Rivals in the Tudor Court
Darcey Bonnette
As Queen Catherine’s maid, and daughter of the Duke of Buckingham, the future seems bright for Elizabeth Stafford. But when her father gives her hand to Thomas Howard, third Duke of Norfolk, the spirited young woman must sacrifice all for duty. Yet Elizabeth is surprised by her passion for her powerful new husband. And when he takes on a mistress, she is determined to fight for her love and her honour…Naïve and vulnerable, Bess Holland is easily charmed by the Duke of Norfolk, doing his bidding in exchange for gifts and adoration. For years, she and Elizabeth compete for his affections. But they are mere spectators to an obsession neither can rival: Norfolk’s quest to weave the Howard name into the royal bloodline.The women’s loyalties are tested as his schemes unfold – among them the litigious marriage of his niece Anne Boleyn to King Henry VIII. But in an age of ruthless beheadings, no self-serving motive goes unpunished – and Elizabeth and Bess will have to fight a force more sinister than the executioner’s axe…This riveting drama sweeps eight decades and six monarchs. It’s the story of lost innocence, of passion that knows no bounds, and of a man battling an enemy even more formidable than the bloodthirsty Henry VIII: himself.
Rivals in the Tudor Court
Darcey Bonnette
Copyright
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
AVON
A division of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd
1 London Bridge Street,
London SE1 9GF
First published by Kensington Publishing, New York, 2011
www.harpercollins.co.uk (http://www.harpercollins.co.uk)
RIVALS IN THE TUDOR COURT. Copyright © D.L. Bogdan 2011. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
D.L. Bogdan asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
HarperCollinsPublishers has made every reasonable effort to ensure that any picture content and written content in this ebook has been included or removed in accordance with the contractual and technological constraints in operation at the time of publication
Source ISBN: 9781847562586
Ebook Edition © OCTOBER 2011 ISBN: 9781847563026
Version: 2018-07-25
Dedication
For my sailor
Contents
Cover (#u7591eef8-c327-5751-91c1-d377cba24b8d)
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Book One
Thomas
The Tower of London
Armor
Two Bonny Lads
A New Allegiance
Family Man
The Passing of a Crown
Book Two
Elizabeth
Kenninghall
A Little Maid
Of Princes …
… and Pirates
Change Winds
The Fruits of War
A Countess’s Life
The Isle of Erin
Traitors and Lovers
The Duke of Norfolk
Book Three
Bess
Mendham, Suffolk
A Real Live Duke
Two Ladies
The Palace Shaped Like an H
The End of an Era
For the King’s Pleasure
Kenninghall
The Redbourne Years
A Howard Rose
Blossom of Hope
Book Four
The Howard Legacy
Fall from Grace
Gratia Dei, Sum Quod Sum!
Norfolk House
Further Reading
A Reading Group Guide
Discussion Questions
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Other Books by Darcey Bonnette
About the Publisher (#litres_trial_promo)
BOOK ONE
The Tower of London
Thomas Howard, January 1547
Two bitches, a bewildered dolt, and a hothead have condemned me to this wretched place. The first wench would be my lovely wife, Elizabeth, whose list of virtues is far too extensive to catalogue. The second is my mistress, Bess Holland, who found it expedient to trade her lover for jewels and lands. The dolt is my daughter Mary, whose endless capacity for ineptness exempts her from being entirely to blame. But the hothead! The hothead is my own son Henry, Earl of Surrey, that talented boy I put such store in. My Surrey. Surrey, who claims to loathe upstarts with all his being yet decides to become one himself, quartering his arms with that of Edward the Confessor (a right reserved for kings alone!), bragging about what we Howards would achieve while ruling through Prince Edward when he comes to power, even plotting the kidnapping of His little Highness…. Oh, I cannot think of it! Fools!
It is cold in the Tower. Dampness seeps through the bare stone walls, rats scamper about, eager to feast upon my flesh should my soul decide to vacate it.
“You will have to wait,” I tell them.
I lie on my bed and scowl at the ceiling. This will not do. I have written to Henry VIII. I have grovelled and snivelled and humiliated myself to the fullest extent. But why would he break with tradition to spare me? What am I saying? It is thinking like this that will kill me. I have never entertained such notions before. I have always survived. I have always pressed on.
I am Thomas Howard.
Armor
Ashwelthorpe, 1478
“It was a vulgar display!” cries my grandfather, Baron John Howard, slamming his fist on the dining table, regarding my father, Sir Thomas, with hard black eyes. “Children, Thomas! Five-year-old brats—my God, it’s like handing a dukedom to that one there!” He waves an impatient hand at me. I wish I could crawl under the table to sit with my dog, but the last time I did that the baron pulled me up by the arm so hard that it ached for days. “That daft king would rather see two children wed than honour me with what is due,” he goes on. “I am the rightful Duke of Norfolk! Mowbray was my cousin, after all! It is fitting that I should have been named heir instead of his snivelling, drooling girl-child!”
Sir Thomas purses his lips, annoyed, though whether it is with my grandfather or the situation, I cannot discern. He shifts on the bench, his thick hands toying with a piece of bread. “It was most unfair, my lord,” he says. “We can thank God, however, that the king had the grace to knight me at the wedding ceremony.”
“Oh, yes, thank God for that,” spits the baron, but I have the distinct feeling he is not thankful at all.
I look under the table at my favourite dog, a grey mongrel named Rain, offering him a reassuring smile.
“What are you thinking over there?” barks the baron.
It takes a moment to realise he is addressing me. I right myself. “Nothing, my lord,” I tell him.
“Don’t lie to me, boy,” the baron hisses. His face is crimson; a thick vein pulsates in his neck. “You find this amusing, do you? Something to laugh at?”
I shake my head, my cheeks burning. A lump swells in my throat. I reach down to lay a hand on my dog’s head, reassuring myself with the soft fur. Soon I can get away from this tirade and run outside with Rain, loyal Rain. I shall lay my head upon his warm side and find shapes in the clouds with my brother Neddy.
“Do enlighten us with your anecdotes, child,” says the baron, leaning back, gripping the edge of the table with slim-fingered hands.
I don’t even know what an anecdote is. I begin to tremble. “I was—I was—”
“‘You were’? ‘You were’?” The baron’s voice has risen an octave in mockery.
My lip quivers.
The old man’s hand springs across the table to grip my collar, pulling me halfway across platters of food. My breeches are ruined. Rain is barking somewhere in the background. My knee is digging into something, the corner of a tray perhaps, but I am too terrified to look down. I can only stare into the dark face of the baron in horror.
His breath reeks of spirits. I cough.
“Do not mock me, boy,” he seethes.
“I wasn’t mocking you!” I cry, my mind scrambling to recall my exact offence.
“Thomas, best rein in your brat,” cries my grandfather as he brings me across his knee before the hall of family and servants and liveried guards. His hand, when he brings it across my bared bottom, hurts indeed, but the eyes of the hall bearing witness to my shame is a pain far greater. “You will be taught to respect your betters, lad!”
At this moment my dog launches himself at the baron, tearing into his ankle with a strangled growl.
Grandfather unleashes a howl, pushing me from his knee to the floor. I reach out in terror, trying to pull Rain off the old man, but the baron has reached him first. In one swift move he grabs the creature by the scruff of the neck, pulling him up onto his hind legs while retrieving his dagger.
“No!” I scream, hot tears streaming down my cheeks.
The baron does not look at me once. He slashes Rain’s throat, discarding the animal on the floor and returning to his seat. He takes in a deep breath, wipes his hands on his linen, and commences to eat his mutton.
I crawl toward my slain dog. Steaming blood oozes from his silvery throat. I do not know what to do. I start trying to push it back inside him. I press my hand to his throat.
I regard the baron, whose back is to me, hoping to project as much hatred into my eyes as is possible, but it does not matter. He does not see me. He is eating his supper, complaining of King Edward IV, who has wronged him so.
I am glad, I think to myself, that he was denied his grand title. Indeed, I hope every misery possible is heaped upon the man until he draws his dying breath.
“Tom!”
My grandmother’s voice is stern.
I turn toward her, blinking back tears. Rain’s blood is slick against my hand.
“Take that thing out of here and bury it,” she orders.
As I gather my pet in my arms, I hear her tell the baron, “Really, my lord, you should have commenced with that unpleasantness elsewhere. It has positively ruined my appetite.”
I take Rain outside, laying him in the snow; I have no idea where to bury him. I will not think of it now. I cannot. Icy tears slide down my cheeks as I remove my shirt and wind it about his throat, then, shivering, rest my head on his side, raising my eyes to the heavens, seeking out the clouds.
One of them looks like a dagger.
Three years later my grandfather announces the death of little Anne Mowbray, King Edward IV’s eight-year-old daughter-in-law and heiress to the dukedom of Norfolk.
“I have lost all to a child-prince. Richard has won the day,” he laments.
We are in the “war room,” a large chamber devoted to maps and a store for the family’s finest suits of armour. The baron is standing over the large mahogany table, tracing the unattainable Mowbray lands with his index finger.
My father shrugs. He is not as afraid of the baron as the rest of the family is. They are a bit alike, though my father, Sir Thomas, is more subtle in his approach, favouring locking someone away in a chamber without food for a few days as opposed to wasting his energy on the administration of beatings.
I am certain to keep my face void of expression during their exchange. After the countless lashings I have endured, I know anything—a blink, a dreamy smile, a twitch—can set Grandfather off. I stay still. Calm. I have practised in the glass, this look of impassivity. Many an hour has been devoted to learning the art of self-control. I will not speak against him; I will not cry out.
Perhaps this frustrates him the most. The others cry when he beats them and indeed they should not, as they are not beaten half as much as I. I do not cry. It is what he waits for, I think; he longs for my tears, for me to beg him to stop.
But I will never beg him for a thing, not ever.
And so in this vein we shall continue, until one of us outlives the other.
Sir Thomas turns to me with a slight smile. “But we shall remain the king’s loyal servants, shall we not?” he asks in light tones. “Edward is a mortal man, God bless him. His reign cannot last forever.” How easily he speaks treason! “Meanwhile, we shall serve him and elevate ourselves the old-fashioned way.”
I wonder what the old-fashioned way is but do not dare ask. I am wondering why Sir Thomas has summoned me to this little conference to begin with.
“Here, my boy,” says Sir Thomas, extending his arm to me. “A gift for you.” With a dramatic gesture, he pulls a large bolt of velvet aside to reveal in the corner a suit of armour. “Happy Christmas, lad.”
My very first suit of armour!
“I am big enough now?” I ask, smiling in spite of myself.
Sir Thomas nods.
“I wouldn’t say that,” pipes in the baron, “but we cannot wait forever. You are already a year behind the other boys; most receive their armour at seven. He’s a little mite, Thomas.”
“Size is irrelevant,” says Sir Thomas in firm tones. It is the first time I have ever heard him address the baron such. To me he says, “It is about intelligence, Little Tom.” He taps my temple with his fingertip. “Battles are won up here before they are ever won on the field. Learn the art of strategy and you will make an incomparable knight. Now. Have a look.”
I inch forward, ignoring the baron’s insult regarding my diminutive stature as I reach out to touch my new armour.
How grand it is! I run a hand along the shining breastplate, imagining myself a strong, tall man of twenty or so, lance poised at my hip as I forge ahead on my charger—a black charger—ready to oust my opponent. It will be easy. I will be the greatest warrior in the land; everyone will admire me. Even girls; they will throw their tokens at me and I will flash them my winning smile. I will not mind their attentions because supposedly men that age actually like the gentle sex.
“What do you think of it, lad?” asks my father. He is smiling down at me. I raise my eyes to him, another great warrior, and smile.
“It is the most wonderful thing I’ve ever seen,” I breathe in awe.
“Be worthy of it,” says the baron, his gravelly voice hard.
I turn to face him, meeting his gaze, hoping my hatred reflects in my uncompromising black eyes. “Let there be no doubt that I shall.”
I have usurped the hayloft as my own personal hideaway. It is far more peaceful than the manor, and up here I have created my own little world. No one knows about it, not even Neddy or Edmund. It is my place. I carve and paint toy soldiers and set up elaborate battlefields where the general—I, of course—always wins the day. Sometimes I draw pictures, maps mostly, planning out my battles. My toy soldiers take to slaying dragons, conquering kingdoms, and even rescuing silly girls.
It is a wonderful place, a place no one can take away from me.
Or so I thought until the day the baron took the dairy maid in a bed of straw and manure. I peek over the ledge when I hear the familiar voice. I want to look away but cannot. He is telling her to hush, covering her mouth as he proceeds to do something I didn’t know was possible. Yet I had seen animals do it, so I suppose people must, too. I just didn’t know it happened like this.
The girl is in a frenzy, wriggling against the baron, tears streaming down her cheeks. “Please, my good lord, stop!” she cries. “Please, let me go!”
In response the baron slaps her.
It is then that the girl’s wide blue eyes find me.
I cannot move. I cannot shrink back. I would make noise and he would know and do … I cannot think of what he would do.
The girl holds my gaze as the baron commences with his strange act. Her eyes are alight with horror and sadness and defeated submission. I long to reach out to her. I find myself wishing in vain that my toy soldiers would come to life and rescue her, slaying the baron in the process.
But such wishes are for children and I cannot think myself a child after today.
When the baron finishes, he pushes her aside. “Go now. Off with you.”
The girl gathers her torn skirts about her and struggles to her feet, rushing out without a backward glance.
The baron collects himself. He stares straight ahead of him.
“We Howards take what we want,” he says without looking toward my hiding spot. “To get anywhere in life, you have to take what you want.”
He quits the stables.
I lie in the straw and vomit.
He knew … he knew I was there, watching.
And he did it anyway.
I never go to the hayloft again. The soldiers I give to my little brothers, encouraging them to play with them as I cannot. I cannot play again. Instead I will learn how to become a real knight, a chivalrous knight. No lady will have need to fear me.
When not forced into study, something that while it comes easily to me is not my passion, I devote myself to learning the sword, riding, archery, anything physical. Anything that will enable me to become the greatest soldier in the land. Anything that will inspire the bards to sing my praises. I shall be the unforgettable Thomas Howard. The hero Thomas Howard.
I, and not the baron, shall make the Howard name great.
I still do not grow very much, to my eternal dismay, as my brothers have already surpassed me and they are much younger. But I will not be daunted. We shall see who will prove their mettle when on the battlefield.
Sir Thomas and the baron are too busy to notice my development; they are occupied with missions of their own and are not much seen at Ashwelthorpe. It is just as well. With them gone I can sing and laugh and play with my brothers with no one to tell me otherwise.
We pass a happy spring and in May, Mother is delivered of a baby girl. When I am permitted to see her I bound into her chambers, eager to meet my new sister.
Mother lies abed, her brown hair cascading about her shoulders, and as the sunlight filters through the window, it catches threads of auburn and gold. I have a strange urge to reach out and touch it but refrain as I approach the cradle. The baby is a tiny black-haired cherub. She sleeps with her little fists curled by her face.
“Oh, my lady,” I breathe. “She’s beautiful.”
Mother stares at me a moment, her expression vacant, before averting her head.
