sanctuary grounds at Westminster, the space so crammed with half a hundred timbered tenements and shabby shops it was a thing of wonder they could still see the sky hanging pale and dreary overhead. Carpenters weaved through the crowd with their planks, brewers carried sacks of grain upon their backs, tailors, barbers and blacksmiths came and went, bakers and butchers followed—all that hubbub moved busily around them like a throng of angry bees swarming all over the place, the strong vortexing eye of a whirlpool. As though that dizzying cacophony was not disturbing enough, the whole area carried the foul stink of the Almonry’s public latrine, a stench so strong that depending on the wind it could make a grown man’s eyes sting and begin to water.
Everyone knew sanctuary was the smallest of mercies. Indeed, it was a risk in itself coming to the Abbey on that day, for though two of the king’s sergeant-at-arms followed their every step, still, a plethora of outlaws pressed in around Margaret and her son: horse thieves and counterfeiters, heretics and bankrupts, traitors and debtors and worse criminals still. It was a dangerous ground the one they trod now, even if a consecrated one. Margaret had harvested all her faith and placed it in the guest-master Abbot Millyng had chosen to lead their way, trusting those petty criminals would not disturb their own protector, a servant of God.
“Lord Almighty!”
The guest-master jumped back as two young men in skull masks came hollering over them, their bodies covered in tattered rags from neck to toe. He placed a hand on top of his heart, over his chain of office, just as an assistant monk prevented his fall. Angrily, the yeomen yelled and slashed at the air with their staffs but did not catch a single hair of the offenders. The guest-master risked a high-strung laugh as the scary creatures ran off before the king’s sergeants could give them a proper thrashing.
“Oh, Blessed Jesu! Forgive me, my lady, my lord,” He turned to Margaret and her son in succession, his heavy body still heaving from their earlier fright, black robe swelling. “The boys were just… just… oh, they were just making merry… ah, the young fools!” He panted, breath quick and shallow. “It’s All Hallows’ Eve after all. I pray you’ll understand.”
Margaret and her son shared a single brief, albeit serious, look of concern. Both of them were fasting on that day, mind and body in preparation to attend the coming royal solemnities marking the passing of Allhallowtide. They were dressed in lean black velvet and russet cloth, the dark gauze of her half hennin circling around Margaret’s chin. There at Westminster, Good King Harry would once again lead the noblemen of the realm into the necessary spiritual repose so lacking in the kingdom for the past decade. Though no more than a child at the time, Margaret still remembered the year she had seen her royal cousin proceed in his long blue ceremonial robes, his face serene and majestic as he headed the procession into St Stephen’s Chapel, bells tolling and incense burning through the long tunnel of the night.
A shiver of the past crept upon her arm, raising goosebumps in its wake. If only King Henry could look as majestic as before! Yes, the truth should be spoken plainly to one’s soul if not out loud: her royal cousin had shrivelled, no more fortitude could be found in him than in the husk of a hollow tree ravaged by the wind. Standing next to George Neville, the Archbishop of York, Margaret had found a distance swimming — almost overflowing — in his eyes, one that seemed to be no more stranger to him than a faithful bedfellow. Years spent as a prisoner in the Tower could do that to a man, Margaret reckoned, years spent in imprisonment could do that to any man, especially one kept in less dignity than what his royal birth commanded — the Lord’s anointed no less, another Son of Man thrown into the litter of scorn!
At that moment, the king’s namesake stepped aside to clear the path for Margaret again, hand darting up to adjust his dark cap and the cloak pinned with the brass buttons Margaret had gifted him on the first night they had been reunited. How the very sight of him filled her with joy! Her own dearest, dearly beloved boy! Just now, he had moved to shield her better from those hollering boys than their own yeomen had done. Henry was as good a child as anyone could claim their own to be: attentive, serious, dutiful. He was at that age boys would sprout briskly and without much warning — a young birch tree, white and long, lean but strong — and had already grown taller than Margaret herself, a remarkably different trait compared to the last time she had seen him. William Herbert had kept her child for almost a decade and Margaret had only been allowed to see him once.
