Winter King: Murder in Henry's Court (Tudor Crimes Book 1)

by Anne Stevens

  The coach leaves, and Will Draper considers what to do next. At last, driven by the biting cold, he moves forward, and knocks on the big door. There is silence, then the sound of footsteps. The door opens, and the thin man is standing there, holding up a candle.

  “Lovely evening,” Will says, and steps inside.

  “You are from her?” the man asks, his voice thick with Dutch vowels trying to crowd out the English ones.

  “No. I am from another.” Will sees that they are alone, and decides to bargain. “My master is not happy about your activities. He has sent me to advise you, Mijnheer. There are boats across the channel every day. Be on one, tomorrow.”

  The man compresses his lips into a turned down smile. He has been threatened in every language in Europe, and knows how to deal with thugs who come in the night. He turns, and leads his visitor through a low door, into his work room. There is the stink of sulphur, and a dozen candles illuminate an array of bizarre looking objects on two long trestle tables.

  “U hoeft niet een heks lijden?” He says. Suffer ye not a witch. How to explain to this stupid Englishman. “I am not a … sorcerer. I am a master alchemist. I study things beyond your ability to understand. You see this, yes?”

  “No, I don’t need to,” Will replies. To listen is to take a chance that you might be tricked into belief. “I want only for you to be gone. My master wants it too, and he will not suffer een heks.

  “I have a commission. Allow me to finish it, and I will pay you with gold from Lady Hurstmantle’s fee. Ten English pounds.” The Dutchman is confident now. Money is the great healer, and ten pounds can keep a man comfortable, for six months. “She wants only a special doll, as a gift for a friend. See, here it is, waiting for its clothes.”

  “You mean it for Lady Anne Boleyn, I think.” Will smiles at the cleverly modelled wax figure. Its face is as cold and uncharitable as the lady’s. It stands no taller than the width of a man’s spread fingers, and its hair is soft.

  “Human hair,” the doll maker confides. “It must look the part, or the lady will not want to touch it. Have we a deal?”

  “How does it work?”

  “Magic.”

  “Would you like me to cut your throat?” Will rests his hand on the hilt of his sword. The doll maker relents. Share the secret, make the fool a co- conspirator, and increase the bribe.

  “It is to do with the painting of the doll,” he confesses. “Twenty pounds?”

  “I am beginning to grow very interested, Mijnheer” Will Draper says. Twenty pounds would buy him a modest house. How much is the doll maker being paid? And for what? A tiny mannikin that looks like Anne Boleyn. “What does the paint have to do with it?”

  “Let me show you.” The movement is almost deft enough to deceive the eye. The Dutchman picks up a sharp modelling tool, dips it in a bowl of green fluid, and thrusts it into Wills chest. He steps back, and the point is confounded by the layers of clothes. The doll maker lunges a second time.

  Will is ready now. He steps aside and grasps the man’s wrist, forcing him to drop the weapon. Then he drags the man over to the table and demands to know what the green fluid is. The doll maker curses, but in Dutch, and it is lost on Will. He picks up the bowl, forces the man to his knees, and pours it into his protesting mouth.

  “Poison?” Thomas Cromwell is seldom taken by surprise, but cannot hide his expression.

  “It was to be mixed into the paint,” Will explains. “The doll maker was a man, a Dutch alchemist. He was paid to make a life like doll of Lady Anne. It was to be painted with a deadly poisonous paint. I think that Anne would cherish such a gift, and handle it.”

  “Good God!” Rafe is more used to account books, and is astonished at man’s depravity.

  “The touch of the poison on her skin might have been enough to kill her,” Will continues. “Whoever was to present the doll, must know the harm it would do.”

  “And who might that have been?” Cromwell asks. “Lady Hurstmantle is not a favourite of Lady Anne. She would suspect. It must be one who is close. Did you get a name, Master Draper?”

  “I regret not.” Will senses he has failed in part of his task. “The man tried to kill me, and in the struggle, he … swallowed the poison. It killed him within seconds, sir.”

