‘She is a beautiful girl and the Howards would propose their own grandmother to him if it suited their purpose,’ Nan says, paying no attention to my ill humour. ‘If you had seen them with Anne Boleyn, if you had seen them with all the other Howard beauties – for Kitty Howard was only one of many – you would be glad to see Mary Howard safely settled.’
‘Oh, I am,’ I say coldly.
Nan waits as the maid lays my sleeves of gold brocade in the scented chest under the window. ‘You don’t mind for him?’ she asks very quietly.
‘Not at all,’ I say clearly. ‘Not at all.’
Thomas leaves court without speaking to me again and I don’t know if he goes directly to Portsmouth or travels to Suffolk to make arrangements for the wedding at Framlingham. I wait for someone to tell me that Thomas Seymour has caught himself an heiress and obliged the cause of reform by making an alliance between the Seymours and the Howards, which will make us all safer at court; to take the Howards from their alliance with Stephen Gardiner is to weaken his power. I wait for Anne Seymour to boast that the match is done and Tom Seymour wedded and bedded. But she says nothing, and I cannot ask. I so dread hearing that he is married that I don’t ask.
Catherine Brandon taps on the door to my room when I am changing my gown to go to dinner, and dismisses the maids with a swift wave of her hand. Nan raises her eyebrows to me in the mirror. She is always alert for Catherine to show any sign that she is taking advantage of her growing favour with the king.
‘This is important,’ Catherine says tersely. ‘What is it?’ I ask.
‘Tom Howard, the duke’s second son, has been summoned before the Privy Council. They’re questioning him. About religion.’
I rise up a little from my seat and then I sit down again. ‘Religion,’ I say flatly.
‘It’s a full inquiry,’ she says. ‘I was leaving the king’s rooms and the door to the Privy Council chamber stood open. I heard them say that Tom was being brought to answer charges, and that Bishop Bonner would report from the Howard lands in Essex and Suffolk. He’s been down there gathering evidence against Tom.’
‘You’re sure it is Tom Howard?’ I ask, suddenly fearful for the man I love.
‘Yes, and they know he has listened to sermons and studied with us. Bishop Bonner has gone through all his books and papers at his home.’
‘Edmund Bonner Bishop of London?’ I name the man who interrogated Anne Askew, a powerful supporter of the old church, hand in glove with Bishop Gardiner, a dangerous man, a vindictive man, a driven man. My influence and power forced him to let Anne Askew go, but there are few who leave the bishop’s palace without pleading guilty to whatever crime he names. There are few who leave without bruises.
‘Yes, him.’
‘Did you hear what he had to report?’
‘No,’ she says. She claps her hands together in her frustration. ‘The king was watching me. I had to walk past the door; I couldn’t stop and listen. I only heard what I have told you. That’s all I know.’
‘Someone will know,’ I say. ‘Someone will tell us. Get Anne Seymour.’
Catherine flits from the room and outside we hear the music of the lute suddenly break off as Anne Seymour puts the instrument aside and comes in, closing the door behind her.
‘Has your husband said anything about questioning young Tom Howard?’ Nan asks her bluntly.
‘Tom Howard?’ She shakes her head.
‘Well, get to your rooms and find out what the council think they are doing,’ Nan says furiously. ‘For Edmund Bonner is looking around Howard lands for heretics and the Privy Council is questioning Tom Howard for heresy, and everyone knows that he has been here listening to the sermons. And many people know that Edmund Bonner released Anne Askew because Her Majesty requested it. How does he now have the courage to question another of our friends? How is he so bold as to go to Howard lands and ask questions about the Howards themselves? Have we lost power without knowing it? Or has Gardiner turned against the Howards? What’s happening now?’
Anne looks from my pale face to Nan’s furious one. ‘I’ll go and find out,’ she says. ‘I’ll come back as soon as I know. I may not be able to speak with him till dinner.’
‘Just go!’ Nan spits, and Anne, usually so careful of her own importance, so slow to obey, scurries out of the room.
