by Deryn Lake
‘Zachary,’ said Norfolk eventually, ‘I want to ask you about the Queen — Katharine. She was ill two weeks ago. What ails her? My spies are hot tongued with talk of poison.’
His bastard gazed into the fire, the flames reflecting strangely in his amber eyes and casting the broad Howard nose into shadow.
‘Of that I cannot say,’ he answered, ‘but she will only be on this earth another fifteen days and her heart will be rotted black through when it is cut from her body.’
Howard shuddered.
‘Then it will be poison?’
Zachary raised his shoulders, his black hair a nimbus lit by fire glow.
‘Yes, I think so. To be honest I have not delved too deep. There are certain things that it is wiser not to know.’
But the Duke was already conjecturing.
‘But by whose hand? Yet need I ask! That she-devil will be behind it. If men like Fisher and More can perish then what price the woman who stands between her and her stinking ambition.’
His dislike for his niece was now public after a bitter quarrel between them during the previous Christmas season. He remembered the involuntary raising of his hand to smite that clever dark face and how he recollected just in time who she was and where they were and had lowered it again, striding from the room in the most violent rage of his life.
‘By Christ, I hate her,’ he said to Zachary. ‘I shall never forgive her for what she did to you. Never.’
His son sat silent again, thinking how every piece of the intricate pattern of life fitted in one with the other. How every action, however small, caused another to ensue. How the laws of giving and receiving back — whether it be for good or for ill — were clearly charted in humanity’s pre-destined allotment so that the cycle of events must ruthlessly be acted out by all the participants. Aloud he said, ‘Yes, I understand.’
‘But you do not detest her?’
‘It is not my role to do so.’
Norfolk made a small ‘Tut’ of irritation.
‘Sometimes you are too good by half. I like my love, and my hates and my allegiances clear cut.’
Zachary gave him a grin.
‘Perhaps I am getting old. But let me reassure you. Tonight I shall perform a little magic, cast a small spell. Dabble in the arts that are not practised by those who are truly good.’
‘A love potion I suppose.’
‘Then you suppose wrong. On the contrary. I am getting rid of a mistress on behalf of a wife.’
He winked at the Duke but Norfolk was a leap ahead of him. The curl of red hair which betrayed Rose Weston and the obsessive love affair that Francis was having with Madge Shelton made the connection abundantly clear.
‘So Rose resorts to magic to get rid of her rival?’
‘Indeed. It is very effective I assure you, Lord Duke. Within a day and a night Sir Francis will be cured for ever. When all else fails a few words to a wax dolly ...’
He did not finish the sentence but burst into his captivating laugh rather relieving Norfolk who did not care for philosophy and other such cant.
‘Well the King’s tired of Mistress Shelton anyway. He thinks of naught but Jane Seymour who stands waiting to make her entrance with much high talk of virtue and virginity.’
Zachary rolled his eyes.
‘As good a mouth-of-meal as any.’
The Duke guffawed.
‘Why thou art a cynic. But what will become of Madge?’
Zachary’s face clouded momentarily.
‘She will end with none of her present lovers. They will all — go.’ Something about his look prevented Norfolk from pursuing the subject.
‘And Katharine is doomed for sure?’
‘I fear so. But she will be revenged, Lord Duke my father. A power will be summoned up, not by her because she is too pious but by one of her household.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘I don’t know. I was not permitted to see. But you unwittingly will have a hand therein.’
‘I? How?’
‘Sir, I know not. Question me no more for my wife comes and this must be spoken no further. I have experienced the Tower once in my life — I have no desire for it to happen again. You will keep the secret?’
‘Of course.’
But it seemed to Thomas Howard that the night outside had grown even colder and he who feared the dark not at all asked to stay beneath Zachary’s roof rather than face alone the freezing river and the thought of Katharine of Aragon’s death-blackened heart.
