Jean Plaidy (13 page)

There were festivities to celebrate the occasion. Let others celebrate! I could not do so.

This was not exactly marriage, I kept telling myself, though it was as binding as marriage. The difference was that there had to be a marriage service before we could live together as husband and wife.

How I rejoiced in that! Perhaps, I thought, it will never come to pass. I had to tell myself that. It was my only consolation.

         

I was now to live with Queen Margaret. Under her protection, they said; but in truth I was a hostage. I was there to remind my father that it was his duty to restore Henry the Sixth to the throne and remove Edward whom he had put there.

Isabel had gone to my mother. How I longed to be with them! Here I was among strangers.

My father, meanwhile, with the Duke of Clarence, had set out for England to keep his promise.

By the grace of the King of France, Queen Margaret was allowed to keep her little court at Amboise where I should be until the marriage. I had said good-bye to my mother and Isabel, which was a terrible wrench for us all, but everything had been arranged and agreed by my father who was now with Clarence making his way to the coast in preparation for the onslaught on England.

I had never felt so lost and alone. Everything familiar was gone and in place of my gentle mother who loved me was this fierce woman who, in spite of her truce with my father, hated everything connected with him.

Amboise is beautiful—perhaps one of the most beautiful small towns of France—and the
château
is one of the country's most impressive. I shuddered as we approached. To me it looked like a fortress standing on its rocky eminence. It must have held many prisoners and I wondered how many of them had lain forgotten forever in its gloomy
oubliettes.
The feelings of those prisoners as they entered that place must have been similar to my own. It was an ancient place. I remembered hearing that Julius Caesar had been here and had made the caves famous because he had used them to store grain, and ever after they were called Caesar's granaries. When one is on the brink of disaster such inconsequential thoughts will come into the mind.

The gray walls, green with moss, looked impregnable, and as we went under the arch toward the castellated walls, a terrible feeling of dread came over me.

The days that followed were some of the most unhappy in my life. More were to come as I grew older, but then I was prepared for evil and had grown a protective shell of stoicism. At that stage I suppose life had been too easy for me…until that terrible day when we had taken ship to France. Always my mother and Isabel had been with me. Now I was parted from them, to be in hostile company—a hostage while my father redeemed his promise.

When I heard that the Prince of Wales was not leaving for England I was dismayed, but relieved when I discovered that he was not living with his mother. He was going on a mission, with Louis's blessing, to raise men for the armies that would be needed to defeat Edward. I had thought at first that I would have to endure his presence and that had alarmed me. It was amazing what pleasure even the smallest relief could give me.

I tried to find out all I could about this man who was to be my husband. It was not easy, for the queen's attendants regarded me with the same suspicion as Margaret did. They were very much in awe of her, which did not surprise me.

There was one thing I heard about him that filled me with apprehension, and made me feel that I had summed up his character correctly.

“The prince is a real warrior,” I was told by one of the women who could not resist the opportunity to tell me. “It was after the battle of St. Albans. Two of the enemy were captured…both men of high rank. They were brought before the queen because the king was too feeble at that time to take his place. So there were these two…proud gentlemen…Yorkists who had been fighting against the king and queen. It was his mother's wish that the prince should be with her—in place of the king—at such times, and she turned to him and said, ‘What shall be their sentence?' The prince was only eight years old, but his mother thought he would have to grow up quickly and he did not disappoint her. ‘They must be sentenced to death,' he said. ‘By what means?' the queen asked him. And what do you think the prince said?”

“I do not know. Tell me.”

“He cried, ‘Cut off their heads!' There! And him only eight. His mother said that, as he had passed the sentence, he must watch it carried out.”

“And…did he?”

“That he did, my lady. He sat there clasping his hands and smiling as the blood spurted out.”

I shuddered. And this was the man they had chosen to be my husband!

Looking back, I do not know how I managed to live through those days. I dreamed of the wildest means of escape—running away, joining gypsies, casting aside everything I had ever known…anything to be free. I was terrified of this marriage. I waited in trepidation each day for the return of the Prince of Wales and for news of what was happening in England. My father would land; he had been well supported by the King of France; he had men and money. Could he overcome Edward? And when he did? I should be married then in very truth to this young man who, in my mind, was fast becoming a monster.

I could not bear it. I felt frustrated and so vulnerable. If only I could have talked to Isabel…explained to my mother…pleaded with my father.

But in my heart I knew that none of these could avail me in any way…except give a grain of comfort to share my fears and sorrow.

I was doomed.

I found a secluded corner in the grounds where no one went very much. A seat was cut into the thick stone of the castle. Overgrown shrubs surrounded it. I could be almost sure of a little solitude there and went there often to brood and ask myself if there was anything I could possibly do to avoid my fate.

I was sitting there one afternoon, and the hopelessness of my position swept over me afresh. My father could not fail to succeed. Very soon would come the news of his victory; then this sad frustrated life would change…to something worse.

I could not bear it. The desperation of my plight swept over me and I began to weep silently. I sat very still and allowed the tears to trickle down my cheeks.

Then suddenly I heard a rustle in the bushes and, to my horror, I saw the queen approaching.

She stood for a moment glaring at me.

“Why do you weep?” she asked.

I could not answer. I could only cover my face with my hands while the sobs shook my body.

There was silence. I guessed how she would despise me. She would be asking herself, what is this bride we have to take for my son? What sort of queen will she be? What sort of mother for the heirs of England?

In that moment I did not care what she thought. I just sat there, holding my hands to my face, finding some small comfort in giving vent to my grief.

