Succession (25 page)

‘You loved him as a child loves – yes – but that is soon forgotten. You will marry again and learn to love as a woman loves a man.’

‘NO!’ she shouted, at the same time furiously aware that she sounded like a child.

He started to tell her to behave herself, but he got no further
because she took several steps towards him, towards the chair in which he sat.

‘Did the Duke of Buckingham outbid William Herbert for your brother’s son?’ she whispered. ‘Do you think my affections can be so easily bought?’

She had barely time to register the terrible shock on his face. In a lightning movement he grabbed her wrist and rose, jerking her arm upwards. The bones in her wrist grated against one another.

She would not cry, she would not cry out, even if he snapped her wrist.

‘Do you think you are the only one who grieves for Edmund?’ he said in tones so low she could hardly hear him. ‘I miss him as I would miss my right arm, my lungs, my heart. His son is my son now, and my heir. Do not think that I will neglect any aspect of his future, or allow anyone, even his mother, to stand in his way.’

He released her then, and she stumbled back, almost falling. Her face was burning and she could hardly see. All her breath seemed to be caught up in her throat. She would not look at her wrist or rub it, she would not give him that satisfaction. She could feel the weight of his contempt bearing down on her, but she would not cry. Above all, she would not cry.

‘Now,’ he said, in the old, impersonal tone, ‘I do not imagine that you would choose to turn back alone and walk all the way to Pembroke, so what I suggest is this. In the morning you will feel better and we will continue on our way. We will take advantage of the good duke’s hospitality, for one week at least, and if you truly do not enjoy any aspect of your visit, we will leave. Otherwise we will extend our stay for as long as they extend their hospitality. Does that seem fair to you?’

What choice did she have? With Jasper, what choice did she ever have? She managed to nod.

‘Good,’ he said. ‘Now I will leave you to your toilette.’

She sat down on the bed as he left, because her legs were trembling. He had brought her to this. Jasper and her nurse had colluded together to betray her. All her visions of herself, her life that was to be dedicated to chastity and prayer, were collapsing around her. She
would be given to another man. He would touch her as Edmund had. She felt a kind of nausea at the thought – she might actually be sick.

‘There you are, my sweeting,’ Betsy said with a slightly forced heartiness as she entered the room. ‘I’ve had such trouble getting a simple bowl of water and a jug of wine –’ She paused, placing them on the chest beside the bed, then changed her tone. ‘What is it, my little dove?’ she said.

And the next moment she was enfolded in Betsy’s arms.

Everything about her was so familiar – the smell of her, which was slightly stale and spicy, the whiskery face, the rolls and folds of the body she had turned to for comfort most of the days of her life, but now never would ever again. Betsy lowered her considerable weight on to the mattress, necessarily taking Margaret with her, and rocked her as she had done since her infancy. When Margaret neither resisted nor responded, she released her slightly and looked into her face with those luminous greenish eyes.

‘What is it, cherub?’ she said again, quietly, and the words and her face tugged at Margaret’s heart as if trying to break it, though it was already broken.

But she only turned her face away.

‘I am tired,’ she said, her voice muffled by Betsy’s sleeve. ‘I must sleep.’

‘Of course you must,’ said Betsy heartily, already manoeuvring her into position, and tucking herself in beside her as she always did, her knees bent into the crook of Margaret’s knees.

Margaret lay beside her, staring into the night, into the darkness that surrounded them both, feeling the intolerable weight of Betsy’s body on her own.

If he had been anything like Edmund, in looks or manner, she could not have borne it, but he wasn’t. He was older, with thinning hair. Also he was plumpish, with scars on his skin. And he didn’t seem to know what to say. Margaret glanced up at Jasper, but he was staring straight ahead. The duchess was beaming vaguely at them both, but
she and her servants had withdrawn a little way from them, and Jane and Betsy had taken her baby to his room.

A painful silence extended itself until the duchess called her away to introduce her to the rest of the household.

