Rivals in the Tudor Court

A New Allegiance

In October my father and grandfather quell Henry Stafford the Duke of Buckingham’s rebellion, which had arisen to support the Earl of Richmond, Henry Tudor, and resulted in the duke’s beheading. As a reward we are given more lands, and Grandfather and Sir Thomas are steeped in favour and royal responsibilities.

On 22 August 1485, our brief interlude of peace is interrupted when Henry Tudor lands in Wales to launch another attack, resulting in the death of Richard III during the Battle of Bosworth. We learn Grandfather is also slain (I grudgingly seek the Lord’s forgiveness for not mourning him) and a wounded Sir Thomas has been taken prisoner in the dreaded Tower of London. We fall at the speed with which we had risen. Our lands, all except Mother’s Ashwelthorpe, are seized. Sir Thomas is referred to as the attainted Earl of Surrey. The dukedom of Norfolk is no longer in Howard hands.

And yet the new King Henry VII is merciful. Neddy and I are styled lords and called to court to wait upon him as pages. Not only this, I am to be betrothed to the king’s future sister-in-law Lady Anne Plantagenet, daughter of the late King Edward IV. The white rose of York and red rose of Lancaster will be united through the king’s marriage to Elizabeth, and I will be his own brother-in-law. I, Thomas Howard, brother-in-law to a king! It makes the thought of dealing with a female much easier. What is most important is that this new connection may one day free my father and restore the Howards to glory.

“Be warned, Thomas,” Mother whispers before we depart. “The king holds you as favoured prisoners; if your father does not continually demonstrate loyalty even from the Tower, you shall be snuffed out without a second thought.”

I shudder at the thought, recalling the poor little princes in the Tower, other innocents snuffed out in the name of ambition. Neddy and I are of no great consequence to anyone and yet still find ourselves pawns. How much greater is the risk to our lives should Sir Thomas offend His Grace further?

I must serve the king, impress him with my loyalty and devotion. I must prove myself indispensable. For love of me, the king may spare my father. Grandfather, despite his own questionable character, did say that we are to ally ourselves to whoever is in power in order to survive. I believe I can see the logic in this with a little more clarity now. With me near, His Grace will see that we Howards are loyal, the most loyal servants he can come by. My heart swells with hope. Yes, that is what I will do. I will prove to this new king, this King Henry VII, that he can trust the Howards as he can his own God.

The court is maddening—wonderful, dizzying. I am caught up and loving every moment. I sleep in the dormitory with the other pages and spend my days on errands for His Grace. I am Lord Thomas Howard, fancy that! It rolls quite nicely off the tongue.

There is always something going on, always work to keep me occupied. Henry VII is not the most personable of men, but I am not here to be petted. I am here to learn, and learn I shall. Henry VII is not a frivolous king. His wish is to keep a firm hold on his throne and oust any pretenders. He is a master of government, installing a King’s Council, increasing taxes among rich and poor, and shipbuilding to strengthen the Royal Navy. He keeps a select number of Privy Councillors for his Court of Star Chamber in which he can deal with delicate matters of justice in a swift and efficient manner. His isn’t a court of endless parties and needless expenditures. He is too set on rebuilding the royal exchequer. He is determined to make himself great and in this I am in sympathy with him.

The hardest lessons are learned in the dormitory. Pages are a rough group of lads and as I have remained quite small, an endless source of consternation, I find myself in many a quandary that only a combination of quick thinking, agility, and fisticuffs can rescue me from.

My energy is devoted to the dagger I have taken to carrying with me at all times. From every position conceivable I practise retrieving it, ensuring that I will be able to rely on the sleek blade no matter the circumstances. I weave it about, practising that steady, certain upward motion that is the dagger’s deadliest move.

I’ll not let anyone get the best of me.

Of course they do try. I’d be a fool to think they would not. I am small and an easy target, but I meet them as a snarling badger would an unsuspecting rabbit and soon my reputation as a fierce and uncompromising opponent precedes me. There is no longer a doubt in my mind that I can be a competent and able soldier, that in hand-to-hand combat I can run a man through without faltering. It is a matter of us or them, after all.

“Aren’t you afraid of anything?” asks Neddy one day.

I laugh. “And what is there to fear? God’s body, Neddy, I’ve no time for that nonsense.” I shrug. “Fear stops you from everything. I’ve never heard of a coward rising to power. They remain a nobody.”

“But we’re nobodies,” says my little brother.

I seize his arm. “No, we’re not. We are the Howards. Our family’s known success before and we will know it again!”

“You sound like Grandfather.” Neddy laughs.

I release his arm, stepping back, the fear I so condemn surging through me.

I do not want to sound like Grandfather.