From under the brim of his cap her son caught the beam of her assessment, her contemplative lingering gaze, and he gave her a slight nod in return, equal parts shy and assertive. I will take care of you, his eyes said, as though he would never be anyone’s charge ever again. He fancied himself a fully grown adult. Though it made her heart swell with pride, Margaret had to come to terms with the fact that her son was hardly a child anymore. Henry was as old now as she had been when she had brought him into the world, all those years before on a chilly January night, the longest one of her life: ever-enduring, ever-arduous, hours eating away hours and blurring into one continuous string of torment. Margaret’s own never-ending road to Calvary, the very dead of winter. Standing there under the colourless October sky, Margaret regarded her son as a second version of herself: paler, yes, painted in lighter colours, but still, the very same person if, disregarding the virtue of her sex, she had been made in the likeness of Adam instead of Eve’s.
There was hardly time for self-pity. Their small party came to a halt as they approached the furthest of the abbey’s tenements, a patched set of rooms overlooking the river and the marshland where the washerwomen did their work, singing particular stories of desolation and wickedness to match the calling of the day. The purpose of their visit lay inside the straw baskets Margaret and her son were carrying: cinnamon comfits and sugared plums, candied quinces and pears and assortments of fruit paste — apricot, apple, strawberry — spiced nuts and almond pottage and pots of honey, all lay at the bottom carefully enveloped in linen; any and every dish that could sweeten the tongue and last through the upcoming winter was stored inside. Elizabeth Woodville, late called queen of England, had three small children inside the humble rooms standing before them.
Brother John Islip, the guest-master, had a face jovial far beyond his years — open, smooth, rather resembling a large egg — and moved with a pleasant roundness as he stepped into the threshold guarded by the tenement’s shambling, rough-edged door. As he met the sanctuary-seekers gathered inside he bowed his tonsured head, his hair thinning round in a circle, and asking the yeomen to stand outside, led mother and son into a dark room where a strong fire chased away the chill, fogging and stifling the air for a second, soot rising like the north wind stirring up the dead leaves.
Good lord, how gloomy! Straining her eyes, Margaret tried to make sense of what her sight devised. The room was hardly large enough for the number of people gathering inside but Margaret soon enough understood why a fire was burning so high in such a crowded enclosure. There were scarcely enough tapestries to get by — only two to be exact, a pair of fraying pieces covering the glassless windows — and each new gust of wind that made those tapestries sway to and fro carried with it the dangerous dampness of the Thames. It was not without some start that Margaret registered the presence of two mice-like creatures pressing against a wall (children, she soon realised), and, having her sight adjust to the dimness of the room after a second or two, she focused on a set of feminine faces that seemed to be as startled as Margaret and her son must have looked at that moment. All too quickly Margaret’s elegant hennin and black velvet clothes felt too inappropriate for the occasion. All eyes locked together before mouths could speak.
By her side, her son murmured.
“Sweet body of Christ.”
Margaret shot him a sharp reproaching look. Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain was what her exasperated expression meant, but the truth was that her son’s blasphemy shrank in comparison with the situation at hand — no, rather, Queen Elizabeth shrank behind her enormous belly, her pregnancy bump low, round and ready to slip from between her thighs at any minute. Her golden hair was covered by a simple white cap as though caught in mid-toilette and she cradled a small infant on her knee, the child, possibly no more than two years old, grasping the velvet of her mother’s heavenly blue gown. Margaret was at a complete loss for words; she had not been aware the former queen was so close to delivering her next child. It was a matter of days, hours, perhaps.
“Your Grace, good tidings!” The guest-master stepped to the side to give them more room to accommodate. “May I present these your humble visitors, the Lady Margaret, wife of Sir Henry Stafford, son of—”
“Yes, brother.” A woman clad in a long grey gown standing on the side of the former queen hastened to speak. “Lady Margaret, countess of Richmond.”
Her fair hair might have been covered by her widow’s wimple but Margaret recognised Lady Jacquetta, the dowager Duchess of Bedford, Queen Elizabeth’s very mother. She was a well-made woman, and though her face didn’t exactly come across as sympathetic at that moment, something in her eyes that spoke of serious anxiety gave her a type of fine beauty, defiant and resilient in the face of adversity. Brother John stood blinking, stuck in a moment of bewilderment, apparently unsure of how to proceed with his performance of a host until Margaret and her son stepped forward and curtsied, taking, as it were, matters into their own hands.