After the introductions, which went on for some time, the duchess said she wished to talk to Margaret, and as they left together she nodded at the young woman who was Margaret’s cousin, and perhaps closest to her in age. Margaret’s cousin followed them into a little room and the duchess ordered a tray of cakes. Then she sat down and Margaret’s cousin sat down, and the duchess said, ‘Well,’ to no one in particular, and apparently did not require a reply.

The duchess wore a green and silver silk, and Margaret’s cousin wore a gown of palest rose. Margaret sat with them, painfully conscious of her own, weathered state.

Like the duchess, Margaret’s cousin wore her hair shaved back from her forehead, so that her face appeared egg-like and pale beneath her pointed wimple, and her eyebrows were shaved too as a sign of piety, though this was also high fashion. Her long sleeves covered her hands and her gown was slashed at the neck to reveal her kirtle and chemise. She was the grandest young lady that Margaret had ever seen, better dressed than the queen, it was said, and certainly better dressed than Margaret herself, but she did not think her pretty. Her face was too pointed and her eyes too close together for that.

The duchess was saying how pleasant it was to have company so early in the season, and Margaret murmured something in reply. Then the duchess said she had planned several feasts, to brighten up the dark days at the end of winter, and much dancing.

‘There will be a special one to celebrate the betrothal,’ she said, beaming, and Margaret did not say that there was no betrothal yet. She was thinking instead of a problem that had not previously occurred to her.

Since Edmund’s death she had given no thought to clothes. The supply of money sent by the king for her wardrobe had long since run out, and no one had had time, since the birth of her baby, to
order her anything new. She had only two gowns that fitted and neither one was suitable for a banquet.

Ordinarily she would have asked Betsy, who could have passed this on to one of the duchess’s servants, but Betsy wasn’t there.

They were waiting for her to speak. Finally she said that she had not brought many clothes with her – she had not been sure how long she would be staying.

The duchess said there was no question at all of them returning while the weather was so unpredictable.

‘We will send for the rest of your wardrobe,’ she said.

Margaret stared at the floor. Then she managed to explain that since her baby nothing had fitted her properly, and nothing new had been sent for yet.

‘But of course!’ cried the duchess, clasping her hand to her escaping hair. ‘You poor child – it is all those men, is it not? You have been surrounded by men – you poor, poor child!’

Margaret’s cousin was staring at her as though she were some curiosity from a travelling fair, then she said, ‘You may have one of my old gowns if you like, I will have it made down for you.’

‘But we will send for materials!’ the duchess said, and they began to talk together as if Margaret wasn’t there.

Margaret’s face burned with humiliation. She couldn’t bring herself to ask how long it might take for the new clothes to arrive, or how much they would cost. She wanted to go home.

‘The first feast is tonight,’ the duchess said. ‘But I believe I have just the thing.’

They ate in the great hall, course after course of meat – hare, pheasant and boar – served on silver platters and swimming in sauce. There was a whole pig, stuffed with swallows, and a swan shaped into a dragon, coloured green and gold and breathing actual smoke. A deer was brought in, roasted on a spit, but Margaret sat stricken in a blue velvet gown, unable to eat. The duchess leaned forward and asked if the food was not to her liking, and she protested that it was. Then the duke said that she needed some meat on her bones,
like her cousin, and he turned to the older girl and slid his moist fingers round her neck, and kissed her fully on the lips, while the duchess smiled brightly in a different direction, and Margaret glanced down quickly at her plate, on which there was a pigeon breast, sinewy and veined; her throat closed as she looked at it and she knew she could never eat. The duke, releasing her cousin, said that what she needed was some ox-blood with her breakfast, and Margaret felt as though she might faint.

Then the duke, reddened by pork and wine, insisted on dancing with her, and after the first dance he bore down on her, leaning on her shoulders as though he would crush her, and leading her a little way away from the guests. Then he asked how she thought she would like her new husband, and without warning he wept and begged her to provide him with more grandchildren.

Margaret wondered what would happen if she pushed him away from her, hard.

To her relief, someone interrupted them. It was Henry Stafford.

‘My Lady Margaret has said that she will show me her son,’ he said.

The duke said he knew what they were up to, he had been just the same at their age, but she took Henry’s arm gratefully and he led her from the room.

