The Scarlet Peacock

by Field, David

  ‘King Louis is no doubt already soiling his hose at the news that we are threatening to align with Maximilian,’ Foxe observed with a sneer.

  ‘How soon will he know?’ Henry enquired.

  ‘By sunset today, sire,’ Foxe advised him. ‘My man at the French court is trusted, primarily because he is believed by Louis to be his man. The information went by fast horse as soon as Thomas here passed it to me.’

  Thomas reminded himself that in this pool of intrigue, false intelligence and downright treachery, he was out of his depth. But something still puzzled him.

  ‘If King Louis has been advised of what he will surely regard as treachery by England, will he not rise against our possessions in Calais?’

  Lovell burst out laughing, then almost choked on his chicken leg, while Foxe smiled indulgently at Thomas.

  ‘His first ambition is Milan, is it not? And he is even now being informed that England has just aligned itself with the most powerful monarch in Europe. When one is standing up to one’s neck in the sea, the last thing one needs is an incoming tide.’

  Thomas persisted.

  ‘And if Louis insists on laying siege to Milan, are we prepared to commit men to the side of the Holy Roman Emperor, as I promised him?’

  ‘Tell him, Lovell,’ Foxe replied with a smile. Lovell, who had regained his composure, smiled and explained.

  ‘Louis will not now attack Milan. That was the whole purpose of your visit to the Emperor, Thomas. Louis fears that should he do so, he will bring down two armies upon his head.’

  It was Henry’s turn to smile.

  ‘You see how I am well served by my Council? The mere threat of our joining Burgundy, and Louis will hold his hand. By this means we have bought off the urgent entreaties of Spain that we take up arms against France. Everyone is satisfied, and we have no need to seek the grant of more taxes from Parliament to equip and dispatch our armies.’

  ‘The Emperor seemed genuinely surprised to learn that Louis was planning to lay siege to Milan,’ Thomas recalled. ‘We were fortunate that we did know.’

  ‘My man at King Louis’ court again,’ Foxe advised him with a proud grin. ‘The same man who will now warn him against it. All that is now required is that you, Thomas, advise the Spanish Ambassador of how Louis was frightened off, and Ferdinand of Aragon will hopefully cease his constant demands that we attack France, which would cost the Treasury dearly.’

  ‘You can perhaps now perceive, Thomas,’ the King added, ‘why there was no time to be lost in your mission to the Emperor, with which I am most contented. There can be no question of my rewarding you directly, since Foxe here advises me that we have not the money. Nor would it look good were it voiced abroad that I bribed a priest in order to instil fear into the heart of the King of France. But there is another way in which I can put riches in your path. We have need of a Dean of Lincoln – would such a post appeal to you?’

  ‘Indeed it would, sire,’ Thomas enthused, already in his mind ordering a new set of robes for his installation, ‘but your Majesty is over generous, I fear.’

  ‘I do nothing for nothing, Thomas,’ the King replied, wiping his mouth with a napkin in a well established sign that he had eaten sufficient that also served as a warning to others around the board to cease eating. But drinking was another matter, and as Henry refilled his goblet he fixed Thomas with an unbroken stare.

  ‘You were a school friend of Thomas Howard, I believe?’

  Thomas frowned, then chose his words carefully.

  ‘It is true, sire, that he and I were at the same school at the same time. However, as for friendship, I fear that I was too fine a scholar to earn that from him. Had he allowed me to assist him in his studies, perhaps, but as things fell out . . . . . ’

  ‘But you became a schoolmaster, nevertheless?’ Henry persisted. Realising that the King had been well briefed on his background, Thomas opted to maximise his opportunity.

  ‘Indeed, your Highness, it was my great pleasure and privilege, while the Head of Divinity at Magdalen College, to tutor the three excellent sons of the noble Marquis of Dorset, the stepbrother of your most gracious late Queen.’

  ‘Both feet,’ Foxe chuckled, as a smile spread across Henry’s face.

