Saint Agnes Day, 1457

"Mother of God, " she cried, as the giant threatened to break her into half. When the pain began to release the worst of its grip, Margaret felt a moment of utter terror. Would she die- just as so many other women did in childbed? O please God- don't let my poor child be bereft of both mother and father. She thought of her husband, the Lord Edmund, dead only twelve weeks ago, after his capture in a foray against York traitors, and shook her head. No - she would survive. She couldn't leave her baby unprotected, and treated only as a powerless pawn, just as she had been treated ever since her third year.

Margaret sat in the birthing-stool, and one of the women put a goblet to her lips. Too exhausted to question, obediently she drank, a bitter taste made her mouth burn. The eyes the midwife raised to her were filled with compassion.

"That'll help things along, don't you fear, madam. I know m'job - it won't be long now."

Later in her memory, the time following the midwife's words always remained as a series of disjointed, dream-like images - almost as if this time happened to someone else rather than herself. But one thing she would remember with clarity all her life - the moment one of the women placed into her arms a squirming, crying infant. A son. The midwife placed the child on Margaret's breast, and he began to nuzzle, his young mother studying him more closely. So perfect - all of him - from his toes, to his hands, miniatures of her own - finely boned, fingers long, and tapering- to dark eyes now gazing at her as if he already knew her.

"I shall call him Henry, after the King. Henry Tudor, Earl of Richmond," she said to the smiling women. Then she looked down again upon her babe, whispering. "My son, I swear to you I'll protect you. You and I - together - we shall be a force to be reckoned with."

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The following quote is from Antonia Fraser, The six wives of Henry VIII, 1992, unabridged, pp 29-30.

Where an heiress was concerned, her 'spoiling' by being obliged to have sex and bear children too young might have important consequences. The physique of the great heiress Margaret Beaufort was considered to have been ruined by early childbearing. She bore the future Henry VII