I first see Anne Plantagenet at the king’s wedding to her sister Elizabeth on 18 January 1486. We are to formally plight our troth this day and I have a little ring for her that was given to me by my father, who still passes his miserable existence in the Tower.

The ring bears no coat of arms, but I was able to scrape enough together to have an H and P interwoven in it to remind her that this is a union of the houses of Howard and Plantagenet.

I steal glimpses of her throughout the grand ceremony that is held at Westminster. She is looking at her sister and new brother-in-law, however, and does not glance at me once.

“She’s beautiful, Tom,” says Neddy in dreamy tones.

I flush and look away, casting my eyes to the ring I am wearing on my middle finger. I hope it fits her. I hope she doesn’t laugh at me and think it a cheap token. Were I in a better financial situation, I would have a beautiful signet ring designed, but such is not my present fate. She will have to settle for this.

At the wedding feast, we are presented to one another for the first time. My heart sinks when I note that she is taller than I, though the long tapering limbs that make up her arms and undoubtedly her legs suddenly take on a new appeal I hadn’t thought to appreciate when first learning of our betrothal.

She is beautiful with her rose-gold hair and soft green eyes that bespeak nothing but gentleness. Her cheekbones are high and well sculpted, her nose long but not unattractive. Her mouth, though not full, gives itself over to a wide, eager smile, revealing a row of straight white teeth.

The king and his new queen consort oversee the formalities themselves, the queen ever doting towards her sister, rubbing her back as she introduces us.

I cannot look the girl directly in the face as I pull at the ring that has decided to make its home on my middle finger. My slim fingers seem as though they have expanded to three times their size in the last two minutes, and my hand trembles as it works at the stubborn piece of jewellery. At last it gives and I offer a grunt of surprise.

The princess laughs.

I keep my head bowed, holding out the ring. “Here,” I say, unceremoniously. “I plight my troth.”

“Lord Thomas,” remonstrates the queen in good-natured tones, “aren’t you going to place the ring on her finger yourself?”

I look at the princess through my lashes. My heart is racing. Truly I believe facing an army of Scots would be easier than making physical contact with this one maid.

Lady Anne offers me a delicate hand. I cannot help but admire the daintiness of the long slim fingers as I slide the ring on.

“You have perfect fingers for the virginals,” I find myself saying.

I look up at her then. My nervousness recedes like the tide; calm surges through me as warm as wine. Everything about me fades, obscured by the light of her face, that sweet, beautiful face. I do not think that I am fourteen, with fickle fourteen-year-old passions. I think of her.

And love her. Just like that.

And just like that, with our hands joined here at Westminster among a bustling court before a jubilant king and his bride, I know she loves me, too.

My father is pardoned and released in 1489, returning home a different man from the one who entered the Tower three years ago. He is harder, darker, proving with his short temper and ruthless management of his household that he is indeed his father’s son.

He is styled the Earl of Surrey and allowed to keep the lands in his wife’s inheritance but none from his father’s or the Mowbrays’.

He is certain to unleash his bitterness at being withheld the title he covets with as much longing as his predecessor, that of the Duke of Norfolk. I, for one, think he should be grateful to be alive, but I suppose he isn’t dwelling on that now. I imagine that he concludes since he is alive he should receive what he considers his due.

The king tests his loyalty by sending him to Yorkshire to quell a rising there. Lord Surrey wins the day. As a reward, His Grace grants him the Howard lands he had still retained.

All of this I take in with interest, being that my father’s elevation is equivalent to my own. However, there is more to interest the lads at court than advancement and soldiering. The fairer sex has entered our awareness. We watch them, these gentle daughters of Venus with their curves and long, lustrous hair, their soft voices, their perfume, their graceful, fluid movements as they dance … and are seized by fever. Suddenly, there are not enough whores to be visited, not enough maidens to deflower. I join in, always one to participate in sport of any kind. Besides, I am to be married soon. I must know what to do. And so I learn.

No sooner do I become a student in the art of love than I become enslaved by it. The gangly girl I met when plighting my troth has returned to the court of her sister a beautiful woman, and my love for her is rejuvenated the moment our eyes lock. When not engaged in my duties I court her with all vigour. Together we stroll in the gardens. She plays for me upon the lute and the virginals, lifting her sweet voice in song, and I close my eyes, trying to emblazon in my mind and heart every note, every sound, every nuance that is this girl, this girl I have come to adore and love with every fibre of my soul. The strength of this emotion terrifies and excites me; like wine I drink it in but remain insatiable. All about me is the growing need for Lady Anne, my princess, my forever love.