  “It cannot be helped. A poisonous doll. Whatever next.” Cromwell shakes his head. He must make sure that Anne hears about her close brush with murder, and how his man stopped it. Then, of course, there is the matter of Lady Hurstmantle. She might try again.

  “Rafe, a discreet note to Lady Hurstmantle, I think. Hint in it that we are on to her, and would frown at any further mischief from that quarter.”

  Will bows himself out of the room. He has taken matters into his own hands, and sent a message to the lady already.

  Lady Hurstmantle is an early riser. She climbs out of bed, leaving the young gallant sleeping. He has done his duty, and will be sent off with a bag of coins. She regrets that she must hire her sexual pleasure these days, and curses her lack of a regular lover. She looks out over her gardens, and realises that there is something perching atop her fountain.

  It is a full sized waxen head. She is intrigued and throws a fur around herself. It is a frosty morning, and she puts on leather slippers too. As she gets closer, she realises that it bears a striking resemblance to her doll maker. How odd, she thinks. Then she perceives that which lies beneath a thin sheen of hardened wax, and screams.

  The Dutchman’s head is a better deterrent than any sharply written note from Rafe Sadler. Lady Hurstmantle will take to her bed for the winter, and keep well away from court. Queen Katherine will wait in vain for news of Anne Boleyn’s mysterious death.

  The news reaches Austin Friars at dinner. Cromwell’s men, clustered around the long kitchen table, marvel at who has the audacity to do such a thing.

  “I doubt it will dissuade her ladyship from pouncing on fresh young men in Westminster,” Barnaby Fowler says. It is seldom their heads she is after.”

  “Hush, you know Master Cromwell dislikes too bawdy a house,” Rafe says. He smiles across the table at Will Draper. Should the truth ever come out, he is already formulating another plea of self defence for his comrade.

  Harry Cork is notable by his absence. Will remarks on it, and Rafe signals with a raised finger that it is not to be spoken of. Later, out of earshot of the rest, he confesses his surprise that Harry Cork has been turned away, as not suitable.

  “Master Cromwell was not to be turned on the matter,” he says. “I tried, for your friend’s sake, but failed. He sent him off with a few shillings, and a letter recommending him to another.”

  “Another?”

  “Any one who might wish to employ a personable young man.”

  “A pity.”

  “Yes. A pity.” Rafe is embarrassed, so Will changes the subject.

  “Might I test your knowledge of London.”

  “Of course. What do you wish to know, my friend?”

  “The address of Isaac ben Mordecai.”

  For a moment Rafe looks surprised, then he bursts out into a gale of laughter. He fetches a quill and ink, and scratches out the name of a street in Stepney.

  “I know you speak several languages, Will,” Rafe Sadler says, as he hands the address to his friend. “Now you wish to seek lessons in Spanish!”

  6 The King’s Councellor

  Austin Friars is in turmoil. Richard Cromwell is all for smuggling his uncle out of the country on one of the Dutch trading boats down at Tilbury. He and Rafe will stay behind and try to get out as much as possible. The king has summoned their master.

  “Peace, Richard.” Cromwell is trying to make his best coat look presentable. “I am called to York Place, not the Tower of London. His majesty would not play me false in this. It is not his way. Upset him, and it is an honest end on the scaffold, not a cat and mouse game. What say you about it, Will Draper?”

  “I will come with you.” Will is strapping his sword on, and loo
ks every inch a military man. If it comes to it, Cromwell thinks, Will Draper will hack his way through a thousand enemy for him. He wonders at such ready devotion. He knows now about the waxen head, and suspects that Will refused a large bribe. Perhaps twelve pounds a year is not enough for such a man. He must reconsider the worth of his devoted soldier of fortune.

  “You will stay here,” Cromwell says. “How can I offend the king by turning up with a murderous Irish wolf hound at my heels? Besides, I hear that you like to stroll in the gardens of Stepney each noon time.”

  “Then take Rafe with you, master.” Will is genuinely concerned for his master’s safety. “He can compose a piece of legislation to see you safe home at the drop of a hat.”

  “I have met his majesty on a score of previous occasions,” Cromwell says, soothing their fears.