Nan rounds on me. ‘Your books,’ she says. ‘Your papers, the new book that you’re writing.’
‘What of them?’
‘We’ll have to pack them up and get them out of the palace.’
‘Nan, nobody is going to search my rooms for my papers. The king himself gave me these books. I am studying his own writings, his own commentaries. We just completed our work on the liturgy together. This is the king’s chosen area of study, not just mine. He is planning an alliance with the Lutheran princes against the Catholic kings. He is leading England away from the Roman Catholic church towards full reform—’
‘The liturgy, yes,’ she says, interrupting me, forgetting, in the grip of her fear, the respect that she should show. ‘You’re safe working on that, I suppose, as long as you agree completely with him. But what about Lamentation? What about that? Would the king think it conformed to The King’s Book? Is your secret work not heretical against his laws? Gardiner’s laws?’
‘But the law keeps changing!’ I exclaim. ‘Changing, and changing again!’
‘Doesn’t matter. It is the law. And your writing is outside it.’
I am silent. ‘Where can I send my papers?’ I ask. ‘Where is safe? Shall I send them to someone in the City? To Thomas Cranmer?’
‘To our uncle,’ she rules. I see that she has already thought of this, that she has been fearful for some time. ‘He’ll keep them safe. He’ll hide them and have the courage to deny them. I’ll pack up while you’re at dinner.’
‘Not my notes on the sermons! Not the translation of the gospels! I need them. I am in the middle of—’
‘Everything,’ she says fiercely. ‘Everything. Every single thing but the king’s Bible and the king’s own writings.’
‘You won’t come to dinner?’
‘I’ve no appetite,’ she says. ‘I won’t come.’
‘You’re never going to miss dinner!’ I say, trying to be cheerful. ‘You’re always hungry.’
‘I never ate a single meal in Syon Abbey when I lived there with Kitty Howard under arrest. My belly was stuffed with fear. And I feel like that now.’
The king dines in the great hall before his people, sending out the best dishes to his favourites, raising his cup to toast his best friends. The court is crowded, for the members of the Privy Council are all here, having worked up an appetite for their dinner with the questioning of Tom Howard. There are many who would be glad to see the younger son from such a great family take a tumble into the quietness of prison for a while and come out with the Howard pride humbled. Those who have been offended by the persistent rise of his father take a pleasure in humiliating the son. Those of the reformed faith are glad to see a Howard squirm. Those who are traditionalists direct their malice at the ardent young scholar. One swift glance tells me that young Tom is not at dinner: not on the table for the young friends and companions, not at the foot of the Howard table. Where can he be?
His father, the Duke of Norfolk, is completely impassive at the head of his family table, rising to his feet to toast the king when he sends down a massive haunch of beef, bowing respectfully to me. There is no way of knowing what is going through the old man’s head. He is a great friend of the old church, devoted to the Mass; but he denied his own beliefs and rode against the Pilgrimage of Grace. Though his heart was with the pilgrims who had enlisted to defend the old church, and fought under the banner of the five wounds of Christ, the duke declared martial law, ignored their royal pardons and killed them one by one in their little villages. He hanged hundreds of innocent men, perhaps thousands, and refused to allow them to be buried in sanctified ground. Whatever his loyalties,
whatever his loves, he cares for nothing as much as keeping his place at the side of the king, second in wealth and honour only to Henry. He is determined that his house shall succeed and become the greatest in England.
I cannot understand why such a man, the head of such a noble house, would sell his own daughter into marriage with the Seymours. Her first marriage was to the king’s bastard heir and there is no comparison. As always, Thomas Howard will be thinking one thing and doing another. So what is he thinking when he proposes this match? What will Thomas Seymour have to do when he is the duke’s son-in-law?
And how can the duke, knowing that his second son has been questioned by the Privy Council, dine on the king’s dishes like a man without fear? How can Thomas Howard, frantically thinking where his son might be, raise a glass with a steady hand to the king? I cannot make him out. I cannot calculate what long careful game he is playing in this court of old gamblers.
