The Red Queen by Philippa Gregory Read Free Book Online

him, either.
    I wait, alone in Pembroke Castle, preparing for siege, admitting no one from the town for fear they are carrying the sickness, knowing I may have to hold this castle against our enemies, not knowing where to send for help, for Jasper is constantly on the move. We have food and we have arms and we have water. I sleep with the key to the drawbridge and the portcullis under my pillow, but I can’t say that I know what I should do next. I wait for my husband to tell me, but I hear nothing from him. I wait for his brother to come. I wish his father would ride by and rescue me. But it is as if I have walled myself in and am forgotten. I pray for guidance from Our Lady, who also faced troubled times when she was with child, but no Holy Ghost appears to announce to the world that I am the Lord’s vessel. It seems that there is to be no annunciation for me at all. Indeed,the servants, the priest, and even my lady governess are rapt in their own misfortunes and worries as the news of the king’s strange sleep and the struggle of power between his queen and the country’s regent alerts every scoundrel to the opportunity of easy pickings to be made in a country without government, and Herbert’s friends in Wales know that the Tudors are on the run, their heir captured, his brother missing, and his bride all alone at Pembroke Castle, sick with fear.
    Then, in November, I get a letter addressed to me, to Lady Margaret Tudor, from my brother-in-law, Jasper. It is the first time in his life he has ever written to me, and I open it with shaking hands. He does not waste many words.
    Regret to tell you that your husband, my dearly beloved brother Edmund, is dead of the plague. Hold the castle at all costs. I am coming.
    I greet Jasper at the castle gate, and at once see the difference in him. He has lost his twin, his brother, the great love of his life. He jumps down from his horse with the same grace that Edmund had, but now there is only the noise of one pair of boots ringing iron-tipped heels on the stone. For the rest of his life he will listen for the clatter of his brother and hear nothing. His face is grim, his eyes hollowed with sadness. He takes my hand as if I am a grown lady, and he kneels and offers up his hands, in the gesture of prayer, as if he is swearing fealty. “I have lost my brother, and you, your husband,” he says. “I swear to you, that if you have a boy, I will care for him as if he were my own. I will guard him with my life. I will keep him safe. I will take him to the very throne of England, for my brother’s sake.”
    His eyes are filled with tears, and I am most uncomfortable to have this big, fully grown man on his knees before me. “Thankyou,” I say. I look round in my discomfiture, but there is no one to tell me how to raise Jasper up. I don’t know what I am supposed to say. I notice he doesn’t promise anything to me if I have a girl. I sigh and clasp my hands around his, as he seems to want me to do. Really, if it were not for Joan of Arc, I would think that girls are completely useless.

JANUARY 1457

    I go into confinement at the start of the month. They put up shutters on my bedroom windows to close out the gray winter light. I can’t imagine that a sky which is never blue and a sun which never shines can be thought so distracting that a woman with child should be shaded from it; but the midwife insists that I go into darkness for a month before my time, as the tradition is, and Jasper, pale with worry, says that everything must be done to keep the baby safe.
    The midwife thinks that the baby will come early. She feels my belly and says that he is lying wrongly, but he may turn in time. Sometimes, she says, babies turn very late. It is important that they come out headfirst; I don’t know why. She does not mention any details to Jasper, but I know that he paces up and down outside my chamber every day. I can hear the floorboards creak as he tiptoes north and south, as anxious