*
Anne Boleyn could never quite pinpoint the moment when she realized that Henry was no longer in love with her. Was it when Elizabeth had been born? Or was it when he had fixed her with his freezing eye and said, ‘Thou art the cause of this man’s death’ at the news of Thomas More’s execution? Or was it earlier? Not that it mattered. She had never loved him so the loss of his affection was immaterial. But what was frightening was to realize that without his protection she tottered on a yawning cliff face. The enemies of the Boleyns stood massed behind her uncle of Norfolk, behind Katharine and the Princess Mary, behind anyone who had the courage to speak out against her. She had risen from the gardens of Kent to royal estate too cleverly for many people’s liking. Even her cousin Sir Francis Bryan had deliberately picked a quarrel with her brother Rochford so that he might be allied with the opposing faction. It was disquieting to sit, pregnant and a little unwell, and know that only the possible birth of a Prince could keep a spark of interest burning in the King.
Christmas had not been the success that she had hoped. She had been unable to take much active part in the festivities, terrified lest the slightest thing should jerk the child out of her womb, and had been obliged to remain sitting down, watching her husband cavort with every woman he could lay his hands on.
Last year she had had to suffer the humiliation of her sluttish cousin Shelton hastening from bed to bed and grinning from ear to ear and now, as a final insult, with Twelfth Night only four days gone the sickly Seymour girl had arrived from Wolf Hall in Wiltshire as a lady-in-waiting.
‘And she waits,’ thought Anne. ‘God help me to have a son, for the King wears his falsehood like a new feather in his hat.’
She stood up feeling sick suddenly though whether through pregnancy or general unease she was not sure. Crossing to a basin she lent over it but the malaise wore off and pouring some water in she began to dab at her face. Tears were mixing with perspiration and she was glad that she had wiped them off for her door was being thrust open very impudently and instead of her brother or one of her set of friends Sir Richard Southwell, pompous but mouthing with importance, was coming in. He wore a curious expression — solemnity mixed with a scarcely subdued smile.
‘Like a pall bearer telling a joke,’ she thought.
He went on one knee and kissed her hand.
‘Madam, I come from His Grace. There is news from Kimbolton Castle. The Dowager Princess Katharine died there yesterday afternoon.’
She could think nothing except that those who had steadfastly maintained that Katharine was Queen of England and that Anne was nothing but a whore, a concubine, would not longer be able to do so.
‘So I am indeed Queen,’ she said rather stupidly. Southwell stared at her.
‘Yes, your Grace,’ he answered as if she were a backward child.
But then, oh then, the door was filled with Henry’s immense bulk and he was smiling and walking towards her with his arms outstretched and picking her up very gently, just as if Jane Seymour did not exist, and saying, ‘She’s gone. That weeping sore, that blemish. Sweetheart — she’s dead. We shall wear yellow for the mourning.’
It was so comforting to feel safe again, to have the reassurance of his warmth protecting her from ill wishers. But just at the back of her brain a small thought nagged.
‘If he can say this — can actually rejoice — over the death of a woman devoted to him for twenty years then what might he say about me?’
Eve
n as he swung her carefully off her feet the chill of fear struck.
*
Henry was in the lists. In plumed armour he loomed astride his mailed horse, a laughing destroyer, for in truth he hadn’t felt so much joy in many a month. The old hag of Kimbolton was dead. Anne was pregnant and Jane offered sweet surrender when he had pandered to her virtue long enough. And he had been feasting and dancing ever since the news of Katharine’s death had reached him. The Court had just finished Christmas, had just removed the cold cloths from around their throbbing temples, when he had declared a new bout of celebrations. So they had all picked up their feet and gone on the round of pleasure once more. And none louder — or more tasteless, so many thought — than the King himself.
And now it was time to joust, to show the world that at forty-four he was still the strongest and the toughest — and to give Mistress Seymour food for thought about his capabilities in the bedchamber. His opponent had raised his lance to him, the powerful horses, heavy mailed, stood at the ready and with a kick from his sturdy spurred legs they were crashing towards one another. And then nothing — falling, a huge weight upon his chest and oblivion.