  ‘So you are well experienced in tutoring those of noble blood?’

  ‘Yes, sire,’ Thomas admitted with some reluctance, unsure of what he had just let himself in for. Without breaking his stare, Henry allowed his smile to broaden.

  ‘I wish you to begin to attempt to instil some book learning into the young Prince Henry, Thomas. He is an indifferent to poor scholar, since his main delight is with knightly show and dangerous sports. If the firing of arrows at retreating deer, the rattling of opponents’ heads in the tiltyards, the launching of hawks into the sky and the tupping of eager ladies in waiting gave a man learning, then young Hal would be the foremost scholar in Europe. As it is, he knows as little of Latin and Greek as he does the internal workings of the human body, and he cares even less. If he is to take his place upon the throne of England – as he must do within months, if this ever-weakening body of mine does not deceive me – then he must be swiftly assisted to make up for all those wasted years when his grandmother, the Lady Margaret Beaufort and my own dear mother, wore herself to the point of exhaustion in her attempts to instil in him something other than a seemingly burning desire to get himself killed in the tiltyard, or to acquire some foul pestilence from a Palace whore. See to it, Thomas.’

  With that, the King rose from the table and retreated through the door to his bedchamber, still carrying the wine goblet. Thomas followed him with his stare, stunned by the responsibility that had just been imposed upon him. He felt Foxe’s reassuring hand on his shoulder.

  ‘Courage, Thomas. Prince Henry is indeed the wild card of the suit, but consider the matter this wise – you have daily access to the man who will soon be king, and who will be in awe of your learning. When he claims his throne, if he be his father’s son, he will choose to have about him those in whom he can trust. This is how Lovell and I attained our high office. And so I bid you good evening.’

  As he walked out alongside Lovell, the latter turned back to Thomas with a smile.

  ‘Good luck, Thomas.’

  Two days later, in Prince Henry’s chambers in Richmond Palace, Thomas rapidly appreciated how much luck he was going to need. Henry, an athletic, handsome youth of seventeen, had the scholastic attainments of an average nine year old, and only interested himself in even the English language because he could employ it in order to write sonnets and lyrics for tunes that he would compose on his lute. Whenever Thomas tried to engage ‘Hal’, as he preferred to be called, in the language of the Classics, he would find some way of diverting the conversation into one on heraldry, hawking or armorial bearings, which were more to his interest, and a complete mystery to his frustrated tutor.

  However, Thomas had learned enough about the ways of the Court to realise that there was something to be gained from every acquired fact, if employed to advantage. He quickly came to appreciate that Henry was headstrong, wilful and totally committed to his own desires, and wanted nothing to do with affairs of state. He would shortly become a young, pleasure-driven king with a vast Treasury at his disposal and, as Foxe had taught Thomas, he would wish to leave the affairs of state in the hands of those he trusted, while he went off hunting, jousting or whoring. All that Thomas needed to do was to ensure that he was trusted, and the world would fall into his cassock pockets.

  There was only one topic upon which Hal seemed to require Thomas’s guidance at this stage in his life.

  ‘Does not the Church say,’ he asked Thomas one dismal November afternoon in which the rain cascading off the roof of Richmond Palace had convinced even Henry that he was better off indoors, ‘that it is a sin to lie with one’s brother’s wife?’

  ‘Indeed it does,’ Thomas replied, slightly taken aback. ‘The Book of Leviticus.’

  ‘And yet my fathe
r insists that I wed the Spanish dumpling?’

  ‘He does so for reasons of state, Hal,’ Thomas advised him in hushed tones. ‘It is to England’s benefit to be allied with Spain, and it was doubly unfortunate that your brother Arthur died when he did, leaving Katherine a widow at so young an age.’

  ‘Did Arthur manage to fuck her, think you?’

  Thomas’s eyes flew wide open at the bluntness of the question, and the crudity of the language in which it had been expressed, then he dropped his pious gaze to the richly carpeted floor. ‘I am an ordained priest, Hal, and such matters are not within my experience. Still less am I party to such intimate secrets.’

