‘The concepts you put forward are lacking in intellectual rigour,’ I said. ‘I conclude, therefore, that they’re just a big load of crap. I am not a Special Child. What’s more, I’ve no wish to be a Special Child. My desire in life is to be married to a decent gentleman of coat armour, and to bear his sons and daughters. To gossip with my neighbours, to disagree with them about the correct height and angle of a hennin, and to influence the selection of the County Sheriff. In other words, to be ordinary. That, Lady Tegolin, will do me.’
‘Really, child, you do try my patience! How on earth do you expect to be taken seriously as the heroine of a story, especially one set partly in Wales, unless you understand at least the rudiments of sorcery and have some basic ability to foretell the future? A woman without special powers is merely a chattel. Of no interest to anyone.’
‘I disagree. Given special powers, anyone can do anything. It takes away all the merit of achievement. It’s like King Arthur’s magic sword. As long as he wielded it, no one could defeat him. Well, that means that the virtue was in the sword, not in him. Even I could be a great knight with a sword like that. I’d be much more impressed by Arthur if he’d fought his battles with an ordinary sword, and still won them.’
‘You are a true Saxon,’ she sighed, ‘entirely lacking in imagination. Have you no Welsh blood at all? If only you could overcome the handicap! I can see your power. It glows around you. Do you not feel it?’
‘I feel a draught from the door,’ I said. ‘Are there no competent joiners in Wales? It would certainly be a good idea for you to employ one of them.’
She shook her head, despairing of me. ‘We are going upon an important journey. To Pembroke. I wish to show you the future. England’s future.’
‘You cannot. No one can see the future. It hasn’t happened yet. We’re making it up as we go along, all of us, like a great big piece of embroidery without a pattern. We’ve each got a needle. Some of us put in the odd stitch. Others put in a row or two. But no one can say what it’ll be when it’s all finished.’
‘You can,’ said Tegolin, ‘if you stand back far enough.’
The next morning we set out for Pembroke, riding on two stocky, sure-footed little ponies, of the sort that pass for horses in Wales. (Most Welsh people have never seen a real horse, and if they came across one would probably take it to be a dragon or something.) Our only escort was a sturdy boy from Tegolin’s stables, who followed us on foot, a spear over his shoulder.
After about ten miles we caught sight of a column of armed men travelling in the opposite direction. It seemed to me that it would be a very good idea to avoid these gentlemen, and the nearer they came the more certain I was that I was right. The wars of York and Lancaster had already kicked off at the time of which I write, and South West Wales was not exactly the place to go for a rest cure.
Tegolin did not seem to be worried. She rode on as if we were running into a party of Observant Friars.
The leader of the cut-throats greeted her politely. (He spoke in Welsh, so I cannot give you his exact words, but the tone was polite.) Tegolin answered him in the same language, and in the same tone, and made him laugh. He touched his helmet and passed on, his nasty band of thugs following him without so much as a glance in our direction.
‘You know him?’ I asked.
She smiled. ‘He’s Thomas ap Gruffydd. A friend. He’s been known to share my bed from time to time, when I’ve had nothing better in my larder.’
‘Is he a Yorkist?’
My father had said that the Yorkists were villainous thieves. Thomas ap Gruffydd certainly answered the general description.
‘He’s on his way to steal someone’s property, child. He may do it in the name of the Duke of York. Or in the name of our blessed King Harry and Queen Margaret. Either way, the profit will be his. A useful friend. A bad enemy. Fortunately, he is at the very least as afraid of me as you are of him.’
‘Because he thinks you are a witch?’
‘Because he knows that I am. And my power is nothing to what yours could be, if you were but willing to learn the art. You could strike such terror into a man like Thomas ap Gruffydd that he’d have to spend the rest of his natural life sitting on a privy.’
‘To be feared is to be hated. I’d much rather be loved.’
‘You can have the love of any man you wish.’
‘By compulsion? That isn’t love. Love comes naturally, or not at all. It cannot be commanded by spells and potions. All you offer me is power, and power is poison. I reject it. I wish to go home.’
‘You must first come to Pembroke.’
‘Why? What’s happening at Pembroke that’s so damned special?’
‘A lying-in.’
I sighed. Tegolin was, among other things, a skilled and popular midwife. She had taken me to help her bring several children into the world. The first experience of this kind had been interesting, I’ll grant you that. But once you’ve seen one baby born, brother, you’ve seen them all. They can all be guaranteed to emerge from the same place, naked, bloody and ugly. A king’s son gets wrapped up in a better class of cloth, but in all the essentials it’s no different whether you’re delivering the child of a queen or a goose-girl.
We arrived at Pembroke not long after Christmas. They were still keeping open castle, but the celebrations were muted by the recent loss of their lord’s brother, Edmund Tudor, Earl of Richmond, who had been sore wounded at the hands of the Yorkists, and died in captivity at Carmarthen. His lady lay upstairs in the solar, struggling with her swollen belly as she considered the written offers of marriage that were already flooding in. She was a great heiress.
I was surprised to find that the Lady Margaret was not much older than myself. Certainly not above fourteen at the very most. She was extremely small and delicate, and, as heiresses go, remarkably good looking. She was learned, too. Even more learned than my brother Edmund. Her idea of fun was to work her way through a thousand pages of Latin text.
I had my doubts about Lady Margaret Beaufort from the first.
Tegolin was known for her skills even in Pembroke, and we were more than welcome. So it chanced that I was present at the birth of the obnoxious Henry Tudor. If I’d known then what I know now, I’d have taken the opportunity to drop him straight down the shaft of the garderobe.
Lady Margaret was delighted with him, naturally enough. So was Tegolin. She went off into a rambling rhapsody in Welsh. She stopped only when she realised that Lady Margaret had no more idea of what she was saying than I did.
‘This child will be our King. Wales shall rule England,’ she explained.
I could tell that Margaret did not wholly believe this, but the idea still pleased her. She thanked Tegolin in the polite, patronising style that every English lady uses when she receives a posy of flowers from a peasant child.
The women had cleaned up the baby, and were passing him round, satisfying themselves that he had all his bits and pieces. At length one of them handed him to me.
‘Ugly little bastard, isn’t he?’ I said.
I’ve no idea why I chose these particular words. Or why I spoke so loudly. It may be that I did possess prophetic powers after all.
Lady Margaret sat up in bed, furious.
‘Get her out of here!’ she yelled. ‘Out, out, out!’
Tegolin was not pleased with me. She scarcely said a word all the way home. That was not at all like Tegolin.
‘Wales cannot even rule itself,’ I said, scornfully, trying to get her going again. ‘It couldn’t rule England long enough for an egg to be boiled hard. How could you have come out with such tripe? No wonder Lady Margaret was annoyed. You forget that she’s English too. Her father was the Duke of Somerset, not Owain Glyndwr. And Glyndwr’s not going to return, either. He was born about 1360, so he’d be nearly a hundred now if he was still alive, which he isn’t. If you stopped living in dreams, Tegolin, and got your bloody door fixed, you’d be a lot better off.’