‘Dear Christ, he’s dead,’ said Norfolk starting to run. ‘The King is dead.’
Somebody pulled the mighty horse from across Henry’s still body and yet another bent over to put his ear to the King’s chest. But through that mass of armour there was silence.
‘He’s finished,’ said the Marquess of Exeter, his raven face suddenly pinched and grey.
With a sinister familiarity, as if he was speaking lines from a play, Norfolk said, ‘I’ll tell the Queen,’ and was moving off towards the royal apartments before anyone could advise him otherwise. Again there was that feeling of pre-determination, of something immutable, as he pushed past the gentlemen ushers at her door, strode through the Queen’s ladies and arrived before her. He gave the most peremptory of bows, looked into the tilting dark eyes of the woman he disliked most in the world and said shortly, ‘Madam, the King is dead — killed by accident in the lists.’
Anne’s future passed before her in a flash. Elizabeth too young to ascend the throne; Mary, smarting and vicious with the many insults heaped upon her and with the great Catholic lords of the land rallying to her side, as the new Queen. And for Anne no mercy at the hands of Katharine of Aragon’s daughter. Why should there be? Mary had been shown none.
‘Oh Christ help me,’ was all she said before she fainted.
‘How could you be so brutal, sir?’ snapped Lady Lee angrily. ‘She is in the fourth month of pregnancy.’
Norfolk gave her a dark look. Nothing ever again would make him feel one whit of sympathy for his niece.
‘Facts are facts, madam,’ he answered curtly and in silence strode from the room. But when he went back to the tilt yard it was to find that Henry was only unconscious and had been carried to his bed with every physician in scurrying distance sent for. And after two hours of his life seeming to hang in the balance he woke up with nothing more than cuts, bruises and a thundering head.
It was Dr Butts himself who took the news to Anne and, though the look of relief on her face amazed him with its intensity, he nonetheless didn’t care for the pinched, white lips that smiled their thanks.
‘Stay in your bed, your Grace. Just for a day or two. You have had a severe shock.’
‘Yes, yes,’ she answered a little weakly. ‘It has all been very distressing.’
He wondered what she meant by ‘all’ and if there was any truth in the rumour that Anne had caught the King with Mistress Seymour perched on his knee and had actually watched him run his great hands over the lady-in-waiting’s eager breasts before her shout of rage had warned them of her presence.
‘May God grant your Grace good health.’
‘Thank you, Dr Butts.’
Another drawn smile made him think that the girl he had once attended at Hever for the Sweat had almost vanished now, all that power and vitality quite subdued. Life was a humourless jest when all was played out and yet there was a certain grim justice to it. The mantle of Katharine had fallen like iron on the shoulders of Anne and silly, plain Jane now trod Mistress Boleyn’s path.
‘Ah well,’ said Dr Butts to himself.
But within six days he who, like all his kind, had made himself hard and uncaring gulped in sickness as he was summoned to the Queen’s apartments and saw what lay waiting. On a towel, minute but with formed hands like a delicate star fish, was a dead foetus and he needed no careful examination to see that it was a boy. And as if this wasn’t enough the room was filled with the most terrible sound for the Queen was howling. Not crying or sobbing or weeping but baying like an animal. It sent his spine into a tremor and it was as much as he could do to part the heavy curtains of her bed and mutter the familiar phrases of comfort that he used to women in such circumstances. But she did not hear him anyway. She was a knot of grief and pain lying like her dead son, knees drawn up to her chin, eyes staring straight in front of her, mouth open and that unearthly sound coming out.
‘Give her this, give her this,’ said Butts urgently, searching in his chest for the strongest opiate it was safe to administer. ‘She must be composed by the time His Grace comes.’
‘Does he know yet?’
‘Yes he knows,’ and he thought of the cry of fury — not of anguish or concern — that had burst from Henry’s lips.
‘How dare she, how dare she, lose my boy?’ he had said. ‘The woman must be unable to bear sons. I do believe I am always to be plagued thus.’
And he had stormed round the room muttering and cursing beneath his breath.
