by Deryn Lake
‘Admiral d’Annebault, if I steal your charming partner might it mean that the peace treaty between our two countries would go unratified?’
The Admiral made an elegant salute. ‘It is up to the Lady, whoever fair creature she may be, hiding her beauty behind her mask.’
So that was to be the game. ‘Her identity is not known to me either,’ answered Thomas smoothly. ‘But such loveliness is too tempting. Madam, will you have me?’
‘Yes, Sir,’ said Katherine’s low voice steadily and with that she put her hand in his.
It was enough! Their locked fingers became channels for communication, for thoughts of desire, for love; their very touching triggered off a whole new set of deepest feelings.
‘Don’t speak,’ said Thomas, so quietly that she could barely hear him. ‘There are ears everywhere.’
But Katherine could not help herself. As the dance brought them close together for the last time she whispered, ‘I love you,’ and was rewarded with a, ‘Forever,’ before they finally drew apart.
But there was one thing left to say. Thomas flicked his gaze to where the King sat at the high table, a massive padded figure inert as a doll, only the movement of his boiled-egg eyes showing that he lived. Then he mouthed, ‘Not long now,’ and flicked his gaze once more. The nod that showed she understood was barely perceptible as Katherine curtsied and left Thomas Seymour’s side for the rest of that evening.
*
Before Admiral d’Annebault finished the round of celebrations organised by Henry Tudor to mark the end of war between England and France, he had two private commissions. The first was very much his own; to visit a child he had fathered on a previous visit to London, long ago when Anne Boleyn had still been Queen, and take presents for her and her mother, a young widow of rank, subsequently remarried. The second was on behalf of his own King; to seek out the astrologer Zachary, who lived not far from Greenwich Palace, and obtain a year’s astrological prediction, his supply of which had been badly curtailed by the war.
Because his time was very much at the disposal of the English, the Admiral found himself unable to undertake both errands and as only he could carry out the first he sent his young aide-de-camp Comte Lucien Harfleur to obtain the King’s horoscope. Harfleur, having been informed that the astrologer’s house was more easily reached by water, duly set out in one of the two state barges put at the Admiral’s disposal for the duration of his stay.
The young man, on his first visit to England, enjoyed this journey downriver, watching the other craft skimming past and the fish leaping out of the water beneath the big white daisy clouds of England in late summer. Lazily he sprawled back amongst the barge’s comfortable cushions, fascinated by the river-light which dappled his skin and the point of his beard, and burnished his bright, uncomfortable clothes. He was suddenly good humoured, not caring that he was to see some foolish old man in a rundown hovel, determined to make the best of everything. He was pleasantly surprised therefore, when the barge pulled up to a well-kept landing stage and a man, working in the extensive gardens, came through the orchard to take the mooring rope.
Lucien clambered ashore. ‘I have come to see Dr Zachary, my good fellow,’ he said in careful English. ‘Would you take me to him.’
A strange expression crossed the servant’s face. ‘Dr Zachary is not here, Sir.’
A little of Lucien’s good humour vanished. ‘How long will he be gone?’
‘That I could not say, Sir. If you would be so good as to step up to the house I will get someone to see you.’
Rather irritated, the Comte followed the gardener up to the spacious dwelling place, well-timbered and very expensive, or so thought Lucien, to be owned by a soothsayer.
The gardener ushered him into a reasonably sized hall and the Comte took a seat, gazing about at the tapestries and furnishings and surmising shrewdly that this particular astrologer must be very well connected. He was still looking at everything when a slight noise made him realise that somebody else had come in, and he glanced up to see what he took at first to be a child, in the doorway. But as the dark beauty approached he saw that she was older than he thought, in her late twenties, the impression of youth being created by her small stature.
‘Sir,’ she said, holding out her hand, ‘I do not know who you are but I believe that you have come to see my husband.’
Lucien gasped. ‘Your husband, Madam? No, I do not think so. I seek Dr Zachary.’