“What do you call her?” I ask.
“It has yet to be decided.”
I think this is quite odd. “But she is three days old. What are you waiting for?” I ask.
“Oh, Tom.” She rolls onto her side, her back to me. “You know so little about this life….” She draws in a shuddering breath. “This cursed life.”
I am moved to pity for this thin, defeated woman whose beautiful baby lies so near her. She seems so unhappy in her role. I furrow my brow in confusion as my eyes shift from mother to daughter. I thought this was what all women yearned for, that it was something as natural for them as longing for a sword is for men.
I approach the bed, daring to touch her shoulder. “Mother,” I say in soft tones, “shouldn’t you name her? She shall be christened soon and it wouldn’t do for her not to have a name.”
Mother throws an arm over her eyes. “Yes, yes, I shall name her. Do not worry. It’s just …” She sits up, hugging her knees. Tears light her brown eyes. “It’s just, Little Tom, to name a child is to give it meaning. To attach yourself to it. And He waits for you to become attached.”
“Who?”
“God.” Mother casts wild eyes about the room, as though God might leap out of the wardrobe any moment and smite her. I am caught up in her panic and find myself doing the same thing. Years later I would have laughed at my young self and assured him that of all the things holy and unholy to lie in wait for him, God would never be one of them.
Mother returns her gaze to me. “You see, He takes them then, Tom. The moment you open your heart, He takes them. Three of them are gone now; you are too young to remember. But I remember. They are in the cemetery. Their headstones have names.”
I am unsettled by her. She does not appear altogether well and I wonder if it would be prudent to fetch the midwife. I turn to the cradle once more. “This one seems strong and splendid to me, my lady,” I tell her. “I expect she shall be with us a good long while.”
At this the baby awakes and begins to fuss. I scoop her up in my arms, holding her to my chest. She is so warm and soft I do not want to let her go. I smile down at her crimson face as she howls her displeasure.
“Listen to that set of lungs!” I cry. “She shall be a force to be reckoned with, my lady, you shall see.”
Mother has covered her ears. “Fetch the wet nurse, Tom. See that she is fed.”
I take the baby to the buxom maid, who I must say seems quite perfect for her profession, and she is happy to relieve me of my little burden.
“Has the missus decided on a name yet, milord?” she asks me in her grating country accent.
I shake my head, heart sinking.
The nurse sits in one of the chairs, baring her breast without a thought. “I suppose it’s in God’s hands.”
God. I shiver. Wasn’t I just looking for Him a moment ago?
The baby is eventually named by Sir Thomas, who settles on Alyss. I admit to feeling a special tenderness for her. As she grows, cooing and laughing and forming short sentences, I teach her to say my name. “Say Tom,” I tell her over and over.
“Tom,” she repeats, her round blue eyes filled with the unbridled adoration only a baby or a dog is capable of projecting. “My Tom,” she says again.
“Yes,” I say, picking her up and twirling her about. “I shall always be your Tom. I shall be your brave knight and protect you from all harm.”
But I cannot protect her from God. He takes her from me in 1483 when she is but two. A fever, a terrible scorching fire of the humours, consumes the body of my little Alyss and she perishes.
Everyone moves on. Mother is with child once more. The baron curses my tears—babies are lost all the time, he tells me, and are replaced easily enough. Sir Thomas does not address the issue at all. So I have found a dual purpose for my helmet. Not only does it serve to protect me from blows to the head in practise, but I can also put it on and cry to my heart’s content. When wearing my helmet, no one sees my tears. No one knows I cry.
The night my little lady is interred, I keep vigil by her headstone, her headstone that bears her name.
I wear my armour. I wear my helmet.
Two Bonny Lads
My Alyss is not to journey to the Lord alone. She is accompanied by our king, Edward IV. The baron carries his banner during the funeral procession and keeps vigil over his body that night, shedding tears and mourning with such conviction, one would have thought he had never spoken ill of him and that they were bosom friends.
This leaves the crown to twelve-year-old Edward V. His uncle Richard Plantagenet, Duke of Gloucester, is to serve as regent until the lad reaches his majority.
However, it is not a smooth transition and on the way to the coronation, Gloucester descends upon the party and arrests Anthony Woodeville, Earl Rivers, along with several others for their supposed conspiracy to assassinate the young king. For their protection, King Edward V and his brother Prince Richard are taken to the Tower of London to be supervised by my grandfather, Constable of the Tower.
On 25 June, Gloucester names himself King of England—he is to be styled as Richard III now and installs himself at Westminster. My grandfather stood at his right as acting Earl Marshal. The baron’s heirs will be named earls marshal by heredity, which means someday I will hold the title. Then came the honour my grandfather had yearned for for as long as memory served. He is named Duke of Norfolk at last. My father is created Earl of Surrey. We are given many of the Mowbray lands along with properties that once belonged to Earl Rivers, who has met with the executioner’s axe.
I wonder at this and decide to question the newly created duke about it on one of his brief visits home (I admit with delight that since the accession of Richard III, my grandfather’s calls are few and far between).
“How can you be styled the Duke of Norfolk when Prince Richard already holds the title?” I ask, referring to one of the princes in the Tower.
Grandfather seizes my shoulders, shaking me till my teeth chatter. “Never mention that name to me again, do you hear me? Never!”
True to my nature, I cannot let it go. “But if they are in the Tower for their protection, they will be let out soon, won’t they?” I ask in subdued tones. “When the danger passes? Why has he been stripped of his title?”
Grandfather averts his head a moment. He works his jaw several times before returning his deep black eyes to me. He draws in a breath. His voice is surprisingly calm. “You must not think of them anymore, Tom. They are … they are to be forgotten.”
“Why?”
He pauses. “There is a new regime now.”
I feel a rising sense of panic. Something terrible has occurred, something dark and evil that I should not pry into. But I want to know. I have to know.
“What happened to them, Grandfather?” I whisper in horror. “What happened to the princes in the Tower?”
Grandfather releases my shoulders. He regards his hands a moment, turning them palm up. They are trembling. “In life, Tom, there is a time when it is expedient to do things …” He shudders. His voice is a gruff whisper. “Terrible things … in order to survive. Survival, Tom; that is what it is all about. The Howards are to be allied to the Crown, no matter whose head it rests upon. We are climbing out of the ashes and will be great. But we cannot hesitate. We carry out our orders without question. We demonstrate our loyalty. We crawl on our bellies and sing their praises; we cavort with demons—whatever it takes. We will rise up to be the greatest family in the land. Play it right and not only will we be able to claim a royal past, but we may see one of our own sit on the throne in the future. Do you see?”
I don’t see at all. He evaded my question by launching into some abstract philosophical discussion of our rise to power through justifiable treachery and shameless flattery.
He leaves it thus and my curiosity is unsatisfied.
Perhaps it is better I do not know the part Grandfather may have played in this particular instance.
For the princes are never seen again.
A New Allegiance
In October my father and grandfather quell Henry Stafford the Duke of Buckingham’s rebellion, which had arisen to support the Earl of Richmond, Henry Tudor, and resulted in the duke’s beheading. As a reward we are given more lands, and Grandfather and Sir Thomas are steeped in favour and royal responsibilities.
On 22 August 1485, our brief interlude of peace is interrupted when Henry Tudor lands in Wales to launch another attack, resulting in the death of Richard III during the Battle of Bosworth. We learn Grandfather is also slain (I grudgingly seek the Lord’s forgiveness for not mourning him) and a wounded Sir Thomas has been taken prisoner in the dreaded Tower of London. We fall at the speed with which we had risen. Our lands, all except Mother’s Ashwelthorpe, are seized. Sir Thomas is referred to as the attainted Earl of Surrey. The dukedom of Norfolk is no longer in Howard hands.
And yet the new King Henry VII is merciful. Neddy and I are styled lords and called to court to wait upon him as pages. Not only this, I am to be betrothed to the king’s future sister-in-law Lady Anne Plantagenet, daughter of the late King Edward IV. The white rose of York and red rose of Lancaster will be united through the king’s marriage to Elizabeth, and I will be his own brother-in-law. I, Thomas Howard, brother-in-law to a king! It makes the thought of dealing with a female much easier. What is most important is that this new connection may one day free my father and restore the Howards to glory.
“Be warned, Thomas,” Mother whispers before we depart. “The king holds you as favoured prisoners; if your father does not continually demonstrate loyalty even from the Tower, you shall be snuffed out without a second thought.”
I shudder at the thought, recalling the poor little princes in the Tower, other innocents snuffed out in the name of ambition. Neddy and I are of no great consequence to anyone and yet still find ourselves pawns. How much greater is the risk to our lives should Sir Thomas offend His Grace further?
I must serve the king, impress him with my loyalty and devotion. I must prove myself indispensable. For love of me, the king may spare my father. Grandfather, despite his own questionable character, did say that we are to ally ourselves to whoever is in power in order to survive. I believe I can see the logic in this with a little more clarity now. With me near, His Grace will see that we Howards are loyal, the most loyal servants he can come by. My heart swells with hope. Yes, that is what I will do. I will prove to this new king, this King Henry VII, that he can trust the Howards as he can his own God.
The court is maddening—wonderful, dizzying. I am caught up and loving every moment. I sleep in the dormitory with the other pages and spend my days on errands for His Grace. I am Lord Thomas Howard, fancy that! It rolls quite nicely off the tongue.
There is always something going on, always work to keep me occupied. Henry VII is not the most personable of men, but I am not here to be petted. I am here to learn, and learn I shall. Henry VII is not a frivolous king. His wish is to keep a firm hold on his throne and oust any pretenders. He is a master of government, installing a King’s Council, increasing taxes among rich and poor, and shipbuilding to strengthen the Royal Navy. He keeps a select number of Privy Councillors for his Court of Star Chamber in which he can deal with delicate matters of justice in a swift and efficient manner. His isn’t a court of endless parties and needless expenditures. He is too set on rebuilding the royal exchequer. He is determined to make himself great and in this I am in sympathy with him.
The hardest lessons are learned in the dormitory. Pages are a rough group of lads and as I have remained quite small, an endless source of consternation, I find myself in many a quandary that only a combination of quick thinking, agility, and fisticuffs can rescue me from.
My energy is devoted to the dagger I have taken to carrying with me at all times. From every position conceivable I practise retrieving it, ensuring that I will be able to rely on the sleek blade no matter the circumstances. I weave it about, practising that steady, certain upward motion that is the dagger’s deadliest move.
I’ll not let anyone get the best of me.
Of course they do try. I’d be a fool to think they would not. I am small and an easy target, but I meet them as a snarling badger would an unsuspecting rabbit and soon my reputation as a fierce and uncompromising opponent precedes me. There is no longer a doubt in my mind that I can be a competent and able soldier, that in hand-to-hand combat I can run a man through without faltering. It is a matter of us or them, after all.
“Aren’t you afraid of anything?” asks Neddy one day.
I laugh. “And what is there to fear? God’s body, Neddy, I’ve no time for that nonsense.” I shrug. “Fear stops you from everything. I’ve never heard of a coward rising to power. They remain a nobody.”
“But we’re nobodies,” says my little brother.
I seize his arm. “No, we’re not. We are the Howards. Our family’s known success before and we will know it again!”
“You sound like Grandfather.” Neddy laughs.
I release his arm, stepping back, the fear I so condemn surging through me.
I do not want to sound like Grandfather.
I first see Anne Plantagenet at the king’s wedding to her sister Elizabeth on 18 January 1486. We are to formally plight our troth this day and I have a little ring for her that was given to me by my father, who still passes his miserable existence in the Tower.
The ring bears no coat of arms, but I was able to scrape enough together to have an H and P interwoven in it to remind her that this is a union of the houses of Howard and Plantagenet.
I steal glimpses of her throughout the grand ceremony that is held at Westminster. She is looking at her sister and new brother-in-law, however, and does not glance at me once.
“She’s beautiful, Tom,” says Neddy in dreamy tones.
I flush and look away, casting my eyes to the ring I am wearing on my middle finger. I hope it fits her. I hope she doesn’t laugh at me and think it a cheap token. Were I in a better financial situation, I would have a beautiful signet ring designed, but such is not my present fate. She will have to settle for this.
At the wedding feast, we are presented to one another for the first time. My heart sinks when I note that she is taller than I, though the long tapering limbs that make up her arms and undoubtedly her legs suddenly take on a new appeal I hadn’t thought to appreciate when first learning of our betrothal.
She is beautiful with her rose-gold hair and soft green eyes that bespeak nothing but gentleness. Her cheekbones are high and well sculpted, her nose long but not unattractive. Her mouth, though not full, gives itself over to a wide, eager smile, revealing a row of straight white teeth.
The king and his new queen consort oversee the formalities themselves, the queen ever doting towards her sister, rubbing her back as she introduces us.
I cannot look the girl directly in the face as I pull at the ring that has decided to make its home on my middle finger. My slim fingers seem as though they have expanded to three times their size in the last two minutes, and my hand trembles as it works at the stubborn piece of jewellery. At last it gives and I offer a grunt of surprise.
The princess laughs.
I keep my head bowed, holding out the ring. “Here,” I say, unceremoniously. “I plight my troth.”
“Lord Thomas,” remonstrates the queen in good-natured tones, “aren’t you going to place the ring on her finger yourself?”
I look at the princess through my lashes. My heart is racing. Truly I believe facing an army of Scots would be easier than making physical contact with this one maid.
Lady Anne offers me a delicate hand. I cannot help but admire the daintiness of the long slim fingers as I slide the ring on.
“You have perfect fingers for the virginals,” I find myself saying.
I look up at her then. My nervousness recedes like the tide; calm surges through me as warm as wine. Everything about me fades, obscured by the light of her face, that sweet, beautiful face. I do not think that I am fourteen, with fickle fourteen-year-old passions. I think of her.
And love her. Just like that.
And just like that, with our hands joined here at Westminster among a bustling court before a jubilant king and his bride, I know she loves me, too.
My father is pardoned and released in 1489, returning home a different man from the one who entered the Tower three years ago. He is harder, darker, proving with his short temper and ruthless management of his household that he is indeed his father’s son.
He is styled the Earl of Surrey and allowed to keep the lands in his wife’s inheritance but none from his father’s or the Mowbrays’.
He is certain to unleash his bitterness at being withheld the title he covets with as much longing as his predecessor, that of the Duke of Norfolk. I, for one, think he should be grateful to be alive, but I suppose he isn’t dwelling on that now. I imagine that he concludes since he is alive he should receive what he considers his due.
The king tests his loyalty by sending him to Yorkshire to quell a rising there. Lord Surrey wins the day. As a reward, His Grace grants him the Howard lands he had still retained.
All of this I take in with interest, being that my father’s elevation is equivalent to my own. However, there is more to interest the lads at court than advancement and soldiering. The fairer sex has entered our awareness. We watch them, these gentle daughters of Venus with their curves and long, lustrous hair, their soft voices, their perfume, their graceful, fluid movements as they dance … and are seized by fever. Suddenly, there are not enough whores to be visited, not enough maidens to deflower. I join in, always one to participate in sport of any kind. Besides, I am to be married soon. I must know what to do. And so I learn.
