THE TOWER OF LONDON, SPRING 1453

I come back to court after a week at Grafton in time for the great celebration in the Tower of London where the king’s half-brothers Edmund and Jasper Tudor are made earls. I stand beside the queen as the two young men kneel before the king for their investiture. They are the sons of Queen Catherine of Valois, the king’s mother, who made a second marriage as imprudent as my own. After her husband Henry V died leaving her a widow with a baby, she did not, as everyone hoped, retire to a nunnery and spend the rest of her life in respectable grief. She stooped even lower than I did and fell in love with the keeper of her wardrobe, Owen Tudor, and married him in secret. She left an awkward situation when she died, with Tudor as her surviving widower or abductor – depending on your judgement – and his two sons as half-brothers to the King of England or two bastards to a madly incontinent queen mother – depending on your charity.

King Henry has decided to acknowledge his half-brothers, deny his mother’s shame, and count them as royal kinsmen. What this will do to the expectations of the several men who are in line to inherit the throne is beyond understanding. These Tudors will just add to the confusion around the throne. The king honours the Duke of Buckingham, who counts himself as the greatest duke of England, but favours Edmund Beaufort the Duke of Somerset above anyone else. And all the while his true heir is the only man not here and never welcomed at court: Richard Plantagenet, Duke of York.

I glance at the queen, who must be shamed by her failure to solve all this by producing a son and heir, but she is looking down at her folded hands, her eyelashes veiling her expression. I see Edmund Beaufort look quickly away from her.

‘His Grace is generous to the Tudor boys,’ I remark.

She gives a little start at my words. ‘Oh, yes. Well, you know what he is like. He can forgive anyone anything. And now he is so afraid of the common people and of the York affinity that he wants to gather his family around him. He is giving the boys a fortune in lands and recognising them as his half-brothers.’

‘It is good for a man to have his family around him,’ I say cheerfully.

‘Oh, he can make brothers,’ she says, and the unspoken words ‘but not a son’ remain unsaid.

As the winter nights become lighter and the mornings become golden rather than grey we receive great nws from Bordeaux where John Talbot, Earl of Shrewsbury, four times the age of his pageboy, sweeps through the rich cities of Gascony, wins back Bordeaux and looks set to reclaim all the English lands. This sends the court into an ecstasy of confidence. They declare that first we will win back all of Gascony and then we will win back all of Normandy and Calais will be secure and Richard will be able to come home. Margaret and I are on the river walk in the gardens at Westminster, wrapped in our winter furs but feeling the spring sunshine on our faces, and looking at the first daffodils of the season.

‘Jacquetta, you are like a lovesick girl,’ she says suddenly.

I jump. I had been looking at the river and thinking of Richard, over the sea in Calais; furious – I am sure – that he is not leading the campaign in Bordeaux. ‘I am sorry,’ I say with a little laugh. ‘I do miss him. And the children.’

‘He will be home soon,’ she assures me. ‘Once Talbot has won back our lands in Gascony, we can make peace again.’

She takes my arm and walks beside me. ‘It is hard to be parted from people that you love,’ she says. ‘I missed my mother so much when I first came to England, I feared that I would never see her again, and now she writes to me that she is ill and I wish I could go to her. I wonder if she would have sent me away if she had known what my life would be like, if she had known that she would never see me again, not even for a visit.’

‘She knows at least that the king is kind to you, and a gentle husband,’ I say. ‘When the Greys asked me for Elizabeth my first thought was would he be kind to her. I think every mother would want that for her daughter.’

‘I so want to be able to tell her I am with child,’ she says. ‘That would make her happy, that is the one thing she wants – that everyone wants. But maybe this year. Perhaps one will come for me this year.’ Her eyelids sweep down and she smiles, almost to herself.

‘Oh, dear Margaret, I hope so.’

‘I am more contented,’ she says quietly. ‘I am even hopeful. You need not fear for me, Jacquetta. It is true that I was very unhappy this summer, and even at Christmas time; but I am more contented now. You were a good friend to warn me to take care. I listened to you, I thought about what you said. I know I must not be indiscreet, I have put the duke at a distance and I think everything is going to be all right.’

There is something going on here – I don’t need the Sight to see it. There is a secret here, and a hidden joy. But I cannot complain of her behaviour. She may smile on the duke; but she is always at the side of the king. She does not linger with the duke in the gallery nor let him whisper in her ear any more. He comes to her rooms, as he always has done; but they talk of matters of state and there are always companions with him, and ladies with her. It is when she is alone or quiet among the crowd that I look at her and wonder what she is thinking, when she folds her hands so demurely in her lap and gazes down, her eyes veiled, smiling to herself.