  ‘He would need to have been desperate to tup her, even were he capable of raising his flagstaff for the purpose. She smells of olive oil, did you know that?’

  ‘Indeed I did not, and how would I?’

  ‘You do not hear her confession?’

  ‘Only your father’s. But in furtherance of your original question, it was always my understanding that the prohibition in Leviticus to which I referred applied only when there had been carnal connection.’

  ‘So if Arthur didn’t fuck her, then my father can force me to marry her, and the Church will not defend me against my obligation to bed her, hold my nose and somehow try to spend my seed inside her?’

  ‘I must humbly beg you not to press me on matters of which I have no knowledge or experience,’ Thomas replied, red in the face with embarrassment. ‘I can, however, advise you that marriage to the Dowager Princess of Wales would be something against which the Church would advise. But I am also obliged to advise you, privily, that for every sin there is an absolution, and for every contemplated sin there is a dispensation.’

  ‘It seems to me that your Church is as flexible as a wet rope,’ Hal smirked back. ‘If I choose to wed her, there is a dispensation available should it transpire that Arthur took her maidenhead, but that if I choose not to smell her in my bed, your Church will find some pretty argument to defend me from it. Your Church is one of convenience, Thomas.’

  ‘It is God’s church, Hal,’ Thomas muttered.

  ‘I wonder if God would agree with that,’ Hal replied with a triumphant grin. ‘But at least I know that I can always come to you for a convenient pathway out of any sin I may be contemplating, or may have committed. For the right price, of course.’

  ‘May we continue with this translation, your Highness?’

  ‘No we may not,’ Hal replied with a stubborn set of his lip. ‘We may continue with your opinion of this latest sonnet. And please call me Hal, if we are to remain friends.’

  This frustrating process was not destined to continue beyond the New Year of 1509, when King Henry’s health took a frightening turn for the worse. Thomas was constantly at his side whenever the physicians had finished fussing around him, and whenever possible he averted his attention from the look of fear in the royal eyes, the mucus and blood on the royal pillow and the rotting smell from the royal bed. At times when Henry was lucid, Thomas constantly reassured him that God would not choose this time to take from England the most generous, pious, gracious and beloved monarch that it had ever known, while ensuring that he said Mass every morning, even if Henry was unconscious. Sometimes, when he was, Thomas administered the last rites just in case this might be Henry’s last day on earth.

  Then came the day when the royal physicians finally agreed on something – that Henry would not see another sunrise. They gathered around his bed from all parts of the Palace, and more widespread parts of London. Princess Mary sobbed onto the bony shoulder of her royal grandmother, Foxe and Lovell muttered between themselves, the physicians came and went with their potions, and Thomas yet again administered the last rites, almost off by heart this time. Late in the afternoon Prince Henry appeared at the foot of the bed, wreathed in sweat and mud from some royal park or other, and averted his gaze as if reluctant to be reminded of the mortality of human life. As Thomas finished the last service he would ever perform for the monarch who had raised him thus far, he lifted his head and met the eyes of the scared young prince. With an almost imperceptible gesture of his head, he indicated to Hal that he wished to speak with him outside the death chamber, and the young man needed no further encouragement.

  ‘Is he marked for death this day?’ Hal asked. Thomas shrugged his shoulders.

  ‘This day or the next, the outcome is not far away, Hal. I shall soon be calling you “sire”.’

  ‘You will continue to call me Hal or I will have your head,’ the prince joked weakly, ‘but I would have your counsel as to what I must do next.’

  Thomas drew him to a bench in the hallway close to the chamber doors, and they both sat down. Thomas took a deep breath, said a short prayer for guidance in his choice of words, and placed his hand on Hal’s shoulder.

  ‘I am your friend, Hal, and would aye be your counsellor at this solemn time. But you must know that the throne is unpopular with the people, due to your father’s misguided reliance on two men who between them have lined their pockets at his expense while letting the blame therefore rest with him.’