No sooner do I become a student in the art of love than I become enslaved by it. The gangly girl I met when plighting my troth has returned to the court of her sister a beautiful woman, and my love for her is rejuvenated the moment our eyes lock. When not engaged in my duties I court her with all vigour. Together we stroll in the gardens. She plays for me upon the lute and the virginals, lifting her sweet voice in song, and I close my eyes, trying to emblazon in my mind and heart every note, every sound, every nuance that is this girl, this girl I have come to adore and love with every fibre of my soul. The strength of this emotion terrifies and excites me; like wine I drink it in but remain insatiable. All about me is the growing need for Lady Anne, my princess, my forever love.
To impress her I try my hand at poetry and fail miserably. She laughs that soft laugh that resembles the gurgling of a stream—how the sound intoxicates me!—and strokes my cheek, assuring me I need not impress her with flowery words.
“All I need,” she tells me, grasping my hands, “all I could ever want, is you, Lord Howard.”
On 4 February 1495, I stand in Westminster Abbey; she has me. Hands entwined with my bride, my princess, we stand before the Archbishop of Canterbury and are wed.
She is still taller than I, almost too tall for what is comely, but it is a trait I will excuse. I make up for my own lack of height in muscle and after we are led to our wedding chambers that night by giggling courtiers who see us to our bed with all manner of crude jokes befitting the occasion, the princess seems duly impressed.
Our settlement is the most pathetic thing a bride and groom of our illustrious station have ever seen and I cannot contain a sigh of dismay when I learn that the princess and I will be living on nothing but the charity of our relatives. We are penniless and it is seen to that we will remain so until my grandmother, the Dowager Duchess of Norfolk, passes on. With my luck the cantankerous old bird will live forever.
The queen provides for her sister in the manner she sees fit, and my princess is given a household of two ladies, a maid, her own gentlemen and yeomen, along with three grooms. She is also given twenty shillings a week for food and a promise that the proper gowns will be provided.
My father allows us use of his residences at Lambeth and Stoke in Suffolk and when I ask my princess where the best place to start our family would be, she blinks back tears.
“Stoke, my lord,” she tells me in her soft, husky voice. “The country. Far away from court.”
“Then we shall remove to Stoke,” I tell her, taking her dainty hands in mine. “And there I will be your goodly and devoted knight and will love you till I die.”
This passionate display sends her into a deep flush and she bows her head. My God, she is a beauty! I cannot believe she is mine.
I find I am relieved to depart from court as well. I am not a born courtier. I am as yet unskilled in the art of empty flattery. I know my calling and that is to arms; should the king need my service, he is assured that I am ready to prove my worth as his loyal and able defender.
We set up our meagre household and I find it isn’t altogether bad to be poor (though I will seize every opportunity to reverse my fortune—I’m not an idiot, after all). My princess is quite competent and demonstrates a keen ability for frugality. She is formal; I imagine being raised at court has instilled this in her and as a result she is not given to initiating demonstrations of affection.
She does not talk much; she is a dreamer. One could never accuse her of being silly or frivolous. Often I find her staring out of the window or seated in the gardens, her expression soft with melancholy whimsy.
“What are you thinking about?” I ask her one day when I find her seated beside the duck pond. She holds an old loaf of bread but is not breaking any off to feed the ducks that are gathered about in anticipation.
To my surprise, tears light her eyes. She averts her head.
“Princess?” I call her nothing else; to utter her sacred name would be sacrilege. So she is Princess, my forever princess, and her tears twist my gut with pain. There is nothing I long for more than to bring her comfort. I kneel beside her, taking her chin between my fingers, turning her head toward me. “What is it, my love?”
She blinks rapidly. “I cannot help it, my lord,” she tells me in tones that ring with desperation. “I cannot stop thinking of them. I try to will away the thoughts … I pray to the Lord for guidance, that He will help me banish them from my mind—”
“Who, my lady?”
She buries her face in her pretty hands. “My brothers … the princes … the princes in the Tower.”
“Oh, Princess!” I cry, gathering her in my arms, rocking back and forth. What can I say to this? Never once had I thought of how the event affected her. Truly she must have had to disguise her grief well at the courts of her uncle Richard III and now her brother-in-law Henry VII.
“I suppose we’ll never know what happened, will we?” she asks, her eyes lit with an innocence I long to preserve.
I shake my head. If Grandfather alluded to anything the day we discussed the ill-fated princes, I will never share it with this poor girl. What purpose would it serve except to further her grief and drive a wedge between us?
“We must press on,” I tell her, stroking her cheek. “Pray for their souls, my love, and press on. We have so much to look forward to.”
She offers a little half smile. “Yes,” she acquiesces. “Do you suppose they are in the faery country?”
This was the last thing I would suppose, but what can I say? I shrug, offering a smile of my own. “You are truly English, I think—one moment speaking of God and the next of the fey. Only a true Englishman can seamlessly marry the two.”
The princess covers her mouth with a hand. “Do you think it blasphemy?”
I wave a hand in dismissal; I want to say I don’t believe in blasphemy any more than I do the faery folk. “Of course not.”
I take her in my arms again, daring to kiss the lips I crave, daring to distract her the best way I know how.
She is a peculiar girl, this princess of mine, but her peculiarities are so endearing that I am beside myself with love for her. She leaves gifts for the faery folk, strange little gifts. A sweetmeat, a piece of string, a thimble, rose petals. In the oddest places—windowsills, the hearth of the fireplaces, my chair in my study, pressed between the pages in one of my ledgers. She writes them little notes, then burns them. The messages will be sent to the faeries in the ashes, she tells me.
When I ask her what she communicates to her faery folk, she answers in all seriousness, “To bid them safeguard my brothers.”
Often she is seen in the garden, twirling about in her gauzy gown, her little voice lifted in song. I watch her when she thinks she is alone.
It is a beautiful sight.
A year into our marriage the princess approaches me in my study. She wears a dreamy smile as she climbs onto my lap and snuggles against my shoulder. As such a show is so opposite to her character, I wrap my arms about her, revelling in her closeness and warmth. I cover the soft cheek and neck in gentle kisses.
“My love, my love,” I murmur against her rose-gold hair. “How now, dearest?”
She pulls away, roses blooming on her cheeks. She reaches for my hand and places it on her belly.
It takes a moment to realise what this gesture portends. When at last understanding dawns on me, I begin to tremble.
“Truly?” I ask her.
She nods. “Truly.”
“Dearest little mother!” I cry, taking her in my arms once more.
“We shall know such happiness! Never will our children question or wonder whether or not we love them. Never will they be afraid of us.”
The princess pulls away, cocking her head. She places a velvet hand on my cheek. “As you were?”
I blink, averting my head.
She does not pry. Instead she leans against my shoulder once more.
I hold my princess for a very long time.
Family Man
I watch my wife’s pregnancy advance in a state of awe. I chase the dark thoughts from my mind, cold stabbing fears of losing my princess and the baby, memories of my mother and the six siblings that succumbed to one childhood ailment or another.
My princess does not grow plump in any area other than her belly and I love watching her waddle about, cradling the curve wherein rests the life I planted. At night I hold her in my arms as she guides my hand to where it kicks and stretches. I tremble and laugh as I feel the little feet and hands jutting out.
“A regular knight we have, and so eager for combat!” I cry, rubbing her belly in delight.
She does not say much. She never says much, but now and then I catch her humming, rubbing her belly with that ethereal smile on her face, a smile she shares with her faeries and her fancies. I take pleasure in the sight of her; I drink in her radiance.
And then in the spring of 1497, the call to arms I have been waiting for arrives. I am to help subdue a rebellious lot of Cornishmen.
My princess gazes at me from her bed, her soft blue eyes lit with pain. “But the baby is to arrive any day now,” she says, her voice taut with anxiety. “If you leave, you will miss it and what if something—what if something goes wrong?”
My heart lurches. “I cannot disobey the king, my lady,” I tell her in soothing tones. “If I am successful, I may be given the favour of more royal assignments and you know what that would mean for the family. You must see that.”
She furrows her brow in confusion, cupping her belly with a protective hand. “Then you must go,” she says, her voice weary. “I know well that one must not refuse royal service.”
I lean down to kiss her, but she averts her head.
I suppose I understand her grief, though what can I do? I can’t very well stay home to pamper a child when the king calls for me! This may be the first of many chances to serve him or it may be the last—in any event I will not forfeit the opportunity.
I leave my princess with a kiss and the promise of my return. She says nothing. Her blue eyes stare past me, through to that world I am never quite able to enter.
I ride away. I will not look back. I will forget the tears sparkling off the cheeks where roses once bloomed.
A man remembers his first kill. Mine is made at the Battle of Blackheath on 17 June when I run my sword through the body of a bulging-eyed Cornishman. It is a very strange sensation, holding the knowledge that someone’s very existence is in my hands. But I snuff it out without hesitation; indeed, to hesitate would certainly lead to my own demise. No, this is no time to lose control and yield oneself to philosophy. I am a soldier and that is that.
The sound of sword splitting through chain mail, sliding through soft flesh is like no other in the fact that it is eerily gentle, like that of permeating wet sand with a stick. I look into his eyes, big blue bulging eyes, watching them widen in surprise. He tries to grip my hilt in a vain effort to deflect the inevitable but in his shock miscalculates and grips the blade itself, slicing his palms through to the backs of his hands. Blood begins spewing from his mouth then, a mouth that had previous ownership of the ability to scream but is now gurgling and gulping the steaming red liquid of life instead. I ease him to the ground, placing a foot on his chest in order to extricate the sword from his failing body. It is difficult, far more so than running him through.
His face drains of colour; the life ebbs out of him like the receding tide and as it does, it is as though what I have taken from him is now surging through me. I am tingling, pulsating. My heart pounds in my ears. I begin to feel the creepings of philosophy, the urge to ponder my situation: Have I done right? Am I normal?
Did I enjoy it?
What makes combat odd is the closeness. I wonder what it would be like to kill a man from far away; many kings have that ability. They sit on a hill and watch the battles commence below yet, by giving the orders, have as much a part in the killing as the knights. It must be easier for a king on a hill. They are not quite so close; they do not have to look into those eyes, those bulging blue eyes. They do not smell the steel and the blood. Nor, I imagine with that strange surge of life flowing through me, do they ever appreciate the full taste of glory on the battlefield.
I gaze at the bloodied blade a long moment. This is blood I spilt. I killed. I killed for my king and my country.
I am a soldier.
Of course I only have a moment to review this fact as I am accosted by more rebels. They are easier to take than my first man. I do not think as hard. I have not the time for such an indulgence; there is only kill or be killed.
And I will kill.
I return to my princess victorious, and my biggest reward for my efforts is holding my son. He is the most beautiful baby I have ever seen. And I should know: I have seen dozens of babies and most of them are horrific, red-faced howling things.
He does not howl or fuss much; he is robust, with my wife’s almond-shaped green eyes and a tuft of rose-gold hair that I cannot stop petting.
“What do we call this little lad?” I ask my princess as I sit beside her on her bed.
She offers her gentle smile.
“I call him Thomas, my lord,” she tells me in her soft voice. “If that pleases you?”
I reach out to stroke her cheek. “Of course it does. There can never be too many Thomas Howards about.” I laugh.
The baby begins to mew a bit and I hand him to her. “Would you like me to fetch the wet nurse?”
“I nurse him myself,” she tells me. “I like nursing him.”
I screw up my face in confusion. “It isn’t done, my lady. It is not good for you. A country wench suited for that type of life would be far better. But you are a dear for trying. I shall send for a proper nurse.” I rise, patting her head. “And that way we can commence with the happy task of giving Thomas here a brother or sister.”
The princess cradles the baby to her heart. I note the plea in her eyes. I cannot help but yield to her desires. She is so fair…. I nod, her helpless servant. She unfastens her nightdress and allows him to suckle, a smile of gratitude lighting her face.
I turn to quit the chambers but, as I do, am reminded of another birth, that of my sister Alyss so many years ago. How my mother would not take to her, how she thrust the little lamb into the hands of the wet nurse as soon as she was able to prevent any chance of becoming too attached before death claimed her.
I turn toward the princess. I want to say something; I want to warn her.
But I don’t know how. Nor do I understand the nature of the warning.
And they are so lovely, sitting there like that. Almost holy.
I will not part them.
The king and queen have sent gifts for the baby, a lovely baptismal gown and fine garments sewn by the queen’s own hands. They have been blessed with a flock of their own children these past years, including two bonny princes, Arthur and Henry. I wonder how often my Thomas will interact with the boys. It would be wonderful if they grew up together to become best friends. I am still in a state of awe that my Thomas is first cousins with the Crown Prince!
That summer, Neddy and I are sent north with our father, who is now lord lieutenant of the army defending the homeland against Scottish invasion. With him we will do our best to keep the barbarians where they belong. They have been making a show of support for Perkin Warbeck, a Yorkist pretender, which has given Henry VII plenty of reason to be annoyed.
I tell myself it is just in a day’s honoured service, burning villages, setting the thatched roofs of these little humble huts aflame while tuning out the screams of the families perishing inside. But this is a different kind of warfare, far different from hand-to-hand combat against men born and bred to kill.
I have to do it, though. It is for the country, for the king who is rescuing me from obscurity.
This is how life is, my reasoning continues. People live and people die. Everyone’s time comes. One day it will be mine and if it is by the sword, I will not blame my slayer for doing his duty.
I tell myself this at night when the dreams come, when I hear the screams, the pleas, the vain cries to God for mercy. I tell myself this as I imagine the situation reversed and it is Stoke up in flames, my wife and baby inside, surrounded by merciless barbarians.
No, I cannot think of that. I must never think of that.
We prove successful and by September, King James IV of Scotland makes a truce with Henry VII. For our role, Neddy and I are knighted by our father at Ayton Castle.
I am now Sir Thomas Howard.
By Epiphany my princess announces in her subtle way that she is again with child, by setting an egg on my desk. It takes me a moment to realise this is not one of her odd gifts to the faery folk but her wordless communication to me about her condition.
I laugh, enchanted by my lady’s newest antics.
She carries this precious cargo in the same manner she did Thomas, all in front. Never is a sight more beautiful to me than my princess with child. I cannot believe my good fortune, to be blessed with a fertile bride and a flourishing career. I am not about to dwell on what I do not have; that is a fool’s hobby. I focus on what is to come, what is to be achieved and gained. It is this thinking that earned me my knighthood and, hopefully, further advancements, advancements that will benefit my growing family.
I must say I think it was easier fighting off the Cornishmen than standing outside the princess’s birthing chamber the day she labours with our second child. As I missed Thomas’s birth, this is a new and altogether uncomfortable experience for me. I am wrought with anxiety, pacing back and forth outside the door, starting at every sound that comes from within. My mother always screamed in childbed and I am expecting the same from my wife. My princess’s silence is more disconcerting than my mother’s agonising cries ever were, and I am beset with fear as I imagine any number of terrible scenarios.
