‘Isn’t this rather ridiculous?’ I ask the king, as we sit beside the fire in his room after dinner. ‘Surely Hereward the Wake had no coat of arms to leave to the Howards, even if they are descended from him, which nobody can prove. Does this matter at all?’
Around us the court murmurs and plays cards. I can hear the rattle of dice. Soon the king will assemble his cronies, and my ladies and I will withdraw.
Henry’s face is mean, his eyes squinting. ‘It matters,’ he says shortly. ‘It matters to me.’
‘But for him to claim descent from Hereward the Wake . . . this is like a fairy story.’
‘It’s a very dangerous story,’ he says. ‘No-one has royal descent in this country but me.’ He pauses. He will be thinking of the former royal family, the Plantagenets. One by one he has sent them to their deaths for nothing worse than their fathers’ name. ‘There is only one family that can trace themselves back to Arthur of England, and that is ours. Any challenge is going to be met with extreme punishment.’
‘But why?’ I ask, as gently as I can. ‘If it is an old shield that he has shown many times before. If it is the silly pride of a young man. If the college of heralds saw it years ago, and you have not objected before?’
He raises one fat finger and instantly I am silent. ‘Do you remember what the dog-master does?’ he asks me quietly.
I nod.
‘Tell me.’
‘He sets one dog against another.’
‘He does. And when any single dog becomes big and strong, what does he do with it?
He snaps his fingers when I don’t answer.
‘He lets the others pull it down,’ I say, unwillingly.
‘Of course.’
I am silent for a moment. ‘It means that you will never have great men about you,’ I remark. ‘No thoughtful advisors, no-one that you can respect. No-one can stay with you and grow great in your service. No-one can be rewarded for loyalty. You can have no tried and tested friends.’
‘That’s true,’ he agrees with me. ‘Because I don’t want anyone like that. I’ve had men like that before, when I was a young man, friends that I loved and men who were brilliant thinkers, who could solve a problem the moment they heard it. If you had seen Thomas Wolsey in his prime! If you had known Thomas More! Thomas Cromwell would work all night, every night – nothing ever stopped him. He never failed at anything he set his hand to. I could set him a problem at dinner and he would bring me a warrant of arrest at chapel before breakfast.’
He breaks off, his little eyes under the pink swollen eyelids look towards the door as if his friend Thomas More might come in at any moment, his thoughtful face warm with laughter, his cap under his arm, his love for the king and for his family the greatest influence in his life, but nothing in the world greater than his love of God.
‘I want Nobody now,’ the king says coldly. ‘Because Nobody gives nothing away, Nobody loves no-one. The world is filled with people seeking only their own ambitions and working for their own causes. Even Thomas More—’ he breaks off with a little self-pitying sob. ‘He chose loyalty to the church over his love for me. He chose his faith over life itself. You see? No-one is ever faithful till death. If anyone tells you anything different they are playing you for a fool. I will never be a fool again. I know that every smiling friend is an enemy, every advisor is pursuing his own interest. Everyone wants my place, everyone wants my fortune, everyone wants my inheritance.’
I can’t argue against this intense bitterness. ‘But you love your children,’ I say quietly.
He looks across at Princess Mary, who is quietly talking to Sir Anthony Denny in a corner. He looks for Princess Elizabeth and sees her peeping upwards into the smiling face of Thomas Seymour.
‘Not particularly,’ he says, and his voice is like cold glass. ‘Who loved me as a child? No-one.’
The young man Henry Howard, dearest friend of Henry’s dead illegitimate son, sends an imploring letter to the king from his prison in the Tower, reminding him that he and Henry Fitzroy were like brothers, that they spent every day together, that they rode and swam and played and wrote poetry together, that they were all in all to each other. They swore loyalty to one another and he would never, ever conspire against his best friend’s father, who had been a father to him.
Henry tosses the letter to me. ‘But I have read his interrogation,’ he says. ‘I have sifted the evidence against him. I have looked at his heraldry and I have heard what he said about me.’