Flashing one brief sweeping gaze, the former queen assessed mother and son from head to toe and from toe to head. She was sat on her pallet bed, looking smaller than Margaret remembered her from the day of her coronation, the time she had seen the queen carried in a fine satin chair, gloriously parting the crowds in Cheapside on her way to her coronation. Her costly gown looked much too out of place compared to the room’s general size and lack of detail, yet that was not the end of the queer feeling that invaded Margaret now. There was something mildly disturbing about the fixity of the queen’s gaze, about the slow descent and rise of her long velvety lashes, or the deliberate way her eyes seemed to caress all things her sight could touch. Then, at the heart of it all, there it sat in all its majesty: the hard stillness of her pupils, the dark brittle stone at the core of a deceivingly soft fruit.
“I shall leave you to it.”
Not ungainly yet not gracefully either, bowing, walking back, the guest master considered his work done and excused himself to see to his other tasks. They followed his and his assistant’s hurried steps outside in silence, in such a stunning moment of arrest the cries of the fishmonger outside stirred the child on the queen’s lap who began to cry and whine.
The poor child. Margaret felt a sting of pity as the girl was handed with no great attachment over to a servant, probably the very midwife King Henry and his council had provided for the former queen. Margaret could wager the girl had been a natural inconvenience since the day of her birth, since the day her sex had proven yet another disappointment to King Edward. Margaret would have known, she had been a disappointment to her father herself. Were a born male, she raised her chin at the thought, I would stand today as Duke of Somerset. She would stand as a duke, or she would have been buried along with the dead of Towton.
“I know of you, Lady Margaret.” Queen Elizabeth spoke after a moment of consideration, her large eyes, dark and enquiring, roving over Margaret’s face. “My mother told me much about the day of your betrothal to Lord Edmund, the king’s brother.” She spoke evenly, a touch nonchalantly even, as though they were taking an idle stroll in the gardens instead of dwelling among such soot and poverty. “We have not formally met but you are no stranger to me. Court stories last long.”
Margaret’s son turned her way, puzzled and curious. For a moment, time was meaningless and boundless, an hourglass tipped upside down, as if Margaret stood between her past and her future. She did not remember who had attended her betrothal. No, Margaret pressed her lips into a thin line. All she remembered was the calm faces of King Harry and uncle Somerset, her mother squeezing her hand tight, Edmund’s sharp jaw and considerable height. For a girl her age, on that day she thought she had been gifted a prince — for what was the king’s brother if not a prince? If only Margaret knew at that time why most romances finished at the wedding.
“Do you remember me, Lady Margaret?” Beside the queen, Duchess Jacquetta asked with a certain gentleness, though no very great warmth. “Last time I saw you, you were such a small girl.” Her eyes fell on Margaret’s son as if to say ‘and not yet a mother.’
“Yes,” Margaret squeezed out a smile, not particularly inclined to reminisce about her past. She took her son by the arm and pushed him forward, ever so slightly. “I would like your graces to meet my son, Lord Richmond.”
As the words Lord Richmond were pronounced, there was a frozen moment of awkwardness, the late queen and her mother sharing a knowing look mixed with curiosity. Henry, perhaps not knowing what else to do, once more took off his cap and bowed in front of the ladies, his light head dipping in one swift motion before bobbing promptly back up again. Margaret’s husband had been left to take care of his own affairs on that day but Margaret had hoped that her son, young man that he still was, would not disturb the sanctuary of women.
“I know of him as well.” The former queen said, eyes taking Margaret’s son into their scope. She met Margaret with a significant look and a quizzical movement of her eyebrows, her smooth forehead creasing. There was a sinuous crane of her long neck before she spoke again. “My good brother… Clarence… keeps his lands.”
Henry was quick to flush a bright pink; Queen Elizabeth’s insistent search for Margaret’s gaze almost left her unaware of it. The meaning coating the former queen’s words like a thin layer of veneer struck Margaret in all its clarity: shared adversity. It was utterly shameful; her son would have to wait until all the courts were running regularly again to claim the estates that belonged to him by right, but Clarence and Warwick had put Elizabeth’s father and brother to death just a year before. Now those two helped to run the kingdom, though how much blame Clarence carried for those deaths, Margaret was unable to say.