‘And how is your little girl?’ she asks a touch wistfully. ‘Is she well and fat and pretty like all your babies always seem to be?’

‘Thank God she is strong and growing well,’ I say. ‘I called her Eleanor, you know. I sent them all s fairings and we had a couple of days of such fine weather when I was down with them. I took the older ones hunting and the younger ones sledging. I will go back to see them at Easter.’

That night the queen dresses in her new gown of darkest red, a colour no-one has seen before, especially bought for her from the London merchants, and we go into the king’s presence chamber with the ladies behind us. She takes her seat beside the king and the little Beaufort heiress, Margaret, comes into the room, dressed far too ornately, paraded by her shameless mother. The child is wearing a gown of angelic white trimmed with red silk roses, as if to remind everyone that she is the daughter of John Beaufort, first Duke of Somerset, a great name but, God forgive him, not a great man. He was Edmund Beaufort’s older brother but he made a fool of himself in France and came home and died, so promptly and conveniently – just ahead of a charge of treason – that Richard says it was by his own hand and it was the only good thing he ever did for his family. This scrap of a girl with the great name and greater fortune is his daughter, and the niece of Edmund Beaufort.

I see her staring at me and I smile at her. At once she flushes scarlet and beams. She whispers to her mother, obviously asking who I am, and her mother very rightly gives her a pinch to make her stand straight and silent, as a girl at court should do.

‘I am giving your daughter in wardship to my dearly loved half-brothers, Edmund and Jasper Tudor,’ the king says to the girl’s mother, the dowager duchess. ‘She can live with you, until it is time for her to marry.’

Amusingly, the child looks up as if she has an opinion about this. When no-one so much as glances at her she whispers to her mother again. She is a dear little thing and so anxious to be consulted. It seems hard to me that she will be married off to Edmund Tudor and sent away to Wales.

The queen turns to me and I lean forwards. ‘What do you think?’ Margaret asks.

Margaret Beaufort is of the House of Lancaster, Edmund Tudor is the son of a queen of England. Any child they conceive will have an impressive lineage, English royal blood on one side, French royal blood on the other, both of them kin to the King of England.

‘Is the king making his brother over-mighty?’ the queen whispers.

‘Oh, look at her,’ I say gently. ‘She is a tiny little thing, and a long way from marriageable age. Her mother will keep her home for another ten years, surely. You will have half a dozen babies in the cradle before Edmund Tudor can wed or bed her.’

We both look down the room at the girl whose little head is still bobbing up and down as if she wishes someone would speak to her. The queen laughs. ‘Well, I hope so, surely a little shrimp like that will never make a royal heir.’

The next night I wait for a quiet moment in the hour before dinner when the queen is dressed and the duke and king have not yet come to our rooms. We are seated before the fire, listening to the musicians. I glance at her for her nod of permission, and then draw my stool a little closer.

‘If you are waiting for a chance to tell me that you are with child again, you need not choose your time,’ she says mischievously. ‘I can see it.’

I blush. ‘I’m certain it will be a boy, I am eating enough to make a man, God knows. I have had to let my belt out.’

‘Have you told Richard?’

‘He guessed, before he left.’

‘I shall ask the duke to let him come home. You will want him at home with you, won’t you?’

I glance at her. Sometimes the almost annual evidence of my reliable fertility makes her wistful; but this time she is smiling, her joy for me is without shadow. ‘Yes. I would want him home, if the duke can spare him.’

‘I shall command it,’ she smiles. ‘The duke tells me he will do anything for me. It is a little request for a man who has promised me the moon.’

‘I will stay at court until May,’ I say. ‘And then after my confinement I will join you on the summer progress.’

‘Perhaps we won’t go very far this year,’ she says.

‘No?’ I am slow to grasp her meaning.

‘Perhaps I too will want an easy summer.’

At last I understand her. ‘Oh Margaret, is it possible?’

‘I thought you had the Sight!’ she crows. ‘And here I am, sitting before you, and I think . . . I am almost certain . . . ’

I clasp her hands. ‘I think so too, I see it now. I really do.’ There is something about her luminous skin and the curves of her body. ‘How long?’