If I let him recite his wrongs he will get angrier and angrier. He will raise his finger and point it at me, he will speak to me as if I am the guilty young man. He draws an intense pleasure in enacting his rage. He prompts himself like an actor to play the part for the thrill that it gives him. He likes to feel his heart race with bad temper; he likes a fight, even if it is in an empty room with a white-faced woman trying to calm him.
‘But you are not taken in by all this,’ I say, trying to appeal to Henry’s scholarly, critical mind before he unleashes his temper. ‘You are sifting the evidence, studying it. You are not believing everything that they tell you?’
‘It is you that should be afraid of what they tell me!’ he says in sudden irritation. ‘For if this treasonous dog that you speak for so sweetly had got his way, it would have been you in the Tower, not him; and his sister would have your place. He is your enemy, Kateryn, far more than he is mine. He plotted to inherit my power; but he would have killed you.’
‘If he is your enemy, then he is mine,’ I whisper. ‘Of course, Your Majesty.’
‘He would have had you dead on some trumped-up charge of heresy or treason,’ the king goes on, ignoring the fact that it would have been his signature on the warrant. ‘And he would have put his sister in your place. We would have had another Howard queen. I would have had another of their whores thrust into my bed! What do you think of that? How can you bear to think of that?’
I shake my head. Of course there is nothing I can say. Who would have signed the warrant? Who would have sent me to my death? Who would have married the Howard girl?
‘You would be dead,’ Henry says. ‘And then at my death the Howards would have commanded my son . . .’ He takes a little breath. ‘Jane’s son,’ he says mistily. ‘In the grip of the Howard family.’
‘But, my lord husband. . .’
‘That was the prize. That’s the prize for them all. That’s what they all want, however they gurn and gloze. They all want command of the regency on my death and control of the new king. That is what I have to defend Edward against. That is what you will defend him against.’
‘Of course, husband, you know—’
‘Poor Henry Howard,’ he says. His voice quavers and the easy tears come quickly. ‘You know I loved that boy as if he were my own? I remember him as such a beautiful boy playing with Fitzroy. They were like brothers.’
‘Can’t he be pardoned?’ I ask quietly. ‘He writes very sorrowfully, I cannot believe that he does not regret . . .’
He nods his head. ‘I will consider it,’ he says grandly. ‘If I can pardon him, I will. I will be just. But I will be merciful too. I loved him; and my boy, my beloved Henry Fitzroy, loved him. If I can forgive Howard for the sake of his playmate, then I will.’
The court is to divide. The king is going to Whitehall to oversee the deaths of the Howards, father and son, and the complete destruction of their treasonous house, and the princesses and I are to go to Greenwich. The Seymours, Thomas and his brother Edward, will stay with the king, help him untangle the plot and name the guilty men. Under the king’s bright suspicious gaze the interrogations of servants, tenants, and enemies are read and reread, and then, I am certain, rewritten. All the vindictive spite that was directed at the reformers, my ladies and me, is now turned, like the mouth of a cannon, towards the Howards, and the great guns are ready to roar. The king’s sentiment, his mercy, his sense of justice, are put aside in an orgy of false evidence. The king wants to kill someone and the cou
rt wants to help him.
The Seymours are in the ascendancy, their religion is the king’s new preference, their family is kin to the royal line, their military skills are the saving of the nation and their companionship is all the king wants. All other rival houses are down in the dust.
The court comes to the outer steps of the palace for the lords to say goodbye to their ladies, and for those who are courting to exchange a look, a word, the touch of a hand. The gentlemen of the court come to say their farewells to me and then finally, Thomas Seymour makes his way towards me. We stand close together, my hand on my horse’s neck, the groom holding him steady.
‘At least you’re safe,’ he says in my ear. ‘Another year gone by, and you’re still safe.’
‘Are you going to marry Elizabeth?’ I ask him urgently.
‘He’s not spoken. Has he said anything to you?’
‘He asked me what I thought of it. I said what I could.’
He makes a little grimace, then he puts the groom aside with one gesture and he cups his hands to take my boot. Just the clasp of his warm hand on my foot reminds me how much I want him. ‘Ah God, Thomas.’