“She’s a strong one, is your lady,” says Tsura Goodman the midwife in her strange accent when she comes out to report on my princess’s progress. “She doesn’t make a sound.” She cocks her head, searching my face for something I am unsure of. She is a peculiar woman, this midwife, said to have descended from the wandering Gypsy folk. Her ancestry reflects in her dark skin and penetrating grey eyes. Her black hair is wound atop her head in a knot; loose tendrils escape to frame her olive-skinned face, and her dark beauty is as alluring as it is haunting.
The woman takes my sword hand. “Beautiful,” she says as she admires it, turning it palm up. “Beautiful and dangerous.” She raises her eyes to mine. I shudder. I have never been keen on what some call the dark arts; indeed, my wife’s attachment to her faery folk is unsettling enough. Looking at the woman before me confirms that she is in possession of something otherworldly. “Take care of its power, my good lord,” she tells me in an eerie tone suggesting that she speaks not by choice but at the command of some higher being with whom I have never become familiar.
“What are you about?” I snap, trying to quell my trembling.
She is unaffected, unafraid. Her full, claret-colored lips curve into a slow smile. “There is always a chance for redemption; no fate is ever certain,” she hisses in urgency, and the incongruity of her seductive expression and harsh tone causes me to start.
“Attend your charge at once, woman!” I cry, snatching my hand from hers and backing away, stifling the urge to make the sign of the cross and run in terror.
Tsura the Gypsy dips into a curtsy, then returns to my wife’s bedside.
I stand outside the chambers, studying my hand a long moment. I clench it into a fist.
Take care of its power indeed.
It is a boy! Another bonny boy! We call him Henry after the king and his son. He is a delight, so blonde and rosy. His eyes are lighter than his brother’s; their silvery blue gaze penetrates the soul as he studies me, his little face earnest as a judge’s. I find myself particularly attached to this wee mite, perhaps because I was here when he was born, and I love holding him, caring for him. It touches me to feel his tiny hand curling about my thumb and I marvel at his perfect small feet, an example of God’s attention to the finest details.
I never knew I could love like this.
The princess and I spend many an hour in the gardens with the children. She laughs more now. Our toddling Little Thomas brings her delight as he discovers his world; he is everywhere at once and it takes a great deal of energy to keep up with him, but it is energy we are happy to spare.
When Thomas is out of his swaddling bands and put into short breeches, assembling words into short sentences, following me about wherever I permit him to go, my princess tells me I should begin considering names for our third child.
I stare at her in wonder. How is it a man can be this happy?
The princess is eight months gone with child when the nurse tells her our baby, our Henry, was found dead in his cradle one spring morning.
I have never heard my princess raise her voice, but now she is screaming. The sound rips from her throat, raw and terrifying. She sinks to her knees before our lamb’s little cradle, thrusting her long arms skyward, bidding the Lord to answer for His decision. When at last she has collected herself, she turns to me, staring, large green eyes filled with questions I cannot begin to answer.
Tears stream down my cheeks unchecked as I approach the cradle. He does not look dead at all, his tiny head lolled to one side, eyes closed, fists curled by his chin. He is so still. I reach out to touch him, then draw back in horror. The warmth I had treasured when cradling him so close is gone. He is cold; the breath of life has departed.
I sob, great gasping, gulping sobs of despair.
There is no reason. There is no good reason.
I turn to the nurse, hot anger replacing the tears that I now wipe away in disgust. “Why was he not attended to?” I seethe.
The woman backs away in horror. “But he was—he was as he is every night, my lord. We checked on him right good, sir.”
“If that were so, he would be here with us!” I cry. “You are dismissed! This whole nursery staff is to leave this instant and I do not care where you go! May God rot your souls for your negligence!”
The woman retreats with the two rockers and nursery maids. I hear them fleeing, their voices raised in panic.
“Pray you make it out of here before I reach the door!” I shout.
I turn once more to the cradle. What do I do now?
“He was perfect,” I tell the princess in softer tones, shaking my head in agonised wonder. “I do not understand…. He was perfect. How can he be here one day and gone the next?”
The princess shakes her head, then sinks to the floor, rocking back and forth, inconsolable.
He did not have many effects. He did not live long enough. But I did save his first pair of little shoes, tucking them into a drawer in my desk, a strange reminder of lost perfection. I will not look at them … often.
We bury him at Stoke. He is too small to be traversed to the family chapel at Lambeth, so I do not bother. We receive sympathy from the royal family along with the Howards—indeed, everyone is well acquainted with loss. My mother had passed that same year and if anyone could have offered me counsel on the subject, it was she. But she is gone and the earl has remarried. Somehow his marrying within months of her death does not make his grief altogether convincing.
As it is, I do not care about anyone’s shared grief or stories of their own losses. All I can think of is my own, of the princess’s face as she asks me wordlessly, Why?
How in God’s blood am I supposed to know?
I fear for the princess, for the faraway look in her eyes. She no longer laughs. We do not speak to each other very much.
We await the birth of our next child, neither of us filled with the hopeful anticipation we harboured for the first two.
Yet when she brings forth another little boy, the knot in my chest eases a bit. He takes after me with his dark hair and skin, but is long like his mother. He seems healthy. I want to love him. I want to enjoy him. I don’t want to grieve anymore.
We call him William, Wills for short.
As he grows I find myself relaxing a bit. When he reaches nine months, the age our Henry was when he was taken from us, tension grips me. I awake in the night, crying out in terror. Sometimes I sit by his cradle all night to make sure his soul is not stolen from me.
But he lives.
It seems God will let us keep our sturdy little Wills.
In 1503 I am blessed with two other events. The first is the birth of a daughter, my own little girl to pet. We name her Margaret after our niece, Princess Margaret Tudor, which leads me to the second event. We are to accompany Princess Margaret to Scotland with my father and the rest of the family to witness her marriage to King James IV. I am thrilled about the journey for so many reasons, not only because of the royal exposure but because I will be with my entire family again. It will be a wonderful opportunity to acquaint myself with my father’s new bride, Agnes Tilney, and an excellent chance for the children to get to know their Howard relations.
“Perhaps I should stay home with the children,” my princess tells me before we depart. “I should not feel comfortable leaving them with a nurse, and bringing them does not seem prudent either. They could catch a chill, what with the nasty Scottish winds.”
I offer a dismissive laugh. “Father said the whole family is to go. I want to bring the children, treat them to a spectacle. We didn’t get to collect Princess Catherine from Aragon when she came to wed Prince Arthur, after all.”
My princess rests a slim hand on her heart. “God rest his poor soul,” she murmurs of the late prince. “He was so young and frail….” She casts her eyes to our son, little Wills, who cannot be described such. He is as robust as Princess Catherine’s new betrothed, young Prince Henry. She is not thinking of the late prince, however, or of the new Crown Prince. She is thinking of our boy, our Henry, and fearing the others perishing of the Scottish wind.
I clear my throat. “No use dwelling on all that,” I tell her, hating the awkwardness that has arisen between us since the baby’s death. “We are going to have a wonderful journey, my sweet, you will see. The children are going to love it. And they should be there to attend their royal cousin.”
My princess offers a sad nod of acquiescence and I find myself balling my fists in frustration, wishing just once that I could see a grin of joyous abandon cross that beautiful melancholy face.
Our Maggie is too young to appreciate anything, but she points her chubby little finger at her beautiful cousin Margaret Tudor, saying “red” in reference to the princess’s lustrous red mane, which seems to be a Tudor trait.
Thomas and Wills are beside themselves with pleasure as we progress north to Edinburgh and I tell them about all the famous battles that have occurred in this town or that.
No one looks at me the way they do; no one admires me as much. I am brought to tears by their flagrant adoration; as I had never admired many growing up, I didn’t realise children were capable of it themselves.
“When they are given love, it is returned,” says my princess when I comment on this as we sit in Holyrood Abbey, watching Princess Margaret become the Queen of Scots. She squeezes my hand. “No one will ever love you like a child,” she adds.
I press her hand in turn. A lump swells my throat. I wonder who our Maggie will marry; it seems odd to think the thought of it affects me far more than marrying off the boys. I suppose all fathers feel that way about their little girls.
I wonder how the king feels. Is it easy giving one’s children up to faraway kingdoms for political expedience?
King Henry is a practical man, however. I would be surprised if he gave himself over to such fancies. Indeed, I should take care that I don’t become some kind of blithering idiot, crying at weddings like an old grandmother.
I am fortunate that I do not have to think about alliances just yet; I have years before my Maggie is marriageable.
She will be at my side a good long time.
We return to Stoke to pass a happy autumn. The children are looking forward to Christmastide. Maggie is running everywhere and is far too smart for her own good, and Thomas is itching to have a suit of armour of his own. I tell him he must wait a year but am pleased to practise archery with him. He is a fine boy, full of potential and enthusiasm. He will be an asset to any king’s court.
These are happy days. My princess’s smile is brought on a little easier now. I have stopped waking up at night to check on the children. I enjoy living the life of a country knight.
My grandmother passes away that year and I admit little grief as her death was the stipulation in allowing the princess and me to live in more comfort. Besides, she was one of the few who lived to a ripe and proper age, and there is no use mourning a full life.
I save the mourning for the young and there are plenty of young to mourn for.
That winter Wills takes ill with a fever. He writhes and twists in his little bed, his black eyes wild as they make helpless appeals to the princess and me. We do not know what to do aside from calling the physician, who can only bleed him.
I hate watching the leeches attach to my little boy’s back; I cry when the butcher of a doctor makes little slits in the tender skin to allow escape of the bad blood that has corrupted my son’s humours.
It is all to no avail. Wills dies in his mother’s arms. The princess does not scream this time. She bows her head, allowing her tears to mingle with the sweat on our child’s brow.
I cannot watch this.
The only thing I can think of to do is chase the inept physician off my property with a horse whip.
“You did nothing!” I cry as he leaps onto his horse, his eyes wide in terror. “You killed him! You and your leeches killed my son!”
The physician rides away without looking back and I throw myself in the dust of the road, sobbing. There is nothing to be done. I look at the horse whip in my hand and in a moment of sheer madness bring it across my own neck. It curls about it and strikes my back. There is something strangely satisfying in the sting of this blow and as I watch the blood pour down my neck onto my shirt, I start to laugh at the insanity of it all. I strike myself again and again until my arm is too weak and my throat is too raw from the laughter that has converted to screaming, racking, useless sobs.
Thomas does not understand what has happened. He does not understand death. He asks about Wills daily, so much so that I have to extract myself from him. I take long walks and longer rides. I swim, immersing my body in the coolness of our pond. Sometimes I wish I would drown.
One day the princess finds me there, floating on my back, staring at the sky. I do not think of anything but the grey sky, grey as the Gypsy woman’s eyes, and the water that envelops me and comforts my broken soul.
“Come back to me, my lord,” she pleads in her soft voice.
She stares at me pointedly, then walks away.
In that moment, tears of gratitude replace those of sorrow. I rise.
Indeed, no one on this earth is wiser than my princess, for there is nothing that can be done but to press on. I cannot abandon the children who are here, looking to me for guidance. I cannot teach them that it is permissible to wallow in selfish grief while life surges on about me.
With new determination I dress and go into the house. To my children. To my princess. To the life I still have.
It is a vain goal, trying to seize something that is not mine to have, trying to hold in this hand, this hand that is said to be so powerful, the thread of life that binds my children to this world.
In early 1508 my daughter, my precious little Maggie, succumbs to an imbalance of the humours of the bowels. She doubles over in pain one evening at supper and we allow her to take rest in the nursery. I had thought she was trying to avoid eating the eels; she never had a robust appetite and hated trying anything new.
“You’re a manipulative little creature,” I tell the six-year-old, my voice stern. “Feigning a stomach ache to get out of eating supper. Well, you shall have nothing to eat, not one thing, for the rest of the evening, and I don’t care how much you cry or beg. You have to learn that you cannot always have what you want.”
How was I to know those would be the last words of mine she would ever hear?
The nurse fetches us moments later, her eyes wide with fear. “The little one has taken ill, my lord,” she whispers, crossing herself. “She is in such terrible pain …” She bows her head. “Such terrible pain.”
The princess and I rush to the side of the writhing child, her face flushed with fever, her black hair matted to her fair forehead with sweat.
I take her in my arms, rocking back and forth. She is clutching her little belly, her head lolling about from side to side in restlessness. There is no outlet for her pain. She reaches out for my face, seizing it between her tiny hands.
“It hurts, it hurts,” she cries. “Make it go away … please, make it go away!”
There is no physician to call. He would have done nothing but bleed her, anyway, and I could not have suffered it. I hold the little girl to my breast as she slips into delirium. She drops her hands. Her face relaxes, the black eyes glaze over, her small body goes limp.
And she is gone. In less than twenty-four hours she went from a healthy, jolly girl to this. Gone.
I stare at my princess in horror, but she cannot abide to be in the same room with death this time. She runs from the sight as though demons surround us, holding her hands to her ears to blot out my cries.
I hold my Maggie in my arms, rocking back and forth. I cannot let her go like this. She was just here. Maybe she isn’t dead. Maybe she will get better. I have heard strange tales in which people appeared dead only to have a resurgence of life moments later. Yes, this can happen for my Maggie. I must hold her a while, will my strength into her so when she wakes up she won’t be afraid.
I talk to her, I tell her she will get better, she is just sick. I apologise for scolding her about supper. I tell her she can eat whatever she wants whenever she wants if she’ll just come back to me. I tell her she must return so she can become a great lady and serve in the queen’s chambers someday. I tell her I am going to arrange a marriage for her with a strong, handsome knight.
I tell her she cannot leave because no one loves her like I do.
She does not move.
No matter, she just isn’t awake yet. She just isn’t awake yet, yes, that is it.
The princess enters collected and composed late that evening with two gentlemen servants.
“You must let her go now, my lord,” she tells me. “She must be interred soon.”
I shake my head. “I have heard of things … of miracles…. She might not be dead. She may be in that deep sleep some people go into and it takes them months or years to wake up…. What if we bury her and she is merely asleep?”
The princess’s eyes mist over with a pity I loathe. I avert my head. Why doesn’t anyone understand? Why do they all look at me this way?
“She isn’t coming back, Thomas,” she says.
It is the first time in our thirteen years of marriage she has ever called me by my first name.
She steps forward. “You must give her over now.”
“No!” I cry, clutching the child to my breast. “You cannot take her!” I kiss my daughter’s cool forehead, stroking her cheek. “I won’t let them take you from me, Maggie, not ever. I will be here when you wake up. I will always be here when you wake up.”
The princess nods to the servants. Some understanding passes between them and at once my arms are seized. The princess has taken Maggie in her arms and is carrying her away from me. I struggle against the men, crying for Maggie, cursing my wife.
I am too weak to break free, however. Perhaps some part of me knows I can no longer follow where she goes. I go limp, ceasing my struggling.
It is over. It is all over.
I press my face against Maggie’s pillow. It still smells of her, of lavender and roses and little girl.
I do not attend her interment.
My son Thomas isn’t the same after the echo of Maggie’s laughter can no longer be heard ringing throughout our house. He takes to his bed with severe headaches and requires possets to alleviate the pain. My wife attends him, sitting by his side, singing softly, stroking his brow and massaging his throbbing temples.
With me he discusses the other children; we talk about Heaven.