Having found a point in common, however, Queen Elizabeth visibly relaxed, her back reclining on the stack of pillows gathered on the pallet bed with a soundless sigh. It was the only available bed in the entire place as far as Margaret could see. She realised the former queen wasn’t as calm and recollected as she strove to seem. The hands resting on top of her enormous belly clutched the fabric of her gown tight, her breathing was spaced out and laboured, unnatural. The queen’s servant, having placed her little charge to sleep, stood behind her in constant attention, bent to fluff the pillows sustaining her mistress’s back. You mustn’t exert the child, madam.
The queen nodded absently to the side. “Those are my daughters, Elizabeth and Mary.” She gestured to the other end of the room, to two small girls that had once been called princesses but that now sat on a stool-like piece of furniture close to the fire, each holding the hands of a lady. Margaret and Henry curtsied and bowed before them.
“And Lady Scrope, of course. And Master Dominic, the physician.”
Another exchange of bows and curtsies.
“My youngest son, Richard, is sleeping upstairs. I shall call him—”
“Please, madam.” Margaret reassured her. “There’s no need. We shan’t disturb his rest.”
Queen Elizabeth fixed Margaret’s son with a new beam of interest, a moment of freshly focused attention as if the memory had just come to her. “You must know my sister Mary, mustn’t you, boy?”
“Yes, madam.” Henry blinked only once before replying. “I’ve had the pleasure of meeting her, Young Herbert’s wife.”
“My lady countess, Lady Pembroke, you mean.” The sweep of a skirt made the floor swish and sing in spite of the mercilessly lingering soot. Duchess Jacquetta, a newly retrieved hoop of embroidery in her hands, shifted her stance and narrowed her eyes at Margaret’s son. “Certainly.”
At that subtle though no less sharp correction, something inside her son’s eyes retreated further inside, a far-away ship melting into the horizon line, perhaps, or a set of procession lights going deeper into the night. The set of his jaw tightened, he raised the tip of his chin and held the duchess’s gaze evenly. “Young Herbert’s wife, yes.”
Margaret took a deep breath. Lord have mercy upon us. Henry had been escorted to London by an entirely different Earl of Pembroke. Discreet as her son seemed to be, it was evident he had already developed a strong sense of loyalty and attachment to his uncle Jasper, his former guardian now returned from exile. As far as Margaret could tell, the years had turned her sweet boy into a studious young man, one not much prone to jesting and laughing. Yet, despite those serious eyes of his that assessed and absorbed, Margaret could see her son was… sentimental. Not sentimental in the easiest meaning of the word, but sentimental in the way he was never simple and open about his feelings, or in the way he seemed to store them in some secret vault inside his heart, a cargo too precious not to be hidden away.
There came a pause, a moment of considerable discomfort for everyone concerned before Margaret cleared her throat and declared with a renewed smile.
“We have brought soul cakes for the children!”
A shrill, loud and long squeal was followed by the pressing sound of quick little footsteps surrounding Margaret from all sides, two small sets of hands grasping and pulling at her skirts. A stern voice tried to reprehend the girls for their eager behaviour but Margaret could only chuckle fondly as she placed down her basket to produce the round cakes marked with a cross on top signifying the giving of alms during Allhallowtide. The sound of their laughing and excitement came over Margaret’s ears like a pure sweet melody. Children were one of God’s greatest blessings.
“Hello!”
Margaret looked up from her basket to see one of the princesses holding a half-eaten soul cake with one hand and pulling at her son’s cloak with the other. She was smiling in full bloom, a smile that was as toothy and as unselfconscious as only girls of that age could possess. Henry, too self-conscious in turn, seemed to be petrified, rooted to the spot and unsure of what to do or where to put his hands. He shot Margaret a somewhat helpless look before turning his attention to the girl again.
“Hello.”