  “Under Cardinal Wolsey’s wing,” Richard Cromwell tells him. “Now he asks for you, by name, master. ‘Send me Cromwell’ he says, and ‘sharpen the axe!’ no doubt.”

  “Then what do you propose, my boys?” Cromwell seldom loses his temper, but is close to it now. “Shall we all run away and live in a Dutch counting house?”

  Later, he recalls the looks on their faces, and smiles to himself.

  The King turns on him as soon as he reaches York Place. He almost scoops him up in his great bear arms, and drags him out into one of the Cardinal’s beautifully maintained gardens. It is winter time, and the bushes are mostly bare, save for some red berries, and a dusting of powdery snow.

  “You came, Cromwell,” his majesty says as they stroll.

  “You commanded,” Cromwell replies.

  “They said you would not.” Henry is flustered, and unable to draw his words together.

  “They said I would disobey my king?” Cromwell permits himself to laugh. “Then they do not know me, sire. I love you as my master, Cardinal Wolsey did. How may I serve you?”

  “I have need of a good and clever man,” Henry says. Rather than the simpering idiots about him now, Cromwell thinks. “I want you to become one of my councellors, Master Cromwell. How say you?”

  “It is an honour, your majesty.” Cromwell is relieved. It can often be the axe rather than the privilege these days. The season of the Winter King is upon them all.

  “I need honest men about me. These are difficult times.” Henry wants to talk in specifics, but cannot find the way. Cromwell, after all, is not even a gentleman. He has heard the tales of how he is the son of a blacksmith, who ran away to sea, and fought for the French.

  “You have but to tell me your wishes.” Thomas Cromwell is being disingenuous. He knows the king cannot simply ask. One must guess, assemble hints, and act. Then you wait, and hope you have read his mind correctly … or that he has not changed it in the meantime.

  “I hear that your household at Austin Friars is growing in size each day.” Small talk now. Tom Cromwell can be a patient man, when it is required. He considers whether the King can take the simple truth.

  “Cardinal Wolsey surrounded himself with good fellows,” he says. “I cannot see them starve, so give them employ.”

  “Good fellows, you say?”

  “And the best of their kind at what ever they do.”

  “Falconers? Farriers?” Henry runs out of f’s and pauses for breath.

  “The best.”

  “Send some to me.”

  “My lord Norfolk asks the same, sire.”

  “Does he indeed?” Henry laughs. “God bugger old Uncle Norfolk. He has too much of England already. I will have Wolsey’s falconers for myself. Pick out the very best and have them put into my service, Thomas.”

  “At once, your Majesty.” Cromwell cannot believe his luck. He will be able to put his people at every key post. The boy who lights the fires, and the man who saddles the King’s mount will be his, and they will serve, and listen. “Might I suggest a fine fellow, who came to me from Harry Percy, just the other day?”

  “I’ll take him. Percy is another who plagues me.”

  Cromwell understands. The king is missing Wolsey already, and seeks to surround himself with the next best thing. He shoots off a verbal arrow, and looks to see it land.

  “This fine fellow left the Duke in disgust, I’m told, at the way he treated the late Cardinal. Harry Percy sought revenge over some petty affront. He refused him his title, and withheld even the basic comforts from my old master. I wonder he stopped short of using leg irons, sire.”

  “I did not order that.” Henry is distressed. He owes much to Wolsey, and knows it well. “I was going to forgive him, Thomas. The arrest was but a chastisement. Do you believe me?”

  “I do, sire. The last time we met, the Cardinal did commend you to me as the finest, most loving of all monarchs. He confessed to having served you ill in the matter of your annulment, but said you would forgive him at the last. In his heart, he knew you would.”

  Henry Tudor stands, arms akimbo, and a tear at the corner of one eye. He is as sentimental as Wolsey said. Then he takes Cromwell’s hand in his, bigger ones, and squeezes it.

  “Percy and the Howard clan have played me false, Thomas,” he says. “I will take Wolsey’s men under my wing, and you are the best of them. I am torn apart by my false marriage. How will I ever get free of Katherine?” He does not expect a detailed answer, but Cromwell has a plan for all weathers.

  “The annulment will never happen,” he tells the king. “The Spaniards and Pope Clement will not allow it. They think they have you in a cage, sire.”