“You don’t feel any pain there, do you?” he asks me one day as I sit beside him while he clutches his head, tears streaming down his cheeks. “There is no pain in Heaven?”
“No pain,” I whisper, taking his hand. I swab his head with a cool cloth.
“And I will see my brothers and Maggie again?” he asks me, his eyes filled with hope.
I nod, swallowing the lump in my throat. “When it is your time, when God calls you to Him. But that will not be for many, many years.”
Thomas shakes his head. “No,” he tells me. “The angel who visited me last night said I will be coming home soon.”
I draw away from him in horror. “You are just sick with grief, Tommy,” I tell him. “We all are. Sometimes when we are agitated, we take on peculiar fancies. That is what has happened. One doesn’t really see angels or anything of that nature.”
“Mummy sees them,” says Thomas. “Only she calls them faeries.”
“Mummy sees nothing,” I say with a little more harshness than intended.
“What about the people in the Bible?” Thomas asks. “They saw angels all the time.”
I had never really read the Bible. I want to say I always intended to, but it isn’t true. I can’t bring myself to pick it up. I shrug. “Times were different then” is the best thing I can think of to say. “Do not worry, Thomas. We will get through this. You will feel better. We have no other choice.” I recall my grandfather’s words, words that seemed so cold but were the best he could come up with. “We are Howards.”
Perhaps it is better clinging to this abstract idea of a name and the greatness that can be associated with it than to the realness of people, people who are bound to leave in one way or another.
I rise, leaving his bedside. In the hall I encounter the princess, who has brought a basket of sweet-smelling herbs to the room along with some embroidery.
I seize her upper arm. Her eyes widen in surprise.
“What are you thinking, passing your fancies on to our son?” I seethe. “Aren’t we in trouble enough as it is without his having to believe in such drivel? There is nothing that can come of it. Shroud him with illusions and the world will be all the more cruel to him when reality sets in.”
“Reality has set in,” returns the princess. “And I can think of no better way to ease his pain and sorrow than with these ‘fancies’ of mine. What else have we to cling to but our faith in the unknown, our faith in something bigger and better waiting for us on the other side? If we have not that, we have nothing.”
I release her arm, half pushing her from me. “It is all nonsense. I’m sick and tired of it.”
Her face is a mingling of sweetness and pity. “Of course you are. But it isn’t that you’re tired of; it’s the death and the pain and the grief. You want something to blame, so you will blame anything to make sense of it all. I do not seek to make sense of it. There is no rational explanation that could ever justify what has happened. So let me keep my nonsense. I will lose my mind without it.”
“Perhaps, madam, your mind is long since gone,” I say before turning on my heel and quitting her presence.
Everything is so simple to her. I want to accept things as she does, but I cannot. I cannot throw myself into some fantasy world while reality stalks me with the relentlessness of a falcon.
I have never realised to this day how different the princess and I really are from each other.
The angel of Thomas’s vision claims him in August, four months after the death of his sister. His is a peaceful passing. He complained of a headache, something the princess and I had come to grow used to, and closed his eyes. That was it. He was gone.
Six servants hold me down to force a sleeping posset down my throat after I have screamed my throat bloody and raw for four hours straight. The princess takes her grief out of doors and sits swaying on a garden bench, singing to herself.
I am alone when I awake; my children are still gone. No amount of screaming against the fates or God or whatever force of divinity that decides these things will return them to me. I am silenced. I require no comfort. It is over, all over. My dynasty has collapsed.
As my heir and namesake, he is interred at the family chapel of Lambeth, and the occasion is celebrated with the property dignity.
Some of my siblings attend the funeral and we are approached by my sister Elizabeth and her husband, the ambitious and untalented Thomas Boleyn.
My sister wraps her arms about my princess in an impulsive embrace that she does not know how to respond to. She is rigid and almost frightened of the show.
I reach out, resting a hand on my sister’s shoulder. “Thank you for coming,” I murmur.
Elizabeth turns a tearstained face to me. “I don’t know what we would do if our situations were reversed,” she whispers, reaching up to touch my cheek with a long-fingered hand. “My God, brother, I’m sorry.”
I swallow the ever-present lump in my throat. “There’s nothing that can be done,” I say in husky tones. “They are gone. All gone.”
“There may be more,” says Elizabeth, her voice taut with desperate hope. When I respond with a cold laugh, she adds, “Oh, Tom … I don’t know if this is the proper time, but we would like to ask Lady Anne to stand as godmother to our new baby. We—we named her for her.”
“That is most kind. She will be honoured, I am certain.” I turn to the princess. “Won’t you be honoured to be godmother to your little namesake?”
The princess nods, her expression vacant.
I disengage from the group, allowing the Boleyns to discuss their children, sweet baby Anne and the promising little George, along with the rest of the family.
I want to be alone. I want to stand by my son’s tomb and recall when I first held him in my arms, how I stroked his hair, how I would coo at him and laugh with him. How he held his bow with such promise. How he laughed and sang and told his childish jokes that caused my sides to ache in genuine mirth because he was so convinced of their humour. I think of his eyes, so like his mother’s, alive with intelligence and mischief. I think of his sensitivity and gentleness. I think of his little clothes and shoes and the new armour I planned to have made for him this year. I think of the great knight that will never be, the grandchildren I will never see, the future we all have been denied.
I think of another child God has claimed for no good reason.
A silky hand slips into my own and I turn toward my princess.
“They know no more suffering,” she tells me. “At least now they are all together.”
“Yes,” I say, my tone oozing with bitterness. “Let us thank God for that.”
We cannot seem to speak to each other, the princess and I, and we take to our grief separately. I throw myself into the running of Stoke. I hunt. I read without grasping the words. I attend Mass, managing to separate the comforting monotony of sacred ritual from the God who I now find too callous to worship in private.
The princess keeps to the gardens. She leaves no more offerings to her faery folk.
We do not go to each other as husband and wife anymore. I want to. I want to reach to her, but something stops me, something in her, something in me. She has drifted further into her world and I am held back as well. I am not so ready to chase her; everything requires too much effort, and what comfort can we offer each other really? Empty words, useless embraces?
Nothing will bring them back.
We attend the christening of my niece and I do not allow myself the luxury of sentimental tears as I hold the child in my arms. She is not my baby. She is someone else’s pet.
My princess can neither hold nor look at the baby. Indeed, I almost find it cruel that she has been named godmother at all in the wake of her tragedy.
I look down into the black eyes of this child; she could easily pass for mine. I stroke her downy soft hair and offer a bitter sigh. “May fate be kinder to you, little Anne Boleyn,” I say to the trusting baby’s face.
I pass her to my stepmother, grateful to be rid of her.
I do not want to hold her.
I do not want to hold any baby but the ones that are gone, the ones I can never get back.
The Passing of a Crown
After a long battle with illness and severe pain, King Henry VII passes into the next world, joining his wife, who died in childbirth in 1503.
“Another family reunited,” says my princess, and I swear her tone rings with envy. “I suppose they have charge over our children now,” she adds as she helps dress me into the black velvet livery I have been issued as I am to be a lord attendant at the funeral.
I say nothing. This talk, as with anything abstract and impractical, frustrates me no end and I extricate myself with haste.
I attend my king’s funeral but am far from being lost in grief. My thoughts are dominated by the new King Henry, styled His Majesty rather than His Grace, so magnanimous is his presence, and the favour I hope he bestows upon me. The Howards are in the ascendant. I cannot help but feel a thrill of excitement as my eyes are drawn to the strong young king, who even at the tender age of eighteen bears an aura of pure energy and power.
I have a feeling serving this Henry VIII will be the adventure of a lifetime.
The king marries Catherine of Aragon, freeing her from her years of sparse living and enforced patience while the old king was hemming and hawing about whether or not he saw political advantage in a union with Spain. This is the first thing this feisty young king does, with special dispensation from the Pope granting permission to wed his brother’s widow on the grounds that their marriage was not consummated.
The June coronation is a grand affair. It seems this young king has a taste for extravagance. There is feasting, dancing, and masquing. I have entered the lists along with my brothers Neddy and Edmund for the jousts that are held in the king’s honour, and I take the prize for most skilled combatant on the first day, along with Sir John Carre. What a thrill to have proven my worth even on this small scale! I shall stand out among these pretty boys and show the king who will serve him best when battle really comes calling.
I doubt he is thinking of any of that now, however. Now is a time for celebration, for frivolity and fun, something this lusty Tudor indulges in without hesitation. This is going to be a far different court from that of his stoic, cautious father, but then, this Henry does not understand what it is like to have to struggle for his crown. His was given to him as God intends, with the passing of a monarch, not with bloodshed and battle. Sheltered and protected his entire life from the harshness of reality, this robust and rosy Henry thinks nothing of the sacrifices that brought him to his glorious apex. He thinks of his parties, of the culture he is set on bringing to England, of his bride.
It would be hard not to think of her. Queen Catherine of Aragon is at the peak of her beauty, though six years her husband’s senior. I admit it is difficult to tear my eyes from her as she sits in her box, where entwined are Cs and Hs on the royal canopy along with her symbol, the pomegranate, and Henry’s red and white Tudor rose.
She is an unusual Spaniard with her deep auburn hair and gentle blue eyes. Her skin is fair and I would never have guessed her to be the daughter of Isabella and Ferdinand.
I have the privilege of dancing with her at one of the masques. She is elegant and formal, keeping the proper distance between us, much like my own princess.
“We are compelled to offer our sympathies, Lord Howard, for the losses of your children,” she tells me in her softly accented voice.
I flinch at the mention of them and the queen squeezes my hand. Her eyes are lit with tears.
“I thank you, Your Grace,” I say. Knowing her to be a pious woman, I add for good measure, “But I suppose it is the will of God.”
“Yes,” she says with a nod.
We both know I do not believe it, but she is too gracious to call attention to it.
My princess does not dance much that evening, though she does accept a twirl about the floor with her irresistible nephew the king, while I am paired off with one of the queen’s young maids, the young daughter of the third Duke of Buckingham.
All I remember about that family was that the grandfather, the second Duke of Buckingham, was executed during the reign of Richard III for supporting Henry VII. It is that of which I am thinking when dancing with this child, who is young enough to be my own.
She examines me with fierce blue eyes. Indeed, they draw me from my reverie and make me call attention to her face, a determined little face with a set jawline. Everything about her is a paradox: delicacy and strength, angularity and softness. Her chestnut hair falls in thick curls to her waist and I find myself wondering rather stupidly if she sets it in rags or if the attractive asset is natural.
“You are Lord Howard,” she tells me.
I nod.
“I saw you in the jousts today,” she says. She cocks her head, her arresting eyes squinting as though they are searching for my soul. It is so disconcerting I have to avert my face a moment.
“And who were you hoping would take the day?” I ask her.
She shrugs. “I suppose you want me to say you,” she says and I cannot help but laugh at her candour.
“No, you may say what you like,” I assure her.
She smiles. “I should have liked Charles Brandon to win,” she says of the king’s boon companion, the handsome courtier who follows him like a lovesick pup. Noting my expression at the thought of the doe-eyed boy, she laughs. “No, in truth I am not so fond of Brandon. I just wanted to see what you’d do.”
“You are an instigator, Lady—”
“Elizabeth,” she says. “Elizabeth Stafford.” Her lips curve into a sarcastic little smile as her eyes take me in from boots to hat. “And you are the very devil.”
“How old are you, Lady Elizabeth?” I ask her, amused.
“I am twelve, sir,” she says proudly.
Twelve. The age my Thomas would be. I close my eyes a moment. Would I have chosen her for his bride? It would have been a good arrangement, the daughter of a duke for my handsome boy. But those are thoughts for the past and the past is gone.
The young girl standing before me will make someone else’s son a fine wife.
“Lord Howard?” Her low voice cuts through my reflection and I start. She offers a perfect little curtsy. “Thank you for the dance, Lord Howard.” She leans up to whisper conspiratorially, “And everyone wanted you to win, even the queen.”
I laugh as I watch her bound through the crowd. It catches in my throat as I find myself wondering when life will find it prudent to dole out its first cruel blow to her.
I shudder, longing for one day of not being assaulted by dark, bitter thoughts.
I return to the side of my princess and ask her to favour me with a dance.
She shakes her head, tears lighting her eyes.
“I do not think I can bring myself to it, my lord,” she says. “I am so tired.”
She coughs into a small handkerchief and upon pulling it away attempts to hide it in the pocket of her dress. It is too late. I have seen the flecks of blood on the cloth, bright as a cardinal’s feather in the snow.
We stare at each other in mutual horror.
BOOK TWO
Kenninghall
Elizabeth Howard (née Stafford), January 1547
Every time I think of my husband, I want to dance the fleet, light steps of a maiden. Of course this urge to avail myself to such joyous abandon is only due to the fact that he is now keeping company with his like, the rats of the Tower of London.
In truth my mood is far from celebratory. One can be triumphant and unhappy at the same time; my husband is a prime example of that.
God gives and God takes. He gives me the peace I crave, but my son is made sacrifice for it, my son Henry, who also sits in the Tower awaiting his fate. No doubt he is blaming everyone but himself for the arrogant and impulsive actions that led him to that dark and evil place—he learned that from his father.
I imagine I will not attend the execution. Thomas made certain to turn my little boy against me years ago. I mourned his loss long before an Act of Attainder was passed against him.
I sift through a casket of sentiments. No one would believe me to be in possession of such a thing; indeed, I rarely look at it save for when they die. Now, faced with more death, I open it again to find the poems written by Henry when he was a child and could barely make his letters. Pictures Mary, guileless girl that she is, drew of our “happy family” when she was too young to know otherwise. My daughter Catherine’s wedding ring. A dried flower my son Thomas gave me when he was five.
A miniature of the third Duke of Norfolk.
He had given it to me years ago; indeed, I think he passed them out to half the kingdom in case anyone should be overcome with the urge to admire him.
I stare at it now. How grave and proud he looks, holding his staffs of office in those elegant hands! His face is an impervious mask; it is a perfect rendering.
I must stop crying. Where have tears ever got me?
I clutch the miniature to my heart a long moment before casting it across the room. Good God, would Thomas be seen crying over a portrait of me?
He may never have cried for me, but there was a time … oh, yes, there was a time….
A Little Maid
I am installed as one of Catherine of Aragon’s ladies-in-waiting in the spring of 1509 at the great age of twelve, when the golden and glorious King Henry VIII ascends the throne of England. She is so beautiful, this unique Spanish woman with her charming accent and her silky auburn hair. She is pious and kind; her gracious sweetness warms me like the sun and I adore her.
She was first married to Prince Arthur. How we pitied her when he died, leaving her to live in a wretched castle with a meagre household and dwindling funds for six years while surly King Henry VII tried to figure out what to do with her. Once he even pondered marrying her himself after the death of his wife, the gentle Queen Elizabeth, but then decided against it in favour of a union with his son. He could never bring himself to carry it out, however. I think he enjoyed holding the King of Spain’s daughter hostage just as much as King Ferdinand liked dickering over the dowry agreement. It was a frustrating situation.