His mechanical articulation of the word did not stop the girl from widening her smile. Margaret, still crouching next to the floor, stopped and stared, paying a greater amount of attention to the former princess. Lord be praised! She had never seen a prettier child! The rosy cheeks, the starry eyes, the angelic round face—the perfect little image of a doll! And—Margaret risked a glance at the queen’s enormous stomach—Edward of York’s heir as of yet. The girl’s golden locks caught the irregular illuminations emanating from the fireside, here and there, there and here, as she held out her soul cake towards Margaret’s son. Her younger sister, standing behind her, gorged herself on her own cake.
“I’m Bessy!” Henry stared at the princess with furrowed brows, as still as a statue. “Who are you? What’s your name?”
“Princess, quit nagging the young lord!” called Lady Scrope, eyeing Margaret’s son distrustfully. “Come back here. Mary, you as well! Come, both of you!”
The girl let go of Henry’s cloak. “He’s my friend!” She whined, but went to the lady’s side regardless, obedient yet joyful, and not before placing her half-eaten soul cake inside Henry’s palm.
Her sister Mary followed behind with light bouncing footsteps of her own. Henry, staring ahead at the wall and unseeing, slowly, automaton-like, raised the cake to his mouth and ate of it.
“My Lady Bessy,” He said quietly as if recovering from a dream. He went down on one knee to stay at a level with the princess. “I am Henry of Richmond.”
As the night laid a dark blanket on the world outside, Queen Elizabeth ate slices of candied quince with gingerly, skilled fingers. She had her dark eyes fixed on her youngest daughter who slept on the pallet, her mouth a thin curved line as the setting of the sun played its dying colour across her face. She breathed deeply with each intake of air and rubbed her belly in a picture that spoke of genuine kindliness, but also a certain dejection of the soul. Even now, caught in such a private picture of destitution, she could make all women in the kingdom look slovenly and coarse next to her. Margaret, sat on a stool facing the queen’s pallet, knew she had already overdone her stay.
“I always keep my youngest about me.”
Before the children had been sent upstairs to the kitchen, the queen’s youngest son had come down to peer at the contents of the baskets Margaret and Henry had brought, that small sugary paradise, then whistled as excited as his own sisters. The boy was of an age with Henry or was perhaps even younger and the two exchanged smiles, unheeding they stood on separate sides of the war, glad they had found a kindred young man to converse with. As they climbed the wobbly stairs, the queen’s son bitterly complained about being left behind when his older brother had been allowed to go into the world and fight with his uncles.
The thought of boys and fighting going together was enough to make Margaret shudder.
“I always keep them about me.” The queen repeated, evidently disturbed by her younger son’s grievance. She ate her quince slices in small bites with increasing appetite, her slender fingers working in an agile, though no less ravenous, fashion. “Always.”
Margaret and Jacquetta shared the same dismal look, the one of the dispossessed. Between the three women, they had lost four husbands and countless relatives besides. Jacquetta, unable to keep her own sons about her, returned to the hoop of embroidery in her lap.
“I rejoice for you, madam,” Margaret said. “For I cannot afford such a luxury. My son is not my own to keep—No, thank you.” Margaret declined the slice of quince the queen offered her at first, but the queen insisted so intensely, even divested of her crown Margaret felt compelled to obey her authority and break her fast.
“How old is he?”
Chewing her bite, an extraordinary sense of pride flooded Maragaret’s chest like the sea’s deep swell. She should be proud of her son, that was no great sin. Her son was worthy of every praise and had earned many a compliment at court. King Henry most of all, had been glad to meet his nephew and godson at last — though truth be told, at first he had taken him to be Prince Edward. Henry bore himself very gravely, his words were scarce but courteous. He had a slight accent, that was true, but Margaret was certain they could change it with time.
“Not yet fourteen, Your Grace.”
“I thought he had been returned to you.” The queen pursed her lips, perhaps wryly. Her voice was oddly fractal, quartz-like: at once elegant and chilling. “Herbert is no more. You have my lord of Warwick to be thankful for.”
A silent seething set in Margaret’s veins. Yes, and if it was not for your husband’s meddling my child could have been returned to me a year ago. Margaret and her husband had been insistent enough after Herbert’s demise to have Henry returned. They had turned and tweaked every corner of the law and had come actually quite close to bringing her boy home. It would have happened, had not King Edward been set free and reinstated to his throne. He had, as evidently he would have, decided in favour of the Herberts. Not for the first time, Margaret was forced to bite her tongue.