To impress her I try my hand at poetry and fail miserably. She laughs that soft laugh that resembles the gurgling of a stream—how the sound intoxicates me!—and strokes my cheek, assuring me I need not impress her with flowery words.

“All I need,” she tells me, grasping my hands, “all I could ever want, is you, Lord Howard.”

On 4 February 1495, I stand in Westminster Abbey; she has me. Hands entwined with my bride, my princess, we stand before the Archbishop of Canterbury and are wed.

She is still taller than I, almost too tall for what is comely, but it is a trait I will excuse. I make up for my own lack of height in muscle and after we are led to our wedding chambers that night by giggling courtiers who see us to our bed with all manner of crude jokes befitting the occasion, the princess seems duly impressed.

Our settlement is the most pathetic thing a bride and groom of our illustrious station have ever seen and I cannot contain a sigh of dismay when I learn that the princess and I will be living on nothing but the charity of our relatives. We are penniless and it is seen to that we will remain so until my grandmother, the Dowager Duchess of Norfolk, passes on. With my luck the cantankerous old bird will live forever.

The queen provides for her sister in the manner she sees fit, and my princess is given a household of two ladies, a maid, her own gentlemen and yeomen, along with three grooms. She is also given twenty shillings a week for food and a promise that the proper gowns will be provided.

My father allows us use of his residences at Lambeth and Stoke in Suffolk and when I ask my princess where the best place to start our family would be, she blinks back tears.

“Stoke, my lord,” she tells me in her soft, husky voice. “The country. Far away from court.”

“Then we shall remove to Stoke,” I tell her, taking her dainty hands in mine. “And there I will be your goodly and devoted knight and will love you till I die.”

This passionate display sends her into a deep flush and she bows her head. My God, she is a beauty! I cannot believe she is mine.

I find I am relieved to depart from court as well. I am not a born courtier. I am as yet unskilled in the art of empty flattery. I know my calling and that is to arms; should the king need my service, he is assured that I am ready to prove my worth as his loyal and able defender.

We set up our meagre household and I find it isn’t altogether bad to be poor (though I will seize every opportunity to reverse my fortune—I’m not an idiot, after all). My princess is quite competent and demonstrates a keen ability for frugality. She is formal; I imagine being raised at court has instilled this in her and as a result she is not given to initiating demonstrations of affection.

She does not talk much; she is a dreamer. One could never accuse her of being silly or frivolous. Often I find her staring out of the window or seated in the gardens, her expression soft with melancholy whimsy.

“What are you thinking about?” I ask her one day when I find her seated beside the duck pond. She holds an old loaf of bread but is not breaking any off to feed the ducks that are gathered about in anticipation.

To my surprise, tears light her eyes. She averts her head.

“Princess?” I call her nothing else; to utter her sacred name would be sacrilege. So she is Princess, my forever princess, and her tears twist my gut with pain. There is nothing I long for more than to bring her comfort. I kneel beside her, taking her chin between my fingers, turning her head toward me. “What is it, my love?”

She blinks rapidly. “I cannot help it, my lord,” she tells me in tones that ring with desperation. “I cannot stop thinking of them. I try to will away the thoughts … I pray to the Lord for guidance, that He will help me banish them from my mind—”

“Who, my lady?”

She buries her face in her pretty hands. “My brothers … the princes … the princes in the Tower.”

“Oh, Princess!” I cry, gathering her in my arms, rocking back and forth. What can I say to this? Never once had I thought of how the event affected her. Truly she must have had to disguise her grief well at the courts of her uncle Richard III and now her brother-in-law Henry VII.

“I suppose we’ll never know what happened, will we?” she asks, her eyes lit with an innocence I long to preserve.

I shake my head. If Grandfather alluded to anything the day we discussed the ill-fated princes, I will never share it with this poor girl. What purpose would it serve except to further her grief and drive a wedge between us?

“We must press on,” I tell her, stroking her cheek. “Pray for their souls, my love, and press on. We have so much to look forward to.”

She offers a little half smile. “Yes,” she acquiesces. “Do you suppose they are in the faery country?”

This was the last thing I would suppose, but what can I say? I shrug, offering a smile of my own. “You are truly English, I think—one moment speaking of God and the next of the fey. Only a true Englishman can seamlessly marry the two.”

The princess covers her mouth with a hand. “Do you think it blasphemy?”

I wave a hand in dismissal; I want to say I don’t believe in blasphemy any more than I do the faery folk. “Of course not.”

I take her in my arms again, daring to kiss the lips I crave, daring to distract her the best way I know how.