‘I am Mistress Howard, his wife.’ The little thing laughed suddenly, and Lucien got a flash of clover-coloured eyes, very big and bright. ‘I hear from your voice that you are French, Sir,’ she went on. ‘Pray, whom do you represent?’
‘I am Comte Lucien Harfleur, here on behalf of the King of France himself,’ answered Lucien importantly, and was very slightly annoyed when Cloverella wrinkled her nose in a smile.
‘Oh yes, of course. They were old friends. I would imagine that his French Majesty has missed his annual horoscope.’
‘Yes,’ said Lucien huffily, ‘that is correct. But if Dr Zachary is not here …’
‘I will cast it for you,’ Cloverella put in, adding hastily as she saw the Comte’s face change, ‘I am quite qualified to do so. I was trained by my husband and have part Romany blood. So follow me. He always worked in his narrow room nearest the stars. Now I do so too.’
Sensing a mystery, Lucien went with her silently, climbing to the top of the house and then up the narrow stairs that led to the attic. Here he saw symbols and charts, dark corners and a glaring one-eyed cat. He caught a little of the fear and suspense of others who had come this way and very quietly drew in his breath.
Cloverella sat on the other side of the desk and poured him a generous pitcher of wine before she drew forth a pack of tattered cards.
‘I have had these since I was a girl,’ she said, ‘and was taught their use before I was five. One of my grandmothers was a gypsy woman, the other the daughter of a peer. Blood, blood, it flows just the same as wine, does it not?’
She offered him the cards to shuffle but Lucien put both his hands over both of hers, noticing how firm to the touch her skin was.
‘Madame, much as I trust you — and believe me I do’ — he kissed her fingers, one by one — ‘I am here on behalf of His Grace François, King of France. With the greatest respect I am duty bound to tell him why it is the soothsayer’s wife who will draw his horoscope and not the man himself.’ Lucien looked down at the cards. ‘And also why she is offering to read my future.’
Cloverella smiled. ‘I thought you might be interested in that, Sir. But as to why my husband is not here, even I do not know.’
Lucien frowned. ‘What do you mean?’
The small face looking into his lost colour. ‘Monsieur le Comte, my husband vanished three years ago.’
‘Vanished?’ repeated Lucien in horror.
Cloverella smiled wanly. ‘Oh, not through any mystical happenings. He was not whisked away by fairies.’ She bit her lip. ‘At least I do not think so. The fact is that he went to visit a great family in Venice and never returned. Neither he nor the ship upon which he sailed were ever seen again. I can only presume he is lying upon the floor of the ocean somewhere.’
With an acuity that surprised him, Lucien asked, ‘Do you believe that? As a Romany do you sense he is dead?’
For the very first time Cloverella looked at him with real interest. ‘That is just the point. I don’t. Somewhere I am sure that he is still alive. The air does not carry the vibrations of his death, do you understand?’
‘Yes,’ said Lucien, though he didn’t, not a word.
‘So I have continued to keep his house running as if he will some day return to it. Monsieur, I had little money of my own, being something of a poor relation, but through using my magic arts — just as once he did — I have built a considerable reputation and patrons that were previously his now come to me. Though I have only very few servants I have kept his two sons here and have paid for t
hem to be well educated by a tutor …’ She said this with considerable pride Lucien noted. ‘… so that one day they will be able to go forth and get a position with one or other of my cousins. I have turned Fate round to my advantage, Monsieur, but meanwhile my quest to find my husband is no further forward.’
Lucien, who had instantly formed a passion for this young and vulnerable witch, said earnestly, ‘If you will be kind enough to tell me all the details of Dr Zachary’s disappearance, Madame, I will ask my royal master if any of his many spies can get information. The recent war has thrown things into turmoil but now that we are once more at peace …’
Cloverella leaned forward over the desk. ‘Monsieur le Comte, would you really do that for me? I would be so obliged to you. Yours is the first positive offer of help that I have received.’
Lucien, both protective and passionate in one engulfing moment, said huskily, ‘Be assured, Madame, that my life is at your disposal.’
Her face lit up cheekily. ‘I will try not to ask for it, Monsieur. But now shuffle these cards then cut them into three with your left hand, the hand that connects with the heart.’