He throws me upwards and I swing my leg over the saddle and my maid comes forward and adjusts my skirts. We are silent while she does her work and then I am looking down on his dark curly head as he strokes my horse’s neck but he cannot put his hand on me. Not even on the toe of my boot.
‘Will you spend Christmas with the king?’
He shakes his head. ‘He wants me to look at Dover Castle.’
‘When will I see you again?’ I can hear the desolation in my voice.
He shakes his head, he doesn’t know. ‘At least you’re safe,’ he says as if that is all that matters. ‘Another year, who knows what will happen?’
I can’t bring myself to imagine that anything good will happen. ‘Merry Christmas, Thomas,’ I say quietly. ‘God bless you.’
He looks up, squinting a little against the brightness of the sky. This is the man that I love and he cannot come closer. He steps back and puts his hand to my horse’s head, gently strokes his nose, fingers his mouth, his sensitive snuffing nostrils. ‘Go safely’ he tells him. ‘You’re carrying a queen.’ He lowers his voice. ‘And my only love.’
GREENWICH PALACE, WINTER 1546
I think of Queen Katherine, who celebrated Christmas at Greenwich over a divided court while the king was in London courting Anne Boleyn, ordered to behave as if nothing was wrong. This time it is not lovemaking that keeps the king in the city but killing. They tell me that the court at Whitehall is closed to everyone but the Privy Council, and that the king and his advisors are going over and over the evidence that has been gathered against the Howards, father and son.
They tell me that the king has become devoted to scholarship. He studies Henry Howard’s careless letters as if they were a text, annotating every guilty admission, questioning every word of innocence. The king has become thorough, pedantic. Spite gives him energy and he follows the interrogations as if he is determined that the young man, the beautiful foolish young man, shall die because of his own light words, spoken without thought.
One night in early January, Henry Howard climbs out of the window of his prison cell, trying to escape the king’s mercy. They seize him just as he is about to slide down the chute for waste water and fall into the icy river. This is typical Henry Howard: daring as a boy. The act should remind everyone that he is an impulsive young man, a bit of a fool, but a brave reckless innocent; but instead of laughing at him and releasing him, they send for irons and keep him in shackles.
Worse, far worse, is his father’s confession. In a desperate gamble to save his wrinkled old skin the old duke writes to the Privy Council that he is guilty of everything that they have put to him. He confesses to bearing arms that were his by right and have been used by the House of Howard for generations. Ludicrously, he confesses to sending secret messages to the pope. He swears that he has done everything they allege, he says anything as long as he can be spared. He pleads guilty as no-one has ever been guilty before and offers all his fortune and his lands as payment for his guilt if they will leave him with his life.
As if his son is nothing but an object for barter, he throws Henry Howard into the bargain along with honour and name and wealth. He casts off his son and heir to hell, he all but sends his own hurdle to drag the young man to the scaffold. He says on oath that his son and heir, the twenty-nine-year-old Henry, is a traitor to the king and to his name and to his house. The old duke sends his boy to death as the agreed price of his own freedom. His accusation is the death sentence for his son, and that night the king signs the warrant to send Henry Howard to trial. The king says that it is all the fault of Thomas Howard, and no-one can complain of him.
We all know what the outcome of the trial must be. His own father has confessed for him and named him as guilty; surely Henry Howard can say nothing in his own defence?
But he has much to say. He stands in the dock and defends himself. He argues all day until they call for candles in the evening, and the handsome young earl shines in their golden light before the jury of his neighbours and friends. Perhaps, even then, they might have refused to convict him, he was so persuasive and funny and insistent. But William Paget came from the court with a secret message from the king, went into the jury room as they considered their verdict, and when they came out, they said that they had all agreed without one dissenting voice. For who was going to argue? They said ‘guilty’.
In the middle of the cold bright month of January a messenger comes from the Privy Council to inform me that Henry Howard has been beheaded on Tower Hill. His father remains in prison awaiting his own sentence. We hear the news in silence. The king’s determination that there should be no more burnings of reformers does not extend mercy to other suspects. Nobody thinks that Henry Howard was more than a foolish braggart, a poet who was too prodigal with his words; but he died for that.