“He is now under the care of his uncle, Lord Jasper.” She raised her chin and held the former queen’s gaze as if her answer could make for the past year’s injustice. “My son’s former guardian, the king’s brother.”
“So he has not been returned to you.” Duchess Jacquetta spoke almost absent-mindedly, adding a new stitch to her embroidery. “You have as much dominion over your son as I have over mine.”
Queen Elizabeth assessed her, oddly suspicious, regarding Margaret from under her long lashes. “Do you trust his uncle, my lady? Do you trust him with your son’s life?”
“Your Grace—”
“We cannot trust anyone who has sided with Warwick, Lady Margaret.” The queen answered her own question, her nostrils flared as she took a great intake of air. “Since the very start, he has meant to destroy me and mine! He will not rest until he sees each of us to the grave.”
Margaret understood her desperation, that pure fear cloaked in anger. She too had once stood in enemy territory, great with child and with no husband to protect her. She covered her mouth as she searched for words, let her hand fall.
“I cannot speak for my lord of Warwick but—” Her hands rose, almost in supplication. “—Your Grace, King Henry is merciful. His treasurer pays for your meat, I know a leg of mutton graces your table every week. They have sent Lady Scrope here to take care of your children, have they not? He will not let harm come to you—”
The queen’s face bloomed an angry red. “Won’t he, Lady Margaret, when my lord returns? Won’t he, when I’ve been told Warwick stands as a true master puppeteer, controlling his every move? Won’t he, my lady, when my child is born?” She spat each word with dripping contempt. “Do not think I have not wept enough over this, Lady Margaret.”
Queen Elizabeth looked as if about to burst, her belly scarcely able to contain the incoming baby within several walls of skin and flesh. Sweating in late October weather, her breath was laboured, her face flushed and exhausted. The duchess covered her hand and shushed her gently in a cooing voice.
Merciless wheel of Fortune, the thought of Saint Katherine came to her yet again. Margaret wished God could find a way to make her own success a blessing she could share with that poor woman, yet unfortunately, in that world, one woman’s good fortune was another woman’s downfall. It must be a girl, Margaret realised with sudden, agonised urgency, it must be another girl or this woman will be made to suffer as I did. They would take her boy from her and she would spend every minute of her life thereafter worrying about his safety. Eyeing the woman’s heavy bump, Margaret could only utter softly.
“I do hope it’s a healthy child.”
The former queen grimaced, face twisted like an infant’s and eyes welling up with accusation. "A boy! I hope it’s a boy!”
Of course, after the birth of three daughters, the once called Queen Elizabeth must have known what the words ‘healthy child’ truly meant. Darkness fell around their shoulders like a heavy mantle, the candied quince slices dropped from the queen’s lap onto the pallet, spreading sugar along the cloth like a powdery trail of stars in the night sky.
“Have faith, madam.” Margaret gathered enough courage to scoot closer and take the queen’s hands in her own, all rules of protocol set aside. “Take comfort, be of good cheer. Your baby will come. Destiny awaits in the hands of God.”
“So I have told her, Lady Margaret.” Duchess Jacquetta shared a thankful look as she rubbed her daughter’s back. “Countless times, haven’t I?”
Queen Elizabeth nodded weakly as she wiped her tears on the back of her hand. “Forgive me, my lady. You brought us such wonderful gifts.” Her dark eyes followed where the rest of the candied slices lay, a small sugary catastrophe. “Here I speak of sorrow when I cannot fathom a greater grief than having a son taken from me.”
She clutched her belly, somewhat in naked desperation, and her eyes seemed to ask: how did you do it? How did you endure? Yet Margaret would not stand to be pitied, not even by an anointed queen.
“Madam, there is greater grief. Our Blessed Lady ever Virgin suffered the greatest of them all.”