  “Damn them!” Henry rages, but wonders if it is true.

  “One cannot cage a lion so easily.” Cromwell has found the right metaphor for the job. “England’s lion can do more than roar. It will take two years, sire.”

  “Two years?”

  “I could lie, then make excuses in twelve months,” Cromwell tells him. “Though I know your majesty is a man of great intelligence, and can deal with the truth.”

  “Of course, but why two years?”

  “We cannot move forward until Pope Clement refuses you.” The lawyer in him is in full flight now. “Once that happens, we can claim that we were forced onto the path we take.”

  “Which is?”

  “Ah, that will take careful planning… and great courage on your part, Your Majesty.”

  “I have fought at the head of my army,” Henry says. “Can anyone doubt my courage?”

  “They would be fools to do so,” Cromwell replies. “Might I beg a few weeks to draw up my ideas?”

  “Nothing disreputable, I trust?”

  “I am a lawyer, your majesty. I live by my repute.”

  Henry laughs then, and can hardly stop.

  “By God, but I have found the right man, have I not?” he says, at last. “What do you know of this business with Lady Hurstmantle?”

  Cromwell shrugs. What should he know? The lady, he has heard, is ill disposed towards the Lady Anne Boleyn, and someone has done her a disservice on that account. The King should rejoice at her discomfort.

  “Perhaps the lady should stay home, and indulge her hobby, rather than meddle in a king’s business.”

  “Well said, honest fellow.” Henry slaps him on the back. “In my younger days, I was happy to be in that lady’s saddle. I fear now that she is grown old and bitter.”

  “But still responds to the rider’s touch, I hear.” Has he gone too far? Henry frowns, then understands the joke. He roars again.

  “Tell me the gossip, Thomas. You are the only man in England who has the courage.” Cromwell bows, and begins a graphic account of Lady Hurstmantle’s insatiable lust for younger men.

  “Bastard blacksmith’s boy!” Norfolk spits. From his high window, he can see, but not hear, what is going on below. Charles Brandon peers over his shoulder. As Duke of Suffolk, and Henry’s boyhood friend, it should be he making the King laugh.

  “I warned you,” he says to his fellow Earl. “I said to make Cromwell your man.”

  “He has approached Anne.”


  “Then tell her to make him fast to the Howard cause.”

  “A councellor! A dirty common whelp as a king’s councellor!”

  “If he pleases the King well, he will not be common for much longer,” Brandon says.

  “Must he follow so close?” Will says.

  “Would you have me go unchaperoned?” Miriam replies. “My brother is looking out for my honour.”

  “Moshe, run along and play with your toys,” he curses, but it is a good humoured demand. He does not want Miriam compromised. It is his intention to marry her, as soon as his fortune is restored.

  “You would do better courting me, Will Draper,” Moshe replies. “I will not treat you as badly as my sister.” He is eighteen, a year younger than his sister, and is on the cusp of being a man. He carries a throwing knife concealed in each sleeve, and can draw and throw in the blink of an eye. Will has seen him pin a playing card at thirty paces, and admires such a skill. The two are already firm friends.

  “My grandfather is worried about our meetings,” Miriam says.

  “Where is he?”

  “On his way to York Place. One of the King’s men has need of him… or, at least, his gold.”

  “He must be careful,” Will responds. “My master is with the King this morning.”

  “I think Master Cromwell treads a far more dangerous path than my grandfather does, Will.” She reaches out and allows her fingers to brush the back of his hand. Moshe gives a theatrical cough, and they all laugh.

  “How do you think we stand?” Henry is serious again, and is asking after the privy purse. Thomas Cromwell shrugs. What can he say? He is not a member of the inner circle. How can he know what the nation is worth? “You must have some idea?”

  “I know that Cardinal Wolsey thought the country worth about a million pounds, and suspected it could be improved.” The king looks at him, expectantly. “With careful management, I think we might get two million a year in revenue.”

  Henry whistles, and shakes his head in surprise. How? Such an amount is almost unthinkable. Cromwell mentions the Kings most deadly rivals, quoting their wealth.