Princess Elizabeth comes to me and puts a cold hand in mine. ‘I hear terrible things of my Cousin Howard,’ she says, her dark eyes questioning me. ‘He was planning to overthrow you, and put another woman in your place. They tell me that he was going to put his sister on the throne.’
‘It was wrong of him to hope for that,’ I reply. ‘Your father and I were married in the sight of God. It would be wrong for anyone to drive us apart.’
She hesitates – she has heard enough about her own mother to know that Anne Boleyn did exactly this to Henry’s first queen, and her kinsmen were planning to do it again to his sixth. ‘Do you think it was right that he should die?’ she asks me.
Not even for Elizabeth, with Jane Grey standing so solemn and silent, listening behind her, am I going to risk expressing an opinion that is different from the king’s. I have kissed the rod. I have lost my voice. I am an obedient wife.
‘Whatever your father the king thinks best, is the right thing to do,’ I say.
She looks at me, this bright, thoughtful girl. ‘If you are a wife, can you not think for yourself?’
‘You can think for yourself,’ I say carefully. ‘But you need not speak. If you are wise you will agree with your husband. Your husband has power over you. You have to find ways to think your own thoughts and live your own life without always telling of it.’
‘Then I had better not marry,’ she says without a glimmer of a smile. ‘If to be a wife is to give up your own opinion, I had better never marry.’
I pat her cheek and I try to laugh at this thirteen-year-old girl forswearing matrimony. ‘Perhaps you are right in this world,’ I say. ‘But this world is changing. Perhaps by the time you are old enough to marry the world will hear a woman’s voice. Perhaps she will not have to swear to obey in her wedding vows. Perhaps one day a woman will be allowed to both love and think.’
HAMPTON COURT PALACE, WINTER 1547
The messenger comes by barge, swiftly down the river in the midnight darkness, rowed as fast as the oarsmen can go
against the in-running tide, from Whitehall. It’s a cold wet journey and the guards take his dripping cape at the entrance of my presence chamber and throw open the doors. One of my ladies, wakened by the hammering on the door of the privy chamber, comes running in to me to say there is an urgent message from the Privy Council at Whitehall and will I receive it?
I am afraid at once, as everyone in this court has learned to fear the uninvited knock on the door. At once I wonder who is in danger, at once I wonder if they have come for me. I throw on my thickest winter robe and go out, my bare feet in my gold-heeled shoes, to my privy chamber where one of the Seymour men is waiting, shifting from one damp footprint to another, dripping rain on the floor. Nan comes after me and my ladies-in-waiting open their chamber doors and peer out, white-faced in the torchlight. Someone crosses herself; I see Nan grit her teeth, fearing bad news.
The messenger kneels to me and pulls off his hat. ‘Your Majesty,’ he says. Something in the appalled shock of his face, in the way he takes a breath as if to make a well-rehearsed speech, the lateness of the hour, the darkness of the night, warns me what he is going to say. I look over his shoulder to see if the yeomen of the guard have come in numbers to arrest me. I wonder if the royal barge is bobbing at the pier showing no lights. I look for the courage inside myself to face this moment. Perhaps now, tonight, they have finally come for me.
He gets to his feet. ‘Your Majesty, I regret to tell you, His Majesty the king is dead.’
So, I am free, I am free and I am alive. When I embarked on this marriage nearly four years ago I did not think that this day would come when I would be free and a widow again. When I saw the warrant for my arrest in the hand of the king’s doctor I did not think that I would survive a week. But I have survived. I have outlived the king who abandoned two wives, left one to die in childbirth, and murdered two others. By betraying my love, my faith and my friend, I have survived. By surrendering my will and my pride and my scholarship, I have survived. I feel like someone in a town terribly besieged for years, coming out of my house and looking wonderingly around at the breached walls and the broken gate, at the destruction in the marketplace and the torn-down church and yet being alive and safe, though others have died and the danger has passed over me. I have saved myself but I have seen the destruction of everything that I loved.