But Henry VIII set it right. He swept in, like a great glorious knight of old, and married the radiant princess. England could not be blessed with a nobler nor gentler queen.
They have a joint coronation ceremony and I am able to attend everything: the jousts, the parties, the fine banquets, everything. I stay up late and gossip with the other girls in the maidens’ chambers and we are beside ourselves with excitement. It is far better than home, where there was nothing to do and no one visited save old boring people who discussed the tedious things that old people relish, like their failing health and war and death. Oh, what a dreadful place!
But here! Oh, it is grand! At the joust celebrating the coronation, we pick our favourite champions; some of the girls give tokens, but the queen says I am too young so must settle on waving instead.
Many girls give their tokens to Charles Brandon, the king’s dearest friend, and the handsome Howard brothers, Edward and Edmund. As fetching as they are, my eyes are drawn to the oldest Howard, Thomas, uncle of the king through his wife, Anne of York. He is a compact man but rippling with lean muscle, and something about him makes me shudder with a mingling of fear and peculiar delight. His dark face is set with determination and he does not offer the easy smiles his brothers do. Curling hair black as pitch reaches his jawline and his long-lashed obsidian eyes seem distracted, as though not really as caught up in the spirit of the events as the rest of us are.
I watch fair Lady Anne tuck her token in Lord Howard’s armour. He kisses her cheek and she flushes furiously.
“Those poor souls,” whispers the queen’s maid of honour, Maria de Salinas, a woman so devoted to the queen that she opted to stay and suffer with her through her years of deprivation rather than return to the land of sunshine and oranges.
I arch a brow. “What happened?” I ask, eager for any court gossip.
“You don’t know? They had a houseful of children, three boys and a precious little niña. Lost them all.”
“Oh, how dreadful,” I breathe. This is not the variety of court gossip I enjoy. “Do you expect they’ll have more children?”
“Would you?”
I shake my head. I would never risk bringing another child into the world after such heartbreak; loving something that seemed destined to be taken away was rather an invitation for more pain.
We watch the jousting tourney, where Lord Howard takes the day. His victory is met with the briefest of smiles and a curt nod of gratitude but he is not as demonstratively ecstatic as his rivals are jealous. I find myself pleased that he has won some sort of recognition—not that it will make anything right for him by any standard, but it is nice to be favoured once in a while.
That evening at the entertainments, I am paired off with Lord Howard for a dance. It is strange. He isn’t a big man at all but there is something so powerful in him, an energy that flows through his elegant hand into my own. We talk of nonsensical things, the joust and Charles Brandon. I tease him a bit to bring a smile to his face. It is not easy, but I find at this moment it is what I wish for most.
When I am rewarded with a slow, almost nervous smile, I offer my most charming in return. He is an older man, old enough to be my own father, but I have no designs on him. He is married to a fine lady, after all.
I just want to see him smile.
The next day a miniature deer park and castle are set up in the tiltyard and there is a spectacular show in honour of Diana, goddess of the hunt. It is quite the display, with the lads slaying the stags and hanging their bloody carcases from poles for the delight of the ladies.
I cannot say that I am particularly delighted. I have never been keen on the idea of blood and gore, and from what I can tell, neither is Her Grace. She offers a tight-lipped smile as though trying to swallow a gag and waves at the gentlemen who are trying so hard to win her favour.
Charles Brandon is there along with all the Howards. They are quite handsome, even Brandon, who I love to tease because nearly everyone has taken a fancy to him. I haven’t. Despite his pretty face, it is easy to see he will soon take to fat.
Lord Thomas Howard takes part in the festivities with his grim face set in determination. He draws back his bowstring with skilled perfection, hitting every intended mark. There are moments when his expression softens as he gazes at his bow, but they do not last long. Whatever emotions he allows to creep into his heart this day, he manages to keep at bay.
“Pray for him,” the queen urges when she finds my eyes have rested upon him. I flush in embarrassment. “There are only two ways a man can go in the wake of such tragedy.”
I offer a grave nod, then bow my head and murmur a quick prayer for the poor wretched Howards.
I am relieved when the hunt is over and we are allowed to take some rest. I never thought there could be such a thing as too much celebrating, but when I lay head to feathers that night, I drift into the blissful sleep of the overtired, dreaming of all the happy things I have been pleased to bear witness to.
Long forgotten is the Howards’ tragic lot. All I can think of are the conduits of London running red with wine in celebration of our glorious king and queen.
On 29 June, the king’s grandmother Margaret Beaufort passes on. The bells toll for six days in her memory and I admit I am more saddened that our celebrations have been cut short than over the passing of that old curmudgeon.
Still, she was the king’s grandmother, which means she was the queen’s relation by marriage, too, so I give the proper deference and pray for her obstinate old soul.
When the period of mourning passes, the king takes to ruling his realm and everything is made merry again. Into the kingdom drift minds of more intelligence than I could ever possess and they bring to us their Greek and Latin plays and books, their ideas about religion and art and music, their passion, their energy, and novelty.
King Henry relishes his merrymaking. Everything is cause for celebration: feast days, holidays, anniversaries of this event and that. There is always jousting and masquing. The king loves leaping out at us in disguise and scaring the queen, who offers her sweet giggle and adoring eyes to the strong and bonny prince. Watching them, I am beset with fantasies about marriage and new love.
Love is all around at court. Not a day goes by when some letter or poem or token isn’t delivered to this lady or that from one handsome courtier or another. Even though the queen runs a devout and chaste household, it is far too easy to get swept up in dreams of romance.
“I think that you are awaiting the day when you, too, receive these love-gifts,” says Fra Diego Fernandez, the queen’s confessor, one afternoon when he finds me sighing in the gardens.
I offer the handsome Spaniard a bright smile. “Oh, no, sir, I do not think about such things.”
He laughs. “Of course you do! You would not be human otherwise!” He leans toward me, nudging my shoulder with his upper arm. “And besides, I won’t tell a soul—remember, I am a confessor.”
His nature is so jovial and inviting I cannot help but warm to him. Fra Diego covers my hand with his. “And you being such a fair child will no doubt have the suitors circling.”
Something about his physical familiarity alarms me. I withdraw my hand. “I am a chaste and virtuous maid,” I tell him in case he may be testing me for my fitness in the royal household.
He only tilts back his dark head to laugh. “Such a treasure!” he exclaims. He snaps off a rose from one of the nearby bushes, twirling it a moment between thumb and forefinger before giving it to me. “Here: your first token,” he says in a whisper before rising from the bench and making long confident strides toward another group of ladies, who are making sheep’s eyes at him.
I study the rose a long moment, confused and delighted.
So absorbed am I in reliving my moment with the handsome Spaniard that I do not notice the pair of feet rooted in place before me. My eyes travel up the well-turned legs to the trunk, which is swathed in fine livery, at last resting on the stern countenance of Lord Thomas Howard.
He snatches the rose from me and crumbles the petals in one fine hand before casting it to the ground. “Don’t be seen dallying with that,” he says in dark tones. “He is a knave and a scoundrel. Who is attending you? You should not wander by yourself.”
“And you should mind your own affairs, sir!” I tell him in haughty tones.
He laughs at this, but his is a peculiar laugh, lacking in real mirth. “My affairs?” He runs a hand through his curling black hair and sits beside me. I try to ignore the flutter in my belly at his nearness. “I recommend that you mind your own. Take care around the Spaniard. The ‘pious and devout’ friar who has you so caught up in his charms will bed anything that moves, my little lady. Everyone knows it.”
“My lord!” I cry, scandalised at his language. “Retract that statement at once! The queen would never trust her soul to a degenerate!”
Lord Thomas’s smile is filled with mockery. “‘Retract my statement’?” He laughs, that odd half laugh. “Am I in the presence of a little lawyer?” The smile fades to a grim line. “I cannot retract a truth. Her Grace is a trusting woman and stubborn at that. Anyone who can last six years in a dreary castle awaiting her fate is not faint of heart. People have warned her against her friar—even old Henry VII—but all to no avail. She will retain him despite his reputation because she does not believe it. She sees what she wants to see in those she loves—a most dangerous trait.” He regards me with penetrating black eyes.
Annoyed, I avert my face. “Well, I suppose he can’t help being a knave, he being so handsome and delightful, unlike some,” I add pointedly. “Besides, he was probably forced to become a friar by his family. He may not even want to be one.”
“You are a silly little creature,” says Lord Thomas. “And one of poor judgment.”
I turn toward him to glare.
“I may not be delightful,” admits Lord Thomas as he rises, “but I am exceedingly handsome.” He chucks my cheek.
“I suppose so,” I say with a slight smile as he retreats. “For an old man!”
“Heed my warning!” he returns.
When I can no longer hear the footfalls and soft laughter of the arrogant knight, I stoop down to gather up the petals of my first love token, cursing Lord Thomas for spoiling my fun and alerting me to the darker side of life at court.
Of Princes …
Thomas Howard, 1511
I have reaped many a reward serving our new king, this boisterous Henry VIII. Not only have I been elected into the elite ranks of the Order of the Garter but I have been given more lands than I know what to do with.
My princess is not as enthused about our triumphs.
“What will we do with it all?” she asks in her soft voice as we prepare to take to London to await the birth of the king’s first heir. “Who will we pass it down to?”
I shake my head. “We can’t pass it down to anyone if we … if we don’t …” I can’t say it. We have not coupled in three years; neither of us can bring ourselves to risk the agony that our unions seem to breed. Instead we watch with heavy hearts as everyone around us celebrates the births of their children. My brothers and sisters have given me a slew of nieces and nephews. Indeed, my own father has proven as fruitful with his second wife as his first, and I have so many new half brothers and sisters I cannot even remember some of their names. I do recall, with a measure of annoyed amusement, that he named another one of the brats Thomas, which strikes me as wholly unoriginal, but I suppose that is his matter.
It is hardest on the princess. When confronted with these rounded bellies and lusty little baby cries, I see her hand stray to her own flat stomach wherein lies a vacant womb too scathed by sorrow to bear fruit.
The queen’s pregnancy is the most difficult to bear, something that sends me into a rage of guilt. Queen Catherine delivered a stillborn daughter the year previous and I can well empathise with the anxiety she must be suffering while anticipating the birth of this child. Despite that I wish her nothing but the best, my heart still contracts in pain whenever my eyes travel to Her Grace’s belly.
The joy of the realm is a constant assault to our grief. The princess begs to be left at home for the duration of the celebrations that will follow the birth, but I stand firm.
“How would that look to our sovereign?” I ask her. “You have to go. We can’t be seen hiding like petulant children. The queen is a gentle woman and can identify with you, at least somewhat. I imagine she will take into consideration your loss and not try to draw attention to … things when you are in her presence.”
“How can that be avoided?” the princess demands, tears streaming down her cheeks. She begins to cough as she does whenever she becomes excited. Breathless, she collapses onto her chaise.
I sit beside her, checking the handkerchief that she so tries to hide. I don’t know why she bothers. I am well aware of the blood that stains it.
“You must stop upsetting yourself like this,” I tell her in gentler tones. I stroke her clammy cheek. “Their triumph is our triumph. We must celebrate with them just as they would with us should we ever …” There is no use saying that. We both know there will be no such celebrations for us.
But the princess seems just as content to pretend as I do and she nuzzles against my upper arm. “Yes, of course. Do pardon my foolishness.” She wipes her eyes with a slender hand. “I want everyone to be happy—you know that, don’t you? Oh, of course you do.” She offers a defeated sigh. “We must remove to London directly to share the joy.”
I stroke her hair and kiss the top of her head, wondering if we shall ever savour joy again.
The Prince of Wales is born at Richmond Palace on New Year’s Day, another bonny little Henry. How can I begrudge anyone this kind of joy when I see the queen’s face, so tender as she beholds her newborn son? Was not my own princess the owner of that same dreamy expression, was not her sweet face once filled with a love so overwhelming, none but a parent can appreciate it? No, now is not a time for resentment or envy. The princess and I give ourselves over to the contagious atmosphere of celebration that cloaks the kingdom.
My father is named one of the infant’s godparents, another mark of the king’s favour, and the earl’s eyes shine with triumph at the honour.
The king makes a pilgrimage of gratitude to the Priory of Our Lady of Walsingham in Norfolk, making the mile progress barefoot from Slipper Chapel to the shrine to light a candle and offer an expensive necklace. Bernard Flower, the Royal Glazier, is commissioned to create stained-glass windows for the chapel as another sign of his appreciation.
I think it’s a lot of showy superstition but hold my peace, for when the king returns, I am required to attend festivities the like of which I have never witnessed. The queen is churched and ready to commemorate the birth of her son with her husband and once the baby is installed at Richmond, they meet the rest of the court at Westminster, where the first of the jousts and banquets begin.
On 1 February, I tilt against the king, Charles Brandon, Edward Neville, and my brother Neddy with the lords Essex, Dorset, and Devon. Even mock battle sends that satisfying surge of heat through my limbs. Everything is so certain—you either win or lose. I savour the rawness of it all, the lusty battle cries, the clank of lance against armour, the pounding of the horse’s hooves against the field, the sweat, the breathlessness.
I look to the stands, to the queen sitting in her box, so merry and exultant, to my princess, so wistful and pained. I expect her thoughts have travelled down that wicked path, the path I catch myself wandering. All the what-ifs, all the wondering. Would our children have participated in the festivities today? No doubt Thomas and our Henry would have been betrothed by now and probably serving the king as pages. Wills and Maggie would have been too young to partake; they would have remained at home. We would have been choosing a tutor for them…. I have to stop this.
I concentrate on the sport, on the simple feat of ousting my opponents, which I am incomparably successful at, though I would never show up His Majesty. No one is foolish enough to do that.
The rigours of play work at our appetites and we are treated to banquets laden with more food than I have ever seen. Venison, hare, mutton, beef, stuffed capons, eels, fish, cheese, breads, sauces rich and savoury on the tongue, puddings, tarts, comfits, wines that warm the blood and bring a tingle to the cheeks. My appetite has changed and I cannot consume as much as in years past, nor have I ever been a drinking man, but in a place where everything is a contest, I am compelled to take in as much of both as possible. I am so sick the next day that it is all I can do to keep my eyes open against the blinding sun.
It is no bother. I am so caught up in it all that I live in splendid excess throughout the whole of the festivities.
By mid February, the celebrating takes such a turn that I am just as happy not to participate in the grandest tourney of all, in which the lads are dressed in such foppery that my princess must remind me to keep my mocking laughter to myself. The king, styled as Sir Loyal Heart, challenges his costumed knights in a spectacle that thrills the ladies and gives the gentlemen spectators something to drink to.
That night, after Henry has taken Brandon twice on the field, there is a pageant entitled The Garden of Pleasure in which the king, as Sir Loyal Heart, is dressed in such a stunning costume of purple satin with gold Cs and Hs dangling from it that even I am rendered breathless. Few believe the array of jewels hanging from his person are real, including the Spanish ambassador, and as we dance, His Majesty, in his endless display of jocularity, orders him to have a yank at one of them to see for himself.
This innocent gesture causes the crowd of onlookers to break into pandemonium. Apparently, they are under the impression that the court jewels are theirs for the taking. No one is safe. The king, who does not seem to be the least bit uncomfortable being manhandled, is stripped to his hose and doublet.