Unbelievably flushed, Lucien said, ‘Which flutters at this moment like a trapped bird.’ He kissed her fingers. ‘And which, Madame, I lay unquestioningly at your feet.’
Chapter Thirty-Two
Edward Seymour, Lord Hertford, had come back from victories in both the wars as a hero; even his wife’s indiscreet behaviour which had implicated her with Anne Askewe was forgotten. But by stark contrast the Duke of Norfolk and the Earl of Surrey were in sulky disgrace and on returning to England took themselves off to Kenninghall immediately, to lick their wounds and mull over the future. Henry Howard, or so it seemed to the Duke, had now gone a little mad. A brilliant boy in many ways and a considerable poet of the school of Sir Thomas Wyatt, his grip on reality had started to diminish when Sir Thomas died. A series of disastrous and unrequited love affairs had not helped; one with his Fair Geraldine, the child Elizabeth Fitzgerald, who had married the elderly Sir Anthony Browne when she was fifteen and gone off to live in Battle Abbey; the other an enormous passion for Edward Seymour’s wife, Anne, a passion of which the Duke had been highly suspicious. Had the whole thing been done to annoy Edward, or had Surrey really taken leave of his senses and fallen in love with this heavily married and haughty lady?
Then there had been the incidents of bad behaviour in London when a gang of young courtiers, led by Henry Howard and Thomas Wyatt, the poet’s son, had smashed the windows of churches and respectable aldermen’s houses. One night they had rowed on the Thames and shot pellets at the ‘queans’ — their word for whores — on the towpath. The gang had frequented Mistress Arundel’s cookhouse in St Lawrence Lane and eaten meat during Lent and Surrey, in his cups, had boasted that his father would stand for King should anything happen to Henry. Fortunately for Henry Howard the King was fond of him, calling him, ‘the most foolish proud boy in England’, and the Earl had only served a short sentence in the Fleet prison for his crimes. But these youthful indiscretions boded no good. Surrey had become outspoken and volatile to the point of idiocy, and consequently enemies lurked everywhere.
Once more the Duke of Norfolk, desperately anxious about the disappearance of his bastard son and the disintegration of his legitimate, tried to make peace with the Seymours by offering Mary Howard’s hand in marriage to Thomas. But again Surrey had intervened, blaming the Seymours for all his misfortunes and savagely screaming at his sister that she should make haste to marry Thomas and then become to Henry Tudor what the Duchesse d’Etampes was to the King of France. The whole affair had been most distressing as Mary had run from the room in floods of tears. As 1546 drew towards its end the Duke of Norfolk mournfully thought that his fortunes had never been so low.
*
By the generosity of the King both Seymour brothers now had fine houses in London within the vicinity of Temple Bar. Thomas, granted his home in 1545 but never there for his own very personal reasons, had characteristically renamed Hampton Place Seymour Place, but Edward was more discreet, continuing to call his establishment Chester Place.
Since the Earl of Hertford’s return from the wars it had become the habit of the Privy Council to meet in his house and on this particular night, with the Council still in lengthy session, the main topic under discussion was the weighty matter of the arrest of the Duke of Norfolk. Edward, despite every accusation levelled against him by Norfolk’s son, still had no hatred of the clan, seeing them as a spent force. But there were others who did not agree and it was the repellent Wriothesley who put their thoughts into words.
‘That old serpent will not be stayed until his fangs are finally drawn.’
‘But he is old,’ Edward argued reasonably. ‘In his seventies. He can’t do much harm now.’
‘Father and son both should be put down,’ said someone lower down the table. And as there were sounds of assent Wriothesley added, ‘With Surrey under arrest in my house it is our duty to summon Norfolk for questioning about him.’
Earlier in the month Sir Richard Southwell, a Norfolk Member of Parliament, had given evidence against Surrey on matters touching the Earl’s loyalty to his sovereign. Typically, Surrey had exploded with wrath, vowing to fight Southwell in his shirt. Now both men were detained for further examination in Lord Chancellor Wriothesley’s home.