Eventually the palace had grown calmer. Anne had fallen into a drugged sleep, the little cadaver that was all that was left of the Prince of Wales had been taken away, Henry had got drunk. And when he had consumed enough and when he had been told that Anne was fit to be seen he had stumped along the corridors still wincing from the bruises of his fall, and flung open the door to her bedchamber, his eyes blazing with hatred.
‘So he’s dead,’ he said. ‘You lost my boy.’
She knew then, even with her drug-clouded brain working slowly, that everything — her love for Harry Percy, her revenge on Henry and Wolsey, the capricious teasing that had gained her a throne — had been for nothing. It was over. The trap of her own making had finally snapped shut. It was only a question of time now before he got rid of her in some way or other.
There was nothing to lose, so she said in a voice made flat by the sedative, ‘It was not my fault.’
He laughed frighteningly.
‘Then whose was it? Mine?’
‘Yes!’
He looked as if he would like to choke the life from her but he remained standing where he was.
‘Explain that.’
‘When you fell in the lists my uncle of Norfolk told me that you were dead. It frightened me into aborting.’
‘But that was six days ago.’
‘You overlook the fact that I also caught you in the arms of the Seymour woman and that had already put me in a state of shock.’
‘You should have been like Katharine and not looked for trouble,’ he said shifting his weight from one leg to the other.
‘Perhaps Katharine didn’t love you,’ she answered flatly.
His fury erupted.
‘I now see that God does not intend me to have any sons by you and I intend to obey His command. You’ll have no more boys from me, madam.’
She just stared at him blankly with those great dark eyes of hers and said nothing. She neither wept nor pleaded which would have been more acceptable than her air of resignation and faint disgust.
‘Then so be it,’ she said.
It was only as he re-entered his own apartments that the King suddenly realized the significance of the date — January 29, 1536. It was the day of Katharine’s funeral! Even as Anne had thrust that pathetic, unformed heap of flesh into the world, the leaden coffin may well have been lowering to
its resting place. It would seem that the Princess of Aragon had leaned from her grave and had the last and final revenge after all. It was in a grim mood that Henry Tudor went limping off to console himself with the virtuous primrose Jane Seymour.
And it was with a shiver of amazement that the Duke of Norfolk realized that Zachary had been right. The play was drawing to its close. The Queen had aborted with a fright caused by his own rough words and in so doing had lost her final clutch at supremacy.
19
As if at a touch from Oberon’s wand Sutton Place which had been brooding before him, dark and oppressive, was suddenly illuminated by the moon. Francis drew breath. He had never seen da Trevizi’s masterpiece more beautiful. The tower of the gateway soared into the night sky, each pane of its many windows sparkling with crystalline iridescence; the triumphant shape of the east and west wings rolled back seemingly for ever; the stained glass of the Great Hall glowed with fire from a thousand rainbows; and each amber brick, each fantastic ornamentation, each moulded pediment glittered like quicksilver. The mansion had never been more graceful yet more exciting — transformed by lunar magicianship into a castle for immortals to dwell in, for fairies to claim.
And this thought put Giles into Francis’s mind; that pudding-basin haircut, the split-pumpkin grin that had been so much an everyday part of his childhood; the jumps and somersaults done with such anxiety to please. And now he lay, God alone knew where, his bones long since picked clean, his empty eye sockets gazing for ever up at the sky beneath which he had lived so long. He had believed in the unseen people, in the power of the mystic carbuncle blessed by the woman of Salisbury. But its magic was gone into the sea and Francis was protected no longer.
He looked once more at Sutton Place and saw it fall beneath a shadow as the moon flirted amongst the clouds. And in that extraordinary light he had the illusion that the house was partly ruined — lonely and sad and decaying. And he who had never worried too greatly about what lay ahead felt racked with an unfamiliar concern for his father’s mansion and for the people, yet unborn, who were destined to live there. Of course it was just the gloaming that made him think he saw two young girls run through the Gate-House arch and deluded him into hearing them laugh and call to each other.