A sliver of moonlight shone on her baby, on the tiny fists curled either side of his head, his pale face even whiter around the lips. He was a still, small, concentrated world on his own. She had to touch him – his cheek and the reddish down on his head – then she leaned over the cradle and lifted him out.

He stirred and his face creased, and he gave a little sigh but did not cry – he hardly ever cried. She held him close to her heart and wondered if he could hear it beating, and thought that so recently he had heard it beating inside her.

Henry stood close beside her, frowning into her baby’s face.

‘I wonder what it is like to be born,’ he said softly. ‘To be suddenly in a strange world – cold and bright.’

She didn’t answer, but adjusted her baby’s blanket.

‘It must be a fearful thing,’ he said, ‘and sad also, to be suddenly separate.’

She glanced up at him quickly, at his frowning face, at his eyes that looked as though they were working out some inscrutable problem. She understood, suddenly, that she was not a child to this man she would marry, as she had been to Edmund, an insignificant child, to be humoured or tolerated. She had been through the mystery of birth and he regarded her with a kind of awe, as if she were older, and very wise.

She showed him how to hold her baby, supporting his head. They sat together on the wooden seat, wondering at his tiny fingers and the little pulse beneath his hair. Slowly the feeling of unreality she’d had since coming to this household began to ebb. The man who would be her new husband did not touch her, but she could feel the heat of him through her dress, a plump, comforting presence. She felt the tension in her shoulders and her lips and the back of her neck begin to ease. She had not known there had been such tightness there.

The following week the materials arrived: pearly silks, spun lace, finest cotton for her chemise, a green silk for dancing in, a new woollen robe for travel. Margaret watched them being cut and shaped, almost as her new life was being cut and shaped before her, and the duchess and her cousin personally supervised her transformation. Her hairline and eyebrows were shaved so that her forehead stood out in a huge dome, then her hair was braided and pulled tightly back from her face, pulling the flesh of her forehead back even further so that she looked permanently, fashionably, surprised. Finally she was given a tall headdress, to add to her height, and then she stood in front of a bronze mirror, staring at someone she did not know.

She was not, nor ever would be, pretty. But that did not matter here, apparently. It did not matter to the duchess, or to her son – the man she had agreed to marry. She looked again at her new face. She would get used to it, as she would get used to her new life. It was like a mask, for a part she had to play.

Their stay was extended for several weeks. She learned to avoid the duke, who seemed permanently eager to bear down on her, but fortunately he was often out hunting or showing off his grandson. Her cousin’s son was a handsome little boy with brown-gold curls who was petted and made much of by the entire household. The duke had given him a tiny sword and loved to see him brandish it and swagger about, but Margaret considered him to be a bad-mannered and disagreeable infant, and she took care to keep her own son away from him.

She did not share a room with Betsy any more; she had requested a room of her own as soon as she had agreed to the betrothal. At mealtimes Betsy sat at the other end of the great table with the other servants, trying and failing to catch Margaret’s eye.

In April they travelled with the duke and duchess and a small household to the duke’s favourite residence of Maxstoke in Warwickshire. There, the Bishop of Coventry and Lichfield granted a dispensation for the marriage between the Lady Margaret, Countess of Richmond, and Henry Stafford, second son of the Duke of Buckingham. This was important because Margaret’s grandfather and Henry’s grandmother were brother and sister.

And after that she returned with Jasper to Pembroke, for it had been agreed that they would not marry immediately; she would have her year of mourning.

By the end of that year the duke’s eldest son had died, and the whole household was in mourning. Against all expectations, William Herbert had been pardoned by the king. And Jasper had made peace with Gruffydd ap Nicholas, who had sworn loyalty to the crown. She heard also that John de la Pole had married one of the daughters of the Duke of York, and wondered what that meant for Lady Alice. But she had little time to wonder; she was preoccupied with other news.

She had inherited Bourne Castle from her grandmother Margaret Holland. The property was technically part of her mother’s estate in Lincolnshire, and close to her castle of Maxey. Margaret
had not seen her mother for several years, but now it seemed she was anxious to accommodate the new couple and set them up in a household of their own, as her wedding present to them both.