Contact with this rabble does not please me in the slightest and I do not hesitate to swat the offenders away with a closed fist. The most amusing aspect of the evening thus far is that my brother-in-law Thomas Knyvet is stripped to his skin and has to climb a pillar to avoid having anything else yanked at. Even the princess laughs when she sees Knyvet’s skinny white arse on display in the torch-light for the whole of the court.
When the assault closes in on the ladies, guards and gentlemen sweep in to push them off.
“Lord Howard! Help!” a shrill voice cries, and my attention is called to little Elizabeth Stafford. I turn to see a couple tearing off the sleeves of her Tudor green and white gown. The child’s blue eyes are wide with terror.
I force myself through the throng, taking her by the shoulders and pulling her away from a crude old woman and her toothless husband, whose hands were so busy in their task, they did not see me coming. It is all I can do to refrain from breaking the king’s peace and running them both through. Had she been my own daughter, I know I would not have hesitated and would sit out a spell in detainment somewhere as a result.
“What madness is this?” I seethe. “Get you out of here, hag!”
Startled, the couple begins to back away. “No offence, milord,” says the man. “We was just joining in the fun.”
“’Tis not your fun to be had!” I shout, moving toward them as if to strike. “Now be gone!”
“And take the bloody sleeves!” Elizabeth adds, finishing the job herself, throwing the sleeves at her assailants. “May they feed you for a month!”
She stands, a tiny pillar of indignation, shivering in the February air, hugging her little arms across her stomacher. I kneel before her and take to vigorously rubbing her upper arms. “Are you hurt?” I ask her.
She shakes her head. Her eyes are bright, fuelled with the same fire I imagine to be in mine when engaging in battle.
“Everyone is removing within doors,” I tell her. “We shall have a splendid banquet where you will be left quite intact for the rest of the evening.”
“Oh, how very disappointing,” she says, her mouth curving into that odd little smile, which is both sarcastic and disarming at once. Noting my expression of mock disapproval, she adds, “Thank you for rescuing me, Thomas Howard.”
“You are most welcome, Lady Elizabeth,” I say in turn as I lead her to the rest of the ladies.
When I encounter my princess again, I take her hand. “You were not hurt?”
She shakes her head. Her cheeks are rosy with a mixture of mirth and fever. “The little girl is all right?”
“Quite,” I say. I remove my hat, running my hand through my sweaty hair. “Perhaps it is best we do not have a daughter at court. I could not bear to watch her assaulted so.”
My princess’s face is stricken and I know I have said the wrong thing. I did not mean it, not that way, but the words are out and as she disengages her hand from mine, I note a new depth to the sadness already lighting her eyes.
There is no use apologising. What is said cannot be unsaid.
Nine days after the closing festivities, in which I had the honour of carrying the king’s helmet, the bells begin to toll. The little prince is dead.
My princess and I exchange a look of horror as we receive the queen’s messenger at our home in Lambeth. I do not understand why the queen has sent a messenger, unless it is to seek out my wife so that she may comfort Her Grace in her grief. The princess knows well the meaning of loss, and her gentle presence would console even the most hardened heart.
But it is not my princess who is sought. It is I. I am called by Her Grace with no other explanation and so, dressed in the black livery of mourning, arrive at the palace to learn what is required of me.
I am received in the presence chamber where Her Grace sits under her canopy of state, her face grave and aged. One would not recognise the gay young woman who sat in her box watching the knights joust in honour of her newborn son just a few weeks ago.
I bow, removing my hat. “Your Grace.”
She offers a brief nod. “We are pleased to ask you to ride in the Prince of Wales’s funeral procession as one of the six mourners.”
I am shaken. “Thank you for bestowing such an honour upon me,” I say at last. It is awkward to be honoured by such a sad undertaking, but it is a practical task and the queen and I are of like mind in practicality, it seems.
She averts her eyes a moment. “I have had two miscarriages,” she goes on, dropping the royal “we,” and I raise my head, startled as much by the familiarity as by the confession. Queen Catherine is never one to break with proprieties. “I thought that was suffering. But nothing compares to this. I have lost my first child, the first child to be successfully carried to term. He was so special, a gift I felt was hard earned and much anticipated not only for me but for the whole kingdom. A prince at last.” Her face adopts a dreamy expression. “There is something about one’s first child…. He will never be replaced. Even when we have another, this little Henry will always be considered my first.” Her voice catches on the last word. She turns grief-stricken eyes to me, her face arranged in an appeal. “How do you bear it, my good sir?”
“Dear lady,” I say, at a loss. “I—words cannot express …” Searching her honest, open face, I am struck by the thought that she is hoping I have some divine answer that will explain her tragedy away. I draw in a wavering breath. “I can say much about grief, but in the end, to someone whose pain is still fresh, all of my words would sound commonplace, empty, and as pointless to you as all the well-intended sympathisers did to me when I lost my children. So the only thing I will tell you about managing grief is this: Press on.” I swallow hard. “Find comfort in what you may, Your Grace.” I bow my head, then add in soft tones, “I appreciate your grief more than is in your estimation. You could not have chosen a more appropriate person to fulfil the obligation of mourner than I.”
The queen leans forward, resting a bejewelled hand on my shoulder. For a moment we are locked in each other’s gaze. Her eyes are wide with a mingling of fear and confusion. She bows her head, slowly removing her hand.
“We thank you for your service, Sir Thomas,” she says, still avoiding my eyes. “You are dismissed.”
I quit the chambers, unsettled and awkward and pitying another mother’s loss.
… and Pirates
I ride in the procession, sitting numb on my mount, keeping vigil over yet another dead child. The spectacle of a kingdom in mourning is too much to take in. I begin to tune it out: the sound of the church bells, the tears of the crowd, the queen’s anguished face.
The little prince is interred, grief is set aside for state business, and we forge ahead. The king recovers in time to go a-Maying, ordering the festivities to commence as usual. There is feasting and masquing and tourneys, in which my brother and I take part. We oust our opponents in typical Howard style and the king claps my brother Neddy on the back, thrilled by the display. He is far more familiar with him than with me. I tell myself it is my age that prevents me from having a closer relationship with His Majesty, but in truth, Neddy isn’t much younger than me. Rather, Neddy possesses charm and flamboyancy, attracting everyone to him without effort. He enjoys people where, as a whole, I am bothered by them. He is open and cheerful and converses for enjoyment, whereas if something isn’t being gained by the conversation, I have little use for the art. What’s more, he is ever ready to partake in any festive situation, bringing his own merry element, which itself proves endearing, else why would the king retain the useless Charles Brandon? I am not of the same nature as Neddy and Brandon so have not commanded the king’s personal attentions as much.
But what I cannot be as a courtier, I can make up for as a soldier. All the prowess demonstrated in the jousts and tourneys has proven worthwhile. We have impressed the king sufficiently so that he sees fit for Ned and me to take on Sir Andrew Barton, the pirate who has been terrorising our trade routes by capturing English ships under the pretext that they are in possession of Portuguese goods. Barton’s case is peculiar. His motives are based on an old family grudge: His father, John Barton, was captured by a Portuguese ship, and the King of Portugal never made amends. Thus the King of Scots permitted him to take any Portuguese ship that crossed his path, along with their goods. In truth I do not think he was permitted to take Portuguese goods off ships that weren’t from Portugal and this is certainly something that could have been smoothed over had Henry VIII only asked James IV. But my father is so eager to dissuade the king from supporting favoured councillor Thomas Wolsey’s encouragement of a French campaign that he urges His Majesty to engage Barton in the hopes of rousing a war with Scotland. Hence the Scottish king is not consulted.
I am not about to make suggestions. If the king is prompted by my father, so be it. My father’s interests are my own; his gain is my gain. If the king asks me to take Barton, I take Barton.
And so in August, I trade land for sea and, from the very first, know that I was born to it—the rolling waves, the salty spray, the eternal motion of the ship, all this coupled with the anticipation of impending battle.
We encounter Barton’s ships, the Lion and the Jenny Pirwin, on the Downs, that narrow roadstead off the eastern coast of Kent where warships patrol the gateway to the North Sea.
“Raise the willow wand!” I cry, indicating the symbol of merchant ships, so that we might lure him in. The Lion, which is being guided by a captain whose ship they looted the day before, comes about.
I stand on deck, gripping the ledge. I am tingling; power surges through my arms straight to my fingertips. My knuckles are white. The wind whips against my cheeks. I lick my salty lips. We lurch into a wave; the spray splashes me and I laugh out loud. There is nothing like this, not the love of a woman nor the cry of a newborn guaranteed to be stolen away—no, this kind of satisfaction is not given by another human being; it is achieved from within and I savour every moment.
The Lion is gaining. She is ready to take us. I stand firm, making certain that Barton sees the man who is fated to kill him.
“Cut the flags!” I order.
The flags are cut and we reveal ourselves to be the Enemy.
“Fire a volley—hit her broadside!” I shout. I am trembling as I watch the other ship closing in. We hit her with the cannons; the damage is not extensive but enough to rock her off balance and send the crew scrambling.
Barton is on deck, a formidable figure in his fine armour. About his neck is a golden whistle. He is shouting orders, indicating the strange apparatus his ship is outfitted with: weights suspended on large beams. They are peculiar and I imagine in the right circumstances quite effective. When someone climbs up the masts to release the lines on which the weights are connected, they can drop onto other ships. This is a machination I cannot help but admire, but only for a moment, as I realise Barton is hoping to utilise them against us.
I look to my archer, a Yorkshire man called Hustler. “Kill any who try to go aloft,” I tell him.
He offers a nervous nod, readying his bow. He aims. My body tenses, but there is even a thrill in the anxiety as I watch the arrow cut through the air to hit its mark, a young crewman attempting to scuttle up the mast, in the shoulder. He falls to the deck to be immediately replaced by another brave sailor attempting the same thing.
“Get him!” I cry.
Hustler draws back his next arrow and releases, again hitting his target.
After this is reduced to a monotony of death, Barton himself begins to climb the mast.
“Kill him,” I tell Hustler.
Hustler’s glance is unsure as he returns his eyes to the pirate.
“Kill him or die,” I say with urgency.
Hustler flinches. “I’ve but two arrows….”
“Use them well,” I urge.
Hustler draws. The first assault bounces off Barton’s armour like a twig against a stone wall. Trembling, Hustler reaches for his last arrow.
“Do it, man!” I command.
Hustler pulls back. Barton reaches up to assure himself better grip on the mast.
“Now!” I shout.
Hustler releases. The arrow slices through the air. I can hear it even over the shouts of the men. It pierces through Barton’s armpit, that soft bit of flesh left vulnerable to attack.
He falls; it seems too slow to be real. I watch him hit deck. Crewmen rush to his side.
“Fight on!” he orders in his brogue, loud enough for me to hear. “I am a little wounded but not slain. I will but rest a while and then rise and fight once more. Meantime, stand fast by St. Andrew’s Cross!” He raises his eyes to the Scots’ flag.
I shake my head in admiration. As my eyes travel to the sailors on board the Lion, I note how stricken they are. He is not only a good commander, he is also loved; it is not an easy combination to attain.
When Barton can no longer shout orders, he resorts to blowing his golden whistle.
And then the whistle is heard no more.
Barton is dead.
We bring in the Lion, where it is added to the royal fleet, and we are toasted as heroes.
I have won!
Elizabeth Stafford, Spring 1512
King Henry has joined the Holy League in an allegiance against France’s King Louis, who was hoping to conquer Italy. Everyone is drunk with war; even the masques and pageants all feature weapons and armour, and the themes are not at all as pleasant as they used to be. I must say, I blame the Howards. They are so hungry for conquest, any kind of conquest, that they started the whole thing with the slaying of the pirate Barton, giving the king his first taste of victory. If Lord Thomas Howard is any indication, once a man tastes victory, there is created in him an insatiable thirst for more. When the king sent him off with the Marquess of Dorset to engage the French army near Bayonne in early June, I thought the stern-faced man would break into a jig of excitement.
Now it is the king who is parched. He does not want to send others to fight his battles; he needs to be a part of them. He wants to be a warrior-king like his father before him and drink in a long draught of Tudor triumph.
Ralph Neville, a young courtier newly arrived, is quick to correct me as we walk in the gardens of Greenwich in late June. “The Howards are all about the Scots,” he tells me. “It is Wolsey who prompts action against the French, to reclaim our lost holdings there for the glory of King Henry!”
Whenever Ralph speaks to me, I am far too beside myself to think of war or anything disagreeable. Ralph will be the fourth Earl of Westmorland and was made a ward of my father in 1510. He was the lankiest, gawkiest, and most thoroughly awkward lad I had ever seen back then. But now! Now he is the handsomest man at court, tall and lean and self-assured, with honey-blonde hair and clear blue eyes that are so light they are almost silver. His smile is easy and he is quick to laugh. He has sought me out a number of times now for walks in the gardens and I relish every encounter.
“I don’t care who prompts what,” I tell him. “Whether it’s the Earl of Surrey or Wolsey or whoever; I just don’t want a war.”
“You’re not even the least bit excited to see the knights leave? It’s going to be quite a spectacle. I think the king will even make war an entertainment,” he adds with a laugh.
“It’s all a pretty spectacle till they return fewer in numbers,” I say in haughty tones. I lower my eyes, swallowing a painful lump in my throat. “My father is accompanying the king, you know.”
Humbled, Ralph reaches for my hand. It is our first touch. We are fifteen years old, two trembling youths wondering what lies beyond this brief contact of skin against skin. His eyes seek mine. They are soft and calm as the afternoon sky.
“If I offended you, I am sorry,” he says in sweet tones.
“I am not offended,” I respond, trying to keep my voice steady. “I just—I just agree with Father Colet. Don’t you remember his Good Friday sermon? He said ‘an unquiet peace is preferable to a just war.’”
“You must learn this now, Lady Elizabeth,” says Ralph, stroking my thumb. “That an unquiet peace can be more miserable than a decisive battle. One can live a whole lifetime in a state of unquiet peace.”
I do not know how to respond. I do not like being challenged this way. I would just like someone to see things as I do. I expel a heavy sigh of frustration.
“Your father will return, my lady,” he assures me. He bows his head. “Oh, I do wish I could be among them! But, alas, I must remain behind.” He casts a shy glance my way and I shiver in delight.
“I hope you can find ways to pass the time while everyone is harvesting their fruits of fortune on the battlefield,” I say with a smile.
He reaches up, tracing my jawline with a velvet fingertip. “I’m sure I can find something….”
He leans forward, pressing his lips to mine. They are soft and moist, warm, filled with sweet eagerness. Only loyalty to my good queen’s virtues gives me the will to pull away and stare into his face in bewildered joy.
“Ralph …” I murmur, just for the sake of saying his name.
He kisses my forehead. “I have longed for you, Elizabeth,” he says. “Say you are mine.”
The courtly language is not the least bit original but as it is addressed to me, I cannot help but offer a giddy little nod and say, “Yes!”
“When your father returns, we will seek his permission to be married,” he continues, his eyes wide with excitement.