‘I have missed two courses, I think,’ she says. ‘So I haven’t told anyone yet. What d’you think?’

‘And the king lay with you before Christmas? And gave you pleasure?’

She keeps her eyes down, but her colour deepens. ‘Oh, Jacquetta – I did not know it could be like that.’

I smile. ‘Sometimes it can.’ Something in her smile tells me that she knows, at last, after eight years of marriage, of the joy that a man can give his wife, if he cares to do so, if he loves her enough to want to make her cling to him and yearn for his touch.

‘When would I be sure?’ she asks.

‘Next month,’ I say. ‘We will get a midwife I know and trust to talk with you and see if you have the signs, and then you can tell His Grace yourself next month.’

She does not want to write to her mother until she is quite certain, and this is a little tragedy, for while she is waiting for the signs that she is with child, a message comes from Anjou to say that Margaret’s mother, Isabella of Lorraine, has died. It is eight years since Margaret said goodbye to her mother and came to England for her wedding, and they were never especially close. But it is a blow to the young queen. I see her in the gallery with tears in her eyes and Edmund Beaufort holding both her hands in his own. Her head is turned towards him as if she would put her face to his broad shoulder and weep. When they hear my footsteps they turn to me, still handclasped.

‘Her Grace is distressed about the news from Anjou,’ the duke says simply. He leads Margaret to me. ‘Go with Jacquetta,’ he says tenderly. ‘Go and let her give you a tisane, something for grief. It is hard for a young woman to lose her mother and such a shame that you never told her –’ He breaks off his words and puts the queen’s hands in mine.

‘You have something you can give her? Don’t you? She should not cry and cry.’

‘I have some well-known herbs,’ I say carefully. ‘Will you come and lie down for a little while, Your Grace?’

‘Yes,’ Margaret says and lets me lead her away from the duke to the seclusion of her rooms.

I make her a tisane of Tipton’s weed, and she hesitates before she drinks it. ‘It will not hurt a baby?’

‘No,’ I reply. ‘It is very mild. You shall have a draught of it every morning for a week. Grief would be worse for a baby; you have to try to be calm and cheerful.’

She nods.

‘And you are sure?’ I ask her quietly. ‘The midwives told me that they were almost certain?’

‘I am certain,’ she says. ‘I will tell the king next week, when I miss my course again.’

But she does not tell him herself. Oddly, she summons his chamberlain.

‘I have a message for you to take to the king,’ she says. She is sombre in her dark blue mourning clothes, and I am sorry that the loss of her mother has taken the brightness from her joy. Still, when she tells the king they will both be elated. I assume she is going to invite the king to come to her rooms. But she goes on: ‘Pray give my compliments to the king and my good wishes, and inform him that I am with child.’

Richard Tunstall simply goggles at her: he has never been asked to take such a message in his life. No royal chamberlain ever has. He looks at me, as if for advice, but I can do nothing but show, by a little shrug, that he had better take the message that this queen wishes to send to her husband.

He bows and steps backwards out of the room, and the guards close the door quietly behind him.

‘I’ll change my gown, the king is certain to come to me,’ she says.

We hurry to her room and change her from her dark blue gown to one of pale green, a good colour for spring. As her maid holds the dress out for her to step into, I can see that she has a rounded belly where she was once so spare, and her breasts fill the fine linen shift. I smile at the sight of her.

We wait for the king to come bursting in, his face alight with joy, his hands held out to her, we wait for an hour. We hear the watchman giving the time, and then finally we hear the footsteps outside and the guards throw open the doors to the queen’s apartments. We all rise to our feet, expecting to see the king rush in, his boyish face beaming. But it is Richard Tunstall again, the king’s chamberlain, with a reply to the queen’s message.

‘His Grace bid me tell you this: that the news is to our most singular consolation and to all true liege people’s great joy and comfort,’ he says. He gulps and looks at me.

‘Is that all?’ I ask.

He nods.

The queen looks blankly at him. ‘Is he coming to me?’

‘I don’t think so, Your Grace.’ He clears his throat. ‘He was so happy that he rewarded me for bringing the news,’ he volunteers.

‘Is he coming to visit Her Grace before dinner?’

‘He has called his jeweller to see him. He is having a special jewel made for the queen,’ he says.

‘But what is he doing now?’ she asks. ‘Right now? As you left him?’

Richard Tunstall gives another bow. ‘He has gone to give thanks in his private chapel,’ he says. ‘The king has gone to pray.’