She is a peculiar girl, this princess of mine, but her peculiarities are so endearing that I am beside myself with love for her. She leaves gifts for the faery folk, strange little gifts. A sweetmeat, a piece of string, a thimble, rose petals. In the oddest places—windowsills, the hearth of the fireplaces, my chair in my study, pressed between the pages in one of my ledgers. She writes them little notes, then burns them. The messages will be sent to the faeries in the ashes, she tells me.

When I ask her what she communicates to her faery folk, she answers in all seriousness, “To bid them safeguard my brothers.”

Often she is seen in the garden, twirling about in her gauzy gown, her little voice lifted in song. I watch her when she thinks she is alone.

It is a beautiful sight.

A year into our marriage the princess approaches me in my study. She wears a dreamy smile as she climbs onto my lap and snuggles against my shoulder. As such a show is so opposite to her character, I wrap my arms about her, revelling in her closeness and warmth. I cover the soft cheek and neck in gentle kisses.

“My love, my love,” I murmur against her rose-gold hair. “How now, dearest?”

She pulls away, roses blooming on her cheeks. She reaches for my hand and places it on her belly.

It takes a moment to realise what this gesture portends. When at last understanding dawns on me, I begin to tremble.

“Truly?” I ask her.

She nods. “Truly.”

“Dearest little mother!” I cry, taking her in my arms once more.

“We shall know such happiness! Never will our children question or wonder whether or not we love them. Never will they be afraid of us.”

The princess pulls away, cocking her head. She places a velvet hand on my cheek. “As you were?”

I blink, averting my head.

She does not pry. Instead she leans against my shoulder once more.

I hold my princess for a very long time.

Family Man

I watch my wife’s pregnancy advance in a state of awe. I chase the dark thoughts from my mind, cold stabbing fears of losing my princess and the baby, memories of my mother and the six siblings that succumbed to one childhood ailment or another.

My princess does not grow plump in any area other than her belly and I love watching her waddle about, cradling the curve wherein rests the life I planted. At night I hold her in my arms as she guides my hand to where it kicks and stretches. I tremble and laugh as I feel the little feet and hands jutting out.

“A regular knight we have, and so eager for combat!” I cry, rubbing her belly in delight.

She does not say much. She never says much, but now and then I catch her humming, rubbing her belly with that ethereal smile on her face, a smile she shares with her faeries and her fancies. I take pleasure in the sight of her; I drink in her radiance.

And then in the spring of 1497, the call to arms I have been waiting for arrives. I am to help subdue a rebellious lot of Cornishmen.

My princess gazes at me from her bed, her soft blue eyes lit with pain. “But the baby is to arrive any day now,” she says, her voice taut with anxiety. “If you leave, you will miss it and what if something—what if something goes wrong?”

My heart lurches. “I cannot disobey the king, my lady,” I tell her in soothing tones. “If I am successful, I may be given the favour of more royal assignments and you know what that would mean for the family. You must see that.”

She furrows her brow in confusion, cupping her belly with a protective hand. “Then you must go,” she says, her voice weary. “I know well that one must not refuse royal service.”

I lean down to kiss her, but she averts her head.

I suppose I understand her grief, though what can I do? I can’t very well stay home to pamper a child when the king calls for me! This may be the first of many chances to serve him or it may be the last—in any event I will not forfeit the opportunity.

I leave my princess with a kiss and the promise of my return. She says nothing. Her blue eyes stare past me, through to that world I am never quite able to enter.

I ride away. I will not look back. I will forget the tears sparkling off the cheeks where roses once bloomed.

A man remembers his first kill. Mine is made at the Battle of Blackheath on 17 June when I run my sword through the body of a bulging-eyed Cornishman. It is a very strange sensation, holding the knowledge that someone’s very existence is in my hands. But I snuff it out without hesitation; indeed, to hesitate would certainly lead to my own demise. No, this is no time to lose control and yield oneself to philosophy. I am a soldier and that is that.

The sound of sword splitting through chain mail, sliding through soft flesh is like no other in the fact that it is eerily gentle, like that of permeating wet sand with a stick. I look into his eyes, big blue bulging eyes, watching them widen in surprise. He tries to grip my hilt in a vain effort to deflect the inevitable but in his shock miscalculates and grips the blade itself, slicing his palms through to the backs of his hands. Blood begins spewing from his mouth then, a mouth that had previous ownership of the ability to scream but is now gurgling and gulping the steaming red liquid of life instead. I ease him to the ground, placing a foot on his chest in order to extricate the sword from his failing body. It is difficult, far more so than running him through.

His face drains of colour; the life ebbs out of him like the receding tide and as it does, it is as though what I have taken from him is now surging through me. I am tingling, pulsating. My heart pounds in my ears. I begin to feel the creepings of philosophy, the urge to ponder my situation: Have I done right? Am I normal?