There is to be a masque after dinner with dancers. The king’s chair with the footstool is placed on the dais and I stand beside him. Courtiers come and go as the dancers make their grand entrance, and Will Somers skips out of the way as the musicians play and the dancing begins.
Anne Seymour comes quietly to stand behind me, her voice masked by the music. She leans forward to whisper in my ear. ‘They offered to release Tom Howard without a charge if he would admit that heresy is preached in your rooms. They threatened him with a trial for heresy if he did not assist them. They said that all they need to know from him are the names of those who preach in your rooms and what they say.’
It is like falling from a horse: everything suddenly goes very slowly and I can see how this started and how it will end between one beat of the music and another. It is as if the court freezes, the little golden clock in my room freezes, as Anne Seymour tells me that the Privy Council are pursuing me for heresy, hunting me down from word to word. Tom Howard is just bait to lead them to me. He is their first step. I am the goal.
‘They asked him to name me?’ I glance sideways at my husband, who is smiling at the dancers and clapping in time to the music, quite blind to my descent into terror. ‘Was the king there? At the Privy Council meeting? Was this in his hearing? Did the king ask them to name me as a heretic himself? Has he told them to find me guilty?’
‘No, thank God. Not the king.’
‘Who then?’
‘It was Wriothesley.’
‘The Lord Chancellor?’
She nods, completely aghast. ‘The highest law lord in the land has ordered the duke’s son to name you as a heretic.’
I cancel the preachers who come to my rooms and instead I summon the king’s chaplains to give us readings from the Bible. I don’t invite them to comment or lead a discussion, and my ladies say nothing, but listen in respectful silence as if none of us is capable of thought. Even when the reading is of great interest to us, something that we would normally study, perhaps even go back to the original Greek to make a new translation, we nod like a convent of orthodox nuns hearing the laws of God and the opinions of man, as if we had no minds of our own.
We go to chapel before dinner and Catherine Brandon, the king’s new favourite, walks beside me.
‘Your Majesty, I am afraid that I have some bad news,’ she starts.
‘Go on,’ I say.
‘A London bookseller, who has supplied me for years with texts, has been arrested for heresy.’
‘I am sorry to hear it,’ I say steadily. ‘I am very sorry for the trouble for your friend.’ I make sure that I don’t even check in my stride as we go side by side down the gallery to the chapel. I incline my head to a group of bowing courtiers.
‘I’m not asking for your protection for him. I am warning you.’ She has to hurry to keep up with my rapid pace. ‘This man, a good man, was arrested on the orders of the Privy Council. The arrest was made out specifically to him by name. He is John Bale. He brings in books from Flanders.’
I raise my hand. ‘Better that you tell me nothing,’ I say.
‘He sold us the Testament in French that you have,’ she says. ‘And the Tyndale translation of the New Testament. They’re banned now.’
‘I don’t have them,’ I reply. ‘I have given away all my books, and you had better get rid of yours, Catherine.’
She looks as frightened as I feel. ‘If my husband were alive then Bishop Stephen Gardiner would never have dared to arrest my bookseller,’ she says.
‘I know,’ I agree. ‘The king would never have allowed Charles Brandon to be questioned by such as Wriothesley.’
‘The king loved my husband,’ she says. ‘So I was safe.’
I know that we are both wondering if he loves me.
GREENWICH PALACE, SUMMER 1546
The ritual of the court moves on, and I – who once led it boldly – am trapped inside it, going through my paces like a blinkered horse, allowed only to run the length of the tilt rail, blinded to the world outside my narrow, frightened view. We transfer to Greenwich for the pleasure of the gardens in the summer weather, but the king hardly emerges from his rooms. The roses bloom in the arbours and he does not smell their scent, heavy on the evening air. The court flirts and plays and competes in little games and he does not bellow advice nor award prizes. There is boating and fishing, riding at the quintain, racing and dancing. I have to appear at every pastime, smile on every winner and maintain the normal life of the court, running in its agreed course. But at the same time I know that people are whispering that the king is ill, and does not want me at his side. That he is an old man struggling with illness and pain but everyone can see his young wife watching the tennis, or the archery, or boating on the river.