‘Good,’ she says dismally. ‘Oh, good.’

We don’t see the king until that evening, when he comes to visit the queen in her rooms before dinner as usual. He kisses her hand before us all and tells her that he is most pleased. I glance round the room and see that all her ladies in waiting are looking, like me, bewildered. This is a couple who have conceived their first child – after nearly eight years of waiting. This child makes their marriage complete and their throne secure. Why do they behave as if they are barely acquainted?

Margaret is queenly, she gives no sign of expecting more warmth or enthusiasm from him. She bows her head and she smiles at the king. ‘I am very happy,’ she says. ‘I pray that we have a son, and if not, a beautiful daughter and a son the next time.’

‘A blessing either way,’ he says kindly, and gives her his arm and leads her into dinner, seats her most carefully at his side and then tenderly chooses for her the very choicest pieces of meat and the softest pieces of bread. On his other side, Edmund Beaufort, Duke of Somerset, smiles on them both.

After dinner she says that she will retire early. The court rises as we withdraw and when we get to the queen’s rooms she leaves her ladies and, beckoning me, goes into her bedroom.

‘Take off my headdress,’ she says. ‘I am so tired and it makes my head ache.’

I untie the ribbons and lay the tall cone to one side. Underneath is the pad which keeps the heavy weight balanced upright on her head. I untie that too and then let down her hair. I take up a brush and gently start to free the tightly braided plaits, and she closes her eyes.

‘That’s better,’ she says. ‘Plait it up loosely, Jacquetta, and they can send in a glass of warm ale.’ I twist the thick red-gold hair into a plait, and help her take off her surcoat and gown. She pulls on a linen gown for the night and climbs into the big bed, looking like a little child among the rich hangings and thick covers.

‘You are bound to feel weary,’ I say. ‘You can just rest. Everyone will want you to rest.’

he king. & wonder what it will be,’ she says idly. ‘Do you think a boy?’

‘Shall I get the cards?’ I ask, ready to indulge her.

She turns her head away. ‘No,’ she says, surprising me. ‘And don’t you think about it, Jacquetta.’

I laugh. ‘I am bound to think about it. This is your first baby; if it is a boy, he will be the next King of England. I am honour-bound to think of him, and I would think of him anyway for love of you.’

Gently, she puts a finger over my lips, to silence me. ‘Don’t think too much then.’

‘Too much?’

‘Don’t think about him with the Sight,’ she says. ‘I want him to bloom like a flower, unobserved.’

For a moment I think that she is afraid of some old horrible hedge-witchery, casting the evil eye or ill-wishing. ‘You cannot think that I would do anything to harm him. Just thinking about him would not harm . . . ’

‘Oh, no.’ She shakes her golden head. ‘No, dear Jacquetta, I don’t think that. It’s just that . . . I don’t want you to know everything . . . not everything. Some things are private.’ She blushes and turns her face away from me. ‘I don’t want you to know everything.’

I think I understand. Who knows what she had to do to gain the interest of such a cool husband? Who knows how seductive she must have been to get him off his knees and into her bed? Did she have to try sluts’ tricks that left her feeling ashamed of herself? ‘Whatever you did to conceive this child, it is worth it,’ I say stoutly. ‘You had to conceive a child and if you have made a son it is all the better. Don’t think badly of yourself, Margaret, and I will think of nothing at all.’

She looks up. ‘Do you think that nothing would be a sin that gave England an heir?’

‘It was a sin for love,’ I say. ‘And hurt no-one. Then it’s forgivable.’

‘I don’t need to confess it?’

I think of Bishop Ayscough who told the young king not to bed his wife in the first week for fear that the young couple would experience the sin of lust. ‘You needn’t confess anything you did to get this child. It had to be done, and it was an act of love, and men don’t understand such things. Priests the least of all.’

She gives a little sigh. ‘All right. And don’t you think about it.’

I wave my hand like a veil over my face. ‘I won’t think. I have not a thought in my head.’

She laughs. ‘I know you can’t stop yourself thinking, I know that. And I know you have the Sight sometimes. But don’t look for this baby, promise me you will not look for him? And think of him as a wild flower which grows and is a thing of beauty; but nobody knows how it was planted nor how it came to be there.’

‘He’s the son of Marguerite the Daisy,’ I say. ‘He can be the flower that we rejoice to see in springtime, whose coming means spring.’

‘Yes,’ she says.‘A wild flower that comes from who knows where?’