After a while I let my hands drop. She was still standing there. She said in a voice I had never heard her use before, “What grieves you?”

Before I could stop myself, I blurted out, “I want to be with my mother and my sister. It is so strange here…so far from home.”

Immediately I had spoken I was ashamed of myself. My words sounded so ridiculously childish, and doubly so in the presence of this woman who had been my enemy before she knew me. She would deride me, despise me. Perhaps she would think me so unworthy that her son must not marry me at any price, I thought, with a ray of hope. But a crown to her would be worth any price.

“How old are you?” she asked.

“I am fourteen.”

Did I imagine it, or was there a slight softening of her features?

“I was about your age when I first went to England…to a foreign country…to a husband whom I had never seen,” she said slowly. “It is a fate that overtakes most of us.”

“I know.”

She spread her hands and lifted her shoulders. “So why must you be so sorry for yourself?”

“I suppose because it has happened to others, that does not make it easier to bear.”

“Tears never help,” she said, and left me.

         

Oddly enough, that was a turning point in our relationship and later I began to learn a little about Margaret of Anjou.

It was only a few days after the incident that I found myself alone with her. She had dismissed her attendants so that she might talk to me.

She was a strange woman—dominating and single-minded. She would have been a good ruler, but she lacked the power to attract people to her, which Edward had in such abundance. She was strong; she chafed against defeat. It had been an ironical turn of fate to give her Henry the Sixth as a husband. There could not have been two people less alike. Yet it emerged that in a way they had been fond of each other.

That first occasion after the scene in the gardens was a little awkward, but during it she managed to convey to me that she was not devoid of feeling and not entirely unsympathetic toward me. She could understand the terrors of a child. After all, I was only fourteen years old and she saw that it was an ordeal to be taken from my mother and sister, the companions of my childhood, to be put with those who had been the sworn enemies of my family for as long as I could remember.

I cannot recall much of that conversation, except that in a brusque sort of way she tried to cheer me, chiefly, I think, by letting me know that it had happened to her, and although she deplored my attitude toward what was an ordinary fate, she did understand my fears, for she had suffered them herself.

After that I often found myself alone with her. We were anxiously awaiting news from England and, as had been the case at Middleham, we were constantly alert for messengers coming to the
château.
What Margaret wanted more than anything was news that Warwick's armies were succeeding; and this would be the signal for her to return to England with her son.

During the days that followed, I began to get a glimpse into what had gone before this terrible conflict that was called the War of the Roses and that had thrust our country into the worst of all calamities which can befall a country: civil war.

Like myself, Margaret had had a comparatively happy childhood, although her father, René of Anjou, had lived in acute insecurity during most of Margaret's early youth.

She spoke of him with an amazing tenderness; in fact she surprised me as I grew to know her. Her imperious manner, her fierce and passionate nature, her capacity for hatred, which she bestowed on her enemies, covered softer traits; she could love as fiercely as she could hate, and as I caught glimpses of this softer side I began to change my opinion of her.

“When I was born,” she once told me, “my father had only the country of Guise. He was of small importance. Then he inherited Lorraine, but there was another claimant who was victorious over him and as a result he was taken prisoner, and for a long period of my childhood he remained so. He was still a prisoner when he inherited Provence and Anjou. My mother was a woman of great spirit. My dear father was too gentle. All he wanted was to live in peace with the world. He loved poetry and such things.” She spoke with an exasperated tenderness.

“How different he must have been from my father,” I said.

“Ah, Warwick!” There was a hardness in her face. “That man, your father, ruined our lives.”

I was foolish to have mentioned him, for she told me no more on that occasion, and seemed to forget that there had been a little friendship between us. Foolishly I had reminded her that I was Warwick's daughter.

I remembered not to do that again.

Later it transpired that she had been brought up by her strong-minded mother, but with René a prisoner, her mother must go to Lorraine to take charge there, and Margaret was sent to Anjou to be with her grandmother, Yolande of Aragon, who governed that land.

“We lived mainly in Angers,” she said. “You remember Angers?”

I shivered. How could I forget Angers?

“My grandmother was a wonderful woman. My mother was a wonderful woman. There are times when I believe it should be left to women to govern.”

I looked alarmed and she gave me a somewhat pitying glance that betrayed her judgment that I was not going to be one of those.

“I was fortunate in my mother and my grandmother,” she said. “It was a sad blow to me when my grandmother died. But my father was free then. He came with my mother to Angers and we were all together for a while…”

“It must have been wonderful to be united with your family.”

“Such pleasures do not last. I was your age when I was betrothed to the King of England. But I had been on the verge of betrothals many times, so I was not sure whether this one would ever come to pass. It might have been like all the others.”

“Why were you betrothed so many times?”

“Because my father's fortunes were ever rising and falling. In the beginning I should have had a very poor match but when he inherited Lorraine and Anjou, well, it was a different matter.”

“There are always such reasons why we are betrothed,” I said sadly.

“But of course. My child, marriages are the strongest of alliances. Never forget that. It is the duty we are called on to accept…whatever is best for our countries at the time.”

“I know.”

“I thought I was so fortunate,” she said. “I was married to a man with a very gentle nature…a good man—a saint perhaps. But good men do not necessarily make good kings and saints were never meant to wear a king's crown. The outcome usually is that they have no will to keep it and do not hold it long.”

“Perhaps it is good when they marry strong wives.”

A wry smile touched her lips.

“My mother and my grandmother taught me self-reliance,” she said. “That is the best lesson any woman can learn.”

She looked at me a little severely, thinking, I was sure, that women who had learned that lesson did not give way to tears.