My physician comes to see me as I am looking at my birds. Two pairs of canaries have nested and one cage has a row of adorable chicks, opening their beaks in unison, stretching their stubby pale wings. ‘There’s nothing wrong with me,’ I say irritably. ‘I didn’t send for you. I am perfectly well. You will have been seen coming here, please make sure that you tell everyone that I am perfectly well and that I didn’t send for you.’
‘I know you didn’t, Your Majesty,’ Doctor Robert Huicke says humbly. ‘It is I who needs to see you. I can see that you are in your full health and beauty.’
‘What is it?’ I ask, closing the cage door and turning from the birds.
‘It is my brother,’ he says.
At once I am alert. Doctor Huicke’s brother is a known reformer and scholar. He has attended the sermons at my rooms, has sent me books from London for my studies. ‘William?’
‘He has been arrested. It was an order from the Privy Council naming him, him alone, not the other scholars that he studies with. None of his circle. Just him.’
‘I am sorry to hear it.’
My blue parrot sidles along his perch as if to listen. I offer him a seed and he takes it in claw and beak, positioning it so that he can crush it and eat the kernel. He drops the husk on the ground and looks at me with his bright intelligent eyes.
‘They asked him about your opinions, Your Majesty. They asked him what authors you cite, what books he has seen in your rooms, who else attends the sermons. They searched his rooms for anything written by you. They suspect him of taking your papers to a publisher. I think they may be building a case against you.’
I shiver as if I am cold despite the warm summer sunshine. ‘I am afraid you are right, Doctor.’
‘Can you speak to the king in favour of my brother, Your Majesty? You know he is no heretic. He has thoughts about religion, but he would never undermine the king’s settlement.’
‘I will speak if I can,’ I say carefully. ‘But you see for yourself that I am not influential at the moment. Stephen Gardiner and his friends the Duke of Norfolk, William Paget and Lord Wriothesley, who were my friends, are working against the new learning, and they are in the ascendancy. This time, while the king is in such pain, it is they who are admitted to his rooms. They are his advisors, not me.’
‘I will speak to Doctor Wendy,’ he says. ‘Sometimes he consults with me about the king’s health. He might mention my brother’s name to the king and ask him for a pardon, if they charge him.’
‘Perhaps all these interrogations and inquiries are just to frighten us,’ I say. ‘Perhaps the good bishop just wants to warn us all.’
The parrot dips up and down as if he is dancing. I recognise that he is hoping for more seeds and I carefully hand him another. He takes it daintily, turning it round with his black tongue and beak as Doctor Huicke continues quietly: ‘I wish that were so. You haven’t heard about Johanne Bette?’
I shake my head.
‘He is one of my congregation, the brother of one of your yeomen. And the Worley brothers, Richard and John, have been taken from your household, too, for questioning. God have mercy on poor Johanne – he has been condemned to death. If this is a warning it is written in the blackest of ink and addressed to you. It is your men that they are questioning, Your Majesty. It is your man who will have to climb the scaffold.’
From the darkened royal rooms comes an announcement: the king is ill again. The fever mounting from his wounded leg burns in his brain and enters every joint of his aching body. Doctor Wendy is in and out of his chambers, trying one remedy after another; the doors are shut to almost everyone else. We hear that they are cupping him, draining the blood from the great bloated body, tapping the wound, grinding gold pieces into it and then washing them out with jugs of lemon juice. The king moans with pain and they station guards to keep people out of the great presence chamber and the gallery beyond, so that no-one shall hear him sob in agony. He does not ask for me, he does not even reply to my messages wishing him well, and I don’t dare to enter without invitation.
Nan says nothing, but I know that she is remembering when the king locked himself away from Katherine Howard as they went through her little letters and her household accounts looking for a payment or a gift for Thomas Culpepper. Now, as then, the king hides in his rooms, watching, and listening, but never giving himself away.