‘I say we issue a warrant for Norfolk’s arrest,’ said Richard Rich.
‘He is Earl Marshall of England, remember,’ Edward answered mildly.
‘Then he should have brought his son up better,’ retorted Wriothesley, barely concealing his claws. ‘Let the old man be brought to London.’
‘Aye.’ The voices were rumbling all round the room.
‘Lord Hertford?’
Edward sat silent, his dark features unreadable, his eyes shuttered, remembering something from four years earlier: a memory of the Earl of Surrey in the throes of passion for Anne, writing poems to various parts of her anatomy which he could not possibly have seen; pursuing her wherever she went, leaving flowers and letters wherever she would sit and walk; begging her for a kiss or even a glance and planting a suspicion in Edward’s mind that had never quite gone away. He was certain Anne had not gone to bed with Henry Howard, yet how had he known about that mole …
‘Lord Hertford?’ The voice was insistent now.
‘Yes?’
It had been a question but the other Council members took it as a sign of assent.
‘Then a warrant shall be issued forthwith for the arrest of the Duke of Norfolk,’ said Wriothesley with satisfaction.
‘So be it,’ answered Edward, and finally raised his hand to be counted.
*
In its sleeping state the figure lying carelessly on a low sofa which stood, cushion covered, on a raised marble platform in a window embrasure, seemed transformed back to its youth. With one hand thrown above his head, the fingers entwined in his own dark curls, the man looked heartrendingly vulnerable, almost innocent. Sleep had smoothed out the lines of the face so that it seemed that of a very young person, on the edge of experience, not worldly. And the body was lean, taut, far from middle years.
The room in which the sleeper lay was high, vaulted, blue mosaics dominating the walls, the stones made of two different shades, one the fierce bright blue of midday sea, the other sharp as wild jacinths. The windows, set loftily and barred without, were also dominated by blue glass but this of a more complex colour. A depth was in this blue that seemed unfathomable, not midnight, not indigo nor turquoise, but something of all three. If any creature had borne an eye this shade, it could only have been an angel.
In the middle of the floor, which was made from cool marble slabs but covered with sumptuous carpets, thrown hither and thither as if they were the merest trifles, a fountain trickled softly and continuously. Made from wrought iron, a twist of leaves supporting a bowl decorated with lions’ heads, it was small, being only thigh high, yet its seductive so
und dominated the room. Lamps matching its simple design hung from the ceiling, which was decorated with a pattern of dark green flowers painted on a background of Reseda. Soft light was everywhere, blue as a mosque, grey as mist.
The sleeper had experienced earlier the strange sensation of leaving his body, of rising above his prostrate form and travelling through time. In his dream, hallucination, whatever it was, he relived a scene from long ago, looking up into his father’s broad face, seeing it sharp with anxiety.
‘Will I outlive His Grace?’ came his father’s distant voice.
‘By a cat’s whisker you will.’
The scene faded and now the dreamer stood in a churchyard looking at two graves packed closely side-by-side. On one grave had been planted a sweet briar eglantine and on the other a rambling rose. The rambler had grown into the eglantine which held it in its branches like a lover.
The dreamer turned away and walked uphill to where a lofty castle dominated the scene, passing through the external fortifications without difficulty and then entering the great hall unseen. Climbing the stairs he went directly to the room he knew so well, the room to which he had been taken as a boy, the room where his father and he had exchanged confidences.
A hunched old man sat in the room, his head plunged into his hands wretchedly. It was hateful to the sleeper to see the game old fellow weep and yet he could do nothing to stop it. Miserably he stood beside his father and saw the tears trickle down the grizzled cheeks and out through the woven fingers.
‘So many years of service,’ said the old man, shaking his head from side to side in a terrible bewilderment. ‘So many years, to be rewarded like this.’
In great distress the dreamer leaned forward and put his hand, light as moth wings, on his father’s shoulder. He did not feel it, he did not even look up.
‘Father,’ called the sleeper, ‘Lord Duke my father. I am here.’