  Hal’s eyes widened. ‘You speak of Foxe and Lovell?’

  Thomas smiled with relief; this was going to be easier than he had feared.

  ‘No, I speak of Dudley and Empson, who have plundered the wealthy and taxed the poor. Should they remain in office – or indeed in this world – then I fear a popular uprising against the throne, led by the London mob.’

  ‘What must I do, Thomas?’

  Thomas jerked his head towards the chamber doors.

  ‘I will return in there shortly, and seek to persuade all those with knowledge of your father’s death, when it comes, to speak nought of it for two days. In those two days you must secure the arrest of Dudley and Empson on charges of treason and have them conveyed to the Tower with great public show. Then you must yourself retreat to the Tower, for your own protection against any mob. I will of course come and go regularly, to keep you advised of how matters progress, and will ensure that during that time you want for nothing. No-one will suspect a humble priest going about his business, and within two days we may begin to plan your coronation, with great splendour if you would follow my advice. The common people love spectacle.’

  It was Hal’s turn to grip Thomas’s shoulder, then he looked up expectantly as the chamber doors swung open, and the doleful face of Richard Foxe appeared. He looked down the corridor at where Thomas and Hal were sitting.

  ‘It is time, Thomas. And a defining moment for you – sire.’

  As Thomas and Henry rose glumly to their feet, Henry turned again to his mentor.

  ‘I will find some way to repay your good offices, Thomas.’

  ‘And I will assist you even in that,’ Thomas smiled back at him reassuringly.

  Dudley and Empson were arrested within an hour of King Henry’s death, and were already secured within the Tower before the new king reached it, along with a select royal bodyguard. There he waited impatiently for Thomas to join him, occupying his time pacing the floor in the royal apartments deep in thought regarding how his accession would be viewed by a populace to whom he had not in the past given a great deal of thought. By the time that Thomas joined him, he was seriously concerned.

  ‘Is there yet any sign of rebellion, Thomas?’

  ‘Fear not, sire. As yet, the people are unaware that the King your father is dead, and hopefully they will remain in ignorance for at least another day. On my way in here it was necessary to prove my identity to the commander of the Yeoman Guard, whose men are posted thickly around the entrance to your apartments, from which we may safely conclude that there can be no attack upon your person. As to any challenge to your throne, we shall perforce have to await any rival claimants.’

  ‘There can be none, surely?’

  ‘Only from those few who remain within the pack of Yorkist dogs, of whom the most worthy claimant, your Plantagenet cousin Edmund de la Pole, has long been confined within
these very walls, and according to my sources of information has all but lost his reason. But that does not exempt you from making your own claim to rule England stronger than it is at present.’

  ‘What must I do, Thomas?’

  ‘First, you must disclaim the policies by which your father grew rich. He has left you a healthy Treasury – much richer than it was when he won the crown from Gloucester – but it has been at the expense of the wealthy merchants and the nobility, most of whom would throw their hats in the air were you to proclaim that there will be no more taxation.’

  ‘But how will I survive?’

  ‘The taxation granted by Parliament is only one source of your revenue. You also acquire much by way of traditional feudal entitlements, the grant of monopolies, and trading profits from certain ventures that your father established with my assistance. This is in addition to custom revenues. Believe me, sire, you will not starve. Talking of which, I have ordered that your supper be brought forth shortly, and with your gracious leave I will join you at board.’

  ‘Gladly, Thomas, gladly! There is so much upon which I need your guidance, if I am to be best placed to enjoy my inheritance. For example, how may I ensure that the people love me?’

  Thomas thought deeply for a moment, then waved in the servers who stood hesitantly in the doorway behind the pages and footmen who hastily assembled the board. Platters of meats, loaves of freshly baked bread, tureens of soup and several jugs of wine appeared on the table as if by feats of conjuring, and as he dug heartily into his supper Henry appeared more relaxed, which was precisely as Thomas wished him to be before launching into the more delicate advice he had to impart.