All faces fell silently, partaking in that great divine sorrow. Margaret had revisited the same scenario countless times in her head. What would happen to her son if Edward of York came back, what would happen to Henry if Edward took the throne again? At the feast, King Henry had mistaken her son for his own, drawing unprecedented attention to Margaret’s boy. She remembered the hungry way all eyes had alighted on him, the whispering that took the crowd like a wave. Margaret was not as strong as the Virgin; she would rather see her son a prisoner, a fugitive, an outlaw, a hostage—anything other than dead, dead, dead.
In the encroaching dark of the room, still scarcely lit, the former queen’s voice surged as if covered in layers of snow. “We shall make a pact today, Lady Margaret.”
“A pact?” Margaret snapped alert, looking over her shoulder at the Duchess of Bedford who returned with a candle, its flame pulsing with luminosity as if dancing.
“A covenant, Lady Margaret. An agreement from woman to woman.”
Margaret’s throat grew tight, it turned as dry as parchment. Beside her daughter, Duchess Jacquetta gave her a strong nod, half of her face cast in shadows.
“Give me your hand.” The queen’s palm was soft but surprisingly cold. “We shall not forget the great kindness you showed us today—We shall repay you. What will it be, Lady Margaret? What would you like for yourself?”
Her head moved from left to right and back again.
“I do not wish for anything—”
“And for your son?”
Margaret closed her eyes. Her heart’s delight emerged from the great depths of herself like a drowned chest just come to the surface of the ocean. “Everything,” she whispered. “Everything.”
A tight squeeze bore down on her hand. “Very well. So when you call I shall come, and when I call—”
Margaret’s eyes snapped open. “I will come.”
A peculiar feeling crept upon her skin as if she had heard it all before, as if she had rehearsed the same lines in some unknown past.
“Bring us the Scriptures, mother.”
The duchess laid between them a ponderous tome, brown and plain, much different from the bibles Margaret was used to seeing. Perhaps the Abbot had lent them one of their simplest volumes, a source of comfort for those who sought asylum inside the house of God having left everything behind them, all vanity and riches. The wind coming through the window whistled the river’s dying lament, the room grew incredibly colder.
“My mother shall oversee it as our witness. Swear it on the Gospels, Lady Margaret.” The queen placed her hand on the book’s cover and enveloped it with her own. Her eyes shone like two round cuts of onyx. “Swear it on your son’s life.”
“I swear it.” Margaret’s fingers curled around the book. She heard her own voice rather than said it. “I swear over the sole fruit of my womb.”
“As do I.” Queen Elizabeth's steady voice was marvellously clear, crystalline. “I swear it on my unborn child.”
The duchess held the guttering candle over the plain book. She let three drops of melting wax fall on their joined hands, the warmth touching Margaret’s skin like a balm. In the name of the Son, the Father and the Holy Spirit. Three other drops rained on the back of their hands. Through Him, with Him, in Him, in the unity of the Holy Spirit.
Margaret and the queen spoke in unison. “Amen.”
A gust of wind came into the room so forcefully it snuffed all the candles. It made the arras covering the windows flap from side to side in a wild tortuous dance as the queen’s youngest child gave out a long wail.
“Mother!”
Two dark silhouettes stood on the narrow stairs, Margaret’s son and the queen’s eldest daughter holding his cloak. The once princess pressed onto his side as if wanting to flee or hide, her eyes as big as an owl’s at the flash of lightning. Young Richard Grey followed soon after, carrying his sister Mary in his arms, her face hid into the crook of his neck. Half frightened himself, Henry searched his mother’s eyes.
“There is a great storm coming.”
“You should go.” The queen said softly but wryly. “The nights are frightful in this place, and endless. You would not want to be stuck here as we are.”
Margaret left her with a final squeeze of her hand. “I will not forget it, Your Grace.”
A favour for a favour, her blood for my blood.
Less than two years later, as Margaret penned the announcement of her marriage to Sir Thomas Stanley, those were the words she repeated to Queen Elizabeth. Her son was a fugitive, an exile imprisoned in Brittany, and all she asked of Edward IV’s queen was a place in her household, a chance to serve her as faithfully as her new husband served her own. She would win her son’s liberty in time with dedicated work, perseverance and unparalleled diligence. Margaret would be the best servant Queen Elizabeth had ever had, and then, carefully, triumphantly, she would bring her boy home.