I cannot say I really know Ralph altogether well, but he is so handsome and charming that the thought of being his wife has me nodding my assent, caught up in his enthusiasm. I am already imagining what our children will look like. They’ll have our blue eyes, no doubt. I begin to tingle.
“Oh, Ralph, do go away so I can find someone to confide our news to!” I cry, shooing him off.
Ralph laughs, rising from the garden bench and dipping into an extravagant bow. “Fare thee well, my wife,” he whispers.
My face flushes bright crimson. I lower my eyes, watching Ralph’s boots as they plod off.
All thoughts of battle and bloodshed are abated, replaced with fantasies of a grand wedding.
I shall be Elizabeth Neville!
The king departs with great fanfare. My father accompanies him with an entourage of six hundred archers, three hundred household servants, musicians—even the choir of the Chapel Royal! No one is left out of this campaign. Wolsey leaves, Bishop Foxe leaves—everyone. They are all dressed in the Tudor livery of green and white. It is a splendid farewell.
The queen rules as regent from Greenwich Palace and it is very quiet without His Majesty. In the company of Her Grace I help sew banners and badges and standards for our soldiers. As my fingers work the needle, I feel I am a part of something great, that somewhere in France someone will be carrying a standard or wearing a badge that I, Elizabeth Stafford, have sewn with all of my love and good wishes.
We follow the war from our safe vantage, learning that on 16 August the king and Emperor Maximilian I routed the French at what became known as the Battle of the Spurs, taking the town of Therouanne.
But the triumphs are accompanied by tragedies. We learn of the casualties. Thomas Knyvet, the shy courtier who amused us all by climbing naked up a pillar when the rabble stole his clothes at the festivities celebrating the late prince’s birth, died at sea off Brest when fighting the French. There are so many others, all young merry men eager for such useless enterprise.
With heavy hearts we mourn our soldiers. Soon there are no more banners to sew, no more standards to bear. The queen’s household grows smaller and smaller.
I am sent home to Thornbury that autumn, but to my delight, Ralph Neville, as my father’s ward, is there as well. As much as I am devoted to Her Grace, I am relieved to be away for a while. The household was so tense waiting for news of the king’s success that my gut was constantly churning and lurching in anxiety.
Now I have but to await the return of the king and his army in a more peaceful place with my betrothed at my side.
Change Winds
Thomas Howard, Winter 1512
It is a thoroughly disgusting affair. No one has come through for me, not the kings of England or Spain. I am short of supplies, horses, everything needed for any successful endeavour of war. I write to Wolsey, that ridiculous upstart, appealing for some sort of objective in all this. After our success at Bayonne, I am left with little or no direction. Should we try for Aquitaine? No one knows and they’re certainly not inclined to inform me.
Meantime I am beset with sick men, bad weather, and worse morale. Wolsey is blamed for it all, to my good fortune, and it is not long before I decide it prudent to wash my hands of the whole affair.
I hire ships to take us home. The king is in a Tudor temper, but there is nothing else to be done. I am not going to remain so that we might be obliterated by dejection, inactivity, and Spanish food.
And so I leave Spain behind. I have not failed. I cannot help if no one cooperated with me and I was given no aid or support. This affair could not have been handled more ineffectively. It is Wolsey’s fault, not mine. Yes, that is it. Someday the king will see that, hopefully sooner rather than later.
I will not think on it anymore. There will be other wars and other victories. For now I am content to go home to my princess and rest.
She is at Lambeth with my stepmother, Agnes, and her increasing brood. When I arrive, Agnes greets me with a sad shake of her head.
“She cannot rise from her bed,” she tells me in her gruff voice. “She’s in a bad way, my lord. I am sorry.”
I rush to her chambers, panic gripping my heart. It is thudding wildly in my chest; I hear it pounding in my ears. I slow my steps upon entering her sanctuary. Everything about her suggests the need for quiet and tranquility.
She lies abed. Her rose-gold hair is plaited and worn over her shoulder. Her skin is so pale it is almost translucent, pearly and ethereal as a seraph. She is so much thinner than when last I saw her. Once so tall and fine of figure, she is now all bones. Upon seeing me, she offers a weak smile. Her lips are blue.
“My lord …”
I have not cried in a long while, not since the death of my Thomas. I had thought to be through with tears forever, but now they come easily enough, flowing icily down my cheeks unchecked as I approach the bed. I am as tentative as the child I was when I approached my mother’s bed after she bore my Alyss, another life fated to be stolen from me.
I sit beside my wife, reaching out to stroke her fevered brow. I remove her nightcap. “This is making you hotter,” I say uselessly. Then in a strangled voice I add, “I do not understand. You were not this bad when I left….”
“Don’t be frightened, my love,” she tells me, reaching up to cup my cheek. With a slender thumb she wipes away a tear. Her eyes are soft, unafraid, and filled with something I had not seen in what seemed like an eternity: hope. “Soon it will be over. I am going to the faery country. I will be with the children.”
My heart lurches at this. She has not spoken of her faery folk in years. I do not know what to say. I continue stroking her brow, but my hand jerks and trembles and I imagine it does little to soothe her.
“I waited for you,” she whispers, coughing. “And now that you are here, I beseech you for your blessing, dearest Thomas.”
“You have it,” I tell her in urgent tones. “You’ve always had it.”
She closes her eyes. The smile remains.
“Princess!” I cry, cupping her face.
Her eyes flutter open. They are filled with pity. “Let me go, Thomas,” she whispers. “Let me go. Please. I am not meant for this world. I never was. You know that.”
Despite my urge to dispute this, I find myself nodding. It is true. From the first she seemed to belong to some other place, some intangible realm of existence forbidden to lesser beings.
“What will become of me?” I ask in a small voice, feeling as desperate and despondent as an abandoned child.
She offers a slight laugh. “I don’t worry about you,” she tells me. “You are a Howard. Howards survive.”
She avails herself of a fit of coughing. Blood spews forth, coating the front of her nightdress.
Now, I have seen much in battle. I have been drenched in the blood and gore of my enemies as well as my own, but nothing compares to this. This is my princess. This is not supposed to happen to my princess….
My heart skips in wild fear. “Somebody help her! Somebody help her!” I cry.
Servants flood the room, attending her with gentle hands. But she has no need of it. Her eyes have focused on her faery country; she is gone. I gesture for the servants to cease their ministrations. They depart, heads bowed, some making the sign of the cross.
I gather my princess in my arms. She is limp, heavy. I cradle her head in the crook of my shoulder, watching my tears glisten off her rose-gold hair.
I begin to sway, humming some tuneless song in nervousness.
I am alone. She is the last of my short-lived family.
I am alone.
After her interment, I lie abed at Lambeth, allowing myself the luxury of dwelling on the past. I do not scream or cry or rage against God. I think of my princess, of the first time I saw her at Westminster. I think of our wedding, of our babies…. I do not want to think of the losses just yet. I want to imagine them all twirling and laughing in some faery garden. I want to imagine her smile, her sweet soft voice, her gentle touch.
My father comes to me one night, interrupting my musings with more unwanted realities. He sits on the edge of my bed, regarding me with sad brown eyes.
“We both know what it’s like to lose,” he begins, folding his hands and bowing his head. “What I am about to tell you may sound cold, even cruel but, my son … you must move on now.”
“Move on? Are you mad? I just buried her!” I cry, sitting up.
My father nods. “Yes. She is gone. Now you must rebuild. You are an earl’s firstborn son. Someday everything I have will go to you. And then where? You need a young, sturdy wife and a houseful of children. Your marriage was dead long before your princess—”
It is all I can do to refrain from slapping him outright.
“I have arranged for you to meet with Buckingham’s daughters at Shrovetide,” he informs me, unaffected by my outraged expression. “You would do yourself credit to make a match with one of them. They are offering a good dowry and it seems the Staffords are of fertile stock.” He pauses, then reaches out to pat my leg. His tone is gentle. “We are not a breed who can afford to love. That is left to the peasants; call it their one great extravagance, their compensation for their miserable lot in life.” He shakes his head. “But us … no, not us. We marry for advantage; we marry so that we might be the founders of dynasties. It is a business, Tom. You were fortunate with your princess if you found some affection. But now you are of an age to put such nonsense away and look toward what is practical. Marry. Assure me a great line of successors.”
The anger fades to numbness. I nod, accepting the truth in his words. I am the son of an earl. I cannot leave my inheritance to a sibling or nephew. I have to rebuild.
The princess would understand. She told me I would survive, and part of ensuring that survival is marrying again. It will not be the same. How could it ever be the same?
“A Stafford girl,” I say, lying back down and closing my eyes. “I suppose it doesn’t matter who she is as long as she’s a good breeder.”
“Good lad,” says my father, patting my leg again. He rises. “Nothing like having your bed warmed again to abate your grief. That’s what I did, and Agnes and I have proven quite successful.”
“Yes,” I say in cool tones. “It is a good business.”
No longer will marriage be considered anything else to me.
Elizabeth Stafford, Yuletide 1512
Everything is so wonderful. Father is home safe but has been so preoccupied that Ralph and I have had plenty of time to be alone. He reads me poetry and sings me frivolous little songs. We play with the dogs and take long walks in the snow. My sister Catherine teases me.
“I see roses in winter!” she cries.
“Where?”
“On your cheeks!” She laughs. “Who put them there?”
We dissolve into giggles as I recount Ralph’s attributes. Is it his smile I like best or the silkiness of his blonde hair, or perhaps his spontaneous laugh? I shiver and giggle for no reason and every reason. Oh, to always remain young and in love and happy!
Ralph decides to ask for my hand at Christmas. It is the perfect arrangement. One of the primary benefits of taking on a ward is ensuring the right of marriage to a member of the guardian’s family—in this case, me. How could anyone object? It is probably what they have been planning all along.
While Ralph takes my parents aside in the parlour for a cordial meeting, Catherine and I wait in the dining hall.
“Father loves Ralph,” I say, my hands twitching in nervousness. “He must have had plans for him to enter our family from the start, don’t you think? Oh, Catherine, it will happen, won’t it?”
Catherine offers her gentle laugh. She is a plump and merry girl with deep dimples on either side of her rosy mouth and lively blue eyes. “It will be fine, sweeting. Don’t fret so. It was ordained from the start!”
My heart is pounding. My cheeks are hot and my breathing short. My head tingles. I don’t know what to do with my hands and keep flexing my fingers.
At last my parents emerge with Ralph. His face is drawn, his eyes are red, and his lips are puffy. He rushes past Catherine and me and I rise, trying to stop him, but am not quick enough. Father reaches me first, seizing my hand.
“I did not tell him no,” he informs me in his gentle voice. “But it must wait.”
“Why?” I ask, biting my quivering lip.
“We are having a guest,” he says slowly.
“What does that matter?” I furrow my brow in frustration.
He reaches out to rub my upper arm. “He is coming to look you girls over and decide which of you he would like to take to wife.”
Catherine and I turn to each other. I approach her, taking her hands in mine. We draw near one another.
“Who?” I whisper.
“Lord Thomas Howard.”
“Lord Howard!” I cry. “But he’s married!”
He shakes his head. “He is a widower newly made.”
“How newly?” I demand.
“Lady Anne Plantagenet passed in late November,” he replies, bowing his head. “God rest her sweet soul.”
“Gracious, he doesn’t waste any time!” I cry, furious.
“Elizabeth!” Father’s voice is sharp. “Remember yourself! His reasons are not for us to question.”
I look to my sister, who at thirteen is already more rounded in figure than I. As uncharitable as it may sound, I hope he chooses her. I shall have speech with her later about endeavouring to make a good impression on him.
My shoulders slump. “He’s so much older than we,” I find myself saying despite the fact that I wish to make him seem a favourable match to my sister. “He is at least forty,” I am compelled to add.
“That may well be, but he is an earl’s son and that family is rising in favour every day,” Father says, wrapping his arms about both our shoulders.
“And,” quips Mother, “you must admit he is in finer form than many men half his age.”
I don’t care a fig about that. Ralph Neville may not have Lord Howard’s well-turned legs, but he is the sweetest, most beautiful … oh, please God. I turn to my sister. She looks as dumb and appealing as any man would want a girl to look. Surely he’ll choose her….
Thomas Howard
It seems the sun still shines and the snow still falls. The birds sing and I manage to take in nourishment. I sleep and dream and think and live even without the princess. But the ache, that relentless dull throb filling my chest, encircling my heart like a coiling snake, never abates. It pursues me with the ardour of a new lover.
I divert myself with hunting. I watch the crimson blood of my kill stain the snow and try not to remember the blood of the princess against the stark white of her cheek. It is no use. Sometimes I sink to my knees with my bow amongst the silence of the trees, watching the sun filtering through the canopy of branches above. I watch a chipmunk scamper across the moss. Does he talk to the faeries? Does he know my princess? Can he tell her … What would I have him tell her? There is so much, and all left unsaid.
I abandon these strange fancies and at Shrovetide remove to Thornbury, where I must fulfil my obligation to my family and choose a bride.
The pre-Lenten celebrations are in full tilt when I arrive. A feast is laid out in my honour and though food holds little appeal for me now, save for the fact that it is what keeps me alive, I partake of the lamb in mint jelly, peacock, cheese, warm bread, and sweet comfits with feigned enthusiasm.
It is very strange, this choosing of a wife. My first marriage was arranged for me, which was most appropriate for that time in my life. I did not have to fret about a thing. Negotiations were made above our innocent heads and all we had to worry about was pleasing each other. That was easy to do.
But now it is different. Now I am in control of my fate and I must choose a wife, mother, and helpmate. And I have one night to do it.
I assess the girls. They are quite young. I recall the one called Elizabeth from our few encounters at court. Though she is on the thin side, she has grown into a beautiful young lady with her long waves of chestnut hair threaded with auburn tumbling loose down her back. Her blue eyes remain fierce and determined and she has retained that set jawline. Her smile is slow in coming but worth waiting for.
The younger sister Catherine is a beauty as well, though a little too plump for my liking. It is pleasant now, but I imagine once she drops a pup, she will give herself over to resembling the broad side of a ship, which just wouldn’t do.
Yet there is a sweet element in Catherine that seems lacking in Elizabeth.
How does one know what is right? We eat and make small talk but they say little. I converse more with the duke, who proudly lists his daughters’ talents and virtues, and I listen attentively. Catherine excels at embroidery, but Elizabeth can sing like a bird. Catherine is a beautiful dancer, but Elizabeth is a skilled equestrienne.
I will just have to see how this night goes.
Elizabeth Stafford
Look at him narrowing his black eyes at us as though he is assessing jewels for scrapes and flaws! Oh, I remember him right enough. A well-intended man but an arrogant knight nonetheless. Well, I shan’t do a thing to impress him tonight. I will be myself and say and do exactly as I like and if Father is displeased with me, so be it. Let him have Catherine. I love her and I truly don’t want to make her a sacrifice, but if it comes down to her or me …
“So, Mistress Elizabeth,” he begins, leaning forward to look down his long nose at me. “What is your favourite thing to do?”
“I enjoy passing time with young people,” I tell him in sharp tones. “Young, merry people.”
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